It's Just The Flu
A comprehensive catalogue of COVID-19 disinformation from 'trusted authorities.'
The present article is an in-depth summary and analysis of COVID-19 disinformation from ‘trusted authorities.’ Watch this quick clip of the mainstream media repeatedly comparing COVID-19 to the flu in early 2020 to refresh your memory.
What is misinformation and disinformation?
According to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, the definition of “disinformation” is “deliberately misleading information announced publicly or leaked by a government or especially by an intelligence agency in order to influence public opinion or the government in another nation.” (Emphasis added.) The dictionary defines “misinformation” as “incorrect information.”
The distinction between the dictionary definitions of “disinformation” and “misinformation” is disinformation requires deliberate intent (usually by the government or intelligence community) to influence the public with misleading information, whereas misinformation is simply false information.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “disinformation” is “false information deliberately created and disseminated with malicious intent.” (Emphasis added.) The CDC defines “misinformation” as “false information shared by people who do not intend to mislead others.”
The distinction between the CDC definitions of “disinformation” and “misinformation” is disinformation requires malice by the creator or disseminator of the false information, whereas misinformation is false information shared by anyone even if they have no intent to mislead.
There are no significant differences between the CDC and dictionary definitions of misinformation since both definitions center on the falsity of the information and do not require any intent. But there are three key differences between the dictionary and CDC definitions of disinformation:
Under the CDC definition, information must be “false” to constitute disinformation. Under the dictionary definition, information need only be “deliberately misleading . . . to influence public opinion” to be disinformation. Therefore, according to the dictionary definition, true information could constitute disinformation if the purpose of disseminating the information is to deliberately mislead the public.
Under the CDC definition, false information is not disinformation so long as the intent behind its dissemination is not malicious. Spreading false information out of the goodness of your heart is not disinformation, according to the CDC. Under the dictionary definition, motives do not matter because all deliberately misleading information disseminated to influence public opinion is disinformation, regardless of whether the dissemination of the information is for benevolent, benign, or malicious purposes.
The dictionary definition emphasizes disinformation is generally associated with governments and “especially” with intelligence agencies. However, the CDC definition does not make any reference to whether individuals, governments, or intelligence agencies are generally associated with disinformation.
We can draw tentative inferences from the differences between the two definitions of disinformation:
CDC does not consider disseminating deliberately misleading information to be disinformation so long as the information is true.
CDC does not consider disseminating false information to be disinformation if the purpose of spreading the false information to further a legitimate government purpose, such as protecting public health.
CDC does not distinguish between disinformation disseminated by individuals and government disinformation.
Who decides what is mis- or disinformation?
The issue of how to define “disinformation” is related to the issue of who decides what is or is not disinformation.
One might expect the owners of the platform that hosts a speaker—whether it be a school, a social media company, or a private club—to decide when speech becomes disinformation and what to do about it, if anything. At least in the United States, we require the government to abide by the Constitution and not concern itself with arbitrating speech.
Yet the reality today is there exists a censorship pipeline. (See generally Manufacturing Consent by Professor Noam Chomsky.) The pipeline begins with for-profit special interest groups and allied nonprofit NGOs explicitly influencing mainstream media.
The intelligence community then overtly and covertly influences the media further. Overt operations are personified by John Brennan, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), on NBC and MSNBC; James Clapper, former Director of the National Security Agency (NSA), on CNN; and John Ratcliffe, former Director of National Intelligence (DNI), on CNN and Fox News. Covert operations are exemplified by Operation MOCKINGBIRD, which sought to subvert the independence of the fourth estate by putting journalists on the CIA’s payroll.
Newspapers and T.V. news programs respond to various influences by pressuring the government to in turn put pressure on private platforms. For its part, the government is more than happy to use the facade of responding to constituents who demand it ‘do more to combat misinformation and disinformation.’ Administrations need no encouragement to hamper their opposition from winning power. What they need is plausible deniability and a tenable excuse to silence opponents.
Once an adequate pretext is in hand, the government explicitly or implicitly threatens to remove protections, to regulate, or to otherwise bring about economic consequences for private platforms hosting inconvenient speech. The message is clear: do for us what the Constitution forbids we do ourselves, by censoring speech we do not like, or else.
Private platforms generally respond to government pressure to censor by omitting information from search results, labelling posts with warnings, and hiding or removing posts. In some cases, platforms will ban individuals or companies. The most stark examples are the deplatforming of former President Trump and Parler.
In this way, the enforcement power of the government is brought to bear against the kinds of speech partisans find offensive, dangerous, or merely politically inconvenient.
Why are arbiters of speech problematic?
The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) follows 425 anti-vaccine accounts across social media. Their research shows those 425 accounts have a combined following of 59.2 million users, of which the most prominent 20 anti-vaxxers have about 39 million followers. The 12 most popular anti-vaxxers contributed to 65 percent of all anti-vaccine content on Facebook and Twitter between February 1 and March 16, 2021. In sum, the CCDH analysis suggests as few as a dozen individuals can have a large impact on public opinion when it comes to spreading disinformation.
The devil is in the details though. Some of the statements CCDH considers to be disinformation are clearly false statements. For example, Mr. Ty and Charlene Bollinger’s Facebook account referred to the pandemic as “fake,” which is obviously false, even malicious considering the Bollingers’ financial conflicts. (The CCDH also labelled the Bollingers’ claim the 2020 U.S. Presidential election was “stolen” as a “false claim,” demonstrating the overlap between censorship of speech concerning COVID and election security.)
On the other hand, the first “example violation” CCDH lists for one of the “Disinformation Dozen,” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., son of Senator Kennedy and nephew of President Kennedy, is Kennedy’s claim “no data show[s] COVID vaccines are safe for pregnant women, and despite reports of miscarriages among women who have received the experimental Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, Fauci and other health officials advise pregnant women to get the vaccine.” Kennedy made the claim on February 23, 2021.
While it is now an overstatement to say “no data” shows the COVID vaccines are safe for pregnant women, the CDC website still describes data on the safety of vaccines for pregnant women as “limited.” “Early data . . . did not find any safety concerns for people who received an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine late in pregnancy or for their babies.” (Emphasis added.)
However, these “preliminary results,” published in April 2021, became public two months after Kennedy’s claims. Additional data showing vaccines are safe for pregnant women was not published until August later that year. Similarly, the authors of the two studies that did not find “an increased risk of miscarriage among people who received an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine just before and during early pregnancy” published in September 2021. Therefore, it appears it was true at the time Kennedy made his claim there was “no data,” at least in human trials, that mRNA vaccines did not affect pregnancy.
As to Kennedy’s anecdotal claim some women are experiencing miscarriages, it is not possible to validate the truth of such reports. Nor it is possible to establish a causal connection between miscarriages and vaccines without doing a scientific study.
However, fact checkers recognized the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System “received 2,508 reports of people experiencing miscarriages after COVID-19 vaccination through Oct. 8, 2021.” Therefore, Kennedy’s claim there are “reports of miscarriages among women who have received the experimental Pfizer and Moderna vaccines” was and remains true.
Moreover, although not directly related to miscarriages, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded $1.67 million on August 30, 2021, because “some women have reported experiencing irregular or missing menstrual periods, bleeding that is heavier than usual, and other menstrual changes after receiving COVID-19 vaccines.” (Emphasis added.) When Kennedy talks about anecdotal data, which does exist in fact, CCDH labels his statement as misinformation; but when the same anecdotes are submitted to the CDC, they are good enough to part with more than a million dollars in taxpayer money.
It is clear from CCDH’s analysis of Kennedy’s speech any statement encouraging “vaccine hesitancy” can be labelled as “misinformation,” even if the statement is factually true. CCDH does not explain in their analysis how calling for more data on potential adverse effects from the vaccines can reasonably be characterized as misinformation or disinformation.
Herein lies the problem with having arbiters of speech who decide what is and what is not misinformation or disinformation. Sometimes arbiters are wrong (usually because they are biased).
What is the risk to free speech?
CCDH’s report calls for “deplatforming the personal accounts” of people who spread disinformation. “In addition to removing repeat offenders . . . social media platforms can make monumental strides toward decreasing the presence of misinformation.” CCDH recommends Facebook “ban private and secret anti-vaccine” groups.
As Glenn Greenwald argued in a recent post on his Substack, “American liberals are obsessed with finding ways to silence and censor their adversaries.” CCDH is no exception.
What is more alarming, as Greenwald explains, is these kinds of reports from organizations like CCDH (a 501(c)(3) nonprofit entity not permitted to engage in substantial lobbying) are regularly used by mainstream media to pressure government officials to regulate social media corporations, unless the platforms change their internal policies to restrict disfavored speech.
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy responded to questions about the campaign to remove Joe Rogan from Spotify, saying, “Tech companies have an important role to play in stopping misinformation because they are the predominant places where misinformation spreads.” (Emphasis added.)
A journalist then posed the question to White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, “Does the White House and the administration think [labelling Rogan’s posts with warnings] is a satisfactory step, or do you think companies like Spotify should go further than just putting a label [on Rogan’s posts about COVID] saying [do your own research].”
Ms. Sakai responded, saying, “Our hope is that all major tech platforms, and all major news sources for that matter, be responsible and be vigilant to ensure the American people have access to accurate information on something as significant as COVID-19 —that certainly includes Spotify.” (Emphasis added.) She continued, “We want every platform to continue doing more to call-out mis- and disinformation, while also uplifting accurate information.” “[Putting warning labels on Rogan’s posts about COVID] is a good step but there’s more to be done.”
As Greenwald asks, “Why is the government even opining at all on what a private company is doing with regard to who they platform in terms of podcasters and how they deal with the content?” The practical answer is it is politically expedient for Democrats to leverage their control of the legislative and executive branches of government to silence as much politically inconvenient speech as possible.
The constitutional answer is: First Amendment protections of free speech are violated when the government coerces or pressures private actors to censor on behalf of the government. (See Norwood v. Harrison, 413 U.S. 455 (1973); see also Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, 372 U.S. 58 (1963).)
The Trump administration threatened to remove Section 230 protections for social media platforms. Democrats have repeatedly hauled social media CEOs before Congress and explicitly threatened them with retaliatory enforcement, which would result in adverse economic outcomes for social media platforms. Partisans are demanding platforms cow-tow to censorship of political opposition, which censorship is justified on the basis their political opponents are spreading disinformation or dangerous speech. The strategy adopted by both major parties is designed to chill freedom of speech, which is unconstitutional.
Although you might be tempted to think chilling the speech of anti-vaxxers like Kennedy is desirable, even necessary in a global health emergency, you should consider how the arbiters of free speech might censor you in future. If Facebook can censor the British Medical Journal for publishing true information, they can—and will—censor you if they find your speech inconvenient.
The editor of The British Medical Journal (BMJ), one of the world’s oldest and most respected medical journals, has written a letter to Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg to bring to his attention an “incorrect” fact-check on one of its reports.
A former employee at Ventavia, a research company that helped with the trials of the Pfizer Covid vaccine, provided The BMJ with dozens of internal documents, photos, email, and recordings, that revealed “a host of poor clinical trial research practices occurring at Ventavia that could impact data integrity and patient safety,” according to the letter.
“We also discovered that, despite receiving a direct complaint about these problems over a year ago, the FDA did not inspect Ventavia’s trial sites,” the letter, written by BMJ editor Fiona Godlee, further claims.
The BMJ hired an investigative reporter to write the story, which was published on November 2. The article had been peer reviewed, legally reviewed, and subjected to The BMJ’s high editorial standards.
However, starting November 10, Facebook users started reporting problems when trying to share the article. Some said they were unable to share, others said their posts were flagged with a warning saying, “Missing context… Independent fact-checkers say this information could mislead people.” Others were warned about the consequences of repeatedly sharing “false information.”
The BMJ’s article was fact-checked by Lead Stories, a Facebook contractor. The BMJ described the fact-check performed by Lead Stories as “inaccurate, incompetent and irresponsible.”
The letter adds:
It fails to provide any assertions of fact that The BMJ article got wrong.
It has a nonsensical title: “Fact Check: The British Medical Journal Did NOT Reveal Disqualifying And Ignored Reports Of Flaws In Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Trials.”
The first paragraph inaccurately labels The BMJ a “news blog.”
It contains a screenshot of the article with a stamp over it stating “Flaws Reviewed,” despite the Lead Stories article not identifying anything false or untrue in The BMJ article.
It published the story on its website under a URL that contains the phrase “hoax-alert.”
The BMJ contacted Lead Stories about the issue, but they allegedly refused to change their fact-check.
The medical journal also contacted Facebook directly about removing the fact-check.
The editors also noted that this was not the first time a credible article by an authoritative source of medical information has been censored by Meta. Instagram censored an article by Cochrane, which provides high quality reviews of medical evidence.
As Matt Taibbi has written in his analysis on Substack, the problem is not that the British Medical Journal published false information, the problem is Kennedy shared the article.
The real issue with Thacker’s piece is that it went viral and was retweeted by the wrong people. As Lead Stories noted with marked disapproval, some of those sharers included the likes of Dr. Robert Malone and Robert F. Kennedy. To them, this clearly showed that the article was bad somehow, but the problem was, there was nothing to say the story was untrue.
[. . .]
Lead Stories eventually wrote a second piece entitled, “Why Lead Stories Fact Checked the BMJ,” which complained that a variety of sites ranging from the Conservative Beaver to Natural News to The Free Thought Project had written fake or misleading stories based upon the BMJ piece. This second article also complained Robert F. Kennedy’s site, The Defender, republished the piece.
Worse, they wrote, Kennedy had republished three other Thacker stories, with titles like “New WHO Group to Look Into Pandemic Origins Dogged by Alleged Conflicts of Interest” and “The covid-19 lab leak hypothesis: did the media fall victim to a misinformation campaign?” This is how Lead Stories phrased their complaint: “This was not the first BMJ piece from Thacker copied by the Defender this way. The site has an entire author profile page for him with the oldest article listed dating back to July 2021.”
Were there factual issues with any of those other pieces? If so, Lead Stories didn’t indicate any. The mere fact that Robert F. Kennedy liked previous Thacker stories was the apparent issue. Lead Stories also took issue with the fact that Thacker thanked Dr. Robert Malone on Twitter for highlighting the BMJ response to their fact check. You can’t see the whole exchange, because of course Twitter has since zapped Malone’s account[.]
[. . .]
Are we now saying that anything Robert Kennedy Jr. or Robert Malone finds newsworthy is suspect? By this method, we’re taking stories that aren’t “anti-vax” by any rational standard, and making them anti-vax by association.
[. . .]
The significance of the British Medical Journal story is that it showed how easily reporting that is true can be made to look untrue or conspiratorial. The growing bureaucracy of “fact-checking” sites that help platforms like Facebook decide what to flag is now taking into account issues like: the political beliefs of your sources, the presence of people of ill repute among your readers, and the tendency of audiences to draw unwanted inferences from the reported facts. All of this can now become part of how authorities do or do not define reporting as factual.
If the arbiters of speech will label facts as misinformation and censor true reports from long-standing, expert publications like the British Medical Journal, there is nothing stopping them from doing the same to you. The irony is truth does not matter in an Orwellian world where arbiters censor speech that challenges special interests.
Who spreads more disinformation: the government, subject matter experts, the mainstream media, or individuals?
Is it really the case, as Surgeon General Murthy claims, that tech platforms are “the predominant places where misinformation spreads”? (Emphasis added.)
The Government Spreads Disinformation
The Trump Administration
On January 22, 2020, Trump lied to the American people, telling them his administration had the emerging novel coronavirus “totally under control.”
On January 18, Trump ignored a warning about the developing crisis from Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Alex Azar. Secretary Azar tried to discuss the endemic in China with Trump but Trump instead turned the conversation to “vaping and whether flavored vaping products would return to the market.”
Trump ignored “over a dozen detailed warnings about the threat of the virus in the President’s Daily Brief” between January and February. One such report in early January by the State Department’s epidemiologist warned DNI Ratcliffe “the virus was likely to spread across the globe” and raised the possibility of pandemic.
On May 5, whistleblower Dr. Rich Bright filed a formal complaint against administration officials claiming, “other senior White House officials ignored [Dr. Bright’s] warnings in mid-January about supply chain shortages and the critical need to fast-track development on a vaccine.”
On January 28, National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien told Trump the emerging virus will be the “biggest national security threat” of his presidency. When asked about the January 28 warning in an interview on May 6, Trump denied remembering receiving the warning.
On February 26, Trump falsely assured Americans the number of cases would go down. Trump claimed, “When you have 15 people [infected in the United States with the novel virus], and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”
On February 27, Azar downplayed the risk of the virus in public statements, telling lawmakers, “It will look and feel to the American people more like a severe flu season in terms of the interventions and approaches you will see.” The same day, Senator Burr told a private luncheon the virus was “much more aggressive” than the flu and “more akin to the 1918 pandemic.” The same day, Trump called Azar to complain CDC Director Nancy Messonnier’s public warnings about the threat from the virus were scaring the stock market.
On February 28, Trump lied to the American people, saying, “[The virus] is going to disappear. One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.” The same day, Dr. Carter Mecher, Senior Adviser for the Office of Public Health in the Department of Veterans Affairs, warned the United States had a “narrow window” to implement nonpharmaceutical interventions like social distancing and school closures.
On March 6, Trump falsely reassured Americans anyone can get a COVID-19 test if they wanted one. “Anybody that wants a test can get a test. That’s what the bottom line is.” The CDC was still warning it may “be difficult to find a place to get tested” a month later on April 12.
On March 13, Trump falsely claimed Google was working on a new website “to facilitate testing at a nearby convenient location . . . Google has 1,700 engineers working on this right now. They have made tremendous progress.” Google responded saying the website is “in the early stages of development” and they were “planning to roll out testing in the Bay Area, with the hope of expanding more broadly over time.”
On March 29, Trump blamed the Obama administration claiming his administration inherited “obsolete” and “broken” tests from the past administration. The novel coronavirus emerged in 2019, during Trump’s presidency, meaning no tests from prior years could have been effective.
On May 11, Trump falsely claimed the number of cases is “dropping around our country very, very substantially.”
On September 13, Michael Caputo, HHS Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs, blamed CDC scientists for the Trump administration’s failures, saying, “There are scientists working for this government who do not want America to get better.” Caputo encouraged people to buy ammunition on the basis left-wing hit squads were preparing for an insurrection.
On October 30, Trump told a campaign rally doctors are overcounting deaths because it will make them more money, in an effort to downplay his administration’s failed response to the pandemic.
The list of disinformation from the Trump administration, above, is not exhaustive, but, for the sake of brevity, we will move on to the Biden administration.
The Biden Administration
On March 1, 2020, Senator Biden falsely claimed the Trump administration “cut the Centers for Disease Control [budget]. They’ve cut the funding for — they’ve tried to cut the funding for NIH, the National Institute of Health.” However, the CDC’s budget was seven percent larger than in President Obama’s final year in office, and Obama’s administration, in which Biden served as Vice President, tried to cut the CDC’s budget in five out of eight years.
On March 15, during a debate with Trump, Biden falsely claimed Trump’s administration “refused to get coronavirus testing kits from the World Health Organization.” Trump did not refuse anything because, as World Health Organization (WHO) spokeswoman Margaret Harris clarified, “No discussion occurred between WHO and CDC about WHO providing COVID-19 tests to the United States.”
The same day, Mara Gay, a New York Times editorial board member, falsely reported Trump told Governors, “Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment — try getting it yourselves.” In actual fact, Trump said, “We [the federal government] will be backing you, but try getting it yourselves. Point of sales, much better, much more direct if you can get it yourself.” Biden repeated Gay’s lie at a town hall on March 24.
On March 19, Biden tweeted, “The Obama-Biden administration set up the White House National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense to prepare for future pandemics like COVID-19. Donald Trump eliminated it.” However, Biden’s tweet mischaracterized the actions of the Trump administration. Trump’s National Security Council established the Counterproliferation and Biodefense Directorate. Three days after Biden’s tweet, Tim Morrison, who ran the new directorate, claimed the change made America’s biodefense response even stronger.
On March 27, Biden falsely claimed Trump never tried to send CDC officials to China. “You should get into China and get our experts there. We have the best in the world. Get them in so we know what is actually happening. There was no effort to do that,” Biden said. In truth, the Trump administration offered to send a CDC experts to China on January 6. Two days later, on January 8, CDC representatives visited Wuhan, China. China had only acknowledged the existence of the novel virus a week prior.
On April 2, Biden’s election campaign released an ad that edited together separate statements from Trump to misquote him as saying, “Coronavirus, this is their new hoax.” Trump never called the virus a hoax.
On December 3, then-President-elect Biden falsely assured Americans he would not make vaccines or masks mandatory. “I don't think it should be mandatory. I wouldn't demand it to be mandatory. Just like I don't think masks have to be made mandatory nationwide.” Multiple members of the Biden administration repeatedly lied about vaccine and mask mandates over the course several months:
On May 7, 2021, Press Secretary Psaki falsely signaled the Biden administration would not mandate employees of private companies get vaccinated. “I wouldn’t anticipate that we would be putting requirements on private sector companies. I would expect that we would allow the space for them to put those requirements in place themselves or decide what is best for their workforces,” Psaki said.
On May 16, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky lied, saying, “We're not counting on vaccine mandates at all.”
On July 12, Psaki lied again, reassuring Americans mandates “are not a decision that we are making” and was “not [the] intention from the federal government.”
On July 16, Surgeon General Murthy continued the Biden’s administration lies about mandates, saying, “You won’t see is a requirement from the federal government to have people get vaccinate.”
On July 27, Psaki continued to lie, claiming, “Can we mandate vaccines across the country? No, that’s not a role that the federal government, I think, [the federal government does not] even has the power to make.”
On July 29, White House COVID-19 Response Director Jeff Zients falsely told CNN, in response to a question about vaccine mandates, “No . . . that's not an authority that we're exploring at all.”
On July 31, Walensky doubled-down with yet another lie, stating, “There will be no nationwide mandate. I was referring to mandates by private institutions and portions of the federal government. There will be no federal mandate.”
On August 3, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Dr. Anthony Fauci falsely claimed “you’re not going to see a central mandate coming from the federal government.”
On August 6, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona falsely stated “at the federal level, I don't have the authority to mask mandate or vaccine mandate. That's not what we do at the federal level.”
On August 23, Biden took a step towards mandating vaccines by calling on private companies to make vaccines mandatory.
On September 9, Biden required companies with more than 100 or more employees submit to a vaccine mandate.
On July 7, 2021, whistleblowers reported HHS ordered employees to lie about an outbreak at Fort Bliss, Texas, in order to downplay the situation. HHS is led by former Attorney General of California, Xavier Becerra.
On July 22, Biden falsely claimed at a town hall, “You're not going to get Covid if you have these vaccinations.” He also falsely stated “if you're vaccinated, you're not going to be hospitalized, you're not going to be in the ICU unit and you're not going to die.”
On December 17, Vice President Kamala Harris lied to The Los Angeles Times, claiming the Biden administration could not have seen the Omnicron variant coming. “I think most scientists did not—upon whose advice and direction we have relied—didn’t see Delta coming. We didn’t see Omicron coming,” Harris falsely claimed. Dr. Bright warned Harris personally earlier in December “variants were coming & we needed plans & action immediately.” He “suggested measures to detect & slow the spread & need to update vaccines. They all knew [dangerous variants like Omnicron were coming].”
On December 22, Biden promised Americans 500 million free tests when his administration had yet to secure any tests and manufacturers “could not possibly provide that many tests for Americans on such short notice.”
On December 27, Biden falsely claimed he would “shut down the virus.” “I’ll put in place a plan to deal with this pandemic responsibly, I’ve already done it . . . I’m not going to shut down the economy, I’m not going to shut down the country, but I’m going to shut down the virus.” The same day, Biden contradicted himself, saying, “There is no federal solution. This gets solved at the state level.”
The Washington Post gave up trying to catalogue all of Biden’s lies, which catalogue they also made for Trump, after Biden’s first 100 days in office. Neither administration has taken adequate steps to “ensure the American people have access to accurate information on something as significant as COVID-19.” Quite the opposite: both administrations have spread disinformation, false information, and false hope at every turn.
WHO Spreads Disinformation
Director-General Tedros’s Links to the Chinese Communist Party
Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was once a member of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). The U.S. designated the communist TPLF as a terrorist organization in the 1990s.
Dr. Tedros served as Foreign Minister prior to becoming Ethiopia’s Health Minister. In his capacity as Foreign Minister, Dr. Tedros secured $16 million in funding from the Chinese government in 2015 and 2016, according to United Nations funding records. China donated a further $44 million to Ethiopia in 2011, just before Dr. Tedros became Foreign Minister, and in 2017, just before Dr. Tedros became Health Minister.
China had not contributed significant amounts to Ethiopia prior to Dr. Tedros becoming Foreign Minister. Total contributions from the Chinese government to Ethiopia since 2000, excluding the period when Dr. Tedros was Foreign Minister, amounted to $345,000.
In 2017, The New York Times published a story detailing accusations against Dr. Tedros. Dr. Tedros allegedly covered up three epidemics in Ethiopia while he was Health Minister. Dr. Tedros denied the accusations, which surfaced during his campaign to become Director-General.
Covering up outbreaks is par for the course for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The government of China underreported the SARS outbreak in 2009 as it was happening by 16.3 times the true number of cases. Similarly, the U.S. government criticized the lack of transparency from the Chinese government in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Washington Post noted the CCP facilitated Dr. Tedros’s ascension to Director-General. The Chinese government “worked tirelessly behind the scenes to help Tedros defeat the United Kingdom candidate for the WHO job, David Nabarro. Tedros’s victory was also a victory for Beijing, whose leader Xi Jinping has made public his goal of flexing China’s muscle in the world.” (Emphasis added.)
Once elected Director-General, Dr. Tedros attempted to appoint Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean dictator, as WHO’s Goodwill Ambassador for Noncommunicable Diseases in Africa in October 2017.
Dr. Tedros is the first Director-General in WHO’s 74-year history who is not a medial doctor. Dr. Tedros has a PhD in Philosophy of Community Health and a MSc in Immunology of Infectious Diseases.
WHO Praised the CCP’s Cover-up of the COVID Outbreak
According to The Lancet, doctors in Wuhan treated a person for COVID-19 on December 1, 2019. Five days later, on December 6, the patient’s wife contracted symptoms despite having no known contact with the wet market. Doctors in Wuhan therefore became aware of an unknown virus with human-to-human transmission in the first week of December.
On December 21, Wuhan doctors noticed a “cluster of pneumonia cases with an unknown cause.”
On December 25, medical staff in two Wuhan hospitals contracted viral pneumonia and quarantined, adding to the evidence for human-to-human transmission.
On December 30, whistleblower Dr. Li Wenliang sent a message to other doctors warning there was a possible outbreak of an unknown virus resembling SARS.
On December 31, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission declared, “The investigation so far has not found any obvious human-to-human transmission and no medical staff infection,” despite the evidence to the contrary.
The same day, the CCP alerted WHO to a possible endemic, three weeks after doctors first started noticing cases of a novel coronavirus.
The same day, Taiwan notified WHO directly they had found evidence of human-to-human transmission.
On January 1, 2020, the Wuhan Public Security Bureau accused Dr. Li Wenliang of “spreading rumors.” Police held Dr. Wenliang for two days and coerced him to sign a statement of criminal guilt. The CCP arrested seven other persons in connection with Wenliang but their fate remains unknown.
The same day, an official at the Hubei Provincial Health Commission ordered genomics companies in China to stop processing tests of the novel virus and to destroy all samples.
The same day, 175,000 people left Wuhan, according to a New York Times analysis of cellphone data.
On January 2, another study in The Lancet found 14 out of 41 infected persons had no exposure to the wet market. The study concluded there was human-to-human transmission. The scientists warned, “We are concerned that 2019-nCoV could have acquired the ability for efficient human transmission.”
The same day, the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) mapped the genome of the novel coronavirus. China did not inform the world of the novel virus’s genetic sequence for another week.
On January 3, “China’s National Health Commission, the nation’s top health authority, ordered institutions not to publish any information related to the unknown disease, and ordered labs to transfer any samples they had to designated testing institutions, or to destroy them.”
The same day, the CCP notified the United States for the first time there was a novel virus, more than a month after first detecting it in Wuhan.
The same day, the CCP again denied the existence of human-to-human transmission, despite the mounting evidence to the contrary. The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission continued to claim, “As of now, preliminary investigations have shown no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission and no medical staff infections.”
On January 4, Dr. Ho Pak-leung of the University of Hong Kong’s Centre for Infection warned, “The city should implement the strictest possible monitoring system for a mystery new viral pneumonia that has infected dozens of people on the mainland, as it is highly possible that the illness is spreading from human to human.”
On January 5, The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission repeated the false claim, “Preliminary investigations have shown no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission and no medical staff infections.”
On January 8, Chinese government authorities announced they had identified the virus. They claimed, and Western media continued to repeat, “There is no evidence that the new virus is readily spread by humans, which would make it particularly dangerous, and it has not been tied to any deaths.”
The same day, WHO praised the Chinese government. “Preliminary identification of a novel virus in a short period of time is a notable achievement and demonstrates China’s increased capacity to manage new outbreaks.” (Emphasis added.) WHO went on to state the organization “does not recommend any specific measures for travelers. WHO advises against the application of any travel or trade restrictions on China based on the information currently available.” (Emphasis added.)
On January 14, WHO tweeted, “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus.” (Emphases added.) WHO ignored Taiwan’s warning of human-to-human transmission from two weeks prior, choosing instead of prioritize the Chinese government’s self-serving narrative. WHO used “preliminary” results to argue there was no “clear” evidence, which misled the public into thinking there was no evidence or no significant evidence of human-to-human transmission.
On January 22, Dr. Tedros continued to praise the CCP’s handling of the outbreak. “I was very impressed by the detail and depth of China’s presentation. I also appreciate the cooperation of China’s Minister of Health, who I have spoken with directly during the last few days and weeks. His leadership and the intervention of President Xi and Premier Li have been invaluable, and all the measures they have taken to respond to the outbreak.”
On January 30, Dr. Tedros praised the CCP’s response yet again. “The speed with which China detected the outbreak, isolated the virus, sequenced the genome and shared it with WHO and the world are very impressive, and beyond words. So is China’s commitment to transparency and to supporting other countries.”
Dr. Tedros praised the Chinese government’s “transparency” and the “speed” at which the CCP “shared” data with the WHO. In reality, the Chinese government was not being transparent about human-to-human transmission, silenced Dr. Wenliang, and failed to report the outbreak in a timely manner to the world.
Dr. Tedros continued his fawning over the CCP, claiming, “In many ways, China is actually setting a new standard for outbreak response. It’s not an exaggeration.” “WHO continues to have confidence in China’s capacity to control the outbreak. As you know, I was in China just a few days ago, where I met with President Xi Jinping. I left in absolutely no doubt about China’s commitment to transparency, and to protecting the world’s people.”
On Jan. 30, WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency of international concern, but WHO’s emergency committee on the coronavirus continued “not [to] recommend any travel or trade restriction based on the current information available.”
The same day, Dr. Tedros repeated the message, saying, “There is no reason for measures that unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade. WHO doesn’t recommend limiting trade and movement. We call on all countries to implement decisions that are evidence-based and consistent.”
On March 11, WHO finally declared a pandemic.
On June 29, WHO changed its timeline of how the organization came to learn of the virus. At first, WHO reported it learned of the virus’s existence from the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission, an official agency of the CCP. WHO later admitted its regional office in Beijing learned of the virus from open-source intelligence gathered from the internet, not from the Chinese government.
CDC Spreads Disinformation
My Personal Experience with CDC Propaganda
On March 5, 2020, my law school prominently displayed a CDC propaganda poster in the main atrium. The poster used text and graphics to compare the novel coronavirus to the flu in an echo of mainstream media reporting. (Unfortunately, I did not take a photo of the poster, and it is now impossible to find online, since major search engines removed or limited the scope of the search-by-date function from their services.)
I submitted a report to the Dean of Students the next day detailing the scientific literature on the novel virus’s transmission and fatality rates. The same day I made my report, which was a Friday, Stanford University became the first university in America to move classes online. My school did not reopen for in-person classes following my advise and Stanford’s lead.
Note the CDC propaganda poster, despite spreading factually false information, was not disinformation under the CDC definition. The purpose of the poster presumably was to prevent public panic, which is a legitimate government purpose. So long as the CDC intended to prevent public panic, spreading false information to that end was not disinformation, even if it meant some older professors contracted the virus and died because the CDC misinformed them as to the real risk.
Note also the government could justify any lie under CDC’s definition of disinformation, so long as there is an articulable, legitimate government purpose for the lie. If the government can argue the dissemination of false information serves a legitimate purpose, the government is not acting with outright malice, however debatable the purpose may be.
CDC’s Flip-flop on Mask Mandate
On July 29, The Washington Post reported on internal documents from the CDC. The documents highlighted how Director Walensky’s “catastrophic guidance” to remove mask mandates resulted in a “massive resurgence of the pandemic.”
The document refutes President Joe Biden’s claim on July 22 that vaccinated people cannot be infected with COVID-19— “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.”
For months, Biden has used the claim that vaccinated people are fully protected from COVID-19 to justify the abandonment of masking and social distancing requirements, despite the fact that the CDC had access to data definitively proving the opposite. “Take your mask off, you’ve earned the right,” Biden said in June.
On May 13, the CDC reversed its guidance on mask-wearing, urging vaccinated people to stop wearing masks and socially distancing in crowded areas.
“Anyone who is fully vaccinated can participate in indoor and outdoor activities, large or small, without wearing a mask or physical distancing,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky declared in May.
The CDC’s statements prompted the near-total abandonment of mask-wearing in the United States. Within days, businesses stopped enforcing mask mandates, while the vaccinated public, misinformed by the CDC, went maskless in public and reduced social distancing.
The deliberate promotion of false advice by US health authorities helped drive a massive resurgence of the pandemic, with cases now surging 50 percent per week.
In the leaked report, CDC scientists call for an urgent reversal of this catastrophic guidance, declaring in bold, “universal masking is essential to reduce transmission of the Delta variant.”
NIH and NIAID Director Fauci Spread Disinformation
The 2014-2017 Moratorium on Gain-of-Function Research
“Gain-of-function” (GoF) research involves genetically modifying a virus to enhance its activity. GoF research can increase the pathogenesis or transmissibility of a virus and expand the range of hosts the virus can infect.
On October 17, 2014, the Obama administration paused Federal funding for certain types of GoF research. The reason for the pause was to review security procedures for handling enhanced viruses following biosafety incidents at Federal research facilities in the United States. “Following recent biosafety incidents at Federal research facilities, the U.S. Government has taken a number of steps to promote and enhance the Nation’s biosafety and biosecurity, including immediate and longer term measures to review activities specifically related to the storage and handling of infectious agents.” (Emphasis added.) The NIH said the pause was to make time for “a deliberative process [to] be undertaken to assess the potential benefits and risks associated with these types of studies.”
The pause covered all new GoF research that “reasonably may be anticipated to confer attributes to influenza, MERS, or SARS viruses such that the resulting virus has enhanced pathogenicity and/or transmissibility (via the respiratory route) in mammals.” In other words, the moratorium covered all SARS-related GoF research that reasonably might result in the leak of an enhanced virus capable of infecting humans.
The pause did not apply “to characterization or testing of naturally occurring influenza, MERS, and SARS viruses, unless these tests reasonably are anticipated to increase transmissibility or pathogenicity.” Nor did the pause apply to “currently-funded research,” although the Obama administration asked those programs to adopt a “voluntary pause.” Research programs covered by the pause could apply for an exception “granted by the head of a federal funding agency if that official determines that the research is urgently necessary to protect public health or national security.”
The NIH continued to accept new applications for GoF function research, including those covered by the “enhanced pathogenicity and/or transmissibility (via the respiratory route) in mammals” criteria. But NIH would not “provide any new or continuation funding for research subject to the pause while the funding pause is in effect.” Federal funding for multi-year research grants is awarded on a year-by-year basis, so no new tranches of federal funds would be dispersed during the moratorium.
NIH program officials reviewed proposed research “to determine if the research meets the above [GoF] criteria, and work with the grantee and grants management officials, as appropriate, to determine how best to proceed, e.g., if the proposed research may be redirected to experiments that are not covered by the pause, etc.”
HSS explained, “The deliberative process is envisioned to be time-limited[.]”
The final [National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity] recommendations and the outcomes of the [National Research Council] conference will inform the development and adoption of a new U.S. Government policy governing the funding and conduct of gain-of-function research. Upon adoption of a federal gain-of-function policy, the U.S. Government will declare the end of the research funding pause.
Three years later, the review of GoF research was distilled into the “Department of Health and Human Services Framework for Guiding Funding Decisions about Proposed Research Involving Enhanced Potential Pandemic Pathogens,” commonly known as the HHS P3CO framework. In response to this development, the NHS lifted the moratorium on GoF research during the Trump administration on December 19, 2017.
The HHS P3CO Framework
The P3CO framework defines several key terms of art:
A “potential pandemic pathogen” (PPP) is “a pathogen that satisfies both of the following”:
“It is likely highly transmissible and likely capable of wide and uncontrollable spread in human populations”; and
“It is likely highly virulent and likely to cause significant morbidity and/or mortality in humans.”
An “enhanced PPP” (ePPP) is defined as “a PPP resulting from the enhancement of the transmissibility and/or virulence of a pathogen. Enhanced PPPs do not include naturally occurring pathogens that are circulating in or have been recovered from nature, regardless of their pandemic potential.”
In short, a PPP is a naturally occurring virus that is highly likely to spread quickly and uncontrollably amongst humans, and which is highly likely to kill a significant number of humans. An ePPP is a virus modified by humans in a lab to have enhanced transmissibility, which definition excludes, both, naturally occurring viruses and viruses recovered from nature that are not enhanced.
There are two further exclusions from the definition of ePPP under the P3CO framework:
“Surveillance activities, including sampling and sequencing”; and
“Activities associated with developing and producing vaccines, such as generation of high growth strains.”
The P3CO framework requires research that is “reasonably anticipated to create, transfer, or use [ePPPs to be] subject to additional HHS department-level review.” However, there is an exemption from the heightened level of review by HSS for ePPPs, if various executive branch agencies jointly determine new information about the risks or benefits of the ePPP’s “creation, transfer, or use” render department-level review inappropriate.
A pathogen previously considered by an agency to be an enhanced PPP should no longer be so considered if the HHS and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, in consultation with the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Agriculture, and Justice, generally acting through the Federal Bureau of Investigation, jointly determine, on the basis of additional information that has been developed about the risks or the benefits of that pathogen’s creation, transfer, or use, that the department-level review processes outlined in this framework are no longer appropriate.
In summary, the funding agency, such as the NIH, makes an initial determination whether a research proposal fits within the definition of creation, transfer, or use of ePPP. If the research concerns ePPP, the proposal must also pass heightened review by HHS.
The criteria for the HHS department-level review are as follows:
The research has been evaluated by an independent expert review process (whether internal or external) and has been determined to be scientifically sound;
The pathogen that is anticipated to be created, transferred, or used by the research must be reasonably judged to be a credible source of a potential future human pandemic;
An assessment of the overall potential risks and benefits associated with the research determines that the potential risks as compared to the potential benefits to society are justified;
There are no feasible, equally efficacious alternative methods to address the same question in a manner that poses less risk than does the proposed approach;
The investigator and the institution where the research would be carried out have the demonstrated capacity and commitment to conduct it safely and securely, and have the ability to respond rapidly, mitigate potential risks and take corrective actions in response to laboratory accidents, lapses in protocol and procedures, and potential security breaches;
The research’s results are anticipated to be responsibly communicated, in compliance with applicable laws, regulations, and policies, and any terms and conditions of funding, in order to realize their potential benefit;
The research will be supported through funding mechanisms that allow for appropriate management of risks and ongoing Federal and institutional oversight of all aspects of the research throughout the course of the research; and
The research is ethically justifiable. Non-maleficence, beneficence, justice, respect for persons, scientific freedom, and responsible stewardship are among the ethical values that should be considered by a multidisciplinary review process in making decisions about whether to fund research involving PPPs.
(Emphases added.)
The framework makes the funding agency responsible for the following aspects of research approval and oversight:
Conduct standard scientific merit review;
Refer proposed research that is reasonably anticipated to create, transfer, or use ePPPs for departmental-level review;
Provide relevant information necessary for departmental-level review;
Participate in departmental-level review process, as requested;
Consider the recommendations resulting from the departmental-level review;
Make a funding decision, stipulating terms and conditions of award including additional risk mitigation measures if appropriate;
Report relevant information on funding decisions to HHS and [The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy]; and
Ensure implementation of and adherence to required risk mitigation procedures and other terms/conditions of award, if funded.
(Emphases added.)
Critical responsibilities for the funding agency include agreeing with the researchers to “additional risk mitigation measures” and ensuring “implementation of and adherence to” those measures as conditions of funding.
The framework makes HHS responsible for the following aspects of research approval and oversight:
Convene a multidisciplinary group to review proposed research that has been determined by the funding agency as being reasonably anticipated to create, transfer, or use ePPPs;
Critically evaluate the proposed research including the risk/benefit assessment and proposed risk mitigation plan;
Consider the eight criteria for guiding HHS funding decisions [above] and additional relevant factors and information;
Develop recommendations on acceptability for HHS funding, including suggestions for additional risk mitigation measures and/or terms and conditions of award, if funded.
A research proposal must meet “all” of the above funding agency and HHS criteria to win approval for federal funding.
Moreover, the P3CO framework requires “extra care” during department-level review if the research proposal is reasonably anticipated to:
Enhance the harmful consequences of the pathogen;
Disrupt immunity or the effectiveness of an immunization against the pathogen without clinical or agricultural justification;
Confer to the pathogen resistance to clinically or agriculturally useful prophylactic or therapeutic interventions against that pathogen or facilitate the pathogen’s ability to evade detection methodologies;
Increase the stability, transmissibility, or the ability to disseminate the pathogen;
Alter the host range or tropism of the pathogen;
Enhance the susceptibility of a host population to the pathogen; or
Generate or reconstitute an eradicated or extinct pathogen.
EcoHealth Alliance’s Bat Coronavirus Research 2014-2019
On May 27, 2014, five months before the Obama administration paused GoF research, the NIH/NIAID awarded $3,086,735 to Dr. Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance (EHA). The award was for a five-year project called “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence” (Federal Award Identification Number R01AI110964).
The research sites were WIV, East China Normal University, Yunnan Institute of Endemic Diseases Control and Prevention, and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention of Guangdong.
The total budget was divided as follows: $838,540 in salaries; $639,966 in administrative costs; $270,840 in “fringe benefits”; $179,590 in travel costs; $53,800 in “other costs”; $749,976 to WIV as a subcontractor; and $295,623 to ECNU as a subcontractor.
The Intercept summarizes the project.
In a 2016 progress report, the group described to NIH its plans to carry out two planned experiments infecting humanized mice with hybrid viruses, known as “chimeras.”
The plans triggered concerns at NIH. Two staff members — Jenny Greer, a grants management specialist, and Erik Stemmy, a program officer handling coronavirus research — wrote to EcoHealth Alliance to say that the experiments “appear to involve research covered under the pause,” referring to a temporary moratorium on funding for gain-of-function research that would be reasonably anticipated to make MERS and SARS viruses more pathogenic or transmissible in mammals.
[. . .]
One of the experiments proposed by EcoHealth Alliance involved making chimeras from the MERS virus. The other experiment used chimeras developed from bat viruses related to SARS. The researchers went on to infect the genetically engineered mice with the altered viruses.
Initially, NIH staff appeared intent on enforcing the funding pause. The two administrators requested additional information from EcoHealth Alliance within 15 days and noted that the next round of funding would be withheld until the information was received. They also asked the group to provide a detailed description of changes that would allow the researchers to pursue their aims without conducting the dangerous experiments.
But what happened next sets off alarm bells for biosafety advocates: Agency staff adopted language that EcoHealth Alliance crafted to govern its own work. The agency inserted several sentences into grant materials describing immediate actions the group would take if the viruses they created proved to become more transmissible or disease-causing as the result of the experiments.
Although the experiments demonstrate a lack of oversight and present dangers to public health, according to several scientists contacted by The Intercept, none of the viruses involved in the work are related closely enough to SARS-CoV-2 to have sparked the pandemic.
(Emphases added.)
The NIH suspected the pause on GoF research covered EHA’s grant. NIH initially threatened to withhold EHA’s funding for 2016 in accordance with the moratorium. However, it is not clear how or why NIH changed their position from one of enforcement to one of acquiescence, in effect allowing EHA to craft the rules governing their own grant.
Nor is there any explanation for why NIH did not enforce the moratorium in 2015. NIH raised the issue for the first time in 2016. According to the Notice of Award dated May 27, 2015, the first year of funding for the project expired on May 31, 2015, well after the pause on GoF research came into effect in October 2014. The pause covered all “continuing funding” for existing programs, so NIH should not have released funding for the second year. Instead, NIH raised the issue for the first time a year late and then quickly backtracked on their threat of pulling funding for the program. It appears NIH out-sourced its oversight responsibilities to EHA in the mistaken expectation EHA would duly self-report violations.
The Intercept’s summary continues.
In December 2017, the funding for some gain-of-function research was resumed under carefully constructed guidelines for “Potential Pandemic Pathogen Care and Oversight,” or P3CO — but the language suggested by Daszak helped the group evade this oversight as well. In July 2018, NIAID program officers decided that the experiments on humanized mice — which had been conducted a few months earlier — would get a pass from these restrictions as long as EcoHealth Alliance immediately notified appropriate agency officials according to the circumstances that the group had laid out.
While it is not unusual for grantees to communicate with their federal program officers, the negotiation of this matter did not appropriately reflect the gravity of the situation, according to Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. “The discussions reveal that neither party is taking the risks sufficiently seriously,” said Bloom. “MERS-CoV has killed hundreds of people and is thought to pose a pandemic risk, so it’s difficult to see how chimeras of MERS-CoV with other high risk bat coronaviruses shouldn’t also be considered a pandemic risk.”
“It’s absolutely outrageous,” said Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. “The NIH is bending over backward to help people it’s funded. It isn’t clear that the NIH is protecting the U.S. taxpayer.”
Once the P3CO framework came into effect, NIH/NIAD failed to “refer proposed research that is reasonably anticipated to create, transfer, or use [ePPPs] for [HHS] department-level review,” as required by the framework. Furthermore, the funding agency did not “ensure implementation of and adherence to required risk mitigation procedures,” choosing instead to continue to allow Daszak to write the rules under which EHA’s research would operate.
The summary continues.
In a written response to questions submitted in September and October, an NIH spokesperson told The Intercept that the rule that was supposed to trigger a stop to the research was added “out of an abundance of caution.” Similarly, in a letter sent to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform last month, NIH principal deputy director Lawrence Tabak called the rule “an additional layer of oversight,” implying that the agency had devised the rule itself. But the notes reviewed by The Intercept show that the language was inserted at Daszak’s suggestion and that the NIH and EcoHealth Alliance worked together to evade additional oversight.
(Emphasis added.)
It is quite concerning NIH Principal Deputy Director Tabak frames the rules Daszak wrote for his own research as “an additional layer of oversight,” when NIH staff members Jenny Greer and Erik Stemmy had concerns the project constituted GoF research covered by the moratorium.
NIH/NIAID has yet to explain why officials initially suspected EHA’s project modifying bat coronaviruses to infect humanized mice (viz., mammals modified to have human-like features, such as ACE-2 receptors to which the virus could bind) met the definition of GoF under the moratorium but not the definition of an ePPP under the P3CO framework.
There was no applicable sampling or vaccine exceptions if EHA’s experiments met the definition of an ePPP. According to the project summary submitted by EHA, the aim of the program was “to understand what factors allow animal Coronaviruses to evolve and jump into the human population by studying virus diversity in a critical group of animals (bats), at sites of high risk for emergence (wildlife markets) in an emerging disease hotspot (China).” (Emphasis added.)
The reference to wet markets as a possible “hotspot” raises the possibility Daszak et al. used the justification for EHA’s 2014 research as plausible cover for a lab leak in 2019.
The summary continues.
Daszak responded to the NIH on June 8, 2016, arguing that, because EcoHealth Alliance’s proposed hybrid viruses were significantly different from the SARS virus, which was already known to infect humans, the experiments were not gain-of-function research and should not be restricted.
Daszak also pointed out that WIV1, the parent of the proposed chimeric SARS-like viruses, “has never been demonstrated to infect humans or cause human disease,” according to the transcribed emails. And he said that previous research “strongly suggests that the chimeric bat spike/bat backbone viruses should not have enhanced pathogenicity in animals.” The NIH would go on to accept these arguments.
But the group’s argument that its viral research did not pose a risk of infection appears to contradict the justification for the work: that these pathogens could potentially cause a pandemic. “The entire rationale of EcoHealth’s grant renewal on SARS-related CoVs is that viruses with spikes substantially (10-25%) diverged from SARS-CoV-1 pose a pandemic risk,” said Bloom. “Given that this is the entire rationale for the work, how can they simultaneously argue these viruses should not be regulated as potential pandemic pathogens?”
(Emphasis added.)
Daszak’s argument the chimeric viruses produced by EHA’s research were significantly different from SARS and that SARS was known to infect humans should not have persuaded NIH. It does not follow EHA’s chimeras were not harmful to humans just because the modified viruses were significantly different from a virus known to infect humans. Of course, it is still possible the modified viruses would be dangerous to humans despite being significantly different from SARS. Afterall, SARS-related viruses are not the only ones capable of infecting humans.
The summary continues.
Regulating risky research is the NIH’s role. But Daszak gave his group a way out. If the recombinant viruses grew more quickly than the original viruses on which they were based, he suggested, EcoHealth Alliance and its collaborators would immediately stop its research and inform their NIAID program officer. Specifically, he suggested a threshold beyond which his researchers would not go: If the novel SARS or MERS chimeras showed evidence of enhanced virus growth greater than 1 log (or 10 times) over the original viruses and grow more efficiently in human lung cells, the scientist would immediately stop their experiments with the mutant viruses and inform their NIAID program officer.
In a July 7 letter to EcoHealth Alliance, NIH’s Greer and Stemmy formally accepted Daszak’s proposed rule. The chimeric viruses were “not reasonably anticipated” to “have enhanced pathogenicity and/or transmissibility in mammals via the respiratory route,” the administrators concluded, according to the transcribed emails.
The language that the NIH later inserted into the grant was strikingly similar to what Daszak proposed: “Should any of the MERS-like or SARS-like chimeras generated under this grant show evidence of enhanced virus growth greater than 1 log over the parental backbone strain you must stop all experiments with these viruses.”
But when the scientists conducted the experiments in 2018, one of the chimeric viruses grew at a rate that produced a viral load of log 4 — or 10,000 times — greater than the parent virus. Even so, the work was allowed to proceed.
Despite the careful wording meant to assure the agency that the research would be immediately halted if it enhanced the viruses’ pathogenicity or transmissibility, EcoHealth violated its own rule and did not immediately report the concerning results to NIH, according to the letter from NIH’s Tabak.
In a letter sent to NIH on October 26, Daszak insisted EcoHealth Alliance did comply with all the requirements of its NIH grant, pointing out that the group reported the results of its experiment in its year four progress report, which it submitted to the agency in April 2018 — and that no one at the agency responded to the description of the experiment. “At no time did program staff indicate to us that this work required further clarification or secondary review,” he wrote.
(Emphases added.)
It is not clear whether NIH included the reporting condition Daszak suggested or whether NIH simply required EHA to “immediately” stop all experiments if they triggered the specified criteria. (“1 log or 10 times over the original viruses and grow more efficiently in human lung cells.”) Nor is it clear whether NIH required EcoHealth to inform their NIAID program officer immediately or only to stop working on the chimera immediately.
Presuming Daszak’s suggestion to include the reporting requirement was implemented by NIH as a condition of funding; presuming there was a requirement to report to the NIH program officer immediately; and presuming the due date for the year four progress report was on or around May 31, 2018, the timeline between the results of the 2018 research triggering the reporting requirement and the year four progress report is not yet established. We do not know whether EHA reported their research in a timely manner or delayed reporting the violation in a separate writing in order to bury the violation in a lengthy annual report.
Daszak also argued in the letter that the viral growth reported in the year four progress report did not correspond to the viral growth outlined in the rule he himself had devised. “The experiment we reported to NIH actually shows genome copies per gram not viral titer.”
Daszak emphasized that the growth of the chimeric viruses in the genetically engineered mice was enhanced only in the early part of the experiment. “By day 6-8, there was no discernably significant difference among the different viral types,” he wrote.
Yet virologists contacted by The Intercept dismissed both the distinction between viral titer and viral growth and the focus on the latter part of the mouse experiment, when the rate of growth between the viruses had evened out.
“I don’t agree with their interpretation,” said Wain-Hobson, of the Pasteur Institute. He described the EcoHealth Alliance’s response as “hairsplitting” and said that viral growth inevitably peters out. “Every growth of a virus comes to a plateau. This has been known since time immemorial,” said Wain-Hobson. “They have chosen this interpretation because it suits them.”
NIH officials have previously stated unequivocally that the agency did not fund any gain-of-function research in Wuhan. “The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” said Anthony Fauci, the head of the NIAID, during a Senate hearing in May. Fauci is scheduled to testify before the Senate health committee tomorrow morning.
In its statement to The Intercept, an NIH spokesperson wrote, “the Agency did not support the kind of ‘gain of function’ research warranting the additional and unique P3CO oversight identified by stakeholders during extensive prior policy development. To claim otherwise is incorrect and irresponsible.” And in his letter last month, Tabak reiterated the claim that the research was not gain-of-function.
But the correspondence with Daszak makes clear that at least some at the agency were concerned that EcoHealth Alliance’s proposed experiments met the criteria for gain-of-function research of concern as early as 2016.
According to Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University who has criticized the lack of federal oversight of gain-of-function research, the fact that the NIH allowed EcoHealth Alliance to write its own rules is further evidence of the NIH’s regulatory failure. “This is like the teacher giving you the opportunity to write your own homework problem and grade your own homework when you turn it in. Then you decide the teacher is so lenient, there’s no need to hand it in,” said Ebright. “The oversight process clearly failed.”
(Emphases added.)
NIH officials have not explained why they thought EHA’s research met the criteria for the moratorium (“reasonably [ ] anticipated to confer attributes to [ ] SARS viruses such that the resulting virus has enhanced pathogenicity and/or transmissibility via the respiratory route in mammals”) but not the ePPP definition under the P3CO framework (“a PPP resulting from the enhancement of the transmissibility and/or virulence of a pathogen”).
EcoHealth Alliance’s Project DEFUSE Proposal 2018
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) solicited interest for the PREEMPT (Preventing Emerging Pathogenic Threats) program in an agency announcement on January 19, 2018. EHA responded to the solicitation seeking funding for a separate proposal called “Project DEFUSE: Defusing the Threat of Bat-borne Coronaviruses.” Daszak requested $14,209,245 on behalf of EHA to fund Project DEFUSE for three and a half years.
The goal of Project DEFUSE was “to defuse the potential spillover of novel bat-origin high-zoonotic risk SARS-related coronaviruses in Asia.” The project would proceed in two phases.
In the first phase, EHA would “intensively sample bats at our field sites” in “three caves in Yunnan Province, China.” These field sites represented a heighted risk of spillover to human populations, according to EHA.
Then the researchers would sample the bats “spike proteins, reverse engineer them to conduct binding assays, and insert them into bat SARSr-CoV (WIV1, SHC014) backbones (these use bat-SARSr-CoV backbones, not SARS-CoV, and are exempt from dual-use and gain of function concerns) to infect humanized mice and assess capacity to cause SARS-like disease.” (Emphasis added.) (Dual-use research of concern is technology that can be used for peaceful and military purposes.)
The researchers would next model the data to build “machine-learning genotype-phenotype models of viral evolution and spillover risk.” The researchers would validate the model “with serology from previously-collected human samples via LIPS assays that assess which spike proteins allow spillover into people.”
The researchers would then build “host-pathogen spatial models to predict the bat species composition of caves across Southeast Asia.” The intermediary objective to conclude the first phase of the project was to create “a prototype app for the warfighter that identifies the likelihood of bats harboring dangerous viral pathogens” throughout Asia.
In the second phase, EHA would evaluate two different approaches to reduce viral shedding in bat caves. One option was “broadscale immune boosting, in which [the researchers would] inoculate bats with immune modulators to upregulate their immune response and downregulate viral replication.” The second option was “targeted immune boosting” to “inoculate bats with novel chimeric polyvalent recombinant spike proteins plus the immune modulator to enhance innate immunity against specific, high-risk viruses.”
Based on “stochastic simulation modeling informed by field and experimental data,” the researchers would then test the most effective biologicals by spraying an aerosol on the bats at the entrance to the roosting nests at the field sites, to test whether the interventions reduced viral shedding from the bats.
The proposal assured DARPA, “EcoHealth Alliance will over see [sic] all work.”
In rejecting the proposal, DARPA noted:
“The proposal is considered to potentially involve GoF/DURC (dual-use research of concern) because they propose to synthesize spike glycoproteins which bind to human cell receptors and insert them into SARSr-CoV backbones to assess whether they can cause SARS-like disease.”
“The proposal does not mention or assess potential risks of Gain of Function (GoF) research.”
“Nor does the proposal mention or assess Dual Use Research of Concern issues, and thus fails to present a DURC risk mitigation plan.”
“The proposal hardly addresses or discusses ethical, legal, and social issues (ELSI).”
“The proposal does not address concerns about these vaccines not being able to protect against hte wide variety of coronaviruses in bat caves which are constantly evolving, due to insufficient epitope coverage.”
In sum, the advanced military research agency of the United States government rejected Daszak’s claim EHA’s research would not constitute GoF or DURC research. According to the military personnel who reviewed the Project DEFUSE proposal, EHA’s argument their SARSr-CoV backbones were not SARS-CoV, and therefore not covered by the ePPP restrictions in P3CO, was not satisfactory. The lack of any serious attempt to address ethical, legal, and social issues is also alarming.
The Global Virome Project 2018-Present
Dr. Dennis Carroll designed and led Project PREDICT, yet another pandemic research and forecasting project, which received more than $210 million in funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development between 2009 and 2019.
According to Carroll, Predict was merely a “pilot project” for The Global Virome Project (GVP), which plans to map the genomes of more than 500,000 viruses around the world at an estimated cost of $1.2 billion. Daszak heads the GVP with Carroll.
The purpose of GVP is to better prepare the world for future pandemics. The ultimate goal of the program is to create “a universal flu vaccine and could potentially help with the development of a similar vaccine for coronaviruses” to cover all SARS, MERS, COVID-19 viruses and their variants. Therefore, GVP’s research will fall within the sampling and vaccine exemptions to the ePPP restrictions.
There are strategic geopolitical implications at play for the United States with regards to GVP.
Absent U.S. government leadership in GVP agenda-setting, governance, and funding the Chinese government could likely take a leading position in this potentially path breaking endeavor undermining years of USG leadership and considerable investment in this critical field of public health,” the cable states. “The Chinese government has shown strong interest in the Global Virome Project and is not shy about expressing interest in funding projects where Chinese scientists will take a lead.”
The strategic implication is a thorough technical understanding of viruses has dual-use application to military and public health purposes. The United States does not want to allow the Chinese government to take the lead when it comes to research into PPPs and ePPPs because such knowledge in the hands of the CCP could erode America’s full-spectrum dominance of the battlefield.
There is enough money and geopolitical power on the line for the executive branch and its agencies to cover-up an accidental lab leak at WIV. The revelation of such a mishap could result in the legislative branch banning further research into vaccines and viral weapons.
Dr. Fauci’s Statements to the U.S. Senate
Dr. Fauci has repeatedly denied NIH funded GoF research in testimony to Congress.
Here is a transcript of Dr. Fauci’s responses to Senator Rand Paul’s questions whether NIH funded GoF research at WIV:
On May 11, 2021, Senator Paul asked the question: “Dr. Fauci, do you still support NIH funding of the lab in Wuhan?”
Fauci’s answer: “Senator Paul, with all due respect, you are entirely and completely incorrect that the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. We do not fund gain—Dr. Baric does [sic] not doing gain-of-function research and, if it is, it’s according to the guidelines and it’s being conducted in North Carolina, not in China.”
Follow up: “You don’t think inserting a bat-virus spike protein that he got from Wuhan Institute into the SARS virus is gain-of-function. You would be in the minority because at least 200 scientists have signed a statement from the Cambridge working group saying that it is gain-of-function.”
Fauci: “Well, it is not. And if you look at the grant and if you look at the progress reports, it is not gain-of-function, despite the fact that people tweet that and write about it.”
Follow-up: “So do you still support sending money to the Wuhan Virology Institute"?”
Fauci: “We do not send money now to the Wuhan Virology Institute.”
Follow-up: “Do you support sending money to the Wuhan Virology Institute? We did under your tutelage. We were sending it through EcoHealth; it was a subagency and a subgrant. Do you support the money from NIH that was going to the Wuhan Institute?”
Fauci: “Let me explain to you why that was done. The SARS-CoV-1 originated in bats in China. It would have irresponsible of us if we did not investigate the bat viruses and the serology to see who might have been infected in China.”
Follow-up: “Or perhaps it would have been irresponsible to send it to the Chinese government that we may not be able to trust, with this knowledge and with this incredibly dangerous viruses. Government scientists like yourself who favor gain-of-function research—” [Dr. Fauci: “I don’t favor gain-of-function research in China. You are saying things that are not correct.”] —“Government defends of gain-of-function, such as yourself, say that COVID-19 were random and not designed by man. But, interestingly, the technique that Dr. Baric developed forces mutations by serial passage through cell culture that the mutations appear to be natural. In fact, Dr. Baric named the technique the No See ‘Em technique because the mutations appear naturally. Nicholas Baker, of the New York Magazine, said, ‘Nobody would know if the virus was fabricated in the laboratory or grown in nature.’ Government authorities in the U.S., including yourself, unequivocally deny that COVID-19 could have escaped a lab. But even Dr. Shi in Wuhan wasn’t so sure. According to Nicolas Baker, ‘Dr. Shi wondered, “Could this new virus have come from her own laboratory?” She checked her records frantically and found no matches. “That really took a load off my mind,” she said, “I had not slept in days.”’ The director of gain-of-function research in Wuhan couldn’t sleep because she was terrified it might be in her lab. Dr. Baric, an advocate of gain-of-function research, admits [in response to the question], ‘The main problem that the Institute of Virology has is the outbreak occurred in close proximity. What are the odds?’ Baric responded, ‘Could you rule out a laboratory escape? The answer in this case is probably not.’ Will you [Dr. Fauci], in front of this group, categorically say that the COVID-19 could not have occurred through serial passage in a laboratory.”
Fauci: “I do not have any accounting of what the Chinese may have done, and I am fully in favor of any further investigation of what went on in China. However, I will repeat, again, the NIH and NIAID categorically has not funded gain-of-function to be conducted in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
Follow-up: “But you do support it in the U.S. We have 11 labs doing it and you have allowed it here. We have a committee to do it but the committee is granted every exemption. You’re fooling with Mother Nature here. You’re allowing super-viruses to be created with a 15 percent mortality. It’s very dangerous. It was a huge mistake to share this with China. And it’s a huge mistake to allow this continue in the United States. And we should be very careful to investigate where this virus came from.”
Fauci: “I fully agree that you should investigate where the virus came from. But, again, we have not gain-of-function research on this virus in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. No matter how many times you say it, it didn’t happen.”
Follow-up: “You are parsing words. You’re parsing words. There was research done with Dr. Shi and Dr. Baric. They have collaborated on gain-of-function research where they enhanced the SARS virus to infect human airway cells. And they did it by merging a new spike protein on it. That is gain-of-function. That was joint research between the Wuhan Institute and Dr. Baric. You can’t deny it.”
Fauci: “I don’t know how many times I can say it, Madame Chair, we did not fund gain-of-function research to be conducted in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
On November 4, 2021, Senator Paul asked the question: “Even the NIH now admits that EcoHealth Alliance did perform experiments in Wuhan that created viruses not found in nature, that actually did gain in lethality. The facts are clear: the NIH did fund gain-of-function research in Wuhan, despite your protestations. You can deny it all you want but even the Chinese authors of the paper, in their paper, admit that viruses not found in nature were created and, yes, they gained in infectivity. Your persistent denials though are not simply a stain on your reputation but are a clear and present danger to the country and to the world. As Professor Kevin Evselt of MIT has written, ‘Gain-of-function research looks like a gamble that civilization can’t afford to risk.’ Yet here we are again with you steadfast in your denials. Why does it matter? Because gain-of-function research with laboratory-created viruses not found in nature could cause a pandemic even worse the next time. We’re suffering today from one that has a mortality of approximately one percent. They are experimenting with viruses that have mortalities between 15 and 50 percent. Yes, our civilization could be at risk from one of these viruses. Experiments that combine unknown viruses with known pandemic-causing viruses are incredibly risky. Experiments that combine unknown viruses with coronaviruses that have as much as 50 percent mortality could endanger civilization as we know it. And here you sit, unwilling to accept any responsibility for the current pandemic and unwilling to take any steps to prevent gain-of-function research from possibly unleashing an even more deadly virus. You mislead the public by saying the published viruses could not be COVID. Well, exactly no-one is alleging that; no one is alleging that the published viruses by the Chinese are COVID. What we are saying is this was risky type of research, gain-of-function research. It was risky to share this with the Chinese and that COVID may have been created from a not-yet revealed virus. We don’t anticipate the Chinese are going to reveal the virus if it came from their lab. You know that but you continue to mislead. You continue to support NIH money going to Wuhan. You continue to say you trust the Chinese scientists. You appear to have learned nothing from this pandemic. Will you today finally take some responsibility for funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan?”
Fauci’s answer: “Senator, with all due respect, I disagree with so many of the things that you’ve said. First of all, ‘gain-of-function’ is a very nebulous term. We have spent—not us but outside bodies—a considerable amount of effort to give a more precise definition to the type of research that is of concern that might lead to a dangerous situation. You are of that; that is called P3CO.”
Follow-up: “We’re aware you deleted ‘gain-of-function’ from the NIH website.”
Fauci: “Well, I can get back to that in a moment if we have time. But let’s get back to the operating framework and guiderails of which we operate under, and you have ignored them. The guidelines are very, very clear that you have to be dealing with a pathogen that clearly is shown and very likely to be highly transmissible in an uncontrollable way in humans and to have a high degree of morbidity and mortality; and that you do experiments that enhance that, hence the word, ‘ePPP,’: enhanced pathogens with pandemic potential.”
Follow-up: “So when EcoHealth Alliance took the virus and SHCO14 and combined it with WIV-1 and caused a recombinant virus that doesn’t exist in nature and it made mice sicker, mice that had humanized cells, you’re saying that that is not gain-of-function research?”
Fauci: “According to the framework and guidelines— ”
Follow-up: “So what you’re doing is defining away ‘gain-of-function.’ You’re simply saying it doesn’t exist because you changed the definition on the NIH website. This is terrible and you’re completely trying to escape the idea that we should do something about trying to prevent a pandemic from leaking from a lab. There’s [a] preponderance of evidence now points towards this coming from the lab, and what you’ve done is change the definition on your website to try to cover your ass, basically. That’s what you’ve done: you’ve changed the website to try to have a new definition that doesn’t include the risky research that is going on. Until you admit that it’s risky, we’re not going to get anywhere. You have to admit that this research was risky. The NIH has now rebuked them. Your own agency has rebuked them. But the thing is you’re still unwilling to admit that they gained-in-function when they say they became sicker. They gained in lethality. It’s a new virus. That’s not gain-of-function?”
Fauci: “According to the definition that is currently operable. You know, Senator, let’s make it clear for the people who are listening: the current definition was done over a two-to-three-year period by outside bodies, including the NSABB, two conferences by the National Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine on December, 2014, and March, 2016. We commissioned external risk-benefit assessment and then, in January 2017, the Office of Science and Technology Policy of the White House issued the current policy. I have not changed any definition.”
Follow-up: “And, coincidentally, the [gain-of-function] definition [on the NIH website] disappeared on the same day the NIH said that ‘Yes, there was a gain-of-function in Wuhan.’ The same day the definition appeared—the new definition—to try to define away what’s going on in Wuhan. Until you accept it, until you accept responsibility, we’re not going to get anywhere close to preventing another lab leak of this dangerous sort of experiment. You won’t admit that it’s dangerous and, for that lack of judgment, I think it’s time you resign.”
Fauci: “There were so many things here that are egregious misrepresentations, Madame Chair, that I don’t think I’d be able to refute all of them. But just a couple of them for the listeners to hear. You have said that I am unwilling to take any responsibility for the current pandemic; I have no responsibility for the current pandemic. The current pandemic. Okay, number two: you said the overwhelming amount of evidence indicates that it’s a lab leak. I believe most card-carrying viral philogynists [sic] and molecular virologists would disagree with you that it is much more likely, even though we leave open all possibilities, that it is much more likely this was a natural occurrence. Third, you say—” [Senator Paul: “We’ve tested 80,000 animals and no animals have been found with COVID.”] “And third, you made a statement just a moment ago that is completely incorrect, where you say we continue to support research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology—” [Senator Paul: “You approved it in August of last year.”] “No, no, your statement says, quote, I wrote it down as you were writing [sic], ‘You continue to support research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.’” [Senator Paul: “You were in committee a month ago and said you still trust the Chinese scientists and you still support the research over there. You said it a month ago in committee.”] “Well, I don’t have any more to say, except to stay that as usual I have a great deal of respect for this body of the Senate, and it makes me very uncomfortable to have to say something, but he is egregiously incorrect in what he says.” [Senator Paul: “History will figure that out on its own.”]
Fauci repeatedly denied NIH funded GoF research in the May 11 hearing without explaining he was using the definition of ePPP to respond to questions about gain-of-function. “The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” “However, I will repeat, again, the NIH and NIAID categorically has not funded gain-of-function to be conducted in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” “But, again, we have not gain-of-function research on this virus in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. No matter how many times you say it, it didn’t happen.” “I don’t know how many times I can say it, Madame Chair, we did not fund gain-of-function research to be conducted in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
Fauci’s denials NIH has never funded GoF research at WIV are factually false and misleading. NIH Principal Deputy Director Tabak confirmed EHA modified the WIV-1 virus to the SHC014 WIV-1 virus, which modification made humanized mice sicker. Tabak explains this gain-of-function was unintentional. “As sometimes occurs in science, this was an unexpected result of the research, as opposed to something that the researchers set out to do.”
Thus, Fauci’s repeated denials NIH has never funded GoF research at WIV are not true. While NIH/NIAID might not have intended to fund GoF research, in fact EHA spent NIH/NIAID money at WIR on making a virus with 10,000 times greater viral growth than its naturally occurring predecessor.
Moreover, Fauci’s statements are misleading because the P3CO framework was not established in 2016 at the time of the offending experiment. The SHC014 WIV-1 experiment came close to meeting the then-operable definition of the type of “gain-of-function research” paused by the moratorium. Under that definition, GoF research included modifying a virus to give it “enhanced pathogenicity and/or transmissibility (via the respiratory route) in mammals.”
The experiment would not have fallen within the scope of the moratorium because researchers infected mice via the ACE-2 receptor not through the respiratory route. As noted earlier, however, the moratorium did not apply to all kinds of GoF research. Enhancing transmissibility of a virus through the ACE-2 receptor instead of via the respiratory route constitutes GoF generally speaking whether or not it meets the criteria for the moratorium.
Fauci attempted to “define away” the NIH/NIAID funded research at WIV by retroactively applying the P3CO framework’s narrow definition of ePPPs to questions about gain-of-function. The average citizen is not able to distinguish the definitions of GoF research in general, from GoF research paused by the moratorium, from ePPPs specifically. Fauci mislead the public by using a narrow, technical definition of ePPPs to respond to questions about GoF research in general. Afterall, Paul was asking Fauci about funding “gain-of-function research” not about funding research into “enhanced potential pandemic pathogens.”
Further, it was only at the November 4 hearing Fauci clarified he was responding to questions about GoF using the narrow definition of ePPPs. “First of all, ‘gain-of-function’ is a very nebulous term. We have spent—not us but outside bodies—a considerable amount of effort to give a more precise definition to the type of research that is of concern that might lead to a dangerous situation. You are of that; that is called P3CO.” “According to the definition that is currently operable [the WIV research was not gain-of-function] . . . I have not changed any definition.”
Dr. Richard H. Ebright, Board of Governors Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers University and Laboratory Director at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology, concluded recently released documents prove NIH-funded research at WIV meets both definitions: GoF and ePPP. “The documents make it clear that assertions by the NIH Director, Francis Collins, and the NIAID Director, Anthony Fauci, that the NIH did not support gain-of-function research or potential pandemic pathogen enhancement at WIV are untruthful.” (Emphasis added.) If professionals cannot agree whether research meets the definition of GoF or ePPP, or both, or neither, then how is the average American supposed to understand subtle distinctions Fauci draws but does not explain?
Lastly, Fauci overstates his claim when he maintains he has “no responsibility for the current pandemic.” Fauci cannot be certain he has no responsibility for the pandemic when it is not yet known whether or not research at WIV led to “a not-yet revealed virus” that caused the COVID-19 pandemic. If it is true research at WIV caused the pandemic due to a lab leak, NIH/NIAID and Fauci are culpable.
To be clear, the NIH/NIAID has categorically ruled out the possibility their R01AI11064 grant to EHA led to the modification of a virus that became COVID-19. Nor does it appear any other U.S. government grants to EHA led to the development of COVID-19.
Published genomic data demonstrate that the bat coronaviruses studied under the NIH grant to EcoHealth Alliance, Inc., and subaward to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) are not and could not have become SARS-CoV-2. Bot the progress report and the analysis attached her again confirm that conclusion, as the sequences of the viruses are genetically very distant.
[. . .]
The second document is a genetic analysis demonstrating that the naturally occurring bat coronaviruses used in experiments under the NIH grant from 2014-2018 are decades removed from SARS-CoV-2 evolutionarily. The analysis compares the sequence relationships between:
SARS-CoV-1, the cause of the SARS outbreak in 2003;
SARS-CoV-2, the cause of COVID-19 pandemic;
WIV-1, a naturally occurring bat coronavirus used in experiments funded by the NIH;
RaTG13, one of the closest bat coronaviruses relatives to SARS-CoV-2 collected by the Wuhan Institute of Virology; and
BANAL-52, one of the several bat coronaviruses recently identified from bats living in caves in Laos.
While it might appear that the similarity of RaTG13 and BANAL-52 bat coronaviruses to SARS-CoV-2 is close because it overlaps 96-97%, experts agree that even these viruses are far too divergent to have been the progenitor of SARS-CoV-2. For comparison, today’s human genome is 96% similar to our closest ancestor, the chimpanzee. Humans and chimpanzees are thought to have diverged approximately 6 million years ago.
But even if NIH/NIAID did not fund the specific research that created COVID-19, and even if NIH/NIAID had no knowledge of the existence of “a not-yet revealed virus” that became COVID-19, NIH/NIAID funded WIV through EHA.
EHA submitted their year-four progress report in April 2018. The report notified NIH/NIAID of the SHC014 WIV-1 experiment. NIH/NIAID continued funding EHA after learning EHA violated the conditions of their funding by not reporting the experiment that caused a gain-of-function in a timely manner. NIH/NIAID awarded $581,646 on June 18, 2018, and $661,980 on July 23, 2019, which latter reward was reduced by $71,770 on August 5, 2019.
If the offending experiment might have been “reasonably judged to be a credible source of a potential future human pandemic,” NIH/NIAID should have notified HHS to trigger department-level review. Such a review might have led to the discovery of inadequate security measures at WIV and prevented the pandemic. Instead “the NIH and EcoHealth Alliance worked together to evade additional oversight,” according to The Intercept.
The real issue for Congress’s regulatory purposes is not whether EHA’s research at WIV should be technically characterized as GoF or ePPP. The real issue is whether NIH funded WIV. Money is fungible. By funding EHA’s work at WIV, and therefore WIV indirectly, NIH/NIAID may have given WIV the financial flexibility needed for the CCP to dedicate other funds to GoF research programs not authorized by NIH/NIAID. That research may have triggered the pandemic in the exact kind of lab leak accident that was the reason the Obama administration paused GoF research in 2014.
Dr. Shi Zhengi, Director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at WIV, boasts WIV secured $1,224,500 in funding from NIH ($665,000) and NIAID ($559,500) from 2014 to 2019. NBC News reports Zhengi co-authored two studies on coronaviruses with two military scientists, Dr. Tong Yigang (in spring 2018) and Dr. Yusen Zhou (in December 2019). Yigang is a professor at the State Key Laboratory of Pathogen and Biosecurity, Beijing Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology. Zhou (now deceased) was Yigang’s boss and the head of the State Key Laboratory of Pathogen and Biosecurity.
On February 24, 2020, just five weeks after the CCP admitted COVID-19 had human-to-human transmission, Zhou filed a COVID-19 vaccine patent on behalf of the Institute of Military Medicine, Academy of Military Sciences of the People Liberation’s Army. Professor Nikolai Petrovsky from Flinders University observed, “This is something we have never seen achieved before, raising the question of whether this work may have started much earlier.” Perhaps the reason the Chinese government had a vaccine so quickly is because they had been working on COVID-19 for some time. Zhengi has denied any research at WIV is conducted for military purposes.
In any case, Congress has a compelling interest and the constitutional authority to investigate the origins of the virus with a view to revising the P3CO framework. Past research into coronaviruses did not prevent the COVID-19 pandemic, which could change perceptions of the risk-reward tradeoff of continuing to fund such research. Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas introduced a bill called the “Viral Gain of Function Research Moratorium Act” in the Senate on October 19, 2021. If passed, the law will block federal funding of GoF research into all flu, MERS, and SARS viruses, as well as all ePPPs. But if research modifying coronaviruses is to continue, then the question to ask to better inform the cost-benefit analysis of such research is whether the P3CO framework was too lax. If it is established to a reasonable degree of probability COVID-19 leaked from WIV, then the P3CO framework, which exempted GoF research like EHA’s at WIV from department-level review, is clearly inadequate.
The Lancet Spreads Disinformation
The Lancet was one of the two most respected science journals in the world, alongside Nature, until it infamously became a knowing and willing participant in Daszak’s disinformation campaign against the lab leak hypothesis.
On February 2, 2020, in an email to Fauci, Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the British medical charity foundation Wellcome Trust and adviser to the UK government, wrote that a “likely explanation” could be WIV “accidentally (created) a virus that would be primed for rapid transmission between humans.” Sir Jeremy assessed the lab was the origin of the virus with 60-70 percent confidence.
According to Sir Jeremy, Dr. Mike Furzan, who discovered MERS, was “bothered by the furin site and has a hard time explain that as an event outside the lab (though, there are possible ways in nature, but highly unlikely).”
Dr. Robert Garry, Professor of Virology at the University of Texas at Austin, responded, “I really can’t think of a plausible natural scenario where you get from the bat virus or one very similar to it to nCoV where you insert exactly 4 amino acids 12 nucleotide that all have to be added at the exact same time to gain this function – that and you don’t change any other amino acid in S2? I just can’t figure out how this gets accomplished in nature.”
Two days later, Sir Jeremy reported Dr. Eddie Holmes, a world authority on virus evolution, was “60-40” in favor of the lab origin hypothesis over zoonosis.
None of the scientists disclosed their internal communications when disclosure could have helped prompt a comprehensive investigation into the origin of the virus. Instead, House Republicans obtained Fauci’s emails through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in mid-2021. The public did not see the emails until January 11, 2022, almost two years after the fact.
Meanwhile, in the two years since the outbreak from Wuhan, the mainstream media repeatedly parroted language from a February 2020 letter in The Lancet that framed the lab origin hypothesis as a “conspiracy.” “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,” wrote more than 20 prominent scientists. Sir Jeremy signed the letter in direct contradiction of his express opinion from only 16 days prior.
Daszak organized the publication of infamous letter in The Lancet and in fact drafted key language. But Daszak decided not to sign the letter in order to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, which conflict of interest was real and not merely apparent.
I spoke with Linfa [Wang] last night about the statement we sent round. He thinks, and I agree with him, that 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.
[. . .]
We’ll then put it out in a way that doesn’t link it back to our collaboration so we maximize an independent voice.
“I also think this is a good decision. Otherwise it looks self-serving and we lose impact,” Dr. Ralph Baric replied. Baric is a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Like Daszak, Baric has an interest in GoF research and is the inventor of the “No See ‘Em technique” that hides genetic modifications to viruses by making them appear as if they occurred naturally.
Daszak was part of the WHO investigation team who went to China in February 2020, which concluded the lab leak hypothesis was “extremely unlikely.” Daszak persuaded other scientists to publish disinformation with the explicit purpose of dissuading further investigation into the possibility of a lab leak. Daszak only signed his name to the letter in The Lancet and declared his conflict-of-interest with EHA after FOIA revealed his central role in manufacturing the letter.
It is not readily apparent whether Daszak genuinely believes zoonosis is the only plausible hypothesis of COVID-19’s origin, whether he was shielding his colleagues at WIV from further scrutiny, or whether he was simply acting to protect the $16,874,314 in funding NIH/NIAID have awarded EHA since 2002. Or, what is more likely, Daszak may be protecting the P3CO framework, its definition of ePPPs, and the exemptions to those definitions for research focused on sampling viruses and developing vaccines. Daszak stands to miss out on $1.2 billion in funding for the GVP should the Viral Gain of Function Research Moratorium Act become law.
What is apparent is Daszak organized for The Lancet to brand the lab leak hypothesis a “conspiracy theory” shortly after subject matter experts gave the same hypothesis serious consideration in early February 2020.
Google Spreads Disinformation
On February 1, 2020, I assessed with moderate-to-high confidence the virus came from WIV. I based my assessment on information Google Maps manipulated the location of the lab on January 29. Google moved the ‘location’ of WIV from 8.6 miles away from the wet market to 21.7 miles away.
The National Pulse reported on June 19, 2021, that Google and USAID funded EHA’s experiments on viruses at WIV. It appears Google moved the location of WIV on Maps in a feeble attempt to cover up their involvement in funding the organization most likely responsible for the pandemic.
The Mainstream Media Spreads Disinformation
All credit to Drew Holden for compiling the epic hypocrisy of mainstream media. The images on the left are from mid-2020; the images on the right are from mid-2021.
Finally, on September 7, 2021, The Intercept began publishing a series of reports detailing the evidence for the lab leak hypothesis, how NIH officials helped EHA evade the gain-of-function moratorium, the dangers of NIAID funding such research, and how the FBI investigated the origins of the pandemic.
Is disinformation the biggest health problem?
As we have seen, the “Disinformation Dozen” and affiliated anti-vaxxer social media accounts have a following of 59.2 million users, according to CCDH’s research. It is safe to say the disinformation from the Trump administration, the Biden administration, the WHO, the CDC, the NIH/NIAID, The Lancet, Google, and mainstream media reached more than 59.2 million people.
Although presumably most of the 59.2 million users following the “Disinformation Dozen” are Americans, social media platforms are global, so the figure is an estimate of the number of followers of the most prominent anti-vaxxer accounts worldwide. There is no doubt some people who are against vaccinations for COVID do not use social media. As a result, 59.2 million is likely an underestimate of the total number of anti-vaxxers in the world.
On the other hand, some of the 59.2 million users may be in favor of vaccines but follow the anti-vaxxer accounts for research and awareness purposes. Some users may be opposed to mRNA vaccines but supportive of adenovirus and protein subunit vaccines. And some of the users may be bots, not real people. However, let us presume the 59.2 million users represent a lower bound for the number of persons worldwide who are opposed to COVID vaccinations.
At the time of writing, 61.3 percent of the global population has received at least one dose, which represents about 4.8 billion people, meaning around 3 billion people around the world have not received any vaccination against COVID. Therefore, the number of anti-vaxxers globally active on social media represent about 2 percent of all unvaccinated people in the world. About 98 percent of the world’s unvaccinated population is unvaccinated because they do not have access to vaccines, not because they are opposed to being vaccinated.
Evidently supply of vaccines, especially to lower-income countries where only 10 percent of the population is vaccinated on average, is a much larger problem for health officials than misinformation or disinformation. But how many times have you heard the news talk about vaccinating underprivileged nations compared to the threat from disinformation?
Conclusions
Despite the best attempts of ‘trusted authorities’ to reassure me nothing was wrong and ‘it’s just the flu,’ I correctly anticipated COVID would become a global pandemic in early February. (The prior link is dated February 19 because moderators of the /r/sandiego subreddit removed my initial post in the first week of February on the basis warning about an imminent pandemic was “not relevant.”)
I reached the following conclusions based on a close analysis of the available peer-reviewed science and the historical record regarding the CCP lies about the scale of the SARS outbreak:
“It is safe to say the fatality rate of the virus is much higher than the flu (0.1%).”
“The novel coronavirus has a potentially long incubation period, during which asymptomatic carriers are contagious, and can spread the disease via direct contact, fomites, and possibly through the air in some circumstances. Although the transmissibility of the novel virus is not as high as measles, which is a very contagious disease, it is much higher than the flu.”
“Experts warn we are on the verge of a global pandemic that will likely affect people everywhere.”
“It is possible the government has adopted a strategy of limiting the publicly available information in order to prevent panic.”
“The source of the virus is ultimately unknown at present. Use critical thinking before reaching conclusions.”
My conclusions were accurate despite limited information but not especially impressive. There is absolutely no chance U.S. intelligence missed the information I was using to form my conclusions. For example, on February 14, 2020, researchers at the South China Institute of Technology concluded “the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan. Safety level may need to be reinforced in high risk biohazardous laboratories. Regulations may be taken to relocate these laboratories far away from city center and other densely populated places.”
The damage caused by mainstream disinformation from ‘trusted authorities’ is severe if not irreparable. Most people to this day still believe it is a “conspiracy theory” COVID resulted from an accidental leak at WIV. It simply does not matter there is no direct evidence of a natural origin or that all of the circumstantial evidence points to a lab leak. That is, all of the evidence WIV has not deleted.
The WIV had published an important database of virus genetic sequences. However, in September 2019 they removed this database with the excuse that it was subject to cypher attacks, and they have not made it available to any researchers. This makes it impossible to determine the exact path of the development of SARS-COV-2.
Instead of pursuing all possibilities objectively, the mainstream media successfully propagandized many Americans—predominantly liberals—into blindly accepting a racist theory Chinese people caused the pandemic by eating bats at a wet market. A peer-reviewed paper published in Nature in June 2021 found no bats or pangolins are sold in the Wuhan wet market. Why did it take scientists 16 months to investigate? Why did CNN, the NYT, or anyone one of the dozens of well-funded news outlets not send a journalist to fact-check their own narrative about the virus emanating from the wet market?
The answer is because scientists are scared of losing their federal funding if they pursue inconvenient research and the media’s job is not to tell you the truth. The media’s job is to control the narrative in service of the for-profit corporate interests that own them. Perhaps the most alarming aspect of the media’s behavior, apart from the fact their disinformation got people killed, is that their disinformation was all part of a planned pandemic playbook.
Event 201 was a WHO-sponsored pandemic simulation just prior to the outbreak of COVID in the summer of 2019. Event 201’s “Segment 4, Communications Discussion” is mandatory viewing for everyone who wishes to understand just how deeply corrupt mainstream media has become. One could easily mistake the simulation as real reporting about COVID-19. Event 201 hired paid actors, just like the news on T.V., to lament “misinformation and disinformation” and the “infodemic” challenging the messaging of ‘trusted authorities’ like the WHO, the CDC, and the U.S. and Chinese governments.
In their quest to dispel disinformation, governments and the mainstream media became—by far—the largest distributors of misinformation. In doing so, they demonstrated ‘trusted authorities’ do not deserve our trust at all.
The blatant, global disinformation campaign concerning COVID’s origins thus established, the next issue Law and Politics will cover is the global disinformation campaign regarding election security. A multi-part series covering election security is forthcoming in the same excruciating detail.
This is Law and Politics. Until next time . . . .