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FTR #1192 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: The title of the program stems from a deadly dichotomization of the discussion of the origin of Covid-19 into either: “A naturally-occurring phenomenon” OR “The Lab Leak Theory.”
Tellingly missing is the deliberately-created, biological warfare pandemic hypothesis that Mr. Emory has been advancing since the very beginning of the pandemic. (This analysis was first advanced in FTR#‘s 1111 & 1112. This program was recorded in early February of 2020.)
With Michael R. Gordon helping craft journalistic justification for the “Lab-Leak Theory” and Philip Zelikow chairing a commission investigating Covid-19, we are seeing players in the PNAC/Iraqi WMD/9/11 nexus being recycled in connection with that theory.
In that context, we review a study released by US National Academy of Sciences at the request of the Department of Defense about the threats of synthetic biology concluded that the techniques to tweak and weaponize viruses from known catalogs of viral sequences is very feasible and relatively easy to do.
Note that the Pentagon has funded research into bat-borne coronaviruses in China and at the “Oswald Institute of Virology,” through various vehicles, including and especially (in combination with USAID) the EcoHealth Alliance .
That research has led to the publication of research papers including some featuring the genomes of bat-borne coronaviruses.
Once those papers are published, the viruses can be “printed out” at will, either as direct copies or as mutated viruses.
Key points of discussion:
- ” . . . . Advances in the area mean that scientists now have the capability to recreate dangerous viruses from scratch; make harmful bacteria more deadly; and modify common microbes so that they churn out lethal toxins once they enter the body. . . .”
- ” . . . . In the report, the scientists describe how synthetic biology, which gives researchers precision tools to manipulate living organisms, ‘enhances and expands’ opportunities to create bioweapons. . . .”
- ” . . . . Today, the genetic code of almost any mammalian virus can be found online and synthesized. ‘The technology to do this is available now,’ said Imperiale. ‘It requires some expertise, but it’s something that’s relatively easy to do, and that is why it tops the list.’ . . .”
- ” . . . . Other fairly simple procedures can be used to tweak the genes of dangerous bacteria and make them resistant to antibiotics, so that people infected with them would be untreatable. . . .”
Reprising a portion of an article used in FTR#1191, we note Danielle Anderson’s experience of having been violently excoriated for exposing false information posted about the pandemic online.
The “last–and only” foreign researcher at the WIV, Ms. Anderson has shared the vitriol that many virologists have experienced in the wake of the pandemic.
Are we seeing a manifestation of what might be called “anti-virologist” McCarthyism, not unlike the “Who Lost China” crusade in the 1950’s?
Are virologists being intimidated into supporting–or at least not refuting–the “Lab Leak Theory?”
Bear in mind that Donald Trump’s attorney and political mentor was the late Roy Cohn, who was Senator Joe McCarthy’s top hatchet man.
A chilling article may forecast the potential deployment of even deadlier pandemics, as operational disguise for biological warfare and genocide.
Note that the sub-heading in the conclusion referring to the lab-leak hypothesis is followed by no mention of the lab-leak hypothesis, per se.
Why not? We feel there may be a chilling subtext to this.
Is this a between-the-lines reference to impending biological warfare development and the deployment of another pandemic?
Note that the Army scientist quoted in the conclusion offers an observation that is very close to a Donald Rumsfeld quote reiterated by Peter Daszak in an article we reference in FTR#1170.
- From the Defense One article: ” . . . . ‘We don’t want to just treat what’s in front of us now,’ [Dr. Dimitra] Stratis-Cullum said. ‘I think we really need to be resilient. From an Army perspective. We need to be agile, we need to adapt to the threat that we don’t know that’s coming.’ . . .”
- From the article from Independent Science News: ” . . . . ‘There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns — there are things we don’t know we don’t know.’ (This Rumsfeld quote is in fact from a news conference) . . . . In the subsequent online discussion, Daszak emphasized the parallels between his own crusade and Rumsfeld’s, since, according to Daszak, the ‘potential for unknown attacks’ is ‘the same for viruses’. . . .”
In FTR#456, we noted the eerie foreshadowing the the 9/11 attacks by Turner Diaries author William Luther Pierce. Key aspects of that book, in turn, foreshadow aspects of the 9/11 attacks.
- In 1998, the author of that tome,–William Luther Pierce–explicitly foreshadowed the 9/11 attacks which defined and cemented Dubya’s administration. “ . . . . In one chilling commentary Pierce, (after noting that Bin Laden and the rest of the lost generation of angry Moslem youth had it with their parents’ compromises and were hell bent on revenge against infidel America) issued this stark, prophetic warning in a 1998 radio address titled, ‘Stay Out of Tall Buildings.’ ‘New Yorkers who work in tall office buildings anything close to the size of the World Trade Center might consider wearing hard hats . . .’ Pierce warned.’ . . . The running theme in Pierce’s commentaries is—to paraphrase his hero Hitler—that Osama Bin Laden’s warning to America is ‘I Am Coming.’ And so is bio-terrorism.’ . . .”
In that context, we note that China is devastated by a WMD/Third World War in Turner Diaries.
The program concludes with a look at some of the many aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Many of these were compiled in FTR#1125.
1. The title of the program stems from a deadly dichotomization of the discussion of the origin of Covid-19 into either: “A naturally-occurring phenomenon” OR “The Lab Leak Theory.”
Tellingly missing is the deliberately-created, biological warfare pandemic hypothesis that Mr. Emory has been advancing since the very beginning of the pandemic. (This analysis was first advanced in FTR#‘s 1111 & 1112. This program was recorded in early February of 2020.)
With Michael R. Gordon helping craft journalistic justification for the “Lab-Leak Theory” and Philip Zelikow chairing a commission investigating Covid-19, we are seeing players in the PNAC/Iraqi WMD/9/11 nexus being recycled in connection with that theory.
. . . . “Basically, it really boils down to an argument that because nearly all previous pandemics were of natural origin, this one must be as well,” said David Relman, a microbiologist at Stanford University, who organized the May letter to Science.
He noted that he does not object to the natural origin hypothesis as a plausible explanation for the pandemic origin. But Dr. Relman thinks the new paper presented “a selective sampling of findings to argue one side.”
. . . . But Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University and a persistent critic of attempts to diminish the likelihood of a laboratory leak, said that this was a straw-man argument. . . .
2. A study released by US National Academy of Sciences at the request of the Department of Defense about the threats of synthetic biology concluded that the techniques to tweak and weaponize viruses from known catalogs of viral sequences is very feasible and relatively easy to do.
Note that the Pentagon has funded research into bat-borne coronaviruses in China and at the “Oswald Institute of Virology,” through various vehicles, including and especially (in combination with USAID) the EcoHealth Alliance .
That research has led to the publication of research papers including some featuring the genomes of bat-borne coronaviruses.
Once those papers are published, the viruses can be “printed out” at will, either as direct copies or as mutated viruses.
Key points of discussion:
- ” . . . . Advances in the area mean that scientists now have the capability to recreate dangerous viruses from scratch; make harmful bacteria more deadly; and modify common microbes so that they churn out lethal toxins once they enter the body. . . .”
- ” . . . . In the report, the scientists describe how synthetic biology, which gives researchers precision tools to manipulate living organisms, ‘enhances and expands’ opportunities to create bioweapons. . . .”
- ” . . . . Today, the genetic code of almost any mammalian virus can be found online and synthesized. ‘The technology to do this is available now,’ said Imperiale. ‘It requires some expertise, but it’s something that’s relatively easy to do, and that is why it tops the list.’ . . .”
- ” . . . . Other fairly simple procedures can be used to tweak the genes of dangerous bacteria and make them resistant to antibiotics, so that people infected with them would be untreatable. . . .”
The rapid rise of synthetic biology, a futuristic field of science that seeks to master the machinery of life, has raised the risk of a new generation of bioweapons, according a major US report into the state of the art.
Advances in the area mean that scientists now have the capability to recreate dangerous viruses from scratch; make harmful bacteria more deadly; and modify common microbes so that they churn out lethal toxins once they enter the body.
The three scenarios are picked out as threats of highest concern in a review of the field published on Tuesday by the US National Academy of Sciences at the request of the Department of Defense. The report was commissioned to flag up ways in which the powerful technology might be abused, and to focus minds on how best to prepare.
Michael Imperiale, chair of the report committee, and professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Michigan, said the review used only unclassified information and so has no assessment of which groups, if any, might be pursuing novel biological weapons. “We can’t say how likely any of these scenarios are,” he said. “But we can talk about how feasible they are.”
In the report, the scientists describe how synthetic biology, which gives researchers precision tools to manipulate living organisms, “enhances and expands” opportunities to create bioweapons. “As the power of the technology increases, that brings a general need to scrutinise where harms could come from,” said Peter Carr, a senior scientist at MIT’s Synthetic Biology Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
More than 20 years ago, Eckard Wimmer, a geneticist at Stony Brook University in New York, highlighted the potential dangers of synthetic biology in dramatic style when he recreated poliovirus in a test tube. Earlier this year, a team at the University of Alberta built an infectious horsepox virus. The virus is a close relative of smallpox, which may have claimed half a billion lives in the 20th century. Today, the genetic code of almost any mammalian virus can be found online and synthesized. “The technology to do this is available now,” said Imperiale. “It requires some expertise, but it’s something that’s relatively easy to do, and that is why it tops the list.”
Other fairly simple procedures can be used to tweak the genes of dangerous bacteria and make them resistant to antibiotics, so that people infected with them would be untreatable. A more exotic bioweapon might come in the form of a genetically-altered microbe that colonizes the gut and churns out poisons. “While that is technically more difficult, it is a concern because it may not look like anything you normally watch out for in public health,” Imperiale said.
…
3. Reprising a portion of an article used in FTR#1191, we note Danielle Anderson’s experience of having been violently excoriated for exposing false information posted about the pandemic online.
The “last–and only” foreign researcher at the WIV, Ms. Anderson has shared the vitriol that many virologists have experienced in the wake of the pandemic.
Are we seeing a manifestation of what might be called “anti-virologist” McCarthyism, not unlike the “Who Lost China” crusade in the 1950’s?
Are virologists being intimidated into supporting–or at least not refuting–the “Lab Leak Theory?”
Bear in mind that Donald Trump’s attorney and political mentor was the late Roy Cohn, who was Senator Joe McCarthy’s top hatchet man.
. . . . . Despite this, Anderson does think an investigation is needed to nail down the virus’s origin once and for all. She’s dumbfounded by the portrayal of the lab by some media outside China, and the toxic attacks on scientists that have ensued.
One of a dozen experts appointed to an international taskforce in November to study the origins of the virus, Anderson hasn’t sought public attention, especially since being targeted by U.S. extremists in early 2020 after she exposed false information about the pandemic posted online. The vitriol that ensued prompted her to file a police report. The threats of violence many coronavirus scientists have experienced over the past 18 months have made them hesitant to speak out because of the risk that their words will be misconstrued.
4. A chilling article may forecast the potential deployment of even deadlier pandemics, as operational disguise for biological warfare and genocide.
Note that the sub-heading in the conclusion referring to the lab-leak hypothesis is followed by no mention of the lab-leak hypothesis, per se.
Why not? We feel there may be a chilling subtext to this.
Is this a between-the-lines reference to impending biological warfare development and the deployment of another pandemic?
Note that the Army scientist quoted in the conclusion offers an observation that is very close to a Donald Rumsfeld quote reiterated by Peter Daszak in an article we reference in FTR#1170.
- From the Defense One article: ” . . . . ‘We don’t want to just treat what’s in front of us now,’ [Dr. Dimitra] Stratis-Cullum said. ‘I think we really need to be resilient. From an Army perspective. We need to be agile, we need to adapt to the threat that we don’t know that’s coming.’ . . .”
- From the article from Independent Science News: ” . . . . ‘There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns — there are things we don’t know we don’t know.’ (This Rumsfeld quote is in fact from a news conference) . . . . In the subsequent online discussion, Daszak emphasized the parallels between his own crusade and Rumsfeld’s, since, according to Daszak, the ‘potential for unknown attacks’ is ‘the same for viruses’. . . .”
The service is closing in on a “pan-coronavirus” vaccine and on synthetic antibodies that could protect a population before spread. But that may not be enough.
June 21, 2021The U.S. Army scientists who have spent the last year finding vaccines and therapeutics to stop COVID-19 cautioned that the nation remains vulnerable to a viral pandemic—one that could be even deadlier than the current one.
Since the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the emerging infectious diseases branch at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research has worked to develop a vaccine that would help patients fend off not only the original virus strain but also new variants.
In initial tests on monkeys, horses, hamsters, and sharks, Walter Reed’s spike ferritin nanoparticle, or SpFN, vaccine has shown effectiveness against not only the current SARS-CoV‑2 variants, but also against the completely different SARS-CoV‑1 outbreak that occurred in 2003, the head of Walter Reed’s infectious diseases branch said at the Defense One 2021 Tech Summit Monday.
“If we try to chase the viruses after they emerge, we’re always going to be behind,” said Dr. Kayvon Modjarrad, director of Walter Reed’s infectious diseases branch. “So the approach that we took with our vaccine, the nanoparticle approach, in which we can place parts of different coronaviruses on to the same vaccine to educate the immune system about different coronaviruses all at the same time.”
Walter Reed’s vaccine is now in the early stages of human trials.
“And we see the same thing over and over again: a very potent immune response and a very broad immune response,” Modjarrad said. “So if we show even a fraction of what we’re seeing in our animal studies in humans, then we’ll have a very good confidence that this is going to be a very good option as a next-generation vaccine.”
Dr. Dimitra Stratis-Cullum, director of the Army’s transformational synthetic-biology for military environments program at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, Army Research Laboratory, was tasked early on to assist the Houston Methodist Research Institute develop blood plasma as a COVID-19 therapeutic. She’s now working on developing a large dataset, a library of COVID strains that would help the lab then create and distribute synthetic antibodies to preemptively prevent a spread.
Related articlesIf the Lab-Leak Theory Is Right, What’s Next?
Creating a pan-coronavirus vaccine—or synthesizing antibodies slightly ahead of a known outbreak still isn’t enough, the scientists cautioned.
“We don’t want to just treat what’s in front of us now,” Stratis-Cullum said. “I think we really need to be resilient. From an Army perspective. We need to be agile, we need to adapt to the threat that we don’t know that’s coming.”
The likelihood this generation will see another pandemic during its lifetime “is high,” Modjarrad said. “We have seen the acceleration of these pathogens and the epidemics that they precipitate. And it may not be a coronavirus, this may not be the big one. There may be something that’s more transmissible and more deadly ahead of us.”
“We have to think more broadly, not just about COVID-19, not just about coronavirus, but all emerging infectious threats coming into the future,” he said.
5. In FTR#456, we noted the eerie foreshadowing the the 9/11 attacks by Turner Diaries author William Luther Pierce. Key aspects of that book, in turn, foreshadow aspects of the 9/11 attacks.
- In 1998, the author of that tome,–William Luther Pierce–explicitly foreshadowed the 9/11 attacks which defined and cemented Dubya’s administration. “ . . . . In one chilling commentary Pierce, (after noting that Bin Laden and the rest of the lost generation of angry Moslem youth had it with their parents’ compromises and were hell bent on revenge against infidel America) issued this stark, prophetic warning in a 1998 radio address titled, ‘Stay Out of Tall Buildings.’ ‘New Yorkers who work in tall office buildings anything close to the size of the World Trade Center might consider wearing hard hats . . .’ Pierce warned.’ . . . The running theme in Pierce’s commentaries is—to paraphrase his hero Hitler—that Osama Bin Laden’s warning to America is ‘I Am Coming.’ And so is bio-terrorism.’ . . .”
In that context, we note that China is devastated by a WMD/Third World War in Turner Diaries.
“The Turner Diaries;” Wikipedia.com
. . . . the Organization attacks it [China] with nuclear, chemical, radiological and biological weapons which render the entire continent of Asia uninhabitable and rife with “mutants”. . . .
6a. The Covid-19 pandemic has served as a “Wealth-Concentration Virus.”
It’s been the same headline for months now:
* April of 2020: American billionaires have gotten $280 billion richer since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic
* May of 2020: American billionaires got $434 billion richer during the pandemic
* August of 2020: American billionaires got $637 billion richer during the pandemic
* September of 2020: U.S. billionaires got $845 billion richer since the start of the pandemic/Wealth of US billionaires rises by nearly a third during pandemic.
* October of 2020: US billionaires saw their net worth rise by almost $1 trillion between March and October — Jeff Bezos remains the richest, a study says.
From nearly the start of the COVID-19 pandemic it’s been clear that the public health disaster wasn’t a disaster for everyone, with the wealthiest individuals being not only largely insulated from the economic lockdown but in many cases well positioned to profit from it. The pandemic was turning into a giant transfer of wealth. But getting a sense of the scale of the massive transfer of wealth was going to take time. And time has indeed passed, with the wealth of US billionaires having risen by nearly a third since the start of the pandemic. . . .
6b. Among the numerous and–we believe–pre-planned aspects of the Covid-19 epidemic is to exacerbate the gap between the developing world and the developed world.
“Covid-19 Every Region of the World Is ‘Worst Affected’ ” by Vijay Prashad; Consortium News; 6/18/2021.
Each month, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) releases a monthly food price index. The release on June 3 showed that food prices have surged by 40 percent, the largest rise since 2011. The impact of this food price rise will grievously hit developing countries, most of which are major importers of food staples.
Prices rise for a range of reasons. The current rise is largely fueled by the collapse of sizeable sections of the global economy during the pandemic. Warnings of general inflation due to lockdown-related pent-up demand, shipping bottlenecks and oil price increases loom over richer states, which – due to the power of the wealthy bondholders – have few tools to manage inflation, and by poorer states, which swirl in a cataclysmic debt crisis.
Rising food prices come at a time when unemployment rates in many parts of the world have skyrocketed.
On June 2, the International Labour Organization (ILO) released its annual “World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2021” report, which showed, as expected, that the pandemic-related economic collapse has meant the loss of hundreds of millions of jobs and working hours. The ILO shows that this collapse — accelerated by Covid-19 — has brought on the “worsening of long-standing structural challenges and inequalities in the world of work, undermining recent progress in poverty reduction, gender equality, and decent work.”
The effects of the collapse are “highly uneven,” further exacerbating what we call the “three apartheids of our times (money, medicine, and food)’. Stalled vaccination programs in countries such as India – which produces 60 percent of the world’s vaccines – and grave debt challenges for countries such as Argentina – which cannot get wealthy bondholders to give it a grace period for debt-servicing payments – prevent recovery and further the cascading phenomenon of hunger and despair.
The editors of New Frame (Johannesburg, South Africa) were struck by the fact that youth unemployment in their country has hit 74.7 percent (overall unemployment is at 42.3 percent, itself a jaw-dropping number). More and more people struggle to survive. The words of the New Frame editorial are worth lingering upon:
“Millions of people endure blocked lives, passing time in a stasis marked by tightening circles of shame, failure, fear, and despair. Some start to sleep most of the day. Some turn to transactional forms of religion, offering submission in the hope of reward. Some succumb to the temptation to dull their pain with cheap heroin. Some take what they can from who they can, how they can. Some, often supported by the grace of family, friends, and community, manage to find a way to hold on to enough hope to keep going.
The weight of what all this means for these people and their families, the colossal squandering of their gifts and possibilities, are not taken as a crisis for our state, the people that govern it or most of our elite public sphere.
Lives are rendered as waste, voices as noise rather than speech, protests as traffic issues or crime. People are told that their suffering is a matter of personal failure, their attempts to cope with their situation consequent to moral dissolution. They can be murdered by the state during a protest or an eviction without consequence.”
Nothing here will be alien to readers in South America or in South Asia, in Papua New Guinea or in Equatorial Guinea. . . .
Oh great, just the world needs: there’s a new source of novel viruses from China. Ancient viruses never seen before. Those were the findings of a new study published in the journal Microbiome about viral samples found in ice cores obtained in 2015 from Tibetan Plateau glaciers in western China. When researchers analyzed the ice they found genetic codes for 33 viruses. Up to 28 of them were novel viruses never identified before and roughly half of were adapted to thrive under frozen conditions. So scientists get to learn about how viruses can function better in cold environments. And that of course translates into an opportunity to learn how to create viruses in a lab that will be extra robust in the winter. Oh goodie.
It’s reminiscent of the 2014 study that revived a 30,000 mega-virus extracted from Siberian permafrost. It’s also worth noting that viable ancient bacteria were obtained from Tibetan Plateau glaciers as far back as 2000 in a study that looked at bacteria trapped in ice deposits from around the world. So this latest study is just an example of the kind of this type of research that hunts for trapped ancient viruses.
And don’t forget that ancient viruses held in glaciers aren’t going to stay in those glaciers. Climate change is going to take care of that.
So we have a situation where the ancient viruses trapped in the melting glaciers are guaranteed to be randomly released into the environment due to glacial melt, while other glacial viruses are going to being identified and studied in labs. What could possibly go wrong?:
“When they analyzed the ice, they found genetic codes for 33 viruses. Four of those viruses have already been identified by the scientific community. But at least 28 of them are novel. About half of them seemed to have survived at the time they were frozen not in spite of the ice, but because of it.”
Ice viruses! It was probably inevitable that viruses specialized in infecting cells under freezing conditions. And here they are, ready for the world to study. Just in time for climate change:
And note the joint sponsorship of this research: this was part of a collaborative program between the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center and the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Chinese Academy of Sciences:
It raises the interesting question of whether or not work with these viruses was also being done at virology labs in China. It would make sense if that was the case. So we have another situation where joint US-China research is taking place on novel viral, meaning there’s probably also a lab somewhere in China working on these ice viruses. Try not to act super surprised if SARS-CoV‑3 ends up ‘leaking out of a Chinese lab’ possessing a remarkable capacity to survive cold environments.
Walter Reed Army Institute of Research Develops Vaccine for COVID-19 and SARS.
In a few weeks, after two years of research the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research expect to announce that they have developed a vaccine that is effective against COVID-19 and all its variants, even Omicron, as well as previous SARS-origin viruses that have killed millions of people worldwide.
Walter Reed’s infectious diseases branch decided to focus on making a vaccine that would work against not just the existing strain but all of its potential variants as well and developed a Spike Ferritin Nanoparticle COVID-19 vaccine, or SpFN, which completed animal trials earlier this year with positive results. Walter Reed’s SpFN uses a soccer ball-shaped protein with 24 faces for its vaccine, which allows scientists to attach the spikes of multiple coronavirus strains on different faces of the protein.
“We decided to take a look at the long game rather than just only focusing on the original emergence of SARS, and instead understand that viruses mutate, there will be variants that emerge, future viruses that may emerge in terms of new species. Our platform and approach will equip people to be prepared for that.”
https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2021/12/us-army-creates-single-vaccine-effective-against-all-covid-sars-variants/360089/
US Army Creates Single Vaccine Against All COVID & SARS Variants, Researchers Say
Within weeks, Walter Reed researchers expect to announce that human trials show success against Omicron—and even future strains.
Defense One
Tara Copp, December 21, 2021 Updated on Dec. 22 to add information from Walter Reed officials about testing the vaccine against the Omicron variant.
Within weeks, scientists at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research expect to announce that they have developed a vaccine that is effective against COVID-19 and all its variants, even Omicron, as well as previous SARS-origin viruses that have killed millions of people worldwide.
The achievement is the result of almost two years of work on the virus. The Army lab received its first DNA sequencing of the COVID-19 virus in early 2020. Very early on, Walter Reed’s infectious diseases branch decided to focus on making a vaccine that would work against not just the existing strain but all of its potential variants as well.
Walter Reed’s Spike Ferritin Nanoparticle COVID-19 vaccine, or SpFN, completed animal trials earlier this year with positive results. Phase 1 of human trials, wrapped up this month, again with positive results that are undergoing final review, Dr. Kayvon Modjarrad, director of Walter Reed’s infectious diseases branch, said in an exclusive interview with Defense One on Tuesday. The new vaccine will still need to undergo phase 2 and phase 3 trials.
“We’re testing our vaccine against all the different variants, including Omicron,” Modjarrad said.
On Wednesday, Walter Reed officials said in a statement that its vaccine “was not tested on the Omicron variant,“ but later clarified in an email to Defense One that while the recently discovered variant was not part of the animal studies, it is being tested in the lab against clinical human trial samples. These “neutralization assays” test whether antibodies can inhibit the growth of a virus.
“We want to wait for those clinical data to be able to kind of make the full public announcements, but so far everything has been moving along exactly as we had hoped,” Modjarrad said.
Unlike existing vaccines, Walter Reed’s SpFN uses a soccer ball-shaped protein with 24 faces for its vaccine, which allows scientists to attach the spikes of multiple coronavirus strains on different faces of the protein.
“It’s very exciting to get to this point for our entire team and I think for the entire Army as well,” Modjarrad said.
The vaccine’s human trials took longer than expected, he said, because the lab needed to test the vaccine on subjects who had neither been vaccinated nor previously infected with COVID.
Increasing vaccination rates and the rapid spread of the Delta and Omicron variants made that difficult.
“With Omicron, there’s no way really to escape this virus. You’re not going to be able to avoid it. So I think pretty soon either the whole world will be vaccinated or have been infected,” Modjarrad said.
The next step is seeing how the new pan-coronavirus vaccine interacts with people who were previously vaccinated or previously sick. Walter Reed is working with a yet-to-be-named industry partner for that wider rollout.
“We need to evaluate it in the real-world setting and try to understand how does the vaccine perform in much larger numbers of individuals who have already been vaccinated with something else initially…or already been sick,” Modjarrad said.
He said nearly all of Walter Reed’s 2,500 staff have had some role in the vaccine’s nearly-two-year development.
“We decided to take a look at the long game rather than just only focusing on the original emergence of SARS, and instead understand that viruses mutate, there will be variants that emerge, future viruses that may emerge in terms of new species. Our platform and approach will equip people to be prepared for that.”