FTR #1130 Bio-Psy-Op Apocalypse Now, Part 6: The Magic Virus Theory, Part 3
In addition to reviewing and highlighting cogent arguments that the SARS-Cov2 (Covid-19) virus may indeed have been made in a laboratory, the program examines significant aspects of the heretofore puzzling epidemiology of the virus. (We do NOT believe that the virus was synthesized by China, as “Team Trump” is charging.)
First, however, the broadcast sets forth information about the quest for a Covid-19 vaccine.
The makeup of Donald Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed” program to develop a Covid-19 vaccine in record time is alarming. (No vaccine has ever been developed for human use in less than four years.)
“Operation Warp Speed”:
1.–Is headed by Moncef Slaoui, formerly the chairman of Moderna’s product development committee: ” . . . . Dr. Slaoui served on the board of Moderna, a biotechnology company that has an experimental coronavirus vaccine that just entered Phase 2 of clinical trials to determine if it is effective. As the chairman of the Moderna board’s product development committee, Dr. Slaoui might have been privy to the early indications of tests of whether the company’s approach appeared promising, now that it is being injected into human subjects. . . .”
2.–Is seen by Slaoui as promising by Slaoui, who may well be referencing tests on Moderna’s mRNA vaccine: “. . . . Dr. Slaoui, now a venture capitalist, said that he had ‘recently seen early data from a clinical trial with a coronavirus vaccine, and these data made me feel even more confident that we will be able to deliver a few hundred million doses of vaccine’ — enough to inoculate much of the United States — ‘by the end of 2020.’ . . . .”
3.–Will be assisted by a four-star general: ” . . . . . . . . Mr. Slaoui will serve as the chief adviser on the effort, and Gen. Gustave F. Perna, a four-star general who is in charge the Army Matériel Command, will be the chief operating officer. . . .”
4.–Perna was recruited by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs: ” . . . . General Perna, who runs the Army’s complex supply chain, said that he was asked by Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to help run the manufacturing logistics related to the vaccine development. . . .”
Note that Moncef Slaoui holds 10 million dollars worth of Moderna stock, which has tripled in value since the Covid-19 outbreak began:” . . . . The former pharma executive tapped by President Donald Trump to lead the federal government’s hunt for a COVID-19 vaccine has more than $10 million in stock options in one of the companies receiving federal funding. . . . Described across four separate filings, Slaoui has 155,438 options in Moderna. The stake is worth $10,366,000 at Moderna’s current share price, $66.69 at the time of publication. Moderna shares have almost tripled in value during 2020. The $66.69 figure represents an increase of 184% from the $23.46 it was trading for on January 1. . . .” (The day the program was recorded, Moderna’s stock increased by 25% in value, and Slaoui announced he would sell his stock.)
In past posts and programs, we have noted the Moderna–one of the companies selected to develop a Covid-19 vaccine, has been substantially underwritten by the Pentagon (DARPA).
Key points of discussion in that regard:
1.–Moderna is using novel vaccine technology using the injection of genetic material to create antibodies. This technology has never been used on human beings. “. . . . The second pharmaceutical company that was selected by CEPI to develop a vaccine for the new coronavirus is Moderna Inc., which will develop a vaccine for the novel coronavirus of concern in collaboration with the U.S. NIH and which will be funded entirely by CEPI. The vaccine in question, as opposed to Inovio’s DNA vaccine, will be a messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine. Though different than a DNA vaccine, mRNA vaccines still use genetic material ‘to direct the body’s cells to produce intracellular, membrane or secreted proteins.’ Moderna’s mRNA treatments, including its mRNA vaccines, were largely developed using a $25 million grant from DARPA and it often touts is strategic alliance with DARPA in press releases. . . .”
2.–The technology has alarming possible negative side-effects. “. . . . Both DNA and mRNA vaccines involve the introduction of foreign and engineered genetic material into a person’s cells and past studies have found that such vaccines ‘possess significant unpredictability and a number of inherent harmful potential hazards’ and that ‘there is inadequate knowledge to define either the probability of unintended events or the consequences of genetic modifications.’ Nonetheless, the climate of fear surrounding the coronavirus outbreak could be enough for the public and private sector to develop and distribute such controversial treatments due to fear about the epidemic potential of the current outbreak. . . .”
3.–Looming large in the background of the Moderna vaccine technology is DARPA funding of “gene drive” technology. “. . . . Concerns about Pentagon experiments with biological weapons have garnered renewed media attention, particularly after it was revealed in 2017 that DARPA was the top funder of the controversial ‘gene drive’ technology, which has the power to permanently alter the genetics of entire populations while targeting others for extinction. At least two of DARPA’s studies using this controversial technology were classified and ‘focused on the potential military application of gene drive technology and use of gene drives in agriculture,’ according to media reports. . . . Co-director of the ETC Group Jim Thomas said that this technology may be used as a biological weapon: ‘Gene drives are a powerful and dangerous new technology and potential biological weapons could have disastrous impacts on peace, food security and the environment, especially if misused, The fact that gene drive development is now being primarily funded and structured by the US military raises alarming questions about this entire field.’ . . . . However, the therapies being developed by Inovio, Moderna and the University of Queensland are in alignment with DARPA’s objectives regarding gene editing and vaccine technology. For instance, in 2015, DARPA geneticist Col. Daniel Wattendorf described how the agency was investigating a ‘new method of vaccine production [that] would involve giving the body instructions for making certain antibodies. Because the body would be its own bioreactor, the vaccine could be produced much faster than traditional methods and the result would be a higher level of protection.’ . . . .”
As discussed in FTR #1124–among other programs–it is now possible to create ANY virus from scratch, using “mail-order” or “designer” genes. 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. . . . 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: ‘The history of humanity is a history of war. Scientific advances quickly lead to developments in weapons technology. . . .‘Biotechnology and genetic knowledge are equally open to this type of malign use. . . .”
We highlight information presented in FTR #1129, for purposes of emphasizing the flimsy nature of the argument presented in a paper from Nature Medicine.
Many scientific and medical people dismissing the argument that the Covid-19 coronavirus may have been created in a laboratory may be acting out of the sincere desire to preclude a full-dress Cold War between the U.S. and China. The Trump administration has tirelessly flogged the “China did it and it came from a laboratory” meme. Many liberals who dismissed the obvious fact that President Kennedy was murdered by a cabal of powerful U.S. national security interests did so because of what Peter Dale Scott calls a “level one cover-up”–alleged Soviet and/or Castro Cuban manipulation of Lee Harvey Oswald, fabricated by the executioners themselves.
Two telling, thoughtful, substantive critiques of the Nature Medicine article shed light on the flimsy nature of its arguments.
It would not be unfair to characterize the article as “The Warren Report” of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Genetic Engineering
Like the Bible, it is open to serious scientific refutation: ” . . . . To put it simply, the authors are saying that SARS-CoV‑2 was not deliberately engineered because if it were, it would have been designed differently. However, the London-based molecular geneticist Dr Michael Antoniou commented that this line of reasoning fails to take into account that there are a number of laboratory-based systems that can select for high affinity RBD variants that are able to take into account the complex environment of a living organism. This complex environment may impact the efficiency with which the SARS-CoV spike protein can find the ACE2 receptor and bind to it. An RBD selected via these more realistic real-world experimental systems would be just as ‘ideal’, or even more so, for human ACE2 binding than any RBD that a computer model could predict. And crucially, it would likely be different in amino acid sequence. So the fact that SARS-CoV‑2 doesn’t have the same RBD amino acid sequence as the one that the computer program predicted in no way rules out the possibility that it was genetically engineered. . . .”
Dr. Michael Antoniou notes that different genetic engineering processes than the one highlighted in the Nature Medicine paper can be used: ” . . . . There is another method by which an enhanced-infectivity virus can be engineered in the lab. A well-known alternative process that could have been used has the cumbersome name of “directed iterative evolutionary selection process”. In this case, it would involve using genetic engineering to generate a large number of randomly mutated versions of the SARS-CoV spike protein receptor binding domain (RBD), which would then be selected for strong binding to the ACE2 receptor and consequently high infectivity of human cells. . . .”
The notion that the “Nature Medicine” authors had not heard of the above process is not credible: ” . . . . Such a directed iterative evolutionary selection process is a frequently used method in laboratory research. So there is little or no possibility that the Nature Medicine article authors haven’t heard of it – not least, as it is considered so scientifically important that its inventors were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2018. . . .”
Of more than passing significance is another article that finds serious fault with the “Nature Medicine” paper. ” . . . . Professor Stuart Newman, professor of cell biology and anatomy at New York Medical College, says that a key argument used to deny that it could be a genetically engineered strain that escaped from a laboratory actually points to the exact opposite. In other words, it indicates that SARS-CoV‑2 could well be genetically engineered and that it could have escaped from a lab. . . . As Adam Lauring, an associate professor of microbiology, immunology and infectious diseases at the University of Michigan Medical School, has noted, Andersen’s paper argues that, ‘the SARS-CoV‑2 virus has some key differences in specific genes relative to previously identified coronaviruses – the ones a laboratory would be working with. This constellation of changes makes it unlikely that it is the result of a laboratory ‘escape’.‘But Professor Newman says that this is totally unconvincing because ‘The ‘key differences’ were in regions of the coronavirus spike protein that were the subject of genetic engineering experiments in labs around the world (mainly in the US and China) for two decades.’ . . .”
Professor Newman goes on to highlight other, serious flaws in the argument: ” . . . In an email interview with GMWatch, Newman, who is editor-in-chief of the journal Biological Theory and co-author (with Tina Stevens) of the book Biotech Juggernaut, amplified this speculation by noting, ‘The Nature Medicine paper points to variations in two sites of the spike protein of the new coronavirus that the authors claim must have arisen by natural selection in the wild. However, genetic engineering of one of these sites, the ACE2 receptor binding domain, has been proposed since 2005 in order to help generate vaccines against these viruses (see this paper). It is puzzling that the authors of the Nature Medicine commentary did not cite this paper, which appeared in the prominent journal Science.’ Moreover, Newman added, “The second site that Andersen et al. assert arose by natural means, a target of enzyme cleavage not usually found in this class of viruses, was in fact introduced by genetic engineering in a similar coronavirus in a paper they do cite. This was done to explore mechanisms of pathogenicity. . . . .”
Worth noting, again, is the British Medical Association’s warning discussed in FTR #1129, as well as above: ” . . . .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. . . .”
As the GMWatch authors conclude: ” . . . . Such ‘enhanced infectivity’ research is carried out on viruses all over the world (and not just in China) to investigate their behaviour and to develop vaccines and other therapies, as well as for ‘biodefence’ purposes. . . .”
Reports are now emerging of possible Covid-19 infection among athletes who participated at the Military World Games in Wuhan in October 19.
We have speculated at some length about the possibility that infecting those very healthy, superbly-conditioned individuals might have been an excellent vehicle for spreading the virus around the world.
Further discussion of this can be found in FTR #‘s 1118 and 1122. We note that China has speculated about the Wuhan Military World Games being a vehicle for the U.S. to spread the infection.
We have noted that language is, past a point, inadequate to analyze and discuss some of the major considerations in the Covid-19 “op.” A bio-weapons would require a very small number of agents in order to be effectively disseminated. In addition, we note that–in the age of mind control–an operative can be dispensed to perform a function without their knowledge.
In addition to French athletes, contingents from Sweden, Spain and Italy appear to have become infected. The apparent infection of the French athletes pre-dates the first confirmed case in China by 20 days.
A fish merchant who worked near Charles De Gaulle Airport tested positive for the virus on December 27.
The apparently infected athletes participating in the Military World Games further complicates the puzzling epidemiology of the virus.
Doctors quoted in a New York Times piece underscore the anomalous epidemiology of the virus: ” . . . . In San Jose, tissue sampling from a woman who died on Feb. 6 revealed that she was probably the first known person in the U.S. whose death was linked to the coronavirus — a strong sign that the virus may have been circulating in that part of Northern California in January. But was it part of a large, previously unrecognized outbreak? . . .
“. . . . Dr. George Rutherford, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco, theorized that perhaps the woman, who worked for a company that had an office in Wuhan, was one of only a small number of people who contracted the virus at that time and that transmissions probably petered out for some reason. Otherwise, he said, the region would have seen a much bigger outbreak. . . .
“. . . . Dr. [Trevor] Bedford said he also believed this was the more likely scenario, noting that up to half of people with coronavirus infections have no symptoms. . . .
“. . . . There could have been a tiny number of isolated coronavirus cases among travelers to the United States in December, Dr. Bedford said. But it is pretty clear that none of them spread.
“In part, scientists can tell that by looking at the genomic fingerprints of each case. But another clue is the rapid rate at which the virus spreads, Dr. Rutherford said. . . . Researchers are not seeing any chains that appear to go that far back. . . .”
Leading the Trump administration’s rhetorical and political charge against China is Mike Pompeo. Charging that the virus “escaped” from a lab in Wuhan and equivocating about whether that release was intentional, Koch brothers-protege Pompeo cited alleged duplicity on behalf of China’s communist party in connection with the virus. ” . . . . ‘I can tell you that there is a significant amount of evidence that this came from that laboratory in Wuhan,’ Pompeo said on ABC’s ‘This Week’ Sunday. ‘Do you think they intentionally released that virus, or it was an accident in the lab?’ Co-Anchor Martha Raddatz pressed. ‘I can’t answer your question about that,’ he said, ‘because the Chinese Communist Party has refused to cooperate with world health experts.’ . . .”
The Chinese medical and scientific establishment has worked closely with counterparts globally in an attempt to analyze and treat the virus.
The highly anomalous epidemiology, the lack of symptoms in half of infected patients, the wide variety of symptoms the virus causes and, lastly, the fact that this was a novel virus and resulting infection are all factors to be considered in evaluating the timeliness of the Chinese response.
Pompeo also asserts that the virus was not made in a laboratory.
Next, we highlight a misleading story in Rupert Murdoch’s “The Daily Telegraph” out of Sydney, Australia. The story alleges that the Five Eyes electronic intelligence network has corroborated the “it came from a Chinese lab” meme.
Of more than passing interest is the disclosure that the project on bat-borne coronaviruses conducted in the Wuhan laboratory was a joint U.S./Chinese project, and that Ralph Baric was a key American partner in the project.
This is the undertaking about which we have reported and discussed extensively in the past! ” . . . . One of Dr Shi’s co-authors on that paper, Professor Ralph Baric from North Carolina University, said in an interview with ‘Science Daily’ at the time: ‘This virus is highly pathogenic and treatments developed against the original SARS virus in 2002 and the ZMapp drugs used to fight ebola fail to neutralise and control this particular virus.’ . . . .”
Baric was the selectee to reconstruct the SARS Cov2 virus from scratch. Note that the article below discusses the U.S. suspension of the “gain of function” experiments and 2017 resumption of same, somehow spinning this into the “China did it” disinformation.
The military has links to the Wuhan lab in question: ” . . . . Furthermore, DARPA and the Pentagon’s past history with bioweapons and their more recent experiments on genetic alteration and extinction technologies as well as bats and coronaviruses in proximity to China have been largely left out of the narrative, despite the information being publicly available. Also left out of the media narrative have been the direct ties of both the USAMRIID and DARPA-partnered Duke University to the city of Wuhan, including its Institute of Medical Virology. . . .”
A “Guardian” article sources UK intelligence assets claiming that the 15-page dossier didn’t come from a Five Eyes intelligence assessment. They assert that it was based on open-source materials and put forward by the US as “a tool for building a counter-narrative and applying pressure to China.”
We conclude with analysis of Trump’s deputy national security adviser.
Against the background of the Trump administration’s anti-China campaign rhetoric and attempts to pin the blame for Covid-19 on a “laboratory” leak and/or deliberate release, we note that the offensive is being pushed by The Donald’s deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger.
“. . . . Matthew Pottinger, the deputy national security adviser who reported on SARS outbreaks as a journalist in China, pressed intelligence agencies in January to gather information that might support any origin theory linked to a lab. . . .”
Pottinger is the son of former Assistant Attorney General J. Stanley Pottinger.
Pottinger, Senior was: Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights under Nixon and Ford; reported by Donald Freed and Fred Landis (in “Death in Washington”) to have foiled investigations into the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Orlando Letelier; the attorney for the Hashemi brothers in the October Surprise investigation; a close personal friend of George H.W. Bush (for whom CIA headquarters was named) and, last but certainly not least, Gloria Steinem’s lover for nine years.
Despite the fact that Steinem touted her CIA background as good journalistic credentials in both “The New York Times” and “The Washington Post” (both with long-standing CIA links themselves), Pottinger has defended her against charges that she worked for the CIA!!
Worth noting, as well, is the fact that the Letelier assassination was one of the murders conducted under Operation Condor, assisted by the CIA. Letelier was killed by a car bomb in Washington D.C., while J.Stanley Pottinger’s good friend George H.W. Bush was in charge of the CIA when Letelier was hit.
(We have covered Operation Condor in numerous programs, including AFA #19. One of the operational centers of Condor was the Chilean Nazi enclave Colonia Dignidad. In FTR #839, we set forth author Peter Levenda’s brave, frightening visit to “The Colony.” This should be digested by anyone interested in the history of which Pottinger, Sr., is a part.)
One wonders if Matthew may have followed J. Stanley into the CIA, if in fact Daddio is Agency, as Mr. Emory suspects.
In FTR #s 998, 999, 1000, we set forth what Mr. Emory calls “weaponized feminism.” Refashioning the doctrine of advancing the cause of women into a legal and political weapon for destroying targeted men, dominant manifestations of the #MeToo movement have served the cause of the far right.
Resembling–in its essence–the “libidinal McCarthyism” of Arthur Miller’s play “The Crucible,” many high-profile manifestations of #MeToo have been propelled by evidentiary material that ranges from dubious to ludicrous to non-existent.
We find it more than coincidental that Bernie Sanders supporter Tara Reade’s shape-shifting accusations against Joe Biden have surfaced decades after the alleged incident–coinciding with Biden’s challenging of Trump and with Pottinger, Jr. helping to direct the administration’s traffic.
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