FTR #1132 Bio-Psy-Op Apocalypse Now, Part 8: Remdesivir Uber Alles

This broad­cast details the process of vet­ting the anti-Covid-19 drug remde­sivir, high­light­ing the insti­tu­tion­al short­cuts tak­en in test­ing the prod­uct, as well as the dubi­ous nature of the bil­lion­aires net­work­ing with offi­cials involved in the approval process.

Before ana­lyz­ing remde­sivir, how­ev­er, we update dis­cus­sion about the SARS CoV‑2 virus hav­ing been engi­neered, not­ing joint U.S.-Chinese projects in which bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es were genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered. The process­es used to mod­i­fy the virus­es would not show any overt evi­dence of human manip­u­la­tion.

Most impor­tant­ly, these projects received financ­ing from insti­tu­tions with doc­u­ment­ed links to U.S. intel­li­gence and mil­i­tary inter­ests.

Research into the his­to­ry of GOF (gain-of-func­tion) work on bat coro­n­avirus­es at the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy indi­cates mul­ti­ple areas of U.S. intel­li­gence pres­ence in that work. 

It was pub­licly dis­closed in a 2017 paper that the US and Chi­na col­lab­o­rat­ed on “gain-of-func­tion” research on bat coro­n­avirus­es to infect humans and that the work received fund­ing from the Unit­ed States Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Development–a fre­quent cut-out for the CIA.

In addi­tion, the work was also fund­ed in part by the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health, which have col­lab­o­rat­ed with both CIA and the Pen­ta­gon in BSL‑4 (Bio-Safe­ty-Lev­el 4) projects. 

The Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy has also part­nered with the USAMRIID since the mid-1980’s.

Impor­tant to note is the fact that it was pub­lic infor­ma­tion that some of this work was done in a biosafe­ty-lev­el 2 lab­o­ra­to­ry, giv­ing an observ­er intent on under­tak­ing a bio­log­i­cal war­fare covert oper­a­tion against Chi­na use­ful field intel­li­gence about the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of WIV for such an “op.”

1.–The inves­ti­ga­tion of infec­tiv­i­ty used unde­tectable meth­ods, negat­ing arti­cles claim­ing the virus could not have been genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered: ” Evi­dence has emerged that researchers at the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy (WIV) in Chi­na, work­ing in col­lab­o­ra­tion with sci­en­tists in the USA, have been genet­i­cal­ly engi­neer­ing bat virus­es for the past sev­er­al years to inves­ti­gate infec­tiv­i­ty – using unde­tectable meth­ods. . . . The evi­dence rebuts claims by jour­nal­ists and some sci­en­tists that the SARS-CoV­‑2 virus respon­si­ble for the cur­rent COVID-19 pan­dem­ic could not have been genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered because it lacks the ‘signs’ or ‘sig­na­tures’ that sup­pos­ed­ly would be left behind by genet­ic engi­neer­ing tech­niques. . . .”

2.–Dr. Richard Ebright not­ed that the research was joint­ly fund­ed by the U.S. and Chi­na, that Peter Daszak (about whom we have voiced reser­va­tions in the past) was one of the Amer­i­can col­lab­o­ra­tors. Fur­ther­more, the research was fund­ed in part by USAID, a com­mon U.S. intel­li­gence cut-out. ” . . . . Dr Richard Ebright, an infec­tious dis­ease expert at Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty (USA), has alert­ed the pub­lic to evi­dence that WIV and US-based researchers were genet­i­cal­ly engi­neer­ing bat virus­es to inves­ti­gate their abil­i­ty to infect humans, using com­mon­ly used meth­ods that leave no sign or sig­na­ture of human manip­u­la­tion. Ebright flagged up a sci­en­tif­ic paper pub­lished in 2017 by WIV sci­en­tists, includ­ing Shi Zhengli, the virol­o­gist lead­ing the research into bat coro­n­avirus­es, work­ing in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Peter Daszak of the US-based Eco­Health Alliance. Fund­ing was shared between Chi­nese and US insti­tu­tions, the lat­ter includ­ing the US Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health and USAID. The researchers report hav­ing con­duct­ed virus infec­tiv­i­ty exper­i­ments where genet­ic mate­r­i­al is com­bined from dif­fer­ent vari­eties of SARS-relat­ed coro­n­avirus­es to form nov­el ‘chimeric’ ver­sions. This formed part of their research into what muta­tions were need­ed to allow cer­tain bat coro­n­avirus­es to bind to the human ACE2 recep­tor – a key step in the human infec­tiv­i­ty of SARS-CoV­‑2. . . .”

3.–Furthermore, the researchers used a type of genet­ic engi­neer­ing that leaves no sig­na­ture of human manip­u­la­tion: ” . . . . The WIV sci­en­tists did this, Ebright points out, ‘using ‘seam­less lig­a­tion’ pro­ce­dures that leave no sig­na­tures of human manip­u­la­tion’. This is note­wor­thy because it is a type of genet­ic engi­neer­ing that Ander­sen and his team exclud­ed from their inves­ti­ga­tion into whether SARS-CoV­‑2 could have been engi­neered – and it was in use at the very lab that is the prime sus­pect for a lab escape. . . .”

4.–In addi­tion, Ebright high­lights the 2015 work done by Ralph Bar­ic in col­lab­o­ra­tion with WIV’s Shi Zhengli–a project we have dis­cussed at length in the past: ” . . . . A group of sci­en­tists from the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na in the USA, with the WIV’s Shi Zhengli as a col­lab­o­ra­tor, pub­lished a study in 2015 describ­ing sim­i­lar exper­i­ments involv­ing chimeric coro­n­avirus­es, which were also cre­at­ed using stan­dard unde­tectable genet­ic engi­neer­ing tech­niques. . . .”

5.–Ebright also cites work done in a bio-safe­ty lev­el 2 lab­o­ra­to­ry. : ” . . . . Ebright points out that the paper states, ‘All work with the infec­tious virus was per­formed under biosafe­ty lev­el 2 con­di­tions’. This lev­el is suit­able for work involv­ing agents of only ‘mod­er­ate poten­tial haz­ard to per­son­nel and the envi­ron­ment’. . . .But they are not at fault in fail­ing to use BSL‑4 for this work, as SARS coro­n­avirus­es are not aerosol-trans­mit­ted. The work does, how­ev­er, fall under biosafe­ty lev­el 3, which is for work involv­ing microbes that can cause seri­ous and poten­tial­ly lethal dis­ease via inhala­tion. . . .”

6.–Dr. Jonathan Lath­am under­scored the reser­va­tions expressed by many con­cern­ing “gain-of-func­tion” exper­i­ments on these kinds of coro­n­avirus­es: ” . . . . The bio­sci­en­tist Dr Jonathan Lath­am crit­i­cised the kind of research on bat coro­n­avirus­es that has been tak­ing place in Wuhan and the USA as ‘pro­vid­ing an evo­lu­tion­ary oppor­tu­ni­ty’ for such virus­es ‘to jump into humans’. Lath­am, who has a doc­tor­ate in virol­o­gy, argues that this kind of work is sim­ply ‘pro­vid­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for con­t­a­m­i­na­tion events and leak­ages from labs, which hap­pen on a rou­tine basis’. . . .”

U.S. Army Med­ical Research Insti­tute of Infec­tious Disease–located at Ft. Det­rick and closed by the CDC for safe­ty vio­la­tions in August, 2019.

Note, again, that the whole world was informed back in 2017 that  dan­ger­ous research involv­ing the cre­ation of bat coro­n­avirus­es to infect humans was being car­ried out in Chi­na.  Note again, that the research was fund­ed in part by the US, includ­ing USAID–a fre­quent U.S. intel­li­gence cut-out; the NIH–which has active­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed with both CIA and Pen­ta­gon. The WIV has also part­nered with the USAMRIID.

Flash for­ward a cou­ple of years and we have a night­mare virus that ini­tial­ly appeared to pop up near­by the WIV, with the Trump admin­is­tra­tion aggres­sive­ly push­ing the idea that it escaped from that lab.

In that con­text, we note the fol­low­ing:

1.–In 2017, Chi­na got approval for its first BSL‑4 lab in Wuhan, the first of sev­er­al planned BSL‑4 labs. “A lab­o­ra­to­ry in Wuhan is on the cusp of being cleared to work with the world’s most dan­ger­ous pathogens. The move is part of a plan to build between five and sev­en biosafe­ty level‑4 (BSL‑4) labs across the Chi­nese main­land by 2025, and has gen­er­at­ed much excite­ment, as well as some con­cerns. . . . Some sci­en­tists out­side Chi­na wor­ry about pathogens escap­ing, and the addi­tion of a bio­log­i­cal dimen­sion to geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions between Chi­na and oth­er nations. . . .”

2.–As will be seen below, the pro­lif­er­a­tion of BSL‑4 labs has sparked wor­ries about “dual use” tech­nol­o­gy: ” . . . . The expan­sion of BSL-4-lab net­works in the Unit­ed States and Europe over the past 15 years — with more than a dozen now in oper­a­tion or under con­struc­tion in each region — also met with resis­tance, includ­ing ques­tions about the need for so many facil­i­ties. . . .”

3.–The above-men­tioned Richard Ebright notes that the pro­lif­er­a­tion of BSL‑4 labs will spur sus­pi­cion of “dual use” tech­nol­o­gy, in which osten­si­ble med­ical research masks bio­log­i­cal war­fare research: ” . . . . But Ebright is not con­vinced of the need for more than one BSL‑4 lab in main­land Chi­na. He sus­pects that the expan­sion there is a reac­tion to the net­works in the Unit­ed States and Europe, which he says are also unwar­rant­ed. He adds that gov­ern­ments will assume that such excess capac­i­ty is for the poten­tial devel­op­ment of bioweapons. ‘These facil­i­ties are inher­ent­ly dual use,’ he says. . . .”

In the con­text of the above arti­cles, note that the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health have also part­nered with CIA and the Pen­ta­gon, as under­scored by an arti­cle about a BSL‑4 lab at Boston Uni­ver­si­ty. Note that the U.S. and Europe have twelve BSL4 labs apiece, Tai­wan has two, while Chi­na has one:

1.–As the arti­cle notes, as of 2007, the U.S. had “more than a dozen” BSL4 labs–China com­mis­sioned its first as of 2017. a ten­fold increase in fund­ing for BSL4 labs occurred because of the anthrax attacks of 2001. Those attacks might be seen as some­thing of a provo­ca­tion, spurring a dra­mat­ic increase in “dual use” biowar­fare research, under the cov­er of “legit­i­mate” medical/scientific research. In FTR #1128, we hypoth­e­sized about the milieu of Stephen Hat­fill and apartheid-linked inter­ests as pos­si­ble authors of a vec­tor­ing of New York City with Sars COV2: ” . . . . Before the anthrax mail­ings of 2001, the Unit­ed States had just two BSL4 labs—both with­in the razor-wire con­fines of gov­ern­ment-owned cam­pus­es. Now, thanks to a ten­fold increase in funding—from $200 mil­lion in 2001 to $2 bil­lion in 2006—more than a dozen such facil­i­ties can be found at uni­ver­si­ties and pri­vate com­pa­nies across the coun­try. . . .”

2.–The Boston Uni­ver­si­ty lab exem­pli­fies the Pen­ta­gon and CIA pres­ence in BSL‑4 facil­i­ty “dual use”: ” . . . . But some sci­en­tists say that argu­ment obscures the true pur­pose of the cur­rent biode­fense boom: to study poten­tial bio­log­i­cal weapons. ‘The uni­ver­si­ty por­trays it as an emerg­ing infec­tious dis­ease lab,’ says David Ozonoff, a Boston Uni­ver­si­ty epi­demi­ol­o­gist whose office is right across the street from the new BSL4 facil­i­ty. ‘But they are talk­ing about study­ing things like small pox and inhala­tion anthrax, which pose no pub­lic health threat oth­er than as bioweapons.’ . . . The orig­i­nal NIH man­date for the lab indi­cat­ed that many groups—including the CIA and Depart­ment of Defense—would be allowed to use the lab for their own research, the nature of which BU might have lit­tle con­trol over. . . .”

Note, also that:

1.–The WIV has part­nered with the U.S. Army’s Med­ical Research Insti­tute of Infec­tious Dis­eases, locat­ed at Ft. Det­rick.

2.–In ear­ly August of 2019, short­ly before the record­ed start of the out­break in Wuhan, Chi­na, the U.S. Army Med­ical Research Insti­tute of Infec­tious Dis­eases at that facil­i­ty was closed down by the CDC due to mul­ti­ple safe­ty violations.“All research at a Fort Det­rick lab­o­ra­to­ry that han­dles high-lev­el dis­ease-caus­ing mate­r­i­al, such as Ebo­la, is on hold indef­i­nite­ly after the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion found the orga­ni­za­tion failed to meet biosafe­ty stan­dards. . . . The CDC sent a cease and desist order in July. After USAMRIID received the order from the CDC, its reg­is­tra­tion with the Fed­er­al Select Agent Pro­gram, which over­sees dis­ease-caus­ing mate­r­i­al use and pos­ses­sion, was sus­pend­ed. That sus­pen­sion effec­tive­ly halt­ed all bio­log­i­cal select agents and tox­in research at USAMRIID . . . .”

Fol­low­ing the update on the WIV and BSL‑4 lab­o­ra­to­ries, we piv­ot to analy­sis of the ele­va­tion of remde­sivir as the “go-to” treat­ment du jour for Covid-19. Of para­mount impor­tance is the remark­able time­line: The DSMB (data safe­ty and mon­i­tor­ing board) ” . . . . the DSMB for the remde­sivir study did not ever meet for an inter­im effi­ca­cy analy­sis, Lane said. All patients had been enrolled by April 20. The data for a DSMB meet­ing was cut off on April 22. The DSMB met and, on April 27, it made a rec­om­men­da­tion to the NIAID. . . . That deci­sion, Lane said, led the NIAID to con­clude that patients who had been giv­en place­bo should be offered remde­sivir, some­thing that start­ed hap­pen­ing after April 28. . . .” 

As will be seen, it was on 4/29 that Joe Gro­gan resigned. (See below.)

When pos­i­tive news on a NIAID study on the drug remde­sivir were released–on 4/29–it drove broad gains in the stock mar­ket. In FTR #1131, we not­ed that dis­clo­sures con­cern­ing pos­i­tive news about Mod­er­na’s exper­i­men­tal Covid-19 vac­cine also proved to be a sim­i­lar dri­ver of the stock mar­ket, as well as of Mod­er­na’s stock.

Dis­cus­sion of the hard details of sev­er­al remde­sivir tri­als begins with dis­cus­sion of an NIAID tri­al that helped move the mar­kets, as seen above. The tri­al was a mod­est suc­cess, indi­cat­ing that recov­ery for recent­ly infect­ed patients was about 31% faster than for place­bo. There was no sig­nif­i­cant sta­tis­ti­cal dif­fer­ence in mortality–the most impor­tant mea­sure of effec­tive­ness accord­ing to many experts.

” . . . . Dur­ing an appear­ance along­side Pres­i­dent Trump in the Oval Office, Antho­ny Fau­ci, the direc­tor of NIAID, part of the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health, said the data are a ‘very impor­tant proof of con­cept’ and that there was rea­son for opti­mism. He cau­tioned the data were not a ‘knock­out.’ At the same time, the study achieved its pri­ma­ry goal, which was to improve the time to recov­ery, which was reduced by four days for patients on remde­sivir. The pre­lim­i­nary data showed that the time to recov­ery was 11 days on remde­sivir com­pared to 15 days for place­bo, a 31% decrease. The mor­tal­i­ty rate for the remde­sivir group was 8%, com­pared to 11.6% for the place­bo group; that mor­tal­i­ty dif­fer­ence was not sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant. . . .”

Next we present a Stat News arti­cle on the inter­nal delib­er­a­tions behind the deci­sions to mod­i­fy the NIAID study. Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance is the DSMB delib­er­a­tion. Note the time­line of the DSMB delib­er­a­tion, com­bined with the announce­ment on 4/29 that drove the mar­kets high­er.

1.–The deci­sion was made to cut it short before the ques­tion of remdesivir’s impact on mor­tal­i­ty could be answered: ” . . . .The Nation­al Insti­tute of Aller­gy and Infec­tious Dis­eases has described to STAT in new detail how it made its fate­ful deci­sion: to start giv­ing remde­sivir to patients who had been assigned to receive a place­bo in the study, essen­tial­ly lim­it­ing researchers’ abil­i­ty to col­lect more data about whether the drug saves lives — some­thing the study, called ACTT‑1, sug­gests but does not prove. In the tri­al, 8% of the par­tic­i­pants giv­en remde­sivir died, com­pared with 11.6% of the place­bo group, a dif­fer­ence that was not sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant. A top NIAID offi­cial said he had no regrets about the deci­sion. ‘There cer­tain­ly was una­nim­i­ty with­in the insti­tute that this was the right thing to do,’ said H. Clif­ford Lane, NIAID’s clin­i­cal direc­tor. . . .”

2.–In addi­tion, patients sched­uled to receive place­bo received remde­sivir, instead. ” . . . . Steven Nis­sen, a vet­er­an tri­al­ist and car­di­ol­o­gist at the Cleve­land Clin­ic, dis­agreed that giv­ing place­bo patients remde­sivir was the right call. ‘I believe it is in society’s best inter­est to deter­mine whether remde­sivir can reduce mor­tal­i­ty, and with the release of this infor­ma­tion doing a place­bo-con­trolled tri­al to deter­mine if there is a mor­tal­i­ty ben­e­fit will be very dif­fi­cult,’ he said. ‘The ques­tion is: Was there a route, or is there a route, to deter­mine if the drug can pre­vent death?’ The deci­sion is ‘a lost oppor­tu­ni­ty,’ he said. . . .”

3.–Steven Nis­sen was not alone in his crit­i­cism of the NIAID’s deci­sion. ” . . . .Peter Bach, the direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Health Pol­i­cy and Out­comes at Memo­r­i­al Sloan Ket­ter­ing Can­cer Cen­ter, agreed with Nis­sen. ‘The core under­stand­ing of clin­i­cal research par­tic­i­pa­tion and clin­i­cal research con­duct is we run the tri­al rig­or­ous­ly to pro­vide the most accu­rate infor­ma­tion about the right treat­ment,’ he said. And that answer, he argued, should ide­al­ly have deter­mined whether remde­sivir saves lives. The rea­son we have shut our whole soci­ety down, Bach said, is not to pre­vent Covid-19 patients from spend­ing a few more days in the hos­pi­tal. It is to pre­vent patients from dying. ‘Mor­tal­i­ty is the right end­point,’ he said. . . .”

4.–Not only was the admin­is­tra­tion of remde­sivir instead of place­bo pri­or­i­tized, but the NIAID study itself was atten­u­at­ed! ” . . . . But the change in the study’s main goal also changed the way the study would be ana­lyzed. Now, the NIAID decid­ed, the analy­sis would be cal­cu­lat­ed when 400 patients out of the 1,063 patients the study enrolled had recov­ered. If remde­sivir turned out to be much more effec­tive than expect­ed, ‘inter­im’ analy­ses would be con­duct­ed at a third and two-thirds that number.The job of review­ing these analy­ses would fall to a com­mit­tee of out­side experts on what is known as an inde­pen­dent data and safe­ty mon­i­tor­ing board, or DSMB. . . .”

5.–The per­for­mance of the DSMB for the remde­sivir study is note­wor­thy: ” . . . . But the DSMB for the remde­sivir study did not ever meet for an inter­im effi­ca­cy analy­sis, Lane said. All patients had been enrolled by April 20. The data for a DSMB meet­ing was cut off on April 22. The DSMB met and, on April 27, it made a rec­om­men­da­tion to the NIAID. . . .”

6.–The DSMB meet­ing on 4/27 deter­mined the switch from place­bo to remde­sivir. Of para­mount impor­tance is the fact that this was JUST BEFORE the 4/29 announce­ment that drove the mar­kets high­er and the same day on which key Trump aide–and for­mer Gilead Sci­ences lob­by­ist Joe Gro­gan resigned! ” . . . . . That deci­sion, Lane said, led the NIAID to con­clude that patients who had been giv­en place­bo should be offered remde­sivir, some­thing that start­ed hap­pen­ing after April 28. . . .”

7.–Dr. Ethan Weiss gave an accu­rate eval­u­a­tion of the NIAID study: ” . . . . ‘We’ve squan­dered an incred­i­ble oppor­tu­ni­ty to do good sci­ence,’ [Dr. Ethan] Weiss said. ‘If we could ever go back and do some­thing all over, it would be the infra­struc­ture to actu­al­ly learn some­thing. Because we’re not learn­ing enough.’ . . . .”

Next, we ana­lyze a STAT News excerpt that goes into more of the con­cerns about the Gilead study design.

The Gilead study was designed with­out any con­trol group, so the ques­tion of how much remde­sivir actu­al­ly helps sick patients (or doesn’t help) can’t be defin­i­tive­ly answered by that study.

The arti­cle also gives Gilead’s expla­na­tion for why they left out a con­trol group: due to the lim­it­ed sup­plies of the drug the com­pa­ny decid­ed to pri­or­i­tize on pro­duc­ing more of the drug itself rather than a place­bo con­trol. It’s an expla­na­tion that only makes sense if pro­duc­ing place­bo dos­es was some­how a sig­nif­i­cant tech­ni­cal chal­lenge, which seems dubi­ous.

Due to a lack of a con­trol group, the study instead focus­es on answer­ing the ques­tion of whether or not the recov­ery times for patients dif­fers between groups receiv­ing a 10-day course of the drug vs a 5‑day course. The patients were severe­ly ill but not on ven­ti­la­tors when enrolled in the study (so the patients that need the drug most weren’t test­ed). The pre­lim­i­nary results released Wednes­day sug­gest there is no dif­fer­ence between the recov­ery times for the two groups.

1.–The Gilead study lacked a con­trol group: ” . . . .  But out­side experts in clin­i­cal tri­al design wor­ry that the results, instead of lead­ing to a clear pic­ture of whether the med­i­cine is effec­tive, will instead mud­dy the waters fur­ther. The main con­cern, they say, stems from the fact that the Gilead tri­al expect­ed to read out this week, which was con­duct­ed among patients with severe dis­ease, lacks a con­trol group — that is, patients who are ran­dom­ly assigned to receive the best treat­ment avail­able, but not remde­sivir. As designed, the only ran­dom­iza­tion is the dura­tion of treat­ment: either five days or 10 days of drug. With­out a true con­trol group of patients, many experts say, it will be dif­fi­cult to deter­mine whether remde­sivir is effec­tive. . . .”

2.–The above-men­tioned Steven Nis­sen summed up the use­ful­ness of the Gilead tri­al. ” . . . . ‘The over­all study itself has lit­tle or no sci­en­tif­ic val­ue since all patients are receiv­ing the drug,’ said Steven Nis­sen, the chief aca­d­e­m­ic offi­cer at the Cleve­land Clin­ic and lead inves­ti­ga­tor of many tri­als for heart drugs that have been approved by the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion. ‘The study, as designed, is essen­tial­ly use­less and can­not be used by the FDA for con­sid­er­a­tion of remde­sivir for approval to treat coro­n­avirus,’ Nis­sen said. . . .”

3.–Gilead’s spokesper­son alleged that the com­pa­ny had a lim­it­ed sup­ply of place­bo and remde­sivir. ” . . . . ‘In the ear­ly stages of the pan­dem­ic, we not only had a lim­it­ed sup­ply of remde­sivir but also a lim­it­ed sup­ply of the matched place­bo required for place­bo-con­trolled stud­ies,’ said Amy Flood, a Gilead spokesper­son. ‘We chose to pri­or­i­tize man­u­fac­tur­ing active drug over place­bo, and we pro­vid­ed our sup­ply of place­bo to Chi­na and NIAID for their stud­ies of remde­sivir.’ . . .”

5.–A num­ber of crit­ics shared Steven Nis­sen’s opin­ion about the sci­en­tif­ic val­ue of the study. ” . . . . Crit­ics point to Gilead’s deci­sion to com­pare two groups giv­en remde­sivir for either five days or 10 days. The prob­lem with this strat­e­gy, they say, is that an inef­fec­tive drug that did noth­ing and a very effec­tive drug that con­sis­tent­ly helped patients over­come the virus would look the same in such a study. Only if the 10-day course were more effec­tive, or if it was worse because of side effects, would the study have any clear result. . . .”

6.–Nissen was more opti­mistic about a sec­ond forth­com­ing Gilead tri­al. Sloan Ket­ter­ing’s Peter Bach did not share that opti­mism. ” . . . .Yet anoth­er tri­al in less sick patients, also run by Gilead, does have a con­trol group and may give a clear­er answer. Nis­sen sees ‘a rea­son­able study design.’ But Bach was more crit­i­cal, say­ing that even though that study has a con­trol group, the lack of a place­bo means the study might not be trust­wor­thy. That’s because its main goal, time to improve­ment of symp­toms, could be affect­ed by the per­cep­tions of clin­i­cians and the patients them­selves. Bach said the hos­pi­tals con­duct­ing the study ‘are eas­i­ly capa­ble of wrap­ping syringes in brown paper and blind­ing the whole thing. I don’t under­stand why you would run a tri­al like this.’ . . . .”

Although it was cut short due to the wan­ing of the pan­dem­ic in Chi­na, a WHO-leaked study was not encour­ag­ing with regard to remde­sivir’s effi­ca­cy as a treat­ment for Covid-19.

1.–The Chi­nese study was a ram­dom­ized con­trolled tri­al: ” . . . . Encour­ag­ing data from patients in that study at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go were described by researchers at a vir­tu­al town hall and obtained by STAT last week. How­ev­er, unlike those data, these new results are from a ran­dom­ized con­trolled tri­al, the med­ical gold stan­dard. . . .”

2.–The Chi­nese study found that remde­sivir was of no val­ue in pre­vent­ing Covid-19 deaths. As not­ed above, the effect of the drug on mor­tal­i­ty was the main con­sid­er­a­tion. Our soci­ety has not been shut down to afford peo­ple short­er stays in the hos­pi­tal, but to pre­vent death. ” . . . . Accord­ing to the sum­ma­ry of the Chi­na study, remde­sivir was ‘not asso­ci­at­ed with a dif­fer­ence in time to clin­i­cal improve­ment’ com­pared to a stan­dard of care con­trol. After one month, it appeared 13.9% of the remde­sivir patients had died com­pared to 12.8% of patients in the con­trol arm. The dif­fer­ence was not sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant. . . .”

3.–The Chi­nese study pro­duced a grim assess­ment of remde­sivir: ” . . . . ‘In this study of hos­pi­tal­ized adult patients with severe COVID-19 that was ter­mi­nat­ed pre­ma­ture­ly, remde­sivir was not asso­ci­at­ed with clin­i­cal or viro­log­i­cal ben­e­fits,’ the sum­ma­ry states. The study was ter­mi­nat­ed pre­ma­ture­ly because it was dif­fi­cult to enroll patients in Chi­na, where the num­ber of Covid-19 cas­es was decreas­ing. An out­side researcher said that the results mean that any ben­e­fit from remde­sivir is like­ly to be small. ‘If there is no ben­e­fit to remde­sivir in a study this size, this sug­gests that the over­all ben­e­fit of remde­sivir in this pop­u­la­tion with advanced infec­tion is like­ly to be small in the larg­er Gilead tri­al,’ said Andrew Hill, senior vis­it­ing research fel­low at Liv­er­pool Uni­ver­si­ty. . . .”

After dis­cussing a num­ber of prob­lems that Gilead Sci­ences may encounter in the pro­duc­tion of sig­nif­i­cant quan­ti­ties of remde­sivir to be effec­tive, the broad­cast con­cludes with dis­cus­sion of the inap­pro­pri­ate­ly-named “Sci­en­tists to Stop Covid-19.”

The remark­able han­dling of the NIAID study, the tim­ing of the announce­ment of the alto­geth­er lim­it­ed suc­cess of the atten­u­at­ed tri­al, and the rise in equi­ties as a result of the announce­ment may be best under­stood in the con­text of the role played in Trump pan­dem­ic deci­sion-mak­ing by an elite group of bil­lion­aires and scientists–including Peter Thiel and con­vict­ed felon Michael Milken (the “junk bond king”).

1.–” . . . . Call­ing them­selves ‘Sci­en­tists to Stop COVID-19,’ the col­lec­tion of top researchers, bil­lion­aires and indus­try cap­tains will act as an ‘ad hoc review board’ for the tor­rent of coro­n­avirus research, ‘weed­ing out’ flawed data before it reach­es pol­i­cy­mak­ers, the Wall Street Jour­nal report­ed on Mon­day. They are also act­ing as a go-between for phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies seek­ing to build a com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nel with Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials. The group . . . . has advised Nick Ayers, an aide to Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence, as well as oth­er agency heads, in the past month. Pence is head­ing up the White House coro­n­avirus task force. . . .”

2.–” . . . The brainy bunch is led by Thomas Cahill, a 33-year-old doc­tor who became a ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist . . . . Cahill’s clout comes from build­ing con­nec­tions through his invest­ment firm, New­path Part­ners, with Sil­i­con Valley’s Peter Thiel, the founder of Pay­Pal, and bil­lion­aire busi­ness­men Jim Palot­ta and Michael Milken. . . .”

Note that Thiel played a dom­i­nant role in bankrolling New­path Part­ners, and the oth­er finan­cial angel who ele­vat­ed Cahill–Brian Sheth–introduced him to Tom­my Hicks, Jr., the co-chair­man of the RNC. In FTR #‘s 1111 and 1112, we looked at Hicks’ net­work­ing with Steve Ban­non asso­ciate J. Kyle Bass, as well as his role in the inter-agency net­works dri­ving the anti-Chi­na effort.

1.–” . . . . At the helm of the effort: The 33-year-old and very-much-under-the-radar ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist Tom Cahill, who leads life sci­ences-focused New­path Part­ners. Cahill com­plet­ed his M.D. and PhD at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty a mere two years ago before land­ing at blue-chip invest­ment firm Rap­tor Group through a friend. He went on to found New­path with some $125 mil­lion after impress­ing well-con­nect­ed names like ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist Peter Thiel and Vista Equi­ty Part­ners co-founder Bri­an Sheth. . . . It was through Sheth, for exam­ple, that Sci­en­tists to Stop Covid-19 con­nect­ed with the co-chair­man of the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee, Thomas Hicks Jr. . . .”

The fed­er­al gov­ern­men­t’s extreme focus on remde­sivir has been shaped, in large mea­sure, by the influ­ence of “Sci­en­tists to Stop COVID-19”:

1.–“Scientists to Stop Covid-19” is shep­herd­ing remde­sivir: ” . . . . Sci­en­tists to Stop COVID-19 rec­om­mends that in this phase, the U.S. Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion (FDA) should work to coor­di­nate with Gilead phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals to focus on expe­dit­ing the results of clin­i­cal tri­als of remde­sivir, a drug iden­ti­fied as a poten­tial treat­ment for COVID-19. The group also rec­om­mends admin­is­ter­ing dos­es of the drug to patients in an ear­ly stage of infec­tion, and notes remde­sivir will essen­tial­ly be a place­hold­er until a more effec­tive treat­ment is pro­duced.

2.–The group is doing so by atten­u­at­ing the reg­u­la­to­ry process for coro­n­avirus drugs: “Gov­ern­ment enti­ties and agen­cies appear to adhere to the rec­om­men­da­tions out­lined by the group, with the Jour­nal report­ing that the FDA and the Depart­ment of Vet­er­ans Affairs (VA) have imple­ment­ed some of the sug­ges­tions, name­ly relax­ing drug man­u­fac­tur­er reg­u­la­tions and require­ments for poten­tial coro­n­avirus treat­ment drugs. . . .”

We con­clude with a piece about the announce­ment of Grogan’s depar­ture.

” . . . . Gro­gan has served as the direc­tor of the White House Domes­tic Pol­i­cy Coun­cil since Feb­ru­ary 2019, over­see­ing a broad array of pol­i­cy issues includ­ing health care and reg­u­la­tion. . . . Gro­gan was one of the orig­i­nal mem­bers of the White House coro­n­avirus task force launched in late Jan­u­ary. . . . Gro­gan worked as a lob­by­ist for drug com­pa­ny Gilead Sci­ences before join­ing the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. . . .”

The depar­ture was announced in the Wall Street Jour­nal on the morn­ing of Wednes­day, April 29, the same day we got our first pub­lic reports of the NIAID clin­i­cal tri­al of remde­sivir that was pos­i­tive enough to show it short­ened the time to recov­ery and the same day the FDA grant­ed remde­sivir emer­gency use sta­tus. 

Note, again, the tim­ing of the DSM­B’s actions, as well as the imflu­ence of “Sci­en­tists to Stop Covid-19.”

Repost: The REAL Memorial Day

Due to the shel­ter-in-place restric­tions, it is not pos­si­ble for Mr. Emory to do his annu­al Memo­r­i­al Day marathon pro­gram­ming about the deci­sive con­nec­tions between Amer­i­can indus­try and finance and the Axis pow­ers of World War II. How­ev­er, we re-post the descrip­tion and pro­gram links from last year’s spe­cial for view­ing and use of the listening–and reading–audience: “In the decades since the end of the Sec­ond World War, much has been writ­ten about the war and fas­cism, the dri­ving force behind the aggres­sion that pre­cip­i­tat­ed that con­flict. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, much of what has been said and writ­ten has failed to iden­ti­fy and ana­lyze the caus­es, nature and method­ol­o­gy of fascism—German Nation­al Social­ism or “Nazism” in par­tic­u­lar. A deep­er, more accu­rate analy­sis was pre­sent­ed in pub­lished lit­er­a­ture, par­tic­u­lar­ly vol­umes pub­lished dur­ing, or in the imme­di­ate after­math of, the Sec­ond World War. . . . . Fas­cism (Nazism in par­tic­u­lar) was an out­growth of glob­al­iza­tion and the con­struc­tion of inter­na­tion­al monop­o­lies (car­tels). Key to under­stand­ing this phe­nom­e­non is analy­sis of the Webb-Pomerene act, leg­is­lat­ed near the end of the First World War. A loop­hole in the Anti-trust leg­is­la­tion of 1914, it effec­tive­ly legal­ized the for­ma­tion of cartels—international monopolies—for firms that were barred from domes­tic monop­o­lis­tic prac­tices. Decry­ing what they viewed as exces­sive and restric­tive “reg­u­la­tion” here in the Unit­ed States, U.S.-based transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions invest­ed their prof­its from the indus­tri­al boom of the 1920’s abroad, pri­mar­i­ly in Japan and Ger­many. This process might well be viewed as the real begin­ning of what is now known as “glob­al­iza­tion.” This rein­vest­ment of the prof­its of the Amer­i­can indus­tri­al boom of the 1920’s in Japan­ese and Ger­man strate­gic heavy indus­try was the cap­i­tal that drove the engines of con­quest that sub­dued both Europe and Asia dur­ing World War II. On Sun­day, we will high­light the Amer­i­can-Ger­man indus­tri­al axis and its var­i­ous man­i­fes­ta­tions. On Mon­day, we will explore the Amer­i­can-Japan­ese indus­tri­al axis.”

Moderna, The Military, Medicine and Money

In past posts and pro­grams, we have not­ed that Moderna–which has been select­ed to devel­op a Covid-19 vaccine–has been sub­stan­tial­ly under­writ­ten by the Pen­ta­gon (DARPA). The vac­cine they are devel­op­ing is a mRNA (mes­sen­ger RNA) vaccine–a type of vac­cine that has nev­er been admin­is­tered to human sub­jects and is seen as very risky: ” . . . . 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.’ . . .” The head of Trump’s “Oper­a­tion Warp Speed” coro­n­avirus vac­cine pro­gram is Mon­cef Slaoui, for­mer­ly in charge of Mod­er­na’s prod­uct devel­op­ment com­mit­tee. He says 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. . . .” This despite the fact that no vac­cine has been approved for human use in less than four years. Slaoui will be assist­ed by Gen­er­al Gus­tave F. Per­na, whose appoint­ment was facil­i­tat­ed by Gen­er­al Mark A. Mil­ley, Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs. Inter­est­ing­ly, Slaoui holds more than $10 mil­lion worth of Mod­er­na stock, which has increased 184% since the begin­ning of the year, due to ” . . . . more than $400 mil­lion from the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to assist tri­als of a coro­n­avirus vac­cine. . . .”

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 #1118 Update on the Coronavirus Outbreak

As the title indi­cates, the broad­cast updates a num­ber of points of inquiry and analy­sis con­cern­ing the Covid-19 out­break. Of par­tic­u­lar note in this con­text, is the fact that the CDC shut down the Army’s research facil­i­ty at Ft. Det­rick. In ear­ly August of 2019, short­ly before the record­ed start of the out­break in Wuhan, Chi­na, the U.S. Army Med­ical Research Insti­tute of Infec­tious Dis­eases at that facil­i­ty was closed down by the CDC due to mul­ti­ple safe­ty vio­la­tions. “All research at a Fort Det­rick lab­o­ra­to­ry that han­dles high-lev­el dis­ease-caus­ing mate­r­i­al, such as Ebo­la, is on hold indef­i­nite­ly after the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion found the orga­ni­za­tion failed to meet biosafe­ty stan­dards. . . . The CDC sent a cease and desist order in July. After USAMRIID received the order from the CDC, its reg­is­tra­tion with the Fed­er­al Select Agent Pro­gram, which over­sees dis­ease-caus­ing mate­r­i­al use and pos­ses­sion, was sus­pend­ed. That sus­pen­sion effec­tive­ly halt­ed all bio­log­i­cal select agents and tox­in research at USAMRIID . . . .”

Much of the pro­gram cen­ters on an arti­cle from Glob­al Research. It is Mr. Emory’s opin­ion that J. Kyle Bass’s com­ments (see above) and the State Depart­ment crack­down on Chi­nese media are relat­ed to some of the ele­ments of dis­cus­sion in this arti­cle. He had heard alle­ga­tions for weeks that there was dis­cus­sion in Chi­nese media about the virus hav­ing orig­i­nat­ed in the Unit­ed States. Up until this arti­cle came to his atten­tion, he had seen noth­ing to that effect.

NB: Although West­ern media and offi­cial treat­ment of Chi­nese media pro­nounce­ments on the coro­n­avirus’s ori­gin being in the U.S. will be dis­missed as “fake news,” “pro­pa­gan­da,” etc., the spec­u­la­tion in a major Japan­ese TV broad­cast and the analy­sis pre­sent­ed in a Tai­wanese sci­en­tif­ic video pre­sen­ta­tion are not eas­i­ly dis­missed as “Com­mu­nist Chi­nese dis­in­for­ma­tion.” It is alto­geth­er dubi­ous that major Japan­ese media or Tai­wanese sci­en­tif­ic pre­sen­ta­tion would car­ry water for the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty.

The arti­cle rais­es a num­ber of points of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis, includ­ing:

1.–” . . . . A new study by Chi­nese researchers indi­cates the nov­el coro­n­avirus may have begun human-to-human trans­mis­sion in late Novem­ber from a place oth­er than the Hua­nan seafood mar­ket in Wuhan. The study pub­lished on Chi­naX­iv, a Chi­nese open repos­i­to­ry for sci­en­tif­ic researchers, reveals the new coro­n­avirus was intro­duced to the seafood mar­ket from anoth­er location(s), and then spread rapid­ly from the mar­ket due to the large num­ber of close con­tacts. . . .”
2.–” . . . . Chi­nese med­ical author­i­ties – and “intel­li­gence agen­cies” – then con­duct­ed a rapid and wide-rang­ing search for the ori­gin of the virus, col­lect­ing near­ly 100 sam­ples of the genome from 12 dif­fer­ent coun­tries on 4 con­ti­nents, iden­ti­fy­ing all the vari­eties and muta­tions. Dur­ing this research, they deter­mined the virus out­break had begun much ear­li­er, prob­a­bly in Novem­ber, short­ly after the Wuhan Mil­i­tary Games. . . . ”
3.–” . . . . They then came to the same inde­pen­dent con­clu­sions as the Japan­ese researchers – that the virus did not begin in Chi­na but was intro­duced there from the out­side. China’s top res­pi­ra­to­ry spe­cial­ist Zhong Nan­shan  said on Jan­u­ary 27. ‘Though the COVID-19 was first dis­cov­ered in Chi­na, it does not mean that it orig­i­nat­ed from Chi­na.’ . . . .This of course rais­es ques­tions as to the actu­al loca­tion of ori­gin. If the author­i­ties pur­sued their analy­sis through 100 genome sam­ples from 12 coun­tries, they must have had a com­pelling rea­son to be search­ing for the orig­i­nal source out­side Chi­na. This would explain why there was such dif­fi­cul­ty in locat­ing and iden­ti­fy­ing a ‘patient zero’. . . .”
4.–” . . . . In Feb­ru­ary of 2020, the Japan­ese Asahi news report (print and TV) claimed the coro­n­avirus orig­i­nat­ed in the US, not in Chi­na, and that some (or many) of the 14,000 Amer­i­can deaths attrib­uted to influen­za may have in fact have result­ed from the coro­n­avirus. (5) . . .”
5.–” . . . . The TV Asahi net­work pre­sent­ed sci­en­tif­ic doc­u­men­ta­tion for their claims, rais­ing the issue that no one would know the cause of death because the US either neglect­ed to test or failed to release the results. Japan avoid­ed the ques­tions of nat­ur­al vs. man-made and acci­den­tal vs. delib­er­ate, sim­ply stat­ing that the virus out­break may first have occurred in the US. The West­ern Inter­net appears to have been scrubbed of this infor­ma­tion, but the Chi­nese media still ref­er­ence it. . . .”
6.–” . . . . Then, Tai­wan ran a TV news pro­gram on February,27,(click here to access video (Chi­nese), that pre­sent­ed dia­grams and flow charts sug­gest­ing the coro­n­avirus orig­i­nat­ed in the US. (6) . . . .”
7.–” . . . . The man in the video is a top virol­o­gist and phar­ma­col­o­gist who per­formed a long and detailed search for the source of the virus. He spends the first part of the video explain­ing the var­i­ous hap­lo­types (vari­eties, if you will), and explains how they are relat­ed to each oth­er, how one must have come before anoth­er, and how one type derived from anoth­er. He explains this is mere­ly ele­men­tary sci­ence and noth­ing to do with geopo­lit­i­cal issues, describ­ing how, just as with num­bers in order, 3 must always fol­low 2. . . .”
8.–” . . . . The basic log­ic is that the geo­graph­i­cal loca­tion with the great­est diver­si­ty of virus strains must be the orig­i­nal source because a sin­gle strain can­not emerge from noth­ing. He demon­strat­ed that only the US has all the five known strains of the virus (while Wuhan and most of Chi­na have only one, as do Tai­wan and South Korea, Thai­land and Viet­nam, Sin­ga­pore, and Eng­land, Bel­gium and Ger­many), con­sti­tut­ing a the­sis that the hap­lo­types in oth­er nations may have orig­i­nat­ed in the US. . . .”
9.–” . . . . With about 50 nations scat­tered through­out the world hav­ing iden­ti­fied at least one case at the time of writ­ing, it would be very inter­est­ing to exam­ine virus sam­ples from each of those nations to deter­mine their loca­tion of ori­gin and the world­wide sources and pat­terns of spread. . . .”
10.–” . . . .The Tai­wanese doc­tor then stat­ed the virus out­break began ear­li­er than assumed, say­ing, ‘We must look to Sep­tem­ber of 2019’. He stat­ed the case in Sep­tem­ber of 2019 where some Japan­ese trav­eled to Hawaii and returned home infect­ed, peo­ple who had nev­er been to Chi­na. This was two months pri­or to the infec­tions in Chi­na and just after the CDC sud­den­ly and total­ly shut down the Fort Det­rick bio-weapons lab claim­ing the facil­i­ties were insuf­fi­cient to pre­vent loss of pathogens. (10) (11) He said he per­son­al­ly inves­ti­gat­ed those cas­es very care­ful­ly (as did the Japan­ese virol­o­gists who came to the same con­clu­sion).. This might indi­cate the coro­n­avirus had already spread in the US but where the symp­toms were being offi­cial­ly attrib­uted to oth­er dis­eases, and thus pos­si­bly masked. . . .”
11.–” . . . . On Feb­ru­ary 26, ABC News affil­i­ate KJCT8 News Net­work report­ed that a woman recent­ly told the media that her sis­ter died on from coro­n­avirus infec­tion. Mon­trose, Col­orado res­i­dent Almeta Stone said, ‘They (the med­ical staff) kept us informed that it was the flu, and when I got the death cer­tifi­cate, there was a coro­n­avirus in the cause of death.’ . . .”
12.–” . . . . In the past two years (dur­ing the trade war) Chi­na has suf­fered sev­er­al pan­demics: A) Feb­ru­ary 15, 2018: H7N4 bird flu. Sick­ened at least 1,600 peo­ple in Chi­na and killed more than 600. Many chick­ens killed. Chi­na needs to pur­chase US poul­try prod­ucts. B)June, 2018: H7N9 bird flu. Many chick­ens killed. Chi­na needs to pur­chase US poul­try prod­ucts. C) August, 2018: out­break of African swine flu. Same strain as Rus­sia, from Geor­gia. Mil­lions of pigs killed. Chi­na needs to pur­chase US pork prod­ucts. D)May 24, 2019: mas­sive infes­ta­tion of army­worms in 14 province-lev­el regions in Chi­na, which destroy most food crops. Quick­ly spread to more than 8,500 hectares of China’s grain pro­duc­tion. They pro­duce aston­ish­ing num­bers of eggs. Chi­na needs to pur­chase US agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts – corn, soy­beans. E) Decem­ber, 2019: Coro­n­avirus appear­ance puts China’s econ­o­my on hold. F) Jan­u­ary, 2020: Chi­na is hit by a ‘high­ly path­o­gen­ic’ strain of bird flu in Hunan province. Many chick­ens died, many oth­ers killed. Chi­na needs to pur­chase US poul­try prod­ucts. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Fur­ther dis­cus­sion of the State Depart­men­t’s crack­down on Chi­nese media out­lets; Fur­ther dis­cus­sion of Shincheonji–a South Kore­an cult that was appar­ent­ly the vehi­cle for intro­duc­ing the virus into that coun­try and which has a branch in Wuhan Chi­na; the struc­tur­al, oper­a­tional and doc­tri­nal over­lap between Shin­cheon­ji and the Uni­fi­catin Church; Don­ald Rums­feld’s posi­tion as chair­man of the board of direc­tors of Gilead Sciences–at the fore­front of Big Phar­ma’s race to devel­op coun­ter­mea­sures to the Covid-19 and a major invest­ment tar­get for hedge funds; The pres­ence on Gilead­’s board of C. Ben­no Schmidt, Sr., who helped launch Richard Nixon’s War on Cancer–a cov­er for the NCI’s Spe­cial Viral Can­cer Research Pro­gram.

Disturbing Article about DARPA and Bat-Borne Coronaviruses

A thought-pro­vok­ing and dis­turb­ing arti­cle about DARPA research into bat-borne dis­eases, includ­ing some caused by coronaviruses–is set forth here, as sup­ple­men­tal to broad­casts on the sub­ject. Whit­ney Webb has pro­vid­ed us with trou­bling insight into Pen­ta­gon research–some of which remains clas­si­fied: A) Into bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es. B) At bio­log­i­cal research facil­i­ties ring­ing both Chi­na and Rus­sia. C) Net­worked with Chi­nese research facil­i­ties in Wuhan. D) Into the DNA of both Russ­ian and Chi­nese pop­u­la­tions. E) Into “gene-driving”–a biotech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment that can per­ma­nent­ly alter the genet­ic make­up of entire pop­u­la­tion groups and lead to the extinc­tion of oth­er groups. F) Into the use of “Insect Allies” to sup­pos­ed­ly pro­vide crops with pro­tec­tion against pests and disease–a tech­no­log­i­cal pro­gram crit­ics have charged masks an offen­sive bio­log­i­cal war­fare man­i­fes­ta­tion. G) Osten­si­bly aimed at pre­vent­ing pan­demics but–very possibly–masking prepa­ra­tions for offen­sive bio­log­i­cal war­fare projects. H) That is heav­i­ly net­worked with the U.S. health and med­ical infra­struc­tures. I) That is heav­i­ly net­worked with firms cho­sen to devel­op vac­cines for the Covid-19. J) Into vac­cines that have not been used on human beings and that use gene-alter­ing manip­u­la­tion that alarms crit­ics. K) Into over­lap­ping tech­nolo­gies man­i­fest­ing philoso­phies of eugen­ics and eth­nic cleans­ing. L) Involv­ing the U.S. Army Med­ical Research Insti­tute of Infec­tious Dis­eases, locat­ed at Fort Det­rick, Mary­land, a facil­i­ty that was closed down by the CDC at the begin­ning of August, 2019, for mul­ti­ple safe­ty vio­la­tions. M) Into the appli­ca­tion of genet­ic engi­neer­ing in order to cre­ate eth­no-spe­cif­ic bio­log­i­cal war­fare weapons.

FTR #1117 More Than One “Flu” Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Researchers found that lev­els of the Covid-19 virus increased soon after symp­toms first appeared, with high­er amounts in the nose than in the throats, which is also more con­sis­tent with influen­za than SARS. Of the 18 patients they exam­ined, one had mod­er­ate lev­els in their nose and throat but no symptoms–people who are asymp­to­matic can still poten­tial­ly spread the virus. It’s this com­bi­na­tion of air­borne trans­mis­sions and asymp­to­matic patients who shed the virus that makes this a par­tic­u­lar­ly infec­tious dis­ease.

This anom­alous new abil­i­ty to infect the upper res­pi­ra­to­ry tract, of course, brings up the chill­ing exper­i­ments where researchers mod­i­fied the H5N1 bird flu virus until it was capa­ble of air­borne trans­mis­sions between fer­rets. That’s the same research that was banned by the NIH fol­low­ing the uproar but has sub­se­quent­ly been real­lowed in ear­ly 2019. That orig­i­nal 2012 study specif­i­cal­ly found that it was muta­tions that gave the virus the abil­i­ty to infect the upper res­pi­ra­to­ry tracts of the fer­rets that made it an air­borne virus. We have yet to year if the SAR-CoV­‑2 virus had the same or sim­i­lar muta­tions to those that were induced in the H5N1 bird flu virus exper­i­ment but it seems like­ly.

The infec­tious­ness of the SARS-CoV­‑2 coro­n­avirus is unprece­dent­ed based on this new study. As one immu­nol­o­gist put it, “This virus is clear­ly much more capa­ble of spread­ing between humans than any oth­er nov­el coro­n­avirus we’ve ever seen. This is more akin to the spread of flu”.

In the con­text of the Covid-19’s flu-like abil­i­ty to infect the upper res­pi­ra­to­ry tract, we explore exper­i­ments adapt­ing the lethal H5N1 avian flu to fer­rets. These exper­i­ments were halt­ed in 2014 but sub­se­quent­ly resumed in 2017.

Might some of this exper­i­ment have been adapt­ed to the Covid-19?

We explore addi­tion­al exper­i­ments adapt­ing the lethal H5N1 avian flu to fer­rets. These exper­i­ments were halt­ed in 2014 but sub­se­quent­ly resumed in 2017.

Might some of this exper­i­ment have been adapt­ed to the Covid-19?

These exper­i­ments were resumed, short­ly before the out­break of Covid-19. Again, might some of the results of the adap­ta­tion of the H5N1 avian flu to fer­rets have fig­ured in the Covid-19 phe­nom­e­non?

Note that many experts were crit­i­cal of the process.

A report on the adap­ta­tion of the A/H5N1 to fer­rets notes that Oseltamivir–marketed under the brand-name Tamiflu–was suc­cess­ful in treat­ing the fer­rets. That is one of the anti-virals in a drug cock­tail used by Thai doc­tors to suc­cess­ful­ly treat a Covid-19 suf­fer­er.

In FTR#55, we not­ed in 1997 that U.S. Army researchers had suc­cess­ful­ly recov­ered genet­ic mate­r­i­al from the 1918 influen­za epi­dem­ic.

As will be seen in future pro­grams, one of the vari­ants of the Covid-19 does indeed behave like the 1918 flu virus. As we will also see in future pro­grams, that virus was res­ur­rect­ed by researchers in 2005.

In the past, we have heard it alleged by cred­i­ble sources that Ger­many was behind the 1918 flu epi­dem­ic that killed scores of mil­lions world­wide.

From Ger­many Watch comes anoth­er post rein­forc­ing this line of inquiry. 

After main­tain­ing that Ger­man agents were sab­o­tag­ing live­stock with anthrax, the post dis­cuss­es British intel­li­gence dis­til­late indi­cat­ing that, after dis­cov­er­ing the par­tic­u­lar strain of vir­u­lent flu, Ger­man agents began delib­er­ate­ly spread­ing it in the U.S.

NB: We don’t feel that the infor­ma­tion from the book Three Wars with Ger­many con­firms the hypoth­e­sis that the flu pan­dem­ic was a Ger­man bio-war­fare weapon gone awry beyond the point of debate. It DOES, how­ev­er, high­light that pos­si­bil­i­ty.

We then tack­le the sub­ject of a cult/church that is at the epi­cen­ter of a Covid-19 out­break in South Korea. The over­lap between this orga­ni­za­tion and the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church is dis­cussed in a Food For Thought post. Might this cult have been a vec­tor for intro­duc­ing the virus into Wuhan?

The fascis­tic nature of the cult and some of the rit­u­als and beliefs of the orga­ni­za­tion would ren­der the group and/or some of its mem­bers as viable “use­ful idiots” for manip­u­la­tion in con­nec­tion with this out­break.

The next two points of dis­cus­sion con­cern the fact that the cur­rent U.S. Ambas­sador to South Korea was the for­mer head of the Unit­ed States Pacif­ic Com­mand. We won­der if he might be ONI and/or CIA, and if he might have any con­nec­tion to the anti-Chi­na blitzkrieg and the Covid-19 out­break?

As the for­mer Com­man­der of the Guan­tanamo base in Cuba, Admi­ral Har­ris cer­tain­ly did have oper­a­tional links with the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty.

FTR #1116 Update on The Chinese Winter and the Coronavirus “Bio-Psy-Op”

In our ongo­ing series about the Covid-19 break­out and the Chi­nese win­ter, we have dis­cussed the dam­age the break­out has done to the Chi­nese econ­o­my, our belief that the out­break is part of a desta­bi­liza­tion effort against Chi­na, and the invest­ments of Steve Ban­non asso­ciate J. Kyle Bass and, in turn, Bass’s polit­i­cal asso­ci­a­tion and prob­a­ble co-invest­ment posi­tion with Trump asso­ciate Tom­my Hicks, Jr.

Posi­tioned to prof­it as a result of a Chi­nese eco­nom­ic down­turn, Bass and Hicks may  well be prof­it­ing from Chi­na’s eco­nom­ic prob­lems, which are grow­ing more severe as a result of the out­break.

Now, many Chi­nese firms say they can­not pay their work­ers their full salaries–a devel­op­ment that will fur­ther strain the Chi­nese econ­o­my.

NB: With the eco­nom­ic con­se­quences of the out­break spread­ing glob­al­ly, Bass, Hicks et al would not nec­es­sar­i­ly have to be invest­ed in Chi­nese equi­ties to prof­it enor­mous­ly from this event.

New bank loans in Chi­na hit a record high in Jan­u­ary, reflect­ing the grow­ing need for cash to keep the busi­ness­es oper­at­ing and employ­ees  paid. The PBOC, China’s cen­tral bank, also cut its bench­mark lend­ing rate today as part of a push to ease the financ­ing costs for busi­ness. As the arti­cle notes, small and rur­al banks are most at risk–a stress test last year by the PBOC found that 13 per­cent of banks were con­sid­ered “high risk”.

As not­ed below, Tom­my Hicks brought in J. Kyle Bass to lec­ture to inter­a­gency gov­ern­ment net­works about Chi­na’s bank­ing sys­tem.

We review the fact that Bass is close to, and may well be a co-investor with, Tom­my Hicks Jr., a key mem­ber of Team Trump. Hicks, Com­merce Sec­re­tary Wilbur Ross and nation­al secu­ri­ty offi­cials are, in turn, work­ing to deny Chi­nese elec­tron­ics firm Huawei access to devel­op­ing 5G net­works, fur­ther ham­string­ing the Chi­nese econ­o­my.

Paul Krug­man, among oth­ers, has not­ed that Wilbur Ross was open­ly cel­e­brat­ing the coro­n­avirus as a boon to the Unit­ed States.

We high­light key aspects of this dis­cus­sion:
1.–Hicks is not a gov­ern­ment offi­cial but has access to high-lev­el gov­ern­men­tal process, includ­ing (appar­ent­ly) CIA activ­i­ties. ” . . . . Tom­my Hicks Jr., 41, isn’t a gov­ern­ment offi­cial; he’s a wealthy pri­vate investor. And he has been a part of dis­cus­sions relat­ed to Chi­na and tech­nol­o­gy with top offi­cials from the Trea­sury Depart­ment, Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil, Com­merce Depart­ment and oth­ers, accord­ing to emails and doc­u­ments obtained by ProP­ub­li­ca. In one email, Hicks refers to a meet­ing at ‘Lan­g­ley,’ an appar­ent ref­er­ence to the CIA’s head­quar­ters. . . .”
2.–Hicks has used his posi­tion to arrange for J. Kyle Bass to net­work with gov­ern­ment agen­cies and offi­cials. Bear in mind that Bass is posi­tioned to ben­e­fit from a down­turn in Chi­na’s econ­o­my. ” . . . . Hicks used his con­nec­tions to arrange for a hedge fund man­ag­er friend, Kyle Bass — who has $143 mil­lion in invest­ments that will pay off if China’s econ­o­my tanks — to present his views on the Chi­nese econ­o­my to high-lev­el gov­ern­ment offi­cials at an inter­a­gency meet­ing at the Trea­sury Depart­ment, accord­ing to the doc­u­ments. . . .”
3.–Hicks and Bass have invest­ed togeth­er since 2011. ” . . . . Bass pre­sent­ed his views on China’s bank­ing sys­tem in the office of Heath Tar­bert, an assis­tant sec­re­tary at Trea­sury in charge of inter­na­tion­al mar­kets and invest­ment pol­i­cy and a pow­er­ful inter­gov­ern­men­tal com­mit­tee that reviews for­eign invest­ments in the U.S. for nation­al secu­ri­ty con­cerns. Among the offi­cials at the meet­ing with Tar­bert were Bill Hin­man, the direc­tor of the divi­sion of cor­po­ra­tion finance at the Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion, and Ray Wash­burne, a wealthy Dal­las restau­rant own­er and fam­i­ly friend of Hicks’ who was nom­i­nat­ed by Trump to head the Over­seas Pri­vate Invest­ment Cor­po­ra­tion. Hicks and Bass, both Dal­las res­i­dents and long­time denizens of the finan­cial com­mu­ni­ty there, have invest­ed togeth­er since at least 2011, accord­ing to secu­ri­ties fil­ings and court records. . . .”
4.–Hicks did not deny that he par­tic­i­pat­ed in Bass’s funds, but was eva­sive.” . . . . But it’s not clear if Hicks or his fam­i­ly have an invest­ment in Bass’ Chi­na-relat­ed funds. Reached twice on his cell­phone, Hicks declined to be inter­viewed by ProP­ub­li­ca. In the sec­ond call, in June, Hicks didn’t dis­pute that he and his fam­i­ly have invest­ed in Bass’ funds. But when asked to detail their busi­ness rela­tion­ship, he cut the con­ver­sa­tion short. . . . ”
5.–Bass has a his­to­ry of bet­ting against trends that will turn down­ward, hav­ing made his for­tune on the 2008 crash. ” . . . . Bass, who made his name and for­tune by bet­ting against sub­prime mort­gages before the crash and is known for large bets that economies or cer­tain macro trends will turn down­ward, declined to com­ment. . . .”
6.–Official review did not exam­ine pos­si­ble busi­ness rela­tion­ships between Hicks and Bass. ” . . . . An admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial briefed on the Bass meet­ing at the Trea­sury down­played it as ‘strict­ly a lis­ten­ing ses­sion.’ . . . . He acknowl­edged that the review didn’t include an exam­i­na­tion of any finan­cial rela­tion­ship between Hicks and Bass. . . .”
7.–Bass is posi­tioned to main­tain “mas­sive asym­me­try” to down turns in Hong Kong and Chi­na, in oth­er words, he will ben­e­fit if they go down. ” . . . . Bass has become a vocal advo­cate for an aggres­sive U.S. pol­i­cy toward Chi­na. On Twit­ter and on cable busi­ness chan­nels he’s denounced every­thing from the country’s Com­mu­nist Par­ty gov­ern­ment to its busi­ness prac­tices. Secu­ri­ties fil­ings show Bass raised $143 mil­lion from about 81 investors in two funds — invest­ments that would ben­e­fit if China’s cur­ren­cy were deval­ued or the coun­try faced cred­it or bank­ing crises. In April, in a let­ter to his investors, Bass wrote that his com­pa­ny, Hay­man Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment, was posi­tioned for com­ing prob­lems in Hong Kong and was set up to ‘main­tain a mas­sive asym­me­try to a neg­a­tive out­come in Hong Kong and/or Chi­na.’ . . . ”
Next, we turn to dis­cus­sion of the pos­si­ble manip­u­la­tion of the virus to make it com­mu­ni­ca­ble through air­borne trans­mis­sion, sim­i­lar to the trans­mis­sion of influen­za.

Researchers found that lev­els of the virus increased soon after symp­toms first appeared, with high­er amounts in the nose than in the throats–more con­sis­tent with influen­za than SARS. Of the 18 patients they exam­ined, one had mod­er­ate lev­els in their nose and throat but no symp­toms. Peo­ple who are asymp­to­matic can still spread the virus. It’s this com­bi­na­tion of air­borne trans­mis­sion and asymp­to­matic patients who are still shed­ding the virus that makes this a par­tic­u­lar­ly infec­tious dis­ease.

This sud­den anom­alous (for SARS-like coro­n­avirus­es) new abil­i­ty to infect the upper res­pi­ra­to­ry tract, of course, brings up chill­ing exper­i­ments in which researchers mod­i­fied the H5N1 bird flu virus to become capa­ble of air­borne trans­mis­sions between fer­rets. That research was banned by the NIH fol­low­ing pub­lic out­cry but resumed in ear­ly 2019. The orig­i­nal 2012 study specif­i­cal­ly found that it was the genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered muta­tions that gave the virus the abil­i­ty to infect the upper res­pi­ra­to­ry tracts of the fer­rets. We have yet to hear if the SAR-CoV­‑2 virus had the same or sim­i­lar muta­tions to those that were induced in the H5N1 bird flu virus exper­i­ment but it seems like­ly.

Thus, the infec­tious­ness of the SARS-CoV­‑2 coro­n­avirus is unprece­dent­ed based on this new study. As one immu­nol­o­gist put it, “This virus is clear­ly much more capa­ble of spread­ing between humans than any oth­er nov­el coro­n­avirus we’ve ever seen. This is more akin to the spread of flu”.

The virus can also be spread through human fecal mate­r­i­al from an infect­ed per­son.

Yet anoth­er spec­u­la­tive ele­ment of dis­cus­sion con­cerns a cult/church in South Korea which is the epi­cen­ter of a burst of cas­es in that coun­try. A reput­ed pres­ence of a branch of the orga­ni­za­tion is in Wuhan, which has direct­ed dis­cus­sion in the direc­tion of the virus hav­ing migrat­ed from Hubei province to South Korea.

Against the back­ground of Uni­fi­ca­tion Church activ­i­ty dur­ing the Cold War, in con­nec­tion with CIA, in con­nec­tion with the fas­cist pow­er elite in Japan that is con­tin­u­ous with that coun­try’s activ­i­ties dur­ing World War II, we won­der about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the use of this cult as a vec­tor­ing agent.

Might it be pos­si­ble that it was used to intro­duce the virus into Chi­na in the first place?

As will be high­light­ed in future pro­grams, there appear to be operational/networking links between the Shin­cheon­ji and the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, as well as doc­tri­nal sim­i­lar­i­ties.

FTR #1113 and FTR #1114 The Chinese Winter: Weaponized Media, Social Media and the Coronavirus Biowarfare Psy-Op Parts 1 and 2

The first pro­gram begins with review of the con­clu­sion of FTR #1112, not­ing the repet­i­tive, drum­roll of arti­cles about the eco­nom­ic effects of the coro­n­avirus on the Chi­nese, U.S. and glob­al econ­o­my, this in the con­text of Steve Ban­non’s links to Guo Wen­gui, J. Kyle Bass and–through Bass–to Tom­my Hicks, Jr. (This was cov­ered at length and in detail in FTR #‘s 1111 and 1112.)

Steve Bannon–one of the lumi­nar­ies of the “Alt-Right,” and a for­mer key Trump aide is cen­tral­ly involved in the anti-Chi­na effort. Note Ban­non’s role in the “Get Chi­na” move­ment and the man­ner in which Wash­ing­ton is being pos­sessed by this: ” . . . . Fear of Chi­na has spread across the gov­ern­ment, from the White House to Con­gress to fed­er­al agen­cies, where Beijing’s rise is unques­tion­ing­ly viewed as an eco­nom­ic and nation­al secu­ri­ty threat and the defin­ing chal­lenge of the 21st cen­tu­ry. ‘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.’ . . . .”

Next, the pro­gram under­takes a review of cir­cum­stances that sug­gest the pos­si­bil­i­ty of investor activ­i­ty by peo­ple linked to Steve Ban­non, who is at the epi­cen­ter of the anti-Chi­na effort. Ban­non has been the ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the enor­mous wealth of the bril­liant, eccen­tric investor Robert Mer­cer. Mer­cer has used AI-direct­ed invest­ment pro­jec­tion to afford a 70% return for his hedge fund.

We won­der if he might have had fore­knowl­edge of the coro­n­avirus out­break? IF that was the case, this would have enabled him to have made a great deal of mon­ey on the tor­pe­do­ing of the Chi­nese econ­o­my as may well be the case for J. Kyle Bass. On the oth­er side of the coin is Mercer’s/Renaissance Tech­nolo­gies’ enor­mous invest­ment in Gilead Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

IF Gilead­’s remde­sivir does prove to be the “go-to” treat­ment for coro­n­avirus, that firm stands to make a great deal of mon­ey, as would Mercer/Renaissance Tech­nolo­gies. NB: The infor­ma­tion from Dr. Mer­co­la’s post should be fac­tored in to the infor­ma­tion about invest­ing and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of short-sell­ing and/or oth­er types of maneu­ver­ing to prof­it from this cri­sis. Equi­ty mar­kets are very respon­sive to sug­ges­tion, accu­rate or fala­cious. We note that the hys­te­ria allud­ed to in the post by Dr. Mer­co­la may well con­tribute to the steep decline in mar­kets.

Chi­na, of course, has shut down much of its infra­struc­ture to com­bat the virus. That is con­tribut­ing, obvi­ous­ly. To what extent they, too, are respond­ing to hys­te­ria is an open ques­tion. We also won­der if they know some­thing we don’t. Media have fea­tured pic­tures of Chi­nese per­son­nel in pro­tec­tive cloth­ing fumi­gat­ing pub­lic facil­i­ties. We won­der if they are pro­tect­ing against rodents or oth­er ani­mals spread­ing the virus. Note the ref­er­ence in the post by Dr. Mer­co­la.

Chi­na has begun test­ing of Gilead­’s remde­sivir. IF, for the sake of argu­ment, Gilead­’s remde­sivir becomes the “go-to” treat­ment for the coro­n­avirus, Gilead–and Mercer–will make a great deal of mon­ey. Chi­na is a huge mar­ket and the drug will find mar­kets else­where, as well. Note that a Chi­nese gov­ern­ment research facil­i­ty has applied for a patent on the drug.

We find it curi­ous that Amer­i­can media out­lets have remained silent on such a promis­ing ther­a­peu­tic reg­i­men. Reuters report­ed it, as did Agence France Presse. These are major wire ser­vices. Why not Amer­i­can media out­lets?

Indica­tive of the “Chick­en Lit­tle journalism”–weaponzed jour­nal­ism– that char­ac­ter­izes the U.S. news media is the lack of cov­er­age of the Amer­i­can flu epi­dem­ic of 2017–2018. Con­trast the sta­tis­tics about the 2017–2018 flu epi­dem­ic in this coun­try with the sta­tis­tics about coro­n­avirus. In this coun­try, 45 mil­lion caught the flu. Accord­ing to the CDC, 80,000 of them died. 

Next, we read in full an Op-Ed col­umn by Rosie Spinks–a rare island of bal­ance and san­i­ty in The New York Times’ cov­er­age of this event. In addi­tion to not­ing the effects of the coro­n­avirus on the eco­nom­ics of the trav­el indus­try, Rosie Spinks notes the dra­con­ian reac­tion of the U.S. State Depart­ment. Ms. Spinks tales stock of the rel­a­tive­ly mild nature of the virus. ” . . . . Numer­ous experts have said that the major­i­ty of peo­ple who con­tract coro­n­avirus will expe­ri­ence it as a res­pi­ra­to­ry infec­tion they will ful­ly recov­er from. But the extreme reac­tions — the can­cel­ing of flights, clos­ing of bor­ders and lev­el-four trav­el warn­ings — seem more appro­pri­ate for some­thing much worse. . . .”

Because it screens points of entry for MERS coro­n­avirus infec­tion because of its cit­i­zens who make the Haj pil­grim­age to Mec­ca, Indone­sia has no record­ed cas­es. In the col­umn cit­ed above, Ms. Spinks not­ed the effec­tive­ness of the kind of pro­phy­lac­tic screen­ing mea­sures tak­en by Indone­sia: ” . . . . Mea­sures like screen­ing at air­ports, quar­an­ti­ning cruise ships or flights with con­firmed cas­es and iso­lat­ing com­mu­ni­ties at the cen­ter of an out­break can be effec­tive, said Erin Sor­rell, an assis­tant research pro­fes­sor at George­town Uni­ver­si­ty who stud­ies emerg­ing infec­tious dis­eases. . . .”

The out­break has occurred in the con­text of what we have called a “Full Court Press” against Chi­na.

Head­ed by “ex” CIA offi­cer William Barr, the Jus­tice Depart­ment has charged Chi­nese per­son­nel with hav­ing hacked the Equifax cred­it report­ing agen­cies. The Chi­nese have denied this. It will be inter­est­ing to see if the U.S. deploys cyber-weapon­ry on Chi­nese com­put­er and inter­net sys­tems, as it has in Rus­sia. In turn, it will be inter­est­ing to see if the “Full Court Press” strat­e­gy encom­pass­es the sab­o­tag­ing of Chi­nese nuclear pow­er plants, Project HAARP envi­ron­men­tal mod­i­fi­ca­tion war­fare or oth­er dra­con­ian mea­sures.

The CIA’s hack­ing tools are specif­i­cal­ly craft­ed to mask CIA author­ship of the attacks. Most sig­nif­i­cant­ly, for our the pur­pos­es of the present dis­cus­sion, is the fact that the Agen­cy’s hack­ing tools are engi­neered in such a way as to per­mit the authors of the event to rep­re­sent them­selves as Chi­nese. ” . . . . These tools could make it more dif­fi­cult for anti-virus com­pa­nies and foren­sic inves­ti­ga­tors to attribute hacks to the CIA. Could this call the source of pre­vi­ous hacks into ques­tion? It appears that yes, this might be used to dis­guise the CIA’s own hacks to appear as if they were Russ­ian, Chi­nese, or from spe­cif­ic oth­er coun­tries. . . . This might allow a mal­ware cre­ator to not only look like they were speak­ing in Russ­ian or Chi­nese, rather than in Eng­lish, but to also look like they tried to hide that they were not speak­ing Eng­lish . . . .”

Piv­ot­ing to what Mr. Emory has termed the “weaponized media cov­er­age” of the coro­n­avirus out­break, we note The New York Times’ stun­ning­ly slant­ed cov­er­age of the 2016 cam­paign.

Before dis­cussing Allen Dulles and his rela­tion­ship to “The New York Times,” we set forth events illus­trat­ing the fun­da­men­tal place of Sul­li­van & Cromwell in the devel­op­ment of Amer­i­can Big Mon­ey. Both Allen Dulles and John Fos­ter Dulles worked for Sul­li­van & Cromwell.

A now famous arti­cle by Carl Bern­stein (of Water­gate fame) focus­es on CIA pres­ence in major U.S. media. We note, here, the deep his­tor­i­cal and polit­i­cal rela­tion­ship between Allen Dulles and The New York Times’s Arthur Hays Sulzberg­er. This, again, by way of back­ground to the weaponized cov­er­age of the coro­n­avirus out­break.

In in his 1985 vol­ume “Amer­i­can Swasti­ka,” the late author Charles High­am pro­vides us with insight into the Chris­t­ian West con­cept, reveal­ing the extent to which these SS/OSS nego­ti­a­tions set the tem­plate for the post-World War II world, as well as the degree of res­o­nance that key Amer­i­cans, such as Allen Dulles, had with Nazi ide­ol­o­gy, anti-Semi­tism in par­tic­u­lar. Weigh­ing the long, pro­found rela­tion­ship between Dulles and The Times, this is pre­sent­ed as some­thing of a “nav­i­ga­tion­al aid” to analy­sis of the weaponized cov­er­age of the virus.

In the con­text of Allen Dulles’s ori­en­ta­tion and his rela­tion­ship with The New York Times, we present a look at The New York Times’ use of a Third Reich alum­nus named Paul Hof­mann as a for­eign cor­re­spon­dent, serv­ing as chief of The Times’ Rome bureau, and cov­er­ing the Gray Lady’s cov­er­age of the CIA’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the over­throw of Patrice Lumum­ba.

The pro­gram con­cludes with an item pre­sent­ed in our land­mark series of inter­views with the bril­liant Jim DiEu­ge­nio about Des­tiny Betrayed.

Noth­ing illus­trates this coun­try’s media and their will­ing­ness to dis­tort infor­ma­tion than the NBC tele­vi­sion broad­cast arranged by Wal­ter Sheri­dan.  Sheri­dan is a career intel­li­gence offi­cer, with rela­tion­ship with the Office of Naval Intel­li­gence, the CIA, the NSA and the FBI.

Exem­pli­fy­ing Sheri­dan’s method­ol­o­gy was the treat­ment met­ed out to Fred Lee­mans, who was the cli­mac­tic per­son inter­viewed by Sheri­dan in his spe­cial. Note the open intim­i­da­tion of Lee­mans and his fam­i­ly, threat­en­ing them if they did not per­jure them­selves, betray Gar­ri­son, and coop­er­ate with both Sheri­dan and Clay Shaw’s coun­sel! This is rem­i­nis­cent of the treat­ment of Mar­lene Man­cu­so detailed in our pre­vi­ous inter­view.