Warning! COVID-19 is a Wake Up Call that the US is Not Prepared for a Natural or Nefarious Biological Agent Attack by Choice: Forewarned is Only Forearmed when You Do Not Ignore or Forget the Warning

This blog has intentionally tried to avoid political or socioeconomic arguments for the US failures to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic within its borders, but the actions and lack of appropriate actions of the Federal to State to Local government bodies have made this avoidance impossible. My past observations have addressed the question: “What drives research in infectious disease, or for that matter, any scientific research? We would like to believe it is the level of the threat to humanity or food and fiber sources and domestic animals, or the need for all humankind to grow in knowledge and wisdom. Some feel in the private, corporate world, it is solely profits. Public funded research and academic research may be thought of as driven by national pride in science and technology leadership and, even as a tool for facilitating science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education, even for better jobs and standard of living. However, the main driver, at least at present, seems to be communication containing sensationalism and catchy headlines which generate concern or just raw fear. I call this “political science”, the driver of all other science by control of the purse strings through public marketing and faddism to generate pressure to fund.” The Black Dragon Trilogy; https://a.co/itfIq0o. In face of this motivation, a politically driven anti-science and anti-public health movement has occurred at the Federal Executive Administration and State House levels, leading to such counter protective measures as faddish unproven treatments, false characterization of SARS-CoV-2 virus and the disease, COVID-19, and fractured guidance on personal protection measures with downright banning of local government mandates for protective masking, social distancing and public health regulation of business and group activities. The WH is once again oppressing science and it is directly related to preventing the next COVID. Science Magazine – August 28, 2020 – page 1039. The results of all this have been inevitable: More than 5.5 million Americans infected since the start of the pandemic and at least 172,000 dead. America continues to fail because of failed political leadership: Georgia, Texas, Florida. Besides the lack of unified political will being a major hindrance, the compartmentalization of the problem has made matters worse. Beth Cameron, former Senior Director for Global Health Security and Biodefense in the NSC, wrote, “When President Trump took office in 2017, the White House’s National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense survived the transition intact.“Its mission was the same as when I was asked to lead the office, established after the Ebola epidemic of 2014: to do everything possible within the vast powers and resources of the U.S. government to prepare for the next disease outbreak and prevent it from becoming an epidemic or pandemic. One year later, I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like covid-19”. Tim Morrison, former senior director for counterproliferation and biodefense on the NSC, wrote in another Washington Post Op-Ed, “It is true that the Trump administration has seen fit to shrink the NSC staff. But the bloat that occurred under the previous administration clearly needed a correction. … One such move at the NSC was to create the counterproliferation and biodefense directorate, which was the result of consolidating three directorates into one, given the obvious overlap between arms control and nonproliferation, weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, and global health and biodefense. It is this reorganization that critics have misconstrued or intentionally misrepresented. If anything, the combined directorate was stronger because related expertise could be commingled” There is controversy on how to describe these changes but the changes at the NSC’s Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense in 2018, departure of some members due to “streamlining” efforts under John Bolton, led the “pandemic response team” as a unit to be largely disbanded. This led to confusion just as did the shifting of hospital COVID-19 data collection from the CDC to HHS and back again and failed and delayed implementation of CDC pandemic plans. Furthermore, delays in filling professional job slots at CDC have also contributed to the overall failure and mismanagement of the pandemic response. Seeing SAR-CoV-2 as separate political, economic, National security (military), public health, medical and veterinary problems, and self-isolating from a global science-based response and establishing a physical “fortress-against-the-world” response has shipwrecked us where we are. In this blog and my books, I have tried to convey that this is a global problem that requires global cooperation and collaboration, including among government agencies, not stove-piping them through a high level political screening agency. High level coordination is necessary but not high level screening and suppression. Freedom to act locally with central support and high level policy guidance is good, but central micromanagement of execution is bad. The US military has learned this lesson since the Vietnam War and has had this in their doctrine for years , and its effectiveness and efficiency has been demonstrated to be superior to centralized control of execution which was characteristic of the former Soviet Union and now of Russia. To be more specific about how the Biodefense problem is inseparable from the pandemic public health problem, let me give you a short history of the military Biodefense issues. Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, December 31, 1991, unbeknownst to the US, the Soviets had continued to develop a massive biological warfare infrastructure. One of their production vats capacity was larger than the entire Iraqi biowarfare production. The Soviets had 2 levels of agents: tactical (like anthrax) and strategic (like smallpox). Tactical would be used locally on troops in the battlefield and strategic would be delivered in an intercontinental ballistic missile warhead against an entire population, including civilians, to destroy the will and means of a nation to execute a war. Of course, asymmetric warfare use of bio weapons by terrorists and special forces made them weapons of mass terror (WMT) rather than weapons of mass destruction (WMD). If I were to describe SARS-CoV-2 in military (Russian) terms, it would be a strategic WMT and WMD. In 6 short months, it has killed and incapacitated a large number of the population, damaged the economy, restricted industrial production, handicapped military operations, divided the public politically, caused panic and social unrest, disrupted education, overwhelmed the medical system and enhanced all these vulnerabilities associated with disparities in wealth, jobs, and access to adequate health care. I would say it has done grave damage to the National Security of the United States. What other Army could have mobilized and marched across the world so fast? Can there be any question that this is a defense, National Security and public health issue simultaneously? The US offensive biowarfare program started after the beginning of WWII, October 1943, at Dugway Proving Grounds, Utah, and ended in 1972. In 1969, President Nixon had terminated the US offensive biological warfare program and ordered all stockpiled weapons destroyed. National Security decisions 35 (November 1969) and 44 (February 1970) had ended the programs for microbes and toxins, respectively. The only Institution supposedly to remain was the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), established to continue the development of medical defenses against biological attack and development of treatments for medical casualties caused by infectious disease, which, up until recent times, has caused more casualties than combat. In 1972, more than 100 nations (including the US and Soviet Union) had signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC), the world’s first treaty (albeit weak in enforcement) banning an entire class of weapons. The agreement prohibited the possession of biological agents except for “prophylactic, protective, or other peaceful purposes.” Obviously, the Soviet Union did not live up to it. During The US offensive program, the US was more interested in using “incapacitating agents” (Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis Virus, Brucella bacteria, and tularemia bacteria) than lethal agents such as plague and anthrax, although these were researched. When the US realized there were still state sponsored and terrorist biowarfare programs, it enacted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 (BWATA, Pub.L. 101–298, enacted May 22, 1990). The agents then fell into Tier categories with the most dangerous agents for humans and animals in Tier 1 Select agents and toxins – A subset of select agents and toxins have been designated as Tier 1 because these biological agents and toxins present the greatest risk of deliberate misuse with significant potential for mass casualties or devastating effect to the economy, critical infrastructure, or public confidence, and pose a severe threat to public health and safety: Bacillus anthracis, Bacillus cereus Biovar anthracis, Botulinum neurotoxins, Botulinum neurotoxin producing species of Clostridium, Burkholderia mallei, Burkholderia pseudomallei, Ebola virus (CP at Brooks investigated cloned subunits because we did not have a BSL4 lab), Francisella tularensis, Foot-And-Mouth Disease virus, Marburg virus, Rinderpest virus, Variola major virus (Smallpox virus), Variola minor virus (Alastrim) (CP used vaccinia virus as an investigative stand in for Smallpox) and Yersinia pestis. The bolded agents are the Tier 1 or related Tier 1 agents we investigated in the Counterproliferation Group at Brooks City-Base, USAF, San Antonio, Texas. Even though Foot-And-Mouth Disease virus and Rinderpest virus are animal viruses only, they could devastate agriculture, disrupt the food supply, and do great economic harm, true strategic weapons. Also FMDV is truly aerosolizeable and can spread on the wind for miles.

However, it is unrealistic to think that restricting the access to these agents in the US can control and prevent nefarious use of these or other biological agents not on such a list. This fact led to Nanobes, discovered by the Brooks CP team and described in earlier posts in perhaps esoteric terms for most, falling into no-man’s land, and have not been put to good and most appropriate use to fight SARS-CoV-2 and other emerging infectious agents. As noted, they were designed to detect, identify, tag with fluorescence and collect magnetically, known and unknown pathogens under minimal and adverse conditions in non-permissive territory by Special Forces with minimal technical execution. They were also designed to be dispersed over wide and distant areas with light weight equipment and be recovered at least in part. They could also be activated not only to identify and collect agents but to kill them with pulsed microwaves, even in cells and tissues as well as on environmental surfaces. They were designed to transform bacterial hosts or transfect animal and human cells to manufacture biosynthetic replicates which could perform the same functions as the synthetic originals. This could be even done in the field with minimal equipment and supplies (disposable fermenters and lyophilized bacterial production hosts and media which could be reconstituted with water after a specific binding Nanobe was selected out of a random library for amplification). This versatile solution became perceived as a potential versatile weapon which side stepped domestic and international law. I warned of the consequences of not using it and, if not, not being prepared for its use by others in a closed scientific meeting in 2009 just prior to ending the CP group research and my retirement. The Russians and, especially the Chinese, followed that part of our work which was published in the open scientific literature and in patents. They have since pursued similar non-military applications evidenced by their open scientific literature publications. By their own admission they foresaw other applications: “the Chinese military ambition, was first described in Military Review, July-August 2005 by Guo Ji-wei and Xue-sen Yang. Paraphrasing what these goals are: (1) Crypticity: Biotechnological Warfare is convenient, easy to use, has a small logistics tail (very prone to Terrorist or Special Forces use); (2) Controllability and recoverability: Can be used to measured effect from kill to non-lethal with the option to offer “mercy” in exchange for surrender; and (3) Biotechnological vs. Biological Weapons: Biotechnological Warfare should not be considered Biological Warfare and side-steps any international law or treaty restrictions.”—The Black Dragon Trilogy. All this has left me exhausted and frustrated. I only hope more people will read and share my books and blog posts so the information they contain might reach the right people to make a difference before it is too late.

Commercial as well as custom nano sprayers can be used to dispense. “The electrosprayer can continuously apply up to 10 ml of liquid containing over 2 million Nanobes per ml spread over a period of 24 hrs from a package the size of an iPhone. One gram of 20-nm particles can be spread over a 10mX10mX1 Km rectangular cube and maintain the same approximate concentration as in the nanosprayer (2,400,000 per cubic cm).”

“This proposal combined novel device development with state of the art nanoscale bioelectromagnetics. Because of the unprecedented novelty of the wireless nanoelectrode device( s), we did not anticipate the immediate use of the technology in the CNS”—The Black Dragon Trilogy. https://www.npr.org/2020/10/27/927263593/a-cia-officer-visits-moscow-returns-with-mysterious-crippling-headaches