Covid News Watch
Fauci Says He’s Always Been ‘Honest’ as COVID Origins Questions Raised + More
Fauci Says He’s Always Been ‘Honest’ as COVID Origins Questions Raised
Anthony Fauci has insisted he has always been honest throughout his career after he was accused by lawmakers of engaging in a “cover-up” in light of fresh intelligence disclosures concerning the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The former chief medical advisor to the president, who was regularly the face of the government’s response to coronavirus, has been repeatedly accused of attempting to obfuscate indirect United States funding of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and previously testified that America had never financed research to enhance viruses in a lab.
It comes as two U.S. intelligence agencies have said they believe COVID-19 was the result of a mishap in a Chinese lab, rather than the virus crossing the species barrier from an infected animal. The revelations have reignited scrutiny of the government’s handling of the pandemic.
Fauci previously came under fire after it emerged that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — which he had been a key member of since 1984 until last year — gave U.S.-based EcoHealth Alliance a $3.7 million grant in 2014, $600,000 of which was sent to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in order to study bat coronaviruses.
COVID Origins Hearing Opens With Arguments for Lab Leak Theory
The New York Times via The Seattle Times reported:
The House panel investigating the origins of the coronavirus pandemic opened its first public hearing Wednesday with Republicans and their witnesses making an aggressive case that the virus may have been the result of a laboratory leak — a notion that has become the subject of intense political and scientific debate.
“There is no smoking gun proving a lab origin hypothesis, but the growing body of circumstantial evidence suggests a gun that, at the very least, is warm to the touch,” said Jamie Metzl, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former State Department official.
Metzl was one of three witnesses invited by Republicans. The others were Dr. Robert R. Redfield, who served as the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under President Donald Trump, and Nicholas Wade, who was the science editor of The New York Times in the 1990s and left the news organization at the end of 2011.
The three have previously said the virus may have accidentally escaped from a laboratory. But they all said Wednesday that the question of how the virus originated remained an open one and that it was important to settle the question. Dr. Paul G. Auwaerter, the clinical director of the infectious diseases division at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, testified at the invitation of Democrats.
COVID Lab Leak Fight Obscures the Global Rise of High-Security Biolabs
The number of high-containment labs around the world conducting potentially risky scientific research is surging, despite a lack of global agreement on how to make sure they’re safe. There are 69 so-called Biosafety Level 4, or BSL-4, facilities designed to study dangerous infectious pathogens in operation, under construction or planned worldwide, according to Global Biolabs, a tracking project run out of King’s College London and George Mason University in Virginia. About a decade ago, there were only 25.
Scientific safety has re-emerged as a high-stakes global issue in the weeks since the U.S. Department of Energy suggested it had intelligence showing a lab leak was the most likely origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. On Wednesday, Congress is holding the first of what is likely to be a series of hearings on the matter. China has rejected the idea of a lab leak, and the scientific consensus remains that the pandemic began when the coronavirus leaped from animals to people.
Health scares — from the 2001 anthrax attacks to outbreaks of SARS, Ebola and Zika — have prompted numerous countries to pour enormous sums of money into building these types of labs. More facilities than ever are handling, and in some cases genetically enhancing infectious pathogens. BSL-4 labs can now be found in more than 25 countries. They are frequently located in cities, where a loose virus or harmful organism could potentially spread quickly.
Highly secure labs are meant to ensure safe conditions for risky studies. Research in which scientists make biological agents more potent, and possibly more harmful, can be used to understand future mutations of viruses and build better vaccines. The downside is these super-pathogens can escape the lab if they’re not handled with sufficient safety practices in place.
COVID Raises Odds for Long-Term Gastro Problems
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Add gastrointestinal problems to the long list of lingering conditions that can follow COVID-19.
New research has found that people who have had COVID-19 are at an increased risk of gastrointestinal disorders within a year of their infection — including liver problems, acute pancreatitis, irritable bowel syndrome, acid reflux and ulcers in the lining of the stomach or upper intestine.
They may also have an increased likelihood of constipation, diarrhea, abdominal pain, bloating and vomiting, according to researchers from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Mo., and the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care system.
Omission of Children’s COVID Vaccine Deaths in Australia Raises Concerns
Australia’s drug regulator was slow to update the country’s Database of Adverse Event Notifications (DAEN) despite several deaths being attributed to the vaccine, including two children, aged 7 and 9.
The information came to light following a Freedom of Information request by an Australian doctor that found the delayed response from the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA). Senator Gerard Rennick said he would push for independent oversight of the TGA.
“A third independent medical party should examine the evidence as the TGA has a conflict of interest because they approved the vaccines and would therefore be held responsible for the deaths of these children due to poor regulatory oversight,” Rennick told The Epoch Times.
The senator also said he was concerned that the TGA was soft-pedaling the risks with the COVID-19 vaccines, especially around myocarditis and cardiac arrests.
Gene That Shielded Some Against Black Death May Be Helping, Harming People Today
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Some people may have a gene that helps protect them from respiratory diseases like COVID-19 — and helped their ancestors fight the plague. It comes at a cost. This same gene variation may be linked to an increased risk of autoimmune disease, including rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease, according to British researchers.
“Although we don’t know the exact mechanism influencing disease risk, carriers of alleles that provide more protection against respiratory disease seem to have an increased risk of autoimmune disease,” lead author Fergus Hamilton, a fellow at the University of Bristol, said in a university news release. “It is potentially a great example of a phenomenon termed ‘balancing selection’ — where the same allele has a different effect on different diseases.”
Past research has found that survivors of the bubonic plague pandemic in the Middle Ages, known as the Black Death, carried a variant — or allele — in a gene known as ERAP2. Those who died lacked this variant.
The new study found that humans now have the same variants, which are associated with protection against infections such as pneumonia and COVID.
COVID Vaccines Won’t Be Free for Long. What Will They Cost?
The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions will hold a hearing on March 22 to discuss the pricing of the COVID-19 vaccines. Pfizer and Moderna are preparing to offer their vaccines in the private sector, without the federal government covering the cost.
This will be necessary, given that the COVID-19 national and public health emergencies will expire on May 11. This will also shift the cost burden to health insurance companies, or for some people, be an out-of-pocket expense, although Moderna has indicated they will provide their vaccine at no cost to the uninsured and underinsured.
The federal government has been paying between $15 to $31 per dose for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Both companies have proposed prices between $110 and $130, around four times higher. The federal government provided funds to make these vaccines possible. This means that the development risks were borne by the government so that if the venture failed, the companies would not bear any costs. Their only loss was the opportunity cost to develop other products.
At the same time, they were guaranteed a market for the vaccines if they were successful. This provided a development effort with little financial risk and significant upside potential, a highly favorable investment environment. This places downward pressure on vaccine prices, at least in the short term.
CNN Boss Ordered Staff Not to Chase Down COVID Lab Leak Theory + More
Credibility Crisis: CNN Boss Ordered Staff Not to Chase Down COVID Lab Leak Theory as Pandemic Unfolded
CNN has long referred to itself as “the most trusted name in news” and famously launched its “Facts First” campaign during the Trump era, but like many other outlets, that sentiment fell by the wayside when it came to the COVID lab-leak theory.
In recent days, the theory that COVID originated from a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology has been embraced by FBI Director Christopher Wray and a bombshell report indicated that the U.S. Energy Department believes the virus likely started in the lab, a sentiment expressed by top Trump administration officials nearly from the outset.
But in the early months of the pandemic, then-CNN president Jeff Zucker would not allow his network to chase down the lab-leak story because he believed it was a “Trump talking point,” according to a well-placed CNN insider.
“People are slowly waking up from the fog,” the insider told Fox News Digital. “It is kind of crazy that we didn’t chase it harder.”
New Emails Show Dr. Anthony Fauci Commissioned Scientific Paper in Feb. 2020 to Disprove Wuhan Lab Leak Theory
New emails uncovered by House Republicans probing the COVID-19 pandemic reveal the deceptive nature of Dr. Anthony Fauci.
They show he “prompted” or commissioned — and had final approval on — a scientific paper written specifically in February 2020 to disprove the theory that the virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China.
Eight weeks later, Fauci stood at a White House press conference alongside President Donald Trump and cited that paper as evidence that the lab leak theory was implausible while pretending it had nothing to do with him and he did not know the authors.
House Republicans to Grill Trump’s CDC Director Over COVID Origins
A Donald Trump-era Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director is set to appear before the House COVID-19 origins subcommittee this week.
The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic will hold its first hearing Wednesday, investigating the origins of COVID-19. The theory that the virus originated from an accidental lab leak has circulated for years and was first dismissed as a conspiracy. However, a new report from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) revealed with “low confidence” that the theory is possible, reigniting debate on where the virus came from.
Dr. Robert Redfield, who led the CDC from 2018 to 2021, will appear at Wednesday’s hearing. House Republicans have been seeking an explanation for the virus’ origins, with Redfield likely explaining that he believes the virus originated in a lab, which is what he has said in the past.
China Continues to Block Efforts to Determine COVID’s Origins, Lawmakers Say
Lawmakers said on Sunday that it remained impossible to determine with any certainty the origins of COVID-19 because of continued obstruction by China’s government. “We have so few facts because the Chinese regime has obfuscated,” Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Sunday’s discussion followed reports late last month that the Department of Energy had concluded that COVID-19 most likely began with an accidental laboratory leak in China — a position it shares with the FBI.
“There’s no direct evidence, we don’t have China admitting it, we don’t have Wuhan Lab handing these things over,” Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) said, referring to the city that is home to several laboratories and where the virus first circulated in late 2019.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the Energy Department report supported the view he took back in 2020 when he was part of the Trump administration. “Make no mistake, this is a Chinese virus that came from the laboratory,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”
WHO Calls on U.S. to Share Information on COVID Origins After China Lab Claims
The World Health Organization has urged all countries to reveal what they know about the origins of COVID-19, after claims from several U.S. government agencies that a Chinese lab leak was behind the disease were furiously denied by Beijing.
“If any country has information about the origins of the pandemic, it’s essential for that information to be shared with WHO and the international scientific community,” the WHO director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on Friday.
The FBI director, Christopher Wray, told Fox News on Tuesday that his agency had now assessed the source of the COVID-19 pandemic was “most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan.”
The first infections from coronavirus were recorded in late 2019 in the Chinese city, which hosts a virus research laboratory. Chinese officials have denied the FBI claim, calling it a smear campaign against Beijing.
Doctors, Scientists Call on Mississippi Officials to Take COVID Vaccines off the Market
The group of physicians, vaccine-injured people, and whistleblowers speaking at the Mississippi Capitol building on Monday and Tuesday weren’t asking state officials to cease all COVID-19 vaccinations and to convene a grand jury to investigate its rollout in the state. They were demanding it.
On Monday and Tuesday, the medical freedom organization MS Against Mandates (MAM) held the Mississippi Medical Freedom Conference in Jackson, Mississippi, which included over a dozen physicians, several whistleblowers, six physician-confirmed vaccine-injured patients, and two parents whose sons died after receiving the vaccines.
Dr. Peter McCullough, a practicing internist and cardiologist in Dallas who is also the national medical adviser for MAM, told The Epoch Times that the purpose of the three-and-a-half-hour roundtable — chaired by Republican state Rep. Randy Boyd — was primarily to educate Mississippi officials about safety concerns regarding the vaccine.
The meeting in the chamber was followed by a press conference on Tuesday on the Capitol building’s steps, where the assembly continued their call for transparency and the removal of the vaccines from the market.
“People are being injured and dying suddenly from these shots, and the state needs to recognize it,” said Dr. John Witcher, the co-founder and former president of MAM.
The Winter COVID Surge That Wasn’t
U.S. News & World Report reported:
The predictions ranged, but some of the warnings were stark: 100 million Americans could be infected with COVID-19 in what would be a massive fall and winter surge. Ultimately, though, the U.S. ended up with its first winter of the pandemic without a large wave of coronavirus.
“This winter there was no major surge similar to what we have seen before,” says Ali Mokdad, an epidemiologist with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. “No major increase in hospitalization or mortality. And that’s true across the Northern Hemisphere, where winter is what we expect from now on as we will have a seasonal increase in COVID-19.”
So what caused the drop-off in numbers? The main driver was the high level of COVID-19 immunity in the population, according to experts.
DC Says It Will Close Its COVID Centers, Citing a Decline in Cases
DC public health officials plan to close the city’s eight COVID centers on March 31 because of a drop in new infections and the widespread availability of vaccines and home testing kits, according to a DC Health statement released Friday.
District officials on Tuesday stopped offering free rapid tests and self-service PCR tests at libraries and senior centers.
The closures come as the federal government prepares for the May 11 expiration of national emergencies to combat the coronavirus.
Right on Cue: Pfizer Keeps up Cadence of COVID Risk Awareness Pushes With Another Diagnostic Pact
Pfizer is once again looking to a diagnostic developer to drum up interest in its COVID-19 drug. Having kicked off the strategy last year through deals with Lucira Health and Roche, the Big Pharma has now partnered with Cue Health to raise awareness of the risks of progressing to severe COVID-19.
Facing a predicted 58% drop in annual sales of its COVID-19 antiviral Paxlovid, Pfizer is searching for ways to persuade people of the need to get a prescription when they test positive for SARS-CoV-2. The search has led the drugmaker to try to target patients at the key point in the process: the moment they receive a positive COVID-19 test result.
Cue is one of the companies delivering those test results. As a result of the new partnership, users of the Cue Health App will have access to educational resources such as the materials on knowplango.com, a Pfizer website that explains the factors that put people at higher risk of severe COVID-19 and how they can access oral treatments. Pfizer tapped four celebrities to push the message in a TV spot in January.
CDC: XBB.1.5 Responsible for 90% of New Coronavirus Infections
U.S. News & World Report reported:
The highly transmissible Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 is well on its way to being responsible for virtually all COVID-19 infections in the U.S.
According to updated estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, XBB.1.5 caused nearly 90% of new coronavirus cases this week. That’s up from 85% of cases last week. It’s the only strain showing significant growth.
Coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths are on the decline, signaling that the U.S. has avoided a large seasonal COVID-19 surge like it saw the past two years. The main reason is likely the high level of immunity across the population whether through vaccination, infection or both.
Hubris, Horseshoe Bats, Humanized Mice: Uncovering Fauci’s COVID Lies + More
Hubris, Horseshoe Bats, Humanized Mice: Uncovering Fauci’s COVID Lies
The Biden administration’s Department of Energy has just joined the FBI — and countless others — in concluding a lab leak in Wuhan most likely caused the pandemic.
In response, former White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci predictably doubled down on his lab-leak dismissal — but hedged his bets. “I don’t see any data for a lab leak. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t have happened,” he said. “We must all keep an open mind to all possibilities.” But “we may never know” how the pandemic began.
Of course, having funded the shady Wuhan animal lab, an inconclusive origins investigation would be incredibly convenient for the good doctor. Fortunately, the American people and Congress aren’t letting him off the hook that easily.
Now in the majority, House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer and Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup have launched an effort to secure testimony from Fauci about the gain-of-function experiments he recklessly funded in Wuhan and his suspicious actions following concerns about a potential lab leak.
How a Little-Known Scientist Cashed in After Helping Fauci Bury Lab-Leak Theory
If Anthony Fauci’s desperate, years-long effort to hide evidence that the mystery bat virus came out of China’s mysterious bat virus laboratory is finally unraveling, don’t blame Kristian Andersen.
The FBI, Department of Energy, and a U.S. Senate investigation have all determined that COVID, which has now killed nearly 7 million people around the world, likely emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In doing so, they seem to have rejected Fauci’s improbable claim that the mystery bat virus broke out just a couple of football fields away from the mysterious bat virus lab, completely independent of the dangerous research Fauci’s agency was likely funding inside.
Andersen, a British virologist with the San Diego-based Scripps Research Institute, had even more reasons than mere proximity to suspect a lab leak back in January 2020 when COVID was just starting to emerge. Andersen and three virology peers had studied the genome sequence of SARS-CoV-2 and suspected right away that it was cooked up in a lab, not a bowl of bat soup from the Wuhan food court.
“Eddie, Bob, Mike and myself all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory,” Andersen wrote in an email to Fauci dated Jan. 31, 2020.
By Feb. 4 he was characterizing claims the mystery bat virus came from the mysterious bat virus lab as one of several “crackpot theories” about COVID’s origin. In March of that year, he co-published a paper in the journal Nature Medicine that declared COVID was not made in a laboratory or “purposefully manipulated.” A few months later, Andersen got a $1.88 million research grant from Dr. Francis Collins’ National Institutes of Health, according to author Andrew Huff.
Senate Seeks COVID Origins Information Declassification
The Senate voted unanimously Wednesday night to require Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to declassify information on the origin of COVID-19.
The bill (S. 619), which passed without objection or a roll-call vote, could put pressure on the Biden administration to voluntarily declassify.
The move comes after the Wall Street Journal reported that Haines’s office provided classified intelligence to the White House and key members of Congress showing the Energy Department had concluded COVID most likely came from a lab leak in China.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said he plans to call officials from the Energy Department before his Energy and Public Works Committee to testify publicly on the suspected origins of the virus, which killed over 1 million Americans.
House Subcommittee Announces First Hearing on COVID Origins
The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic has announced that it will hold its first hearing on the origins of COVID-19 on March 8.
The committee’s chairman, Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), said in a March 1 statement announcing the hearing that Americans “deserve real answers” on the origins of the virus, having suffered through the pandemic and the government policies related to it.
The announcement comes as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is facing renewed scrutiny that its Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) could be the origin site of the virus.
“We can’t accept more years of stonewalling; the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic is committed to conducting a proper investigation that the American people have demanded,” Wenstrup added.
Flu and COVID Combo Shots Won’t Come in Time for This Year, FDA Official Says
Vaccines that offer protection against both COVID-19 and influenza with a single shot will likely not be ready in time for this year, a top federal official said Wednesday. However, tweaks to update the current COVID vaccines and drugs are expected soon.
The Food and Drug Administration‘s top vaccines official, Dr. Peter Marks, had previously said in September that vaccines to cover both viruses could be deployed this year. But at a webinar this week by the National Foundation for Infectious Disease, Marks acknowledged the effort had proved “too heavy a lift” for this fall, ending hopes of a combined option for the 2023 fall and winter respiratory illness season.
Moderna, Pfizer and Novavax have all announced plans to pursue trials of standalone flu vaccines in addition to versions combined with their COVID-19 shots. Pfizer executives told investors in January they did not expect approval of their combination shot until 2025.
A combo shot could also simplify an increasingly complex annual vaccination schedule ahead of the expected rollout of new RSV vaccines — to protect against the respiratory syncytial virus — which may need to go into arms around the same time.
COVID Call Centers and Testing Sites Close in Further Sign U.S. Is Moving Past the Pandemic
COVID-19 call centers and testing sites are closing across the United States as more Americans look to move on from the pandemic and with the emergency declaration set to end in May. In Rockland County, New York — just north of New York City — the call center closed Tuesday after three years in operation.
In nearby Massachusetts, the state’s department of public health announced Monday it is shutting down its remaining free PCR testing sites, which were known as “Stop the Spread” sites, at the end of March.
It comes as several COVID data trackers also shut down, including Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center, one of the first to launch in early 2020 and a vital source that filled in information gaps.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services also shut down its data website last month but has kept the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s dashboard running.
‘You Cannot Hide’: Biden Administration to Go After Scammers Who Stole Billions in COVID Relief
The Biden administration announced a series of measures Thursday to track down and punish fraudsters who scammed billions of taxpayer dollars that were supposed to provide relief to Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Biden is pledging $1.6 billion to bolster law enforcement manpower and new programs that will be used to prosecute scammers, prevent fraud and provide assistance to victims of identity theft.
The administration’s plans call for creating 10 Department of Justice “strike forces” that will include U.S. attorneys and other law enforcement officials to investigate COVID-relief fraud and help recover stolen tax dollars. The teams will target criminal syndicates and other major fraudsters. Three strike forces already are in place and have recovered millions of dollars in stolen relief funds, officials said.
Long COVID Patients Show Lower Levels of Brain Oxygen
U.S. News & World Report reported:
People who have long COVID — lingering symptoms after a COVID-19 infection — may also have lower brain oxygen levels, cognitive problems and psychiatric troubles, such as anxiety and depression.
Researchers from the University of Waterloo in Canada and Drexel University in Philadelphia combined two parallel studies to better understand what is happening in long COVID patients.
People who had been infected did not have the expected increase in oxygen level in an area of the brain that is normally engaged during one of these tasks, the investigators found.
Brain imaging found that older women were most affected. “We don’t know for sure why this was the case, but there have been other studies showing that older women are especially impacted by some post-COVID-19 syndrome symptoms,” Hall said.
Regulators Extend Shelf Life of Valneva’s COVID Vaccine Candidate
Vaccines company Valneva (VLS.PA) said on Thursday that its inactivated COVID-19 vaccine candidate product VLA2001 had its shelf life extended to 21 months from 18 months previously, as it unveiled regulatory updates for the product.
“As previously announced, Valneva will not invest in further development of the vaccine, in the absence of a new partnership. It is, however, completing remaining clinical studies and submissions as agreed with regulators,” added Valneva.
FBI Director Says COVID Origin Is ‘Most Likely’ a Lab Incident in China + More
FBI Director Says COVID Origin Is ‘Most Likely’ a Lab Incident in China
U.S. News & World Report reported:
FBI Director Christopher Wray on Tuesday publicly acknowledged the agency’s stance that the COVID-19 pandemic likely resulted from an accidental laboratory leak in China.
The interview came days after The Wall Street Journal reported that the Department of Energy decided with “low” confidence that the coronavirus most likely came from a laboratory. The agency previously said it was unsure how the virus originated.
The Biden administration this week downplayed the DOE report, saying that the U.S. government and the intelligence community have not reached a “definitive conclusion.”
Wray added that Beijing has hindered investigation efforts into COVID-19’s origin. “I will just make the observation that the Chinese government, it seems to me, has been doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate the work here, the work that we’re doing, the work that our U.S. government and close foreign partners are doing, and that’s unfortunate for everybody,” he said.
Pfizer/BioNTech Seeks U.S. Nod for Updated COVID Vaccine as Booster in Kids Under 5
Pfizer Inc. (PFE.N) and its German partner BioNTech SE (22UAy.DE) have applied for emergency use authorization of their Omicron-adapted COVID-19 vaccine in the United States as a booster dose for children aged six months through four years, the companies said on Wednesday.
The Omicron-adapted vaccine is currently authorized by the U.S. health regulator as the third dose of the three-dose primary course of vaccination in the country for children in this age group.
If the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorizes the vaccine as a booster dose, children who have completed their primary series — either with three doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s original vaccine or with two doses of their original and one dose of the adapted vaccine — would be eligible to receive the booster dose at least two months after the completion of their primary series.
‘No-Brainer’ COVID Was Made in a Lab, Johns Hopkins Doctor Says
A professor of public health policy at John Hopkins University has told Congress that it was a “no-brainer” that COVID-19 originated from a Chinese laboratory the same day the director of the FBI made a far more cautious assertion to the same effect.
Speaking on a panel to the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on Tuesday, Marty Makary, a surgeon who became a prominent pundit during the pandemic but has no background in virology, noted a series of indicators that made it clear to him that the virus came from a lab, but said it was “embarrassing” since the U.S. government had funded the lab.
Anthony Fauci, the former chief medical advisor to the president, previously came under fire after it emerged that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) gave U.S.-based EcoHealth Alliance a $3.7 million grant in 2014, $600,000 of which was sent to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, in order to study bat coronaviruses.
“The reason this is even an issue is that it’s embarrassing we funded the lab,” Makary told House representatives. “If we had not funded the lab, 100% of Americans would say this is obvious, this is a no-brainer.”
China Dismisses FBI Statement on COVID Lab Leak Theory
For the second day in a row, China on Wednesday dismissed U.S. suggestions that the COVID-19 pandemic may have been triggered by a virus that leaked from a Chinese laboratory.
Responding to comments by FBI Director Christopher Wray, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said the involvement of the U.S. intelligence community was evidence enough of the “politicization of origin tracing.”
“By rehashing the lab-leak theory, the U.S. will not succeed in discrediting China, and instead, it will only hurt its own credibility,” Mao said.
In an interview with Fox News that aired Tuesday, Wray said, “The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in (central China’s) Wuhan.”
Cruz Rips Fauci: ‘Directly Responsible’ for Future Pandemic Deaths Because He Destroyed Credibility of Experts
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said this week that he believes Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, will likely not be held accountable for actions during the pandemic because the Biden administration controls the Department of Justice.
Cruz made the remarks during his podcast “Verdict” with co-host Ben Ferguson while discussing the revelation this week that the Department of Energy now believes that the pandemic likely originated from a lab accident in Wuhan, China.
“I have asked Attorney General Merrick Garland whether he intended to prosecute Fauci and he dodges those questions,” Cruz said in reference to allegations that Fauci lied to Congress. “He refuses to answer those questions. I’ve asked the FBI, they dodge those questions. Look, Fauci flat-out told Congress under oath that the federal government was not funding gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute for Virology. … NIH, in writing, confirmed that they were funding gain-of-function research.”
Cruz later added that Fauci has done “more damage” to the U.S. than any other bureaucrat in U.S. history and that he has also done “more damage to the credibility of the scientific and medical community” than anyone else in history.
Novavax Raises Doubts About Ability to Remain in Business, Shares Fall
COVID-19 vaccine maker Novavax Inc (NVAX.O) on Tuesday raised doubts about its ability to remain in business and announced plans to slash spending as it works to prepare for a fall vaccination campaign, and its shares plunged more than 25%.
The company said there is significant uncertainty around its 2023 revenue, funding from the U.S. government, and pending arbitration with global vaccine alliance Gavi. But its cash flow forecast indicates it has sufficient capital to fund operations over the next year.
The company lost $182 million, or $2.28 per share, in the fourth quarter on weaker-than-expected sales of $357 million. Analysts had expected sales of $383 million, according to Refinitiv data.
The company said the U.S. government did not extend its agreement with Novavax beyond December 2023, putting some of the remaining $416 million in that deal at risk.
EU Silence Over Pfizer COVID Contract Talks Is Problem That Won’t Go Away — Watchdog
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s silence about her dealings with drugmaker Pfizer (PFE.N) leading to the EU’s biggest COVID-19 vaccine contract is hurting public trust and is a problem that will not go away, its ombudsman said.
“We need to hear what went on, otherwise it’s going to drag on,” Emily O’Reilly said in an interview, pointing to the EU public prosecutor’s investigation of the bloc’s acquisition of vaccines and the European parliament’s COVID committee’s plans to hold more hearings on the issue. “So it just won’t go away.”
O’Reilly said the Commission had “stonewalled” her request last year for it to publish text messages exchanged by von der Leyen and Bourla in the months before Brussels signed a contract in May 2021 with Pfizer and BioNTech (22UAy.DE) to buy up to 1.8 billion doses.
In February, the New York Times said it was suing the Commission over failure to release the text messages.
Pfizer Confirms It Ended COVID Vaccine Pregnancy Trial Early
Pfizer has confirmed it stopped its clinical trial analyzing COVID-19 vaccine safety and efficacy in pregnant women. The company said that enrollment in the study stopped in the fourth quarter of 2021 after health experts, including the U.S. Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, began recommending the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for pregnant women.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and European Medicines Agency both agreed to the proposal to halt the study, according to Pfizer. The regulatory agencies did not respond to requests for comment. The randomized, placebo-controlled study in question was launched in early 2021 after pregnant women were excluded from the phase three trial that led to the authorization of the vaccine in the United States and a number of other countries.
Pfizer and BioNTech said they expected to enroll some 4,000 pregnant women but actually enrolled just 349, according to the trial record. Some of the participants were to receive a vaccine while others would receive a placebo, according to the original protocol. Women were expected to be studied for seven to 10 months.
The trial was listed as completed on Aug. 23, 2022, but no results have been released yet.
