FTR #1131 Bio-Psy-Op Apocalypse Now, Part 7: Moderna Uber Alles

We begin by Intro­duc­ing the top­ic of Mod­er­na’s SARS Cov‑2 vac­cine as a mon­ey mak­er for both Mod­er­na and as a dri­ver for the mar­ket as a whole, we note last Mon­day’s announce­ment which gen­er­at­ed a major boost in the val­ue of Mod­er­na’s stock and a strong, gen­er­al ral­ly. The lat­ter appar­ent­ly stems from opti­mism that a sucess­ful vac­cine will alle­vi­ate the eco­nom­ic dam­age from Covid-19.

A Mar­ket­Watch piece about the rapid fluc­tu­a­tion of Mod­er­na’s stock under­scores the sig­nif­i­cance of the tim­ing of an announce­ment cast­ing Mod­er­na’s vac­cine tri­al in over­ly opti­mistic light:

1.–Moderna’s CEO (Stephen Ban­cel) and CFO (Lorence Kim) both sold stock on Fri­day, in accor­dance with pre­arranged trans­ac­tions. Bear in mind, that (as dis­cussed in FTR #1130) Mod­er­na’s stock was trad­ing at $23.46 at the begin­ning of the year, and the company–which has nev­er mar­ket­ed a vaccine–was the ben­e­fi­cia­ry of $483 mil­lion dol­lars in fed­er­al fund­ing ear­li­er in the year.) ” . . . . On Fri­day, Ban­cel sold 11,046 shares at a weight­ed aver­age price of $65.56 for about $724,200, as part of a pre­de­ter­mined trad­ing plan adopt­ed Dec. 28, 2018, accord­ing to a Form 4 fil­ing with the Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion. He also dis­posed of 1,577 shares as part of a ‘bona fide’ gift. . . . Also, on Fri­day, Kim sold 20,000 shares at a weight­ed aver­age price of $65.53 for about $1.31 mil­lion, as part of a pre­de­ter­mined trad­ing plan. . . .”

2.–Kim also simul­ta­ne­ous­ly bought and sold shares of his firm for a net prof­it of $16.79 mil­lion on Mon­day, the day of an over­ly opti­mistic announce­ment by Mod­er­na. The for­tu­itous­ly timed Mod­er­na announce­ment made the fir­m’s CFO rough­ly $4 mil­lion: ” . . . . On Mon­day, he [Kim] exer­cised options to buy 241,000 shares at a weight­ed aver­age price of $12.45 for about $3 mil­lion, also as part of a pre­de­ter­mined plan. At the same time, Kim exe­cut­ed sales of 241,000 shares, at a weight­ed aver­age price of $82.12 for about $19.79 mil­lion. That means Kim net­ted about $16.79 mil­lion on the simul­ta­ne­ous buy and sale of shares. . . . with Monday’s stock price surge fol­low­ing the announce­ment of ear­ly data on its vac­cine can­di­date poten­tial­ly adding $4 mil­lion to Kim’s cof­fers. . . .”

3.–The above-ref­er­enced announce­ment by Mod­er­na led to a dra­mat­ic increase in Mod­er­na’s stock and boost­ed the mar­ket as a whole. Mod­er­na announced that evening that it would sell $1.34 bil­lion in stock to help its vac­cine oper­a­tion: ” . . . . Shares of Mod­er­na closed at a record high of $80.00 on Mon­day after the com­pa­ny released a slice of pos­i­tive inter­im clin­i­cal data from the first phase of its COVID-19 vac­cine tri­al. That night it announced it would sell $1.34 bil­lion in stock to help fund man­u­fac­tur­ing costs asso­ci­at­ed with the exper­i­men­tal COVID-19 vac­cine. . . .”

4.–Moderna’s stock nose­dived at the end of the trad­ing day on Tues­day, due to a crit­i­cal arti­cle from Stat News: ” . . . . The stock took a nose dive on Tues­day, clos­ing at $71.67, like­ly due in some degree to a Stat News sto­ry that ques­tioned a lack of clin­i­cal clar­i­ty in the data it pro­vid­ed to investors. . . .”
Mod­er­na’s announce­ment was crit­i­cal­ly assessed by Stat News, which point­ed out that the results were incom­plete at best: ” . . . . In a clin­i­cal-tri­al data dis­clo­sure on Mon­day, Mod­er­na shared that eight out of 45 par­tic­i­pants in its COVID-19 vac­cine study devel­oped neu­tral­iz­ing anti­bod­ies, a deci­sion that Stat’s Helen Bran­swell described as a ‘rea­son for cau­tion.’ It didn’t share infor­ma­tion about the immune response to the exper­i­men­tal vac­cine in the remain­ing 37 par­tic­i­pants. . . .”

5.–Nonetheless, Mod­er­na’s stock–bolstered by gov­ern­ment investment–has been on a dra­mat­ic upward swing: ” . . . . The company’s stock was up 3.8% in trad­ing on Wednes­day. Year-to-date, it has soared 270.2%, even though the com­pa­ny has no approved prod­ucts. . . .”

There are seri­ous ques­tions about the sub­stance of Mod­er­na’s state­ment:

1.–Moderna’s much tout­ed report on its vaccine—which trig­gered an upsurge in the mar­kets on Monday—appears to have been incom­plete, at best, and pur­pose­ful­ly decep­tive, at worst. “ . . . . While Mod­er­na blitzed the media, it revealed very lit­tle infor­ma­tion — and most of what it did dis­close were words, not data.. . . . If you ask sci­en­tists to read a jour­nal arti­cle, they will scour data tables, not cor­po­rate state­ments. With sci­ence, num­bers speak much loud­er than words. Even the fig­ures the com­pa­ny did release don’t mean much on their own, because crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion — effec­tive­ly the key to inter­pret­ing them — was with­held. . . .”

2.–Part of the rea­son for alarm and skep­ti­cism con­cerns the behav­ior of the NIAID—whose direc­tor is Antho­ny Fau­ci: “ . . . . The Nation­al Insti­tute for Aller­gy and Infec­tious Dis­eases has part­nered with Mod­er­na on this vac­cine. Sci­en­tists at NIAID made the vaccine’s con­struct, or pro­to­type, and the agency is run­ning the Phase 1 tri­al. This week’s Mod­er­na read­out came from the ear­li­est of data from the NIAID-led Phase 1. NIAID doesn’t hide its light under a bushel. The insti­tute gen­er­al­ly trum­pets its find­ings, often offer­ing direc­tor Antho­ny Fau­ci . . . or oth­er senior per­son­nel for inter­views. But NIAID did not put out a press release Mon­day and declined to pro­vide com­ment on Moderna’s announce­ment. . . .”

3.–To begin with, Moderna’s announce­ment was only sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sub­stan­tive for 8 of the 45 vol­un­teer sub­jects: “ . . . . The company’s state­ment led with the fact that all 45 sub­jects (in this analy­sis) who received dos­es of 25 micro­grams (two dos­es each), 100 micro­grams (two dos­es each), or a 250 micro­grams (one dose) devel­oped bind­ing anti­bod­ies. Lat­er, the state­ment indi­cat­ed that eight vol­un­teers — four each from the 25-micro­gram and 100-micro­gram arms — devel­oped neu­tral­iz­ing anti­bod­ies. Of the two types, these are the ones you’d real­ly want to see. We don’t know results from the oth­er 37 tri­al par­tic­i­pants. . . .”

4.–It is pos­si­ble that neu­tral­iz­ing anti­bod­ies may have been devel­oped in the 37 test sub­jects whose data was not released because the test­ing process is exact­ing. Still the state­ment war­rants cau­tion, at the least. “ . . . . This doesn’t mean that they didn’t devel­op neu­tral­iz­ing antibodies.Testing for neu­tral­iz­ing anti­bod­ies is more time-con­sum­ing than oth­er anti­body tests and must be done in a biose­cu­ri­ty lev­el 3 lab­o­ra­to­ry. Mod­er­na dis­closed the find­ings from eight sub­jects because that’s all it had at that point. Still, it’s a rea­son for cau­tion . . . .”

5.–In addi­tion, the age of the sub­jects was not released and that is rel­e­vant. “ . . . . Sep­a­rate­ly, while the Phase 1 tri­al includ­ed healthy vol­un­teers ages 18 to 55 years, the exact ages of these eight peo­ple are unknown. If, by chance, they most­ly clus­tered around the younger end of the age spec­trum, you might expect a bet­ter response to the vac­cine than if they were most­ly from the senior end of it. And giv­en who is at high­est risk from the SARS-CoV­‑2 coro­n­avirus, pro­tect­ing old­er adults is what Covid-19 vac­cines need to do. . . .”

6.–In addi­tion, there was no data released as to the dura­bil­i­ty of the neu­tral­iz­ing anti­bod­ies. If, for the sake of argu­ment, they are not long-last­ing, the util­i­ty of the vac­cine is neg­li­gi­ble. “ . . . . The report of neu­tral­iz­ing anti­bod­ies in sub­jects who were vac­ci­nat­ed comes from blood drawn two weeks after they received their sec­ond dose of vac­cine. Two weeks. ‘That’s very ear­ly. We don’t know if those anti­bod­ies are durable,’ said Anna Durbin, a vac­cine researcher at Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty. . . .”

7.–Still anoth­er point of contention/alarm con­cerns the vari­abil­i­ty in neu­tral­iz­ing anti­bod­ies among recov­ered patients: “ . . . . But stud­ies have shown anti­body lev­els among peo­ple who have recov­ered from the ill­ness vary enor­mous­ly; the range that may be influ­enced by the sever­i­ty of a person’s dis­ease. John ‘Jack’ Rose, a vac­cine researcher from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty, point­ed STAT to a study from Chi­na that showed that, among 175 recov­ered Covid-19 patients stud­ied, 10 had no detectable neu­tral­iz­ing anti­bod­ies. Recov­ered patients at the oth­er end of the spec­trum had real­ly high anti­body lev­els. So though the com­pa­ny said the anti­body lev­els induced by vac­cine were as good as those gen­er­at­ed by infec­tion, there’s no real way to know what that com­par­i­son means. . . .”

8.–It is less than encour­ag­ing that Mod­er­na dis­closed that more rel­e­vant data will be dis­closed in a report to be released in con­junc­tion with NIAID: “ . . . . STAT asked Mod­er­na for infor­ma­tion on the anti­body lev­els it used as a com­para­tor. The response: That will be dis­closed in an even­tu­al jour­nal arti­cle from NIAID, which is part of the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health. . . .”

9.–Ann Durbin was struck by the word­ing of Moderna’s release: “ . . . . Durbin was struck by the word­ing of the company’s state­ment, point­ing to this sen­tence: ‘The lev­els of neu­tral­iz­ing anti­bod­ies at day 43 were at or above lev­els gen­er­al­ly seen in con­va­les­cent sera.’ ‘I thought: Gen­er­al­ly? What does that mean?’ Durbin said. Her ques­tion, for the time being, can’t be answered. . . .”

10.–Jack Rose com­ment­ed on the opaque nature of Moderna’s release: “. . . . Rose said the com­pa­ny should dis­close the infor­ma­tion. ‘When a com­pa­ny like Mod­er­na with such incred­i­bly vast resources says they have gen­er­at­ed SARS‑2 neu­tral­iz­ing anti­bod­ies in a human tri­al, I would real­ly like to see num­bers from what­ev­er assay they are using,’ he said. . . .”

10.–To date, Mod­er­na issues press releas­es, not papers that can be vet­ted by the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty: “ . . . . It doesn’t pub­lish on its work in sci­en­tif­ic jour­nals. What is known has been dis­closed through press releas­es. That’s not enough to gen­er­ate con­fi­dence with­in the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty. ‘My guess is that their num­bers are mar­gin­al or they would say more,’ Rose said about the company’s SARS‑2 vac­cine, echo­ing a sus­pi­cion that oth­ers have about some of the company’s oth­er work. ‘I do think it’s a bit of a con­cern that they haven’t pub­lished the results of any of their ongo­ing tri­als that they men­tion in their press release. They have not pub­lished any of that,’ Durbin not­ed. . . .”

After sum­ma­riz­ing a high­ly tech­ni­cal arti­cle warn­ing that of the pos­si­ble con­se­quences of intro­duc­ing a SARS Cov‑2 vac­cine that gen­er­ates inad­e­quate­ly high lev­els of anti­bod­ies, we detail a 2016 STAT News arti­cle about Mod­er­na high­lights a num­ber of areas of con­cern, giv­en the speed and rel­a­tive­ly opaque nature of the poten­tial intro­duc­tion of its Covid-19 vac­cine.

The financ­ing of the com­pa­ny by DARPA, and Mon­cef Slaoui’s join­ing with Four Star Gen­er­al Per­na (ele­vat­ed by the Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen­er­al Mark A. Mil­ley) are of addi­tion­al con­cern.

1.–As of 2016, Mod­er­na had the largest val­u­a­tion of any pri­vate biotech firm and for­mer employ­ees felt that Mod­er­na prized mon­ey over sci­ence. Note that, as will be reviewed lat­er in the pro­gram, its stock has risen expo­nen­tial­ly as a result of the injec­tion of hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars. Bear in mind that Mod­er­na has also been under­writ­ten by DARPA. “ . . . . Mod­er­na is worth more than any oth­er pri­vate biotech in the US, and for­mer employ­ees said they felt that Ban­cel prized the company’s ever-increas­ing val­u­a­tion, now approach­ing $5 bil­lion, over its sci­ence. . . .”

2.–Moderna has main­tained a cul­ture of secre­cy, which in 2016, applied to the first two prod­ucts under­go­ing phase 1 tri­als: “ . . . . Mod­er­na just moved its first two poten­tial treat­ments — both vac­cines — into human tri­als. In keep­ing with the cul­ture of secre­cy, though, exec­u­tives won’t say which dis­eases the vac­cines tar­get, and they have not list­ed the stud­ies on the pub­lic fed­er­al reg­istry, ClinicalTrials.gov. List­ing is option­al for Phase 1 tri­als, which are meant to deter­mine if a drug is safe, but most com­pa­nies vol­un­tar­i­ly dis­close their work. . . .”

3.–Protein ther­a­py has been a dri­ving eco­nom­ic and ther­a­peu­tic fac­tor in the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal busi­ness: “ . . . . For decades, com­pa­nies have endeav­ored to craft bet­ter and bet­ter pro­tein ther­a­pies, lead­ing to new treat­ments for can­cer, autoim­mune dis­or­ders, and rare dis­eases. Such ther­a­pies are cost­ly to pro­duce and have many lim­i­ta­tions, but they’ve giv­en rise to a multi­bil­lion-dol­lar indus­try. The anti-inflam­ma­to­ry Humi­ra, the world’s top drug at $14 bil­lion in sales a year, is a shin­ing exam­ple of pro­tein ther­a­py. . . .”

4.–Moderna aims at doing an end run around that tech­nol­o­gy with the injec­tion of mRNA (mes­sen­ger RNA) or DNA. This is a risky tech­nol­o­gy: “ . . . . Moderna’s tech­nol­o­gy promised to sub­vert the whole field, cre­at­ing ther­a­peu­tic pro­teins inside the body instead of in man­u­fac­tur­ing plants. The key: har­ness­ing mes­sen­ger RNA, or mRNA. . . . . It’s high­ly risky. Big phar­ma com­pa­nies had tried sim­i­lar work and aban­doned it because it’s exceed­ing­ly hard to get RNA into cells with­out trig­ger­ing nasty side effects. . . . .”

5.–CEO Ban­cel has main­tained the company’s cul­ture of secre­cy: “ . . . . Under Ban­cel, Mod­er­na has been loath to pub­lish its work in Sci­ence or Nature, but enthu­si­as­tic to her­ald its poten­tial on CNBC and CNN, tak­ing part in seg­ments on the world’s most dis­rup­tive com­pa­niesand the poten­tial “cure for can­cer.” . . .”

6.–Moderna had dra­con­ian atti­tude toward employ­ees from its incep­tion: “ . . . . From the begin­ning, Ban­cel made clear that Moderna’s sci­ence sim­ply had to work. And that any­one who couldn’t make it work didn’t belong. The ear­ly Mod­er­na was a chaot­ic, unpre­dictable work­place, accord­ing to for­mer employ­ees. One recalls find­ing him­self out of a job when a quick-turn­around exper­i­ment failed to pan out. Anoth­er helped train a group of new hires only to real­ize they were his replace­ments. . . .”

7.–Joe Bolen exem­pli­fied the treat­ment Mod­er­na met­ed out: “ . . . . Most stun­ning to employ­ees was the abrupt depar­ture of Joseph Bolen, who came aboard in 2013 to lead Moderna’s R&D efforts. Bolen was a big-name hire in biotech cir­cles, an expe­ri­enced chief sci­en­tif­ic offi­cer who had guid­ed Mil­len­ni­um Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals to FDA approval for a block­buster can­cer drug. . . ‘No sci­en­tist in his right mind would leave that job unless there was some­thing wrong with the sci­ence or the per­son­nel,” said a per­son close to the com­pa­ny at the time.’ . . .”

8.–Bolen had com­pa­ny: “ . . . . Bolen wasn’t alone. Chief Infor­ma­tion Offi­cer John Reyn­ders joined in 2013 to make Mod­er­na what he called the world’s “first ful­ly dig­i­tal biotech,”only to step down a year lat­er. Michael Morin, brought in to lead Moderna’s sci­en­tif­ic efforts in can­cer in 2014, last­ed less than 18 months. As did Greg Licholai, hired in 2015 to direct the company’s projects in rare dis­eases. The lat­ter two key lead­er­ship posi­tions remain unfilled. . . .”

9.–The expla­na­tion of CFO Lorence Kim is less than reas­sur­ing from the stand­point of prod­uct safe­ty and reli­a­bil­i­ty: “ . . . . ‘We force every­one to grow with the com­pa­ny at unprece­dent­ed speed,’ Mod­er­na Chief Finan­cial Offi­cer Lorence Kim said. ‘Some peo­ple grow with the com­pa­ny; oth­ers don’t.’ . . .”

10.–Beginning in 2013, Mod­er­na part­nered with a series of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal giants, includ­ing AstraZeneca, which has been select­ed to devel­op a Covid-19 vac­cine: “ . . . . That’s when Mod­er­na — which had just 25 employ­ees — signed a stag­ger­ing $240 mil­lion part­ner­ship with UK phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal giant AstraZeneca. It was the most mon­ey phar­ma had ever spent on drugs that had not yet been test­ed in humans. . . .”

11.–The firm has been lav­ish­ly cap­i­tal­ized: “ . . . . In ear­ly 2015, Mod­er­na dis­closed a $450 mil­lion financ­ing round, the largest ever for a pri­vate biotech com­pa­ny. This month, the com­pa­ny broke its own record, rais­ing anoth­er $474 mil­lion. . . . Though it has yet to reveal data from a sin­gle clin­i­cal tri­al, Mod­er­na is now val­ued at $4.7 bil­lion, accord­ing to Pitch­book. . . .”

12.–Initially, Mod­er­na aimed at devel­op­ing prod­ucts that would be admin­is­tered for a peri­od of years: “ . . . . From the start, Mod­er­na her­ald­ed its abil­i­ty to pro­duce pro­teins with­in cells, which could open up a world of ther­a­peu­tic tar­gets unreach­able by con­ven­tion­al drugs. The most rev­o­lu­tion­ary treat­ments, which could chal­lenge the multi­bil­lion-dol­lar mar­ket for pro­tein ther­a­py, would involve repeat­ed dos­es of mRNA over many years, so a patient’s body con­tin­ued to pro­duce pro­teins to keep dis­ease at bay. . . .”

13.–Instead of pro­duc­ing treat­ments that would be admin­is­tered over a peri­od of years, the com­pa­ny focused on vac­cines: “ . . . . But Moderna’s first human tri­als aren’t so ambi­tious, focus­ing instead on the crowd­ed field of vac­cines, where the com­pa­ny has only been work­ing since 2014. . . . The choice to pri­or­i­tize vac­cines came as a dis­ap­point­ment to many in the com­pa­ny, accord­ing to a for­mer man­ag­er. The plan had been to rad­i­cal­ly dis­rupt the biotech indus­try, the man­ag­er said, so ‘why would you start with a clin­i­cal pro­gram that has very lim­it­ed upside and lots of com­pe­ti­tion?’” . . . .”

14.–The answer to Moderna’s focus on vac­cines may be due to issues of prod­uct safe­ty: “ . . . Deliv­ery — actu­al­ly get­ting RNA into cells — has long bedev­iled the whole field. On their own, RNA mol­e­cules have a hard time reach­ing their tar­gets. They work bet­ter if they’re wrapped up in a deliv­ery mech­a­nism, such as nanopar­ti­cles made of lipids. But those nanopar­ti­cles can lead to dan­ger­ous side effects, espe­cial­ly if a patient has to take repeat­ed dos­es over months or years. . . .”

15.–Vaccines will only admin­is­ter mRNA at the time of vac­ci­na­tion, rather than over a long peri­od of time: “ . . . . ‘I would say that mRNA is bet­ter suit­ed for dis­eases where treat­ment for short dura­tion is suf­fi­cient­ly cura­tive, so the tox­i­c­i­ties caused by deliv­ery mate­ri­als are less like­ly to occur,’ said Katal­in Karikó, a pio­neer in the field who serves as a vice pres­i­dent at BioN­Tech. . . That makes vac­cines the low­est hang­ing fruit in mRNA, said Franz-Wern­er Haas, CureVac’s chief cor­po­rate offi­cer. ‘From our point of view, it’s obvi­ous why [Mod­er­na] start­ed there,’ he said.’ . . .”

16.–Moderna’s expla­na­tion for its focus on vac­cines is not reassuring—the speed with which it can pro­ceed to human tri­als. The firm’s secre­cy has gen­er­at­ed alarm: “ . . . . Mod­er­na said it pri­or­i­tized vac­cines because they pre­sent­ed the fastest path to human tri­als, not because of set­backs with oth­er projects. ‘The notion that [Mod­er­na] ran into dif­fi­cul­ties isn’t borne in real­i­ty,’ said Afeyan. But this is where Moderna’s secre­cy comes into play: Until there’s pub­lished data, only the com­pa­ny and its part­ners know what the data show. Every­one out­side is left guess­ing — and, in some cas­es, wor­ry­ing that Mod­er­na won’t live up to its hype. . . .”

17.–Moderna applies soft­ware and a busi­ness mod­el derived from Tes­la, Ama­zon and Uber: “ . . . . Mod­er­na has pio­neered an auto­mat­ed sys­tem mod­eled on the soft­ware Tes­la uses to man­age orders, Ban­cel said: Sci­en­tists sim­ply enter the pro­tein they want a cell to express, and testable mRNA arrives with­in weeks. . . . That has always been part of the plan, for­mer employ­ees said, point­ing to Bancel’s fas­ci­na­tion with the tech indus­try. Uber and Ama­zon were not the first to come up with their respec­tive busi­ness ideas, but they were the ones that built enough scale to ward off com­pe­ti­tion. And Mod­er­na is posi­tion­ing itself to do the same in mRNA. . . .”

Mon­cef Slaoui’s  opti­mistic state­ment on the Fri­day before the Mon­day announce­ment, presents impor­tant con­text for Moderna’s Mon­day announce­ment. That announce­ment moved mar­kets based on inad­e­quate data. “Oper­a­tion Warp Speed” (head­ed by Slaoui) sug­gests that can­di­date Trump  is very inter­est­ed in those pre­lim­i­nary results as well. 

Eliz­a­beth War­ren scored Slaoui’s con­flict of interest–a con­sid­er­a­tion that will be dis­cussed at length: ” . . . . Fol­low­ing Mon­cef Slaoui’s Fri­day appoint­ment as a co-leader of the Warp Speed pro­gram, he’s set to sell about 155,000 shares in Mod­er­na, accord­ing to press reports. They were worth an esti­mat­ed $10 mil­lion Fri­day, but after Monday’s stock run-up on pos­i­tive ear­ly data, they’re now val­ued at about $12.4 mil­lion. . . . Fol­low­ing Slaoui’s selec­tion, Sen. Eliz­a­beth War­ren tweet­ed that it’s a ‘huge con­flict of inter­est’ for him to keep the Mod­er­na stock as he assumes the new role. She said he should ‘divest imme­di­ate­ly.’ In a now-delet­ed tweet, Slaoui respond­ed that there ‘is no con­flict of inter­est, and there nev­er has been,’ Busi­ness Insid­er reports. . . .”

Even after agree­ing to sell his Mod­er­na stock, Slaoui’s invest­ments raise alarm­ing questions–note that he is a “ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist” and a long­time for­mer exec­u­tive at Glaxo-Smithk­line:

1.–The cir­cum­stances of his appoint­ment will per­mit him to avoid scruti­ny: ” . . . . In agree­ing to accept the posi­tion, Dr. Slaoui did not come on board as a gov­ern­ment employ­ee. Instead, he is on a con­tract, receiv­ing $1 for his ser­vice. That leaves him exempt from fed­er­al dis­clo­sure rules that would require him to list his out­side posi­tions, stock hold­ings and oth­er poten­tial con­flicts. And the con­tract posi­tion is not sub­ject to the same con­flict-of-inter­est laws and reg­u­la­tions that exec­u­tive branch employ­ees must fol­low. . . .”

2.–He will retain a great deal of Glaxo-Smithk­line stock: ” . . . . He did not say how much his GSK shares were worth. When he left the com­pa­ny in 2017, he held about [500,000 in West­ern Print Edi­tion] 240,000 shares and share equiv­a­lents, accord­ing to the drug company’s annu­al report and an analy­sis by the exec­u­tive com­pen­sa­tion firm Equi­lar. . . .”

3.–Further analy­sis of Slaoui’s posi­tion deep­ens con­cern about the integri­ty of the process: ” . . . . ‘This is basi­cal­ly absurd,’ said Vir­ginia Can­ter, who is chief ethics coun­sel for Cit­i­zens for Respon­si­bil­i­ty and Ethics in Wash­ing­ton. ‘It allows for no pub­lic scruti­ny of his con­flicts of inter­est.’ Ms. Can­ter also said fed­er­al law barred gov­ern­ment con­trac­tors from super­vis­ing gov­ern­ment employ­ees. . . . Ms. Can­ter, a for­mer ethics lawyer in the Oba­ma and Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tions, the Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion and oth­er agen­cies, point­ed out that GSK’s vac­cine can­di­date with Sanofi could wind up com­pet­ing with oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers vying for gov­ern­ment approval and sup­port. ‘If he retains stock in com­pa­nies that are invest­ing in the devel­op­ment of a vac­cine, and he’s involved in over­see­ing this process to select the safest vac­cine to com­bat Covid-19, regard­less of how won­der­ful a per­son he is, we can’t be con­fi­dent of the integri­ty of any process in which he is involved,’ Ms. Can­ter said. In addi­tion, his affil­i­a­tion with Medicxi could com­pli­cate mat­ters: Two of its investors are GSK and a divi­sion of John­son & John­son, which is also devel­op­ing a poten­tial vac­cine. . . .”

Mod­er­na stands to make bil­lions of dol­lars if their vac­cine goes to mar­ket:

1.–” . . . . What investors are bet­ting on, for Mod­er­na and oth­ers devel­op­ing vac­cines against the SARS-CoV­‑2 virus, is that a third of the devel­oped world’s pop­u­la­tion will get vac­ci­nat­ed every year. That could amount to a $10 bil­lion annu­al busi­ness, at an esti­mat­ed price of $30 per vac­ci­na­tion. . . .”

2.–” . . . . Mor­gan Stan­ley ana­lysts this past week­end sug­gest­ed that pric­ing might start at $5 to $10 a dose dur­ing this first pan­dem­ic cri­sis, then rise to a range of $13 to $30 for pre­ven­tive dos­es in future years. But at BMO Cap­i­tal Mar­kets, ana­lyst George Farmer spec­u­lat­ed that Mod­er­na could start charg­ing $125 per treat­ment in the U.S. mar­ket and raise that price over time to $200. . . . ”

We close the pro­gram with a reminder of the extent to which fed­er­al fund­ing dri­ves the val­ue of Mod­er­na: ” . . . . ‘Instead of wait­ing for the data and then scal­ing up with man­u­fac­tur­ing process … we can make as many dos­es as we can. We are doing both in par­al­lel,’ he said. The com­pa­ny plans to hire up to 150 peo­ple to sup­port the effort. Ban­cel said the com­pa­ny ‘couldn’t have done this’ with­out the fund­ing com­mit­ment from the Bio­med­ical Advanced Research and Devel­op­ment Author­i­ty, which is part of the Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices. . . .”

Preview of “Walkin’ the Coronavirus”

In Ser­pen­t’s Walk–which we have dis­cussed for decades–the SS go under­ground (which they did), buy into the opin­ion-form­ing media (which they did) and, infil­trate the mil­i­tary (which they have done), and, after a ter­ror­ist attack by genet­i­cal­ly-engi­neered virus­es dec­i­mates large parts of the Unit­ed States, mar­tial law is declared and the Nazis take over. NB: we do not know if “cross-vec­tor­ing” is occur­ring with the Covid-19 virus, how­ev­er that is some­thing to be con­tem­plat­ed and researched. From “Ser­pen­t’s Walk: ” . . . . ‘Pacov con­sists of two sep­a­rate re-work­ings of two DNA chains of exist­ing virus­es. It’s a pig­gy-back weapon, a two-stage oper­a­tion. You send in the first stage. The vec­tors . . . agents of trans­mis­sion . . . for Pacov‑1 are exten­sive. It trav­els through the air, the water, or direct­ly from per­son-to-per­son and is high­ly con­ta­gious. It spreads for hun­dreds of miles, if con­di­tions are opti­mal.  Pacov‑1 pro­duces only a mild, flu-like infec­tion that dis­ap­pears with­in a day or two. Pub­lic health author­i­ties would over­look it, nev­er con­sid­er it a seri­ous epi­dem­ic, and even if they did they’d have to look care­ful­ly to iso­late it. Once a vic­tim is over the ‘flu,’ Pacov‑1 becomes dor­mant and almost unde­tectable. A month or two lat­er, you send in the sec­ond stage: Pacov‑2 is also a virus, just as con­ta­gious as the first, and just as harm­less by itself. It reacts with Pacov‑1 to pro­duce a pow­er­ful coag­u­lant. . . . you die with­in three min­utes. No warn­ing, no vac­cine, no cure. Those not exposed to both stages remain unharmed. . . . Pacov‑2 goes inert, like Pacov‑1 with­in a week or two. Then you get your victim’s coun­try, all his prop­er­ty, in undam­aged con­di­tion. . . . and a lot of corpses to bury.’ . . . .” We note that, although a “coag­u­lant” is not caus­ing the phe­nom­e­non, blood clots are indeed one of the many symp­toms of the Covid-19: ” . . . . Doc­tors in hot spots across the globe have begun to report an unex­pect­ed preva­lence of blood clot­ting among COVID cas­es, in what could pose a per­fect storm of poten­tial­ly fatal risk fac­tors. . . . It’s grow­ing so com­mon with severe COVID cas­es, doc­tors are rec­og­niz­ing it as a new pat­tern of clot­ting called COVID-19-asso­ci­at­ed coag­u­lopa­thy, or CAC, which is notably asso­ci­at­ed with high inflam­ma­to­ry mark­ers in the blood, like D‑dimer and fib­rino­gen. . . . ‘In the begin­ning of the out­break, we start­ed only giv­ing them med­i­cine to pre­vent clots. We saw that it was­n’t enough,’ Dr. Cristi­na Abad, an anes­the­si­ol­o­gist at Hos­pi­tal Clínicos San Car­los in Madrid, told ABC News. ‘They start­ed hav­ing pul­monary embolisms, so we start­ed [full] anti­co­ag­u­la­tion on every­one.’ . . .”

Provocation: Covid-19 as a False Flag “Bio-Reichstag Fire” (Updated on 4/22/2020)

In FTR #1126, we exam­ined the Trump admin­is­tra­tion and GOP’s exploita­tion of the Covid-19 out­break as a cam­paign tac­tic and right-wing hints that the virus escaped from a Chi­nese bio­log­i­cal war­fare lab­o­ra­to­ry. Now, Ger­many, France and Britain are join­ing with the Trump admin­is­tra­tion and the GOP in hint­ing that the coro­n­avirus escaped from a Chi­nese bio­log­i­cal war­fare lab­o­ra­to­ry. As a “Ger­man For­eign Pol­i­cy” arti­cle notes, the tone of Amer­i­can, British, French and Ger­man rhetoric con­cern­ing Covid-19 is rem­i­nis­cent of the delib­er­ate dis­in­for­ma­tion that led to the inva­sion of Iraq in 2002. A) ” . . . . Last week­end, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump warned the Peo­ple’s Repub­lic that it should face con­se­quences if it was ‘know­ing­ly respon­si­ble’ for the spread of the pan­dem­ic. Wash­ing­ton is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly spread­ing delib­er­ate rumors that the virus could have orig­i­nat­ed in a Chi­nese lab­o­ra­to­ry. Where­as, sci­en­tists vehe­ment­ly refute the alle­ga­tions, Ger­man For­eign Min­is­ter Heiko Maas declared, he ‘does not want to exclude’ that the WHO will have to deal with these issues. On Mon­day, Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel called on Bei­jing to show ‘trans­paren­cy’ on the issue. . . .”; B) ” . . . . At the same time delib­er­ate rumors are being spread in the Unit­ed States that the Covid-19 virus could have orig­i­nat­ed in a Chi­nese lab­o­ra­to­ry — pos­si­bly in bioweapons lab. The US gov­ern­ment indi­cat­ed that it does not rule out this pos­si­bil­i­ty; US intel­li­gence ser­vices are cur­rent­ly inves­ti­gat­ing the issue. Par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the lie about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruc­tion, such an alle­ga­tion must be per­ceived as a threat to lend legit­i­ma­cy to new aggres­sions. . . .”; C) ” . . . . Already last week, Ger­man media organs have increas­ing­ly been call­ing Chi­na the ‘cul­prit’ behind the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic out­break. Under the head­line ‘what Chi­na already owes us,’ Ger­many’s Springer press even called for ‘repa­ra­tions.’ (german-foreign-policy.com reported.[5]) Lead­ing British and French politi­cians have expressed sim­i­lar views. British For­eign Min­is­ter Dominic Raab has repeat­ed­ly declared that Chi­na will be held respon­si­ble for the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic. French Pres­i­dent Emmanuel Macron has now joined the cam­paign. Regard­ing the pan­demic’s alleged ori­gin, he declared, ‘there are clear­ly things that have hap­pened’ in Chi­na ‘that we don’t know about.’[6] It is not clear how Macron can know some­thing exists that he does not know about. It is how­ev­er clear that he seeks to impli­cate Bei­jing. . . .” In fact–as we have seen, the DARPA has been doing exten­sive research into bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es. In addi­tion, Fort Det­rick was shut down in ear­ly August of 2019 for safe­ty vio­la­tions.

Supplement to The Magic Virus Theory

As dis­cussed in FTR #1124–among oth­er programs–it is now pos­si­ble to cre­ate ANY virus from scratch, using “mail-order” or “design­er” genes. Sad­ly pre­dictable jour­nal­is­tic bro­mides that the Covid-19 coro­n­avirus could not have been/was not made in a lab­o­ra­to­ry fly in the face of bio-tech­nol­o­gy that has exist­ed for 20 years. In FTR #282–recorded in May of 2001–we not­ed the ter­ri­ble sig­nif­i­cance of the devel­op­ment of such “Design­er Gene” tech­nol­o­gy. A BBC sto­ry from 1999 high­lights the fears of experts that the advent of such tech­nol­o­gy could enable the devel­op­ment of eth­no-spe­cif­ic bio­log­i­cal weapons: ” . . . . Advances in genet­ic knowl­edge could be mis­used to devel­op pow­er­ful bio­log­i­cal weapons that could be tai­lored to strike at spe­cif­ic eth­nic groups, the British Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion has warned. A BMA report Biotech­nol­o­gy, Weapons and Human­i­ty says that con­cert­ed inter­na­tion­al action is nec­es­sary to block the devel­op­ment of new, bio­log­i­cal weapons. It warns the win­dow of oppor­tu­ni­ty to do so is very nar­row as tech­nol­o­gy is devel­op­ing rapid­ly and becom­ing ever more acces­si­ble. ‘Recipes’ for devel­op­ing bio­log­i­cal agents are freely avail­able on the Inter­net, the report warns. . . . The BMA report warns that legit­i­mate research into micro­bi­o­log­i­cal agents and genet­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed ther­a­peu­tic agents could be dif­fi­cult to dis­tin­guish from research geared towards devel­op­ing more effec­tive weapons. . . . Dr Vivi­enne Nathanson, BMA Head of Health Pol­i­cy Research said: . . . ‘Biotech­nol­o­gy and genet­ic knowl­edge are equal­ly open to this type of malign use. Doc­tors and oth­er sci­en­tists have an impor­tant role in pre­ven­tion. They have a duty to per­suade politi­cians and inter­na­tion­al agen­cies such as the UN to take this threat seri­ous­ly and to take action to pre­vent the pro­duc­tion of such weapons.’ . . . ”

FTR #1126 Bio-Psy-Op Apocalypse Now, Part 2: The Democracy-Killing Virus

We begin a series of pro­grams high­light­ing var­i­ous aspects of the “three-dimen­sion­al chess” aspect of the Covid-19 “bio-psy-op” we feel is under­way. Actu­al­ly six or sev­en dimen­sion­al chess might be a bet­ter way of express­ing this ana­lyt­i­cal con­cept.

It is of para­mount impor­tance for listeners/readers to under­stand that the con­cep­tu­al break­down is for cog­ni­tive clar­i­ty only. The bio-psy-op” is mul­ti-dimen­sion­al in its entire­ty and must be under­stood to be a type of “fascist/totalitarian lasagna” with many lay­ers to be con­sumed.

In this pro­gram, we present ways in which the Covid-19 out­break is sub­vert­ing democ­ra­cy, both inside and out­side of the Unit­ed States.

Although he has only flirt­ed with exer­cis­ing them, to date, Trump does indeed have some emer­gency pow­ers that can be invoked to fur­ther his agen­da” ” . . . . The most notable aspect of pres­i­den­tial emer­gency action doc­u­ments might be their extreme secre­cy. It’s not uncom­mon for the gov­ern­ment to clas­si­fy its plans or activ­i­ties in the area of nation­al secu­ri­ty. . . . By con­trast, we know of no evi­dence that the exec­u­tive branch has ever con­sult­ed with Con­gress — or even informed any of its mem­bers — regard­ing the con­tents of pres­i­den­tial emer­gency action doc­u­ments. . . . That is a dan­ger­ous state of affairs. The coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic is fast becom­ing the most seri­ous cri­sis to face this coun­try since World War II. And it is hap­pen­ing under the watch of a pres­i­dent who has claimed that Arti­cle II of the Con­sti­tu­tion gives him ‘the right to do what­ev­er I want.’ It is not far-fetched to think that we might see the deploy­ment of these doc­u­ments for the first time and that they will assert pres­i­den­tial pow­ers beyond those grant­ed by Con­gress or rec­og­nized by the courts as flow­ing from the Con­sti­tu­tion. . . .”

Next, we add that the Bio-Psy-Op Apoc­a­lypse is spawn­ing total­i­tar­i­an manifestations–not surprisingly–at the Depart­ment of Jus­tice head­ed by “ex” CIA offi­cer William Barr. ” . . . . The request raised eye­brows because of its poten­tial impli­ca­tions for habeas cor­pus — the con­sti­tu­tion­al right to appear before a judge after arrest and seek release. ‘Not only would it be a vio­la­tion of that, but it says ‘affect­ing pre-arrest,’” said Nor­man L. Reimer, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Crim­i­nal Defense Lawyers. ‘So that means you could be arrest­ed and nev­er brought before a judge until they decide that the emer­gency or the civ­il dis­obe­di­ence is over. I find it absolute­ly ter­ri­fy­ing. Espe­cial­ly in a time of emer­gency, we should be very care­ful about grant­i­ng new pow­ers to the gov­ern­ment.’ . . .”

It will come as no sur­prise to vet­er­an lis­ten­ers, the Pen­ta­gon has con­tin­gency plans for vary­ing degrees of gov­ern­men­tal and/or civic dis­abil­i­ty. ” . . . . But Coro­n­avirus is also new ter­ri­to­ry, where the mil­i­tary itself is vul­ner­a­ble and the dis­as­ter sce­nar­ios being con­tem­plat­ed — includ­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of wide­spread domes­tic vio­lence as a result of food short­ages — are forc­ing plan­ners to look at what are called ‘extra­or­di­nary cir­cum­stances’. Above-Top Secret con­tin­gency plans already exist for what the mil­i­tary is sup­posed to do if all the Con­sti­tu­tion­al suc­ces­sors are inca­pac­i­tat­ed. Stand­by orders were issued more than three weeks ago to ready these plans, not just to pro­tect Wash­ing­ton but also to pre­pare for the pos­si­bil­i­ty of some form of mar­tial law. . . .”

The mil­i­tary’s con­tin­gency plans have been par­tial­ly acti­vat­ed: ” . . . . While being hit with coro­n­avirus at rates equiv­a­lent to the civil­ian pop­u­la­tion, the U.S. mil­i­tary has acti­vat­ed its ‘defense sup­port of civ­il author­i­ties’ appa­ra­tus, estab­lish­ing liaisons in all 50 states, acti­vat­ing units and com­mand posts, and mov­ing forces to pro­vide med­ical, trans­porta­tion, logis­tics, and com­mu­ni­ca­tions sup­port in New York and Wash­ing­ton states. Lt. Gen. Lau­ra Richard­son, the com­mand of Army North (ARNORTH), has request­ed and received approval for the deploy­ment of ground units in response to the now declared nation­al emer­gency. . . .”

We note, in pass­ing, that, although not in effect at this point, dis­cus­sion of “mar­tial law” are far more than just social media fod­der, to coin a term. ” . . . . Because of so many rumors fly­ing in social media, the Pen­ta­gon estab­lished a ‘rumor con­trol’ web­site to beat down sto­ries of mil­i­tary-imposed quar­an­tines and even mar­tial law. And it said it was going to lim­it details of both the spe­cif­ic num­bers of coro­n­avirus cas­es and oper­a­tional details. . . .”

Mar­tial law dis­cus­sion has been spurred by, among oth­er things, Trump’s rumi­na­tions about what he can and will do: “. . . . Ear­li­er Sat­ur­day, Mr. Trump said that he is con­sid­er­ing declar­ing an ‘enforce­able’ quar­an­tine affect­ing some res­i­dents of the New York met­ro­pol­i­tan area, pos­si­bly includ­ing New Jer­sey and Con­necti­cut. He called the region a ‘hot spot’ of the coro­n­avirus out­break sweep­ing the coun­try. . . . Mr. Trump reit­er­at­ed in his remarks before the send off of the USNS Com­fort that he was con­sid­er­ing a quar­an­tine of the area. The Com­fort is a naval hos­pi­tal boat which is car­ry­ing over 1,000 beds and 1,200 med­ical per­son­nel to New York City. . . . Using active duty troops to enforce a quar­an­tine would require the pres­i­dent to sus­pend the Posse Comi­ta­tus Act, which for­bids the use of the armed ser­vices for law enforce­ment. . . .”

Trump has plen­ty of com­pa­ny: ” . . . . In Hun­gary, a new law has grant­ed Prime Min­is­ter Vik­tor Orban the pow­er to side­step Par­lia­ment and sus­pend exist­ing laws. Mr. Orban, who declared a state of emer­gency this month, now has the sole pow­er to end the emer­gency. Par­lia­ment, where two-thirds of the seats are con­trolled by his par­ty, approved the leg­is­la­tion on Mon­day. . . .‘The draft law is alarm­ing,’ said Daniel Kar­sai, a lawyer in Budapest who said the new leg­is­la­tion had cre­at­ed ‘a big fear’ among Hun­gar­i­ans that ‘the Orban admin­is­tra­tion will be a real dic­ta­tor­ship.’ . . .”

Orban’s Hun­gary has been joined by, among oth­ers, the long-stand­ing British democ­ra­cy: ” . . . . some of the pro­vi­sions . . . . will give the gov­ern­ment unchecked con­trol. The leg­is­la­tion gives sweep­ing pow­ers to bor­der agents and the police, which could lead to indef­i­nite deten­tion and rein­force ‘hos­tile envi­ron­ment’ poli­cies against immi­grants, crit­ics said. ‘Each clause could have had months of debate, and instead it’s all being debat­ed in a few days,’ said Adam Wag­n­er, a lawyer who advis­es a par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee on human rights. . . . ‘These are eye-water­ing pow­ers that would have not been real­ly imag­in­able in peace­time in this coun­try before,’ said Silkie Car­lo, the direc­tor of Big Broth­er Watch, a rights group. She called the mea­sures ‘dra­con­ian.’ . . . .”

Pri­va­cy is being dra­mat­i­cal­ly cur­tailed under cov­er of com­bat­ting the virus: ” . . . . As Thomas Gaulkin of the Bul­letin of the Atom­ic Sci­en­tists not­ed ear­li­er this month, many Amer­i­cans— often fierce in their objec­tions to per­ceived gov­ern­ment over­reach into their lives—might nor­mal­ly object to dystopi­an images of fly­ing robots polic­ing lock­downs. But these, of course, are not nor­mal times. ‘If drones do begin to hov­er over U.S. streets to help con­trol this pan­dem­ic,’ Gaulkin wrote, ‘it will be yet anoth­er vis­i­ble reminder that we’ve entered a pub­lic health Twi­light Zone where Amer­i­cans have no bet­ter option than to embrace what was once only imag­in­able, and nev­er real.’ . . . ”

The alpha preda­tor of the elec­tron­ic sur­veil­lance land­scape is Peter Thiel’s Palan­tir. They have land­ed two key gov­ern­ment con­tracts in con­nec­tion with the Covid-19 out­break:” . . . . Palan­tir, the $20 bil­lion-val­ued Palo Alto tech com­pa­ny backed by Face­book-fun­der Peter Thiel, has been hand­ed a $17.3 mil­lion con­tract with one of the lead­ing health bod­ies lead­ing the charge against COVID-19. It’s the biggest con­tract hand­ed to a Sil­i­con Val­ley com­pa­ny to assist America’s COVID-19 response, accord­ing to Forbes’ review of pub­lic con­tracts, and comes as oth­er Cal­i­forn­ian giants like Apple and Google try to fig­ure out how best to help gov­ern­ments fight the dead­ly virus. . . . The mon­ey, from the fed­er­al government’s COVID-19 relief fund, is for Palan­tir Gotham licens­es, accord­ing to a con­tract record reviewed by Forbes. That tech­nol­o­gy is designed to draw in data from myr­i­ad sources and, regard­less of what form or size, turn the infor­ma­tion into a coher­ent whole. The ‘plat­form’ is cus­tomized for each client, so it meets with their mis­sion needs, accord­ing to Palan­tir. . . . Palan­tir Gotham is slight­ly dif­fer­ent to Foundry, a new­er prod­uct that’s aimed more at gen­er­al users rather than data sci­ence whizzes, with more automa­tion than Gotham. As Forbes pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed, Foundry is being used by the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC) to ingest infor­ma­tion from all man­ner of hos­pi­tals across Amer­i­ca to see where best to pro­vide more or less resource. . . . Palan­tir is now work­ing with at least 12 gov­ern­ments on their respons­es to coro­n­avirus, accord­ing to two sources with knowl­edge of its COVID-19 work. That includes the U.K.’s Nation­al Health Ser­vice, which is using Foundry for sim­i­lar pur­pos­es as the CDC. . . .”

Exem­pli­fy­ing the mul­ti-dimen­sion­al chess sce­nario in con­nec­tion with the “bio-psy-op” is the GOP’s plan to use the Covid-19 out­break to scape­goat Chi­na and tar the Democ­rats and Joe Biden with the same brush. Of par­tic­u­lar note in this regard is the Steve Bannon‑J. Kyle Bass-Tom­my Hicks, Jr. tri­umvi­rate dis­cussed in–among oth­er programs–FTR #‘s 1111 and 1112.

At the epi­cen­ter of the anti-Chi­na effort, Ban­non is net­worked with Bass, who is asym­met­ri­cal­ly invest­ed with regard to the Hong Kong and Chi­nese economies. Hicks, in turn, is a co-investor with Bass, co-chair­man of the RNC, and one of the prime movers of the inter­a­gency gov­ern­men­tal net­works involved in the anti-Chi­na desta­bi­liza­tion oper­a­tion. This net­worked rela­tion­ship affords investors like Bass and Hicks the ulti­mate posi­tion from which to prof­it from “insid­er” infor­ma­tion. 

The syn­the­sis of covert oper­a­tions and elec­toral pol­i­tics reminds us of the 1952 elec­tion, in which Arthur Bliss Lane occu­pied a key posi­tion in the Cru­sade For Free­dom, as well as the GOP. (We dis­cussed this in AFA #37, and uti­lized infor­ma­tion from, among oth­er sources, Blow­back by Christo­pher Simp­son.

Exem­plary, as well, of the bio-psy-op as syn­the­sis of covert oper­a­tion and polit­i­cal cru­sad­ing is the GOP’s cyn­i­cal manip­u­la­tion of emer­gency appro­pri­a­tions to achieve their long­stand­ing objec­tive of crip­pling state and local gov­ern­ments, as well as dri­ving the Postal Ser­vice into bank­rupt­cy. Pri­va­tiz­ing postal ser­vice has been a right-wing/­GOP objec­tive for a long time. ” . . . . Every­one, and I mean every­one, knows what is real­ly hap­pen­ing: McConnell is try­ing to get more mon­ey for busi­ness­es while con­tin­u­ing to short­change state and local gov­ern­ments. After all, “starve the beast” — forc­ing gov­ern­ments to cut ser­vices by depriv­ing them of resources — has been Repub­li­can strat­e­gy for decades. This is just more of the same. . . . Oh, and Trump per­son­al­ly has ruled out aid for the Postal Ser­vice. . . .”

FTR #1125 Three-Dimensional Chess and the Covid-19 Outbreak: A Structural Overview

“A nation of sheep will beget a gov­ern­ment of wolves.”–Edward R. Mur­row

This pro­gram is an overview of a num­ber of over­lap­ping con­sid­er­a­tions in the Covid-19 out­break, which Mr. Emory calls a “Bio-Psy-Op.” These over­lap­ping areas will be pre­sent­ed in a series of pro­grams: FTR #1126 Bio-Psy-Op Apoc­a­lypse Now, Part 2: The Democ­ra­cy-Killing Virus; FTR #1127 Bio-Psy-Op Apoc­a­lypse Now, Part 3: The Eugenic Virus; FTR #1128 Bio-Psy-Op Apoc­a­lypse Now, Part 4: The Wealth-Con­cen­trat­ing Virus; FTR #1129 Bio-Psy-Op Apoc­a­lypse Now, Part 5: Walkin’ the Coro­n­avirus; FTR #1130 Bio-Psy-Op Apoc­a­lypse Now, Part 6: Context–The Chi­na-Killing Virus; FTR #1131 Bio-Psy-Op Apoc­a­lypse, Part 7: Pinch­back­’s Per­spec­tive and FTR #1132 Bio-Psy-Op Apoc­a­lypse Now, Part 8: The Nazi Virus.

Before dis­cussing the Covid-19 “op,” per se, we memo­ri­al­ized the bril­liant Kevin Coogan, author of “Dream­er of the Day: Fran­cis Park­er Yock­ey and the Post­war Fas­cist Inter­na­tion­al,” as well as numer­ous arti­cles. Kevin passed away on 2/27/2020 in New York City. We do not know the cause. Kevin was a bril­liant writer and ana­lyst and will be sore­ly missed.

In For The Record #233, we exam­ined Kev­in’s analy­sis of “The Order,” a fascist/mystical con­cept that was for­mu­lat­ed, in part by fas­cist mys­tic Julius Evola. Evola was a dom­i­nant philo­soph­i­cal and ide­o­log­i­cal influ­ence on Steve Ban­non, at the epi­cen­ter of the anti-Chi­na effort. (Mr. Emory mis­spoke himself–the pro­gram is FTR #233, not #312.)

The con­cept of three-dimen­sion­al chess derives from the old “Star Trek” tele­vi­sion series, in which the offi­cers played a vari­a­tion of chess that involved play­ing on three dif­fer­ent lev­els. Under­stand­ing the “Bio-Psy-Op” sim­i­lar­ly involves think­ing and aware­ness on at least three lev­els.

An op-ed col­umn in The New York Times by Bret Stephens goes to the essence of this “bio-psy-op.” ” . . . . The only cer­tain­ty is that, in the midst of a cri­sis, politi­cians are rarely penal­ized for pre­dict­ing the worst pos­si­ble out­come. If it comes to pass, they seem prophet­ic. If it doesn’t, they take cred­it for avert­ing cat­a­stro­phe. In the mean­time, they seek to enhance their pow­ers. . . . we might face not a reces­sion but a full-blown depres­sion, which would be finan­cial­ly ruinous for hun­dreds of mil­lions and have its own dis­as­trous knock-on effects in men­tal, emo­tion­al, and phys­i­cal health, includ­ing for the elder­ly and sick who already face the great­est risks from the virus. . . .”

Key points of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis, which will be devel­oped at much greater length and in much greater detail in the series of pro­grams not­ed above, includ­ing some of the arti­cles which will fig­ure into the analy­sis:

1.–Exemplifying the pro­found psy­cho­log­i­cal aspects of the Covid-19 Psy-Op is the phe­nom­e­non of the hoard­ing of toi­let paper. Mr. Emory views this as a deep Freudian/anal response to feel­ings of help­less­ness on the part of cit­i­zens. Toi­let paper is of no help against the virus, but is symp­to­matic of a deep-seat­ed per­son­al­i­ty dynam­ic seek­ing to man­i­fest some mea­sure of social con­trol. This was the sub­ject of a recent New York­er piece. ” . . . . ‘Con­trol­ling clean­li­ness around B.M.s is the ear­li­est way the child asserts con­trol,’ Andrea Green­man, the pres­i­dent of the Con­tem­po­rary Freudi­an Soci­ety, said. ‘The fact that now we are all pre­sum­ably los­ing con­trol cre­ates a regres­sive push to a very ear­ly time. So, I guess that trans­lates in the uncon­scious to ‘If I have a life­long sup­ply of toi­let paper, I’ll nev­er be out of con­trol, nev­er be a help­less, dirty child again.’ ’ . . . .”

2.–FTR #1126 Bio-Psy-Op Apoc­a­lypse Now, Part 2: The Democ­ra­cy-Killing Virus: The Covid-19 “op” is lead­ing to the atten­u­a­tion or elim­i­na­tion of democ­ra­cy all over the world. In addi­tion to dra­con­ian pow­ers pro­posed by “ex” CIA offi­cer and Attor­ney Gen­er­al William Barr, Trump has boast­ed about pow­ers grant­ed to him “that peo­ple don’t even know about.” Abroad, fas­cists and auto­crats from Vik­tor Orban to Naren­dra Modi are using the Covid-19 out­break to cement con­trol. Even Great Britain has man­i­fest­ed emer­gency pow­ers that one crit­ic termed “Eye-Water­ing.” Civ­il lib­er­ties are tak­ing a beat­ing, with “Pan­dem­ic Sur­veil­lance” enabling a mas­sive ero­sion of pri­va­cy that is unlike­ly to abate. There are ques­tions about whether the elec­tions will be held in Novem­ber. (“Trump Has Emer­gency Pow­ers We Aren’t Allowed to Know About” by Eliz­a­beth Gotein and Andrew Boyle; The New York Times; 4/10/2020.; “DOJ seeks new emer­gency pow­ers amid coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic” by Bet­sy Woodruff Swan; Politi­co; 03/21/2020; “Exclu­sive: Inside the Military’s Top Secret Plans If the Coro­n­avirus Crip­ples Gov­ern­ment” by William M. Arkin; Newsweek; 3/18/2020; “Exclu­sive: U.S. Mil­i­tary Acti­vates Its Nev­er-Before-Used Fed­er­al Response to Com­bat Coro­n­avirus Out­break” by William M. Arkin; Newsweek; 2/27/2020.; “For Auto­crats and Oth­ers, Coro­n­avirus Is a Chance to Grab Even More Pow­er” by Selam Gebrikadan; The New York Times; 3/30/2020.; “Media Dis­sent Fades as Modi Tight­ens Grip” by Vin­du Goel and Jef­frey Gettleman;The New York Times; 4/3/2020.; “Coro­n­avirus Sur­veil­lance Is Enter­ing Dystopi­an Ter­ri­to­ry” by Eric Lutz; Van­i­ty Fair; 4/9/2020.

3.–FTR #1127 Bio-Psy-Op Apoc­a­lypse Now, Part 3: The Eugenic Virus: The dis­pro­por­tion­ate dam­age being inflict­ed by the pan­dem­ic on minorities–African-Americans and Lati­nos in par­tic­u­lar, has received con­sid­er­able dis­cus­sion. Eco­nom­i­cal­ly dis­ad­van­taged to a con­sid­er­able extent and sub­ject to the phys­i­o­log­i­cal, psy­cho­log­i­cal and behav­ioral lia­bil­i­ties stem­ming from that state of affairs, they are more vul­ner­a­ble to the rav­ages of the virus. In addi­tion, “social-dis­tanc­ing” is a lux­u­ry that many poor peo­ple can not afford. Anoth­er major con­sid­er­a­tion con­cerns the rationing of health care. Peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties are afraid they will be shunt­ed “to the back of the line” when it comes time for them to receive prop­er treat­ment. The elder­ly are falling ill and dying all over the world. (“Peo­ple with Dis­abil­i­ties Are Afraid They Will Be Dis­crim­i­nat­ed Against Because of Coro­n­avirus” by Rick Jer­vais; USA Today; 3/26/2020.; “Who Should Be Saved First? Experts Offer Med­ical Guid­ance” by Austin Frakt; The New York Times; 3/24/2020.; “Ear­ly Data Shows African Amer­i­cans Con­tract­ing and Dying of Coro­n­avirus at an Alarm­ing Rate” by Aki­lah John­son and Talia Buford; ProP­ub­li­ca; 4/3/2020.; “Social Dis­tanc­ing Is A Priv­i­lege” by Charles Blow; The New York Times; 4/5/2020. ; “Scape­goat­ing New York Means Ignor­ing Its Des­per­ate Need” by Kim Phillips-Fein; The New York Times; 4/5/2020.

4.–FTR #1128 Bio-Psy-Op Apoc­a­lypse Now, Part 4: The Wealth-Con­cen­trat­ing Virus: In FTR #‘s 1111 and 1112, among oth­er pro­grams, we spoke of the net­work­ing and invest­ing of Steve Ban­non, J. Kyle Bass and Tom­my Hicks, Jr. Bass, you will recall, is asym­met­ri­cal­ly invest­ed with regard to the economies in Hong Kong and Chi­na. He has cer­tain­ly made mon­ey, as have many oth­ers. With the Fed­er­al Reserve esti­mat­ing unem­ploy­ment at rates that may reach 32% and econ­o­mist Paul Krug­man opin­ing that this down­turn will be three to five times as bad as the 2008 finan­cial col­lapse, those who do have mon­ey will be able to buy up assets at pen­nies on the dol­lar. An arti­cle in The Guardian dis­cuss­es hedge fund returns of as much as 4,000+ per­cent for some firms. The pos­si­bil­i­ty of “insid­er knowl­edge” of the com­ing pan­dem­ic sug­gests itself. It should be not­ed that J. Kyle Bass made his for­tune bet­ting against the sub­prime hous­ing mar­ket. In this pro­gram, we will dis­cuss his role in help­ing to bring down Bear Stearns in the 2008 col­lapse. A for­mer employ­ee of that ill-fat­ed com­pa­ny, Bass leaked dam­ag­ing infor­ma­tion about Bear Stearns to a Wall Street Jour­nal reporter, there­by pre­cip­i­tat­ing the col­lapse of the firm. (“Coro­n­avirus job loss­es could total 47 mil­lion, unem­ploy­ment rate may hit 32%, Fed esti­mates” by Jeff Cox; CNBC; 03/30/2020; “Hedge funds ‘rak­ing in bil­lions’ dur­ing coro­n­avirus cri­sis” by Rupert Neate Wealth and Jasper Jol­ly; The Guardian; 04/09/2020.; “WSJ: ‘Twas Kyle Bass that Killed Bear Stearns” by Thorn­ton McEnery; Dealbreaker.com; 3/29/2016 [Updat­ed on 1/14/2019.]; “Nas­sim Taleb-Advised Uni­ver­sa Tail Fund Returned 3,600% in March” by Erik Schatzk­er; Bloomberg; 04/08/2020; “How A Goat Farmer Built A Dooms­day Machine That Just Booked A 4,144% Return” by Antoine Gara; Forbes; 04/13/2020.

5.–FTR #1129 Bio-Psy-Op Apoc­a­lypse Now, Part 5: Walkin’ The Coro­n­avirus: In the Nazi tract Ser­pen­t’s Walk–which we have dis­cussed for decades–the SS go under­ground (which they did), buy into the opin­ion-form­ing media (which they did) and, infil­trate the mil­i­tary (which they have done), and, after a ter­ror­ist attack by genet­i­cal­ly-engi­neered virus­es dec­i­mates large parts of the Unit­ed States, mar­tial law is declared and the Nazis take over. From Ser­pen­t’s Walk: “. . . . ‘Yes. Well. ‘Pacov’ stands for ‘Pan­dem­ic Com­mu­ni­ca­ble Virus,’ one of the ugli­er results of mil­i­tary exper­i­men­ta­tion with recom­bi­nant DNA. Do you know what that is?’. . . . ‘Very well, let me tell you in layman’s terms.’ Mul­der extend­ed a hand to shush Wrench, who had start­ed to speak. ‘Pacov con­sists of two sep­a­rate re-work­ings of two DNA chains of exist­ing virus­es. It’s a pig­gy-back weapon, a two-stage oper­a­tion. You send in the first stage. The vec­tors . . . agents of trans­mis­sion . . . for Pacov‑1 are exten­sive. It trav­els through the air, the water, or direct­ly from per­son-to-per­son and is high­ly con­ta­gious. It spreads for hun­dreds of miles, if con­di­tions are opti­mal.  Pacov‑1 pro­duces only a mild, flu-like infec­tion that dis­ap­pears with­in a day or two. Pub­lic health author­i­ties would over­look it, nev­er con­sid­er it a seri­ous epi­dem­ic, and even if they did they’d have to look care­ful­ly to iso­late it. Once a vic­tim is over the ‘flu,’ Pacov‑1 becomes dor­mant and almost unde­tectable. A month or two lat­er, you send in the sec­ond stage: Pacov‑2 is also a virus, just as con­ta­gious as the first, and just as harm­less by itself. It reacts with Pacov‑1 to pro­duce a pow­er­ful coag­u­lant. . . . you die with­in three min­utes. No warn­ing, no vac­cine, no cure. Those not exposed to both stages remain unharmed. . . . Pacov‑2 goes inert, like Pacov‑1 with­in a week or two. Then you get your victim’s coun­try, all his prop­er­ty, in undam­aged con­di­tion. . . . and a lot of corpses to bury.’ . . . .”

6.–FTR #1130: Bio-Psy-Op Apoc­a­lypse Now, Part 6: Context–the Chi­na-Killing Virus: Ana­lyzes the Covid-19 out­break in the con­text of the anti-Chi­na, full-court press, high­light­ed in, among oth­er, pro­grams, FTR #‘s 1089 through 1095, 1103, 1104, 1105. (“Unleash the Pri­va­teers” by Colonel Mark Can­cion (USMC—Retired) and Bran­don Schwartz; U.S. Naval Insti­tute Mag­a­zine; April 2020 [Vol. 146/2/1,406; “Inside the World Uyghur Con­gress: The US-backed right-wing regime change net­work seek­ing the ‘fall of Chi­na’” by Ajit Singh; The Gray Zone; 03/05/2020; “Coro­n­avirus Alarm Blends Yel­low Per­il and Red Scare” by Joshua Cho; Fair­ness and Accu­ra­cy in Report­ing; 3/6/2020.)

7.–FTR #1131 Bio-Psy-Op Apoc­a­lypse, Part 7: Pinch­back­’s Per­spec­tive: ” . . . .Barag­o­na was a Nazi from Fort Sill. . . . Gar­ri­son also obtained a tran­script of a let­ter writ­ten by Fer­rie to Barag­o­na. Next to Barag­o­na’s name, Gar­ri­son wrote: ‘Note Barag­o­na is impor­tant.’ The let­ter had been sent to Gar­ri­son by Glenn Pinch­back, and a car­bon copy was sent to Mendel Rivers, a con­gress­man from Geor­gia. (Pinch­back worked in the Oper­a­tions Com­mand at Fort Sill, where he inter­cept­ed mail.) In the let­ter, Fer­rie shared his dream of the re-uni­fi­ca­tion of Ger­many and liv­ing in a world where all the cur­ren­cy was in Deutschmarks. Pinch­back­’s sum­ma­tion of the let­ter described a ‘Neo-Nazi plot to enslave Amer­i­ca in the name of anti-Com­mu­nism,’ and ‘a neo-Nazi plot gar­gan­tu­an in scope.’ The Fer­rie let­ter spoke of the need to kill all the Kennedys and Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. . . . Pinch­back also report­ed­ly obtained a let­ter from David Fer­rie to Barag­o­na con­fess­ing his role in the assas­si­na­tion of Robert Gehrig, who was a Nazi and Fort Sill sol­dier. . . .”

8.–FTR #1132 Bio-Psy-Op Apoc­a­lypse Now, Part 8: The Nazi Virus: This pro­gram will syn­the­size the var­i­ous aspects of the “Bio-Psy-Op Apoc­a­lypse Now” series, demon­strat­ing how the var­i­ous con­cep­tu­al com­po­nents set forth here­in con­sti­tute a Nazi “Full-Spec­trum Dom­i­nance.”

FTR #1124 The Magic Virus Theory: The “Whole-of-Society Response”

This pro­gram takes stock of some of the remark­able fea­tures of the Covid-19 coro­n­avirus, to be seen in the con­text of a coun­try whose political/intellectual elites have accept­ed the “Mag­ic Bul­let The­o­ry.” (This is dis­cussed in–among oth­er programs–The Guns of Novem­ber, Part 2.)

It is our con­sid­ered opin­ion that the virus is part of the desta­bi­liza­tion effort against Chi­na and is found­ed upon research high­light­ed in, among oth­er pro­grams, FTR #‘s 1119 and 1120.

As high­light­ed below, all of this must be eval­u­at­ed in light of the fact that the coor­di­na­tor of the anti-Chi­na effort–former Trump cam­paign man­ag­er Steve Bannon–is a fas­cist.

In addi­tion to review­ing how the Covid-19 virus infects human lung tis­sue and both the upper and low­er res­pi­ra­to­ry tracts, we note:

1.–The virus appears to have been a bat virus and the ran­dom muta­tions seen are unlike­ly to be nat­ur­al: ” . . . . What are the odds that a ran­dom bat virus had exact­ly the right com­bi­na­tion of traits to effec­tive­ly infect human cells from the get-go, and then jump into an unsus­pect­ing per­son? ‘Very low,’ [Kris­t­ian] Ander­sen [of the Scripps Research Trans­la­tion­al Insti­tute] says . . . . ”

2.–The abil­i­ty of this bat virus to infect ACE2 was present from day one. ” . . . . . The clos­est wild rel­a­tive of SARS-CoV­‑2 is found in bats, which sug­gests it orig­i­nat­ed in a bat, then jumped to humans either direct­ly or through anoth­er species. . . . When SARS-clas­sic first made this leap, a brief peri­od of muta­tion was nec­es­sary for it to rec­og­nize ACE2 well. But SARS-CoV­‑2 could do that from day one. ‘It had already found its best way of being a [human] virus,’ says Matthew Frie­man of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land School of Med­i­cine. . . .”

3.–Indeed, why was this “sev­enth virus” the one to infect humans “. . . . This fam­i­ly, the coro­n­avirus­es, includes just six oth­er mem­bers that infect humans. . . . . Why was this sev­enth coro­n­avirus the one to go pan­dem­ic? Sud­den­ly, what we do know about coro­n­avirus­es becomes a mat­ter of inter­na­tion­al con­cern. . . .”

4.–Perhaps the most notable obser­va­tion made about this virus thus far: it doesn’t appear to be mutat­ing in evo­lu­tion­ar­i­ly sig­nif­i­cant ways. Of the 100-plus muta­tions observed in the virus so far, none has emerged as evo­lu­tion­ar­i­ly dominant–unusual for a virus that only recent­ly jumped to humans. and has spread pro­lif­i­cal­ly. It’s as though the virus is already evo­lu­tion­ar­i­ly opti­mized for spread­ing among humans and there are no ‘gain-of-func­tion’ muta­tions left for it acquire. As Lisa Gralin­s­ki, a coro­n­avirus expert at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na Chapel Hill, described it, ‘The virus has been remark­ably sta­ble giv­en how much trans­mis­sion we’ve seen . . . . there’s no evo­lu­tion­ary pres­sure on the virus to trans­mit bet­ter. It’s doing a great job of spread­ing around the world right now.’ . . .”

5.–As dis­cussed in oth­er programs–including FTR #‘s 1117 and 1121, the “cytokine storms” that over­whelm the immune sys­tem of some Covid-19 vic­tims are symp­to­matic of oth­er virus­es that have gone either “Gain-of-Func­tion” alter­ation and/or genet­ic recov­ery and recreation–HN1 Avian Flu, SARS, and the 1918 “Span­ish Flu” virus: ” . . . . These dam­ag­ing over­re­ac­tions are called cytokine storms. They were his­tor­i­cal­ly respon­si­ble for many deaths dur­ing the 1918 flu pan­dem­ic, H5N1 bird flu out­breaks, and the 2003 SARS out­break.  . . . .”

In addi­tion, an arti­cle in Sci­ence Direct char­ac­ter­izes the advent of the furin-like cleav­age site as a “gain-of-func­tion” phe­nom­e­non. “Gain of Func­tion” is a mech­a­nism of action of an “Enhanced Poten­tial Pan­dem­ic Pathogen.” Note the use of the word “strik­ing­ly” in this oth­er­wise dry and pedan­tic aca­d­e­m­ic pre­sen­ta­tion. It is VERY sig­nif­i­cant and–we suspect–betokens aware­ness on the part of the authors that “we aren’t in Kansas, any­more, Toto!” “. . . . STRIKINGLY [caps are ours–D.E.], the 2019-nCoV S‑protein sequence con­tains 12 addi­tion­al nucleotides upstream of the sin­gle Arg↓ cleav­age site 1 (Fig. 1, Fig. 2) lead­ing to a pre­dic­tive­ly sol­vent-exposed PRRAR↓SV sequence, which cor­re­sponds to a canon­i­cal furin-like cleav­age site (Braun and Sauter, 2019; Iza­guirre, 2019; Sei­dah and Prat, 2012). This furin-like cleav­age site, is sup­posed to be cleaved dur­ing virus egress (Mille and Whit­tak­er, 2014) for S‑protein ‘prim­ing’ and may pro­vide a gain-of-func­tion to the 2019-nCoV for effi­cient spread­ing in the human pop­u­la­tion com­pared to oth­er lin­eage b beta­coro­n­avirus­es. This pos­si­bly illus­trates a con­ver­gent evo­lu­tion path­way between unre­lat­ed CoVs. Inter­est­ing­ly, if this site is not processed, the S‑protein is expect­ed to be cleaved at site 2 dur­ing virus endo­cy­to­sis, as observed for the SARS-CoV. . . .”

The arti­cle also notes that the virus dif­fers sig­nif­i­cant­ly from oth­er coro­n­avirus­es of its type. ” . . . . Based on its genome sequence, 2019-nCoV belongs to lin­eage b of Beta­coro­n­avirus (Fig. 1A), which also includes the SARS-CoV and bat CoV ZXC21, the lat­ter and CoV ZC45 being the clos­est to 2019-nCoV. . . . Since furin is high­ly expressed in lungs, an enveloped virus that infects the res­pi­ra­to­ry tract may suc­cess­ful­ly exploit this con­ver­tase to acti­vate its sur­face gly­co­pro­tein (Bassi et al., 2017; Mbikay et al., 1997). Before the emer­gence of the 2019-nCoV, this impor­tant fea­ture was not observed in the lin­eage b of beta­coro­n­avirus­es. . . .”

The fea­tures of the virus not­ed above must be seen in the con­text of the DARPA research into bat coro­n­avirus­es:

1.–” . . . . the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), began spend­ing mil­lions on such research in 2018 and some of those Pen­ta­gon-fund­ed stud­ies were con­duct­ed at known U.S. mil­i­tary bioweapons labs bor­der­ing Chi­na and result­ed in the dis­cov­ery of dozens of new coro­n­avirus strains as recent­ly as last April. Fur­ther­more, the ties of the Pentagon’s main biode­fense lab to a virol­o­gy insti­tute in Wuhan, Chi­na — where the cur­rent out­break is believed to have begun — have been unre­port­ed in Eng­lish lan­guage media thus far. . . . For instance, DARPA spent $10 mil­lion on one project in 2018 ‘to unrav­el the com­plex caus­es of bat-borne virus­es that have recent­ly made the jump to humans, caus­ing con­cern among glob­al health offi­cials.’ Anoth­er research project backed by both DARPA and NIH saw researchers at Col­orado State Uni­ver­si­ty exam­ine the coro­n­avirus that caus­es Mid­dle East Res­pi­ra­to­ry Syn­drome (MERS) in bats and camels ‘to under­stand the role of these hosts in trans­mit­ting dis­ease to humans.’  . . . For instance, one study con­duct­ed in South­ern Chi­na in 2018 result­ed in the dis­cov­ery of 89 new ‘nov­el bat coro­n­avirus’ strains that use the same recep­tor as the coro­n­avirus known as Mid­dle East Res­pi­ra­to­ry Syn­drome (MERS). That study was joint­ly fund­ed by the Chi­nese government’s Min­istry of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy, USAID — an orga­ni­za­tion long alleged to be a front for U.S. intel­li­gence, and the U.S. Nation­al Insti­tute of Health — which has col­lab­o­rat­ed with both the CIA and the Pen­tagonon infec­tious dis­ease and bioweapons research.. . . .”

2.–DARPA is doing this work, in part, at bio­log­i­cal research facil­i­ties ring­ing both Chi­na and Rus­sia. ” . . . .  One of those stud­ies focused on ‘Bat-Borne Zoonot­ic Dis­ease Emer­gence in West­ern Asia’ and involved the Lugar Cen­ter in Geor­gia, iden­ti­fied by for­mer Geor­gian gov­ern­ment offi­cials, the Russ­ian gov­ern­men­tand inde­pen­dent, inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Dilyana Gay­tandzhie­va as a covert U.S. bioweapons lab. . . . Anoth­er U.S. gov­ern­ment-fund­ed study that dis­cov­ered still more new strains of ‘nov­el bat coro­n­avirus’ was pub­lished just last year. Titled ‘Dis­cov­ery and Char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of Nov­el Bat Coro­n­avirus Lin­eages from Kaza­khstan,’ focused on ‘the bat fau­na of cen­tral Asia, which link Chi­na to east­ern Europe’ and the nov­el bat coro­n­avirus lin­eages dis­cov­ered dur­ing the study were found to be ‘close­ly relat­ed to bat coro­n­avirus­es from Chi­na, France, Spain, and South Africa, sug­gest­ing that co-cir­cu­la­tion of coro­n­avirus­es is com­mon in mul­ti­ple bat species with over­lap­ping geo­graph­i­cal dis­tri­b­u­tions.’ In oth­er words, the coro­n­avirus­es dis­cov­ered in this study were iden­ti­fied in bat pop­u­la­tions that migrate between Chi­na and Kaza­khstan, among oth­er coun­tries, and is close­ly relat­ed to bat coro­n­avirus­es in sev­er­al coun­tries, includ­ing Chi­na. . . .

The unusu­al fea­tures of the virus must also be seen in the con­text of the Steve Ban­non-led anti-Chi­na desta­bi­liza­tion effort. It is our opin­ion that the spread­ing of the virus is intend­ed to pro­voke the “Whole-of-soci­ety” response. As dis­cussed in FTR #947, the dom­i­nant intel­lec­tu­al and polit­i­cal influ­ence on Ban­non is the Ital­ian fas­cist Julius Evola. Orig­i­nal­ly a sup­port­er of Mus­soli­ni, he ulti­mate­ly decid­ed Mus­soli­ni was too mod­er­ate and in an ide­o­log­i­cal “Gain-of-Func­tion” muta­tion, asso­ci­at­ed him­self with the Nazi SS, who were financ­ing his work by the end of World War II. 

Ban­non’s assess­ment of U.S.-China rela­tions amounts to a dec­la­ra­tion of “Totaler Krieg–Total War.” ” . . . ‘These are two sys­tems that are incom­pat­i­ble,’ Mr. Ban­non said of the Unit­ed States and Chi­na. ‘One side is going to win, and one side is going to lose.’ . . . .”

The coro­n­avirus attack we believe was unleashed on the U.S. and the world as a whole (to alien­ate it from Chi­na) and Chi­na itself (to inflect eco­nom­ic dam­age and stir up domes­tic unrest) is the man­i­fes­ta­tion of what the head of the FBI expressed: ” . . . . ‘I think it’s going to take a whole-of-soci­ety response by us.’ . . .”

Of para­mount impor­tance is the fact that state­ments being issued to the effect that the virus was not made in a lab­o­ra­to­ry are not just irrel­e­vant, but absurd. ANY virus can be made in a lab­o­ra­to­ry, from scratch as is being done for the SARS-CoV­‑2 (Covid-19) virus.

The bro­mides being issued–all too predictably–that the virus could not have been/wasn’t made in a lab­o­ra­to­ry are the viro­log­i­cal equiv­a­lent of the Mag­ic Bul­let The­o­ry.

We first dis­cussed “Design­er Genes” in FTR #282.

Ralph Baric–who did the gain-of-func­tion mod­i­fi­ca­tion on the Horse­shoe Bat coro­n­avirus, has been select­ed to engi­neer the Covid-19.

” . . . . The remark­able abil­i­ty to ‘boot up’  virus­es from genet­ic instruc­tions is made pos­si­ble by com­pa­nies that man­u­fac­ture cus­tom DNA mol­e­cules, such as Inte­grat­ed DNA Tech­nol­o­gy, Twist Bio­science, and Atum. By order­ing the right genes, which cost a few thou­sand dol­lars, and then stitch­ing them togeth­er to cre­ate a copy of the coro­n­avirus genome, it’s pos­si­ble to inject the genet­ic mate­r­i­al into cells and jump-start the virus to life. The abil­i­ty to make a lethal virus from mail-order DNA was first demon­strat­ed 20 years ago. . . .”

Note what might be termed a “viro­log­ic Juras­sic Park” man­i­fes­ta­tion: ” . . . . The tech­nol­o­gy imme­di­ate­ly cre­at­ed bio-weapon wor­ries. . . . Researchers at the US Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC) drove that point home in 2005 when they res­ur­rect­ed the influen­za virus that killed tens of mil­lions in 1918–1919. . . .”

A key fac­tor spurring our sus­pi­cion con­cern­ing genet­ic-engi­neer­ing of one or more vari­ant of the Covid-19 virus con­cerns a 2015 Gain-of-Func­tion exper­i­ment done by the above Ralph Bar­ic: “Ralph Bar­ic, an infec­tious-dis­ease researcher at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na at Chapel Hill, last week (Novem­ber 9) pub­lished a study on his team’s efforts to engi­neer a virus with the sur­face pro­tein of the SHC014 coro­n­avirus, found in horse­shoe bats in Chi­na, and the back­bone of one that caus­es human-like severe acute res­pi­ra­to­ry syn­drome (SARS) in mice. The hybrid virus could infect human air­way cells and caused dis­ease in mice. . . . The results demon­strate the abil­i­ty of the SHC014 sur­face pro­tein to bind and infect human cells, val­i­dat­ing con­cerns that this virus—or oth­er coro­n­avirus­es found in bat species—may be capa­ble of mak­ing the leap to peo­ple with­out first evolv­ing in an inter­me­di­ate host, Nature report­ed. They also reignite a debate about whether that infor­ma­tion jus­ti­fies the risk of such work, known as gain-of-func­tion research. ‘If the [new] virus escaped, nobody could pre­dict the tra­jec­to­ry,’ Simon Wain-Hob­son, a virol­o­gist at the Pas­teur Insti­tute in Paris, told Nature. . . .”

Modus Operandi of Covid-19–Does It Reflect Genetic Engineering?

An inter­est­ing piece in “The Atlantic” describes how the SARS-CoV­‑2 virus that caus­es COVID-19 dif­fers from oth­er coro­n­avirus­es known to infect humans. We present this as sup­ple­men­tal to dis­cus­sion of DARPA research into bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es. The virus appears to have been a bat virus and the ran­dom muta­tions seen are unlike­ly to be nat­ur­al: ” . . . . What are the odds that a ran­dom bat virus had exact­ly the right com­bi­na­tion of traits to effec­tive­ly infect human cells from the get-go, and then jump into an unsus­pect­ing per­son? ‘Very low,’ [Kris­t­ian] Ander­sen [of the Scripps Research Trans­la­tion­al Insti­tute] says . . . . ” A) The SARS-CoV­‑2 (Covid-19) virus is unusu­al in that it infects both the upper and low­er res­pi­ra­to­ry tracts. The ‘spike’ part of the SARS-CoV­‑2 virus is unusu­al­ly good at latch­ing into a pro­tein called ACE2 which is found on the exte­ri­or of the cells in human air­ways. This abil­i­ty appears to be fun­da­men­tal to the virus’s abil­i­ty to infect the upper res­pi­ra­to­ry tract. The virus appears to infect the upper air­ways first and then, as cells in them die and are sloughed off, it makes its way down to the low­er res­pi­ra­to­ry tract and lungs where the dead­ly infec­tions occur. This sequen­tial pat­tern of infect­ing the upper res­pi­ra­to­ry tract pri­or to mak­ing its way down to the lungs enables it to silent­ly spread asymp­to­mati­cal­ly before turn­ing more lethal in the low­er res­pi­ra­to­ry tract. B) We note that the ACE2 pro­tein appears to man­i­fest more heav­i­ly in the lung tis­sue of  East-Asians. As indi­cat­ed in the Whit­ney Webb arti­cle, genet­ic mod­i­fi­ca­tion has been envi­sioned as applic­a­ble to bio­log­i­cal war­fare to cre­ate “eth­no-spe­cif­ic” bio­log­i­cal weapons. C) Anoth­er key fea­ture of the virus’s abil­i­ty to infect humans con­cerns a pro­tein bridge con­nect­ing two halves of the virus’s spike. Acti­va­tion of this spike caus­es the virus injects its nucle­ic acid into the cell. Acti­vat­ing the spike requires the cleav­age of a pro­tein bridge con­nect­ing the two halves of the spike. That cleav­age is pre­cip­i­tat­ed by the enzyme furin which is ubiq­ui­tous in human cells. In con­trast, the coro­n­avirus which caused SARS had a pro­tein bridge that was less like­ly to be cleaved. SARS-CoV­‑2 first latch­es onto to human upper air­way cells and, once there, has the pro­tein bridge link­ing the halves of the spike sev­ered by the furin enzyme. D) Per­haps the most notable obser­va­tion made about this virus thus far: it doesn’t appear to be mutat­ing in evo­lu­tion­ar­i­ly sig­nif­i­cant ways. Of the 100-plus muta­tions observed in the virus so far, none has emerged as evo­lu­tion­ar­i­ly dominant–unusual for a virus that only recent­ly jumped to humans. and has spread pro­lif­i­cal­ly. It’s as though the virus is already evo­lu­tion­ar­i­ly opti­mized for spread­ing among humans and there are no ‘gain-of-fuc­tion’ muta­tions left for it acquire. As Lisa Gralin­s­ki, a coro­n­avirus expert at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na Chapel Hill, described it, “The virus has been remark­ably sta­ble giv­en how much trans­mis­sion we’ve seen . . . . there’s no evo­lu­tion­ary pres­sure on the virus to trans­mit bet­ter. It’s doing a great job of spread­ing around the world right now.” E) Gralin­sky works close­ly with Ralph Baric’s lab. Recall that Bar­ic is the researcher who con­struct­ed a chimeric virus out of a SARS virus and horse­shoe bat coro­n­avirus in 2015. When Gralin­s­ki observes that the virus wouldn’t feel any evo­lu­tion­ary pres­sure to spread because it’s already doing such a good job that is VERY sig­nif­i­cant. Evo­lu­tion doesn’t stop just because the sta­tus quo of an organ­ism is already effec­tive. A muta­tion allow­ing the virus to spread even more read­i­ly would be expect­ed. And nor­mal­ly such an event does hap­pen. But it hasn’t hap­pened so for SARS-CoV­‑2 because it is already at some­thing of a “coro­n­avirus evo­lu­tion­ary peak”. In addi­tion, an arti­cle in “Sci­ence Direct” char­ac­ter­izes the advent of the furin-like cleav­age site as a “gain-of-func­tion” phe­nom­e­non. “Gain of Func­tion” is a mech­a­nism of action of an “Enhanced Poten­tial Pan­dem­ic Pathogen.” “. . . . Strik­ing­ly, the 2019-nCoV S‑protein sequence con­tains 12 addi­tion­al nucleotides upstream of the sin­gle Arg↓ cleav­age site 1 (Fig. 1, Fig. 2) lead­ing to a pre­dic­tive­ly sol­vent-exposed PRRAR↓SV sequence, which cor­re­sponds to a canon­i­cal furin-like cleav­age site (Braun and Sauter, 2019; Iza­guirre, 2019; Sei­dah and Prat, 2012). This furin-like cleav­age site, is sup­posed to be cleaved dur­ing virus egress (Mille and Whit­tak­er, 2014) for S‑protein “prim­ing” and may pro­vide a gain-of-func­tion to the 2019-nCoV for effi­cient spread­ing in the human pop­u­la­tion com­pared to oth­er lin­eage b beta­coro­n­avirus­es. This pos­si­bly illus­trates a con­ver­gent evo­lu­tion path­way between unre­lat­ed CoVs. Inter­est­ing­ly, if this site is not processed, the S‑protein is expect­ed to be cleaved at site 2 dur­ing virus endo­cy­to­sis, as observed for the SARS-CoV. . . .”

FTR #1122 Bio-Psy-Op Apocalypse Now: Fireside Rant about the Covid-19 Outbreak

This broad­cast updates, in a admit­ted­ly stri­dent mode, the Covid-19 out­break. We begin with dis­cus­sion of Mod­er­na, Inc.

Mod­er­na Inc. is one of the DARPA-fund­ed com­pa­nies that has been autho­rized to begin test­ing of vac­cines. As dis­cussed by Whit­ney Webb, Mod­er­na Inc. is get­ting a green light to devel­op its mRNA vac­cine (mRNA 1273) for pre­vent­ing Covid-19 infec­tion. The West­ern Edi­tion of The New York Times con­tains infor­ma­tion NOT con­tained in the online man­i­fes­ta­tion of the arti­cle. 

Although vac­cines that inject nucle­ic acid–either DNA or mes­sen­ger RNA–into cells have been seen as promis­ing, they have NEVER been admin­is­tered to humans. The tri­als for the Mod­er­na vac­cine appear to be “fast-tracked.” 

We have done numer­ous pro­grams about the polio vac­cine and how that “fast-tracked” (and con­se­quent­ly insuf­fi­cient­ly vet­ted) vac­cine was con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with the SV40 can­cer-caus­ing mon­key virus.

In the con­text of the desta­bi­liza­tion of Chi­na (cov­ered in many pro­grams and a key ele­ment of analy­sis in assess­ing the Covid-19 out­break), we note that the col­laps­ing of economies abroad, includ­ing the U.S., will sig­nif­i­cant­ly and adverse­ly affect Chi­na’s export-ori­ent­ed econ­o­my.

It may lead to the col­lapse of the Chi­nese econ­o­my eagerly–and financially–anticipated by J. Kyle Bass, Tom­my Hicks Jr. and Steve Ban­non.

An op-ed col­umn fur­ther devel­ops the poten­tial dan­ger to Chi­na’s econ­o­my posed by the Covid-19 out­break. ” . . . . While Chi­na is no longer cen­ter stage, as the virus spreads world­wide there are renewed fears that the cri­sis could cir­cle back to its shores by hurt­ing demand for exports. Over the last decade China’s cor­po­rate debt swelled four­fold to over $20 tril­lion — the biggest binge in the world. The Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund esti­mates that one-tenth of this debt is in zom­bie firms, which rely on gov­ern­ment-direct­ed lend­ing to stay alive. . . .”

Next, we tack­le the sub­ject of an esca­lat­ing media war between Chi­na and the U.S.

Trump’s label­ing of Covid-19 as “the Chi­nese virus” is appar­ent­ly in response to sug­ges­tions in Chi­nese social media and some pub­lished mate­r­i­al point­ing to the U.S. and/or nation­al secu­ri­ty ele­ments with­in and/or asso­ci­at­ed with it as the source of the virus.

In FTR #1109, we exam­ined Don­ald Trump’s deal­ings with Deutsche Bank, key “sui­cides” in con­nec­tion with the bank’s records on Trump and Jared Kush­n­er, Trump’s claims of exec­u­tive priv­i­lege in attempts to keep the records secret, the appar­ent destruc­tion of those records by Deutsche Bank and the track­ing of the case to a deci­sion by the Supreme Court.

Now, the Covid-19 out­break may delay that deci­sion indef­i­nite­ly.

As high­light­ed above, Don­ald Trump has been label­ing Covid-19 the “Chi­nese virus” in response to Chi­nese inti­ma­tions (cor­rect in their main con­tention in our opin­ion) that the U.S. is the point of ori­gin of the virus.

An arti­cle in The Asia Times pro­vides more depth on the grow­ing media war between the U.S. and Chi­na.

Key points of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis:

1.–China now open­ly views the U.S. as a threat: ” . . . . For the first time since the start of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in 1978, Bei­jing open­ly regards the U.S. as a threat, as stat­ed a month ago by For­eign Min­is­ter Wang Yi at the Munich Secu­ri­ty Con­fer­ence dur­ing the peak of the fight against coro­n­avirus. . . .”
2.–President Xi Jin­ping has dropped ver­bal clues as to the Chi­nese view of the ori­gin of the Covid-19: ” . . . . Bei­jing is care­ful­ly, incre­men­tal­ly shap­ing the nar­ra­tive that, from the begin­ning of the coro­n­avirus attack, the lead­er­ship knew it was under a hybrid war attack. The ter­mi­nol­o­gy of Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping is a major clue. He said, on the record, that this was war. And, as a counter-attack, a ‘people’s war’ had to be launched. More­over, he described the virus as a demon or dev­il. Xi is a Con­fu­cian­ist. Unlike some oth­er ancient Chi­nese thinkers, Con­fu­cius was loath to dis­cuss super­nat­ur­al forces and judg­ment in the after­life. How­ev­er, in a Chi­nese cul­tur­al con­text, dev­il means ‘white dev­ils’ or ‘for­eign dev­ils’: guai­lo in Man­darin, gwei­lo in Can­tonese. This was Xi deliv­er­ing a pow­er­ful state­ment in code. . . .”
3.–A Chi­nese For­eign Min­istry offi­cial cit­ed the Mil­i­tary World Games in Wuhan as a pos­si­ble vec­tor­ing point. (We believe this is pos­si­ble, although we sus­pect the Shin­cheon­ji cult and a USAMRIID asso­ci­a­tion with a Wuhan viro­log­i­cal insti­tute as oth­er pos­si­ble vec­tors.) IF, for the sake of argu­ment, fas­cist ele­ments (CIA, Under­ground Reich or what­ev­er) chose the US mil­i­tary ath­letes as a vec­tor, it would have been alto­geth­er pos­si­ble to do so with­out attract­ing atten­tion. Mil­i­tary ath­letes are in superb con­di­tion and, if infect­ed with one of the milder strains of Covid-19, their robust immune sys­tems might well leave them asymp­to­matic, yet still con­ta­gious, or mild­ly ill at worst. They could then com­mu­ni­cate the virus to oth­er mil­i­tary ath­letes, who would then serve as a vec­tor for oth­er coun­tries. ” . . . . Zhao’s explo­sive con­clu­sion is that COVID-19 was already in effect in the U.S. before being iden­ti­fied in Wuhan – due to the by now ful­ly doc­u­ment­ed inabil­i­ty of the U.S. to test and ver­i­fy dif­fer­ences com­pared with the flu. . . .”
4.–Author Pepe Esco­bar reit­er­ates the con­tention that the vari­ants of the virus in Italy and Iran are dif­fer­ent from the vari­ants that infect­ed Wuhan, an inter­pre­ta­tion whose sig­nif­i­cance is debat­ed by sci­en­tists.
5.–The arti­cle high­lights the shut­ter­ing of Ft. Det­rick, which has now been par­tial­ly re-opened. ” . . . . Adding all that to the fact that coro­n­avirus genome vari­a­tions in Iran and Italy were sequenced and it was revealed they do not belong to the vari­ety that infect­ed Wuhan, Chi­nese media are now open­ly  ask­ing ques­tions and draw­ing a con­nec­tion with the shut­ting down in August last year of the “unsafe” mil­i­tary bioweapon lab at Fort Det­rick, the Mil­i­tary Games, and the Wuhan epi­dem­ic. Some of these ques­tions had been asked– with no response – inside the U.S. itself. . . .”
6.–Escobar also notes Event 201, which we high­light­ed in FTR #‘s 1111 and 1112: ” . . . . Extra ques­tions linger about the opaque Event 201 in New York on Octo­ber 18, 2019: a rehearsal for a world­wide pan­dem­ic caused by a dead­ly virus – which hap­pened to be coro­n­avirus. This mag­nif­i­cent coin­ci­dence hap­pened one month before the out­break in Wuhan. Event 201 was spon­sored by Bill & Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion, the World Eco­nom­ic Forum (WEF), the CIA, Bloomberg, John Hop­kins Foun­da­tion and the UN.  The World Mil­i­tary Games opened in Wuhan on the exact same day. . . .”
7.–We note that, although we have not been able to con­clu­sive­ly prove that CIA was one of the spon­sors of the event, a for­mer Deputy Direc­tor of the Agency was a key par­tic­i­pant. Hav­ing reached such a lev­el of promi­nence with­in the agency, one nev­er “leaves” alto­geth­er. It is prob­a­ble that there was Agency par­tic­i­pa­tion.
8.–Further dis­cus­sion notes the pos­si­ble use of a coro­n­avirus as part of a psy-op: ” . . . . The work­ing hypoth­e­sis of coro­n­avirus as a very pow­er­ful but not Armaged­don-pro­vok­ing bio-weapon unveils it as a per­fect vehi­cle for wide­spread social con­trol — on a glob­al scale. . . .”
9.–Escobar alleges that Cuba has devel­oped an anti-viral that is promis­ing against the virus: ” . . . . The anti-viral Heberon – or Inter­fer­on Alpha 2b – a ther­a­peu­tic, not a vac­cine, has been used with great suc­cess in the treat­ment of coro­n­avirus. A joint ven­ture in Chi­na is pro­duc­ing an inhal­able ver­sion, and at least 15 nations are already inter­est­ed in import­ing the ther­a­peu­tic. . . .” 
10.–Quoting Ital­ian ana­lyst San­dro Mez­zadra, Esco­bar notes the Covid-19 out­break as a social Dar­win­ian psy-op: ” . . . .We are fac­ing a choice between a Malthu­sian strand – inspired by social Dar­win­ism – ‘led by the John­son-Trump-Bol­sonaro axis’ and, on the oth­er side, a strand point­ing to the “requal­i­fi­ca­tion of pub­lic health as a fun­da­men­tal tool,’ exem­pli­fied by Chi­na, South Korea and Italy. There are key lessons to be learned from South Korea, Tai­wan and Sin­ga­pore. The stark option, Mez­zadra notes, is between a ‘nat­ur­al pop­u­la­tion selec­tion,’ with thou­sands of dead, and ‘defend­ing soci­ety’ by employ­ing ‘vari­able degrees of author­i­tar­i­an­ism and social con­trol.’ . . .”
11.–Like many ana­lysts, Escobar–correctly in our opinion–notes that the Covid-19 out­break threat­ens the glob­al econ­o­my and may col­lapse the deriv­a­tive mar­ket. That this may be intend­ed to mask an over­val­ued equi­ties mar­ket seems prob­a­ble to us.

FTR #1121 More than One “Flu” Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Part 2

Oya­Gen, Inc. has used a drug devel­oped, test­ed and FDA-approved that suc­cess­ful­ly treats and–apparently–cures Covid-19. Inter­est­ing­ly and, per­haps, sig­nif­i­cant­ly, the tri­als were con­duct­ed at Fort Det­rick. As seen in FTR #‘s 1119 and 1120, the mil­i­tary has been heav­i­ly involved in research­ing virus­es of this type.

There con­tin­ues to be enor­mous empha­sis on Gilead Sci­ences by hedge funds includ­ing Renais­sance Tech­nolo­gies. Robert Mer­cer stepped down as CEO of the firm at the end of 2017, as pub­lic­i­ty around Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca and the fall­out from the Char­lottesville march made him some­thing of a PR lia­bil­i­ty. Usu­al­ly in such sit­u­a­tions, peo­ple like Mer­cer remain as key investors.

In FTR #1118, we not­ed that the Board of Direc­tors of the firm is “inter­est­ing.” The “dis­ap­point­ing” per­for­mance of Gilead Sci­ences changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly with the Covid-19 out­break. ” . . . . Until Mon­day, when it fell in a bru­tal mar­ket rout, Gilead’s stock price had defied the over­all mar­ket decline of recent weeks, ris­ing almost 20 per­cent from Feb. 21 to March 6, on hopes that the drug could pro­vide the first treat­ment for covid-19. The lack of treat­ment helps explain why. The stock price increased 5 per­cent on Feb. 24 alone when a top offi­cial of the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion pinned much of the world’s hopes for a treat­ment on the drug. . . .”

Again, in FTR #‘s 1119 and 1120 we looked at the pro­found involve­ment of the Pen­ta­gon in research­ing coro­n­avirus­es like Covid-19, as well as DARPA’s deep involve­ment with com­pa­nies approved to begin work­ing on vac­cines. Now, Med­ica­go, anoth­er DARPA-fund­ed com­pa­ny, claims to have a vac­cine ready for tri­al. “. . . . Using plants and genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered agrobac­te­ria works faster than eggs also makes the vac­cine much eas­i­er to pro­duce at scale, which, in part, is why the U.S. mil­i­tary has invest­ed in the com­pa­ny. In 2010, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, put togeth­er a $100 mil­lion pro­gram dubbed Blue Angel to look into new forms of vac­cine dis­cov­ery and pro­duc­tion. A big chunk of that mon­ey went to Med­ica­go to build a facil­i­ty in North Car­oli­na, where they showed that they could find a vac­cine in just 20 days, then rapid­ly scale up pro­duc­tion. . . .”

Next, we turn to an arti­cle not­ing that the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the COVID-19 dis­ease has remark­able over­lap with a hypo­thet­i­cal dis­ease, dubbed “Dis­ease X.” In 2018, the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion empha­sized an alarm­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of “hypo­thet­i­cal” “Dis­ease X” that appears to be shared with SARS-CoV­‑2: the abil­i­ty to rapid­ly morph from a mild to dead­ly dis­ease. The sud­den turn towards a dead­ly dis­ease appears to be due, in part, to an over­ly aggres­sive immune response that ends up rav­aging the lungs. As one expert points out, this is the same pat­tern seen in the 1918 “Span­ish flu” pan­dem­ic.

In FTR #1117, we reviewed the fact that mil­i­tary researchers had suc­cess­ful­ly recov­ered DNA from that infa­mous 1918 flu virus. as will be seen below, that virus was re-cre­at­ed in a lab­o­ra­to­ry in 2005.

So the WHO warned a cou­ple years ago about a hypo­thet­i­cal “Dis­ease X” dis­ease that was high­ly con­ta­gious with the abil­i­ty to spread with asymp­to­mati­cal­ly, is mild in most cas­es but with the abil­i­ty to sud­den­ly turn dead­ly. And here we are two years lat­er with a dis­ease that fits that pro­file. It was a pret­ty pre­scient pre­dic­tion.

Note, also, that Mar­i­on Koopmans–head of viro­science at Eras­mus Med­ical Cen­ter in Rot­ter­dam and one of the WHO per­son­nel who opined that Covid-19 was “Dis­ease X” worked at the same insti­tu­tion as the researchers who per­formed gain-of-func­tion exper­i­ments on the HN51 Avian Bird Flu virus, adapt­ing to fer­rets and mak­ing it com­mu­ni­ca­ble through casu­al res­pi­ra­to­ry activ­i­ty. Those GOF experiements were also dis­cussed in FTR #1117.

” . . . . From recent reports about the stealthy ways the so-called Covid-19 virus spreads and maims, a pic­ture is emerg­ing of an enig­mat­ic pathogen whose effects are main­ly mild, but which occa­sion­al­ly — and unpre­dictably — turns dead­ly in the sec­ond week. . . . The doc­tor [Li Wen­liang], who was in good health pri­or to his infec­tion, appeared to have a rel­a­tive­ly mild case until his lungs became inflamed, lead­ing to the man’s death two days lat­er, said Lin­fa Wang, who heads the emerg­ing infec­tious dis­ease pro­gram at Duke-Nation­al Uni­ver­si­ty of Sin­ga­pore Med­ical School. A sim­i­lar pat­tern of inflam­ma­tion not­ed among Covid-19 patients was observed in those who suc­cumbed to the 1918 ‘Span­ish flu’ pan­dem­ic . . .”

We won­der if vari­ants of the Covid-19 may have been mod­i­fied to infect the upper res­pi­ra­to­ry tract and/or mod­i­fied with DNA from the res­ur­rect­ed 1918 “Span­ish Flu”?

Peter Daszak of the WHO once again, voiced the (self-ful­fill­ing?) opinion/prophecy that Covid-19 is indeed “Dis­ease X.”

A key fac­tor spurring our sus­pi­cion con­cern­ing genet­ic-engi­neer­ing of one or more vari­ant of the Covid-19 virus con­cerns a 2015 Gain-of-Func­tion exper­i­ment: “Ralph Bar­ic, an infec­tious-dis­ease researcher at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na at Chapel Hill, last week (Novem­ber 9) pub­lished a study on his team’s efforts to engi­neer a virus with the sur­face pro­tein of the SHC014 coro­n­avirus, found in horse­shoe bats in Chi­na, and the back­bone of one that caus­es human-like severe acute res­pi­ra­to­ry syn­drome (SARS) in mice. The hybrid virus could infect human air­way cells and caused dis­ease in mice. . . . The results demon­strate the abil­i­ty of the SHC014 sur­face pro­tein to bind and infect human cells, val­i­dat­ing con­cerns that this virus—or oth­er coro­n­avirus­es found in bat species—may be capa­ble of mak­ing the leap to peo­ple with­out first evolv­ing in an inter­me­di­ate host, Nature report­ed. They also reignite a debate about whether that infor­ma­tion jus­ti­fies the risk of such work, known as gain-of-func­tion research. ‘If the [new] virus escaped, nobody could pre­dict the tra­jec­to­ry,’ Simon Wain-Hob­son, a virol­o­gist at the Pas­teur Insti­tute in Paris, told Nature. . . .”

The above-men­tioned Ralph Baric–who did the gain-of-func­tion mod­i­fi­ca­tion on the Horse­shoe Bat coro­n­avirus, has been select­ed to engi­neer the Covid-19.

Note what might be termed a “viro­log­ic Juras­sic Park” man­i­fes­ta­tion: ” . . . . . . . . The tech­nol­o­gy imme­di­ate­ly cre­at­ed bio-weapon wor­ries. . . . Researchers at the US Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC) drove that point home in 2005 when they res­ur­rect­ed the influen­za virus that killed tens of mil­lions in 1918–1919. . . .”