Hughes Energy

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www.hughesenergygroup.com

Hughes Aircraft Company provides aerospace and defense contract services and products in the United States. It was founded as a division of Hughes Tool Company. Its products include the Hughes H-4 Hercules ""Spruce Goose"" aircraft, the atmospheric entry probe carried by the Galileo spacecraft, and the AIM-4 Falcon guided missile.

Hughes Aircraft Company was established in 1932 by Howard Hughes in Glendale, California. It was acquired by General Motors from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 1985.

Acquired by Ratheon

Ben Breed develops patents for these folks. I expect they are merging with Boeing and h

Hughes Electronics AKA Direct TV Group

On June 5, 1985 General Motors was announced as the winner of a secretive five month, sealed-bid auction. Other bidders included Ford Motor Company and Boeing.[1] The purchase was completed on December 20, 1985, for an estimated $5.2 billion, $2.7 billion in cash and the rest in 50 million shares of GM Class H stock.[2]

On December 31, 1985, General Motors merged Hughes Aircraft with its Delco Electronics unit to form Hughes Electronics Corporation, an independent subsidiary. The group then consisted of: Delco Electronics Corporation and Hughes Aircraft Company.

Display of a Hughes satellite inside the Space Shuttle Explorer.

In August of 1992 Hughes Aircraft completed its purchase of General Dynamics' missile businesses for $450 million.[3] This brought the Tomahawk Cruise Missile, Advanced Cruise Missile, Standard missile, Stinger missile, Phalanx Close-in weapon system, and Rolling Airframe Missile into Hughes' portfolio.

In 1994 Hughes Electronics introduced DirecTV, the world's first high-powered DBS. In 1995 Hughes Electronic's Hughes Space and Communications division became the largest supplier of commercial satellites. Also in 1995 the group purchased Magnavox Electronic Systems from the Carlyle Group. In 1996 Hughes Electronics and PanAmSat agree to merge their fixed satellite services into a new publicly held company, also called PanAmSat with Hughes Electronics as majority shareholder.

In 1995, Hughes Aircraft sold its Technology Products Division (automated wire and die bonder) to an investor group led by Citicorp and incorporated the division as Palomar Technologies.[4] In 2008, Citicorp sold the bonder division to the current management team at Palomar Technologies.[5]

In 1997 GM transferred Delco Electronics to its Delphi Automotive Systems business. Later that year the assets of Hughes Aircraft were sold to Raytheon for $9.5 billion.[6] The remaining companies remained under the Hughes Electronics name and within GM.

In 2000, The Boeing Company purchased three units within Hughes Electronics Corp.: Hughes Space and Communications Co., Hughes Electron Dynamics, and Spectrolab Inc., in addition to Hughes Electronics' interest in HRL, the company's primary research laboratory. The four joined Boeing Satellite Systems, a company subsidiary, later becoming the Satellite Development Center, part of Boeing Integrated Defense Systems. [7]

In 2003 the remaining parts of Hughes Electronics (DirecTV, DirecTV Latin America, PanAmSat, Hughes Network Systems) were purchased by News Corporation from GM and renamed The DirecTV Group.

Palantir IPO Cements Billionaire Fortunes For Cofounder Peter Thiel And CEO Alexander Karp

The data mining company listed its shares in an unusual direct listing, with cofounders Thiel and Karp registering to sell hundreds of millions of dollars…

www.forbes.com

Patents of Ben R. Breed

“Multi-static, Opportune-source-exploiting, Passive Sonar Processing”

US6661740 B1 (GRANT) https://www.google.com/patents/US6661...

Publication date Dec 9, 2003, Filing date Jun 3, 2002

Original Assignee: Breed Ben R., Mahood William Lee

[0001] The government has certain rights in this invention pursuant to Contract No. N00024-00-C-4088 awarded by the Department of the Navy.

“Low Temperature Fusion” US 20090122940 A1

https://www.google.com/patents/US2009...

Original Assignee: Ben R. Breed, Filing date: Mar 17, 2006, Publication date: May 14, 2009

Ivermectin Still a ‘Wonder Drug’ for Animals & People, yet Reporters Remain Either Ignorant or Complicit in an Ongoing Misinformation Campaign

Ivermectin Still a ‘Wonder Drug’ for Animals & People, yet Reporters Remain Either Ignorant or Complicit in an Ongoing Misinformation Campaign

Recently, a reader of the Baltimore Sun reminded the population of that great American city that ivermectin is much more than just a crude horse or animal

trialsitenews.com

Recently, a reader of the Baltimore Sun reminded the population of that great American city that ivermectin is much more than just a crude horse or animal de-worming medication. However, that’s exactly how reporters and many other American papers represent the therapy. Remember TrialSite’s retort of the Los Angeles Times hit piece? The Maryland resident responded to yet another ivermectin hit piece in this Mid-Atlantic city from yet another journalist using the pen as a sword in a concerted, protracted information war.

Ms. Janine DiStephan reminds all that the antiparasitic drug has brought extraordinary benefits to humanity.

Prior to COVID-19, ivermectin was often referred to as a “Wonder Drug,” In fact, the inventors of this drug won a Nobel Prize as it is one of the “greatest discoveries in medicine” while used as an antiparasitic treatment. Ivermectin is saving “countless human lives” while stopping the spread of parasitic-borne diseases around the world via programs such as Mectizan. TrialSite recently reported that researchers associated with the BOHEMIA Project are even looking at using the drug to stop malaria.

Yet if one were to read the American mainstream press, one would never know that this drug does so much good—and that it’s quite safe at current indications. The drug has been under attack by the FDA and other agencies since it was put to use as an early treatment for COVID-19, starting first mostly in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs), then in America.

This came as the result of lab work early on during the pandemic when scientists in Australia found that the antiparasitic drug actually zapped SARS-CoV-2. Since then, 81 studies in humans have been completed, including many dozens reporting positive data but a few more extensive high-profile studies that failed to meet primary endpoints. The mainstream press, such as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, pounced all over any news deemed negative. But several studies revealed positive results.

By early 2021, the use of the drug off-label skyrocketed from 3,000 prescriptions per week to nearly 90,000 targeting COVID-19. Attacks on safety were exposed, at least in some cases, as misinformation as TrialSite discovered. In one instance, the AAPCC and the National Poison Data System reported an increase in calls to toxic centers associated with ivermectin from January to August 2021.

TrialSite did some digging and found a different reality. The vast majority of the case calls (nearly 80%) fell under the “no problem” category. It turned out that only 1% of the calls (11 cases) were associated with the severe category, yet none were classified for further analysis. This is despite the massive increases in the use of prescriptions off-label.

When industry and the FDA found out the extent of the off-label usage, they reacted with a campaign to smear the drug as they didn’t want any doctors prescribing off-label for COVID-19.

The FDA sent menacing letters to licensing body associations for both physicians and pharmacies cautioning against any misinformation. In doing so, doctors or pharmacists associated with any criticism of the vaccines or, for that matter, advancing drugs such as ivermectin off-label for COVID-19 as part of early treatment regimens could lose their licenses. In fact, some doctors have lost their licenses, and one was even required to go through a psychiatric evaluation.

Consequently, a considerable push by mainstream media sought to denigrate and attack the drug as used only for animals, particularly for ridding them of worms.

Mainstream media completely ignored any positive news associated with the drug, yet they pounced all over any negative news. In what has progressed into an information war, TrialSite contends that the situation isn’t necessarily black or white, as there are now data that are both positive as well as data revealing no efficacy against SARS-CoV-2.

In the letter to the editor of the Sun and its reporter is an underlying message that dissing this drug as part of a top-down agenda to federalize COVID-19-based medicine leads to another form of misinformation that is sanctioned, even mandated, from the powers-that-be above. The entire process reflects either a persistent ignorance, at best, or an unfortunately “stubborn intentional falsification” of a drug that has, overall, done so much good for humanity

Baltimore Sun - We are currently unavailable in your region

Back to the Future as Dr. Fauci Educates Viral Natural Immunity Superior to Vaccination

Back to the Future as Dr. Fauci Educates Viral Natural Immunity Superior to Vaccination

Sometimes a visit to the past can clarify the present or at least inform the future. Recently entrepreneur and YouTuber Patrick Bet David shared Twitter

trialsitenews.com

Sometimes a visit to the past can clarify the present or at least inform the future. Recently entrepreneur and YouTuber Patrick Bet David shared Twitter an interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci, present-day Chief Medical Advisor to the President (although he has been eerily silent of late) and head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institute of Health who adamantly clarifies that natural immunity is superior to vaccination once infected with the influenza virus.

In a C-Span interview, a younger Dr. Fauci uses common medical knowledge when asked about a scenario where a person has been ill with the influenza virus for 14 days. The C-Span host asks the NIAID head whether the person should get the flu shot if she has already been sick with the flu. Fauci doesn’t hesitate:

“Well, no, if she got the flu for 14 days she is protected as anybody could be because the best vaccination is to get infected yourself.” Fauci pauses and cuts off the host who was going to insert a comment reemphasizing “If she really has the flu, she definitely doesn’t need a flu vaccine.”

Fauci further declared after the host tries one more time to inquire “It’s the most potent vaccine” of course that’s natural immunity.

Now, SARS-CoV-2 isn’t the influenza virus, but Fauci’s point during this interview has been common wisdom with viruses. But of course, there are many different viruses with various immune responses and immunopathology as described by Rouse and Sehrawat. SARS-CoV-2 isn’t the flu but it’s also a virus and the science of the past shouldn’t be conveniently dropped for the urgent health policy needs of the present.

SARS-CoV-2 was new and of course, regardless of what any media might broadcast the origin of this pathogen remains uncertain—but probably either it made its way into humans via zoonotic process or somehow through human negligence leaked out of a lab in Wuhan, China, or some other source, with its’ sophisticated mutations supporting pathogen survival. Fear, driven by uncertainty (or perhaps some inside knowledge), led to a series of decisions that lead to today.

Millions of people have died and unfortunately will may continue to do so if care isn’t directed in a more precise, risk-based manner, earlier on in the infectious lifecycle (e.g., early care).

Governments now transition to more lax positions yet evidence of this contagion continuing on abounds—from South Korea and New Zealand to now Canada heavily vaccinated places experience serious, in some cases record-breaking surges of cases and even deaths as is the case in both New Zealand and South Korea. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like this pathogen will just dissipate like previous coronaviruses—but we hope we are wrong here.

The race to make a vaccine with World Health Organization targets of 70% immunization worldwide represented an unprecedented situation in our history of medicine. Never before had something like this happened on this scale. Driving that number was the original assumption that vaccination with COVID-19 immunization would stop the spread of the pathogen and help lead to herd immunity.

That, unfortunately, wasn’t the case with the emergence of delta, studies started indicating that the vaccine durability was questionable while the mutant variants became more evasive. That unfortunate combination (waning vaccine effectiveness and evasive variant) only worsened with Omicron and BA.2 hence the recent approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the fourth dose (second booster dose) for elderly and select immunocompromised persons.

Bill Gates, perhaps the most active vaccine investor on the planet, has even referred to Omicron like it’s a vaccine. Meanwhile, government rational for mass vaccination pivoted from stopping community transmission to preventing more serious illness and death as well as protecting stretched health care systems—especially in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs). The vaccines have demonstrated value at offering protection against more severe situations (e.g., hospitalization and death)—yet breakthrough situations became ever more commonplace.

Over 80 million have been infected in the United States, perhaps many more. The rush to vaccinate people even after natural immunity studies materialized many months ago. While TrialSite covered the studies demonstrating the impacts of natural immunity, mainstream media in the United States was strangely, or not so strangely silent on the issue of natural immunity.

A confluence of specific policy, mandate-driven ethos, and media bias led to intense pressure to vaccinate everyone, even if they were already infected. While health authorities in the United States and most other places spent little on studying natural immunity—while many billions of taxpayer funds continue to get directed to various pharmaceutical and biotech firms for not only vaccines but all sorts of investigational therapies many with questionable overall value to society. And even now investors must question the math behind some of these pipelines.

As policies materialized to reinforce behavior, such as vaccine passports in places like New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, one had to show full proof of vaccination to enter a restaurant, exercise in a gym, or visit the theatre. But given what we have learned about natural immunity, such as the study covering Sweden’s entire population just the other day demonstrating that natural immunity lasts for at least 20 months and for all practical purposes is just as sufficient as vaccination (although the study shows natural immunity and vaccination is slightly better) why wouldn’t natural immunity be included in such vaccine passport schemes. At least they were in most European countries.

Yes, while Dr. Fauci was resolute in the past that natural immunity was indeed not only real but at least in the case of the flu, superior, at least with influenza, his leadership has led to a very different reality today in the United States. A vaccination-first policy all but ignores natural immunity. It’s as if it wouldn’t exist but for some alternative media that kept reporting on studies from around the world that offered some at least preliminary insight into the topic.

The upcoming American College of Cardiology (ACC) Annual Conference starting today through April 4th is yet another example of this new reality post-COVID-19 less the full science (meaning it’s not scientific but rather political). What if you want to attend yet you have already been infected with SARS-CoV-2 and for whatever reason couldn’t or didn’t want to get a vaccine. Too bad, you cannot be there. That’s because proof of full COVID-19 vaccination is required to attend the ACC.22 event in person.

What will define full COVID-19 vaccination in 3, 6, 9, and 12 months? Will you need a boost, or two, or more? What’s clear here at the TrialSite, it’s not a scientific question with this current leadership, but a political one

Pfizer BNT162 Document Dump Continues

Pfizer BNT162 Document Dump Continues

The non-profit participating in the call for COVID-19 vaccine production transparency announced that the latest documents from Pfizer have been disclosed.

trialsitenews.com

The non-profit participating in the call for COVID-19 vaccine production transparency announced that the latest documents from Pfizer have been disclosed. TrialSite has followed the release of these documents in a legal action led by attorney Aaron Siri and his firm Siri Glimstad, representing the group Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency. The latest batch includes a report from February 28, 2021, titled “5.3.6 CUMULATIVE ANALYSIS OF POST-AUTHORIZATION ADVERSE EVENT REPORTS OF PF-07302048 (BNT162B2) RECEIVED THROUGH 28-FEB-2021“ that lists some findings reported in this media before—the company reports no material safety signals. Although 1,223 fatalities were reported in just under a three-month period with 65 associated with vaccine effectiveness—and 136 deaths associated with cardiovascular-related safety reports (classified as resolved or resolving), none of these were acknowledged to be causally associated with the vaccine itself as TrialSite reported before.

The data below in part has been reported by this media before. The accumulation of adverse events that occurred in the first three months from the time the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine BNT162b2 was released in December 2020 to February 28, 2021, representing the first reporting period (now disclosed formerly in the trove of documentation), doesn’t necessarily represent cause and effect, although it’s easy to see why one would think that would be the case.

At the point of this report (Feb. 28, 2021) of the rollout of the vaccine, over 126 million doses had been shipped with 42,086 adverse event cases meaning that actually reported issues were a minuscule 0.0334% of all doses at that time. Thus, the pharmaceutical company reported no safety signals with the regulatory authorities accepting that point, especially given the state of urgency at the time in the middle of the pandemic. The risk-benefit analysis seemed obvious to medical authorities.

Moreover, Pfizer, a large multinational with sophisticated resources, systems, and processes, reported the data didn’t reveal any novel safety concerns or risks necessitating a label change while supporting a favorable risk-benefit profile for the COVID-19 vaccine.

Yet TrialSite reminds all of the importance of revisiting this data as with what many deem unconstitutional vaccine mandates, billions in taxpayer-funded company revenues, and shielded liability (e.g., PREP ACT), true medical value necessitates transparency, accessibility, and accountability. The monitoring from independent, reader-supported media continues.

Background

The legal dispute over a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request went back and forth with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) at one point proposing that the full release of documentation associated with the commercialization of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine occur in 75 years!

But as reported in TrialSite, the federal judge ruled against the FDA’s request to dribble out 500 pages per month. Rather, they were ordered on January 6 to release 55,000 every month. The plaintiffs declared FDA had or could obtain sufficient capacity to respond to the original order, moreover, there was no reason for Pfizer meddling with the action against the Gold Standard regulatory.

Ultimately the judge ordered 70,000 pages per month of the supporting documentation released to the public. TrialSite reported, “The FDA will produce 80,000 pages on or before May 2, June 1 and July 1, 2022” further elaborating “70 00 pages on or before August 1” and the same number on or before the first business day of each month thereafter.

The latest batch of Pfizer vaccine documents from the FDA includes 11,043 pages in addition to an “unredacted version of the post-marketing experience report” according to attorney Siri’s tweet. What’s in the latest set of documents?

First, TrialSite notes that Pfizer reported “large numbers of spontaneous adverse event reports received for the product (BNT162b2).” Consequently, the company prioritized the processing of serious cases in a bid to meet expedited regulatory reporting timelines thereby ensuring the reports were available for signal detection. The company reported that the large increase in cases didn’t impact their ability to track, report,and comply.

In the table below, TrialSite provides an overview

Document Description

125742_S1_M5_5351_c4591001-fa-interim-publications.pdf 16.1.11 PUBLICATIONS BASED ON THE STUDY 1. Mulligan MJ, Lyke KE, Kitchin N, et al. Phase 1/2 study of COVID-19 RNA vaccine BNT162b1 in adults. Nature. 2020;10.1038/s41586-020-2639-4. 2. Walsh EE, Frenck FW, Falsey AR, et al. Safety and immunogenicity of two RNA-based Covid-19 vaccine candidates. N Engl J Med 2020; DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2027906.

125742_S1_M5_5351_c4591001-fa-interim-randomization.pdf 16.1.7.1 Listing of Randomization Scheme and Actual Vaccine Received – Phase 1, 2 Doses, 21 Days Apart

125742_S1_M5_5351_c4591001-fa-interim-randomization-sensitive.pdf 16.1.7.2 Listing of Randomization Scheme and Actual Vaccine Received – Phase 2

125742_S1_M5_5351_c4591001-fa-interim-sample-crf.pdf Annotated Study Book for Study Desi Study Design: C4591001

125742_S1_M5_5351_c4591001-fa-interim-sponsor-signature.pdf CLINICAL STUDY REPORT APPROVAL FORM

125742_S1_M5_5351_c4591001-interim-mth6-adverse-events-sensitive.pdf 16.2.7.2.3 Listing of Severe and Grade 4 Local Reactions – Subjects with Indeterminate Vaccine – All Subjects ≥16 Years of Age

125742_S1_M5_5351_c4591001-interim-mth6-audit-certificates.pdf Pfizer Audit Certificate

125742_S1_M5_5351_c4591001-interim-mth6-demographics.pdf 16.2.4 Listing of Demographic Characteristics – All Subjects ≥16 Years of Age

125742_S1_M5_5351_c4591001-interim-mth6-invest-signature.pdf INVESTIGATOR DECLARATION Clinical Study Report (one trial site location)

reissue_5.3.6 post marketing experience.pdf 5.3.6 CUMULATIVE ANALYSIS OF POST-AUTHORIZATION ADVERSE EVENT REPORTS OF PF-07302048 (BNT162B2) RECEIVED THROUGH 28-FEB-2021

125742_S1_M5_5351_c4591001-fa-interim-audit-certificates.pdf Pfizer Audit Certificate (Sixteen(16)investigator site audits were performed between29-Apr-2020and14-Nov-2020for Study C4591001 Phase 2/3*)

125742_S1_M5_5351_c4591001-fa-interim-demographics.pdf Table 16.2.4.1 Listing of Demographic Characteristics – Phase 1, 2 Doses, 21 Days Apart

125742_S1_M5_5351_c4591001-fa-interim-iec-irb-consent-form.pdf 16.1.3.1 LIST OF INDEPENDENT ETHICS COMMITTEE (IEC) OR INSTITUTIONAL REVIEW BOARD (IRB) ARGENTINA

125742_S1_M5_5351_c4591001-fa-interim-invest-signature.pdf Final analysis interim report—authored by clinical lead John L. Perez from the trial site Upstate Medical University

125742_S1_M5_5351_c4591001-fa-interim-protocol-deviations.pdf 16.2.2.1 Listing of Important Protocol Deviations – Phase 1, 2 Doses, 21 Days Apart

TrialSite’s Sonia Elijah continues to review and chronicle elements of previous released documentation.

In the document titled 5.3.6 CUMULATIVE ANALYSIS OF POST-AUTHORIZATION ADVERSE EVENT REPORTS OF PF-07302048 (BNT162B2) RECEIVED THROUGH 28-FEB-2021, Pfizer’s Worldwide Safety department documents post-authorization safety data associated with the vaccine, which centers on BioNTech data points per a Pfizer and BioNTech agreement. This report includes data associated with adverse events (AEs). Post -marketing AE reporting has limitations included in the document.

The report includes safety data associated with the Pfizer/BioNTech clinical and post authorization safety package of their Biologics License Application (BLA) for BNT162b2. This particular artifact offers “an integrated analysis of the cumulative post-authorization safety data, including U.S. and foreign post-authorization adverse event reports received through 28 February 2021. The emergency use authorization (EUA) was granted by the FDA on December 11, 2020, so this post-authorization adverse event report covers just three months

By this point, the document discloses 126.2 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine had been shipped worldwide. A total of 158,893 events are reported from December 1, 2020, through February 28, 2021. Of these, Pfizer reported 42,086 case reports, including the following:

Case Report #

Medically Confirmed 25,379

Non-medically Confirmed 16,707

Total Case Reports 42,086

Country Breakdown

Case Report #

USA 13,739

UK 13,404

Italy 2,578

Germany 1,913

France 1,506

Portugal 866

Spain 756

Rest of World 7,324

For case outcomes see the table:

Gender #

Male 9,182

Female 29,914

No Data 2,990

Total 42,086

See age distribution

Age #

≤ 17 175*

18-30 4,953

31-50 1,3886

51-64 7,884

65-74 3,098

≥75 5,214

Unknown 6,876

*In 46 cases reported age was <16-year-old and in 34 cases <12-year-old

Case Outcomes

Case Outcome #

Recovered/Recovering 19,582

Recovered with Symptoms 520

Not Recovered at time of report 11,361

Fatal 1,223

Unknown 9,400

Note among these case outcomes the following trends:

Case Outcome #

General Disorders/Admin Site 51,335

Nervous system disorders 25,957

Musculoskeletal/Connective 17,283

Gastrointestinal 14,096

Skin & Subcutaneous tissue 8,476

Respiratory, thoracic & mediastinal 8.848

Infections & Infestations 4,610

Injury, poisoning & procedural complications 5,590

Investigations 3,693

What about Important potential risks such as Vaccine Associated Enhanced Disease (VAED) including Vaccine Associated Enhanced Respiratory Disease (VAERD)?

The report shared that “No post-authorized AE reports have been identified as cases of VAED/VAERD, therefore, there is no observed data at this time. An expected rate of VAED is difficult to establish so a meaningful observed/expected analysis cannot be conducted at this point based on available data. The feasibility of conducting such an analysis will be re-evaluated on an ongoing basis as data on the virus grows and the vaccine safety data continues to accrue.”

However, the report goes on to identify possible relevant events (138 cases) across a number of countries, including 38 deaths (see page 11).

Pfizer concludes, “VAED may present as severe or unusual clinical manifestations of COVID-19. Overall, there were 37 subjects with suspected COVID-19 and 101 subjects with confirmed COVID-19 following one or both doses of the vaccine; 75 of the 101 cases were severe, resulting in hospitalization, disability, life-threatening consequences or death. None of the 75 cases could be definitively considered as VAED/VAERD. In this review of subjects with COVID-19 following vaccination, based on the current evidence, VAED/VAERD remains a theoretical risk for the vaccine. Surveillance will continue.”

What about pregnancy and breastfeeding?

Out of the tota,l 413 cases were reported at this time, including 84 serious and 329 non-serious. Pfizer breaks down on page #12 the country of origin and reports on some disturbing outcomes:

∙ Spontaneous abortion (23)

∙ Outcome pending (5)

∙ Premature birth (2)

∙ Neonatal death (2)

∙ Spontaneous abortion with intrauterine death (2)

∙ Spontaneous abortion with neonatal death (1)

∙ Normal outcome (1)

What about baby feeding cases?

Pfizer reports 116 cases with exposure to vaccine during breastfeeding via mother’s milk without the occurrence of any clinical adverse events. However out of 17 cases, 3 are serious and 14 non-serious and involved the following when the infant/child was exposed to the vaccine:

∙ Pyrexia (5)

∙ Rash (4)

∙ Infant irritability (3)

∙ Infant vomiting (2)

∙ Diarrhea (2)

∙ Insomnia (2)

∙ Illness (2)

Poor feeding infant, Lethargy, Abdominal discomfort, Vomiting, Allergy to vaccine, Increased appetite, Anxiety, Crying, Poor quality sleep, Eructation, Agitation, Pain and Urticaria one each.

Pfizer reported, “Conclusion: There were no safety signals that emerged from the review of these cases of use in pregnancy and while breastfeeding.”

Likewise, Pfizer reported no safety signals that emerged based on the review of pediatric cases <12 years o age with 34 cases (24) serious involving Off label use (11), Pyrexia (6), Product use issue (5), Fatigue, Headache and Nausea (4 each), Vaccination site pain (3), Abdominal pain upper, COVID-19, Facial paralysis, Lymphadenopathy, Malaise, Pruritus and Swelling (2 each).

By page #17, Pfizer reports Adverse Events of Special Interest (AESI) including 136 deaths resolved with 767 resolving at that point in time.

The company noted that based on the cumulative data at that time no new safety signals were raised. But that they would continue to monitor and continue causality assessments post availability of additional unblinded data from a forthcoming study referred to as C4591001 as well as other referenced studies.

A goal here is to provide transparency, accessibility and objective analysis which benefits all of society. This media recognizes the value of the COVID-19 vaccines given the reduction in death and hospitalization during the pandemic. However, consumer safety is of paramount importance as is a constant progression of the scientific understanding of the benefits and risks of new medicinal products. TrialSite will continue to review the documentation from the Siri Glimstad-based action

Perhaps worthy of its own thread.

Sensors Embeded Within CMNS Solid State Fusion Reactor Substrates

Or something like that. My thinking advanced control requires sensors on the nano scale and includes terrahertz, a new technology and industry,

Like the

Atomic and Molecular Physics Group (AMPG)

AMPG_RearchInterest

• This topic is focused on the study of intense, ultrafast laser pulses interacting with atoms, molecules, solids, and plasmas. Atoms and molecules in strong field have induced abundant physical phenomena, such as above threshold ionization (ATI), non-sequential double ionization (NSDI), high-order harmonic generation (HHG) and attosecond physics. The extremely non-perturbative and extremely non-linear characterization, beyond the suitable scope of classical pertubative theory, has aroused great enthusiasm among researchers looking for new theory. Meanwhile, using femtosecond laser pulse, high resolution measurements on temporal (attosecond) and spatial (sub-angstrom) can be performed by generating tabletop coherent extremely-ultraviolet source, with which we can real-time measure atomic and molecular structure and even manipulate them.
• Terahertz (THz) radiation is a category of electromagnetic radiation in a frequency interval from 0.1 to 10 THz, which occupies a large portion of the electromagnetic spectrum between the infrared and microwave bands. For the shortage of mature generation and detection methods, the THz band remains unexplored compared to the relatively well-developed science and technology in the microwave and optical frequencies. Thus it is of great chance and challenge in filling up this “THz Gap”. Our main goal is to become the leading platform for THz science and engineering, dedicated to the following: research and development of new materials and their electromagnetic characterization for THz applications; exploration of new applications in the areas of telecommunication and electromagnetic sensing, THz security and defense applications; research on generation and of new intense THz source; THz time-domain spectra system (TDS) and coherently THz image and manipulation. Recently, we proposed attosecond synchronization of THz wave and harmonics, arbitrary polarized THz wave detection, difference frequency generation of THz radiation in GaSe crystal and so on, showing the progress and potential in THz generation, detection and application.

So anyways I am interested in patents cited in the recent Google Cold Fusion Patents, like Ben Breed's one which seems to be coming out of the Raytheon group? That's a advanced solid state reactor.

Also of interest is this sensor patent, cited by Team Google, out of the University Court Of The University Of Glasgow It seems taylor-made for Google’s reactor, but I am only guessing. Others here might dispell or discuss its significance.

A couple of the patent categories it is listed under are fairly new, ones I like to watch and study...

Classifications

G01N33/54373 Apparatus specially adapted for solid-phase testing involving physiochemical end-point determination, e.g. wave-guides, FETS, gratings

G02B1/002 Optical elements characterised by the material of which they are made; Optical coatings for optical elements made of materials engineered to provide properties not available in nature, e.g. metamaterials

Plasmonic device, method of manufacturing a plasmonic device and method of analysis using a plasmonic device

Abstract

A plasmonic device is disclosed, the plasmonic device having a base substrate and an electrically conductive film formed on the base substrate. The base substrate has a reference upper surface and an arrangement of chiral nanostructures formed in relief from the reference upper surface. Each chiral nanostructure has a nanostructure upper surface which is disposed at a distance of at least 30 nm from the reference upper surface in a thickness direction. The electrically conductive film is formed on the nanostructure upper surface of each chiral nanostructure and on at least part of the reference upper surface of the base substrate. Also disclosed is a method of analysis of a biological material using the plasmonic device, by depositing the biological material onto the plasmonic device and irradiating the plasmonic device and the biological material with electromagnetic radiation. The arrangement of chiral nanostructures and electrically conductive film generates a superchiral electromagnetic field, the effect of the presence of the biological material on the superchiral electromagnetic field then being detected.

Images (17)

US20170370923A1 - Plasmonic device, method of manufacturing a plasmonic device and method of analysis using a plasmonic device - Google Patents

Quote from Shane D.

Do not believe that Sam. Fact is that after UNIBO started applying pressure, Rossi was given a chance to save his friends reputation. Rossi responded by throwing him under the bus. He has a rich history of doing that.

So how should Rossi have handled

the situation?

Quote from THHuxleynew

It is just common sense that people who know they are at higher risk are more likely to get vaccinated

Unvaccinated 80+ 1.4%

Unvaccinated 50-59 9%

From July:

Unvaccinated 80+ 9%

Unvaccinated 50-59 19%

So this bias is getting larger with time, unlike your antivaxxer-guessed idea stated above it would get smaller.

Display More

Why not look at it in absolute numbers. The same graph yields this:

We see that the number of 80+ year olds transitioning from being not fully vaccinated to fully vaccinated from your date of July 2022 to present is meagre compared to other age groups. So the bias towards older people being fully vaccinated and skewing the numbers is clearly lessening. That you are arguing against this is weird, rather akin to Jed saying that 99 percent of the Japanese are vaccinated.

Quote from sam12

So how should Rossi have handled

the situation?

Help his friend.

Quote from Shane D.

Help his friend.

I think Rossi should hire this light

Tester to retest the SKLed.

Stay away from the University crowd.

Bob Greenyer Live an hour or so ago.

Complete interview with John B Alexander that Bob refers to in his talk.

Ivermectin brings freedom to India... https://www.mygov.in/covid-19

But not for Kerala - the India vaccine terror state, that now (3.April2022) produces 90% of India's CoV-19 deaths...

FDA: Where is Novavax? Why Haven’t You Authorized? Who are You Protecting?

FDA: Where is Novavax? Why Haven’t You Authorized? Who are You Protecting?

What do Europe, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the World Health Organization have in common? They have all authorized or approved the Novavax COVID-19

trialsitenews.com

What do Europe, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the World Health Organization have in common? They have all authorized or approved the Novavax COVID-19 vaccine while the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continues to sit on a submission by the American company. This starts to seem a bit strange. On December 31 Novavax completed the submission of the final data package to the FDA including the complete chemistry, manufacturing, and controls module to fulfill the prerequisites for emergency use authorization (EUA) application. What’s happened since then at the purported Gold Standard agency? Not much in relation to the Novavax vaccine, at least not publicly. In the meantime, the Novavax vaccine (NVX-CoV2373) has been authorized on an emergency basis in the world’s major markets including European (European Medicines Agency), approved by the United Kingdom’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) as well as Canada and even the World Health Organization’s Emergency Use Listing (EUL). Even Japan’s health authorities procured 150 million doses from Novavax recently.

Health Canada granted authorization for the recombinant protein, adjuvanted vaccine branded as Nuvaxovid COVID-19 Vaccine for active immunization to prevent COVID-19 last month. Novavax has been authorized in several other nations as well, including major markets.

TrialSite reported that a version of the product was produced in India for Indonesia as well as for the Philippines. On December 20 the European Medicines Agency recommended that the Novavax product the European Medicines recommended use of the product. Most recently the company requested access with EMA for the teen cohort. The United Kingdom’s MHRA approved the vaccine on February 3, 2022. See the press release.

Even the World Health Organization (WHO) included Novavax on the global health agencies emergency use listing (EUL). See the press release.

Where is the FDA?

What about the U.S. FDA? Why has EMA, MHRA, Health Canada, and other agencies such as the WHO authorized this vaccine from an American company and not the FDA? TrialSite receives mail all the time from viewers who would eagerly accept this vaccine? Why isn’t the FDA accelerating for choice like their colleagues in Europe? Why can’t the American consumer have competition for COVID-19 vaccines?

Some across America start to think that the medical establishment, including regulators, are too cozy with a couple of the vaccine producers, namely the mRNA makers of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

While the pivotal Phase 3 studies were good enough to support emergency approvals in Canada, the UK, Europe, and World Health Organization, why in the world wouldn’t the FDA move as well? It’s time for the American public to knock on that regulator’s door

The CDC is beholden to corporations and lost our trust. We need to start our own

The People's CDC

The CDC is beholden to corporations and lost our trust. We need to start our own | US news | The Guardian

A new omicron variant, referred to as BA 2, is taking hold in the US. Anthony Fauci and others have said they don’t expect a new surge in the US, but BA.2 is causing devastating surges elsewhere, and the policies and behaviors we might use to prevent a surge in the US have been widely abandoned, in part thanks to the CDC’s new system for measuring and conveying Covid risk.

In late February, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) unveiled a new Covid-19 monitoring system based on what they call “Community Levels.” By downplaying the importance of Sars-CoV-2 transmission, the new system instantly turned what was a pandemic map still red from Omicron transmission to green – creating the false impression that the pandemic is over.

Released four days before the State of the Union, the new CDC measures and the narrative they created let President Biden claim victory over the virus via sleight of hand: a switch from standard reporting of community transmissions to measures of risk based largely on contentious hospital-based metrics. The previous guidelines called anything over 50 cases per 100,000 people “substantial or high.” Now, they say 200 cases per 100,000 is “low” as long as hospitalizations are also low.

The resulting shift from a red map to a green one reflected no real reduction in transmission risk. It was a resort to rhetoric: an effort to craft a success story that would explain away hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths and the continued threat the virus poses.

The desires of corporate America have been prioritized over the health needs of our people – especially our most vulnerable

These new guidelines are at odds with evidence-based and equitable public health practice in three fundamental ways.

First, they do not intend to prevent disease spread. By minimizing the importance of new cases, and focusing instead on hospitalizations–a lagging indicator–the revamped warning system delays action until surges are well underway and the consequences of severe disease and death are already in motion. Making matters worse, at-home tests are not recorded in the US, so the only “early indicator” in the risk level calculation grossly undercounts the true number of cases.

The justification for the shift is that the virus is mostly harmless a claim which not only ignores that one million have already died in the US alone, but also completely erases the reality of Long Covid. Studies indicate that 10-30% of Covid infections deteriorate into multiple debilitating syndromes lasting months to years. Minimizing Covid’s risks to the public will only increase these harms in our communities.

Secondly, the new guidelines do more than inappropriately message safety; the guidelines shift the burden of responsibility onto vulnerable people. In place of clear, evidence-based guidance on masking for those facing greater risk, for example, the CDC simply advises individuals to consult with their local healthcare provider. This instruction assumes that providers are accessible, well informed, and willing to take on the personal liability for giving guidance around a potentially fatal virus that the CDC was once responsible for. In a country without healthcare for all, these assumptions are wrong.

Even before these changes, Biden and the CDC declared the US faced a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” – disregarding the risks faced by those of us living with chronic diseases and disabilities, including the immunocompromised; those with lower incomes and higher-risk jobs; members of indigenous, Black, and Latinx communities; the elderly; the pregnant; and children, especially under five years old.

These vulnerable populations have unjustly had too little access to vaccines, masks, testing, and clean air. Many faced employment practices forcing them into unsafe, in-person work, while those more privileged protected themselves by working and learning remotely. We’ve already seen the consequences of these inequities: disproportionate death and disability in structurally vulnerable communities. Now, by increasing transmissions, inequities will continue to multiply as the pandemic continues.

Thirdly, the guidelines are blatantly political. The new recommendations aim to convince the public that this pandemic is over when it is not. They suggest we tolerate the nearly one million US dead, and too-quickly abandon measures that would keep that number from growing. They suggest we continue to isolate those with chronic illness and disability while the rest return to “normal” life. They suggest Long Covid isn’t the rapidly growing crisis that it is, especially for those fully vaccinated, despite documented risks of ongoing and sometimes disabling symptoms. They dismiss the near-inevitable emergence of new variants. They dismiss the urgency to vaccinate the rest of the world.

Simply changing the metrics gave jurisdictions across the US a false sense of security

Before the new CDC guidelines, the vulnerable were moderately protected by local mask mandates, passing shelter-in-place recommendations, and general support for public health interventions aimed at collective well-being. There was at least some urgency around vaccination campaigns and occupational protections against the virus. There was recognition that Covid was still a threat.

Changing the metrics alone permitted jurisdictions across the US to retire mask mandates and people to retire their masks. As successful health campaigns are interrelated, efforts to vaccinate against Covid and improve ventilation in schools and at work have also lost steam. The shift from red to green reflects both major US parties turning the page on the virus as a political problem rather than a change in the reality of the pandemic. And the red to green shift also paved the way for the political class to wash their hands of would-be fights over Covid funding.

Some claim that the White House and the CDC are “following the science” and doing the best they can in these times. But if the goal is to prevent infection and suffering, the updated recommendations do not align with science or equity. It’s more accurate to say they’re following the money. They’ve put the desires of corporate America above the needs of our people, and especially our most vulnerable.

We need a CDC that prioritizes the health of the people, not the health of big business. We need a People’s CDC. And so we formed one.

We’re epidemiologists and physicians, artists and biologists. We’re children, parents, and grandparents. We’re living with Long Covid and losses of loved ones. We’ve come together with a common anger at our government’s disregard for social and public health responsibilities. Though many of us have just met, we inherit hundreds of years of resistance traditions.

We greet this work with humility, recognizing there are still many uncertainties about new variants, Long Covid, and the future of therapeutics. Yet we know enough to reject, with certainty, ineffectual public health policies based on individualistic approaches. And we are certain that there is another way - that collective action has always and can now create a new way forward in responding to Covid and other deadly pathogens.

We’ve already put out a statement and recommendations about BA 2, a statement regarding the CDC’s new recommendations and we brought together a coalition of groups to create an equity-focused toolkit to help parents and teachers demand the best Covid protections in schools. We are in the midst of developing COVID “weather reports” on the state of the pandemic based on epidemiological data rather than what corporate America demands.

We demand a layered, collective, and equitable approach to the pandemic. We recognize that none are safe from contagious disease until we are all safe. It is with this understanding that we will continue to share the latest on the state of the pandemic, toolkits for action, and recommendations on what to do, developed for and together with community organizations. For it is only through collective power that we can create a new, more equitable world that can not only control outbreaks but also prevent them from emerging in the first place.

We hope you will join us.

Mindy Fullilove, MD, The New School

Zoey Thill, MD, MPH, MPP, Family Medicine Physician

Josh Garoon, PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Mary Jirmanus Saba, Independent Filmmaker

Lucky Tran, PhD, March for Science

Elaine A. Hills, PhD, Independent Public Health Scientist

Jeoffry B. Gordon, MD, MPH, California Physicians Alliance

Douglas Farrand, University of Orange

Dannie Ritchie, MD, MPH, Brown University, Community Health Innovations of Rhode Island

Kaliris Y. Salas-Ramirez, PhD, The City College of New York

Sam Friedman, PhD, NYU Grossman School of Medicine

Molly Rose Kaufman, University of Orange

Daniel Joseph Wiley, The HUUB

Robert G. Wallace, PhD, Pandemic Research for the People

Margeaux Simmons, PhD, University of Orange

Edgar Rivera Colon, PhD, USC Keck School of Medicine

The People’s CDC is a collective of public health practitioners, scientists, healthcare workers, educators, advocates and people from all walks of life who care about reducing the harmful impacts of Covid-19. The People’s CDC is volunteer-run and independent of partisan political and corporate interests. A copy of the People’s CDC report on the change in the CDC’s Covid-19 guidelines can be found at peoplescdc.org.

This Shouldn’t Happen”: Inside the Virus-Hunting Nonprofit at the Center of the Lab-Leak Controversy

Chasing scientific renown, grant dollars, and approval from Dr. Anthony Fauci, Peter Daszak transformed the environmental nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance into a government-funded sponsor of risky, cutting-edge virus research in both the U.S. and Wuhan, China. Drawing on more than 100,000 leaked documents, a V.F. investigation shows how an organization dedicated to preventing the next pandemic found itself suspected of helping start one.

“This Shouldn’t Happen”: Inside the Virus-Hunting Nonprofit at the Center of the Lab-Leak Controversy

Chasing scientific renown, grant dollars, and approval from Dr. Anthony Fauci, Peter Daszak transformed the environmental nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance into a…

www.vanityfair.com

On June 18, 2021, an evolutionary biologist named Jesse D. Bloom sent the draft of an unpublished scientific paper he’d written to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to the president of the United States. A bespectacled, boyish-looking 43-year-old often clad in short-sleeved checkered shirts, Bloom specializes in the study of how viruses evolve. “He is the most ethical scientist I know,” said Sergei Pond, a fellow evolutionary biologist. “He wants to dig deep and discover the truth.”

The paper Bloom had written—known as a preprint, because it had yet to be peer-reviewed or published—contained sensitive revelations about the National Institutes of Health, the federal agency that oversees biomedical research. In the interests of transparency, he wanted Fauci, who helms an NIH subagency, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), to see it ahead of time. Under ordinary circumstances, the preprint might have sparked a respectful exchange of views. But this was no ordinary preprint, and no ordinary moment.

More than a year into the pandemic, the genesis of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was still a mystery. Most scientists believed that it had made the leap from bats to humans naturally, via an intermediary species, most likely at a market in Wuhan, China, where live wild animals were slaughtered and sold. But a growing contingent were asking if it could have originated inside a nearby laboratory that is known to have conducted risky coronavirus research funded in part by the United States. As speculation, sober and otherwise, swirled, the NIH was being bombarded by Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits. Fauci himself needed a security detail, owing to death threats from conspiracy theorists who believed he was covering up some dark secret.

Bloom’s paper was the product of detective work he’d undertaken after noticing that a number of early SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequences mentioned in a published paper from China had somehow vanished without a trace. The sequences, which map the nucleotides that give a virus its unique genetic identity, are key to tracking when the virus emerged and how it might have evolved. In Bloom’s view, their disappearance raised the possibility that the Chinese government might be trying to hide evidence about the pandemic’s early spread. Piecing together clues, Bloom established that the NIH itself had deleted the sequences from its own archive at the request of researchers in Wuhan. Now, he was hoping Fauci and his boss, NIH director Francis Collins, could help him identify other deleted sequences that might shed light on the mystery.

Bloom had submitted the paper to a preprint server, a public repository of scientific papers awaiting peer review, on the same day that he’d sent a copy to Fauci and Collins. It now existed in a kind of twilight zone: not published, and not yet public, but almost certain to appear online soon.

Collins immediately organized a Zoom meeting for Sunday, June 20. He invited two outside scientists, evolutionary biologist Kristian Andersen and virologist Robert Garry, and allowed Bloom to do the same. Bloom chose Pond and Rasmus Nielsen, a genetic biologist. That it was shaping up like an old-fashioned duel with seconds in attendance did not cross Bloom’s mind at the time. But six months after that meeting, he remained so troubled by what transpired that he wrote a detailed account, which Vanity Fair obtained.

After Bloom described his research, the Zoom meeting became “extremely contentious,” he wrote. Andersen leapt in, saying he found the preprint “deeply troubling.” If the Chinese scientists wanted to delete their sequences from the database, which NIH policy entitled them to do, it was unethical for Bloom to analyze them further, he claimed. And there was nothing unusual about the early genomic sequences in Wuhan.

Instantly, Nielsen and Andersen were “yelling at each other,” Bloom wrote, with Nielsen insisting that the early Wuhan sequences were “extremely puzzling and unusual.”

Andersen—who’d had some of his emails with Fauci from early in the pandemic publicly released through FOIA requests—leveled a third objection. Andersen, Bloom wrote, “needed security outside his house, and my pre-print would fuel conspiratorial notions that China was hiding data and thereby lead to more criticism of scientists such as himself.”

Fauci then weighed in, objecting to the preprint’s description of Chinese scientists “surreptitiously” deleting the sequences. The word was loaded, said Fauci, and the reason they’d asked for the deletions was unknown.

That’s when Andersen made a suggestion that surprised Bloom. He said he was a screener at the preprint server, which gave him access to papers that weren’t yet public. He then offered to either entirely delete the preprint or revise it “in a way that would leave no record that this had been done.” Bloom refused, saying that he doubted either option was appropriate, “given the contentious nature of the meeting.”

At that point, both Fauci and Collins distanced themselves from Andersen’s offer, with Fauci saying, as Bloom recalled it, “Just for the record, I want to be clear that I never suggested you delete or revise the pre-print.” They seemed to know that Andersen had gone too far.

Both Andersen and Garry denied that anyone in the meeting suggested deleting or revising the paper. Andersen said Bloom’s account was “false.” Garry dismissed it as “nonsense.” Sergei Pond, however, confirmed Bloom’s account as accurate, after having it read aloud to him. “I don’t remember the exact phrasing—I didn’t take any notes—but from what you described, that sounds accurate. I definitely felt bad for poor Jesse.” He added that the “charged-up” atmosphere struck him as “inappropriate for a scientific meeting.” A spokesperson for Fauci declined to comment.

Six months after his contentious meeting with Fauci and other top scientists on June 20, 2021, Jesse Bloom made a written record of his recollections. Vanity Fair later obtained the document. Click here to see and download the full document.

The wagon-circling on that Zoom call reflected a siege mentality at the NIH whose cause was much larger than Bloom and the missing sequences. It couldn’t be made to disappear with creative editing or deletion. And it all began with a once-obscure science nonprofit in Manhattan that had become the conduit for federal grant money to a Wuhan research laboratory.

In 2014, Fauci’s agency had issued a $3.7 million grant to EcoHealth Alliance, a nongovernmental organization dedicated to predicting and helping to prevent the next pandemic by identifying viruses that could leap from wildlife to humans. The grant, titled Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence, proposed to screen wild and captive bats in China, analyze sequences in the laboratory to gauge the risk of bat viruses infecting humans, and build predictive models to examine future risk. The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) was a key collaborator to whom EcoHealth Alliance gave almost $600,000 in sub-awards. But the work there had been controversial enough that the NIH suspended the grant in July 2020.

As it happened, EcoHealth Alliance failed to predict the COVID-19 pandemic—even though it erupted into public view at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, a short drive from the WIV itself. In the ensuing months, every move of EcoHealth Alliance, and its voluble president Peter Daszak, came under scrutiny by a small army of scientific sleuths and assorted journalists. What, they wanted to know, had really gone on at the WIV? Why had Daszak been so cagey about the work his organization had been funding there? And were Fauci and other officials trying to direct attention away from research that the U.S. had been, at least indirectly, financing?

The dispute over COVID-19’s origins has become increasingly acrimonious, with warring camps of scientists trading personal insults on Twitter feeds. Natural-origin proponents argue that the virus, like so many before it, emerged from the well-known phenomenon of natural spillover, jumping from a bat host to an intermediate species before going on to infect humans. Those suspecting a lab-related incident point to an array of possible scenarios, from inadvertent exposure of a scientist during field research to the accidental release of a natural or manipulated strain during laboratory work. The lack of concrete evidence supporting either theory has only increased the rancor. “Everyone is looking for a smoking gun that would render any reasonable doubt impossible,” says Amir Attaran, a biologist and lawyer at the University of Ottawa. Without cooperation from the Chinese government, that may be impossible.

In 2018, Daszak had appeared on Chinese state-run TV and said, “The work we do with Chinese collaborators is published jointly in international journals and the sequence data is uploaded onto the internet free for everyone to read, very open, very transparent, and very collaborative.” He added, “Science is naturally transparent and open…. You do something, you discover something, you want to tell the world about it. That’s the nature of scientists.”

But as COVID-19 rampaged across the globe, the Chinese government’s commitment to transparency turned out to be limited. It has refused to share raw data from early patient cases, or participate in any further international efforts to investigate the virus’s origin. And in September 2019, three months before the officially recognized start of the pandemic, the Wuhan Institute of Virology took down its database of some 22,000 virus samples and sequences, refusing to restore it despite international requests.

As for transparency-minded scientists in the U.S., Daszak early on set about covertly organizing a letter in the Lancet medical journal that sought to present the lab-leak hypothesis as a groundless and destructive conspiracy theory. And Fauci and a small group of scientists, including Andersen and Garry, worked to enshrine the natural-origin theory during confidential discussions in early February 2020, even though several of them privately expressed that they felt a lab-related incident was likelier. Just days before those discussions began, Vanity Fair has learned, Dr. Robert Redfield, a virologist and the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), had urged Fauci privately to vigorously investigate both the lab and natural hypotheses. He was then excluded from the ensuing discussions—learning only later that they’d even occurred. “Their goal was to have a single narrative,” Redfield told Vanity Fair.

Why top scientists linked arms to tamp down public speculation about a lab leak—even when their emails, revealed via FOIA requests and congressional review, suggest they held similar concerns—remains unclear. Was it simply because their views shifted in favor of a natural origin? Could it have been to protect science from the ravings of conspiracy theorists? Or to protect against a revelation that could prove fatal to certain risky research that they deem indispensable? Or to protect vast streams of grant money from political interference or government regulation?

The effort to close the debate in favor of the natural-origin hypothesis continues today. In February, The New York Times gave front-page treatment to a set of preprints—written by Michael Worobey at the University of Arizona, Kristian Andersen at Scripps Research Institute, and 16 coauthors, including Garry—claiming that a new analysis of public data from the Huanan market in Wuhan provided “dispositive evidence” that the virus first leapt to humans from animals sold there. But a number of top scientists, Bloom among them, questioned that assertion, saying the preprints, while worthy, relied on incomplete data and found no infected animal.

“I don’t think they offer proof. They provide evidence that more strongly supports the link to the wild animal market than to the WIV, and that’s the way I would have phrased it,” says W. Ian Lipkin, an epidemiologist at Columbia University who favors the natural-origin theory.

“Some scientists seem almost hell-bent on naming the Huanan market as the site of the origin of the pandemic; and some members of the media seem more than happy to embrace these conclusions without careful examination,” said Stanford microbiologist David Relman. “This issue is far too important to be decided in the public domain by unreviewed studies, incomplete and unconfirmed data, and unsubstantiated proclamations.”

Perhaps more than anyone, Peter Daszak—a Western scientist immersed in Chinese coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology—was uniquely positioned to help the world crack open the origin mystery, not least by sharing what he knew. But last year, Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, the Columbia University economist who oversees the Lancet’s COVID-19 commission, dismissed Daszak from the helm of a task force investigating the virus’s genesis, after he flatly refused to share progress reports from his contested research grant. (In written responses to detailed questions, Daszak said he was “simply following NIH guidance” when he declined Sachs’s request, because the agency was withholding the reports in question “until they had adjudicated a FOIA request.” The reports are now publicly available, he said.)

“[Daszak] and NIH have acted badly,” Sachs told Vanity Fair. “There has been a lack of transparency…and there is a lot more to know and that can be known.” He said that the NIH should support an “independent scientific investigation” to examine the “possible role” in the pandemic of the NIH, EcoHealth Alliance, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and a partner laboratory at the University of North Carolina. “Both hypotheses are still very much with us,” he said, and “need to be investigated seriously and scientifically.” (“We are also on record as welcoming independent scientific investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Daszak told Vanity Fair.)

This story is based on more than 100,000 internal EcoHealth Alliance documents obtained by Vanity Fair, as well as interviews with five former staff members and 33 other sources. The documents, most of which predate the pandemic, span a number of years and include budgets, staff and board meeting minutes, and internal emails and reports. While the documents do not tell us where COVID-19 came from, they shed light on the world in which EcoHealth Alliance has operated: one of murky grant agreements, flimsy oversight, and the pursuit of government funds for scientific advancement, in part by pitching research of steeply escalating risk.

The story of how Daszak’s grant entangled Fauci in the specter of Wuhan coronavirus research began years earlier, at a stately Beaux Arts social club in Washington, D.C. For more than a decade, EcoHealth Alliance hosted a series of cocktail parties at the Cosmos Club near DuPont Circle to discuss the prevention of viral outbreaks. There, expert biologists, virologists, and journalists mingled with the true guests of honor: federal government bureaucrats who were in the position to steer grants.

On invitations, EcoHealth Alliance described the events as “educational.” Inside the nonprofit, however, officials called them “cultivation events.” The return on investment was excellent: For about $8,000 in Brie and Chardonnay per event, they got to network with prospective federal funders. As the organization’s 2018 strategic plan spelled out, “Given our strength in federal funding, we enhanced our cultivation events at the Cosmos Club in Washington DC, which now regularly attract 75-150 people at high levels in govt agencies, NGOs and the private sector.” (“These kinds of events are common among many nongovernmental organizations and nonprofits, which depend upon both public and private donors for support,” Daszak told Vanity Fair.)

Of all those high-level people, almost no one ranked as high as Fauci, a scientific kingmaker who dispensed billions in grant money each year—and Daszak was determined to share a podium with him. The idea was admittedly a reach. Though he’d met with Fauci and received funding from his agency, Daszak was relatively obscure. But he had cultivated back-channel access to the minders who guarded Fauci’s calendar.

On September 9, 2013, Daszak emailed Fauci’s senior adviser David Morens to see if the sought-after NIAID chief would be available as a panel speaker. Morens emailed back, recommending that Daszak “write Tony directly, thanking him for meeting with you all recently and then inviting him to be a member of this Cosmos Club discussion. That way, it is personal and doesn’t look ‘cooked’ by us.”

Though Fauci declined that invitation and several others, Daszak kept trying. In February 2016, Morens passed along a valuable tip: Fauci “normally says no to almost everything like this. Unless ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox are all there with cameras running. If he were asked to give THE main talk or the only talk that might increase the chances.”

The gambit worked. Fauci signed on to give a presentation on the Zika virus at the Cosmos Club on March 30, and the RSVPs flowed in. The guests came from an array of deep-pocketed federal agencies: the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Pentagon, even NASA. As Daszak would declare at a board meeting on December 15, the “Washington, DC cultivation events have been a great way to increase our visibility to federal funders,” according to meeting minutes. A month earlier, Donald Trump had been elected president. One board member at the meeting asked what his incoming administration might mean for a conservation nonprofit dependent on federal grants. Daszak offered breezy reassurance: The organization’s “apolitical mission” would help it adapt.

Little did he know that, in the era of Trump and COVID-19, science itself would become the ultimate political battleground.

EcoHealth Alliance’s D.C. “cultivation events,” whose guest speakers would include Dr. Anthony Fauci, are said in board meeting minutes to improve “visibility” to federal funders. Click here to see and download the full document.

If a shared podium with Fauci proved that Daszak had become a true player among virus hunters, it also underscored just how far he had come. For years, Peter Daszak sat at the helm of a struggling nonprofit with a mission to save manatees, promote responsible pet ownership, and celebrate threatened species. The organization, which operated under the name Wildlife Trust until 2010, was constantly on the hunt for ways to close its budget shortfalls. One year, it proposed to honor at its annual benefit a mining company operating in Liberia that was paying it to assess the risks of Ebola virus. Another idea was to seek donations from palm-oil millionaires leveling rainforests who might be interested in “cleaning up” their image.

Balding and usually clad in hiking gear, Daszak was one part salesman, one part visionary. He saw clearly that human incursions into the natural world could lead to the emergence of animal pathogens, with bats a particularly potent reservoir. Daszak was “making a bet that bats were harboring deadly viruses,” said Dr. Matthew McCarthy, an associate professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York. In 2004, as a 23-year-old Harvard medical student, McCarthy followed Daszak to Cameroon to trap bats. “I left my family, my friends,” he said. “It was a very powerful thing for people like me, going into the most remote parts of the world. I was taken by him, hook, line, and sinker.”

The bioterror attacks of 2001, in which letters dusted with anthrax spores were sent through the U.S. mail, coupled with the first SARS coronavirus outbreak in China the following year, would bring money for the study of lethal natural pathogens pouring into federal agencies. In 2003, the NIAID got an eye-popping $1.7 billion for research to defend against bioterrorism.

Daszak’s office on Manhattan’s Far West Side didn’t have a laboratory. The closest bat colonies were in Central Park. But he cultivated an affiliation with Shi Zhengli, a Chinese scientist who would rise to become the director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases. Slight and sophisticated with an international education, Shi became known in China as “bat woman” for her fearless exploration of their habitats. Dazsak’s alliance with her would open China’s bat caves to him.

In 2005, after conducting field research in four locations in China, Daszak and Shi coauthored their first paper together, which established that horseshoe bats were a likely reservoir for SARS-like coronaviruses. They would go on to collaborate on 17 papers. In 2013, they reported their discovery that a SARS-like bat coronavirus, which Shi had been the first to successfully isolate in a lab, might be able to infect human cells without first jumping to an intermediate animal. “[Peter] respected her,” said the former EcoHealth Alliance staffer. “In the view of everyone, they were doing great work for the world.” Their partnership gave Daszak an almost proprietary sense of the bat caves in Yunnan province, which he would later refer to in a grant proposal as “our field test sites.”

As Daszak’s staff and Shi’s graduate students intermingled, traveling between Wuhan and Manhattan, the exchange flourished. When Shi visited New York, the EcoHealth staff selected a restaurant for a celebratory dinner with great care. “Zhengli is not one to stand on formality; she makes dumplings by hand with her students in the lab!!” Daszak’s chief of staff wrote to another employee. “She got her PhD in France, loves red wine, and likes good food above formality.”

By 2009, bats had turned into big money. That September, USAID awarded a $75 million grant called PREDICT to four organizations, including Daszak’s. It was “the most comprehensive zoonotic virus surveillance project in the world,” USAID stated, and its purpose was to identify and predict viral emergence, in part by sampling and testing bats and other wildlife in remote locations.

The $18 million over five years awarded to what was then Wildlife Trust was a “game-changer,” Daszak told his staff in an ecstatic email sharing the news. “I want to take this opportunity (despite 7 hours of drinking champagne – literally!) to thank all of you for your support.”

The money transformed the ragged nonprofit. It increased its budget by half, ending a yearslong operating loss; began a long-deferred rebranding, which led to the new name EcoHealth Alliance; and spruced up its headquarters, even fixing its chronically broken air conditioner. Over the course of the grant, it allocated $1.1 million to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, USAID recently acknowledged in a letter to Congress.

When Dr. Maureen Miller, an infectious disease epidemiologist, arrived at EcoHealth Alliance in 2014, she landed in an environment that she found to be toxic and secretive. Closed-door meetings were the norm. The senior leadership constituted an unwelcoming “old boys network.” She soon came to believe that she was hired “because they needed a senior-level woman,” she said, adding, “I was excluded from pretty much everything.”

She came aboard shortly before the organization’s PREDICT grant was renewed for five more years. It was also the year the NIH approved Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence, the $3.7 million grant that would come back to haunt Fauci. Miller said she was “lured by the idea of being able to create a pandemic-threats warning system.”

Miller got to work creating a surveillance strategy to detect zoonotic virus spillover. Chinese villagers living near bat caves in Southern Yunnan province would have their blood tested for antibodies to a SARS-like coronavirus, then answer questionnaires to determine if certain behaviors had led them to be exposed. It was a “biological and behavioral warning system,” Miller explained.

Over the next two years, Miller saw Daszak only a handful of times. But she worked closely with Shi Zhengli, who developed the test to screen the villagers’ blood. In that time, Miller noted, “I never got a result from [Shi] via phone. I had to show up in China to learn anything from her.” From that, Miller gleaned that, while Shi was a “world-class scientist, she respects the Chinese system.” In short, she followed the Chinese government’s rules. (Shi Zhengli did not respond to written questions for this article.)

Miller left EcoHealth Alliance in November 2016, never knowing what became of the strategy she’d developed. But in the fall of 2017, Shi alerted Miller’s former assistant to the fact that Daszak was about to get credit for her work in an upcoming publication. “Shi went out of her way to ensure I would be included,” Miller said. The final version of a letter, published in January 2018 in the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s journal, Virologica Sinica, included Miller’s name. Six out of 218 villagers had tested positive for antibodies, suggesting that the strategy was a successful way to gauge potential spillover.

But the experience left Miller with a dark impression of Daszak: “He is so single-minded that he wants to be the one who makes the discovery, without having to share.”

Daszak said Miller has been credited as a coauthor on at least eight papers stemming from her work at EcoHealth Alliance, “a testimony to the equity, fairness, and openness of our publication and authorship practices.” He added that the nonprofit’s staff is “diverse and culturally sensitive” and has been “majority female for 20 years.”

Daszak’s $3.7 million NIH grant first set off alarm bells in early May 2016, as it entered its third year. The NIH requires annual progress reports, but Daszak’s year-two report was late and the agency threatened to withhold funds until he filed it.

The report he finally did submit worried the agency’s grant specialists. It stated that scientists planned to create an infectious clone of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), a novel coronavirus found in dromedaries that had emerged in Saudi Arabia in 2012 and killed 35% of the humans it infected. The report also made clear that the NIH grant had already been used to construct two chimeric coronaviruses similar to the one that caused Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which emerged in 2002 and went on to cause at least 774 deaths worldwide. (A chimeric virus is one that combines fragments of different viruses.) These revelations prompted the NIH’s grant specialists to ask a critical question: Should the work be subject to a federal moratorium on what was called gain-of-function research?

With that, Daszak’s grant got tangled in a yearslong debate that had divided the virology community. In 2011, two scientists separately announced that they had genetically altered Highly Pathogenic Asian Avian Influenza A (H5N1), the bird flu virus that has killed at least 456 people since 2003. The scientists gave the virus new functions—enabling it to spread efficiently among ferrets, which are genetically closer to humans than mice—as a way to gauge its risks to people. Both studies had received NIH funding.

The scientific community erupted in conflict over what became known as gain-of-function research. Proponents claimed it could help prevent pandemics by highlighting potential threats. Critics argued that creating pathogens that didn’t exist in nature ran the risk of unleashing them. As the dispute raged, Fauci worked to strike a middle ground, but ultimately supported the research, arguing in a coauthored Washington Post op-ed that “important information and insights can come from generating a potentially dangerous virus in the laboratory.”

In October 2014, the Obama administration imposed a moratorium on new federal funding for research that could make influenza, MERS, or SARS viruses more virulent or transmissible, while a review took place. But the moratorium, as written, left loopholes, which allowed Daszak to try to save the research. On June 8, 2016, he wrote to the NIH’s grant specialists that the SARS-like chimeras from the completed experiment were exempt from the moratorium, because the strains used had not previously been known to infect humans. He also pointed to a 2015 research paper in which scientists had infected humanized mice with the same strains, and found that they were less lethal than the original SARS virus.

But the 2015 research paper he cited was not particularly reassuring. In it, Shi Zhengli and a preeminent coronavirus researcher at the University of North Carolina, Ralph Baric, mixed components of SARS-like viruses from different species, and created a novel chimera that was able to directly infect human cells. (Baric did not respond to written questions seeking comment.)

This gain-of-function experiment, which had begun prior to the moratorium, was so fraught that the authors flagged the dangers themselves, writing, “scientific review panels may deem similar studies…too risky to pursue.” The paper’s acknowledgments cited funding from the NIH and from EcoHealth Alliance, through a different grant.

If anything, the MERS study Daszak proposed was even riskier. So he pitched a compromise to the NIH: that if any of the recombined strains showed 10 times greater growth than a natural virus, “we will immediately: i) stop all experiments with the mutant, ii) inform our NIAID Program Officer and the UNC [Institutional Biosafety Committee] of these results and iii) participate in decision making trees to decide appropriate paths forward.”

This mention of UNC brought a puzzled response from an NIH program officer, who pointed out that the proposal had said the research would be performed at the WIV. “Can you clarify where the work with the chimeric viruses will actually be performed?” the officer wrote. Ten days later, with still no response from Daszak, the program officer emailed him again. On June 27, Daszak responded, buoyant as ever:

“You are correct to identify a mistake in our letter. UNC has no oversight of the chimera work, all of which will be conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology…. We will clarify tonight with Prof. Zhengli Shi exactly who will be notified if we see enhanced replication…my understanding is that I will be notified straight away, as [principal investigator], and that I can then notify you at NIAID. Apologies for the error!”

By July 7, the NIH agreed to Daszak’s terms, which relied entirely on mutual transparency: Shi would inform him of any concerning developments involving the lab-constructed viruses, and he would inform the agency. Daszak replied enthusiastically to a program officer, “This is terrific! We are very happy to hear that our Gain of Function research funding pause has been lifted.”

Allowing such risky research to go forward at the Wuhan Institute of Virology was “simply crazy, in my opinion,” says Jack Nunberg, director of the Montana Biotechnology Center. “Reasons are lack of oversight, lack of regulation, the environment in China,” where scientists who publish in prestigious journals get rewarded by the government, creating dangerous incentives. “So that is what really elevates it to the realm of, ‘No, this shouldn’t happen.’”

A subsequent development seemed to support that view. On January 15, 2021, in the waning days of the Trump administration, the State Department released a fact sheet based on declassified intelligence. It asserted that Chinese military scientists had been collaborating with the WIV’s civilian scientists since 2017, if not earlier. That raised the question of whether research there was being repurposed for offensive or military uses. Though Shi and other WIV leaders have previously denied such collaboration occurred, former deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger calls those denials “willful lies. If one were to give them the benefit of the doubt, you might go so far as to say they have no choice but to lie, but these are lies nonetheless.”

If China’s military had been collaborating with WIV scientists, it’s unclear if Daszak would have realized it. He had far less visibility into the WIV than he let on, a former EcoHealth Alliance staffer told Vanity Fair. The work being done there was “always an enigma,” the former staffer said. The nonprofit had hired a U.S.-based Chinese national who helped “interpret for them what was happening inside the WIV…. But we had to take everything at face value. It was more, ‘Accept what it is, because of this relationship’” between Shi and Daszak.

“He doesn’t know what happened in that lab,” said the former staffer. “He cannot know that.”

According to Daszak, EcoHealth Alliance “was aware” of the WIV’s research activities related to its NIH grant. He says he had no knowledge of Chinese military involvement there and was never notified of any by the U.S. government.

By 2017, despite massive infusions of grant money, EcoHealth Alliance faced a brewing financial crisis. Ninety-one percent of its funding came from the federal government, and 71% of that came from the PREDICT grant, according to minutes of the organization’s finance committee meeting. The renewed grant, known as PREDICT II, was slated to end in two years. There was no way to know if the grant would be reauthorized for a third time. The looming possibility that it would expire came to be known internally as the “PREDICT cliff.”

How to prevent the organization from tumbling over it consumed meeting after meeting. One possible solution was the Global Virome Project, a nongovernmental initiative being organized by the infectious disease specialist Dennis Carroll, who had established PREDICT while working at USAID. The Global Virome Project was far more ambitious: Its goal was to map every possible virus on earth—an estimated 840,000 of which might infect human beings—as a way to “end the pandemic era.”

The program had a steep projected price tag of $3.4 billion over 10 years, Daszak explained to board members. But the cost of not knowing and suffering a pandemic was estimated at $17 trillion over 30 years. Looked at that way, the Global Virome Project was a relative bargain.

But there was another way that EcoHealth Alliance could ward off the $8 million shortfall it was facing. The Defense Department could serve as a federal life raft in a new ocean of grants. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was seeking proposals for a new program called PREEMPT, which aimed to identify animal pathogens “to preempt their entry into human populations before an outbreak occurs.”

For EcoHealth Alliance, the PREEMPT grant seemed like a slam dunk. For years, Daszak had been developing a method of predictive modeling to identify likely sites of viral spillover around the world and stop pandemics at the source. Some questioned the effectiveness of Daszak’s approach. “In 20 years of using this method, [EcoHealth Alliance] did not predict a single outbreak, epidemic or pandemic,” Maureen Miller told Vanity Fair. But David Morens, senior adviser to the NIAID director, said that Daszak became one of the “key players” in understanding that “emerging diseases came from animals, the animals had their own geographic ranges, and if you knew where the animals were and what diseases they carried, you could predict hot spots.”

EcoHealth Alliance also doubled down on another key selling point: Its unique on-the-ground connections in China would effectively give the U.S. government a foothold in foreign laboratories. As Daszak had told his staff at a meeting some years earlier, one Defense Department subagency wanted “information on what is going on in countries in which they cannot access (China, Brazil, Indonesia, India).”

With the PREDICT cliff and the DARPA deadline coming ever closer, Daszak struck an upbeat note with his board, pointing out that the organization had a strong track record of winning federal grants. “This was the golden ticket,” a former staffer familiar with the DARPA grant application said. “The message was always, ‘We are going to do cool and cutting-edge science. DARPA is the right agency to fund this.’”

Last September, EcoHealth Alliance’s grant proposal to DARPA was leaked to DRASTIC, a loosely affiliated global group of sleuths—ranging from professional scientists to amateur data enthusiasts—dedicated to investigating the origins of COVID-19. From the 75-page proposal, a striking detail stood out: a plan to examine SARS-like bat coronaviruses for furin cleavage sites and possibly insert new ones that would enable them to infect human cells.

A furin cleavage site is a spot in the surface protein of a virus that can boost its entry into human cells. SARS-CoV-2, which emerged more than a year after the DARPA grant was submitted, is notable among SARS-like coronaviruses for having a unique furin cleavage site. This anomaly has led some scientists to consider whether the virus could have emerged from laboratory work gone awry.

Documents obtained by Vanity Fair shed new light on the chaotic process surrounding the DARPA proposal, which was cocreated with colleagues including Shi Zhengli at the WIV and Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As the March deadline approached, the grant’s collaborators worked 24/7, with versions pouring in from around the world. “Those documents were being written by many, many people,” one former employee recalled.

The grant application proposed to collect bat samples from caves in Yunnan Province, transport them to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, extract and manipulate the viruses they contain, and use them to infect mice with humanized lungs. It would then map high-risk areas for bats harboring dangerous pathogens and treat test caves with substances to reduce the amount of virus they were shedding.

It was a long way from saving manatees from motorboats.

By almost any definition, this was gain-of-function research. The federal moratorium had been lifted in January 2017 and replaced with a review system called the HHS P3CO Framework (for Potential Pandemic Pathogen Care and Oversight). This required a safety review by the agency funding the research.

EcoHealth Alliance’s DARPA proposal asserted that its research was exempt from the P3CO framework. It also emphasized the extensive experience of the team it would assemble. But at a staff meeting on March 29, Daszak expressed dismay at the slapdash and amateur nature of the DARPA submission. It was a “major failure on all accounts,” he noted, enumerating a cascade of mistakes: The application was late, sent in “30 minutes after deadline.” There were errors uploading documents, comment boxes that remained on the pages, a question of who was in charge. What was needed, he exhorted his staff, was a “change in culture” as “part of [a] mentaility [sic] to get money,” according to the meeting minutes.

EcoHealth Alliance’s controversial rejected DARPA grant proposal is described as a “major failure” in staff meeting minutes. Click here to see and download the document.

Inside DARPA, the grant application was met with immediate skepticism. The contract was “never awarded because of the horrific lack of common sense” it reflected, said a former DARPA official who was there at the time. EcoHealth Alliance was viewed as a “ragtag group” and a “middle guy,” a backseat collaborator willing to get on an Air China jet, eat terrible food, and stay in bad hotels, said the former official.

Likewise, the WIV was also viewed as subpar, especially when compared with the Harbin Veterinary Research Institute, which operated China’s only other high-containment laboratory with the highest biosafety protocol: BSL-4. Harbin was China’s Harvard, said the former DARPA official. The WIV was more like a safety school. EcoHealth Alliance had “bolted on” a serious scientist, Ralph Baric, and “podged” the proposal together. Having the nonprofit serve as the prime contractor for a global project with national security risks was like “having your rental car agency trying to run an armada,” said the former DARPA official.

Though two of three DARPA reviewers deemed it “selectable,” the third, a program manager in the Biological Technologies Office, recommended against funding it. He wrote that the application did not adequately mention or assess the gain-of-function risk or the possibility that the proposed work could constitute dual-use research of concern (DURC), the technical term for science that can be repurposed to cause harm or endanger security.

The DARPA proposal was “basically a road map to a SARS-CoV-2-like virus,” says virologist Simon Wain-Hobson, who is among the scientists calling for a fuller investigation of COVID-19’s origins. If the research had the blessing of a top coronavirus scientist like Baric, then it is possible the WIV would have wanted to copy what it viewed as cutting-edge science, he said. “That doesn’t mean they did it. But it means it’s legitimate to ask the question.”

According to Daszak, no one at DARPA expressed any concerns about the proposed research to EcoHealth Alliance. On the contrary, he said, “DARPA told us that ‘we had a strong proposal’ and ‘wished DARPA had greater funding for the PREEMPT program.’” He added, “the research was never done by EHA or, to my knowledge, any of the collaborating partners on that proposal.”

By late December 2019, cases of what would soon be identified as SARS-CoV-2 began emerging around the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in the Jianghan district of Wuhan, roughly eight miles from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Daszak seemed poised to play a leading role in the emerging crisis. On January 2, 2020, he tweeted: “The GOOD news!! is that leading scientists from the US, China and many other countries are working together to actively block the ability of these viruses to spillover, and to rapidly detect them if they do.” He continued, “This includes active collaboration with China CDC, Wuhan Inst. Virology, @DukeNUS, @Baric_Lab, and a diverse array of Provincial CDCs, universities and labs across S. and Central China.”

On January 30, Daszak went on CGTN America, the U.S. outpost for Chinese state television, and said two things that proved to be spectacularly wrong. “I’m very optimistic…that this outbreak will begin to slow down,” he said. “We’re seeing a small amount of human-to-human transmission in other countries, but it’s not uncontrollable.” He went on to conclude that the Chinese government was taking all necessary steps “to be open and transparent, and work with WHO, and talk to scientists from around the world, and where necessary, bring them in to help. They’re doing that. It’s exactly what needs to happen.”

In fact, the opposite was true. The virus was spreading uncontrollably and the Chinese government was busy crushing anyone who spoke out: It ordered laboratory samples destroyed, punished doctors who raised alarms, and claimed the right to review any scientific research about COVID-19 ahead of publication, a restriction that remains in place today.

At the highest levels of the U.S. government, alarm was growing over the question of where the virus had originated and whether research performed at the WIV, and funded in part by U.S. taxpayers, had played some role in its emergence.

To Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the CDC at the time, it seemed not only possible but likely that the virus had originated in a lab. “I personally felt it wasn’t biologically plausible that [SARS CoV-2] went from bats to humans through an [intermediate] animal and became one of the most infectious viruses to humans,” he told Vanity Fair. Neither the 2002 SARS virus nor the 2012 MERS virus had transmitted with such devastating efficiency from one person to another.

What had changed? The difference, Redfield believed, was the gain-of-function research that Shi and Baric had published in 2015, and that EcoHealth Alliance had helped to fund. They had established that it was possible to alter a SARS-like bat coronavirus so that it would infect human cells via a protein called the ACE2 receptor. Although their experiments had taken place in Baric’s well-secured laboratory in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, who was to say that the WIV had not continued the research on its own?

In mid-January of 2020, Vanity Fair can reveal, Redfield expressed his concerns in separate phone conversations with three scientific leaders: Fauci; Jeremy Farrar, the director of the U.K.’s Wellcome Trust; and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization (WHO). Redfield’s message, he says, was simple: “We had to take the lab-leak hypothesis with extreme seriousness.”

It is not clear whether Redfield’s concerns are what sparked Fauci’s own. But on Saturday night, February 1, at 12:30 a.m., Fauci emailed the NIAID’s principal deputy director, Hugh Auchincloss, under the subject line “IMPORTANT.” He attached the 2015 paper by Baric and Shi and wrote, “Hugh: It is essential that we speak this AM. Keep your cell phone on.” He instructed Auchincloss to read the attached paper and added, “You will have tasks today that must be done.”

February 1 proved to be a critical day. With the death count in China passing 300 and cases popping up in more than a dozen countries, Farrar convened a group of 11 top scientists across five time zones. That morning, he asked Fauci to join. “My preference is to keep this group really tight,” Farrar wrote. “Obviously ask everyone to treat in total confidence.” Fauci, Francis Collins, Kristian Andersen, and Robert Garry all joined the call. No one invited Redfield, or even told him it was happening.

In the conference call and emails that followed over the next four days, the scientists parsed the peculiarities of SARS-CoV-2’s genomic sequence, paying special attention to the furin cleavage site.

Dr. Michael Farzan, an immunologist, emailed the group, writing that the anomaly could result from sustained interaction between a chimeric virus and human tissue in a laboratory that lacked appropriate biocontainment protocols, “accidentally creating a virus that would be primed for rapid transmission between humans.” He leaned toward the lab-origin hypothesis, saying, “I think it becomes a question of…whether you believe in this series of coincidences, what you know of the lab in Wuhan, how much could be in nature—accidental release or natural event? I am 70:30 or 60:40.”

He was not alone. Garry wrote of the “stunning” composition of the furin cleavage site: “I really can’t think of a plausible natural scenario where you get from the bat virus or one very similar to it to [SARS-CoV-2] where you insert exactly 4 amino acids 12 nucleotide[s] that all have to be added at the exact same time to gain this function…. I just can’t figure out how this gets accomplished in nature.”

The previous evening, Andersen had emailed Fauci, saying that he and scientists including Garry, Farzan, and the Australian virologist Edward Holmes all found the genetic sequence “inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory.”

But within three days, four of the scientists on the call, including Andersen, Garry, and Holmes, had shared the draft of a letter arguing the opposite. Farrar shared a copy with Fauci, who offered feedback ahead of its publication on March 17 in Nature Medicine. The letter, The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2, analyzed the genomic sequence and made a seemingly unequivocal statement: “we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”

How they arrived at such certainty within four days remains unclear. In his book Spike: The Virus vs. The People—the Inside Story, Farrar cited “the addition of important new information, endless analyses, intense discussions and many sleepless nights.” But even as they circulated the draft on February 4, qualms remained. Farrar wrote to Collins and Fauci that, while Holmes now argued against an engineered virus, he was still “60-40 lab.”

A Wellcome spokesman told Vanity Fair, “Dr. Farrar is in regular conversation with and regularly convenes many other expert scientists.” He added, “Dr. Farrar’s view is that there was at no stage any political influence or interference during these conversations, or in the research carried out.” Garry said that it was “frankly tiresome to explain for the umpteenth time that that was one email cherry-picked among dozens, even hundreds, in part of an ongoing scientific discussion.”

Though he wasn’t part of those conversations, the epidemiologist W. Ian Lipkin told Vanity Fair, “I have known Fauci for 30 years. Fauci is not interested in anything but the truth. Anyone that says anything otherwise doesn’t know him.”

Lipkin was added as a fifth author on the Proximal Origin letter. Ahead of publication, he told his coauthors he was concerned that gain-of-function research on coronaviruses was being performed in laboratories with insufficient safeguards. The Proximal Origin letter addresses that issue, but dismisses a possible accident as the source of SARS-CoV-2. Lipkin was not invited to participate in future publications with the group, such as the preprints by Andersen and Worobey that made it onto the front page of The New York Times in February. “I can speculate on why I’ve not been asked to join various publications. However, I don’t know why I’ve not been asked,” he said.

While Andersen and the others were fine-tuning the Proximal Origin letter, Daszak was quietly working to bury speculation of a lab leak. On February 19, in a letter published in the influential medical journal The Lancet, he joined 26 scientists in asserting, “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.” Nine months later, emails released by a Freedom of Information group showed that Daszak had orchestrated the Lancet statement with the intention of concealing his role and creating the impression of scientific unanimity.

Under the subject line, “No need for you to sign the ‘Statement’ Ralph!!,” he wrote to Baric and another scientist: “you, me and him should not sign this statement, so it has some distance from us and therefore doesn’t work in a counterproductive way.” Daszak added, “We’ll then put it out in a way that doesn’t link it back to our collaboration so we maximize an independent voice.”

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

The Lancet statement ended with a declaration of objectivity: “We declare no competing interests.” Among its signatories were Jeremy Farrar and one other participant in the confidential huddle with Fauci.

Reading the Lancet letter, with Farrar’s name attached to it, Redfield had a dawning realization. He concluded there’d been a concerted effort not just to suppress the lab-leak theory but to manufacture the appearance of a scientific consensus in favor of a natural origin. “They made a decision, almost a P.R. decision, that they were going to push one point of view only” and suppress rigorous debate, said Redfield. “They argued they did it in defense of science, but it was antithetical to science.”

A Wellcome spokesperson told Vanity Fair, “The letter was a simple statement of solidarity with highly reputable researchers based in China and against non-evidence-based theories. Dr. Farrar does not believe the letter was covertly organized. He had no conflict of interest to declare.”

As the pandemic spread to every corner of the globe, Daszak continued to devote his considerable energies to promoting the idea that science itself had reached consensus: The virus emerged from nature, not a lab. But as one concerning detail after another slipped into public view, the facade of unanimity began to crack, exposing his own work to questions.

During a White House COVID-19 press briefing on April 17, 2020, a reporter for the right-wing television network Newsmax asked President Trump why the NIH would fund a $3.7 million grant to a high-level lab in China. The details were wrong, and the question seemed queued-up to feed an anti-China political agenda. Trump responded, “We will end that grant very quickly.”

That exchange, in turn, uncorked a question from another reporter to Fauci: Could SARS-CoV-2 have come from a lab? His answer from the White House podium was swift and clear. A recently published analysis from a “group of highly qualified evolutionary virologists” had concluded that the virus was “totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human.” He was referring to the Proximal Origin letter, drafted by some of the scientists he’d met with confidentially in early February.

The next day, Daszak sent an email of profuse thanks to Fauci for “publicly standing up and stating that the scientific evidence supports a natural origin for COVID-19 from a bat-to-human spillover, not a lab release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” Fauci responded, thanking him back.

If Daszak thought that Fauci’s kind words meant his grant was safe, he was mistaken. Six days later, he received a sharply worded letter from a senior NIH official: His bat coronavirus research grant, which had provided subgrants to the WIV, was being terminated. Amid an uproar and legal threats, the agency reinstated the grant several months later, but suspended its activities. So began a bitter, ongoing battle between Daszak and the NIH over whether he’d complied with the grant’s terms. Swaths of this private correspondence have become public since last September, as part of a FOIA lawsuit waged by The Intercept.

Daszak also found himself answering increasingly pointed questions about the WIV’s decision to take down its online database of 22,000 genomic sequences in September 2019, prior to the known onset of the pandemic.

Maureen Miller says the human blood samples that were collected in China as part of the surveillance strategy she designed at EcoHealth Alliance could hold clues to COVID-19’s provenance. But they went into the WIV and are now out of reach. Why would a database supported by U.S. tax dollars to help prevent and respond to a pandemic be made “inaccessible exactly when it was needed to fulfill its intended purpose?” asks Jamie Metzl, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, who was among the first to call for a full investigation of COVID-19’s origins.

Presumably, Daszak possessed a great deal of that inaccessible data. He said as much during a March 2021 panel organized by a London-based think tank: “A lot of this work has been conducted with EcoHealth Alliance…. We do basically know what’s in those databases.” Previously, EcoHealth Alliance had signed a pledge, along with 57 other scientific and medical organizations, to share data promptly in the event of a global public health emergency. And yet, in the face of just such an emergency, Daszak told Nature magazine, “We don’t think it’s fair that we should have to reveal everything we do.”

In April 2020, he warned colleagues from other institutions that partnered on the PREDICT grants not to publicly release certain sequences. “All - It’s extremely important that we don’t have these sequences as part of our PREDICT release to Genbank at this point,” he wrote. “As you may have heard, these were part of a grant just terminated by NIH. Having them as part of PREDICT will [bring] very unwelcome attention to” the PREDICT program, grant partners, and USAID.

By October 2021, the NIH had repeatedly demanded that EcoHealth Alliance turn over data related to its grant research with the WIV. Daszak argued that he couldn’t share a number of SARS coronavirus sequences because he was waiting for the Chinese government to authorize their release. The explanation seemed to undercut the entire rationale for having the U.S. government help fund a global collaboration on virus emergence.

Daszak said it was “incorrect” to suggest that EcoHealth Alliance had not “readily shared data,” and asserted that all of its relevant coronavirus data from NIH-supported research at the WIV has now been made public. He added that he warned about “unwelcome attention” because he wanted “to avoid [colleagues] being dragged into the political fray unfairly” after the NIH’s decision to terminate EcoHealth Alliance’s grant “unleashed a torrent of unwarranted political attacks.”

U.S. officials and at least one of Daszak’s former colleagues were stunned when, in November 2020, the WHO announced the names of 11 international experts assigned to a fact-finding mission to China to investigate COVID-19’s origins. China had veto power over the list, and none of the three candidates put forward by the U.S. had made the cut. Instead, Peter Daszak was listed as America’s sole representative.

It’s still unclear how Daszak wound up on the commission. “I didn’t want to go, and I said no initially,” he later told Science magazine, before adding, “If you want to get to the bottom of the origins of a coronavirus outbreak in China, the number one person you should be talking to is the person who works on coronaviruses in China, who’s not from China…. So that’s me, unfortunately.”

Daszak told Vanity Fair, “WHO reached out to me and asked me to serve on the committee. I initially refused, but…following their persuasive arguments decided that it was my duty as a scientist to support the origins investigation.” A WHO spokesperson would neither confirm nor deny Daszak’s account.

One former EcoHealth staffer thinks it’s obvious who tapped Daszak for the role: “If his name was not among the names floated [by the U.S.], his was the name that the Chinese government chose.”

In China, the experts spent half of their monthlong mission quarantined in hotels. Once released, they made one trip to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Daszak later described the visit to 60 Minutes: “We met with them. We said, ‘Do you audit the lab?’ And they said, ‘Annually.’ ‘Did you audit it after the outbreak?’ ‘Yes.’ `Was anything found?’ ‘No.’ ‘Do you test your staff?’ ‘Yes.’ No one was—”

The correspondent, Lesley Stahl, interrupted: “But you’re just taking their word for it.” Daszak responded, “Well, what else can we do? There’s a limit to what you can do and we went right up to that limit. We asked them tough questions…. And the answers they gave, we found to be believable—correct and convincing.”

On March 24, 2021, Daszak presented a confidential preview of the WHO mission’s findings to a group of federal health and national security officials in a packed government conference room. Dressed in a tweed jacket instead of his usual hiking gear, he clicked through a 36-slide presentation, which Vanity Fair obtained.

Peter Daszak’s 36-slide presentation summarizing the deliberations of the WHO-convened study on COVID-19’s origins. Click here to see and download the full presentation.

Amid the charts, graphs, and old photos from the Huanan market of caged animals that could have harbored the virus, there was one slide devoted to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. It seemed to suggest that the questions swirling around the laboratory as a possible source of the pandemic could be put to rest. There had been annual external audits with no unusual findings. Access was strictly controlled. And his trusted partner Shi Zhengli said there had been no COVID-like illnesses among her staff.

The presentation complete, Daszak held up his hands, as if waiting for a standing ovation, the attendee recounted: “His ego couldn’t fit in the room with all those interagency partners.”

The WHO Commission released its 120-page final report a week later. The experts had voted, by a show of hands, that direct transmission from bat to human was possible to likely; transmission through an intermediate animal was likely to very likely; transmission through frozen food was possible; and transmission through a laboratory incident was “extremely unlikely.”

The report was so error-riddled and unpersuasive that WHO director general Tedros effectively disowned it the day it was released. “As far as WHO is concerned all hypotheses remain on the table,” he said.

Three months later, the commission’s lead expert, Danish food scientist Peter Ben Embarek, extinguished the last embers of the report’s credibility. He confessed to a documentary film crew that the group had made a backroom deal with the 17 Chinese experts attached to the commission: The report could mention the lab-leak theory only “on the condition we didn’t recommend any specific studies to further that hypothesis” and used the phrase “extremely unlikely” to characterize it.

But that wasn’t the final shoe to drop. Daszak himself all but admitted—in a letter to Dr. Michael Lauer, the NIH’s deputy director for extramural research—that he had signed on to the WHO mission with a personal and professional agenda: to gather exculpatory information about the WIV, in part to help lift the curtain of suspicion around his grant so it could be reinstated.

“I have made extensive efforts to satisfy NIH’s broad concerns,” he wrote on April 11, 2021. “This includes serving as an expert on the WHO-China joint Mission on the Animal Origins of COVID-19, which involved 1 month on the ground in China (including 2 weeks locked in quarantine), at great personal burden and risk to me, to our organization, and to my family.”

He wrote that, while he had “acted in good faith” to follow the WHO’s directives for the mission, he had also gathered essential information that “specifically addresses” one of the demands the NIH had made as a condition of reinstating the grant: that he arrange for an outside inspection team to find out if the WIV had SARS-CoV-2 in its possession prior to December 2019. He’d returned with “categorical statements from WIV senior staff” that they did not have it prior to December 2019, he wrote, and had managed to get their assurances included in the WHO final report.

Unfortunately for Daszak, the NIH was unmoved. The grant remains suspended today.

On February 25, 2022, a day before Worobey, Andersen, Garry, and their 15 coauthors rushed their preprints into the public domain, claiming “dispositive evidence” that SARS-CoV-2 originated from the Huanan market, China’s CDC published a preprint of its own that contained new data and pointed to a different conclusion. It revealed that, of the 457 swabs taken from 18 species of animals in the market, none contained any evidence of the virus. Rather, the virus was found in 73 swabs taken from around the market’s environment, all linked to human infections. Thus, while the samples proved the market served as an “amplifier” of viral spread, they did not prove the market was the source.

Meanwhile, an analysis published on March 16 in the medical journal BMJ Global Health, written by a group of Italian scientists and coauthored by Sergei Pond, cites a growing body of studies indicating that the virus may have been spreading worldwide for weeks, or even months, before the officially recognized start date of December 2019. If true, this would entirely upend the presumption of the market as the genesis of the pandemic.

“There are still a lot of credible questions that have not been answered,” says Pond. And with “no overwhelming evidence in either direction,” he adds, he is “puzzled as to why it’s necessary to push in one direction.” (Responding to written questions, Andersen said, “I have no particular stake in the idea that SARS-CoV-2 came from the market and not from virology research. The science speaks for itself and the evidence is clear.”)

Simon Wain-Hobson has his own hypothesis for what is taking place: The group of scientists pushing the claim of natural origin, he says, “want to show that virology is not responsible [for causing the pandemic]. That is their agenda.”

Quote from Fm1

but BA.2 is causing devastating surges elsewhere,

This is outraging nonsense. BA.2 simply adds a smaller second peek and looks to be even more harmless for most than BA.1.

Japan reports that symptoms are mostly like hey fewer. Omicron is not longer a CoV-19 virus. Its a simple corona virus that does not infect the deep lung.

Of course for the older (80+) and the chronically ill (diabetes, high blood pressure, reduced kidney function etc.) any virus is a problem.

Please be aware that the official US(German/UK/Swiss/FR/AU ...) numbers of deaths are fake and for > 90% are not caused by Omicron. These deaths are with Omicron. This is known from RSA since more than two months now.

Quote from Fm1

Thirdly, the guidelines are blatantly political. The new recommendations aim to convince the public that this pandemic is over when it is not.

Of course the pandemic is over! We now just have a new type of classic corona virus. It's grand time that WHO reclassifies it!

Quote from Wyttenbach

This is outraging nonsense. BA.2 simply adds a smaller second peek and looks to be even more harmless for most than BA.1.

Japan reports that symptoms are mostly like hey fewer. Omicron is not longer a CoV-19 virus. Its a simple corona virus that does not infect the deep lung.

Of course for the older (80+) and the chronically ill (diabetes, high blood pressure, reduced kidney function etc.) any virus is a problem.

Please be aware that the official US(German/UK/Swiss/FR/AU ...) numbers of deaths are fake and for > 90% are not caused by Omicron. These deaths are with Omicron. This is known from RSA since more than two months now.

Of course the pandemic is over! We now just have a new type of classic corona virus. It's grand time that WHO reclassifies it!

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The point of the article is the CDC failed to follow the science and that guidence was politically based rather than based on science. People have lost trust

Several members have complained to the moderation team about the excessive length of comments posted in this thread. We are not planning to do anything to prevent this, but perhaps members should bear in mind the old acronym 'TLDR' (too long didn't read) before pasting in large chunks of text from outside sources. Extracts from key points and links to the source material will probably work better and get more reads.

Quote from Alan Smith

Several members have complained to the moderation team about the excessive length of comments posted in this thread.

The Rossi brabler's ?

Quote from Wyttenbach

The Rossi brabler's ?

My feeling (didn't count them...) - in total the most text lines are copied from Trialsitenews...