Daily Archives: May 1, 2020

5 Eyes Has Memo/Evidence on China Virus Deception

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Primer: Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo is correct, China is using the same fake/false propaganda tactics well known and exploited for decades by Russia’s FSB. Further, while Beijing refuses to allow foreign (read U.S.) scientists into the Wuhan Laboratory for review/investigation, Beijing is also refusing WHO scientists as well.

China sends thousands of medical staff to Wuhan as ...

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FNC: A research dossier compiled by the so-called “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance states that China intentionally hid or destroyed evidence of the coronavirus outbreak, resulting in the loss of tens of thousands of lives around the world.

The 15-page document from the intelligence agencies of the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand, was obtained by Australia’s Daily Telegraph newspaper and states that China’s secrecy amounted to an “assault on international transparency.”

The dossier touches on themes that have been discussed in media reports about the outbreak of the virus, including initial denial that the virus could be transmitted between humans, the silencing or “disappearing” of doctors who tried to speak up, the destruction of evidence in laboratories and refusal to provide live samples to international scientists working on a vaccine.

Specifically, the file notes that China began censoring news of the virus on search engines beginning Dec. 31, deleting terms including “SARS variation, “Wuhan Seafood market” and “Wuhan Unknown Pneumonia.”

Three days later, on Jan. 3, China’s National Health Commission, ordered virus samples to be either moved to designated testing facilities or destroyed, while simultaneously enforcing a “no-publication order” related to the disease.

Perhaps most damningly, the dossier states that Chinese authorities denied that the virus could be spread between humans until Jan. 20, “despite evidence of human-human transmission from early December.”

The dossier is similarly unsparing about the World Health Organization (WHO), stating that it toed the Chinese line about human-to-human transmission despite the fact that”officials in Taiwan raised concerns as early as December 31, as did experts in Hong Kong on January 4.”

As of Friday night, the WHO’s official Twitter account still featured a tweet from Jan. 14 that stated: “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China.”

At the same time, the dossier states that throughout February, “Beijing [pressed] the US [sic], Italy, India, Australia, Southeast Asian neighbours and others not to protect themselves via travel restrictions, even as [China] imposes severe restrictions at home.”

At the same time, the file states: “Millions of people [left] Wuhan after the outbreak and before Beijing lock[ed] down the city on January 23.”

The dossier continues the litany of Chinese defensiveness, stating: “As EU [European Union] diplomats prepare a report on the pandemic, [China] successfully presses Brussels to strike language on [China] disinformation.”

Similarly, “As Australia calls for an independent inquiry into the pandemic, [China] threatens to cut off trade with Australia. [China] has likewise responded furiously to US [sic] calls for transparency.”

The Telegraph report does present one point of divergence between the allied governments, with Australia believing the virus most likely originated in the Wuhan wet market and putting the chances it accidentally leaked from a lab at “5 percent.”

By contrast, Fox News reported April 15 that U.S. intelligence officials are increasingly confident that coronavirus likely originated in a Wuhan lab as a consequence of China’s attempt to demonstrate that its efforts to identify and combat viruses are equal to or greater than the capabilities of the United States

President Trump said Thursday that he’s seen evidence suggesting the virus came from a lab after Fox News and others asked if he knew of anything that gave him confidence that the outbreak originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

“Yes, I have,” he replied, “And, I think that the World Health Organization should be ashamed of themselves because they’re like the public relations agency for China.”

Multiple sources previously told Fox News that it is believed standards in Wuhan were disregarded before the virus leaked, prompting Beijing to initiate a cover-up. Sources also claimed the WHO was complicit from the beginning in helping China cover its tracks.

The WHO and China have denied any wrongdoing.

The Telegraph also reported that key figures at the Wuhan Institute of Virology previously worked or trained in Australian government labs where they conducted research on pathogens in live bats as part of an ongoing partnership with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

According to the dossier, the team’s work at the Wuhan lab involved discovering samples of coronavirus within a cave in Yunnan province and synthesizing a bat-derived coronavirus that could not be cured.

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KEY DATES IN COVID COVER-UP

November 9, 2015:

Wuhan Institute of Virology publish a study revealing they created a new virus in the lab from SARS-CoV.

December 6, 2019

Five days after a man linked to Wuhan’s seafood market presented pneumonia-like symptoms, his wife contracts it, suggesting human to human transmission.

December 27

China’s health authorities told a novel disease, then affecting some 180 patients, was caused by a new coronavirus.

December 26-30

Evidence of new virus emerges from Wuhan patient data.

December 31

Chinese internet authorities begin censoring terms from social media such as Wuhan Unknown Pneumonia.

January 1, 2020

Eight Wuhan doctors who warned about new virus are detained and condemned.

January 3

China’s top health authority issues a gag order.

January 5

Wuhan Municipal Health Commission stops releasing daily updates on new cases. Continues until January 18.

January 10

PRC official Wang Guangfa says outbreak “under control” and mostly a “mild condition”.

January 12

Professor Zhang Yongzhen’s lab in Shanghai is closed by authorities for “rectification”, one day after it shares genomic sequence data with the world for the first time.

January 14

PRC National Health Commission chief Ma Xiaowei privately warns colleagues the virus is likely to develop into a major public health event.

January 24

Officials in Beijing prevent the Wuhan Institute of Virology from sharing sample isolates with the University of Texas.

February 6

China’s internet watchdog tightens controls on social media platforms.

February 9

Citizen-journalist and local businessman Fang Bin disappears.

April 17

Wuhan belatedly raises its official fatalities by 1290.

 

Operation Warp Speed

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The mission is for the United States to have the ability to inoculate 300m people by January 2021. In collaboration between Health and Human Services, the FDA and the Department of Defense, the DOD has a unique division known as The Research Regulatory Oversight Office (R2O2) which is the P&R component level oversight office for the authorities and responsibilities under Department of Defense (DoD) Instruction 3216.01, “Use of Animals in DoD Programs.” The R2O2 manages animal care and use review and oversight processes for research conducted and supported by the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute, both of which are accredited by AAALAC as is required for all DoD institutions housing animals for Research, Development, Testing and Evaluation or training.

U.S. Department of Defense and FDA collaborate to help speed ... source

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The Trump administration is organizing a Manhattan Project-style effort to drastically cut the time needed to develop a coronavirus vaccine, with a goal of making enough doses for most Americans by year’s end.

Called “Operation Warp Speed,” the program will pull together private pharmaceutical companies, government agencies and the military to try to cut the development time for a vaccine by as much as eight months, according to two people familiar with the matter.

As part of the arrangement, taxpayers will shoulder much of the financial risk that vaccine candidates may fail, instead of drug companies.

The project’s goal is to have 300 million doses of vaccine available by January, according to one administration official. There is no precedent for such rapid development of a vaccine.
Last month, Trump directed Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar to speed development of a vaccine, and administration officials have been meeting on the effort for three to four weeks, one of the people said. A meeting on the project was scheduled at the White House on Wednesday.

The people familiar with the project and the administration officials asked not to be identified because it hasn’t yet been publicly announced.

A spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, Michael Caputo, said the president refused to accept the timeline for standard vaccine development and encouraged a breakthrough process.
Speeding Up

Vaccine development is typically slow and high risk. The project’s goal is to cut out the slow part, the people said. Operation Warp Speed will use government resources to quickly test the world’s most promising experimental vaccines in animals, then launch coordinated human clinical trials to winnow down the candidates.
The group is discussing which Americans might be vaccinated first, as the medicines would likely roll off production lines in batches, one of the people said. The project would be funded from money already available to the government and won’t require new authority from Congress, one of the people said.

There are at least 70 different coronavirus vaccines in development by drugmakers and research groups, according to the World Health Organization. But drugmakers have not coordinated their efforts to the extent they could through the Warp Speed project, one of the people said.
Under the effort, the Defense Department would make its animal research resources available for pre-clinical work on vaccines.

The group is also discussing the use of what’s known as a master protocol to test the vaccines. Instead of multiple clinical trials run by each drugmaker, competing for patients and resources, the government would organize one large trial to test several vaccines at once and advance the most promising ones.
Oxford Vaccine

The Trump administration isn’t alone in trying to fast-track a vaccine. One of the world’s most promising vaccine candidates has been developed by a team at Oxford University in London. Last month, scientists at the U.S. National Institutes of Health innoculated six rhesus macaques with the Oxford vaccine and then exposed them to the coronavirus, the New York Times reported.

All six were healthy more than four weeks later, according to the Times. The researchers are currently testing their vaccine in 1,000 patients and plan to expand to stage two and three clinical trials next month involving about 5,000 more people.

The Oxford group told the Times they could have several million doses of their vaccine produced and approved by regulators as early as September.

In the U.S., the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has meanwhile shifted much of its research effort to the coronavirus virus.

One of the people familiar with Operation Warp Speed drew a distinction with the Oxford group, describing the U.S. effort as broader in scope. It’s unclear which vaccine candidates would be part of Operation Warp Speed, or whether it would include the Oxford vaccine.

More than 1 million cases of coronavirus have been confirmed in the U.S., and at least 58,000 people have died from the illness it causes in the last two months. Widespread social-distancing measures have helped slow the spread, but at the cost of millions of jobs and losses to the economy that experts fear will take years to recover.

Along with wider diagnostic testing for the virus and an effective therapeutic drug, a vaccine is one of the key tools for reducing long-term risk from the virus. Testing can help contain an outbreak in its early stages, or after it’s been curbed enough to manage. A therapy can help those who get sick, reducing the risk of death and the burden on hospitals.

Gilead Sciences Inc. announced Wednesday that in a trial conducted by Fauci’s agency, the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, its experimental coronavirus therapy remdesivir helped patients recover faster than under standard care. More here from Bloomberg