House Report on COVID

Well the House Report came out on COVID. As expected it was a limited hangout. 520 pages is a lot to digest so I had to skim some parts, so if I missed anything my apologies. I was already familiar with most of the Origins having read the transcripts of the interviews they published, so its not worth much of my/our time rehashing that Limited Hangout.

https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/12.04.2024-SSCP-FINAL-REPORT.pdf

They did mention DOJ was investigating the Origins and claimed they were focused on EHA, but any real investigation would also be looking at Barics lab and RML in addition to EHA. The FBI is the lead agency for investigating Bioterrorism using the National Bioforensics Analysis Center (NBFAC)

2018 the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) assumed management of the NBFAC.

National Bioforensics Analysis Center (NBFAC) was previously run by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). NBFAC conducts technical analyses in support of federal law enforcement investigations and attempts to coordinate multi-agency biological forensic efforts.

DHS and the FBI signed a memorandum of agreement that transferred NBFAC management to the FBI.

While discussing the January 31 call on Origins and listing the attendees they failed to mention Barics name, despite Baric himself telling them he was on that call listening in. Sometimes its not what they say thats important but what they omit.

An interesting part was DARPAS reason for rejecting DEFUSE was because of the GOF work. They interviewed Dr. Gimlett who was the Program Officer at DARPA in charge of the PREEMPT program.

While we already knew one of the reasons was they didn’t address the safety issues, the interesting part is the guy handling it (James Gimlett) said he did not know why they needed it as it wasn’t necessary for PREEMPTS purpose. As I said in a recent post it seemed Ralph just wanted to slip it in for his own purposes. What purposes? Perhaps vaccine related. Perhaps other. Remember, he has security clearance and DoD runs other programs

The House also released the transcript of their interview. A couple of interesting things not covered by the House Report which we will get to.

Vaccine Development

Self Spreading Vaccine

DARPA Partners

NIH

WIV Participation Approved by whom? Redacted

Ok, lets get on with whats actually in the House Report

Gimlett

It [Preempt] was more -- in my mind, it was more heavily focused on the surveillance and analytics at the front end and trying to do a better job of assessing likelihood of spillover. So the program was divided into two technical areas. That was technical area one. Technical area two was sort of -- it was basically pinging the community to see if there were any ideas on how to preempt, literally, a spillover either at the vector if it was mosquito borne, at the sort of livestock if it was passing through livestock before entering the human population, or directly in the wild animal reservoirs. And it was more assess what's possible, sort of the art of the possible, and if you had some solution to validate it in some kind of closed, confined, safely controlled area. So that was the idea. It wasn't actually go out and do it. It was to see what is possible to be done in a controlled experimental environment.

Note a controlled area would be a BSL 4 such as in RML or WIV labs

The interviewer points out

In addition to EcoHealth’s summaries of Technical Areas 1 and 2, EcoHealth—via DEFUSE—also proposed:

After receptor binding, a variety of cell surface or endosomal proteases cleave the SARS-CoV S glycoprotein causing massive changes in S structure and activating fusion-mediated entry. We will analyze all SARSr- CoV gene sequences for appropriately conserved proteolytic cleavage sites in S2 and for the presence of potential furin cleavage sites. SARSr-CoV S with mismatches in proteolytic cleavage sites can be activated by exogenous trypsin or cathepsin L. Where clear mismatches occur, we will introduce appropriate human-specific cleavage sites and evaluate growth potential in Vero cells and HAE cultures.

First off, lets be clear. This part of the proposal is coming from Baric not Daszak. Daszak is not a virologist. He barely understands what Ralph is proposing. In this section Baric is simply talking about adding a FCS to a bat virus which is unlikely to be much of a threat. A FCS added to SARS in 2006 which was a human virus did not much affect its virulence in human cells.

In addition, he proposed

Recovery of Full length SARSr-CoV: We will compile sequence/RNAseq data from a panel of closely related strains (e.g.<5% nucleotide variation) and compare the full length genomes….

The genome of consensus candidates will be synthesized commercially (e.g. BioBasic), as six contiguous cDNA pieces linked by unique restriction endonuclease sites for full length genome assembly

This is far more interesting. Here Ralph is describing the synthetic creation of a coronavirus using a consensus of natural viruses sequences. Yet for some reason its left out

Here is an idea, subpoena BioBasic to see what they synthesized for Ralph in 2018-2019. Also Ralph and find out what sequences he had in his library in 2019 (or had access to).

Gimlett goes on to say

And reading the proposal is the first time that they did talk about engineering chimeric viruses, albeit still just taking components of wild virus found in bat caves, but mixing and matching to potentially gain -- probably to gain ability to even culture in, like, human cell cultures. So I understood the rationale, but it didn't quite map to what I was looking for, and I wasn't sure how that would help necessarily in producing probabilistic risk map, and they didn't go through clearly that motivation and how they were going to use that data. So all of these were concerns, particularly the claim that since this is a wild bat virus, gain-of-function, dual use, none of it is relevant, and we don't have to go any further. That was not what the BAA specified. So now I don't remember the original question, whether I got to it in some way, 1 but this is a complicated story. I just want to get it clear.

So, I mean, any time you put a virus in some other animal, in a petri dish, in a cell culture, there are some risks. And any time anyone gets infected by a virus, the virus will be looking to gain function in some respect. So there's always risks. And I wanted to be sure that this program had clear safety guidelines, where it would be done, in the BSL-3, if it was a coronavirus with pandemic potential. And even if it's a bat virus, it could still have risks. I mean, there are always -- it is spilling over, and there's probably some component in that viral quasi species that's capable of entering other mammalian cell types. So this does encounter -- and it's hitting a gray area that was a concern, and we just wanted to make sure that we never got - - crossed that line.

He finishes up summarizing why DEFUSE was not funded

I would say three major things, which we've kind of talked about all of them. One, no regulatory or ELSI discussion. Two, no, sort of, justification for collect -- of basically, acquiring a whole set of data based on, sort of, genetic manipulation of the virus, how that data would then inform a model, for example. So the model development which we've talked about in the letter. And then, three, didn't address -- or basically just denied that they had to address gain-of-function because it didn't fall under any of the regulatory requirements. So those three were key reasons in my mind.

Operation Warp Speed

They applauded OWS as a wild success claiming it saved millions of lives which is a very dubious claim.

FINDING: Operation Warp Speed Was a Great Success and Helped Save Millions of Lives.

Before 2020 the fastest vaccine development took four years.1164 OWS yielded a vaccine that was available to millions of Americans in less than one year. By nearly all accounts, this was an incredible feat of science which was made possible by the unique structure of OWS. Dr. Fauci, though reluctant to give credit to the Trump Administration, characterized the effort as “the best decision [he’s] ever made with regard to an intervention as director of the institute.”Dr. Fauci also testified that OWS was a “great success.”

They said 140,000 lives were saved in the first 5 months alone. Yet there were more COVID deaths after May 2021 (626k) than before (597k). Also they did not count how many excess deaths due to the Vaccine resulted. We know now that after a 1st dose people are more susceptible to getting COVID due to transient immune suppression. In December/January of 2020/2021 there were 204k COVID deaths. Coincidence?

My own little study estimated that in the first quarter of 2021 estimated there were 76K excess COVID deaths from the Vaccine

https://pete843.substack.com/p/a-snapshot-of-possible-covid-vax

No doubt the vaccine worked temporarily for those who survived it but their immunity coupled with lockdowns and social distancing drove Sars/Cov-2 to a more transmissible pathogenic variant

Back to the report, In what seems contradictory to me, they were totally unconcerned about Trumps pressure on FDA for early EUA despite mRNA vaccines being a new technology and tests being skipped that normally should be done but made a big deal about Biden’s pressure to issue BLA in August despite accepting the vaccines that were approved are safe and effective

VAERS

While they mention the Adverse Effects and VAERS and lack of compensation for injuries, they don’t be overly concerned about Vaccine Safety, or the fact Children have no business taking this vaccine.

They did point out the high number of VAERS Reports but claim anyone can send them and said Doctors were required to send them. Many Doctors didn’t know about VAERS and most do not know they are required to send them despite no evidence of causation. For those that do they know there is no enforcement mechanism or penalty for not filing

The lack of resources for making sure VAERS reports were processed timely, failure to make sure Vaccine Providers and Doctors were made aware of their obligations to file a report and funds made available for this purpose given that filing a report is time consuming and the lack of warning that those who do not file a report would be subject to penalties just shows they didn’t want to be bothered with VAERS reports

Lockdowns

They mention the Lockdowns were bad and implied they went beyond the Trumps 15 days to slow the curve is BS.

The government did not authorize trillions of dollars in relief spending to states and their residents because they thought people would get a 15 day holiday.

The “small print” encouraged governors to implement full lockdowns and Congress -Trump/Biden provided them the funding them to do so:

For those with bad eyes

School operations can accelerate the spread of the coronavirus. Governors of states with evidence of community transmission should close schools in affected and surrounding areas. Governors should close schools in communities that are near areas of community transmission, even if those areas are in neighboring states. In addition, state and local officials should close schools where coronavirus has been identified in the population associated with the school. States and localities that close schools need to address childcare needs of critical responders, as well as the nutritional needs of children… In states with evidence of community transmission, bars, restaurants, food courts, gyms, and other indoor and outdoor venues where groups of people congregate should be closed.

Testing

They praised the private sector for getting testing volumes sky high without ever questioning the validity of testing asymptomatic people and having them stay home for two weeks if they tested positive when most of them were false positives due to a high Ct Threshold, meaning they did not have replication content virus.

Strategic National Stockpile

They blamed Obama for not restocking the National Stockpile with masks but never questioned why Trump did not do the same despite the Administrations focus on an upcoming pandemic.

COVID Policies Caused Inflation

They acknowledged that the spending and Fed Reserve policies in 2020-2021 contributed to the inflation seen in late 2021/2022 , although acknowledging supply side issues did not mention the real possibility that due to business closures and reduced competition that collusion and price gouging contributed

Mandates

Discussed below in more detail. They overstated the Federal Mandates, the mandates from the private sector, vaccine passports enabled by CDC Vaccine cards and local government mandates had a larger impact

OMISSIONS

What else didn’t they mention besides Barics presence on Jan 31 call and CREID network and RML?

Nothing about the harms of over testing asymptomatic people.

Nothing about CDC under Redfield changing the way Death Certificates were filled out so as to inflate COVID Death Counts include those who died of other reasons

No questioning of how they could exclude those who were vaccinated from being counted as unvaxxed or undervaxxed until 15 days after their jab. Given that vaccination might result in infection or worsen an already existing infection due to immune suppression from the vaccine this allowed them to inflate the vaccines efficacy

No mention of Excess Non-Covid Deaths nor any concern about clinical trial fraud, DNA contamination or the fact the testing requirements for mRNA should be more robust.

For example, we still have no authoritative report on how much spike protein is produced per dose, how long it persists, where it goes, how long mRNA translated spike protein, which cells are transfected, how long mRNA persists, and if mRNA or spike protein can be shed from saliva, perspiration, urine, etc because the manufacturers were not required to do the tests/measurements in the 4 years after the EUA

No mention of Black Rocks role in the Federal Reserves Going Direct Plan that pumped money into Big Corporations bank accounts

More Details on Above Subjects

Below I provide excerpts and a few comments for some of the topics summarized above

Stockpile

Between Fiscal Years (FY) 2015 and 2021, three-quarters of the non-COVID- 19 supplies and budget were allocated to fighting just two threats: smallpox and anthrax.

SNS was not created nor designed to respond to a national, or truly global emergency, like the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2009 the SNS responded to the H1N1 influenza outbreak and depleted its resources of PPE. Even knowing a resource such as PPE will always be relevant and valuable to any type of emergency, the Obama Administration repeatedly prioritized replenishing the stockpile with other resources.

In 2018, China accounted for 95 percent of U.S. imports of ibuprofen, 91 percent imports of hydrocortisone, approximately 40 percent of penicillin, and 70 percent of acetaminophen.

The lack of preparation is especially hard to justify given all the work the Administration was doing preparing for a Pandemic

See attached (jump to 2017 if short on time)

https://pete843.substack.com/p/a-covid-timeline

Lockdowns

On March 16, 2020, the Trump Administration announced “15 days to slow the spread” guidelines. Subsequent to these guidelines, states and localities took it a step further and began to issue strict lockdown orders.At this point, there appeared to be general agreement that potentially unnecessary activities should be put on hold temporarily to “flatten the curve” and mitigate the risk of the healthcare system being overwhelmed by serious cases of COVID-19.

Dr. Birx later wrote in her book “Silent Invasion” that 15 days was simply a starting point and that she had already planned for a longer lockdown when pitching the plan.

Shifting consumer habits and disrupted supply chains helped to pump up the stock market and drive-up profits for large corporations and wealthy individuals.

Some people will argue that nobody expected the lockdowns to last long. I say BS, within days of the 15 days to slow the spread (lockdowns) legislation was passed authoring the following spending. Legislation like this does not get written in a matter of days and certainly not for an anticipated 15 day holiday

PPP funding, increased the total funding to $813.7 billion. The SBA IG estimated the U.S. taxpayers lost $64 billion in fraud attributable to PPP alone.

$872 billion was allocated to COVID-19 UI benefit programs.

Fraudulent Unemployment Insurance Payments Total More Than $191 Billion.

Through third-party lending firms, SBA disbursed over $400 billion in COVID-19 EIDL funds.

Losses of at Least $200 Million.

More than 475 million total payments were made through the CARES Act, CAA, and ARPA, and the total of these payments exceed $1.4 trillion dollars.

Business Closures

By the end of August 2020, industry survey data showed a staggering 163,735 U.S. businesses closed due to the pandemic, with 60 percent (97,966) of those closures classified as permanent.

Having almost 100,000 businesses unable to reopen during the recovery phase represents a significant portion of the U.S. business landscape.

According to a National Restaurant Association report in December 2020, 17 percent of the country’s restaurants had closed long term or permanently.

65 percent of “nonemployer” (very small) business owners reported that they did not apply for PPP because they assumed they would not qualify, or the process was too confusing.

The pandemic pushed the rapid development of tools to improve teleworking, such as teleconferencing (e.g., Microsoft TEAMS, Zoom, etc.), document sharing tools, and cloud-based computing capacity.

E-commerce grew at five times faster than before the pandemic and “[o]ther kinds of virtual transactions such as telemedicine, online banking, and streaming entertainment have also taken off.”

The pandemic caused rapid development of automation and artificial intelligence [hereinafter “AI”].

The common feature of pandemic-driven automation technology is their correlation to replacing human interaction and physical proximity.

Two-thirds of executives surveyed stated they intend to increase investment in automation and AI,which will predominately take the place of lower-wage workers.

By 2030, up to 25 percent of all U.S. workers could need to shift to other occupations that require greater training, education, and skills than they currently possess.

Good times for Tech companies and Big Corporations

Inflation

The Federal Reserve’s measures, combined with fiscal stimulus measures passed by Congress, provided critical support to businesses and households, mitigating the economic downturn.

By late 2020 and into 2021, economic growth had rebounded strongly, with Gross Domestic Product growth rates returning to positive territory.

Without the Federal Reserve’s aggressive intervention, the economic damage from the pandemic could have been much more severe and prolonged, potentially leading to a deeper and longer-lasting recession.

The combination of the aggressive monetary policy and fiscal stimulus fueled a surge in demand as businesses reopened and consumers spent their savings and stimulus checks. Global supply chains were already strained due to the pandemic, and the surge in demand exacerbated these issues, leading to higher prices for goods and services.

With interest rates at historic lows and stimulus money injected into the economy, there was considerable consumer demand for automobiles, but prolonged shortages of chips and other key components restrained production and increased prices.

The tight labor market, with employers struggling to fill positions, also contributed to wage growth and further inflationary pressures.

The Federal Reserve’s early actions, while crucial in preventing economic collapse, also contributed to the inflationary pressures seen later. The prolonged period of low interest rates and large-scale asset purchases, combined with supply chain issues and labor market dynamics, created an environment where inflation could take hold.

In summary, while the Federal Reserve’s use of all available tools helped avert a much longer and more severe economic downturn, it also played a role in the inflationary pressures that emerged later.

So basically the 2020 Lockdowns and actions taken to mitigate the Economic hardship they caused were responsible for the inflation we saw in 2022. No wonder they waited until after the election

Funny how they did not mention Black Rocks role in buying many of those assets for the Fed while implementing the August 2019 Going Direct proposal presented at Jackson Hole, Wyoming

Testing

Early on in March 2020, the CDC’s testing guidelines prioritized people who were symptomatic, had traveled to affected areas, or were exposed to confirmed cases.

Healthcare workers and those in critical roles were also prioritized due to limited testing capacity.

by June of 2020, the CDC updated its guidelines to include asymptomatic individuals, especially those in high-risk settings like long-term care facilities or prisons.

The guidance gradually shifted to encourage broader testing.

The federal government also provided funding to facilitate testing. There was significant financial support for testing through the CARES Act, which allocated billions of dollars for testing and disease surveillance.

The Health Care Enhancement Act (2020) allocated an additional $25 billion for testing, including funds for states, territories, and tribes to develop testing plans and increase capacity.

The ability of private industry to create efficient distribution networks was another key factor in the success of COVID-19 testing efforts.

…. private companies, with their established logistics networks, were able to rapidly expand the distribution of test kits across the country. Retailers such as Walmart, Walgreens, and CVS partnered with diagnostic companies to open drive-through testing sites, providing easily accessible testing in parking lots and clinics nationwide.

The private sector facilitated the distribution of test kits directly to state and local health departments, ensuring a more equitable allocation of resources.

Private industry also pioneered the development of at-home test kits,

Perhaps the most significant contribution of private industry to the COVID-19 response was the dramatic increase in testing capacity. As private laboratories and manufacturers entered the testing market, daily testing capacity rose from just a few thousand tests per day in early 2020 to more than one million tests per day by mid-2021.

The success of private sector contributions underscores the importance of public-private partnerships in responding to large-scale health crises. As the world prepares for future pandemics, leveraging the expertise, resources, and agility of private industry will be essential for developing effective testing strategies and ensuring swift responses to emerging threats.

Those private companies rolling out the tests were not doing it for free. They got paid big bucks by the tax payers. Now they got all this test capacity and mask production capacity ready for the next Pandemic which is urgently needed

Interesting also is that Redfield was a big proponent of universal testing of asmptomatic people for HIV testing in the 1980’s and partnered with Fauci in drumming up fear and later would participate in an alleged fraudulent HiV vaccine trial

Warp Speed

OWS was a $10 billion dollar strategy developed and initiated by the Trump Administration during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic which aimed to expedite the development of a safe and effective vaccine and have substantial quantities available by January 2021.

OWS consisted of a partnership between HHS, DOD, and the private sector and employed several time-saving strategies, while mitigating financial risk through the backing of the federal government.

The first COVID-19 vaccine was authorized on December 11, 2020, just less than 7 months after OWS was announced.1159

The primary mechanisms OWS leveraged to accelerate the development of COVID-19 vaccines was allowing vaccine companies to start large-scale manufacturing during clinical trials and combining clinical trial phases or running them concurrently, while limiting liability.

There is little doubt that the rapid development and authorization of COVID-19 vaccines saved millions of lives. The NIH estimates that as many as 140,000 American lives were saved by May 2021—within 5 months of the first authorization

FDA’s standards for EUA differ from their standards for approving a BLA. Most importantly, for a BLA to be approved a product must demonstrate that it is safe and effective, whereas for an EUA to be authorized the product must only demonstrate that it may be safe and effective.

FDA issued its approval for Pfizer’s BLA on August 23, 2021, and the very next day, on August 24, 2021, Secretary Austin issued a memo announcing the DOD’s vaccine mandate.

Ultimately, Dr. Gruber did sign off on the approval of Pfizer’s BLA and testified that she believed the vaccine to be safe and effective.

Mandates

After DOD issued its mandate, the floodgates of federal mandates opened.

On September 9, 2021, President Biden issued Executive Order 14043, which required federal employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by November 8, 2021, or risk removal or termination from their federal employment

On November 4, 2021, OSHA issued a rule which required all employers with 100 or more employees to impose COVID-19 vaccine mandates, and CMS announced a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for all healthcare workers who worked at facilities participating in Medicare and Medicaid.

The Federal Employee/Contractor mandate was never enforced due to a court injunction. OSHA ‘s mandate was a Test Mandate for Unvaxxed, and also never implemented due to SCOTUS requiring Congress to authorize it. The CMS and DoD mandates affected 18 million active military and health care workers. That sucked. No other citizen (320 million) was mandated by the Federal Govt

Unfortunately

Many private companies pushed to implement their own vaccine policies. After the FDA hurriedly granted full approval for the Pfizer vaccine on August 23, 2021, these companies, amongst others, announced some form of vaccination plan: American Express, Amtrak, Cisco, Citigroup, CVS Health, Deloitte, Delta Airlines, DoorDash, Equinox, Facebook, Ford, General Electric, Goldman Sachs, Google, Lyft, McDonalds, MGM Resorts International, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, NBCUniversal, Netflix, The New York Times, Saks, Southwest Airlines, Twitter, Uber, United Airlines, Walgreens, The Walt Disney Company, Walmart, and The Washington Post.

College campuses across the country were another area significantly impacted by COVID-19 vaccine mandates.“vaccine passport” requirements became a new de-facto lockdown. For example, in Washington DC, bars, gyms, concert venues and other businesses were forced to require proof of COVID-19 vaccination for their patrons.

Vaccine passport” policies (implemented by local governments/businesses) were in some ways their own distinct policy. “Vaccine passports” refer to policies put in place which required vaccination to attend social functions— like sporting events and concerts, travel, patronize restaurants and bars, or other activities.

While there were a variety of methods used to verify vaccination status, among the most common was to require individuals to present their CDC issued COVID-19 vaccine cards.

According to reports, the CDC issued nearly 1 billion of these cards between 2020 and May of 2023.884

On July 16, 2021, just a month before the New York City vaccine passport policy, Dr. Walensky notoriously warned that “this is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated.”

Dr. Walensky herself acknowledged on August 5, 2021, that COVID-19 vaccines “continue to work well for Delta, with regard to severe illness and death – they prevent it. But what they can’t do anymore is prevent transmission.”

VAERS

The Federal Government’s preeminent passive surveillance system is the VAERS.

The Federal Government’s primary avenues for active surveillance are FDA CBER Sentinel BEST System, CMS data, and CDC’s VSD and V-Safe systems.

HHS describes VAERS as “a national early warning system to detect possible safety problems in U.S.-licensed vaccines. VAERS is co-managed by the CDC and the FDA.”

Importantly, healthcare professionals and vaccine manufacturers are specifically required to report adverse events that occur after a vaccination to VAERS, but anyone can report an adverse event.

Pursuant to the EUA for COVID-19 vaccines, manufacturers and providers were required to report serious adverse events to VAERS irrespective of proof of attribution.

the public database only contains preliminary reports, and all updates and corrections are housed on a “separate, back-end system” which is unavailable to patients, doctors, and other public users of the database.

Some Deaths likely were reported in subsequent reports. Someone should FOIA how many

Knowing how challenging it can be to actually file a VAERS report, the task could have been even vastly larger than the large task that it already is.

This was a huge miss by Operation Warp Speed. How do you rush an experimental vaccine without also preparing to conduct adequate pharmacovigilance. Where were the $$ (carrot) and stick (penalties) to incentivize filing reports and upgrading capacity to follow up on these reports.

While CDC did come up with an app it only allowed users to select from a menu of symptoms that are not by themselves serious. For example, you could not select Myocarditis or Stroke, and of course, users could not report their own death

Masks-School Closures-Social Distancing-Cuomo Nursing Home Closures-WHO, etc are sections worth reading but I am not going to go over all that

End