Covid Timeline Wiki Project: February 27, 2020

This was a big day for propaganda -- if you know of any that I missed, or have any other additions, corrections, etc. please share in comments.

NYT HEADLINES

• TRUMP TAPS PENCE TO LEAD RESPONSE AS VIRUS SPREADS

• Children Freeze to Death. Bombs Rain down. And ‘Nobody Cares. [in Syria]

[below the fold but so ironic, this being the day the US pandemic propaganda machine was switched into high gear, I have to include it:]

• China’s Propaganda Machine Loses Credibility in Outbreak

NYT FRONT PAGE PHOTO

NYT OPINION SECTION

Let’s Call It Trumpvirus by Gail Collins

Making fun of the Trump administration’s incompetence and relating that to the virus..

UK The Guardian

Ministers preparing for potential big jump in coronavirus cases

Ministers are racing to prepare the UK for a potential sudden increase in the spread of the coronavirus, with officials fearing it could take just 72 hours for an outbreak the size of Italy’s to take hold.

There have been 13 cases of the virus so far in the UK, with no deaths. But Italy saw its confirmed cases rocket from just three on Friday to more than 200 by Monday and its total is now 400, with 12 deaths.

COVID TASK FORCE - CHANGE IN LEADERSHIP

As reported by the White House:

Today, Vice President Mike Pence announced the following individual to a key position on his team to combat the spread of the Coronavirus:

Ambassador Deborah Birx, to serve as the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator.

Ambassador Birx is a world-renowned global health official and physician. She will be detailed to the Office of the Vice President and will report to Vice President Mike Pence. She will also join the Task Force led by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.  She will be supported by the National Security Council staff. 

[NOTE: on the Covid response org chart, the Task Force is above all the other agencies, including HHS. Birx is not just “joining the task force” she is replacing Azar as its leader. On March 18th, HHS is officially relieved of its Lead Federal Agency duties, and Deborah Birx - representing the NSC and DHS - is in charge.]

COVID COMMUNICATIONS MUST GO THROUGH VP/TASK FORCE - now led by Birx

As reported by the NYT, “The White House moved on Thursday to tighten control of coronavirus messaging by government health officials and scientists, directing them to coordinate all statements and public appearances with the office of Vice President Mike Pence, according to several officials familiar with the new approach.”

WHAT THIS MEANS IS THE PUBLIC HEALTH AGENCIES CAN NO LONGER COMMUNICATE ABOUT THE VIRUS DIRECTLY TO THE PUBLIC. IT ALL HAS TO GO THROUGH THE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL-LED TASK FORCE.

PROPAGANDA INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

1. NYT OP-ED NOW ACCESSIBLE ONLY THROUGH DIRECT LINK

We Knew Disease X Was Coming. It’s Here Now.

by Peter Daszak, identified in the NYT as “a disease ecologist”

In early 2018, during a meeting at the World Health Organization in Geneva, a group of experts I belong to (the R&D Blueprint) coined the term “Disease X”: We were referring to the next pandemic, which would be caused by an unknown, novel pathogen that hadn’t yet entered the human population. As the world stands today on the edge of the pandemic precipice, it’s worth taking a moment to consider whether Covid-19 is the disease our group was warning about.

Disease X, we said back then, would likely result from a virus originating in animals and would emerge somewhere on the planet where economic development drives people and wildlife together. Disease X would probably be confused with other diseases early in the outbreak and would spread quickly and silently; exploiting networks of human travel and trade, it would reach multiple countries and thwart containment. Disease X would have a mortality rate higher than a seasonal flu but would spread as easily as the flu. It would shake financial markets even before it achieved pandemic status.

In a nutshell, Covid-19 is Disease X.

…

The looming pandemic will challenge us in new ways, as people try to evade quarantines, and misinformation campaigns and conspiracy theorists ply their trade in open democracies.

…

The problem is that between outbreaks, the will to spend money on prevention wanes, and the market for vaccines and drugs against sporadic viral diseases isn’t enough to drive research and development.

…

A radical shift is also needed in the way that tests, vaccines and drugs are designed so that entire groups of pathogens are targeted instead of individual pathogens that are already known. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the United States is working on a universal flu vaccine that would cover all known strains of influenza; a universal coronavirus vaccine, an Ebola-virus vaccine and others will also be needed.

Pandemics are like terrorist attacks: We know roughly where they originate and what’s responsible for them, but we don’t know exactly when the next one will happen. They need to be handled the same way — by identifying all possible sources and dismantling those before the next pandemic strikes.

[NOTE: Here’s what Daszak said in February 2016 (you can read more about him in my article on the lab leak and the countermeasures):

…until an infectious disease crisis is very real, present, and at an emergency threshold, it is often largely ignored. To sustain the funding base beyond the crisis, we need to increase public understanding of the need for MCMs such as a pan-influenza or pan-coronavirus vaccine. A key driver is the media, and the economics follow the hype. We need to use that hype to our advantage to get to the real issues. Investors will respond if they see profit at the end of process.]

2. NYT PODCAST

Donald McNeil Jr., a science and health reporter for the NYT says: “I’m trying to bring a sense that if things don’t change, a lot of us might die. If you have 300 relatively close friends and acquaintances, six of them would die in a 2.5 percent mortality situation.”

“We can do it, but we’re not used to being controlled from the top down the way people have been in China. So I don’t know what’s going to happen in the United States. We’re not mentally prepared to fight a sort of people’s war against an epidemic, which is what happened in China.”

3. Scientific American/Zenep Tufekci

This was the first pandemic publication (as far as I know) of Zeynep Tufekci, who became a regular Covid propagandist thereafter. Her wikipedia bio is bizarre, disjointed and I believe largely a coverup for IC work (I don’t have receipts on that, just hunches). Check out what it says she did during the pandemic - keep in mind that her education and training are in computers and sociology:

“In 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, Tufekci was critical of the mainstream media for failing to explain the importance of mask wearing, and is often cited as one of the first to take up the importance of mask wearing in the mainstream media.^[23][24] This led to Tufekci becoming one of the academics who advised the WHO on adopting a mask recommendation.^[25][26] In addition to her mainstream media writing during the COVID-19 pandemic, Tufekci has co-authored articles published in peer reviewed academic journals reviewing evidence that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is airborne, with British medical professor Trisha Greenhalgh^[27] and environmental engineering professor Linsey Marr.^[28]”

Excerpts from Tufekci’s first pandemic propaganda piece that appeared on February 27th in Scientific American:

Preparing for Coronavirus to Strike the U.S. - Getting ready for the possibility of major disruptions is not only smart; it’s also our public duty

“All of this means that the only path to flattening the curve for COVID-19 is community-wide isolation: the more people stay home, the fewer people will catch the disease. The fewer people who catch the disease, the better hospitals can help those who do. Crowding at hospitals doesn’t just threaten those with COVID-19; if emergency rooms are overwhelmed, more flu patients, too, will die because of lack of treatment, for example. “

[BOLDFACE ADDED - Note the mention of “flattening the curve” - which only became a thing on the very day her article came out (see #4 below)]

In a podcast interview with Sam Harris, dated February 1, 2021, Tufekci claims she wrote the article because everyone who had any credentials (epidemiologists, infectious disease experts, even the mainstream media) was telling the public to remain calm and not to panic. But she knew people had to prepare to stay home “for a few weeks.”

Why did she publish in Scientific American? Because she “owed them a blogpost” and “nobody else was interested” in her article.

4. The Economist/Flatten the Curve

The print edition of The Economist, dated Feburary 27, 2020, featured an authorless article entitled “Going Global” — online title: “The Virus Is Coming”

The online version links to this article: “Covid-19 is now in 50 countries, and things will get worse”

Although the second article is dated “February 29th” it has a link from the online article dated February 27th. This is a crucial detail, because Dr. Drew Harris, who supposedly introduced the world to the “flatten the curve” graph/concept, first tweeted it on the night between February 27th and 28th, and he claimed The Economist as one of his sources:

So maybe he saw it right when the online Economist article appeared and immediately re-designed and tweeted it, even though a March 27th NYT article suggests he managed to see the article, fly from Portland, Oregon to Philadelphia, redesign the graph, and tweet it out, all on the same day:

“ At the end of February, Drew Harris, a population health analyst at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, had just flown across the country to visit his daughter in Eugene, Ore., when he saw an article on his Google news feed. It was from The Economist, and was about limiting the damage of the coronavirus.”

“Dr. Harris was waiting for his return flight in Portland when the first Oregon coronavirus case was announced; he had dinner at a busy airport bar and thought about how quiet the place would be in a week or two when the reality of the outbreak set in. Once home, he recreated his graphic and posted it on Twitter and LinkedIn, and was pleased to see the enthusiastic interest in flattening the curve.”

“‘Now I know what going viral means,’ Dr. Harris said.”

So how exactly did that tweet “go viral”?

Here’s Dr. Harris’s Twitter/X page:

Most of his posts have little to no engagement. The “flatten the curve” post had 57 comments, none of which (as far as I can tell) were posted before March 6th. None of the comments has any engagement.

On March 13th there are multiple messages about the post appearing that day in articles in: Fast Company, Forbes, Washington Post, People, and NPR.

On LinkedIn the same post has 4 comments and 13 reposts.

Here are some highlights from Dr. Harris’s CV:

Training:

• 1983 Doctor of Podiatric Medicine (i.e., podiatrist — a doctor who treats feet)

• 1999 Master of Public Health

Experience:

• 1984-2001 Podiatric Medicine, private practice

• 2001-2004 University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey, Executive Director for Special Projects for Sr VP for Academic Affairs. Coordinator, UMDNJ’s Bioterrorism response efforts

• 2004-2008 Director, Public Health Leadership Initiative for Emergency Response

• 2004-2008 Assistant Director, NJ Center for Public Health Preparedness at UMDNJ

From Wikipedia: The Centers for Public Health Preparedness (CPHP) program was established in 2000 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to strengthen bioterrorism and emergency preparedness by linking academic expertise to state and local health agency needs.

These centers were awarded through a competitive submission process to four schools of public health (Saint Louis University, University of Alabama-Birmingham, University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Oklahoma).^[2] These initially funded centers formed a nucleus upon which to build a response to the events on September 11, 2001. In 2001, the CDC and the Association of Schools of Public Health (ASPH) added resources to the A-CPHP that allowed for the stepwise expansion of the program to more schools of public health.

From 2004 to 2010, the CDC gave $134 million in funding to the Centers for Public Health Preparedness (CPHP) Cooperative Agreement program; 27 CPHPs within accredited schools of public health received the funds.

[NOTE: UMDNJ is one of those 27 centers that received millions of dollars to prepare responses to bioterrorism attacks.]

• 2008-2010 President, NJ Association for Biomedical Research

[QUESTION: How is a podiatrist with a Masters in Public Health the President of a Biomedical Research Association????]

For laughs:

• EDITORIALS, REVIEWS, CHAPTERS: Public Health Emergency and Disaster Preparedness [book chapter] in Public Health and Podiatric Medicine (2006)

But seriously, check out the funding:

Of the 15 items listed under ‘SUPPORT’ on Dr. Drew’s CV, eleven are between $5,000 and $50,000. Then there are three items related to the Center for Public Health Preparedness [see above], with a total value of over $2.3 MILLION.

SUMMARY

A podiatrist with a Masters in public health, who found his way to a leadership position in the biodefense-industrial complex in NJ in the years following 9/11, supposedly originated the first viral “flatten the curve” graph on February 27th/28th - inspired by a graph the appeared in a pandemic-panic article in The Economist on the 27th. The Twitter post had no comments until March 6th. It was re-published simultaneously in at least 5 different nationally prominent media outlets on March 13th, the date of President Trump’s National Emergency Declaration, and the date of the Pan-CAP-A.

On the same day as the “flatten the curve” tweet, an article appeared in Scientific American by a sociology professor who later claimed no other publication was interested, and she had to publish it because she was frustrated that no epidemiology or virology experts were whipping up panic about the coming pandemic. In her article she used the phrase “flatten the curve.”

Also on the same day the NYT published a pandemic-panic op-ed that has since been disappeared from all but direct search with the URL, written by the US scientist whose organization is closely associated with gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab where the novel coronavirus most likely originated. In the article he called Covid-19 “disease X” and compared pandemics to terrorist attacks.

And all of this happened on the day that leadership of the pandemic Task Force — the group in charge of the entire U.S. pandemic response — was transferred from the HHS to the Vice President, who immediately appointed Deborah Birx as head of the Task Force.

New England Journal of Medicine

In a February 27th editorial, the NEJM announced it would forego it rigorous review process for articles about the novel coronavirus and Covid-19:

“The current outbreak of coronavirus infection is a threat to the health of the public and a breaking news story that changes hour by hour. We can eventually take a long view of how to manage and prevent epidemics, but today practitioners and public health authorities need actionable information as soon as possible.

We are therefore putting in place a set of practices that we will apply to all submitted manuscripts describing the 2019-nCoV outbreak.

• We expect authors to share important information with public health authorities as early as possible. In the case of the current coronavirus outbreak, we will, with authors’ approval, share appropriate manuscripts in confidence with the World Health Organization. We also encourage authors to submit their work for posting on preprint servers.

• We will rapidly evaluate submitted manuscripts and, if we plan to publish them, will expedite all editorial steps to make them available as quickly as possible. We encourage authors to share with other researchers the original data that underlie all reports on 2019-nCoV that we publish.”

[BOLDFACE ADDED]

BIOWARFARE INDUSTRIAL-COMPLEX

Senator Richard Burr, Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee (until May 2020)

As reported by NPR:

On Feb. 27, when the United States had 15 confirmed cases of COVID-19, President Trump was tamping down fears and suggesting that the virus could be seasonal.

…

On that same day, Burr attended a luncheon held at a social club called the Capitol Hill Club. And he delivered a much more alarming message.

"There's one thing that I can tell you about this: It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history," he said, according to a secret recording of the remarks obtained by NPR. "It is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic."

…

Sixteen days before North Carolina closed its schools over the threat of the coronavirus, Burr warned it could happen.

"There will be, I'm sure, times that communities, probably some in North Carolina, have a transmission rate where they say, 'Let's close schools for two weeks. Everybody stay home,' " he said.

And Burr invoked the possibility that the military might be mobilized to combat the coronavirus.

As reported by Just Security:

Since January 2015, Burr had been a member of the Gang of Eight—a group that consists of the majority and minority leaders of the Senate and House and top Republicans and Democrats on the Senate and House intelligence committees. The U.S. intelligence community is able to share the nation’s most sensitive secrets with this small group without anyone else outside the administration knowing.

Close connections between Senator Burr and Robert Kadlec as reported in The First Shots,

In 2004, Congress passed the Project Bioshield Act, which provided six billion dollars in funding for the government to purchase and stockpile countermeasures against anthrax, smallpox, and other threats…in 2005, Kadlec helped Burr draft the lase that created ASPR and its drug and vaccine development arm, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA."

FAUCI

As reported by the Brownstone Institute and Totality of Evidence:

On February 26, Fauci was writing: “Do not let the fear of the unknown… distort your evaluation of the risk of the pandemic to you relative to the risks that you face every day… do not yield to unreasonable fear.”

The next day, February 27, Fauci wrote actress Morgan Fairchild: “be prepared to mitigate an outbreak in this country by measures that include social distancing, teleworking, temporary closure of schools, etc.”

UK/WELLCOME TRUST

Director Jeremy Farrar said:

“But now, what we are really missing, is tangible, high-level funding and support from global financial institutions including the World Bank, Regional Development Banks and the International Monetary Fund. The possible impact of this coronavirus is far beyond a health emergency – it’s a global crisis with potential to reach the scale of the global financial crisis of 2008. These institutions, designed to act as the world’s insurance policy, were quick to act then and can no longer stand by in the face of a crisis that is no less threatening. 

"An urgent commitment of $10 billion, with more to follow as needed, is essential from the World Bank to underpin the public health measures in low- and middle-income countries, coordinated by the WHO alongside critical investment in diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines. Anything less leaves us at risk of much greater costs later and long-term catastrophe. The sums are considerable. The decision to release funds should not be taken lightly, but the stakes could not be higher.”