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FTR#1256 Pandemics Inc., Part 6

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“Polit­i­cal language…is designed to make lies sound truth­ful and mur­der respectable, and to give an appear­ance of solid­i­ty to pure wind.”

— George Orwell, 1946

EVERYTHING MR. EMORY HAS BEEN SAYING ABOUT THE UKRAINE WAR IS ENCAPSULATED IN THIS VIDEO FROM UKRAINE 24

ANOTHER REVEALING VIDEO FROM UKRAINE 24

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FTR#1256 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: By way of intro­duc­tion, we present a link to a short Twit­ter video by Pro­fes­sor Jef­frey Sachs. 

NB: The infor­ma­tion in this pro­gram and accom­pa­ny­ing descrip­tion is large­ly a recap of mate­r­i­al pre­sent­ed in the first five pro­grams in this series. It is repeat­ed and pre­sent­ed in a dif­fer­ent order in the audio file.

This rep­e­ti­tion is due to: A) the high­ly tech­ni­cal nature of much of the dis­cus­sion of the viral com­po­si­tion of SARS CoV‑2 and relat­ed virus­es and B) the tremen­dous sig­nif­i­cance of this infor­ma­tion.

Con­tin­u­ing analy­sis of a fright­en­ing con­sor­tium of insti­tu­tions appar­ent­ly linked to the delib­er­ate gen­e­sis of Covid-19, this pro­gram reit­er­ates ele­ments of analy­sis from FTR#‘s 1254 & 1255, pre­sent­ing the infor­ma­tion in a dif­fer­ent sequence for increased under­stand­ing and reten­tion.

Those insti­tu­tions are: Eco­Health Alliance, Metabio­ta, In-Q-Tel and Munich Rein­sur­ance. 

Tak­en togeth­er, a num­ber of points of infor­ma­tion high­light­ed here go a long way to prov­ing the legal con­cept of “con­scious­ness of guilt,” the guilt being intent to cre­ate the pan­dem­ic and knowl­edge that such a thing was done.

(The infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed here should be tak­en in con­junc­tion with infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed in–among oth­er pro­grams–FTR#‘s 1251, 1252 and 1253. In turn, those pro­grams are devel­op­ments of doc­u­men­ta­tion pre­sent­ed in our many pro­grams about Covid-19.)

Of para­mount impor­tance in eval­u­at­ing the mate­r­i­al here and in the oth­er broad­casts about Covid-19 is the devel­op­ment of syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy and the man­ner in which it enables bio­log­i­cal war­fare: “ . . . 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 syn­the­sised. ‘The tech­nol­o­gy to do this is avail­able now,’ said [Michael] Impe­ri­ale. “It requires some exper­tise, but it’s some­thing that’s rel­a­tive­ly easy to do, and that is why it tops the list. . . .”

Going a long way toward prov­ing con­scious­ness of guilt are:

  1. The clas­si­fi­ca­tion of infor­ma­tion about the nature of the bio­log­i­cal agents involved with the CDC’s clo­sure of the Unit­ed States Army’s Med­ical Insti­tute of Infec­tious Dis­ease in ear­ly August of 2019, on the eve of the pan­dem­ic.
  2. The behav­ior of Peter Daszak and col­leagues in “gam­ing” the Lancet state­ment on the “nat­ur­al” ori­gin of the coro­n­avirus (Dasza­k’s Eco­Health Alliance–funded and advised by the nation­al secu­ri­ty establishment–is impli­cat­ed in the cre­ation of the SARS COV‑2.)
  3. The reac­tion of gov­ern­ment offi­cials to Trump admin­is­tra­tion fig­ures into the ori­gins of the virus, advis­ing would be inves­ti­ga­tors that such inquiries would open a “can of worms,” or “a Pan­do­ra’s Box” because it would should light on U.S. fund­ing of the projects.
  4. Metabiota–partnered with Eco­Health Alliance–was net­worked with In-Q-Tel (the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty’s ven­ture cap­i­tal arm) and Munich Re to pro­vide pan­dem­ic insur­ance. Their 2018 busi­ness mod­el direct­ly fore­shad­owed the pan­dem­ic. In 2018, as well, Eco­Health Alliance pro­posed a “nov­el coro­n­avirus” for syn­the­sis by DARPA. Although there is no evi­dence that DARPA syn­the­sized the virus, the U.S. did syn­the­size close­ly relat­ed virus­es. With the genome of that nov­el virus hav­ing been pub­lished, it may well have been syn­the­sized either by DARPA or some­one else, giv­en the con­tem­po­rary tech­nol­o­gy. Again, this, also was in 2018.
  5. Many aspects of the SARS COV‑2 virus, includ­ing its curi­ous FCS site and insti­tu­tion­al­ized obfus­ca­tion of aspects of the pan­dem­ic it caused sug­gest delib­er­ate cov­er-up. Why would the NIH redact 290 pages of a doc­u­ment request­ed by an FOIA suit!! Why were sequences of bat coro­n­avirus genomes removed from pub­lic view.

It’s remark­able just how damn­ing our begin­ning arti­cle is.

Co-author of the let­ter to the Pro­ceed­ings of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences and for­mer chair­man of the Lancet’s com­mis­sion on the ori­gins of the pan­dem­ic, Sachs is some­one in a posi­tion to bring real pub­lic atten­tion to this top­ic, if he choos­es to do so. The authors make a com­pelling case for an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion, and who would be in a bet­ter posi­tion than Sachs to make this case pub­licly after he dis­band­ed his Lancet Com­mis­sion over these kinds of con­cerns? That’s all part of what is going to make this a sto­ry to watch.

This arti­cle has some remark­able points of infor­ma­tion to be con­sid­ered and it is alto­geth­er wel­come and impor­tant that some­one of Dr. Sachs’ high pro­fes­sion­al pro­file and pres­tige has come for­ward:

  • “ . . . . The NIH could say more about the pos­si­ble role of its grantees in the emer­gence of SARS-CoV­‑2, yet the agency has failed to reveal to the pub­lic the pos­si­bil­i­ty that SARS-CoV­‑2 emerged from a research-asso­ci­at­ed event, even though sev­er­al researchers raised that con­cern on Feb­ru­ary 1, 2020, in a phone con­ver­sa­tion that was doc­u­ment­ed by email (5). Those emails were released to the pub­lic only through FOIA, and they sug­gest that the NIH lead­er­ship took an ear­ly and active role in pro­mot­ing the ‘zoonot­ic hypoth­e­sis’ and the rejec­tion of the lab­o­ra­to­ry-asso­ci­at­ed hypoth­e­sis. . . .”
  • “ . . . . The NIH has resist­ed the release of impor­tant evi­dence, such as the grant pro­pos­als and project reports of EHA, and has con­tin­ued to redact mate­ri­als released under FOIA, includ­ing a remark­able 290-page redac­tion in a recent FOIA release. . . .”
  • “ . . . . Act­ing NIH Direc­tor Lawrence Tabak tes­ti­fied before Con­gress that sev­er­al such sequences in a US data­base were removed from pub­lic view. . . .
  • “ . . . . Spe­cial con­cerns sur­round the pres­ence of an unusu­al furin cleav­age site (FCS) in SARS-CoV­‑2 (10) that aug­ments the path­o­genic­i­ty and trans­mis­si­bil­i­ty of the virus rel­a­tive to relat­ed virus­es like SARS-CoV­‑1 (1112). SARS-CoV­‑2 is, to date, the only iden­ti­fied mem­ber of the sub­genus sar­be­covirus that con­tains an FCS, although these are present in oth­er coro­n­avirus­es (1314). A por­tion of the sequence of the spike pro­tein of some of these virus­es is illus­trat­ed in the align­ment shown in Fig. 1, illus­trat­ing the unusu­al nature of the FCS and its appar­ent inser­tion in SARS-CoV­‑2 (15).From the first weeks after the genome sequence of SARS-CoV­‑2 became avail­able, researchers have com­ment­ed on the unex­pect­ed pres­ence of the FCS with­in SARS-CoV‑2—the impli­ca­tion being that SARS-CoV­‑2 might be a prod­uct of lab­o­ra­to­ry manip­u­la­tion. In a review piece argu­ing against this pos­si­bil­i­ty, it was assert­ed that the amino acid sequence of the FCS in SARS-CoV­‑2 is an unusu­al, non­stan­dard sequence for an FCS and that nobody in a lab­o­ra­to­ry would design such a nov­el FCS (13). . . .”
  • “ . . . . In fact, the asser­tion that the FCS in SARS-CoV­‑2 has an unusu­al, non­stan­dard amino acid sequence is false. . . . (The one non-human non-great ape species with the same sequence is Pip­istrel­lus kuh­lii, a bat species found in Europe and West­ern Asia; oth­er bat species, includ­ing Rhi­nolo­phus fer­rume­quinem, have a dif­fer­ent FCS sequence in ENaC a [RKAR’SAAS]). . . .”
  • “ . . . . We do know that the inser­tion of such FCS sequences into SARS-like virus­es was a spe­cif­ic goal of work pro­posed by the EHA-WIV-UNC part­ner­ship with­in a 2018 grant pro­pos­al (“DEFUSE”) that was sub­mit­ted to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) (25).The 2018 pro­pos­al to DARPA was not fund­ed, but we do not know whether some of the pro­posed work was sub­se­quent­ly car­ried out in 2018 or 2019, per­haps using anoth­er source of fund­ing. . . .”
  • “ . . . . We also know that that this research team would be famil­iar with sev­er­al pre­vi­ous exper­i­ments involv­ing the suc­cess­ful inser­tion of an FCS sequence into SARS-CoV­‑1 (26) and oth­er coro­n­avirus­es, and they had a lot of expe­ri­ence in con­struc­tion of chimeric SARS-like virus­es (2729). In addi­tion, the research team would also have some famil­iar­i­ty with the FCS sequence and the FCS-depen­dent acti­va­tion mech­a­nism of human ENaC (19), which was exten­sive­ly char­ac­ter­ized at UNC (1718).For a research team assess­ing the pan­dem­ic poten­tial of SARS-relat­ed coro­n­avirus­es, the FCS of human ENaC—an FCS known to be effi­cient­ly cleaved by host furin present in the tar­get loca­tion (epithe­lial cells) of an impor­tant tar­get organ (lung), of the tar­get organ­ism (human)—might be a ratio­nal, if not obvi­ous, choice of FCS to intro­duce into a virus to alter its infec­tiv­i­ty, in line with oth­er work per­formed pre­vi­ous­ly. . . .”
  • “ . . . . Of course, the mol­e­c­u­lar mim­ic­ry of ENaC with­in the SARS-CoV­‑2 spike pro­tein might be a mere coin­ci­dence, although one with a very low prob­a­bil­i­ty. The exact FCS sequence present in SARS-CoV­‑2 has recent­ly been intro­duced into the spike pro­tein of SARS-CoV­‑1 in the lab­o­ra­to­ry, in an ele­gant series of exper­i­ments (1230), with pre­dictable con­se­quences in terms of enhanced viral trans­mis­si­bil­i­ty and path­o­genic­i­ty. Obvi­ous­ly, the cre­ation of such SARS‑1/2 “chimeras” is an area of some con­cern for those respon­si­ble for present and future reg­u­la­tion of this area of biol­o­gy. . . .”
  • “ . . . . Infor­ma­tion now held by the research team head­ed by EHA (7), as well as the com­mu­ni­ca­tions of that research team with US research fund­ing agen­cies, includ­ing NIH, USAID, DARPA, DTRA, and the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty, could shed con­sid­er­able light on the exper­i­ments under­tak­en by the US-fund­ed research team and on the pos­si­ble rela­tion­ship, if any, between those exper­i­ments and the emer­gence of SARS-CoV­‑2. . . .”

Recap­ping infor­ma­tion from our “Oswald Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy” series, we note that Trump offi­cials who were look­ing to tout the Chi­nese “lab-leak” hypoth­e­sis were told to avoid the top­ic, lest it cre­ate prob­lems for the U.S.

Note, as well, that both Peter Daszak and Ralph Bar­ic, asso­ci­at­ed with Eco­Health Alliance, were engaged in dubi­ous maneu­ver­ing to eclipse atten­tion on the pos­si­ble U.S. spon­sor­ship of the SARS COV‑2 gain-of-func­tion manip­u­la­tions.

  1. ” . . . . It soon emerged, based on emails obtained by a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion group called U.S. Right to Know, that Daszak had not only signed but orga­nized the influ­en­tial Lancet state­ment, with the inten­tion of con­ceal­ing his role and cre­at­ing the impres­sion of sci­en­tif­ic una­nim­i­ty. . . .”
  2. . . . . In one State Depart­ment meet­ing, offi­cials seek­ing to demand trans­paren­cy from the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment say they were explic­it­ly told by col­leagues not to explore the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virology’s gain-of-func­tion research, because it would bring unwel­come atten­tion to U.S. gov­ern­ment fund­ing of it. . . . because it would ‘open a can of worms’ if it con­tin­ued.’. . .”
  3. ” . . . . As the group probed the lab-leak sce­nario, among oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ties, its mem­bers were repeat­ed­ly advised not to open a ‘Pandora’s box,’ said four for­mer State Depart­ment offi­cials inter­viewed by Van­i­ty Fair. The admo­ni­tions ‘smelled like a cov­er-up,’ said Thomas DiNan­no . . . .”

Next, the pro­gram reviews an excerpt­ing of a Wired Mag­a­zine arti­cle about the Metabiota/Munich Rein­sur­ance project.

Bear in mind that In-Q-Tel, the ven­ture cap­i­tal arm of the CIA and the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty, is greas­ing the wheels of this project with financ­ing.

We high­light two key points of infor­ma­tion:

  • The busi­ness suc­cess of the pan­dem­ic insur­ance would nec­es­sar­i­ly incor­po­rate analy­sis of the “fear fac­tor” of poten­tial pan­dem­ic pathogens: ” . . . . As sophis­ti­cat­ed as Metabiota’s sys­tem was, how­ev­er, it would need to be even more refined to incor­po­rate into an insur­ance pol­i­cy. The mod­el would need to cap­ture some­thing much more dif­fi­cult to quan­ti­fy than his­tor­i­cal deaths and med­ical stock­piles: fear. The eco­nom­ic con­se­quences of a scourge, the his­tor­i­cal data showed, were as much a result of society’s response as they were to the virus itself. . . . The Sen­ti­ment Index was built to be, as Oppen­heim put it, ‘a cat­a­log of dread.’ For any giv­en pathogen, it could spit out a score from 0 to 100 accord­ing to how fright­en­ing the pub­lic would find it. . . . Mad­hav and her team, along with Wolfe and Oppen­heim, also researched the broad­er eco­nom­ic con­se­quences of dis­ease out­breaks, mea­sured in the ‘cost per death pre­vent­ed’ incurred by soci­etal inter­ven­tions. ‘Mea­sures that decreased per­son-to-per­son con­tact, includ­ing social dis­tanc­ing, quar­an­tine, and school clo­sures, had the great­est cost per death pre­vent­ed, most like­ly because of the amount of eco­nom­ic dis­rup­tion caused by those mea­sures,’ they wrote in a 2018 paper. . . .”
  • More sin­is­ter, still, is the fact that Metabio­ta had ana­lyzed the sce­nario of a nov­el coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic two years before it hap­pened. This appears to be the 2018 paper referred to above. Do not fail to note that, at the time that Metabio­ta was run­ning this sce­nario, they were part­nered with Eco­Health Alliance, which was using Pen­ta­gon and USAID mon­ey to research and per­form gain-of-func­tion on these types of coro­n­avirus­es!! Do not fail to lose sight of the fact that Eco­Health Alliance has David Franz as a pri­ma­ry advi­sor. Franz was the for­mer com­man­der of the USAMRIID, which has a decades-long part­ner­ship with what Mr. Emory calls “The Oswald Institue of Virol­o­gy.” ” . . . . As the human and eco­nom­ic dev­as­ta­tion mul­ti­plied in tan­dem across the globe, Metabiota’s employ­ees sud­den­ly found them­selves liv­ing inside their own model’s pro­jec­tions. Just two years ear­li­er, the com­pa­ny had run a large set of sce­nar­ios fore­cast­ing the con­se­quences of a nov­el coro­n­avirus spread­ing around the globe. . . .”

Piv­ot­ing to a anoth­er inter­est­ing, emerg­ing dis­ease that was a point of inter­est for Metabio­ta, we open  a dis­cus­sion of mon­key pox, a dis­ease that will be more com­plete­ly dis­cussed in the next pro­gram.

Metabio­ta was eval­u­at­ing mon­key­pox in late 2019: ” . . . .  it rat­ed this risk for the mon­key­pox virus in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of the Con­go (where there have been report­ed cas­es of that virus) as ‘medi­um.’ . . .”

We con­clude this pro­gram with an excerpt­ing of an op-ed col­umn by Scott Got­tlieb, the head of the FDA under Trump, a mem­ber of the con­ser­v­a­tive Amer­i­can Enter­prise Insti­tute and a mem­ber of the board of direc­tors of Pfiz­er.

He notes that the new agency cre­at­ed by Biden to deal with mon­key­pox and oth­er emerg­ing infec­tions was for­mer­ly: ” . . . . an office inside ‌the Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices that is charged with coor­di­nat­ing the fed­er­al response to bioter­ror­ism . . . .

1. 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:

“Syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy rais­es risk of new bioweapons, US report warns” by Ian Sam­ple; The Guardian; 06/19/2018

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. . . 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 syn­the­sised. ‘The tech­nol­o­gy to do this is avail­able now,’ said [Michael] Impe­ri­ale. “It requires some exper­tise, but it’s some­thing that’s rel­a­tive­ly easy to do, and that is why it tops the list. . . .”

2. Chair­man of The Lancet’s now-dis­band­ed Covid com­mis­sion, Jef­frey Sachs is some­one in a posi­tion to bring real pub­lic atten­tion to this top­ic, if he choos­es to do so. The authors make a com­pelling case for an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion, and who would be in a bet­ter posi­tion than Sachs to make this case pub­licly after he dis­band­ed his Lancet Com­mis­sion over these kinds of con­cerns? That’s all part of what is going to make this a sto­ry to watch.

“ . . . . Infor­ma­tion now held by the research team head­ed by EHA (7), as well as the com­mu­ni­ca­tions of that research team with US research fund­ing agen­cies, includ­ing NIH, USAID, DARPA, DTRA, and the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty, could shed con­sid­er­able light on the exper­i­ments under­tak­en by the US-fund­ed research team and on the pos­si­ble rela­tion­ship, if any, between those exper­i­ments and the emer­gence of SARS-CoV­‑2. . . .”

If our sus­pi­cions about Sachs are well-found­ed, he might be in posi­tion to con­trol the results that do emerge.

Nonethe­less, this arti­cle has some remark­able points of infor­ma­tion to be con­sid­ered:

  • “ . . . . Much of the work on SARS-like CoVs per­formed in Wuhan was part of an active and high­ly col­lab­o­ra­tive US–China sci­en­tif­ic research pro­gram fund­ed by the US Gov­ern­ment (NIH, Defense Threat Reduc­tion Agency [DTRA—Pentagon, D.E.], and US Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment [USAID]—State Depart­ment, fre­quent cov­er for CIA, D.E.), coor­di­nat­ed by researchers at Eco­Health Alliance (EHA—Chief fun­ders are Pen­ta­gon, USAID, sci­ence and pol­i­cy advi­sor is David Franz, for­mer com­mand­ing offi­cer of the U.S. Army Research Insti­tute of Infec­tious Disease—D.E.), but involv­ing researchers at sev­er­al oth­er US insti­tu­tions. For this rea­son, it is impor­tant that US insti­tu­tions be trans­par­ent about any knowl­edge of the detailed activ­i­ties that were under­way in Wuhan and in the Unit­ed States. The evi­dence may also sug­gest that research insti­tu­tions in oth­er coun­tries were involved, and those too should be asked to sub­mit rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion (e.g., with respect to unpub­lished sequences). . . .”
  • “ . . . . as out­lined below, much could be learned by inves­ti­gat­ing US-sup­port­ed and US-based work that was under­way in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Wuhan-based insti­tu­tions, includ­ing the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy (WIV), Chi­na. It is still not clear whether the IC inves­ti­gat­ed these US-sup­port­ed and US-based activ­i­ties. If it did, it has yet to make any of its find­ings avail­able to the US sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty for inde­pen­dent and trans­par­ent analy­sis and assess­ment. If, on the oth­er hand, the IC [Intel­li­gence Com­mu­ni­ty] did not inves­ti­gate these US-sup­port­ed and US-based activ­i­ties, then it has fall­en far short of con­duct­ing a com­pre­hen­sive inves­ti­ga­tion. . . .”
  • “ . . . . Par­tic­i­pat­ing US insti­tu­tions include the EHA, the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na (UNC), the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Davis (UCD), the NIH, and the USAID.Under a series of NIH grants and USAID con­tracts, EHA coor­di­nat­ed the col­lec­tion of SARS-like bat CoVs from the field in south­west Chi­na and south­east Asia, the sequenc­ing of these virus­es, the archiv­ing of these sequences (involv­ing UCD), and the analy­sis and manip­u­la­tion of these virus­es (notably at UNC). A broad spec­trum of coro­n­avirus research work was done not only in Wuhan (includ­ing groups at Wuhan Uni­ver­si­ty and the Wuhan CDC, as well as WIV) but also in the Unit­ed States. The exact details of the field­work and lab­o­ra­to­ry work of the EHA-WIV-UNC part­ner­ship, and the engage­ment of oth­er insti­tu­tions in the Unit­ed States and Chi­na, has not been dis­closed for inde­pen­dent analy­sis. The pre­cise nature of the exper­i­ments that were con­duct­ed, includ­ing the full array of virus­es col­lect­ed from the field and the sub­se­quent sequenc­ing and manip­u­la­tion of those virus­es, remains unknown. . . .
  • “ . . . . The NIH could say more about the pos­si­ble role of its grantees in the emer­gence of SARS-CoV­‑2, yet the agency has failed to reveal to the pub­lic the pos­si­bil­i­ty that SARS-CoV­‑2 emerged from a research-asso­ci­at­ed event, even though sev­er­al researchers raised that con­cern on Feb­ru­ary 1, 2020, in a phone con­ver­sa­tion that was doc­u­ment­ed by email (5). Those emails were released to the pub­lic only through FOIA, and they sug­gest that the NIH lead­er­ship took an ear­ly and active role in pro­mot­ing the ‘zoonot­ic hypoth­e­sis’ and the rejec­tion of the lab­o­ra­to­ry-asso­ci­at­ed hypoth­e­sis. . . .”
  • “ . . . . The NIH has resist­ed the release of impor­tant evi­dence, such as the grant pro­pos­als and project reports of EHA, and has con­tin­ued to redact mate­ri­als released under FOIA, includ­ing a remark­able 290-page redac­tion in a recent FOIA release. . . .”
  • “ . . . . Act­ing NIH Direc­tor Lawrence Tabak tes­ti­fied before Con­gress that sev­er­al such sequences in a US data­base were removed from pub­lic view. . . .
  • “ . . . . Spe­cial con­cerns sur­round the pres­ence of an unusu­al furin cleav­age site (FCS) in SARS-CoV­‑2 (10) that aug­ments the path­o­genic­i­ty and trans­mis­si­bil­i­ty of the virus rel­a­tive to relat­ed virus­es like SARS-CoV­‑1 (1112). SARS-CoV­‑2 is, to date, the only iden­ti­fied mem­ber of the sub­genus sar­be­covirus that con­tains an FCS, although these are present in oth­er coro­n­avirus­es (1314). A por­tion of the sequence of the spike pro­tein of some of these virus­es is illus­trat­ed in the align­ment shown in Fig. 1, illus­trat­ing the unusu­al nature of the FCS and its appar­ent inser­tion in SARS-CoV­‑2 (15).From the first weeks after the genome sequence of SARS-CoV­‑2 became avail­able, researchers have com­ment­ed on the unex­pect­ed pres­ence of the FCS with­in SARS-CoV‑2—the impli­ca­tion being that SARS-CoV­‑2 might be a prod­uct of lab­o­ra­to­ry manip­u­la­tion. In a review piece argu­ing against this pos­si­bil­i­ty, it was assert­ed that the amino acid sequence of the FCS in SARS-CoV­‑2 is an unusu­al, non­stan­dard sequence for an FCS and that nobody in a lab­o­ra­to­ry would design such a nov­el FCS (13). . . .”
  • “ . . . . In fact, the asser­tion that the FCS in SARS-CoV­‑2 has an unusu­al, non­stan­dard amino acid sequence is false. The amino acid sequence of the FCS in SARS-CoV­‑2 also exists in the human ENaC a sub­unit (16), where it is known to be func­tion­al and has been exten­sive­ly stud­ied (1718). The FCS of human ENaC a has the amino acid sequence RRAR’SVAS ( 2), an eight–amino-acid sequence that is per­fect­ly iden­ti­cal with the FCS of SARS-CoV­‑2 (16).ENaC is an epithe­lial sodi­um chan­nel, expressed on the api­cal sur­face of epithe­lial cells in the kid­ney, colon, and air­ways (1920), that plays a crit­i­cal role in con­trol­ling flu­id exchange. The ENaC a sub­unit has a func­tion­al FCS (1718) that is essen­tial for ion chan­nel func­tion (19) and has been char­ac­ter­ized in a vari­ety of species. The FCS sequence of human ENaC a (20) is iden­ti­cal in chim­panzee, bonobo, orang­utan, and goril­la (SI Appen­dix , Fig. 1), but diverges in all oth­er species, even pri­mates, except one. (The one non-human non-great ape species with the same sequence is Pip­istrel­lus kuh­lii, a bat species found in Europe and West­ern Asia; oth­er bat species, includ­ing Rhi­nolo­phus fer­rume­quinem, have a dif­fer­ent FCS sequence in ENaC a [RKAR’SAAS]). . . .”
  • “ . . . . One con­se­quence of this “mol­e­c­u­lar mim­ic­ry” between the FCS of SARS CoV‑2 spike and the FCS of human ENaC is com­pe­ti­tion for host furin in the lumen of the Gol­gi appa­ra­tus, where the SARS-CoV­‑2 spike is processed. This results in a decrease in human ENaC expres­sion (21). A decrease in human ENaC expres­sion com­pro­mis­es air­way func­tion and has been impli­cat­ed as a con­tribut­ing fac­tor in the patho­gen­e­sis of COVID-19 (22). Anoth­er con­se­quence of this aston­ish­ing mol­e­c­u­lar mim­ic­ry is evi­denced by appar­ent cross-reac­tiv­i­ty with human ENaC of anti­bod­ies from COVID-19 patients, with the high­est lev­els of cross-react­ing anti­bod­ies direct­ed against this epi­tope being asso­ci­at­ed with most severe dis­ease (23).  [Auto-immune reac­tion, pos­si­bly over­lap­ping mRNA vaccines—D.E.]. . . .”
  • “ . . . . We do know that the inser­tion of such FCS sequences into SARS-like virus­es was a spe­cif­ic goal of work pro­posed by the EHA-WIV-UNC part­ner­ship with­in a 2018 grant pro­pos­al (“DEFUSE”) that was sub­mit­ted to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) (25).The 2018 pro­pos­al to DARPA was not fund­ed, but we do not know whether some of the pro­posed work was sub­se­quent­ly car­ried out in 2018 or 2019, per­haps using anoth­er source of fund­ing. . . .”
  • “ . . . . We also know that that this research team would be famil­iar with sev­er­al pre­vi­ous exper­i­ments involv­ing the suc­cess­ful inser­tion of an FCS sequence into SARS-CoV­‑1 (26) and oth­er coro­n­avirus­es, and they had a lot of expe­ri­ence in con­struc­tion of chimeric SARS-like virus­es (2729). In addi­tion, the research team would also have some famil­iar­i­ty with the FCS sequence and the FCS-depen­dent acti­va­tion mech­a­nism of human ENaC (19), which was exten­sive­ly char­ac­ter­ized at UNC (1718).For a research team assess­ing the pan­dem­ic poten­tial of SARS-relat­ed coro­n­avirus­es, the FCS of human ENaC—an FCS known to be effi­cient­ly cleaved by host furin present in the tar­get loca­tion (epithe­lial cells) of an impor­tant tar­get organ (lung), of the tar­get organ­ism (human)—might be a ratio­nal, if not obvi­ous, choice of FCS to intro­duce into a virus to alter its infec­tiv­i­ty, in line with oth­er work per­formed pre­vi­ous­ly. . . .”
  • “ . . . . Of course, the mol­e­c­u­lar mim­ic­ry of ENaC with­in the SARS-CoV­‑2 spike pro­tein might be a mere coin­ci­dence, although one with a very low prob­a­bil­i­ty. The exact FCS sequence present in SARS-CoV­‑2 has recent­ly been intro­duced into the spike pro­tein of SARS-CoV­‑1 in the lab­o­ra­to­ry, in an ele­gant series of exper­i­ments (1230), with pre­dictable con­se­quences in terms of enhanced viral trans­mis­si­bil­i­ty and path­o­genic­i­ty. Obvi­ous­ly, the cre­ation of such SARS‑1/2 “chimeras” is an area of some con­cern for those respon­si­ble for present and future reg­u­la­tion of this area of biol­o­gy. . . .”
  • “ . . . . Infor­ma­tion now held by the research team head­ed by EHA (7), as well as the com­mu­ni­ca­tions of that research team with US research fund­ing agen­cies, includ­ing NIH, USAID, DARPA, DTRA, and the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty, could shed con­sid­er­able light on the exper­i­ments under­tak­en by the US-fund­ed research team and on the pos­si­ble rela­tion­ship, if any, between those exper­i­ments and the emer­gence of SARS-CoV­‑2. . . .”

“A call for an inde­pen­dent inquiry into the ori­gin of the SARS-CoV­‑2 virus” by Neil L. Har­ri­son and Jef­frey D. Sachs; PNAS [Pro­ceed­ings of the Naion­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences]; 05/19/2022

3. Recap­ping infor­ma­tion from our “Oswald Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy” series, we note that Trump offi­cials who were look­ing to tout the Chi­nese “lab-leak” hypoth­e­sis were told to avoid the top­ic, lest it cre­ate prob­lems for the U.S.

Note, as well, that both Peter Daszak and Ralph Bar­ic, asso­ci­at­ed with Eco­Health Alliance, were engaged in dubi­ous maneu­ver­ing to eclipse atten­tion on the pos­si­ble U.S. spon­sor­ship of the SARS COV‑2 gain-of-func­tion manip­u­la­tions.

  1. ” . . . . It soon emerged, based on emails obtained by a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion group called U.S. Right to Know, that Daszak had not only signed but orga­nized the influ­en­tial Lancet state­ment, with the inten­tion of con­ceal­ing his role and cre­at­ing the impres­sion of sci­en­tif­ic una­nim­i­ty. . . .”
  2. . . . . In one State Depart­ment meet­ing, offi­cials seek­ing to demand trans­paren­cy from the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment say they were explic­it­ly told by col­leagues not to explore the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virology’s gain-of-func­tion research, because it would bring unwel­come atten­tion to U.S. gov­ern­ment fund­ing of it. . . . because it would ‘‘open a can of worms’ if it con­tin­ued.’. . .”
  3. ” . . . . As the group probed the lab-leak sce­nario, among oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ties, its mem­bers were repeat­ed­ly advised not to open a ‘Pandora’s box,’ said four for­mer State Depart­ment offi­cials inter­viewed by Van­i­ty Fair. The admo­ni­tions ‘smelled like a cov­er-up,’ said Thomas DiNan­no . . . .”

“The Lab-Leak The­o­ry: Inside the Fight to Uncov­er Covid-19’s Ori­gins” by Kather­ine Eban; Van­i­ty Fair; 6/3/2021.

. . . . On Feb­ru­ary 19, 2020, The Lancet, among the most respect­ed and influ­en­tial med­ical jour­nals in the world, pub­lished a state­ment that round­ly reject­ed the lab-leak hypoth­e­sis, effec­tive­ly cast­ing it as a xeno­pho­bic cousin to cli­mate change denial­ism and anti-vaxxism. Signed by 27 sci­en­tists, the state­ment expressed “sol­i­dar­i­ty with all sci­en­tists and health pro­fes­sion­als in Chi­na” and assert­ed: “We stand togeth­er to strong­ly con­demn con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries sug­gest­ing that COVID-19 does not have a nat­ur­al ori­gin.”

The Lancet state­ment effec­tive­ly end­ed the debate over COVID-19’s ori­gins before it began. To Gilles Dema­neuf, fol­low­ing along from the side­lines, it was as if it had been “nailed to the church doors,” estab­lish­ing the nat­ur­al ori­gin the­o­ry as ortho­doxy. “Every­one had to fol­low it. Every­one was intim­i­dat­ed. That set the tone.” . . . . 

. . . . It soon emerged, based on emails obtained by a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion group called U.S. Right to Know, that Daszak had not only signed but orga­nized the influ­en­tial Lancet state­ment, with the inten­tion of con­ceal­ing his role and cre­at­ing the impres­sion of sci­en­tif­ic una­nim­i­ty.

Under the sub­ject line, “No need for you to sign the “State­ment” Ralph!!,” he wrote to two sci­en­tists, includ­ing UNC’s Dr. Ralph Bar­ic, who had col­lab­o­rat­ed with Shi Zhengli on the gain-of-func­tion study that cre­at­ed a coro­n­avirus capa­ble of infect­ing human cells: “you, me and him should not sign this state­ment, so it has some dis­tance from us and there­fore doesn’t work in a coun­ter­pro­duc­tive way.” Daszak added, “We’ll then put it out in a way that doesn’t link it back to our col­lab­o­ra­tion so we max­i­mize an inde­pen­dent voice.”

Bar­ic agreed, writ­ing back, “Oth­er­wise it looks self-serv­ing and we lose impact.” . . . .

. . . . A months long Van­i­ty Fair inves­ti­ga­tion, inter­views with more than 40 peo­ple, and a review of hun­dreds of pages of U.S. gov­ern­ment doc­u­ments, includ­ing inter­nal mem­os, meet­ing min­utes, and email cor­re­spon­dence, found that con­flicts of inter­est, stem­ming in part from large gov­ern­ment grants sup­port­ing con­tro­ver­sial virol­o­gy research, ham­pered the U.S. inves­ti­ga­tion into COVID-19’s ori­gin at every step. In one State Depart­ment meet­ing, offi­cials seek­ing to demand trans­paren­cy from the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment say they were explic­it­ly told by col­leagues not to explore the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virology’s gain-of-func­tion research, because it would bring unwel­come atten­tion to U.S. gov­ern­ment fund­ing of it.

In an inter­nal memo obtained by Van­i­ty Fair, Thomas DiNan­no, for­mer act­ing assis­tant sec­re­tary of the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Con­trol, Ver­i­fi­ca­tion, and Com­pli­ance, wrote that staff from two bureaus, his own and the Bureau of Inter­na­tion­al Secu­ri­ty and Non­pro­lif­er­a­tion, “warned” lead­ers with­in his bureau “not to pur­sue an inves­ti­ga­tion into the ori­gin of COVID-19” because it would “‘open a can of worms’ if it con­tin­ued.” . . . . 

. . . . As the group probed the lab-leak sce­nario, among oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ties, its mem­bers were repeat­ed­ly advised not to open a ‘Pandora’s box,’ said four for­mer State Depart­ment offi­cials inter­viewed by Van­i­ty Fair. The admo­ni­tions ‘smelled like a cov­er-up,’ said Thomas DiNan­no . . . .

4. Next, the pro­gram reviews an excerpt­ing of a Wired Mag­a­zine arti­cle about the Metabiota/Munich Rein­sur­ance project.

Bear in mind that In-Q-Tel, the ven­ture cap­i­tal arm of the CIA and the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty, is greas­ing the wheels of this project with financ­ing.

We high­light two key points of infor­ma­tion:

  • The busi­ness suc­cess of the pan­dem­ic insur­ance would nec­es­sar­i­ly incor­po­rate analy­sis of the “fear fac­tor” of poten­tial pan­dem­ic pathogens: ” . . . . As sophis­ti­cat­ed as Metabiota’s sys­tem was, how­ev­er, it would need to be even more refined to incor­po­rate into an insur­ance pol­i­cy. The mod­el would need to cap­ture some­thing much more dif­fi­cult to quan­ti­fy than his­tor­i­cal deaths and med­ical stock­piles: fear. The eco­nom­ic con­se­quences of a scourge, the his­tor­i­cal data showed, were as much a result of society’s response as they were to the virus itself. . . . The Sen­ti­ment Index was built to be, as Oppen­heim put it, ‘a cat­a­log of dread.’ For any giv­en pathogen, it could spit out a score from 0 to 100 accord­ing to how fright­en­ing the pub­lic would find it. . . . Mad­hav and her team, along with Wolfe and Oppen­heim, also researched the broad­er eco­nom­ic con­se­quences of dis­ease out­breaks, mea­sured in the ‘cost per death pre­vent­ed’ incurred by soci­etal inter­ven­tions. ‘Mea­sures that decreased per­son-to-per­son con­tact, includ­ing social dis­tanc­ing, quar­an­tine, and school clo­sures, had the great­est cost per death pre­vent­ed, most like­ly because of the amount of eco­nom­ic dis­rup­tion caused by those mea­sures,’ they wrote in a 2018 paper. . . .”
  • More sin­is­ter, still, is the fact that Metabio­ta had ana­lyzed the sce­nario of a nov­el coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic two years before it hap­pened. This appears to be the 2018 paper referred to above. Do not fail to note that, at the time that Metabio­ta was run­ning this sce­nario, they were part­nered with Eco­Health Alliance, which was using Pen­ta­gon and USAID mon­ey to research and per­form gain-of-func­tion on these types of coro­n­avirus­es!! ” . . . . As the human and eco­nom­ic dev­as­ta­tion mul­ti­plied in tan­dem across the globe, Metabiota’s employ­ees sud­den­ly found them­selves liv­ing inside their own model’s pro­jec­tions. Just two years ear­li­er, the com­pa­ny had run a large set of sce­nar­ios fore­cast­ing the con­se­quences of a nov­el coro­n­avirus spread­ing around the globe. . . .”

“We Can Pro­tect the Econ­o­my From Pan­demics. Why Didn’t We?” by Evan Ratliff; Wired; 06/16/2020

5. Next, we review the fact that Metabiota–which uses AI and social media scrap­ing (among oth­er tools) to gauge the “fear fac­tor” involved with pan­dem­ic readi­ness (and the asso­ci­at­ed pan­dem­ic insur­ance policies)–was gaug­ing the fear fac­tor for mon­key pox, which had man­i­fest­ed some human infec­tions in the Con­go as “low.”

This was in ear­ly 2020. Now, the dis­ease is on the “front burn­er,” so to speak. Peo­ple are afraid of the “new pan­dem­ic.”

Despite only 306 doc­u­ment­ed cas­es in the U.S. (as of 6/28/2022), hun­dreds of thou­sands of vac­cine dos­es are being read­ied for human use.

The dis­ease bears an epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sim­i­lar­i­ty to AIDS: an African mon­key virus infect­ing gay males with mul­ti­ple sex part­ners.

“How AI is bat­tling the coro­n­avirus out­break” by Rebec­ca Heil­weil; Vox; 01/28/2020.

. . . . Sim­i­lar­ly, the epi­dem­ic-mon­i­tor­ing com­pa­ny Metabio­ta deter­mined that Thai­land, South Korea, Japan, and Tai­wan had the high­est risk of see­ing the virus show up more than a week before cas­es in those coun­tries were actu­al­ly report­ed, par­tial­ly by look­ing to flight data. Metabio­ta, like Blue­Dot, uses nat­ur­al-lan­guage pro­cess­ing to eval­u­ate online reports about a poten­tial dis­ease, and it’s also work­ing on devel­op­ing the same tech­nol­o­gy for social media data.

Mark Gal­li­van, Metabiota’s data sci­ence direc­tor, explains that online plat­forms and forums can also give an indi­ca­tion that there’s a risk of an epi­dem­ic. Metabio­ta also claims it can esti­mate the risk of a disease’s spread caus­ing social and polit­i­cal dis­rup­tion, based on infor­ma­tion like an illness’s symp­toms, mor­tal­i­ty rate, and the avail­abil­i­ty of treat­ment. For instance, at the time of this article’s pub­li­ca­tion, Metabio­ta rat­ed the risk of the nov­el coro­n­avirus caus­ing pub­lic anx­i­ety as “high” in the US and Chi­na, but it rat­ed this risk for the mon­key­pox virus in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of the Con­go (where there have been report­ed cas­es of that virus) as “medi­um.”

It’s hard to know just how accu­rate this rat­ing sys­tem or the plat­form itself can be, but Gal­li­van says the com­pa­ny is work­ing with the US intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty and the Defense Depart­ment on issues relat­ed to the coro­n­avirus. This is part of Metabiota’s work with In-Q-Tel, the non­prof­it ven­ture firm asso­ci­at­ed with the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency. But gov­ern­ment agen­cies aren’t the only poten­tial clients of these sys­tems. Metabio­ta also adver­tis­es its plat­form to rein­sur­ance com­pa­nies — rein­sur­ance is essen­tial­ly insur­ance for insur­ance com­pa­nies — that might want to man­age the finan­cial risks asso­ci­at­ed with a disease’s poten­tial spread. . . .

6. We will rumi­nate about the mon­key­pox out­break and its impli­ca­tions in our next pro­gram. We con­clude this pro­gram with an excerpt­ing of an op-ed col­umn by Scott Got­tlieb, the head of the FDA under Trump, a mem­ber of the con­ser­v­a­tive Amer­i­can Enter­prise Insti­tute and a mem­ber of the board of direc­tors of Pfiz­er.

He notes that the new agency cre­at­ed by Biden to deal with mon­key­pox and oth­er emerg­ing infec­tions was for­mer­ly: ” . . . . an office inside ‌the Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices that is charged with coor­di­nat­ing the fed­er­al response to bioter­ror­ism . . . .

“Mon­key­pox Is About to Become the Next Pub­lic Health Fail­ure” by Scott Got­tlieb; The New York Times; 7/30/2002.

. . . . It has effec­tive­ly cre­at­ed an agency out of an office inside ‌the Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices that is charged with coor­di­nat­ing the fed­er­al response to bioter­ror­ism, among oth­er things. The reorder­ing puts the new Admin­is­tra­tion for Strate­gic Pre­pared­ness and Response on equal foot­ing with the C.D.C. . . .

Discussion

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