Independent journalist Mike McCormick served as a White House stenographer during the Obama administration, an experience that provided him with both insider knowledge and a unique perspective. In a recent Substack post, McCormick questioned why, less than two weeks prior to former President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the administration chose to give the “green light” to lift the moratorium on federal funding for gain-of-function research (research intended to increase the lethality or the transmissibility of a pathogen).
In the process, he exposed some fateful developments, largely unreported by the press, that occurred in the weeks before former President Barack Obama handed over the reins to his successor.
Throughout his presidency, Obama appeared (at least publicly) to be leery of the risks associated with GOF research. His concern grew after a series of “biosafety incidents” had occurred at government research facilities. And in October 2014, his administration announced a pause on funding of GOF research during which they would conduct an assessment of its “potential risks and benefits.”
This “deliberative process” ended on Jan. 9, 2017 when the White House Office of Science and Technology set in motion the events that would lift the moratorium on funding later that year.
“Today, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) is releasing ‘Recommended Policy Guidance for Departmental Development of Review Mechanisms for Potential Pandemic Pathogen Care and Oversight (P3CO).’ Adoption of these recommendations will satisfy the requirements for lifting the current moratorium on certain life sciences research that could enhance a pathogen’s virulence and/or transmissibility to produce a potential pandemic pathogen (an enhanced PPP). [Emphasis added.]
Issuance of this policy guidance concludes the deliberative process launched in October 2014 by OSTP and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).”
This stunning announcement received little or no press coverage. By that time, the media’s obsession with taking down Gen. Michael Flynn and painting Trump as an agent of Russia was dominating the news cycle.
The pause was formally lifted by the National Institutes of Health in December 2017 – conveniently placing responsibility for this unfortunate decision on Trump. This momentous occasion received wide media coverage.
The recommendation to end the moratorium flew in the face of what Obama’s homeland security advisor Lisa Monaco considered “one of the gravest risks for the new administration” – the emergence of an “infectious disease.”
Just four days later, White House officials conducted a tabletop exercise with their incoming Trump-administration counterparts. The topic? How to respond to “the worst influenza pandemic since 1918.”
Documents related to this Jan. 13, 2017 transition briefing were obtained by Politico in March 2020, more than three years later, and can be viewed here. The Politico piece was largely an opportunity to bash Trump over his handling of the pandemic and for recklessly ignoring the Obama administration’s warning.
Participants were asked to imagine that a highly transmissible respiratory virus was already raging in London, Seoul, and Jakarta. Medical service providers in affected areas were overwhelmed and some travel bans had already been implemented.
The similarities of this fictitious scenario with the pandemic that would devastate the world less than three years later are staggering.
During that period, Dr. Ralph Baric, a well-known University of North Carolina virologist and professor, and Dr. Shi Zhengli, the director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, better known as the “batwoman,” created a new and more dangerous form of the coronavirus.
In a November 2015 report published in science journal “Nature,” the team concluded: “On the basis of these findings, scientific review panels may deem similar studies building chimeric viruses based on circulating strains too risky to pursue, as increased pathogenicity in mammalian models cannot be excluded.”
The world’s most knowledgeable experts on GOF research had deemed it “too risky to pursue.”
Moreover, just days after former President Donald Trump’s shock victory, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology sent a letter to Obama warning him of the very real threat of biological attack.
The 16-page letter explicitly warned that the “modification of pathogens to overcome existing immunity or to be resistant to available drugs,” in other words, GOF, posed a serious threat to national security.
Despite predictions of doom from his own staffers, the alarming conclusions of the Baric/Shi project, and a grave warning from PCAST, the administration laid the groundwork to end the moratorium.
This late, quiet, and inexplicable decision allowed then-Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci to direct funds to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a lab known for its inadequate safety practices. A lab whose director had concluded one year earlier that this type of experimentation was “too risky to pursue.”
McCormick called this “Obama’s poison pill,” a characterization I initially considered to be alarmist. I’ve changed my mind. After looking at the timeline, I find it appropriate.
A previous version of this article appeared in The Washington Examiner.
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Obama’s poison pill was a war waged against those he supposedly lead, while president.
The more I learn about the back story, the more ill I become. The people who unleashed this virus should all be held accountable, in the most vicious way.
“…in the most vicious way….”
Actually, leaving them supine in their beds, slowly drowning in their own mucus seems to be the vicious way they’ve killed so many others.