Anthrax and COVID

Glenn Greenwald and Saagar Enjeti independently took deep dives to investigate the bizarre and, in fact, highly suspicious, behavior of the U.S. regarding the 2001 anthrax attacks. They discussed their conclusions together on Rumble:

Here's an excerpt of the transcript from their interview:

G. Greenwald: We've been planning the anthrax program we did last night to kind of walk through and remind people of exactly what that attack was, why it was so significant, but also the multiple mysteries embedded within it. And out of the blue, not without knowing I was working on it. You came to me and said, I've currently fallen into this anthrax rabbit hole. And as a result, I've run into a lot of the stuff that you're writing about because I wrote about it almost nonstop for two years in 2007, 2008 and 2009. Tell me what it was that kind of attracted your interest to it? Like what has made you so fascinated by this topic?

Saagar Enjeti: Glenn, for me, it was a lab leak. I mean, at the very beginning, you know, of course, we've done our best to try and dig as deep into lab leak as possible. So, at the very beginning, we started with the Wuhan lab. So obviously we have the Wuhan lab, I think at this point is basically, I mean, I don't really know anybody who doesn't believe that it came out of there. If we can rehash that evidence at a later time, I'll […]

G. Greenwald: I'll tell you some people if you want to find out. But anybody rational does not believe that any longer.

Saagar Enjeti: Yes, there is. There is a tremendous amount, an overwhelming amount of evidence to say that Covid leaked from the Wuhan lab. Then you peel back one layer that's almost boring now at this point. And we look at the U.S. funding. We have Dr. Fauci, Dr. Peter Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance. All of that is now well-established. I wanted to keep going back even more layers. So, then we go to the overall arc of gain-of-function research. Then, I decided to go even higher than gain-of-function research to say, where the hell did this vast amount of money being pumped through the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Health, even come from? That leads me to the 2007 Review of the Government Accountability Office about specifically the bioterrorism initiatives that were sparked by the anthrax attacks of 2001. And what I realized, Glenn, is that the 2001 anthrax attacks opened the door and changed completely the way that we handled dangers not just here in the United States, but all across the world. And our dirty fingers are all over gain of function, research opportunities all over funding people who are going into caves, which no human being ever would be in in the first place, getting covered in bat poop and then getting bitten, going back into a lab and being like, “Hey, we found this one thing and tried to develop a vaccine for it just in case that somebody ever does go into that.” And instead, we now have actually vast and ample amounts of evidence. Not only did COVID leak from the Wuhan lab but actually it looks like Ebola. There is a very good case to say that the Ebola outbreak in the mid-2010s also came from the lab. Then you go back even further. And so really what I became interested in is your reporting specifically around the anthrax attacks, because the more I realized that it all started with anthrax and the fact was that everyone was ignoring me on it, I was like, oh, well, they solved that one, right? No, actually, not at all. The FBI accused the wrong man, the person that they pinned it on. They just blamed it on him with no due process at this point. I think you have to be an idiot to think that Bruce Ivins was the person responsible for the anthrax. I mean, many of the people who were even involved in the investigation would tell you that. And so actually, I was saying I can't believe Glenn has been so right for so long.

When he mentioned his own anthrax episode, Glenn was referring to the previous night's show, where he connected bizarre and incriminating behavior by the U.S. in the 2001 anthrax attacks to what appears to be dangerous biological weapon experimentation by the U.S. ever since, leading up to what appears to be the U.S. misconduct related to the release of COVID in Wuhan. It is a long, detailed, gripping and convincing episode.

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“No One is Safe”: The Many Stages of the COVID Messaging Campaign.

Matt Orfalea offers a new collection of the many stages of the Covid-19 messaging campaign, including a collective roar against “asking questions” or “doing your own research.”

Matt Taibbi follows up with this article: "Looking Back on the Sadism of the Covid-19 Shaming Campaign: As Matt Orfalea's new video shows, Apologies are due for the media campaign against "the unvaccinated," which unveiled open cruelty as public policy strategy." An excerpt:

I got the shot and never advised people not to get vaccinated. I couldn’t imagine an area where I was less qualified to give advice. But this is the point: the same people Orf shows picking up torches and railing with bloodcurdling certainty against “the unvaccinated” are nearly all people who knew as little as me, and whose beliefs about the vaccine were at best secondhand.

You’re disgusted at those who “do their own research”? What do you think journalism is? None of us do lab experiments. The job is always an imperfect effort to figure out which sources are most trustworthy, and because even the most credentialed often screw up, we always need to leave room for consensus proving wrong.

In this case one didn’t need a microbiology degree to recognize something about Covid-19 messaging was off. From flip-flops about masks (an “evolving situation,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said) to unwillingness to be frank in discussing natural immunity or risks to children, even casual news-readers saw confusion in the ranks of senior officials. Later, a series of reversals on key questions — first about whether the vaccine prevented contraction, then about whether it prevented transmission — left even people who wanted to follow official advice unsure of what to do.

I hope Matt’s video survives as a warning. There is still a lot of investigation to be done, in particular about the origins of the pandemic — certain segments of the national audience may still be in for a shock or two there — but as Matt shows, we already see a cautionary tale about faulty information being used to gin up real hatred.

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Marty Makary Counts the Many Ways the Federal Government Failed Us During COVID

Marty Makary, MD, testifying before Congress:

More tragically, the NIH has $42 billion. BARDA, which is part of the PAHPA Act, has another billion dollars and they couldn't do the most basic clinical research we needed done quickly to answer the basic questions to end the controversies and the conspiracy theories to finally get up the questions Americans were asking us: How does it spread? Is it from touching surfaces? Do I need to pour 20 gallons of alcohol on my groceries? Fauci was telling teachers in July to wear gloves and goggles. Or was it spread airborne? That could have been answered in 24 hours in one of our BSL4 labs? Or in one week of clinical research to answer the question: When are you most contagious? What's the peak day of viral shedding? How long do you have you have to quarantine for? Do masks work? We could have answered these with definitive basic clinical research early. They didn't.

And so I think it's fair to ask how did they do in preparing us? For the pandemic? We've spent over $20 billion on PAHPA over the last 20 years. What has that done for us? How many lives were saved during the COVID pandemic because of investments by PAHPA or BARDA? Now, they've done some good work. I've seen it. But regardless of one's political affiliation, they've got to acknowledge that we doctors in the public were flying blind. We had opinion ruling the day on what we should do or not do when we could have been governed by evidence. Policy driven by good basic clinical research. We didn't have that. And so we had a void of clinical research. And guess what filled that void over half a year? A year? Two years? What filled that void were political opinions. Those controversies could have been ended early. We had the money.

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Marty Makary Exposes Ten Myths Promulgated by the CDC During COVID

Dr. Marty Makary is a highly accomplished surgeon at John Hopkins. I posted some video of his presentation to Congress here. He has now written "10 myths told by COVID experts — and now debunked" at the New York Post." He writes that throughout COVID the CDC:

weaponized research itself by putting out its own flawed studies in its own non-peer-reviewed medical journal, MMWR. In the final analysis, public health officials actively propagated misinformation that ruined lives and forever damaged public trust in the medical profession.

He then lists 10 ways that the CDC misled Americans. These are the headlines only--visit the NYP for the entire article:

  • Natural immunity offers little protection compared to vaccinated immunity.
  • Masks prevent COVID transmission
  • School closures reduce COVID transmission
  • Myocarditis from the vaccine is less common than from the infection
  • Young people benefit from a vaccine booster
  • Vaccine mandates increased vaccination rates
  • COVID originating from the Wuhan lab is a conspiracy theory
  • It was important to get the second vaccine dose three or four weeks after the first dose
  • Data on the bivalent vaccine is ‘crystal clear’
  • One in five people get long COVID.

The main sin of the public health officials, according to Makary:"Public health officials said “you must” when the correct answer should have been “we’re not sure.” [More . . . ]

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