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FTR#‘s 1292 and 1293 The Oswald Institute of Virology, Part 14: The Northwoods Virus, Part 2 and Apocalypse, The Satanic Presidency of Joe Biden

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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 [5]

ANOTHER REVEALING VIDEO FROM UKRAINE 24 [6]

Mr. Emory has launched a new Patre­on site. Vis­it at: Patreon.com/DaveEmory [7]

FTR#1292 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment [8].

FTR#1293 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment. [9]

[10]Intro­duc­tion: This descrip­tion opens with an unchar­ac­ter­is­tic qual­i­fi­ca­tion and apol­o­gy: There are two ele­ments of the titles of each of these pro­grams that were not ade­quate­ly explained in the broad­casts them­selves, although they are implic­it in the sub­ject mate­r­i­al.

The term “North­woods Virus” is more com­plete­ly pre­sent­ed in FTR#1215 [11]. Among the appar­ent goals of the “Covid Oper­a­tion” that pro­duced SARS CoV‑2 is the turn­ing of Amer­i­can pub­lic opin­ion against Chi­na. Oper­a­tion North­woods was a plan hatched by the Join Chiefs of Staff in the ear­ly 1960’s to stage appar­ent ter­ror­ist inci­dents against Amer­i­can civil­ian and mil­i­tary per­son­nel and infra­struc­ture in order to manip­u­late pub­lic opin­ion in this coun­try and gen­er­ate sen­ti­ment for an inva­sion of Cuba.

The sec­ond pro­gram refers to the Biden Pres­i­den­cy as “Satan­ic,” because behind a stu­dious­ly con­struct­ed façade of iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics, “Team Biden” is pur­su­ing an overt­ly war­like, impe­ri­al­ist agen­da that was accu­rate­ly char­ac­ter­ized by writer Hen­ry Miller in his nov­el Trop­ic of Can­cer: “Amer­i­ca is the very incar­na­tion of doom, and she will lead the rest of the world into the Bot­tom­less Pit.”

Per­haps the most insid­i­ous of Biden’s pro­grams is his “Can­cer Moon­shot.”

Omi­nous­ly, it may well be the suc­ces­sor to Richard Nixon’s “War on Can­cer,” which did not defeat can­cer, but did serve as the appar­ent plat­form for the devel­op­ment of bio­log­i­cal war­fare weapons, AIDS in par­tic­u­lar.

Mod­eled after DARPA, head­ed by a DARPA alum­na whose CV inter­sects with that Agency’s appar­ent involve­ment with the devel­op­ment of Covid-19 and with an act­ing direc­tor who is also a for­mer employ­ee of that benight­ed orga­ni­za­tion, this new health agency [12]ARPA‑H [13], this agency will employ new, syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy tech­nol­o­gy.

Although that devel­op­ment is rep­re­sent­ed as human­i­tar­i­an, the struc­ture of the agency and the nation­al secu­ri­ty back­grounds of its lead­ing per­son­nel sug­gest strong­ly that this agency, too, will serve as a clan­des­tine plat­form for the next gen­er­a­tion of bio­log­i­cal weapon­ry.

We begin FTR#1292 [8]with a reprise of the audio from a (now delet­ed) 55-sec­ond video of Dr. Jef­frey Sachs sum­ma­riz­ing his two-year stew­ard­ship of The Lancet’s com­mis­sion inves­ti­gat­ing the ori­gins of SARS CoV‑2.

Sachs stat­ed that he is “pret­ty con­vinced” it came from a U.S. bio­log­i­cal lab­o­ra­to­ry.

Next, we recap a study [14] 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.

One of the cen­tral points Mr. Emory has made about the gen­e­sis of the coro­n­avirus con­cerns the legal prin­ci­ple of “con­scious­ness of guilt.”

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 [15] of the Unit­ed States Army’s Med­ical Insti­tute of Infec­tious Dis­ease in ear­ly August of 2019 [15], on the eve of the pan­dem­ic.
  2. The behav­ior of Peter Daszak and col­leagues in “gam­ing” [16]the Lancet state­ment on the “nat­ur­al” ori­gin of the coro­n­avirus (Dasza­k’s Eco­Health Alliance–fund­ed and advised by the nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment [17]–is impli­cat­ed in the cre­ation of the SARS COV‑2.) Note that the Eco­Health Alliance was syn­the­siz­ing “nov­el coro­n­avirus­es” at this point in time, an impor­tant fac­tor to remem­ber when eval­u­at­ing the Metabiota/Munich Re busi­ness mod­el being pre­sent­ed in 2018. (See #4 pre­sent­ed below.)
  3. The reac­tion [16] 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 [18]–was net­worked with In-Q-Tel [19] (the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty’s ven­ture cap­i­tal arm) and Munich Re to pro­vide pan­dem­ic insur­ance. Their 2018 busi­ness mod­el direct­ly fore­shad­owed [20] the pan­dem­ic. “ . . . . Just two years ear­li­er, the com­pa­ny had run a large set of sce­nar­ios fore­cast­ing the con­se­quences of a nov­el coro­n­avirus spread­ing around the globe. . . . 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 . . . .”  In 2018, as well, Eco­Health Alliance pro­posed a nov­el coro­n­avirus” [21] 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!! [20] Why were sequences of bat coro­n­avirus genomes removed from pub­lic view [20].

The pro­gram fea­tures a recap of some of the more impor­tant arti­cles in the long series on the coro­n­avirus, fol­lowed by dis­cus­sion of the Ener­gy Department’s con­clu­sion that the coro­n­avirus escaped from a Chi­nese lab­o­ra­to­ry.

Excel­lent analy­sis pre­sent­ed by the Moon of Alaba­ma [22]blog notes that the Wall Street Jour­na [23]l arti­cle break­ing the “news” about the Ener­gy Department’s con­clu­sion was co-authored by Michael R. Gor­don, who trum­pet­ed the “Lab Leak” meme in the spring of 2021.

In a pre­vi­ous jour­nal­is­tic incar­na­tion [24], Gor­don helped gen­er­ate enthu­si­asm for the inva­sion of Iraq by par­rot­ing the dis­in­for­ma­tion about Sad­dam Hus­sein hav­ing WMD’s.

Sur­pris­ing to Moon of Alaba­ma [22]but not to us is Edward Snowden’s endorse­ment of the Lab Leak Hypoth­e­sis.

Far from being the “hero” Snow­den has made out to be, Snow­den is an extreme right-winger, whose work on cyber-secu­ri­ty appears to be the work of a con­scious dou­ble agent. (We have cov­ered Snowden’s escapades in numer­ous pro­grams over the years, par­tic­u­lar­ly FTR#’s 1078 [25]-1081 [26].)

For the con­ve­nience of the lis­ten­er, we recap a 2001 arti­cle [27] dis­cussing the all-encom­pass­ing scope of U.S. elec­tron­ic snooping—an arti­cle that reveals the depth of Snowden’s duplic­i­ty.

In addi­tion to touch­ing on a sto­ry of a recent­ly-released book [28] about the Coro­n­avirus being syn­the­sized as part of a U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram, the pro­gram recaps the Biden administration’s cre­ation of a “Med­ical DARPA.”

Fol­low­ing dis­cus­sion of Moderna’s delib­er­ate with­hold­ing [29]of data from reg­u­la­tors about its new biva­lent mRNA vac­cine, we note a study that indi­cates that new, dead­ly vari­ants of Covid that could over­whelm the health­care sys­tem are a dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty.

Of great sig­nif­i­cance is analy­sis of a diplo­mat­ic break­through [30] engi­neered by Chi­na. Bro­ker­ing a rap­proche­ment between Iran and Sau­di Ara­bia in the Mid­dle East, Chi­na has helped to re-set the polit­i­cal land­scape of the Mid­dle East.

As not­ed by M.K. Bhadraku­mar, the realign­ment may sig­nal a demise of the dol­lar as the glob­al reserve cur­ren­cy of choice. IF such a devel­op­ment ensues, it will prove dev­as­tat­ing to America’s impe­r­i­al sta­tus, cur­tail­ing the mil­i­tary indus­tri­al com­plex in par­tic­u­lar.

Mr. Emory express­es his great fear that this will not be allowed to develop—the above-men­tioned “Can­cer Moon­shot” and lethal, syn­the­sized micro-organ­isms and pan­demics will very like­ly be the Amer­i­can answer to the long-term eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal impli­ca­tions of the Chi­nese diplo­mat­ic coup.

1a. We begin with a reprise of the audio from a (now delet­ed) 55-sec­ond video of Dr. Jef­frey Sachs sum­ma­riz­ing his two-year stew­ard­ship of The Lancet’s com­mis­sion inves­ti­gat­ing the ori­gins of SARS CoV‑2.

Sachs stat­ed that he is “pret­ty con­vinced” it came from a U.S. bio­log­i­cal lab­o­ra­to­ry.

This same audio clip con­cludes FTR#1293.

1b. 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 [14]

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. . . .”

2a.  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 [15] of the Unit­ed States Army’s Med­ical Insti­tute of Infec­tious Dis­ease in ear­ly August of 2019 [15], on the eve of the pan­dem­ic.
  2. The behav­ior of Peter Daszak and col­leagues in “gam­ing” [16]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 [16] 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 [18]–was net­worked with In-Q-Tel [19] (the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty’s ven­ture cap­i­tal arm) and Munich Re to pro­vide pan­dem­ic insur­ance. Their 2018 busi­ness mod­el direct­ly fore­shad­owed [20] the pan­dem­ic. “ . . . . Just two years ear­li­er, the com­pa­ny had run a large set of sce­nar­ios fore­cast­ing the con­se­quences of a nov­el coro­n­avirus spread­ing around the globe. . . . 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 . . . .”  In 2018, as well, Eco­Health Alliance pro­posed a “nov­el coro­n­avirus” [31] 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!! [20] Why were sequences of bat coro­n­avirus genomes removed from pub­lic view [20].

2b.

3a.“Ener­gy Dept. Sus­pects Virus Was From Lab” by Julian E. Barnes; The New York Times; 2/27/2023; pp. A1-A7 [West­ern Print Edi­tion]. [36]

3b.“U.S. Find­ing On Covid Draws Fire From Chi­na” by David Pier­son; The New York Times; 2/28/2023; p. A6  [West­ern Print Edi­tion]. [37]

. . . . Chi­na has also sought to deflect blame for the pan­dem­ic by spread­ing a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry that the virus may have been the result of research at a U.S. mil­i­tary lab at Fort Det­rick, Md. The claim, which was first made in March 2020 was repeat­ed by a for­eign min­istry spokesman as recent­ly as this month.

At the Ener­gy Depart­ment, new intel­li­gence prompt­ed it to change its posi­tion from being unde­cid­ed about how the virus emerged. Offi­cials did not share that intel­li­gence but said the agency made its con­clu­sion with only “low con­fi­dence.” . . . . [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s]

4.“This Debate Hasn’t Made Us Safer” by David Wal­lace-Wells; The New York Times; 3/5/2023. [38]

5.“Was the Pen­ta­gon and CIA Behind the COVID-19 Pan­dem­ic?” by Jere­my Kuz­marov; Covert Action Mag­a­zine; 2/27/2023. [28]

Bioter­ror­ism expert and whistle­blow­er alleges that CIA secret­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed in sup­port­ing uneth­i­cal gain of func­tion research that result­ed in the man­u­fac­ture of the COVID-19 virus, which was then leaked from the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy.

Dr. Andrew G. Huff is an Iraq War vet­er­an and infec­tious dis­ease epi­demi­ol­o­gist with a Ph.D. from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta who, in Sep­tem­ber 2014, went to work for Eco­Health Alliance [39], an NGO that received over $118 mil­lion in grants from fed­er­al agen­cies [40] whose mis­sion was to pro­tect the pub­lic from infec­tious dis­eases.

In a new book, The Truth About Wuhan: How I Uncov­ered the Biggest Lie in His­to­ry (New York: Sky­horse Press, 2022), Huff claims that his boss at Eco­Health Alliance, Dr. Peter Daszak, was work­ing with the CIA and that begin­ning in 2012, he over­saw the devel­op­ment of the bio­log­i­cal agent known as SARS-CoV­‑2 that results in the dis­ease COVID-19.

The devel­op­ment occurred through Gain-of-Func­tion research fund­ed by the Unit­ed States Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment (USAID) and the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health (NIH).[1] [41]

Accord­ing to Huff, Dr. Daszak and Dr. Antho­ny Fau­ci, Direc­tor of the Nation­al Insti­tute of Aller­gy and Infec­tious Dis­eases from 1984 until his retire­ment in Decem­ber 2022, along with oth­er col­leagues, “behaved like a pseu­do­science mafia entrenched in the halls of the med­ical mil­i­tary indus­tri­al com­plex.”[2] [42]

They not only engi­neered the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic but “crim­i­nal­ly con­spired to smear” any­one who did not sup­port their narrative—including Huff who was sub­ject­ed to a cam­paign of FBI sur­veil­lance and harass­ment that near­ly result­ed in his death.

Engi­neer­ing a Dead­ly Virus—and a Vac­cine to Alleged­ly Com­bat It

One of the first tasks that Dr. Huff under­took while work­ing at Eco­Health Alliance was to review an NIH pro­pos­al titled “Under­stand­ing the Risk of Bat Coro­n­avirus Emer­gence,” writ­ten by Dr. Daszak with Zhengli Shi of the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy (WIV) and some oth­er sci­en­tists.

The study had the sup­port of “the grand­fa­ther of Gain-of-Func­tion research,” Dr. Ralph Bar­ic, a virol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Carolina’s Gillings School of Pub­lic Health, which ranks third in NIH fund­ing. (Accord­ing to Huff, “Fau­ci has been [the school’s] de fac­to Don for decades.”[3] [43])

The pro­pos­al advo­cat­ed for study­ing peo­ple in rur­al Chi­na who may have come into con­tact with bats that spread the Coro­n­avirus among humans and to screen for the virus with the goal of being able to bet­ter pre­dict Coro­n­avirus trans­mis­sion. It fur­ther aimed to devel­op new Coro­n­avirus strains and per­form exper­i­ments [44] that would enhance the abil­i­ty of bat coro­n­avirus to infect human cells and lab­o­ra­to­ry ani­mals using tech­niques of genet­ic engi­neer­ing.[4] [45]

This study fit the def­i­n­i­tion of Gain-of-Func­tion research, whose aim is to “pur­pose­ful­ly enhance the path­o­genic­i­ty, infec­tiv­i­ty, vir­u­lence, sur­viv­abil­i­ty or trans­mis­si­bil­i­ty of an infec­tious agent,” as Huff defines it, or put more sim­ply, “make an infec­tious agent more dan­ger­ous.”[5] [46]

On Octo­ber 17, 2014, the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion declared a mora­to­ri­um [47] on Gain-of-Func­tion research relat­ed to influen­za, Mid­dle East res­pi­ra­to­ry syn­drome (MERS) and severe acute res­pi­ra­to­ry syn­drome (SARS) after an acci­dent at the U.S. Cen­ter for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC).

Dr. Fau­ci sub­se­quent­ly out­sourced [48] the Gain-of-Func­tion research to China’s Wuhan lab and licensed the lab [49] to con­tin­ue receiv­ing U.S. gov­ern­ment fund­ing. The mora­to­ri­um on Gain-of-Func­tion research was lift­ed by the Trump admin­is­tra­tion in Decem­ber 2017 [44], and Dr. Fau­ci sent $3.7 mil­lion from the Nation­al Insti­tute of Aller­gy and Infec­tious Dis­eases to the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy to restart the coro­n­avirus bat project.

By try­ing to make bats capa­ble of infect­ing human cells, Huff came to believe that his employ­er was involved not only in uneth­i­cal Gain-of-Func­tion but also bioweapons research. Its end result was “the cre­ation of SARS-CoV­‑2,” which “caus­es the dis­ease known as COVID-19.”[6] [50]

Accord­ing to Huff, the infec­tious agent SARS-CoV­‑2 and the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine—which Huff char­ac­ter­izes as gene therapy—were co-devel­oped under the same research pro­gram.[7] [51]

Huff writes that Eco­Health Alliance used Dr. Baric’s work for test­ing exper­i­men­tal vac­cines, treat­ments and ther­a­peu­tics against the new­ly engi­neered SARS-CoV­‑2 strain years before COVID-19 was known to the pub­lic to deter­mine which coun­ter­mea­sures would be most effec­tive at mit­i­gat­ing the dis­ease in human­ized mice.[8] [52] . . . . 

6. Among those par­rot­ing the Ener­gy Depart­men­t’s line on the Wuhan “Lab Leak” meme is Edward Snow­den. In, among oth­er pro­grams, FTR#‘s 1075 [53] through 1081 [26], we not­ed not only that the Inter­net was devel­oped for “coun­terin­sur­gency pur­pos­es”

“Edward Snow­den Signs On To Dis­trib­ute U.S. Gov Pro­pa­gan­da;” Moon of Alaba­ma; 2/27/2023. [22]

Edward, you are an idiot.

Edward Snow­den @Snowden — 15:36 UTC · Feb 26, 2023 [54]

Do you remem­ber the “insti­tu­tion­al” and social media cor­po response in the first half of 2020 when some­one con­tra­dict­ed the con­sen­sus? They were pun­ished for the “crime” of “dis­in­for­ma­tion.”

Cor­po­ra­tions must nev­er again be per­mit­ted to police speech.

wsj.com
WSJ News Exclu­sive | Lab Leak Most Like­ly Ori­gin of Covid-19 Pan­dem­ic, U.S. Agency Now Says [55]
The Ener­gy Department’s revised assess­ment of how the pan­dem­ic start­ed is based on new intel­li­gence.

Moon of Alaba­ma @MoonofA — 16:05 UTC · Feb 26, 2023 [56]

How is the U.S. Ener­gy Depart­ment (which is the ‘intel­li­gence’ here) qual­i­fied to make such con­clu­sions? Is Michael A. Gor­don, famous for Iraq WMD claims, an author qual­i­fied to write more than garbage?

Quot­ed Tweet
Edward Snow­den @Snowden · 14h
Do you remem­ber the “insti­tu­tion­al” and social media cor­po response in the first half of 2020 when some­one con­tra­dict­ed the con­sen­sus? They were pun­ished for the “crime” of “dis­in­for­ma­tion.”

Cor­po­ra­tions must nev­er again be per­mit­ted to police speech.
https://wsj.com/articles/covid-origin-china-lab-leak-807b7b0a [57]

chi­na­hand @chinahand — 17:52 UTC · Feb 26, 2023 [58]

to recap the actu­al state of play: mean­ing­less DoE report gets leaked to journos so cre­den­tialed cretins can assist USG in mak­ing anti-Chi­na hay. Got­ta change the name to “less than zero media”

Caitlin John­stone @caitoz — 11:35 UTC · Feb 27, 2023 [59]

It’s the same guy. IT’S THE SAME FUCKING GUY.

Quot­ed Tweet
Mark Ames @MarkAmesExiled — 13h
DC’s Chi­na War lob­by dust­ing off their Iraq WMD tool to revive lab leak the­o­ry

The new ‘report’:

Lab Leak Most Like­ly Ori­gin of Covid-19 Pan­dem­ic, Ener­gy Depart­ment Now Says [23]
U.S. agency’s revised assess­ment is based on new intel­li­gence
By Michael R. Gor­don and War­ren P. Stro­bel
Updat­ed Feb. 26, 2023 4:29 pm ET

The U.S. Ener­gy Depart­ment has con­clud­ed that the Covid pan­dem­ic most like­ly arose from a lab­o­ra­to­ry leak, accord­ing to a clas­si­fied intel­li­gence report recent­ly pro­vid­ed to the White House and key mem­bers of Con­gress.
...
The Ener­gy Depart­ment made its judg­ment with “low con­fi­dence,” accord­ing to peo­ple who have read the clas­si­fied report.
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U.S. offi­cials declined to give details on the fresh intel­li­gence and analy­sis that led the Ener­gy Depart­ment to change its posi­tion.
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The Nation­al Intel­li­gence Coun­cil, which con­ducts long-term strate­gic analy­sis, and four agen­cies, which offi­cials declined to iden­ti­fy, still assess with “low con­fi­dence” that the virus came about through nat­ur­al trans­mis­sion from an infect­ed ani­mal, accord­ing to the updat­ed report.

Pre­vi­ous­ly:

THREATS AND RESPONSES: THE IRAQIS; U.S. SAYS HUSSEIN INTENSIFIES QUEST FOR A‑BOMB PARTS [24]
By Michael R. Gor­don and Judith Miller
Sept. 8, 2002

More than a decade after Sad­dam Hus­sein agreed to give up weapons of mass destruc­tion, Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a world­wide hunt for mate­ri­als to make an atom­ic bomb, Bush admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials said today.

In the last 14 months, Iraq has sought to buy thou­sands of spe­cial­ly designed alu­minum tubes, which Amer­i­can offi­cials believe were intend­ed as com­po­nents of cen­trifuges to enrich ura­ni­um. Amer­i­can offi­cials said sev­er­al efforts to arrange the ship­ment of the alu­minum tubes were blocked or inter­cept­ed but declined to say, cit­ing the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of the intel­li­gence, where they came from or how they were stopped.
...
While there is no indi­ca­tion that Iraq is on the verge of deploy­ing a nuclear bomb, Iraq’s pur­suit of nuclear weapons has been cit­ed by hard-lin­ers in the Bush admin­is­tra­tion to make the argu­ment that the Unit­ed States must act now, before Mr. Hus­sein acquires nuclear arms and thus alters the strate­gic bal­ance in the oil-rich Per­sian Gulf.
...
Hard-lin­ers are alarmed that Amer­i­can intel­li­gence under­es­ti­mat­ed the pace and scale of Iraq’s nuclear pro­gram before Bagh­dad’s defeat in the gulf war. Con­scious of this lapse in the past, they argue that Wash­ing­ton dare not wait until ana­lysts have found hard evi­dence that Mr. Hus­sein has acquired a nuclear weapon. The first sign of a ”smok­ing gun,” they argue, may be a mush­room cloud.

7. The year-long inves­ti­ga­tion con­clud­ed just before the 9/11/attacks. [The NSA/GCHQ vac­u­um clean­ing pre­dates 9/11–D.E.] The Euro­pean Par­lia­men­tary com­mis­sion con­clud­ed that many oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries had the same capa­bil­i­ty.

“World Brief­ing | Europe: Report On U.S. Spy Sys­tem” by Suzanne Daley; The New York Times; 9/6/2001. [27]

[Notice when this was published–9/6/2001.–D.E.] . . . The Unit­ed States-led spy­ing sys­tem known as Ech­e­lon can mon­i­tor vir­tu­al­ly every com­mu­ni­ca­tion in the world — by e‑mail, phone or fax — that bounces off a satel­lite, the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment was told. But in report­ing on a year­long study of the sys­tem that was prompt­ed by con­cern that Amer­i­can com­pa­nies were using data from the sys­tem to gain a com­pet­i­tive edge, Ger­hard Schmid, a Ger­man mem­ber of the Par­lia­ment, said that many Euro­pean coun­tries had sim­i­lar abil­i­ties . . .

8. It appears that the FDA, CDC, and Mod­er­na all col­lud­ed to with­hold data from these advi­so­ry pan­els the Mod­er­na had already gath­ered indi­cat­ing that the biva­lent COVID boost­ers are pos­si­bly less effec­tive at pre­vent an infec­tion than the orig­i­nal mRNA vac­cine for­mu­la­tion.

Yep, first the FDA held a day-long meet­ing on June 28 with a pan­el of inde­pen­dent experts about the new boost­ers. The pres­i­dent of Mod­er­na was also invit­ed to present to the pan­el and shared the results of a new Mod­er­na study that had just been preprint­ed (non-peer reviewed) three days before the meet­ing. The study showed the new biva­lent vac­cine elicit­ed high­er anti­body lev­els. But also high­er infec­tion rates. The high­er anti­body lev­els were excit­ed­ly shared to the pan­el. Noth­ing about the high­er infec­tion rates was shared.

So why didn’t the FDA share this info about high­er infec­tion rates with the pan­el? The FDA was aware of Moderna’s preprint­ed study, after all. We’ll we’re told that the FDA just didn’t have enough time to review it. That’s the excuse giv­en for how Moderna’s pres­i­dent was allowed to selec­tive­ly share results with the pan­el and the FDA leav­ing the pan­elists in the dark.

The FDA ulti­mate­ly approved the biva­lent boost­ers on August 31. The next day, the CDC held an inde­pen­dent pan­el of its own to review the new biva­lent boost­ers. Again, peo­ple from Mod­er­na were there to selec­tive­ly present how the new boost­ers result­ed in high­er anti­body lev­els while leav­ing out the data about the high­er infec­tion rates entire­ly. On Sep­tem­ber 13, the FDA final­ly pub­lished the data it based its approval on, includ­ing the infec­tion data. So the FDA only pub­licly released the data from Mod­er­na show­ing pos­si­bly low­er effi­ca­cy for the new boost­ers only after the CDC’s pan­el gave its own stamp of approval with­out know­ing about the low­er effi­ca­cy find­ings.

So what was the CDC’s excuse for keep­ing the pan­el in the dark? Well, accord­ing to the CDC spokesper­son, the “CDC was aware” of the data that would lat­er be pub­lished in The New Eng­land Jour­nal of Med­i­cine. Also, they added that assess­ing infec­tions was an “explorato­ry objec­tive of the study,” which was “not designed to assess vac­cine effec­tive­ness.” It’s not exact­ly a com­pelling excuse. Final­ly, they point­ed out that in assess­ing infec­tions, “researchers used dif­fer­ent dura­tions and points in time among a very small group of peo­ple,” and because of the lim­i­ta­tions of the data, it was not fea­tured at the meet­ing. In oth­er words, the Mod­er­na study was poor­ly-pow­ered crap.

Which is was by all indi­ca­tions. And that’s part of the sto­ry here: Moderna’s poor­ly-pow­ered crap study was appar­ent­ly fine for use when it increased the chances of the vac­cines get­ting approved. But when it comes to the data show­ing reduced effec­tive­ness we can just ignore it because of the poor sta­tis­ti­cal pow­er. It’s all quite con­ve­nient. Con­ve­nient for Mod­er­na and any Mod­er­na super-fans that inhab­it the fed­er­al reg­u­la­to­ry bureau­cra­cy. As Dr. Paul Offit, one of the inde­pen­dent experts who is now livid over this scan­dal, put it, his faith in the whole approval process has been shak­en. Which should raise plen­ty of ques­tions for the rest of us [29]:

“FDA vac­cine advis­ers ‘dis­ap­point­ed’ and ‘angry’ that ear­ly data about new Covid-19 boost­er shot wasn’t pre­sent­ed for review last year” by Eliz­a­beth Cohen and Nao­mi Thomas; CNN; 01/11/2023 [29].

Some vac­cine advis­ers to the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment say they’re “dis­ap­point­ed” and “angry” that gov­ern­ment sci­en­tists and the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny Mod­er­na didn’t present a set of infec­tion data on the company’s new Covid-19 boost­er dur­ing meet­ings last year when the advis­ers dis­cussed whether the shot should be autho­rized and made avail­able to the pub­lic.

That data sug­gest­ed the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the updat­ed boost­er might not be any more effec­tive at pre­vent­ing Covid-19 infec­tions than the orig­i­nal shots.

The data was ear­ly and had many lim­i­ta­tions, but sev­er­al advis­ers told CNN that they were con­cerned about a lack of trans­paren­cy.

US tax­pay­ers spent near­ly $5 bil­lion on the new boost­er, which has been giv­en to more than 48.2 mil­lion [60] peo­ple in the US.

“I was angry to find out that there was data that was rel­e­vant to our deci­sion that we didn’t get to see,” said Dr. Paul Offit, a mem­ber of the Vac­cines and Relat­ed Bio­log­i­cal Prod­ucts Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee, a group of exter­nal advis­ers that helps the FDA make vac­cine deci­sions. “Deci­sions that are made for the pub­lic have to be made based on all avail­able infor­ma­tion – not just some infor­ma­tion, but all infor­ma­tion.”

At a meet­ing of this FDA advi­so­ry group in June and a meet­ing in Sep­tem­ber of a pan­el that advis­es the US Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion, the experts were pre­sent­ed with reams of infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing that the new vac­cine worked bet­ter than the one already on shelves, accord­ing to a review of videos and tran­scripts of those meet­ings and slide pre­sen­ta­tions made by Mod­er­na, CDC and FDA offi­cials.

That data – called immuno­genic­i­ty data – was based on blood work done on study par­tic­i­pants to assess how well each vac­cine elicit­ed anti­bod­ies that fight off the Omi­cron strain of the virus that caus­es Covid-19.

The data that was not pre­sent­ed to the experts looked at actu­al infec­tions: who caught Covid-19 and who did not.

It found that 1.9% of the study par­tic­i­pants who received the orig­i­nal boost­er became infect­ed. Among those who got the updat­ed biva­lent vac­cine – the one that sci­en­tists hoped would work bet­ter – a high­er per­cent­age, 3.2%, became infect­ed. Both ver­sions of the shot were found to be safe.

This infec­tion data was far from com­plete. The num­ber of study sub­jects who became infect­ed was very small, and both the patients and the researchers were aware of who was get­ting the orig­i­nal shot and who was get­ting the new boost­er.

Despite these imper­fec­tions, the data was includ­ed in a preprint study that was post­ed online in June, again in Sep­tem­ber in an FDA doc­u­ment and then lat­er that month in a top med­ical jour­nal – and advis­ers to the FDA and the CDC said the data should have been shared with them, too.

“It’s not a group of chil­dren. We under­stand how to inter­pret these results,” said Dr. Eric Rubin, a mem­ber of the FDA vac­cine advi­so­ry com­mit­tee.

The six FDA and CDC advis­ers inter­viewed by CNN said that this infec­tion data wouldn’t have changed how they vot­ed, because the data had such lim­i­ta­tions, but it still should have been pre­sent­ed to them.

“There should always be full trans­paren­cy,” said Dr. Arnold Mon­to, a pro­fes­sor of epi­demi­ol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan School of Pub­lic Health and act­ing chair of the FDA advis­ers’ group. “These data should not be dis­missed. They are ear­ly, but they indi­cate that we need to look at them and see what their val­ue is.”

Dr. Pablo Sanchez, a mem­ber of the CDC’s pan­el, called the Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee on Immu­niza­tion Prac­tices, said that if the data “was looked at as part of the study, it should have been pre­sent­ed to the advis­ers pri­or to their deci­sion.”

The FDA and the CDC con­vene their advi­so­ry board meet­ings and make pre­sen­ta­tions to the advis­ers. At last year’s meet­ings, Mod­er­na exec­u­tives made pre­sen­ta­tions, as well. The advis­ers then make their rec­om­men­da­tions to the agen­cies, and the agen­cies decide whether to autho­rize the shots and rec­om­mend them to the pub­lic.

Mod­er­na spokesman Christo­pher Rid­ley said in an email to CNN that the com­pa­ny shared the infec­tion data with the FDA and post­ed the study man­u­script before the agency’s pan­el meet­ing in June “in response to requests that we share an update from the ongo­ing study.”

That study preprint [61] was post­ed online June 25, three days before the FDA advis­ers met.

Michael Fel­ber­baum, an FDA spokesman, told CNN in an email that “the FDA received the preprint less than a day pri­or to the advi­so­ry com­mit­tee meet­ing,” and “the infor­ma­tion was there­fore not pro­vid­ed in an ade­quate time­frame for it to be includ­ed in the agency’s meet­ing mate­ri­als, and gen­er­al­ly the FDA only dis­cuss­es data at advi­so­ry com­mit­tee meet­ings that the agency has had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to sub­stan­tive­ly review.”

“Numer­ous stud­ies sup­port the find­ing that the COVID-19 vac­cines remain the best defense against the most dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences of COVID-19 such as hos­pi­tal­iza­tion and death, and that the updat­ed vac­cines may help pro­vide bet­ter pro­tec­tion against the cur­rent­ly cir­cu­lat­ing vari­ants,” Fel­ber­baum wrote.

He added that “through­out the pan­dem­ic, the FDA has remained as trans­par­ent as pos­si­ble regard­ing its process­es and deci­sion-mak­ing regard­ing the COVID-19 vac­cines” and that Mod­er­na could have cho­sen to present the data at the FDA advi­so­ry com­mit­tee meet­ing.

Kris­ten Nord­lund, a CDC spokes­woman, said that “due to the many lim­i­ta­tions involv­ing this clin­i­cal data, it was not fea­tured” in the CDC’s advi­so­ry com­mit­tee dis­cus­sion.

Empha­sis on trans­paren­cy

The advis­ers said there are three main rea­sons why it mat­ters that the infec­tion data was not pre­sent­ed to them.

One, they said, is the poten­tial impact of their deci­sion: If Amer­i­cans were going to be get­ting these shots, all avail­able data should be brought to the table for con­sid­er­a­tion.

Two, the advi­so­ry com­mit­tee meet­ings are streamed live online, and reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies around the world use the infor­ma­tion to help make deci­sions about vac­cines in their coun­tries.

Three, they stressed that trans­paren­cy is impor­tant. The pub­lic doesn’t wit­ness con­ver­sa­tions among FDA offi­cials or between agency offi­cials and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny exec­u­tives, but they do get to watch the advi­so­ry pan­els’ pro­ceed­ings.

Infec­tion data not includ­ed in pre­sen­ta­tions by FDA and Mod­er­na

Last sum­mer, as the FDA’s and CDC’s out­side advis­ers con­sid­ered the updat­ed boost­ers, the stakes were high. They knew that in just a mat­ter of months, win­ter would be approach­ing, and Covid rates could spike. They also knew the orig­i­nal vac­cine was get­ting less effec­tive with each new vari­ant and that the addi­tion of the Omi­cron strain in the updat­ed boost­er might help bat­tle the virus.

The FDA advis­ers [62] – 21 vot­ing mem­bers, includ­ing infec­tious dis­ease experts and vac­ci­nol­o­gists from Stan­ford, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia and Har­vard – met [63] for a full day on June 28.

Dr. Stephen Hoge, the pres­i­dent of Mod­er­na, made a pre­sen­ta­tion [64] to the advis­ers and fre­quent­ly referred to infor­ma­tion from the preprint study that had been post­ed three days before. The study was fund­ed by Mod­er­na and led by com­pa­ny sci­en­tists, and it had not been sub­ject­ed to peer review or pub­lished in a med­ical jour­nal.

The data Hoge shared with the advis­ers demon­strat­ed that blood tests on about 800 study par­tic­i­pants indi­cat­ed that the new biva­lent boost­er was “supe­ri­or” at increas­ing anti­bod­ies to the Omi­cron vari­ant com­pared with the orig­i­nal vac­cine.

Hoge did not men­tion anoth­er part of the study that cast a less-pos­i­tive light on the updat­ed shot.

In that part, the researchers gave some par­tic­i­pants the exist­ing vac­cine and oth­er par­tic­i­pants the updat­ed boost­er, and then they kept track of who became infect­ed with Covid-19.

Among the hun­dreds of par­tic­i­pants who received the orig­i­nal vac­cine and showed no evi­dence of a pri­or Covid-19 infec­tion, over the peri­od of the small study, 1.9% became infect­ed. Among the hun­dreds who received the new biva­lent vac­cine, a high­er per­cent­age, 3.2%, became infect­ed. The preprint did not indi­cate whether these find­ings were sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant.

A 22-page FDA brief­ing doc­u­ment [65] giv­en to the advis­ers did not men­tion this infec­tion data.

Dr. Jer­ry Weir, direc­tor of the Divi­sion of Viral Prod­ucts at the FDA’s Office of Vac­cines Research and Review, also did not men­tion the infec­tion data in his pre­sen­ta­tion [66] to the advis­ers.

At the end of the June 28 meet­ing, the FDA advis­ers vot­ed 19–2 to rec­om­mend the inclu­sion of an Omi­cron vari­ant for the Covid-19 boost­er vac­cine. Offit, a pro­fes­sor of vac­ci­nol­o­gy at the Perel­man School of Med­i­cine at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, and Dr. Hen­ry Bern­stein, a pro­fes­sor of pedi­atrics at the Zuck­er School of Med­i­cine at Hofstra/Northwell in New York, vot­ed in oppo­si­tion.

Over the next month, the US gov­ern­ment announced agree­ments to pur­chase the biva­lent boost­er from Pfiz­er [67] and Mod­er­na [68]: a con­tract for $3.2 bil­lion with Pfiz­er [69] and for $1.74 bil­lion with Mod­er­na [70].

Lim­i­ta­tions of Moderna’s infec­tion data

The infec­tion data that wasn’t includ­ed in the Mod­er­na and FDA pre­sen­ta­tions has sev­er­al seri­ous lim­i­ta­tions, accord­ing to the six advis­ers who spoke to CNN.

First, the num­bers were very small: The study ana­lyzed only hun­dreds of patients, and only 16 became infect­ed. None of them end­ed up in the emer­gency room or were hos­pi­tal­ized.

Sec­ond, par­tic­i­pants were not ran­dom­ly assigned to receive either the orig­i­nal or new vac­cine, and the study was not dou­ble-blind, mean­ing the par­tic­i­pants and the researchers knew who was receiv­ing which shot. Lack of ran­dom­iza­tion and blind­ing can bias study results.

Third, the pri­ma­ry pur­pose of the study was not to study infec­tion rates but to do immuno­genic­i­ty analy­ses, tak­ing blood from par­tic­i­pants and exam­in­ing their anti­body respons­es to the vac­cine.

“The pri­ma­ry objec­tive of the study was to assess the safe­ty and immuno­genic­i­ty of the biva­lent vac­cine. The study was not ran­dom­ized and did not con­trol for infec­tion risk between arms, mak­ing com­par­i­son of a rel­a­tive­ly small num­ber of cas­es prob­lem­at­ic,” he wrote.

Near­ly $5 bil­lion for updat­ed boost­ers

On August 31, about two months after the FDA advis­ers’ meet­ing, the agency autho­rized the Mod­er­na biva­lent vac­cines. The Mod­er­na infec­tion data was includ­ed in the agency’s writ­ten deci­sion [71], but it wasn’t post­ed online until Sep­tem­ber 13, accord­ing to Fel­ber­baum, the FDA spokesman.

On Sep­tem­ber 1, the CDC advis­ers [72] – 14 vot­ing mem­bers – met to con­sid­er whether to rec­om­mend the biva­lent boost­ers for Amer­i­cans to get in the fall. Sev­er­al CDC sci­en­tists pre­sent­ed data [73] at that meet­ing but did not include the infec­tion data.

Nord­lund, the CDC spokes­woman, said in her email that the “CDC was aware” of the data that would lat­er be pub­lished in The New Eng­land Jour­nal of Med­i­cine [74] but that assess­ing infec­tions was an “explorato­ry objec­tive of the study,” which was “not designed to assess vac­cine effec­tive­ness.” She added that in assess­ing infec­tions, “researchers used dif­fer­ent dura­tions and points in time among a very small group of peo­ple,” and because of the lim­i­ta­tions of the data, it was not fea­tured at the meet­ing.

“CDC vac­cine rec­om­men­da­tions are made fol­low­ing an eval­u­a­tion and pre­sen­ta­tion of high-qual­i­ty vac­cine effi­ca­cy or immuno­bridg­ing data,” Nord­lund wrote.

Dr. William Schaffn­er, a non-vot­ing mem­ber of the CDC’s advi­so­ry com­mit­tee, called Nordlund’s argu­ment “very weak.”

“The data are lim­it­ed, but they are infor­ma­tive, and I think one would have antic­i­pat­ed that a com­plete pre­sen­ta­tion would have includ­ed them,” said Schaffn­er, an infec­tious dis­ease spe­cial­ist at Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty Med­ical Cen­ter.

Dr. Jacque­line Miller, a senior vice pres­i­dent at Mod­er­na, pre­sent­ed [75] to the advis­ers. Like her col­league Hoge, the com­pa­ny pres­i­dent, she showed mate­r­i­al sug­gest­ing that the biva­lent vac­cine was supe­ri­or and did not show slides detail­ing the sta­tis­tics about the infec­tion rates, accord­ing to a copy of the slides she pre­sent­ed.

Sev­er­al hours into the meet­ing, one of the CDC advis­ers, Dr. Sybil Cineas, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of med­i­cine at the War­ren Alpert Med­ical School of Brown Uni­ver­si­ty, asked Miller about cas­es of Covid-19 among study sub­jects who received the orig­i­nal vac­cine ver­sus the updat­ed biva­lent boost­er.

Miller said that among sub­jects with no evi­dence of pri­or infec­tion, as well as those with evi­dence of pri­or infec­tion, the dis­ease inci­dence rates were 2.4% for the group who received the orig­i­nal vac­cine and 2.5% for those who got the biva­lent boost­er.

That data would be pub­lished two weeks lat­er in The New Eng­land Jour­nal of Med­i­cine.

When she answered Cineas’ ques­tion, Miller did not men­tion oth­er aspects of the infec­tion data in the pub­lished study. That data indi­cat­ed that among hun­dreds of par­tic­i­pants with no pre­vi­ous Covid-19 infec­tions, infec­tion occurred in 1.9% of those who’d received the old vac­cine and in 3.2% of those who’d received the new biva­lent vac­cine. She also did not men­tion break­downs of whether par­tic­i­pants were sick with Covid or had asymp­to­matic ill­ness­es. The study, like the preprint, did not men­tion whether any of these find­ings were sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant.

At the end of the meet­ing, the CDC advis­ers vot­ed 13–1 in favor of rec­om­mend­ing the biva­lent boost­er, with Sanchez, a pro­fes­sor of pedi­atrics at the Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege of Med­i­cine, vot­ing in oppo­si­tion. CDC Direc­tor Dr. Rochelle Walen­sky signed off on the rec­om­men­da­tion lat­er that day, and the vac­cines were made avail­able to the pub­lic. Cur­rent­ly [76], they are the only boost­er avail­able once some­one has had their pri­ma­ry series of a Covid-19 vac­cine.

More than six months after the FDA advis­ers met, Mod­er­na still has not released data from a ran­dom­ized Phase 3 tri­al com­par­ing infec­tions in par­tic­i­pants who received the new boost­er with those who received the old shot. The com­pa­ny expects to release such results “short­ly” with about 3,000 par­tic­i­pants, accord­ing to Rid­ley.

Pfiz­er does not “cur­rent­ly have data on inci­dence of infec­tion post biva­lent boost­er. How­ev­er, we con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor real-world data and col­lect data from our own stud­ies,” accord­ing to a state­ment from Jer­i­ca Pitts, senior direc­tor of glob­al media rela­tions.

Togeth­er, the new updat­ed boost­ers from Pfiz­er and Mod­er­na cost tax­pay­ers near­ly $5 bil­lion. To put that in per­spec­tive, that’s about the size of the annu­al bud­get for the state of Delaware [77].

For­mer FDA sci­en­tist: No excuse for exclud­ing infec­tion data

A for­mer FDA sci­en­tist who helped run the agency’s vac­cine divi­sion told CNN that if he were still at the agency, he would have advo­cat­ed for shar­ing the infec­tion infor­ma­tion with the advis­ers, even if it was made avail­able only a short time before the meet­ing.

“I don’t think there’s any excuse for exclud­ing it,” even with its imper­fec­tions, said Dr. Philip Krause, who served [78] as deputy direc­tor of the FDA’s Office of Vac­cine Research and Review until he resigned in Octo­ber 2021.

“The company’s fail­ure to present this infor­ma­tion at the [FDA advis­ers meet­ing] and the omis­sion of dis­cus­sion about the data at that meet­ing rais­es ques­tions about the abil­i­ty of the process to pro­vide a full and trans­par­ent review of the data,” he added.

Krause said his main con­cern was pre­serv­ing – or regain­ing – the pub­lic trust in the FDA.

“That’s the crit­i­cal thing,” he said. “The FDA’s objec­tive review of the data is what is pro­vid­ing the great, great val­ue to the Amer­i­can peo­ple, because this way they know that some­body who doesn’t have a stake in the out­come has looked at the deep­est pos­si­ble lev­el at these data.”

FDA and CDC vac­cine advis­ers echoed Krause’s con­cerns about trans­paren­cy.

“I think that as much data that’s avail­able should be made pub­lic and avail­able for dis­cus­sion by advi­so­ry groups so that the pub­lic can see, yes, the avail­able sci­ence has been eval­u­at­ed as best as [pos­si­ble] at that par­tic­u­lar time,” said Bern­stein, the mem­ber of the FDA advi­so­ry com­mit­tee.

Bern­stein added that he was dis­ap­point­ed that the data had not been pre­sent­ed to him and the oth­er advis­ers.

Offit, the mem­ber from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, said he was angry.

“I was angry to find out that there was data that was rel­e­vant to our deci­sion that I didn’t get to see. Angry because they should trust us to make the deci­sion based on all the data. These agen­cies, whether it’s the FDA or CDC, can’t make that deci­sion for us. That’s the point of hav­ing an inde­pen­dent advi­so­ry com­mit­tee,” he said.

‘It shook my faith’

About a month after the CDC advis­ers met, stud­ies [79] were released from researchers at Har­vard and Colum­bia sug­gest­ing that the new vac­cines didn’t work any bet­ter than the orig­i­nal.

Those stud­ies, which were very small and only in preprint and not in a med­ical jour­nal, mea­sured immune respons­es after peo­ple got the biva­lent vac­cine com­pared with the orig­i­nal ver­sion of the vac­cine.

“We essen­tial­ly see no dif­fer­ence” between the old boost­ers and the new about a month after the shot, said Dr. David Ho, a pro­fes­sor of micro­bi­ol­o­gy and immunol­o­gy at Colum­bia whose team authored one of the stud­ies.

Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and oth­er admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials con­tin­ue to empha­size that the updat­ed boost­er [80] is the best way to avoid hos­pi­tal­iza­tion or death from Covid-19. But near­ly four months after its release, only 15.4% of the US pop­u­la­tion age 5 and old­er has opt­ed to get the shot, accord­ing to CDC data [60].

On Jan­u­ary 26, the advis­ers are sched­uled to meet [81] again to dis­cuss future Covid-19 vac­ci­na­tion reg­i­mens.

Offit, the FDA vac­cine advis­er, said the Colum­bia and Har­vard stud­ies con­vinced him even more that the infec­tion data and all the relat­ed caveats should have been giv­en to the advis­ers from the begin­ning.

“This was not accept­able. I under­stand we’re in the mid­dle of a pan­dem­ic. I under­stand we’re build­ing the plane while it’s still in the air, but you can’t do this,” he said. “It did shake my faith. It shook my faith in how these deci­sions were being made.”

——–

9. “Endemic­i­ty Is Not a Vic­to­ry: The Unmit­i­gat­ed Down­side Risks of Wide­spread SARS-CoV­‑2 Trans­mis­sion;” MDPI; Vol­ume 2, Issue 12. [30]

Abstract

The strat­e­gy of rely­ing sole­ly on cur­rent SARS-CoV­‑2 vac­cines to halt SARS-CoV­‑2 trans­mis­sion has proven infea­si­ble. In response, many pub­lic-health author­i­ties have advo­cat­ed for using vac­cines to lim­it mor­tal­i­ty while per­mit­ting unchecked SARS-CoV­‑2 spread (“learn­ing to live with the dis­ease”). The fea­si­bil­i­ty of this strat­e­gy crit­i­cal­ly depends on the infec­tion fatal­i­ty rate (IFR) of SARS-CoV­‑2. An expec­ta­tion exists that the IFR will decrease due to selec­tion against vir­u­lence. In this work, we per­form a viral fit­ness esti­ma­tion to exam­ine the basis for this expec­ta­tion. Our find­ings sug­gest large increas­es in vir­u­lence for SARS-CoV­‑2 would result in min­i­mal loss of trans­mis­si­bil­i­ty, imply­ing that the IFR may vary freely under neu­tral evo­lu­tion­ary drift. We use an SEIRS mod­el frame­work to exam­ine the effect of hypo­thet­i­cal changes in the IFR on steady-state death tolls under COVID-19 endemic­i­ty. Our mod­el­ing sug­gests that endem­ic SARS-CoV­‑2 implies vast trans­mis­sion result­ing in year­ly US COVID-19 death tolls num­ber­ing in the hun­dreds of thou­sands under many plau­si­ble sce­nar­ios, with even mod­est increas­es in the IFR lead­ing to unsus­tain­able mor­tal­i­ty bur­dens. Our find­ings high­light the impor­tance of enact­ing a con­cert­ed strat­e­gy and con­tin­ued devel­op­ment of bio­med­ical inter­ven­tions to sup­press SARS-CoV­‑2 trans­mis­sion and slow its evo­lu­tion.

10. “Chi­na steps up, a new era has dawned in world pol­i­tics” by M.K. Bhadraku­mar; Indi­an Punch­line; 3/11/2023.  [82]

The agree­ment announced on Fri­day in Bei­jing regard­ing the nor­mal­i­sa­tion of diplo­mat­ic rela­tions between Sau­di Ara­bia and Iran and the reopen­ing of their embassies is a his­toric event. It goes way beyond an issue of Sau­di-Iran­ian rela­tions. China’s medi­a­tion sig­ni­fies that we are wit­ness­ing a pro­found shift of the tec­ton­ic plates in the geopol­i­tics of the 21st cen­tu­ry. 

The joint state­ment issued on Fri­day in Bei­jing [83] begins by say­ing that the Sau­di-Iran­ian agree­ment was reached “in response to the noble ini­tia­tive of Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping.” The dra­mat­ic begin­ning goes on to state that Sau­di Ara­bia and Iran have expressed their “appre­ci­a­tion and grat­i­tude” to Xi Jin­ping and the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment “for host­ing and spon­sor­ing the talks, and the efforts it placed towards its suc­cess.” 

The joint com­mu­nique also men­tioned Iraq and Oman for fos­ter­ing the Sau­di-Iran­ian dia­logue dur­ing 2021–2022. But the salience is that the Unit­ed States, which has been tra­di­tion­al­ly the dom­i­nant pow­er in West Asian pol­i­tics for close to eight decades, is nowhere in the pic­ture.

Yet, this is about the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion between the two biggest region­al pow­ers in the Per­sian Gulf region. The US retrench­ment denotes a colos­sal break­down of Amer­i­can diplo­ma­cy. It will remain a black mark in Pres­i­dent Biden’s for­eign pol­i­cy lega­cy. 

But Biden must take the blame for it. Such a cat­a­clysmic fail­ure is large­ly to be traced to his fer­vour to impose his neo­con­ser­v­a­tive dog­mas as an adjunct of America’s mil­i­tary might and Biden’s own fre­quent insis­tence that the fate of humankind hinges on the out­come of a cos­mic strug­gle between democ­ra­cy and autoc­ra­cy. 

Chi­na has shown that Biden’s hyper­bole is delu­sion­al and it grates against real­i­ties. If Biden’s moral­is­tic, ill-con­sid­ered rhetoric alien­at­ed Sau­di Ara­bia, his attempts to sup­press Iran met with stub­born resis­tance from Tehran. And, in the final analy­sis, Biden lit­er­al­ly drove both Riyadh and Tehran to search for coun­ter­vail­ing forces that would help them to push back his oppres­sive, over­bear­ing atti­tude.

The US’ humil­i­at­ing exclu­sion from the cen­tre stage of West Asian pol­i­tics con­sti­tutes a “Suez moment” for the super­pow­er, com­pa­ra­ble to the cri­sis expe­ri­enced by the UK in 1956, which oblig­ed the British to sense that their impe­r­i­al project had reached a dead end and the old way of doing things—whipping weak­er nations into line as osten­si­ble oblig­a­tions of glob­al lead­er­ship —was no longer going to work and would only lead to dis­as­trous reck­on­ing. 

The stun­ning part here is the sheer brain pow­er and intel­lec­tu­al resources and ‘soft pow­er’ that Chi­na has brought into play to out­wit the US. The US has at least 30 mil­i­tary bases in West Asia — five in Sau­di Ara­bia alone — but it has lost the man­tle of lead­er­ship. Come to think of it, Sau­di Ara­bia, Iran and Chi­na made their land­mark announce­ment on the very same day Xi Jin­ping got elect­ed for a third term as pres­i­dent. 

What we are see­ing is a new Chi­na under the lead­er­ship of Xi Jin­ping trot­ting over the high knoll. Yet, it is adopt­ing a self-effac­ing pos­ture claim­ing no lau­rels for itself. There is no sign of the ‘Mid­dle King­dom syn­drome,’ which the US pro­pa­gan­dists had warned against. 

On the con­trary, for the world audi­ence — espe­cial­ly coun­tries like India or Viet­nam, Turkey, Brazil or South Africa — Chi­na has pre­sent­ed a salu­tary exam­ple of how a democ­ra­tised mul­ti­po­lar world can work in future — how it is pos­si­ble to anchor big pow­er diplo­ma­cy on con­sen­su­al, con­cil­ia­to­ry pol­i­tics, trade and inter­de­pen­dence and advance a ‘win-win’ out­come.  

Implic­it in this is anoth­er huge mes­sage here: Chi­na as a fac­tor of glob­al bal­ance and sta­bil­i­ty. It is not only Asia-Pacif­ic and West Asia who are watch­ing. The audi­ence also includes Africa and Latin Amer­i­ca — in fact, the entire non-West­ern world that forms the big major­i­ty of world com­mu­ni­ty who are known as the Glob­al South. 

What the pan­dem­ic and the Ukraine cri­sis have brought to the sur­face is the latent geopo­lit­i­cal real­i­ty that the Glob­al South rejects the poli­cies of neo-mer­can­talism pur­sued by the West in the garb of ‘lib­er­al inter­na­tion­al­ism.’ 

The West is pur­su­ing a hier­ar­chi­cal inter­na­tion­al order. None oth­er than the EU for­eign pol­i­cy chief Josep Bor­rell blurt­ed this out in an unguard­ed moment recent­ly with a touch of racist over­tone when he said from a pub­lic plat­form that ‘Europe Is a gar­den. The rest of the world Is a jun­gle, and the jun­gle could Invade the gar­den.’

Tomor­row, Chi­na could as well be chal­leng­ing the US hege­mo­ny over the West­ern Hemi­sphere. The recent paper by the Chi­nese For­eign Min­istry titled ‘US Hege­mo­ny and Its Per­ils [84]’ tells us that Bei­jing will no longer be on the defen­sive. 

Mean­while, a realign­ment of forces on the world stage is tak­ing place with Chi­na and Rus­sia on one side and the US on the oth­er. Doesn’t it con­vey a big mes­sage that on the very eve of the his­toric announce­ment in Bei­jing on Fri­day, the Sau­di Ara­bi­an for­eign min­is­ter Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud land­ed sud­den­ly in Moscow on a ‘work­ing vis­it’ and went into a hud­dle with For­eign Min­is­ter Sergey Lavrov who was vis­i­bly delight­ed? (here [85]here [86] and  here  [87] ) 

Of course, we will nev­er know what role Moscow would have played behind the scenes in coor­di­na­tion with Bei­jing to build bridges between Riyadh and Tehran. All we know that Rus­sia and Chi­na active­ly coor­di­nate their for­eign pol­i­cy moves. Inter­est­ing­ly, on March 6, Pres­i­dent Putin had a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion [88] with Iran’s Pres­i­dent Ebrahim Raisi.  

Audac­i­ty of hope 

To be sure, the geopol­i­tics of West Asia will nev­er be the same again. Real­is­ti­cal­ly, the first spar­row of spring has appeared but the ice was melt­ed for only three or four rods from the shore. Nonethe­less, the sun’s rays give hope, sig­nalling warmer days to come. 

Con­ceiv­ably, Riyadh won’t have any truck fur­ther with the dia­bol­i­cal plots hatched in Wash­ing­ton and Tel Aviv to resus­ci­tate an anti-Iran alliance in West Asia. Nor is it in the realms of pos­si­bil­i­ty that Sau­di Ara­bia will be par­ty to any US-Israeli attacks on Iran. 

This bad­ly iso­lates Israel in the region and ren­ders the US tooth­less. In sub­stan­tive terms, it scat­ters the Biden administration’s fever­ish efforts late­ly to cajole Riyadh to join Abra­ham Accords. 

How­ev­er, sig­nif­i­cant­ly, a com­men­tary in Glob­al Times [89] not­ed some­what auda­cious­ly that the Sau­di-Iran­ian deal “set a pos­i­tive exam­ple for oth­er region­al hotspot issues, such as the eas­ing and set­tle­ment of the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict. And in the future, Chi­na could play an impor­tant role in build­ing a bridge for coun­tries to solve long-stand­ing thorny issues in the Mid­dle East just as what it did this time.” 

Indeed, the joint com­mu­nique issued in Bei­jing says, “The three coun­tries [Sau­di Ara­bia, Iran and Chi­na] expressed their keen­ness to exert all efforts towards enhanc­ing region­al and inter­na­tion­al peace and secu­ri­ty.” Can Chi­na pull a habit out of the hat? Time will tell.

For the present, though, the Sau­di-Iran­ian rap­proche­ment will cer­tain­ly have pos­i­tive fall­outs on the efforts toward a nego­ti­at­ed set­tle­ment in Yemen and Syr­ia as well as on the polit­i­cal insta­bil­i­ty in Lebanon.

Besides, the joint com­mu­nique empha­sis­es that Sau­di Ara­bia and Iran intend to revive the 1998 Gen­er­al Agree­ment for Coop­er­a­tion in the Fields of Econ­o­my, Trade, Invest­ment, Tech­nol­o­gy, Sci­ence, Cul­ture, Sports, and Youth. All in all, the Biden administration’s max­i­mum pres­sure strat­e­gy toward Iran has crashed and the West’s sanc­tions against Iran are being ren­dered inef­fec­tu­al. The US’ pol­i­cy options on Iran have shrunk. Put dif­fer­ent­ly, Iran gains strate­gic depth to nego­ti­ate with the US.  

The cut­ting edge of the US sanc­tions lies in the restric­tions on Iran’s oil trade and access to west­ern banks. It is entire­ly con­ceiv­able that a back­lash is about to begin as Rus­sia, Iran and Sau­di Ara­bia — three top oil/gas pro­duc­ing coun­tries start accel­er­at­ing their search for pay­ment mech­a­nisms bypass­ing the Amer­i­can dol­lar. 

Chi­na is already dis­cussing such an arrange­ment with Sau­di Ara­bia and Iran. Chi­na-Rus­sia trade and eco­nom­ic trans­ac­tions no longer use Amer­i­can dol­lar for pay­ments. It is well under­stood that any sig­nif­i­cant ero­sion in the sta­tus of the dol­lar as ‘world cur­ren­cy’ will not only spell doom for the Amer­i­can econ­o­my but will crip­ple the US’ capac­i­ty to wage ‘for­ev­er wars’ abroad and impose its glob­al hege­mo­ny. 

The bot­tom line is that the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion between Sau­di Ara­bia and Iran is also a pre­cur­sor to their induc­tion as BRICS mem­bers in a near future. To be sure, there is a Russ­ian-Chi­nese under­stand­ing already on this score. The BRICS mem­ber­ship for Sau­di Ara­bia and Iran will rad­i­cal­ly reset the pow­er dynam­ic in the inter­na­tion­al sys­tem.

11. “Biden Picks Biotech Exec­u­tive to Lead New Bio­med­ical Research Agency” By Sheryl Gay Stol­berg; The New York Times; 09/12/2022 [90]

Dr. Renee Wegrzyn is Pres­i­dent Biden’s choice to lead the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, which is aimed at dri­ving bio­med­ical inno­va­tion.

Pres­i­dent Biden, sketch­ing out a vision for “bold approach­es” to fight­ing can­cer and oth­er dis­eases, announced on Mon­day that he had select­ed Dr. Renee Wegrzyn, a Boston biotech exec­u­tive with gov­ern­ment expe­ri­ence, as the direc­tor of a new fed­er­al agency aimed at pur­su­ing risky, far-reach­ing ideas that will dri­ve bio­med­ical inno­va­tion. [!—D.E.]

Mr. Biden made the announce­ment at the John F. Kennedy Pres­i­den­tial Library and Muse­um in Boston, on the 60th anniver­sary of the for­mer president’s “moon­shot” speech that ush­ered in an era of space trav­el. He used the occa­sion to reit­er­ate his call to “end can­cer as we know it” — the tag line for his own “can­cer moon­shot” ini­tia­tive. . . .

. . . . Mod­eled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the new agency is known as the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. (In the argot of Wash­ing­ton, where every agency has an acronym, the defense research agency is called DARPA and the health agency [12] is ARPA‑H [13].) . . . .

. . . . Dr. Wegrzyn is a vice pres­i­dent for busi­ness devel­op­ment at Gink­go Bioworks and the head of inno­va­tion at Con­cen­tric by Gink­go, the company’s ini­tia­tive to advance coro­n­avirus test­ing and track the spread of the virus. She also worked at DARPA and its sis­ter agency, the Intel­li­gence Advanced Research Projects Activ­i­ty. . . .

. . . . The agency already has an act­ing deputy direc­tor, Adam H. Rus­sell [91], also a DARPA alum­nus, who has been lay­ing the tech­ni­cal infra­struc­ture and oth­er ground­work to get the new agency off the ground. . . .

. . . . In addi­tion to announc­ing his intent to appoint Dr. Wegrzyn, Mr. Biden issued an exec­u­tive order on Mon­day estab­lish­ing a biotech­nol­o­gy and bio­man­u­fac­tur­ing ini­tia­tive intend­ed to posi­tion the Unit­ed States as a leader in the field and to cen­ter drug man­u­fac­tur­ing in the coun­try. [This is aimed at China–D.E.]. . .

12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renee_Wegrzyn [92]

. . . . From 2003 to 2006, Wegrzyn worked as a post-doc­tor­al research fel­low at the Euro­pean Mol­e­c­u­lar Biol­o­gy Lab­o­ra­to­ry [93]. From 2006 to 2008, she worked as the assay devel­op­ment group leader for Adlyfe, a biotech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny based in Que­bec [94]. In 2009, she was a senior sci­en­tist at Meso Scale Dis­cov­ery and in 2012, she was a fel­low at the Johns Hop­kins Cen­ter for Health Secu­ri­ty [95]. From 2009 to 2016, she worked as a senior lead tech­nol­o­gist at Booz Allen Hamil­ton [96]From 2016 to 2020, she served as a pro­gram man­ag­er in the Bio­log­i­cal Tech­nolo­gies Office [97] of DARPA [98], where she spe­cial­ized in syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy and biose­cu­ri­ty [99]. [This is the peri­od dur­ing which DARPA [32] was doing the SARS CoV‑2 work—D.E.] 2018, she has been a senior advi­sor to the Nuclear Threat Ini­tia­tive [100].[3] [101] In 2020, she joined Gink­go Bioworks [102] as vice pres­i­dent of busi­ness devel­op­ment.[4] [103]. . . .