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Fauci’s Calendar Raises Questions About COVID Response
The COVID-19 pandemic had a profound impact on American society and the world at large, from small businesses to mental health to childhood education. As we emerge from it, public health experts, academics and journalists will piece together the history of our national response, of how personal grief intertwined with social consequences.
Last week, an important piece of that puzzle became publicly available. Dr. Anthony Fauci‘s official calendar from late 2019 and early 2020, until now hidden, is available at OpenTheBooks.com for the world to scrutinize. It should serve to inform lawmakers whose duty is to exercise oversight and hold public servants accountable. New details of meetings, names and dates allow for — and demand — more focused questions, so that we can sort out what saved lives and what caused undue damage.
A part of the calendar that cries out for more clarity is Fauci‘s conversation with Dr. James LeDuc, who runs a Biosafety Level 4 research facility in Texas. BSL4 is the highest security level to prevent the spread of dangerous diseases, and LeDuc had personally trained the Wuhan scientists on those procedures. He was having back-channel communications with the Wuhan lab director, as well as with Dr. Shi Zhengli, who became colloquially known as the “bat lady.” Zhengli experimented with coronaviruses as part of the U.S.-backed EcoHealth project.
Energy and Commerce GOP Leaders Press Boston University on COVID Research
The top Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee are pressing the president of Boston University for more information about the institution’s recent COVID-19 research.
Earlier this month, researchers from the Boston University School of Medicine published findings from a pre-print study in which they combined the ancestral coronavirus with genetic data from the circulating Omicron strain.
The National Institutes of Health said it did not review nor issue awards for the experiments described in the article, and is examining the matter to determine whether the research should have been subject to agency guidelines.
Boston University has stated that the research did not have to be cleared because the experiments were carried out with funds from the university and that there was no gain of function with the research.
The Updated COVID Boosters Could Have Been Better — From Design to Implementation, Our Bivalent Shots Missed the Mark
In August, the FDA authorized updated COVID-19 vaccine boosters containing an equal mix of the ancestral vaccine and a component tailored against the Omicron BA.4/5 subvariants. It rejected the idea of yet another booster of the original vaccine — which the U.S. has in abundant supply — or authorizing a monovalent Omicron-only booster. In our view, this decision was not clear-cut and may have been the wrong one.
European countries made different choices based on similar information, opting instead for a bivalent vaccine containing an equal mix of the ancestral vaccine and one designed against the Omicron BA.1 subvariant.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) committee recently noted that “…currently available data are not sufficient to support the issuance of any preferential recommendation for bivalent variant-containing vaccine boosters over ancestral-virus-only boosters….The bulk of the benefit is from the provision of a booster dose, irrespective of whether it is a monovalent or bivalent vaccine.”
Where Did Omicron Come From? Maybe Its First Host Was Mice
It’s one of the perplexing mysteries of the COVID pandemic: Where did Omicron emerge from, almost one year ago? The fast-moving, extremely contagious variant arrived just after Thanksgiving 2021, bristling with weird mutations. When scientists untangled the array, they found that Omicron wasn’t related to Delta or Alpha, the two waves that preceded it. Instead, its divergence from its closest common ancestor dated back more than a year, to the first few months of the pandemic — practically a geologic era in viral-replication time.
That was a conundrum. How could something be so communicable that it ripped through more than 120 countries in two months, yet have evaded detection for so long? Within the riddle lurked a puzzle: If Omicron developed not from earlier variants but in parallel to them, where was it hiding out all that time?
Now a new study from a research team at the University of Minnesota is giving that debate fresh energy. Their analysis suggests that Omicron adapted to mice, where it developed its mutational array before it passed into humans.
Model Predicts COVID Deaths Will Flatline This Winter — IHME Foresees Almost Eight-Fold Reduction in COVID Deaths Compared With Last Winter
The U.S. probably won’t see a major surge in COVID deaths this winter, according to new models from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington in Seattle.
By Feb. 1, 2023, daily deaths are projected to be at a high point of 335, which pales in comparison to the approximate 2,500 daily deaths seen during the Omicron surge around the same time last year, according to a recently published IHME policy brief. The report estimates the COVID-19 infection-fatality rate (IFR) to be below 0.2% as of October 17.
“Many people have been exposed to COVID-19, either through infection or through vaccination, [so we don’t expect] a high hospitalization rate and high mortality rate,” Ali Mokdad, Ph.D., a professor at IHME and chief strategy officer for population health at the University of Washington, told MedPage Today. “We will see a little bit of a rise, but it will not be as high as what we have seen in the past.”
Also contributing to that flattening of the deaths curve is the fact that current and emerging variants appear less severe and unable to thwart humoral and cellular immunity — though Mokdad warned that the appearance of a new variant that is more severe and immune-evasive could change those predictions. Nonetheless, he said, the probability of that happening is small.
African Health Official: Ebola in Uganda Is Under Control
Uganda’s Ebola outbreak is under control, a top public health official in Africa said Thursday, noting that local health authorities are doing well to trace most contacts.
“The situation is not getting out of control,” said Dr. Ahmed Ogwell, acting director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We have good visibility of all the contacts.”
About 98% of 2,694 documented contacts — people exposed to Ebola by a confirmed patient — are being monitored, Ogwell said, adding that it “gives comfort that we know the evolution of this particular outbreak.”
Moderna Nears U.S. Deal to Develop Shots for Ebola, Other Biological Threats
Moderna Inc. is close to clinching a deal with the U.S. Department of Defense to develop messenger RNA vaccines targeting a range of biological threats such as the Ebola virus.
The contract will see Moderna work with researchers from the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) at Galveston to build on the company’s mRNA technology that was used to rapidly make COVID-19 vaccines, according to people familiar with the situation who were not authorized to speak on the deal because it has not yet been finalized. Ebola has returned to the fore as a vaccine-resistant strain of the deadly virus spawned an outbreak in Uganda that began in September.
While talks between Moderna, UTMB and the Defense Department began well before the Uganda outbreak, Moderna’s vaccine aims to target the strain spreading there, called Sudan ebolavirus, as well as the more-common Zaire strain and related Marburg virus, according to one of the people. However, it’s unlikely Moderna’s candidate would be ready to use in time to address the burst of cases in Uganda. So far 95 people have been infected in that country, according to its Ministry of Health.
