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The Prohibition (Before the Waiver)

Section 236 begins with what appears to be a sweeping prohibition:

“None of the funds authorized to be appropriated by this Act or otherwise made available for fiscal year 2027 for the Department of Defense may be obligated or expended—
(1) to conduct gain-of-function research on any potential pandemic pathogen at any facility operated by or on behalf of the Department; or
(2) to award contracts, grants, cooperative agreements, or any other form of financial assistance to any institution of higher education, nonprofit organization, private entity, or other research institute that is conducting gain-of-function research on potential pandemic pathogens.”

The prohibition covers not only military laboratories themselves, but also universities, nonprofits, private companies, and outside research institutes receiving Defense Department money.

The Waiver

Then comes the waiver.

The very next subsection states:

“The Secretary of Defense may waive the prohibition under subsection (a) on a case-by-case basis, with respect to an individual research project, grant, contract, or cooperative agreement, if the Secretary determines that such a waiver is in the national interests of the United States.”

The only requirement is notification.

According to the bill:

“Not later than 30 days before the date on which an award is made, a project is initiated, or an agreement entered into, with respect to which a waiver is made ... the Secretary of Defense shall submit to the Committees on Armed Services of the Senate and the House of Representatives notice of such waiver.”

Congressional approval is not required.

The Secretary of Defense merely has to notify Congress that the military intends to proceed with the work.

Bill Defines GOF

The legislation also provides an unusually direct definition of gain-of-function research:

“The term ‘gain-of-function research’ means any research that may be reasonably anticipated to confer an attribute to a pathogen such that the pathogen would have enhanced pathogenicity or transmissibility in mammals.”

Meanwhile, the bill defines a “potential pandemic pathogen” as one that, through gain-of-function research:

“(A) is likely more transmissible or likely capable of wide and uncontrollable spread in human populations;
“(B) is likely more virulent or likely to cause modest or greater morbidity or mortality in humans; or
“(C) is likely to pose a severe threat to public health, the capacity of the public health systems to function, or national security.”

In plain English, the legislation authorizes the Defense Secretary to approve experiments intended to create purported pathogens that are more transmissible, more virulent, more difficult to control, or more threatening to public health systems and national security—provided the Pentagon determines doing so serves the “national interest.”

Congress, the White House, the Department of Energy, the FBI, the CIA, and Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) all acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic was “likely” the result of a laboratory incident involving engineered pathogens.

Which raises questions as to whether the bill itself, especially through the GOF waiver, is the real threat to national and international security.

Bottom Line

If gain-of-function research on purported pandemic pathogens is so dangerous that Congress felt compelled to prohibit it, then creating a national-security waiver that allows the exact same experiments to continue raises obvious questions about what the prohibition was ever intended to accomplish in the first place.

The Pentagon is not seeking authority to study harmless microbes or obscure laboratory organisms.

The bill specifically contemplates research involving purported pathogens that could become “more transmissible,” “more virulent,” and “capable of wide and uncontrollable spread in human populations.”

That is not the language of defensive medicine.

It is the language of pandemic-capable biological agents and bioweapons.

Perhaps most remarkably, this authority is being sought only a few years after what much of the U.S. government itself now believes was a laboratory-associated pandemic involving an engineered pathogen.

If the lesson policymakers took from COVID is that government agencies should retain the ability to enhance the characteristics of potential pandemic pathogens whenever they determine it serves the “national interest,” then many Americans may reasonably conclude that the institutions claiming to protect the public from biological threats have instead become some of the largest generators of those risks themselves.

At minimum, Congress has now placed into statute the proposition that the U.S. military should retain the authority to fund research designed to make potential pandemic pathogens more dangerous—provided the Secretary of Defense signs off on it and sends Congress a letter 30 days in advance.

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DARPA's 2018 'PREEMPT' Program Sought to Build the Wildlife Alibi for Future Pandemic Pathogens

Jon Fleetwood — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 17:44:09 GMT

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) launched a program in early 2018 called PREventing EMerging Pathogenic Threats (PREEMPT) whose stated goal was to identify and stop future pandemic threats before they entered the human population, according to program documents.

Unlike traditional outbreak investigations, which attempt to reconstruct the animal origins of purported pathogens after outbreaks occur, PREEMPT sought to “predict” those origins in advance.

In 2018.

The year before the COVID-19 pandemic started.

The year before we were told SARS-CoV-2 came from nature.

DARPA wanted researchers to identify which animals would harbor future threats, which mutations would enable species jumps, which locations would become outbreak hotspots, and under what ecological conditions future human pathogens would emerge from nature.

The agency described the effort as a “radical departure from current practice.”

“The PREEMPT program represents a radical departure from current practice, aiming to target viral biothreats within the animal reservoirs where they originate and preempt their entry into human populations before an outbreak occurs.”

In other words, DARPA was no longer interested merely in responding to purported pandemics after they appeared.

It wanted to predict and characterize them beforehand.

A Prempt Background Hr001118s0017 (1)

1.15MB ∙ PDF file

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Predicting the Spillover Story Before the Spillover

PREEMPT was not simply a wildlife surveillance program.

DARPA required researchers to build “predictive” models capable of estimating the alleged likelihood that a future human-capable pathogen would emerge from an animal reservoir in a geographic hotspot.

The models were expected to capture viral evolutionary trajectories, species-jump mutations, ecological drivers, transmission bottlenecks, and spillover probability.

Researchers were instructed to combine wildlife surveillance, environmental information, sequencing data, ecological variables, and socioeconomic information into continuously updated predictive systems capable of forecasting future emergence events.

DARPA further encouraged the use of “real-life ecosystems and natural hosts” to experimentally validate these predictions and improve future forecasting accuracy.

Historically, the wildlife origin story of a purported pathogen was reconstructed after the fact.

PREEMPT sought to predict that story beforehand.

From Genetic Alibi to Wildlife Alibi

The program appears to fit naturally alongside DARPA’s earlier PROPHECY effort.

As previously reported by this publication, DARPA’s 2010 PROPHECY program sought to predict the future evolution of viruses, identify important mutations before they emerged, and develop drugs and vaccines “in advance of need.”

If PROPHECY sought to build the genetic backstory of future pandemic pathogens, PREEMPT sought to build the wildlife backstory as well.

Put more bluntly:

PROPHECY sought to build the genetic alibi.

PREEMPT sought to build the wildlife alibi.

Then PREEMPT Produced DEFUSE

PREEMPT did not remain an abstract modeling exercise for long.

In March 2018, just months after DARPA launched PREEMPT, EcoHealth Alliance, Ralph Baric’s laboratory at the University of North Carolina, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and U.S. government collaborators submitted DEFUSE directly into the PREEMPT program itself.

Internal government records identify DEFUSE as a PREEMPT proposal and document U.S. Geological Survey participation in the effort.

The timing is difficult to ignore.

The same DARPA program that sought to “predict” the wildlife reservoirs, spillover pathways, and ecological origin stories of future human pathogens also produced a proposal that documented all three defining characteristics later associated with the purported COVID-19 pathogen:

a furin cleavage site insertion,
human-optimized receptor-binding domain residues,
and the two-proline spike stabilization strategy later incorporated into the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines.

DEFUSE remains the only known pre-pandemic proposal documenting all three characteristics together in a single document before the emergence of COVID-19.

In other words, the same DARPA research ecosystem that was building predictive wildlife origin stories for future pandemic pathogens was simultaneously documenting the precise molecular characteristics of the pathogen that would purportedly emerge from wildlife less a year later.

The Chronology

The sequence is remarkable.

2010: DARPA launches PROPHECY to “predict” the future evolution of viruses and develop countermeasures before they are needed.
January 2018: DARPA launches PREEMPT to predict the animal reservoirs, spillover pathways, and ecological origin stories of future human pathogens.
March 2018: DARPA receives DEFUSE, a proposal involving EcoHealth Alliance, Ralph Baric, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology that documents all three defining characteristics later associated with SARS-CoV-2.
Late 2019: The world is told that a novel coronavirus emerged from wildlife through a natural spillover event.

Viewed through my In Silico Theory of pandemic origins framework, the chronology appears less like a collection of unrelated biodefense projects and more like a complete explanatory architecture:

first the genetic backstory,
then the wildlife backstory,
followed by experimental validation,
and finally the pharmaceutical response infrastructure.

Bottom Line

The year before COVID-19, the United States military’s premier advanced research agency launched a program dedicated to predicting the animal reservoirs, spillover pathways, and ecological origin stories through which future human pathogens would purportedly emerge from nature.

Months later, a proposal submitted directly into that same DARPA program by EcoHealth Alliance, Ralph Baric, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology documented all three defining structural characteristics later associated with SARS-CoV-2.

Then COVID-19 happened.

And Ralph Baric became one of the most significant defenders of the wildlife-origin narrative in the United States.

Whether readers view PREEMPT as prudent biodefense planning, a predictive surveillance system, or something more consequential is ultimately up to them.

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DARPA's Pandemic Stack: Building the Pandemic Operating System Before COVID

Jon Fleetwood — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 18:55:22 GMT

Beginning in 2010, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) launched a succession of biodefense programs that, viewed together, appear to form the architecture of a complete pandemic operating system: predicting genomic threats, converting sequence information into pharmaceuticals, compressing response timelines, extending surveillance into animal populations, and preparing interventions before any declared outbreak began.

The programs were called PROPHECY, ADEPT, P3, and PREEMPT.

A fifth project, DEFUSE, was submitted under PREEMPT and proposed applying that architecture specifically to bat coronaviruses.

Operation Warp Speed later supplied the industrial-scale manufacturing and deployment layer.

The conventional explanation is that these projects represented prudent pandemic preparedness.

But under my In Silico Theory of pandemic origins, another possibility emerges:

The U.S. military appears to have spent a decade constructing the computer sequence-based predictive, surveillance, diagnostic, pharmaceutical, and deployment infrastructure capable of orchestrating pandemics.

Under this framework, the central object is not necessarily a conventionally demonstrated physical virus.

It is the digital (in silico) sequence architecture accepted as a virus, and the vast machinery capable of converting that architecture into PCR targets, purported cases, surveillance data, computational variants, pharmaceutical products, and emergency policy.

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PROPHECY (2010): Building the Predictive Layer

DARPA launched PROPHECY in September 2010, with the stated end goal of “developing drugs and vaccines in advance of need.”

The program sought the ability to “successfully predict the natural evolution of any virus” using platforms and algorithms capable of monitoring alleged rare genetic events and incorporating environmental pressures.

PROPHECY called for high-throughput biological systems that could generate data for predictive algorithms, correlate genotype with phenotype, track mutations and reassortments, and forecast future evolutionary trajectories.

Within the conventional framework, PROPHECY was intended to predict how physical viruses would evolve.

Under the In Silico Theory, however, PROPHECY can be understood as something more foundational: the construction of systems capable of defining and forecasting future genomic sequence space.

That matters because modern pandemic infrastructure operates through accepted sequence information.

PCR targets are selected from sequences.

Variants are computationally inferred from sequences.

Surveillance databases are organized around sequences.

Vaccines can be designed from sequences.

PROPHECY therefore appears to represent the first layer of the system: the capacity to generate, interpret, and predict the informational genetic architecture around which a future pandemic could be organized.

ADEPT (2011): Turning Sequence Information Into Countermeasures

DARPA followed PROPHECY with ADEPT.

ADEPT began investing in gene-encoded medical countermeasures, including DNA- and RNA-based technologies, around 2011 and 2012.

DARPA later credited ADEPT with helping establish the technological foundation for nucleic-acid vaccines and identified Moderna as one of the program’s contracted performers.

Under the conventional story, ADEPT helped the government respond more quickly to emerging infectious diseases.

Under the In Silico framework, ADEPT supplied the pharmaceutical layer necessary to convert accepted genetic information directly into products.

The importance of ADEPT is not simply that it supported vaccines.

It helped establish a system in which a digitally distributed sequence could become the design template for a pharmaceutical intervention without requiring the traditional production model built around growing and purifying an allegedly circulating pathogen.

If PROPHECY developed the ability to map and forecast sequence architectures, ADEPT developed the ability to manufacture solutions from those architectures.

The Gain-of-Function Pause Gap (2014–2017)

The chronology becomes more striking after ADEPT.

In 2014, the federal government paused funding for certain gain-of-function experiments involving influenza, SARS, and MERS.

That pause remained in effect until late 2017.

DARPA’s next major pandemic platform emerged during the period when the government was transitioning out of that pause.

The timing alone does not prove that the programs were designed to evade or replace the pause.

But the sequence deserves scrutiny.

The federal government temporarily restricted some forms of overt pathogen-enhancement research, while the military’s biodefense system increasingly emphasized predictive modeling, programmable countermeasures, rapid deployment, genomic surveillance, and intervention architecture.

P3 (2017): Compressing Sequence-to-Deployment Time

DARPA’s Pandemic Prevention Platform, known as P3, emerged in 2017.

DARPA described P3 as a follow-on to ADEPT and said the program aimed to identify an outbreak and develop and deploy protective countermeasures within approximately 60 days.

P3 was therefore not primarily a discovery program.

It was a speed program.

Its purpose was to collapse the time separating the recognition of a purported threat from the deployment of a medical product.

Within the In Silico Theory, P3 represents the compression layer:

How quickly can an accepted sequence architecture be converted into a deployable countermeasure?

That is a different question from whether a conventionally demonstrated physical virus has been independently verified.

P3 was explicitly meant to operate even when no real virus is ever provided, and “only electronic viral sequence information may be available.”

Once the genomic architecture is accepted, the system can move.

Diagnostic targets can be selected.

Surveillance can begin.

Candidate products can be designed.

Manufacturing can start.

Emergency authorities can be activated.

P3 was designed to shorten that entire sequence-to-intervention cycle.

PREEMPT (2018): Constructing the Animal-Origin Layer

DARPA launched PREEMPT in January 2018.

The program sought to identify allegedly “human-capable” viruses in animal reservoirs and intervene before their alleged spillover into humans.

PREEMPT required field sampling, next-generation sequencing, metagenomics, ecological surveillance, genotype-to-phenotype mapping, mutation identification, machine learning, and near-real-time data sharing.

The program specifically called for models that could capture:

viral evolutionary trajectories,
mutations allegedly governing species jumps,
genetic signatures of fitness,
and the probability that a purported animal virus could enter humans.

Under the official framework, PREEMPT was designed to stop zoonotic spillover.

Under the In Silico Theory, PREEMPT supplied something equally important: an animal-reservoir context into which future genomic architectures could be placed.

PROPHECY could forecast genetic trajectories.

PREEMPT could search animal populations for matching sequence fragments, construct evolutionary relationships, and generate a computational backstory connecting an accepted human sequence to a alleged wildlife origin.

This does not require claiming that PREEMPT fabricated any particular sequence.

The deeper concern is structural.

PREEMPT created an apparatus capable of turning animal sampling, sequencing, ecological data, and computational models into a purported natural-emergence narrative.

In that sense, PROPHECY and PREEMPT appear complementary.

PROPHECY developed the predictive genetic layer.

PREEMPT developed the field-surveillance and origin-narrative layer.

DEFUSE (2018): The PREEMPT Thread That Reached COVID

DEFUSE was not a standalone DARPA program.

It was an EcoHealth Alliance proposal submitted under PREEMPT in 2018.

The proposal sought more than $14 million for work involving EcoHealth Alliance, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Ralph Baric’s University of North Carolina team, Duke-NUS, the U.S. Geological Survey, and other partners.

DEFUSE proposed intensive bat sampling, spike sequencing, reverse engineering, receptor-binding experiments, chimeric coronavirus construction, humanized-mouse testing, machine-learning genotype-to-phenotype models, and interventions in bat populations.

Its importance under this theory is not that DEFUSE itself “caused COVID.”

That is too narrow.

DEFUSE matters because it is one granular endpoint of the PREEMPT infrastructure that later became tied to the most recent pandemic.

It shows how the broader DARPA system could be applied to a specific coronavirus narrative:

sample bats,
identify sequences,
model spillover,
engineer spikes,
test human-cell binding,
create predictive applications,
and intervene in animal reservoirs.

DEFUSE therefore provides a visible case study of what the PREEMPT architecture looked like when aimed directly at SARS-related coronaviruses shortly before COVID.

Under the In Silico Theory, DEFUSE is not the whole story.

It is one exposed strand of a much larger military biodefense yarn.

Operation Warp Speed (2020): The Industrial Deployment Layer

Operation Warp Speed launched in May 2020 as a partnership between the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Defense.

Its goal was to produce hundreds of millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses on a radically compressed timeline.

The federal government funded manufacturing while clinical trials were still underway, overlapped development stages that were traditionally sequential, and assumed enormous financial risks to place products into mass production before final authorization.

By the end of 2020, HHS and DOD had obligated approximately $13 billion toward vaccine development, manufacturing, and distribution.

Operation Warp Speed was not a DARPA program.

But it appears to have operationalized capabilities DARPA had spent years developing.

ADEPT helped establish programmable nucleic-acid platforms.

P3 sought a 60-day countermeasure timeline.

Operation Warp Speed then demonstrated how the federal government could move from accepted sequence architecture to mass-produced pharmaceutical intervention at national scale.

OWS was therefore not the beginning of the system.

It was the deployment event that revealed how mature the system had become.

The DARPA Pandemic Stack

Viewed together, the sequence is difficult to ignore:

Under the conventional interpretation, these are separate biodefense projects.

Under the In Silico Theory, they appear more like successive components of one vertically integrated system:

Predict the sequence.
Build the product platform.
Compress deployment time.
Construct the animal-origin framework.
Apply it to specific coronavirus architectures.
Deploy the countermeasure at population scale.

The Central Operational Object

The standard pandemic model begins with a pathogen.

The In Silico Theory begins with pre-accepted genomic information.

Under the standard model:

virus → illness → isolation → sequencing → diagnostics → vaccines

Under the In Silico model:

accepted sequence → PCR targets → purported cases → surveillance databases → computational variants → pharmaceutical design → emergency governance

The distinction is critical.

PCR does not independently establish the existence of a complete, intact, disease-causing virion in each person labeled a case.

It amplifies predefined sequence targets selected from an accepted genomic reference.

Variants are not physical objects independently pulled from every patient.

They are computational classifications produced by comparing sequence data against accepted references.

The vaccines themselves were designed around accepted spike-sequence architecture.

The sequence did not merely describe the pandemic.

It powered the infrastructure that made the pandemic operational.

COVID May Have Been One Deployment, Not the Final Objective

The narrowest interpretation of these programs is that DARPA anticipated a future pandemic and prepared for it.

The more troubling hypothesis is that DARPA helped create a reusable system capable of producing the informational, diagnostic, pharmaceutical, and governmental conditions necessary to orchestrate pandemics.

Under that theory, COVID was not the sole objective of the architecture.

It was one deployment of it.

The same infrastructure could theoretically be reused:

a new genomic reference is published,
PCR targets are distributed,
purported cases begin accumulating,
surveillance systems identify computational variants,
emergency models forecast catastrophe,
pharmaceuticals are rapidly designed,
and governments deploy countermeasures through preexisting emergency authorities.

The organism named in the next emergency could change.

The operating system would remain largely the same.

Bottom Line

PROPHECY, ADEPT, P3, PREEMPT, and DEFUSE should not be examined merely as isolated government research projects.

Together, they appear to form successive layers of a DARPA-built pandemic architecture capable of predicting genomic narratives, generating surveillance targets, constructing animal-origin frameworks, designing sequence-based pharmaceuticals, and compressing their deployment into emergency timelines.

Operation Warp Speed then demonstrated how that architecture could be activated at industrial scale.

The central question is therefore no longer limited to where SARS-CoV-2 supposedly came from.

It is whether the U.S. military spent a decade building an infrastructure capable of orchestrating pandemics—and whether COVID was only one operation conducted through that system.

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DARPA Project ‘PROPHECY’ Reengineered Vaccine Development by Building Future Pathogen Blueprints First and Systems to ‘Validate’ Them Later

Jon Fleetwood — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 21:08:52 GMT

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) spent the early 2010s constructing what may have been the most ambitious predictive vaccine-development infrastructure ever attempted: a sprawling, multi-institution effort designed to determine the future characteristics of purported pathogens before they emerged and ultimately use those predictions to develop drugs and vaccines before they were needed.

The program, known as PROPHECY—short for Pathogen Defeat—was announced in 2010 under Broad Agency Announcement DARPA-BAA-10-93 and was managed by DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office.

DARPA itself described the vaccine-centric purpose of the program unambiguously.

According to the agency:

“The Prophecy (Pathogen Defeat) program will explore the evolution of viruses in the hopes of predicting viral mutations and ultimately developing drugs and vaccines in advance of need.”

The effort was not limited to coronaviruses, influenza, or any other single disease category.

DARPA repeatedly stated that the goal was understanding:

“the natural evolution of any virus.”

The result was a massive architecture that brought together machine learning researchers, statisticians, bioinformaticians, computational biologists, laboratory scientists, surveillance specialists, universities, contractors, and national laboratories into a single “predictive” framework.

Yesterday, this website reported that DARPA’s PROPHECY program expanded into the laboratory of coronavirus researcher Ralph Baric years before the COVID-19 pandemic and nearly a decade before the DARPA/DEFUSE proposal documented all three defining structural features of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein prior to the outbreak.

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DARPA Wanted to Turn Vaccine Development from Reactive to Predictive

DARPA openly believed that existing vaccine development operated backwards.

The agency described the modern pharmaceutical model as:

“observational and reactive.”

PROPHECY was intended to replace that model with one that was:

“predictive and preemptive.”

Rather than waiting for future purported disease threats to appear before beginning the process of characterization and countermeasure development, DARPA sought systems capable of determining the characteristics of future pathogen populations in advance.

Everything in PROPHECY flowed from that objective.

Building the Blueprint Before the Pathogen

DARPA’s ambitions extended far beyond outbreak forecasting.

The agency stated:

“DARPA seeks to achieve the ability to successfully predict the natural evolution of any virus, via platforms and algorithms which are capable of monitoring rare advantageous viral events...”

The program sought systems capable of determining:

future mutations,
future reassortments,
future genetic events,
the order in which mutations would emerge,
genotype-to-phenotype relationships,
and ultimately the characteristics of future pathogen populations.

DARPA acknowledged:

“there is at present no reliable capability to predict viral reassortment or mutations responsible for the emergence of new viral strains.”

Its proposed solution was:

“An investigative platform to predict mutations and possibly reassortments in advance of their occurrence.”

The agency further explained that PROPHECY sought:

“predictive algorithms of viral evolution that are informed and validated experimentally using high throughput biological platforms...”

and:

“the integration of a viral evolution platform with an algorithm that predicts mutations which confer an evolutionary advantage to the viral population.”

Among the formal requirements of the program was the ability to:

“reproducibly predict the genomic, proteomic, and/or functional attributes of the final viral population.”

DARPA also sought to determine:

“the rate and order of mutation acquisition”

as well as:

“the correlation of genotype to phenotype.”

The objective was not merely individual mutations.

It was the endpoint population itself.

Prediction Was Only the First Layer

PROPHECY was never designed to stop at prediction.

DARPA required participants to construct what it called:

“biological validation systems”

and repeatedly emphasized:

“testing and validation of the system and algorithm.”

The BAA instructed performers to:

“Perform a ‘real world’ test of the predictive algorithm and biological validation system...”

The purpose of that exercise was to determine whether researchers could:

“reproducibly predict the genomic, proteomic, and/or functional attributes of the ending viral population.”

DARPA further instructed participants to:

“develop a research strategy and solicit collaborations from partners”

that would assist in:

“applying their predictive methodology to surveillance data from the real world.”

The architecture described by PROPHECY therefore extended beyond prediction alone.

The program sought to construct systems capable not only of generating future pathogen blueprints, but also of attempting to validate those predictions experimentally and through subsequent observational frameworks.

Bottom Line

Amid COVID-19 debates, public attention has focused on later programs such as DEFUSE, ADEPT, pandemic mRNA platforms, and Operation Warp Speed.

But PROPHECY confirms that by 2010, DARPA was openly attempting to build a generalized predictive infrastructure capable of deciding the future characteristics of purported pathogens, using those predictions to enable drugs and vaccines in advance, and constructing systems intended to validate those predictions experimentally and through later observational frameworks.

Most importantly, the effort was never intended for a single disease.

PROPHECY sought to build this capability for:

“any virus.”

Whether viewed as predictive biodefense, anticipatory genomics, preemptive countermeasure development, or something else, the architecture described by DARPA followed a remarkably consistent sequence:

vaccines as the objective;
future pathogen blueprints as the enabling technology;
“validation” systems as the final layer.

That architecture may ultimately prove to be one of the most consequential and least understood developments in the history of modern biodefense research.

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DARPA's 2010 Operation 'PROPHECY' Funded Ralph Baric's UNC Network to Generate the Genetic Blueprint of Future Pandemic Coronaviruses

Jon Fleetwood — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 18:44:58 GMT

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) launched a little-known program in 2010 with the stated aim of determining the future genetic makeup of viruses before they emerged, including the mutations, genomic attributes, and evolutionary pathways of viral populations that did not yet exist, according to government documents and records from a DARPA-funded coronavirus project operating within the laboratory of University of North Carolina coronavirus researcher Ralph Baric.

The newly resurfaced DARPA program, known as PROPHECY, was announced in September 2010 under Broad Agency Announcement DARPA-BAA-10-93 and was managed by DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office.

PROPHECY confirms the U.S. military was developing the genetic backstory of pandemic coronaviruses nearly a decade before the emergence of SARS-CoV-2.

The discovery pushes DARPA’s documented involvement in predictive coronavirus genomics back to 2010, eight years before the DARPA/DEFUSE proposal involving Ralph Baric, EcoHealth Alliance, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology documented all three defining structural features of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein before the pandemic.

The Baric connection is particularly notable because his laboratory had already spent years building the technological foundation for digitally designed and genetically seamless coronaviruses, including synthetic “scapegoat” viruses carrying false origin fingerprints and computer-designed coronaviruses assembled without detectable engineering scars.

Baa+darpa Baa 10 93 (1)

365KB ∙ PDF file

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DARPA Wanted to Determine What ‘Future’ Viruses Looked Like Before They Existed

DARPA’s objective was unusually explicit.

“DARPA seeks to achieve the ability to successfully predict the natural evolution of any virus.”

But the technical requirements reveal that the agency’s ambitions extended well beyond simply forecasting outbreaks or identifying dangerous viral families.

DARPA wanted systems capable of determining:

future mutations,
future reassortments,
future genetic events,
the order in which mutations would emerge,
genotype-to-phenotype relationships,
and ultimately the genomic characteristics of future viral populations.

The agency acknowledged that:

“there is at present no reliable capability to predict viral reassortment or mutations responsible for the emergence of new viral strains.”

The solution, according to DARPA, was:

“An investigative platform to predict mutations and possibly reassortments in advance of their occurrence.”

Determining the Genetic Blueprint of Future Viral Populations

The program repeatedly returned to a single concept: determining the future genetic composition of viruses before those populations emerged.

DARPA instructed performers to develop:

“predictive algorithms of viral evolution that are informed and validated experimentally using high throughput biological platforms.”

The agency further stated:

“This objective will likely be achieved through the integration of a viral evolution platform with an algorithm that predicts mutations which confer an evolutionary advantage to the viral population.”

Among the program’s formal requirements was the ability to:

“reproducibly predict the genomic, proteomic, and/or functional attributes of the final viral population.”

DARPA further required researchers to:

“Develop algorithms that can significantly improve the level of confidence for prediction of all relevant genetic events that occur during viral evolution.”

The agency sought to identify:

“the rate and order of mutation acquisition”

as well as:

“the correlation of genotype to phenotype.”

The documents therefore describe a program intended to construct the genetic description of evolving viral populations before the physical biology arrived.

DARPA Wanted Biological Validation, Not Just Computer Models

PROPHECY was not designed as a purely computational exercise.

DARPA required performers to build what it called:

“a closed viral evolution platform”

capable of reproducing:

“natural virus-host interactions.”

The agency wanted researchers to expose purported viruses to selective pressures, observe the resulting evolutionary trajectories, and compare the actual genetic outcomes to the predicted ones.

The program required:

“accurate analysis of all relevant genetic events resulting in a change of virus phenotype within the viral evolution platform.”

DARPA envisioned continuous sequencing and algorithm refinement, including data:

“possibly feeding back into the algorithm in real time.”

The Ralph Baric Coronavirus Connection

Evidence that PROPHECY expanded into coronavirus-specific work emerged through the curriculum vitae (archive) of University of North Carolina coronavirus researcher Eric Donaldson.

710272645 Cv1 (1)

37.6KB ∙ PDF file

Donaldson identified himself as:

“Team leader of Sequencing Team for DARPA Prophecy Grant.”

The project involved twelve principal investigators and a $1.76 million DARPA award running from April 2011 through March 2014.

Its title was:

“Studies of Coronavirus Evolution from the Molecular, Atomic and Computational Perspective.”

The project proposed:

“characterize the coronavirus quasispecies using next generation sequencing”

before exposing those populations to:

“various selective pressures including monoclonal antibody neutralization and orthologous receptor switching.”

Researchers would then determine:

“which viral spike gene genotypes give rise to novel phenotypes.”

The project’s ultimate objective mirrored DARPA’s broader ambitions:

“The ultimate goal of this high-risk grant is to provide an algorithm for predicting routes of coronavirus evolution in the future.”

The Work Took Place Inside Baric’s Laboratory

Donaldson’s CV states that he was employed:

“working in the lab of Dr. Ralph Baric.”

The same document states he was simultaneously:

“working with Dr. Baric to resurrect bat coronaviruses to determine the cross species transmission potential of a variety of novel coronaviruses identified in bats.”

Elsewhere in the CV, Donaldson described plans to:

“synthetically resurrect these coronaviruses using in silico biology”

and then:

“assess the ability of these viruses to emerge into the human host.”

The DARPA-funded sequencing effort therefore operated not merely in Baric’s orbit, but inside the Baric laboratory itself.

The ‘Real World’ Test

The final phase of PROPHECY moved beyond prediction and into validation.

DARPA required:

“Perform a ‘real world’ test of the predictive algorithm and biological validation system.”

The objective of that exercise was to determine whether researchers could:

“reproducibly predict the genomic, proteomic, and/or functional attributes of the ending viral population.”

DARPA further specified that:

“This system will be tested multiple times with each starting population to demonstrate reproducibility.”

Bottom Line

For years, public attention has focused on later coronavirus programs such as DEFUSE, pandemic mRNA platforms, and Operation Warp Speed.

The newly surfaced PROPHECY documents point to an earlier chapter.

By 2010, DARPA was openly seeking systems capable of determining the genetic composition of purported viral populations before they emerged, identifying their mutations, calculating the order in which those mutations would appear, and experimentally validating those forecasts.

By 2011, one of those efforts was operating inside Ralph Baric’s laboratory at Chapel Hill.

The obvious question is not whether the U.S. military was interested in future pandemic coronavirus genomes.

The documents show that it was—and the next known chapter is DEFUSE, where Baric, EcoHealth Alliance, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology documented all three defining spike features that would later appear at the center of the SARS-CoV-2 mystery before the pandemic began.

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Healthy Man Dies of Toxic Shock After Taking Moderna's New Pandemic Bird Flu mRNA-1018 Vaccine: Journal 'Clinical Infectious Diseases'

Jon Fleetwood — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 16:52:31 GMT

A healthy 74-year-old man died from toxic shock syndrome during Moderna’s Phase 1/2 clinical trial of its experimental mRNA-1018 pandemic influenza vaccine, according to a study published in April in Clinical Infectious Diseases by scientists from Moderna and collaborating institutions.

The Moderna and collaborating scientists claim the death was unrelated to the Moderna shot, but without explaining how that determination was made.

The findings come as Moderna advances its mRNA-1018 pandemic bird flu vaccine with up to $54.3 million in support from the Bill Gates-backed Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services terminated its previous funding for the program.

A January 2023 Nature Reviews Drug Discovery paper co-authored by Moderna scientists bluntly admits that avoiding “unacceptable toxicity” in mRNA vaccines remains a major challenge, warning that “lipid nanoparticle structural components, production methods, route of administration and proteins produced from complexed mRNAs all present toxicity concerns” and that the way these vaccines spread through the body can cause harm due to “cell tropism and tissue distribution… and their possible reactogenicity.”

Moderna submitted data in November 2017 proving their mRNA vaccine lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) accumulate in mammalian liver, spleen, plasma (blood), kidneys, heart, and lungs.

Toxic shock syndrome is typically attributed to toxins produced by certain bacterial infections, but the paper provides too little clinical information to independently assess whether another mechanism, like LNPs or vaccine-induced immune system damage, may have contributed to the participant’s death.

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The trial evaluated five experimental mRNA vaccine candidates collectively known as mRNA-1018, which were intended to protect against influenza A viruses considered to have pandemic potential, including H5N1, H5N8, and H7N9.

The study enrolled only healthy adults at sites across the United States and United Kingdom, with participants receiving two injections administered 21 days apart.

“Eligible participants were healthy adults ≥ 18 years,” the paper confirms.

In fact, according to the supplementary data, participants were required to be healthy based on their medical history, physical examination, laboratory testing, and electrocardiogram results, while individuals with unstable medical conditions, immunodeficiency, immune-mediated disease, or significant laboratory abnormalities were excluded from enrollment.

The vaccines are said to consist of messenger RNA packaged inside lipid nanoparticles that encode influenza surface proteins.

The drugs were manufactured using the same mRNA platform Moderna uses for its licensed products, like its COVID-19 shot.

The study reports the death:

“One death (due to toxic shock syndrome), assessed as not related to the study vaccine, was reported on day 139 for a 74-year-old male who had received two 50 µg doses of H7-only,” the authors wrote.

The publication offers no further narrative describing the fatal case.

It does not identify the bacterial organism responsible for the toxic shock syndrome, disclose whether the participant had developed a preceding infection, report hospitalization details, discuss laboratory findings, provide autopsy information, or explain the methodology investigators used to conclude that the death was unrelated to vaccination.

The absence of those details leaves readers unable to independently evaluate the fatal event or the investigators’ causality assessment.

Because the participant entered the trial as a healthy adult, the paper raises questions it does not answer about whether the fatal illness was entirely unrelated to vaccination or whether the vaccine may have contributed through an unidentified biological mechanism.

The publication does not investigate whether vaccine components themselves, expression of the encoded influenza proteins, immune system damage, or another pathway played any role in the participant’s inability to survive the illness.

Instead, it simply reports the investigators’ conclusion that the death was unrelated to the study vaccine.

Beyond the fatality, investigators reported additional serious adverse events during the study.

The paper states that 24 participants in Part A and four participants in Part B experienced serious adverse events.

One serious adverse event, syncope (fainting), was considered related to vaccination.

Investigators also identified two vaccine-related cases of thrombocytopenia (abnormally low number of platelets called thrombocytes in the blood) and one vaccine-related case of acute thyroiditis (inflammation of the thyroid gland) that resulted in a participant discontinuing the study.

Most participants also experienced short-term reactions following vaccination.

Across the various vaccine candidates and dose levels, solicited local reactions—including injection-site pain—occurred in approximately 70% to more than 90% of participants, while systemic reactions such as fatigue and headache occurred in more than half.

Higher doses generally produced higher rates of adverse reactions.

Bottom Line

Moderna’s own study reports that a healthy participant died from toxic shock syndrome after receiving its experimental pandemic bird flu mRNA-1018 vaccine, yet the fatality is summarized in a single sentence before investigators declare it unrelated to vaccination.

That omission matters even more because Moderna scientists have separately acknowledged that mRNA vaccines face potential “unacceptable toxicity” concerns involving lipid nanoparticles and the proteins produced by the injected mRNA, while Moderna’s own data showed its LNPs can accumulate in mammalian organs.

Without the clinical evidence behind the death investigation, readers are left unable to evaluate whether the fatal event was truly unrelated—or whether the vaccine contributed through a mechanism the paper never examines.

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WHO Predicts 'Another Pandemic Within the Coming Decade' While Installing PABS System for Exporting 'Dangerous Pathogens' All Over the World

Jon Fleetwood — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 18:14:10 GMT

The World Health Organization (WHO) is demanding that governments complete negotiations on a permanent international system for transporting purported pathogens with pandemic potential and their proxies across the world, while simultaneously claiming that another pandemic is likely within the coming decade.

The proposal raises biosafety, international security, and national sovereignty questions about whether an unelected international organization should coordinate a permanent system for the cross-border movement of pathogens with pandemic potential and related biological materials and data.

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The push comes as delegates from WHO Member States meet in Geneva from July 6 through July 17 to negotiate the final operational rules for the Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing (PABS) System, the last major component needed before the WHO Pandemic Agreement can enter into force.

In an open letter to leaders of the G7, G20, BRICS and “all nations,” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva insisted that heads of government intervene personally to ensure the negotiations are completed this month.

“The next pandemic will not wait for us,” the letter states. “Scientists estimate there is close to a one in four chance of another pandemic within the coming decade, and the ground beneath our old assumptions is shifting.”

The WHO is asking governments to treat the negotiations with urgency.

“So we ask you to treat 17 July as a deadline, not a milestone,” the letter states, urging leaders to send “the unambiguous signal that this is the round in which the work is finished.”

At the center of those negotiations is Article 12 of the WHO Pandemic Agreement, which establishes the WHO Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing (PABS) System, with negotiators drafting “legally binding contracts to be negotiated and signed with WHO.”

The treaty states that the Parties:

“hereby establish a multilateral system for safe, transparent, and accountable access and benefit-sharing for PABS Materials and Sequence Information, the ‘WHO Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing System’.”

Rather than limiting the system to genetic sequence data, the treaty repeatedly refers to both “materials and sequence information on pathogens with pandemic potential.”

The WHO’s public appeal likewise describes the system as involving more than digital genetic information.

According to the letter:

“To respond to future pandemics in time, countries must be able to quickly identify pathogens with pandemic potential and share their genetic information and material so scientists can develop tools: the tests, the treatments, the vaccines that decide who lives and who does not.”

Elsewhere, the WHO describes the purpose of the PABS system even more directly.

“The PABS system rests on a simple, fair bargain,” the letter states. “Those who share dangerous pathogens quickly must be able to trust that the vaccines and treatments born from that sharing will reach their own people too.”

The letter argues that the framework replaces what it describes as an ad hoc approach to pathogen access.

“Today the rules for accessing a pathogen and sharing what flows from it are improvised case by case, often mid-crisis. PABS replaces that with a single framework known in advance, stable rules that let laboratories and partners across the world move at the speed an outbreak demands.”

Article 12 similarly states that the PABS Instrument must contain provisions governing:

“the rapid and timely sharing of PABS Materials and Sequence Information” together with the sharing of benefits arising from their use.

PABS will contain provisions regarding:

“implementation consistent with applicable international law and with applicable national and/or domestic law, regulations and standards related to risk assessment, biosafety, biosecurity and export control of pathogens.”

Those provisions raise broader questions about how an international pathogen-sharing system will function once the operational annex is finalized, including which pathogen materials will be exchanged, who will receive them, what laboratories will qualify to participate, and what oversight mechanisms will govern international transfers.

The WHO itself acknowledges in the same letter that:

“Advances in biotechnology, matched unevenly by biosafety, raise the risk of accidental or deliberate release.”

Despite that acknowledgment, the organization argues that completing the PABS annex is essential.

“Until it is finished, the Agreement cannot enter into force,” the letter states. “The promise stays unkept.”

The WHO’s latest push also comes as the organization continues to face criticism over its handling of COVID-19.

In its final report, the U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic concluded:

“The WHO’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic was an abject failure because it caved to pressure from the Chinese Communist Party and placed China’s political interests ahead of its international duties. The WHO’s newest effort to solve the problems exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic—via a ‘Pandemic Treaty’—may harm the United States.”

Bottom Line

The WHO is urging governments to rapidly complete a permanent international framework for dispersing purported pathogens with pandemic potential, their biological materials, and associated sequence information worldwide, while warning that another pandemic is likely within the next decade.

The proposal raises broader biosafety and international security questions about whether expanding the international movement of such pathogens with pandemic potential or their proxies could also increase opportunities for accidental release, diversion, theft, misuse, or fraud.

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HHS, Gates Foundation Fund U.S.-Wuhan Team to Engineer Virus Designed to Edit Human DNA: Journal 'Molecular Therapy'

Jon Fleetwood — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 15:58:59 GMT

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation helped fund a U.S.-Wuhan research team that engineered an adenovirus designed to deliver DNA-editing machinery into human blood-forming stem cells, according to a study published July 1 in Molecular Therapy.

The stated purpose of the study was to genetically engineer human stem cells to resist HIV infection.

But the experiments raise broader questions about the risks of funding purported viral systems designed to permanently alter the human body.

The research was funded by multiple National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants under HHS, grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and support from biotechnology company Ensoma Bio.

The author affiliations include the University of Washington, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, and the State Key Laboratory of Virology and Biosafety at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The study acknowledges support from NIH grants R01HL128288, R01AI174304, K08AI183990, and R01HL141781, along with grants INV-017692 and INV-038139 from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Additional support came from China’s Prevention and Control of Emerging and Major Infectious Diseases–National Science and Technology Major Project and Ensoma Bio.

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According to the paper, the researchers claim to have engineered modified helper-dependent adenoviral (HDAd) vectors to carry CRISPR-derived base editors programmed to alter the human CCR5 gene.

Rather than editing cells outside the body before transplanting them back into a patient, the researchers say they designed the adenovirus to deliver the gene-editing machinery directly into blood-forming stem cells inside a living subject.

Hematopoietic stem cells continually produce new blood and immune cells throughout a person’s life.

By altering the DNA of those stem cells, the researchers say they sought to create a continuing supply of immune cells lacking a functional CCR5 receptor, which HIV is said to commonly use to infect cells.

The study claims that the engineered adenovirus produced “near-complete target site editing” in an HIV-permissive cell line.

The researchers also reported efficient editing in human CD34+ blood-forming stem cells obtained from mobilized donors and umbilical cord blood.

The experiments extended beyond laboratory cell cultures.

Researchers injected the engineered adenoviral vector into humanized mice, enriched the purportedly genetically modified cells, and then exposed the animals to HIV.

According to the paper, approximately 50% of the targeted CCR5 sites were edited in bone marrow cells, and the treated animals had roughly 12-fold lower HIV plasma titers than untreated controls following HIV challenge.

The paper describes the work as part of a broader effort to move human gene editing from ex vivo procedures—where cells are removed, genetically modified, and reinfused—to in vivo editing performed directly inside the body using purported viral delivery systems.

The researchers write that helper-dependent adenoviral vectors can carry large genetic payloads, be manufactured at relatively low cost, and be adapted to deliver different genome-editing systems into hematopoietic stem cells

Bottom Line

American taxpayer dollars and Gates Foundation funding helped finance a U.S.-Wuhan collaboration that engineered a virus to carry purportedly human DNA-editing machinery into living cells.

The study illustrates continued government investment in purported viral delivery systems designed to make permanent changes inside the body.

You can contact NIAID here, NIH here, and HHS here to voice opposition to taxpayer-funded research on pathogens—particularly after Congress, the White House, the Department of Energy, the FBI, the CIA, and Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) all acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic was “likely” the result of a laboratory incident involving engineered pathogens.

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HHS Funds Experiments Determining How to Make H5 Influenza More Pathogenic: Journal 'Science'

Jon Fleetwood — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 17:55:05 GMT

Scientists funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) say they have identified the molecular mechanism that allows low-pathogenic H5 avian influenza to acquire the defining genetic feature of highly pathogenic bird flu, according to a study published March 12 in Science.

Pathogenicity is the ability of a microorganism or agent to cause disease in a host.

Americans are paying for experiments that determine the molecular steps said to make H5 influenza more dangerous.

The study was carried out by Dr. Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Center—best known for his controversial H5N1 bird flu gain-of-function experiments—along with researchers from Erasmus Medical Center, EMBL Grenoble, University Grenoble Alpes, Leiden University, and Princeton University.

The controversial experiments come as Congress asks for $3.3 billion for a future influenza pandemic, including the construction of new influenza vaccine manufacturing facilities, in a newly introduced House bill.

They also come as the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) clears the way for approval of Moderna’s new mRNA influenza vaccine, despite the shot claiming to offer less than 1% absolute benefit.

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The study centered on the multibasic cleavage site (MBCS), which the authors describe as the genetic basis for the transition from low-pathogenic avian influenza viruses (LPAIVs) to highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses (HPAIVs).

To determine that mechanism, the researchers claim to have engineered influenza RNA sequences and structures and measured how frequently the virus acquired the nucleotide insertions that generate the multibasic cleavage site.

According to the paper:

“We show that transient H5 RNA structures, predicted to trap the influenza virus polymerase on purine-rich sequences, drive nucleotide insertions.”

The researchers then say they experimentally altered those RNA structures.

When they disrupted the structures, the frequency of pathogenicity-generating insertion events fell sharply.

When they strengthened them, the insertion events increased dramatically.

In one engineered construct, heteropolymer insertion frequencies increased approximately eightfold over the parental construct.

Meaning the engineered virus was said to have become about eight times more likely to acquire the genetic change that turns low-pathogenic H5 influenza into highly pathogenic bird flu.

The scientists also transferred H5 RNA features into H6 influenza, creating chimeric “Frankenstein” genetic hybrids.

According to the paper:

“Introduction of H5-like sequences and structures into an H6 hemagglutinin resulted in MBCS-yielding insertions.”

The study further reported that the insertions generated by the engineered system produced multibasic cleavage site sequences that were “similar or identical” to those observed in naturally emerging highly pathogenic H5 influenza viruses.

The authors concluded they had identified the mechanism responsible for generating the multibasic cleavage site.

They wrote:

“We show that the trapping of the influenza virus RdRp on A/U-rich sequences by transient RNA structures formed by the template is the mechanism by which nucleotide insertions occur at the H5 cleavage site.”

You can contact NIAID here, NIH here, and HHS here to voice opposition to taxpayer-funded research on pandemic pathogens—particularly after Congress, the White House, the Department of Energy, the FBI, the CIA, and Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) all acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic was “likely” the result of a laboratory incident involving engineered pathogens.

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HHS Secretary Kennedy Begins Year-Long Wind-Down of COVID-19 Emergency Use Authorization Declarations

Jon Fleetwood — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 17:05:47 GMT

Today, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has “signed determinations terminating the COVID-19 Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) declarations for drugs and biological products and for medical devices, concluding that the circumstances that justified these emergency authorities no longer exist,” according to an agency press release.

“Americans deserve a regulatory system that is transparent, accountable, and rooted in the rule of law,” said Secretary Kennedy. “By ending these COVID-19 emergency use authorization declarations, we’re reinforcing public confidence that emergency authorities are temporary and targeted.”

While Kennedy’s signature is welcomed by many, his “temporary” characterization is undermined by the fact that the COVID EUA authority has lasted for more than six years.

Moreover, as of June 30, 2026, no major COVID-19 vaccines remain under EUA (they are now FDA-approved or revoked), with only a few niche therapeutics like Pemgarda and Gohibic plus many diagnostic tests still authorized under the declarations that are now being terminated.

Questions arise about whether the termination is more symbolic than substantive.

The move comes as HHS awards Pfizer $1.2 billion and Moderna $314 million for more COVID vaccines, both unaffected by Kennedy’s signature because they both already have full FDA approval.

Moreover, the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) has cleared the way for Moderna’s experimental mRNA influenza vaccine, mFlusiva (mRNA-1010).

As the government orchestrates a future influenza pandemic, questions arise as to whether the termination of the COVID-19 EUA declarations represents a genuine departure from emergency-driven policymaking, or simply a reorientation of the same accelerated approval pathways, mRNA platforms, and substantial federal contracts toward new targets.

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Termination Not Immediate

The EUA declaration terminations do not go into effect immediately.

Per the release:

“The terminations will take effect following advance notice periods to ensure an orderly transition. The declaration for drugs and biological products will terminate 12 months after the Secretary’s determination, while the declarations for medical devices will terminate 180 days after the Secretary’s determination.”
…
“The advance notice periods are designed to provide manufacturers, healthcare providers, health systems, distributors, and patients adequate time to transition away from products authorized solely under the COVID-19 EUA declarations. During this transition, HHS and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will continue working with manufacturers on appropriate regulatory pathways for products seeking traditional approval, clearance, or licensure.”
“HHS will publish notices of the terminations in the Federal Register and provide the notifications required by law to Congress.”

Bottom Line

Secretary Kennedy’s announcement marks the formal end of one of the longest-running emergency regulatory frameworks in U.S. history.

But after more than six years of emergency powers, billions of taxpayer dollars, and the transition of the government’s flagship COVID-19 vaccines from emergency authorization to full FDA approval, the practical impact appears limited.

The federal government is still spending more than $1.5 billion on new COVID-19 vaccines, while simultaneously advancing a new generation of mRNA influenza vaccines and expanding pandemic preparedness programs.

That raises a straightforward question: Has the emergency era actually ended, or has the infrastructure built during COVID simply been redirected toward the next declared public health emergency?

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Congress Wants $3.3 Billion for Future Influenza Pandemic, Vaccines, Other Medical Countermeasures: H.R. 9260

Jon Fleetwood — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 20:40:35 GMT

The U.S. House of Representatives has advanced legislation proposing more than $3.3 billion for federal medical countermeasure programs, including nearly $313 million specifically earmarked for a future influenza pandemic, according to the bill’s text.

H.R. 9260, introduced by Representative Robert B. Aderholt (R-AL), is titled the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2027 and would fund the federal government’s labor, health, education, and related agency programs for fiscal year 2027.

The request for billions of taxpayer dollars to develop drugs Americans could be forced to take during a future government-declared emergency comes as the U.S. military and National Institutes of Health bankroll gain-of-function experiments on influenza pathogens, the kind of experiments said to have led to the COVID-19 pandemic.

It also comes as the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) clears the way for approval of Moderna’s new mRNA influenza vaccine, despite the shot claiming to offer less than 1% absolute benefit.

You can find your representative here and let them know how you believe they should vote on H.R. 9260.

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The new funding request appears in the appropriations for the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) under the heading “Research, Development, and Procurement.”

The legislation appropriates:

“For carrying out title III and subtitles A and B of title XXVIII of the PHS Act, with respect to the research, development, storage, production, and procurement of medical countermeasures to counter potential chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear threats to civilian populations, $3,312,991,000.”

The bill then divides that total into several categories.

It allocates:

“(1) $1,060,000,000, to remain available through September 30, 2028, shall be for expenses necessary to support advanced research and development... and other administrative expenses of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority;”

It also provides:

“(2) $880,000,000, to remain available until expended, shall be for expenses necessary for procuring security countermeasures...”

Another section appropriates:

“(3) $1,060,000,000, to remain available until expended, shall be for expenses necessary to carry out section 319F-2(a) of the PHS Act.”

$313 Million Dedicated to Future Influenza Pandemic Drugs & Construction of Influenza Vaccine Manufacturing Facilities

The bill separately appropriates funding specifically tied to an influenza pandemic.

It states:

“(4) $312,991,000 shall be for expenses necessary to prepare for or respond to an influenza pandemic, of which $285,000,000 shall remain available until expended for activities including the development and purchase of vaccines, antivirals, necessary medical supplies, diagnostics, and surveillance tools.”

The legislation further authorizes part of those funds to support private-sector manufacturing capacity if deemed necessary by the Department of Health and Human Services.

The bill states:

“funds allocated under this paragraph may be used for the construction or renovation of privately owned facilities for the production of pandemic influenza vaccines and other biologics, if the Secretary finds such construction or renovation necessary to secure sufficient supplies of such vaccines or biologics.”

The legislation also provides that:

“products purchased with funds made available under this heading may, at the discretion of the Secretary, be deposited in the Strategic National Stockpile pursuant to section 319F-2 of the PHS Act.”

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HHS Awards Moderna $314 Million for Adult and Pediatric COVID-19 Vaccines: SAM.gov

Jon Fleetwood — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 16:18:47 GMT

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has awarded Moderna more than $314.2 million in contracts for adult and pediatric COVID-19 vaccines for fiscal years 2026 and 2027, according to federal procurement records published this month.

The awards were issued June 1 through the CDC Office of Acquisition Services.

The pediatric vaccine contract, identified as award number 75D30126D21000, carries a total value of $285,044,250.

The adult vaccine contract, identified as award number 75D30126D21003, carries a total value of $29,183,000.

Combined, the two awards total $314,227,250.

Both awards issued to Moderna were published on SAM.gov on June 3.

You can contact HHS here and CDC here.

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The pediatric contract exceeds the adult contract by nearly $256 million, with the pediatric award amounting to almost 10 times the value of the adult contract.

The procurement records provide virtually no explanation for the spending.

The contract descriptions are blank.

No information is provided regarding projected dose quantities, expected demand, effectiveness data, safety considerations, or the rationale for allocating more than $314 million in taxpayer funds toward COVID-19 vaccine purchases over the next two fiscal years.

The awards also indicate that federal COVID-19 vaccine procurement remains an ongoing government priority years after officials declared the emergency phase of the pandemic over and repeatedly characterized COVID-19 as an endemic respiratory virus.

Americans Increasingly Reject COVID Vaccines

The award comes as federal health agencies continue promoting updated COVID-19 vaccines despite declining uptake among the general public and ongoing debate over the risk-benefit profile of repeated vaccination, particularly for healthy children.

Only 9% of children are reported by the CDC to be up to date with the 2025─26 COVID-19 vaccine, emphasizing the low demand among the young demographic.

Just 3.0% of parents say they even plan to vaccinate their child.

The same report shows only 17% of adults received the 2025─26 COVID-19 vaccine.

Rasmussen polling shows more than half of voters think COVID-19 vaccines “may have killed many people.”

The survey found that 56% of likely U.S. voters consider it likely that side effects of COVID-19 vaccines have caused a significant number of unexplained deaths, including 32% who believe it’s very likely.

COVID vaccines alone have been linked to 1.6 million adverse events, according to CDC VAERS data.

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Congo's 'Ebola Business' and $15 Billion Annual Fraud

Jon Fleetwood — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 16:05:32 GMT

As the United States moves toward requesting more than $1.4 billion in additional funding for the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ebola situation, two serious questions about fraud must be asked from the start.

The first is how much of the money that arrives will be lost to corruption and profiteering inside the response.

The second, more critical question is how much fraud is being committed to secure that funding in the first place, including whether official case numbers, death counts, and claims of rapid spread are being inflated or manipulated to justify the large sums being requested.

That question is especially significant, given that the U.S. Military has confirmed in peer-review that Ebola PCR tests—used to “confirm” infection counts—produce contradictory results on the same human samples.

Moreover, the genetic sequence order of PCR primers and probes are neither verified by the manufacturer nor by the person administering the test, raising questions about accuracy and how easily the tests can give false readings or be manipulated (see my X/Grok conversation about this).

Congo’s recent history makes both questions unavoidable.

Since American taxpayers are the ones ultimately being asked to fund it, don’t they deserve direct and honest answers?

The U.S. State Department has already announced more than $270 million in direct Ebola response funding.

The CDC has already activated $107 million in emergency funding for Ebola response.

All of this, while the U.S. is funding gain-of-function experiments making mutant Ebola resistant to drugs.

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A Country Losing $10–15 Billion a Year to Fraud

In 2015, President Joseph Kabila’s anti-corruption adviser stated publicly that Congo was losing $10 to $15 billion per year to fraud, evasion, and leaks—an amount close to twice the national budget at the time.

He said the problem existed at some of the highest levels of government.

This systemic corruption has continued for years.

The ‘Ebola Business’ Precedent

During the purported 2018–2020 Ebola outbreak, the flow of hundreds of millions of dollars created what many on the ground openly called the “Ebola business.”

Investigations documented inflated contracts, kickbacks, exaggerated per diems paid to security forces, and other schemes.

Some communities and responders believed certain actors had a financial incentive to prolong the crisis because it kept the money coming.

Attacks on health workers were partly fueled by this perception.

A UN-commissioned review warned that these practices would damage future aid efforts.

The Current Numbers & the Funding Request

Authorities are currently reporting a major Ebola outbreak.

They claim it is spreading quickly, with official figures citing well over 1,000 confirmed cases and hundreds of deaths since mid-May.

These numbers are being used to justify urgent, large-scale international funding, including the more than $1.4 billion now being sought from Congress.

The central question is: How much can these numbers be trusted?

When a country has a documented history of losing $10 to $15 billion annually to fraud, and when the previous Ebola response produced a clear “Ebola business” in which financial incentives existed to keep the crisis active, it is logical to ask whether the current case counts and speed-of-spread claims are fully accurate—or whether they are being exaggerated to attract billions in new aid.

No independent investigation has yet proven that the 2026 numbers are fabricated or significantly inflated.

At the same time, no transparent, independent verification has been made public that would eliminate reasonable doubt in an environment where fraud has long been systemic and where large funding creates powerful incentives.

The Two Questions That Demand Answers

How much of the requested funding is being lost to kickbacks, inflated contracts, and profiteering once it reaches Congo?
How much of the official outbreak narrative—including the case numbers being used to justify the money—is itself the product of fraud designed to secure that funding?

These are not minor concerns.

They go to the heart of whether the scale of the crisis and the amount of funding being requested rest on reliable information or on the same patterns of manipulation seen in the past.

Until there is strong, independent verification of the numbers and robust safeguards against both types of fraud, skepticism about how much of Congo’s Ebola figures are real—and how much is being shaped to secure funding—is not only justified but necessary.

The history of the “Ebola business” and $10–15 billion in annual fraud makes anything less a serious failure of oversight.

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Mutant Drug-Resistant Ebola Created by U.S., China, U.K., Germany Just Before Africa Outbreak: Journal 'npj Viruses'

Jon Fleetwood — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 17:24:28 GMT

An international research consortium involving major institutions from the United States, China, the United Kingdom, and Germany claims to have successfully created mutant strains of Orthoebolavirus that are resistant to the neutralizing effects of the monoclonal antibody mAb 11886.

They published their work in npj Viruses on May 7, just days before the 2026 Ebola outbreak was first officially reported by the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Ministry of Public Health.

These Ebola experiments, which were conducted under BSL-4 conditions at Philipps University Marburg, involved the intentional generation and selection of purported viral variants that bypass therapeutic neutralization.

The experiments align with published gain-of-function (GOF) definitions.

According to a 2022 review published in Advances in Applied Microbiology:

“Gain-of-Function research on viruses is enhancing transmissibility, virus replication, virulence, host range, immune evasion or drug and vaccine resistance to get insights into the viral mechanisms, to create and analyze animal models, to accelerate drug and vaccine development and to improve pandemic preparedness.”

The new Ebola study was said to have resulted in the generation of mutated, drug-resistant Ebola pathogens in the name of drug development.

It raises international security concerns, as Congress, the White House, the Department of Energy, the FBI, the CIA, and Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) all acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic was “likely” the result of a laboratory incident involving engineered pathogens.

You can contact NIAID here, NIH here, and HHS here to voice opposition to taxpayer-funded research on pandemic pathogens.

Multiple U.S. government Ebola preparedness and response programs were administratively updated on the federal Assistance Listings database in mid-January 2026—roughly three to four months before health authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo announced the latest Ebola outbreak.

The Trump administration is now seeking more than $1.4 billion in Ebola funding from Congress, just after the CDC activated $107 million in emergency funding for Ebola response.

U.S. taxpayers are now paying for both the creation of mutated, drug-resistant Ebola pathogens while also paying for the government’s expensive response to Ebola.

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Researchers Force the Virus to Become Resistant

To produce these drug-resistant mutants, researchers claim to have used a replication-competent version of the virus known as EbolaΔVP30.

The team says they forced the evolution of the virus by subjecting it to three consecutive 6-day passage cycles.

During these cycles, the virus was said to be exposed to increasing concentrations of the antibody mAb 11886, starting at 0.63 µg/mL and escalating to 5.0 µg/mL to drive the selection of mutations that could survive the treatment.

After this process, the team isolated individual plaques that were able to survive in the presence of 10 µg/mL of the antibody.

Finally, the researchers claim they extracted viral RNA and sequenced the glycoprotein gene to identify the specific genetic mutations responsible for the acquired resistance.

The Experiments Identified Two Specific Genetic Mutations That Resist Drugs

The sequencing analysis was said to have identified two specific genetic mutations that directly negated the effectiveness of the antibody.

The first mutation, known as V505I, is located in the GP2 N-terminus and was identified as the primary driver of resistance against mAb 11886.

The second mutation, known as T402I, is said to be located in the mucin-like domain and contributed to resistance through indirect effects on how the virus processes its purported surface proteins.

Experimental data from the study confirmed that each of these mutations, when present individually, was sufficient for the virus to evade neutralization at a concentration of 10 µg/mL.

Research Supported by an International Network of Funding & Institutions

The creation of these drug-resistant Ebola variants was made possible by a global network of funding agencies and academic-industry partnerships.

In the United Kingdom, the research was supported by the UK Medical Research Council through an iCASE PhD studentship to FRD (MR/N01796X/1), and the Wellcome Trust through a Senior Fellowship to SJD (106917/Z/15/Z).

In Germany, the work was supported by the German Research Foundation via a grant to TS (197785619/SFB1021).

In China, funding was provided by the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences Innovation Fund for Medical Science grants to PR and AT (2024-12M-2-001-1 and 2018-12M-2-002).

In the United States, the research was supported by the National Institutes of Health through grant U19 AI109762 to EOS.

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Microchip-Like, Parasite-Like, and 'Self-Assembling Nanotech' Structures Found Inside Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine: Journal 'IJVTPR'

Jon Fleetwood — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 17:52:39 GMT

Researchers publishing in the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research this month have released a study featuring darkfield microscopy images of what they describe as self-assembling “parasites,” massive ribbon-like structures, compartmentalized protocells, and a rectangular embedded structure inside Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine material, arguing that the findings are consistent with advanced synthetic biological architectures.

The publication comes as the CDC awards Pfizer more than $1.24 billion in contracts for more COVID shots.

The new paper, “From Synthetic DNA and RNA-Based Self-Assembling Nanotechnology to Sequelae of COVID-19 Shots,” was published June 19 by independent researcher Shimon D. Yanowitz and Okinawa Christian University professor Daniel Broudy.

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At the center of the study are microscope images derived from Pfizer vaccine-vial contents.

According to the paper, researchers placed drops of Pfizer vial material on microscope slides and observed the contents beneath coverslips.

The authors report that unusual structures appeared and organized over time after the vial material was placed under observation.

One of the first images highlighted in the paper is what the authors describe as:

“A synthetic structure, resembling a ‘parasite’ that self-assembled on a glass-slide with some fluid from a Pfizer vial placed there and located under a coverslip.”

The paper also presents images of what the researchers call self-assembling ribbons.

The figure caption states:

“Very large ‘ribbon’ type structures that self-assembled on the glass-slide of the microscope from a drop of Pfizer vial matter...”

Images published in the study show long fibrous formations stretching across large portions of the microscope field.

According to the authors, some of the structures folded, frayed, and developed into increasingly elaborate forms while under observation.

The most visually striking image in the paper may be Figure 8.

There, the authors publish an image of what they describe as:

“A very large spherical shaped, compartmentalized, cell-sized capsule (’protocell’)...”

Within the same image, the researchers identify:

“...a smaller rectangular compartment potentially containing meta-DNA...”

The rectangular structure appears embedded inside the larger spherical formation and is among the most unusual images presented in the study.

Additional images show similar spherical structures floating in Pfizer vial material.

The researchers write:

“Protocells floating in a drop of a Pfizer vial under a coverslip...”

According to the paper, these structures are not isolated anomalies.

Rather, the authors argue that the images collectively reveal a hierarchy of self-assembling architectures that begins with nanoscale materials and progresses into increasingly large and complex formations visible under microscopy.

The researchers further argue that the structures documented in Pfizer vaccine material resemble technologies described in scientific literature involving DNA origami, programmable biomaterials, nanorobotics, molecular communication systems, and synthetic biological engineering.

The paper ultimately argues that the parasite-like structures, ribbon-like formations, protocells, and rectangular embedded compartments documented in Pfizer vaccine material are components of a larger self-assembling system.

The researchers conclude that the images provide evidence linking the contents of Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine vials to broader concepts in synthetic biology, nanotechnology, and programmable biological architectures, while calling for further investigation into the identity, composition, and biological significance of the structures documented in the study.

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FDA Launches ‘Operation TrialBlazer’ to Fast-Track Experimental Drugs

Jon Fleetwood — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 18:09:29 GMT

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced a sweeping new initiative aimed at speeding experimental drugs from the laboratory into human testing and ultimately toward approval, unveiling measures designed to cut development timelines, reduce information requirements, rely less on traditional animal testing, and accelerate the path to market.

The new FDA initiative, called “Operation TrialBlazer,” spans the entire drug-development pipeline—from the earliest stages of development through the clinical trials used to secure FDA approval.

While the agency presents the effort as modernization, the FDA’s own documents repeatedly describe existing requirements, timelines, and testing practices as obstacles that slow products down.

The agency states that the purpose of the initiative is to:

“accelerate and modernize clinical research across the full continuum of drug development—from the Investigational New Drug (IND) phase to late-stage pivotal trials.”

In plain English, FDA is searching for ways to move drugs from development into human beings faster.

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The move comes just days after the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) voted unanimously that the “benefits” of Moderna’s experimental mRNA influenza vaccine, mFlusiva (mRNA-1010), “outweigh its risks,” clearing the way for potential FDA approval in adults aged 50 and older.

Even though Moderna’s own Phase 3 trial confirmed that the shot produced roughly six times more severe reactions than standard-dose influenza vaccines while providing less than one percentage point (<1%) in absolute risk reduction.

Members of Congress have warned that the FDA “is not meeting important federal safety requirements to protect its employees and the public while also failing to prioritize scientific data quality delivered from FDA laboratories.”

The developments raise questions about why FDA is simultaneously accelerating drugs through the pipeline while facing accusations that it is already failing to meet basic safety requirements.

You can contact the FDA here.

Get More Drugs Into More People, Faster

One of the most revealing parts of the new announcement is a proposed Expedited Investigational New Drug pilot program.

According to FDA:

“The proposed Expedited IND pilot program would leverage America’s world-class research institutions as collaborative partners to shorten the time from drug identification to first-in-human study.”

That objective is difficult to misinterpret.

The agency is openly seeking ways to reduce the amount of time between identifying a drug candidate and administering it to human subjects.

Less Data Over Less Time, Not More Data Over More Time

FDA is also targeting the amount of information companies collect before testing products in people.

According to FDA:

“In the past, some companies have submitted more data than is necessary at that step in the development process, creating unnecessary work that delays promising treatments from reaching early-stage clinical trials.”

The agency says companies should generate and submit “only the data that is needed.”

According to FDA:

“By focusing exclusively on phase-appropriate requirements, companies can save 6 to 12 months of development time.”

That means FDA believes as much as a year can be removed from the process before products advance further through development.

For Americans who already believe drugs reach the market too quickly, the announcement raises an obvious question: What safeguards, studies, reviews, or information does FDA believe can be eliminated in order to remove six to twelve months from the timeline?

Fast-Track to FDA Approval

The acceleration effort continues into the approval process itself.

FDA simultaneously revised guidance governing what evidence companies may use to support approval.

According to the agency:

“FDA revised this guidance to clarify circumstances in which drug developers may be able to rely on one rigorous, adequate and well-controlled pivotal clinical investigation, plus confirmatory evidence, to demonstrate substantial evidence of effectiveness for drug approval.”

Pivotal trials are the major studies used to support approval decisions.

The revised guidance expands circumstances under which a product may move toward approval based on a single pivotal study combined with other supporting evidence.

According to FDA, these approaches can:

“reduce duplicative infrastructure, streamline data collection, and accelerate the generation of evidence needed to support regulatory decision-making.”

Bottom Line

The documents reveal a coordinated FDA effort to identify every stage of the drug-development process that slows products down and determine whether those steps can be shortened, simplified, replaced, or removed.

The language used throughout the announcement is revealing.

FDA repeatedly uses terms such as “accelerate,” “shorten,” “reduce,” “streamline,” “flexible,” and “save” development time.

The agency’s most direct admission may be its statement that revised requirements could save sponsors “6 to 12 months of development time.”

For critics who already believe pharmaceutical products are rushed through development without adequate long-term safety evaluation, the announcement is likely to be viewed not as a tightening of standards, but as a government-led effort to move experimental products through the pipeline faster.

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Australia Claims First H5 Bird Flu Detection After Spending More Than $1 Billion Preparing for It

Jon Fleetwood — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 18:15:07 GMT

Australian authorities announced Friday what they describe as the country’s first detection of highly pathogenic H5 bird flu, nearly two years after launching a billion-dollar “preparedness” campaign, creating a dedicated task force, and conducting nationwide simulation exercises for the anticipated arrival of the pathogen.

Australia was the last continent without a reported detection of H5N1.

The announcement reads:

“Testing at CSIRO’s Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness (ACDP) has confirmed H5 high pathogenicity avian influenza (bird flu) in a brown skua in Western Australia.”
“This is the highly pathogenic strain of concern that has been circulating globally, and is the first detection in Australia.”

The development comes as governments from now every continent orchestrate a coming bird flu pandemic, either through the lab-creation (here, here) of bird flu pandemic pathogens using gain-of-function experiments, outbreak response and so-called preparedness measures, or bird flu narrative public messaging—like Australia's new announcement.

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According to Australia’s Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, testing at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation’s (CSIRO) Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness was said to have confirmed H5 avian influenza in a brown skua found in Western Australia.

Officials claim a second migratory seabird, a giant petrel, also tested positive for H5 avian influenza and is undergoing confirmatory testing.

In September 2024, News.com.au reported that Australia was “the only continent to have not detected H5N1” while highlighting a federal government initiative described as a “$1 billion move” to combat the bird flu strain.

The same report detailed a series of national preparedness exercises designed to test Australia’s response to a future H5 outbreak.

Australia subsequently established a dedicated H5 task force involving the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, the Australian Centre for Disease Control, the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, and the National Emergency Management Agency.

Australia’s announcement closes the final geographic gap in official H5 reporting, leaving every continent represented in the bird flu narrative.

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FDA Committee OK's Moderna mRNA-1010 Influenza Shot with Less Than 1% Absolute Benefit, Clears the Way for FDA Approval

Jon Fleetwood — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 15:27:30 GMT

The Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) voted unanimously on Thursday that the “benefits” of Moderna’s experimental mRNA influenza vaccine, mFlusiva (mRNA-1010), “outweigh its risks,” clearing the way for potential FDA approval in adults aged 50 and older.

The vote comes just weeks after Moderna’s own Phase 3 trial confirmed that the shot produced roughly six times more severe reactions than standard-dose influenza vaccines while providing less than one percentage point (<1%) in absolute risk reduction.

The advisory committee nevertheless voted 9-0 in favor of the vaccine for adults aged 50 to 64 and 9-0 in favor of the vaccine for adults 65 and older.

The vote does not itself approve the vaccine.

Rather, it provides a recommendation that FDA conclude the vaccine’s benefits outweigh its risks, significantly increasing the likelihood that the agency will grant licensure for use in adults aged 50 and older.

And according to Kaiser polling, fewer than half of American adults say they have confidence in the FDA to ensure the safety and effectiveness of vaccines approved for use in the U.S.

Only 42% believe the FDA makes decisions based on science rather than the personal views of agency officials.

Just 37% believe the FDA acts independently, without influence from outside interests.

For many Americans, the 9-0 vote is not a rebuttal to concerns about regulatory capture—it is the evidence.

Especially when it’s their own tax dollars funding the research behind Moderna’s mRNA-1010.

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Committee Composed of Moderna, Other Vaccine Industry Figures

The committee’s composition draws scrutiny in light of the unanimously favorable vote for a drug that provides less than 1% protection.

Committee member Flor Munoz-Rivas previously served on Moderna’s Vaccines Advisory Board and participated in multiple Moderna vaccine Data Safety Monitoring Boards.

For critics, the obvious concern is that former Moderna insiders should not be sitting on FDA panels tasked with judging Moderna products in the first place.

Meanwhile, the roster includes a current GlaxoSmithKline vaccine executive and a Merck vaccine executive serving as industry representatives, alongside CDC immunization officials, NIH personnel, vaccine researchers, infectious-disease specialists, and “public-health” academics.

With the panel drawn overwhelmingly from the vaccine industry, critics argue the vaccine establishment is effectively reviewing and approving its own products.

You can find VRBPAC member contact information here.

You can contact FDA here.

Relative & Absolute Risk Explained

According to FDA briefing documents presented to VRBPAC, the primary efficacy analysis found protocol-defined RT-PCR-confirmed influenza-like illness in 411 of 20,179 mRNA-1010 recipients (2.0%) compared with 557 of 20,124 recipients of standard-dose influenza vaccines (2.8%).

FDA characterized the result as 26.6% “relative” vaccine efficacy, even though 2% to 2.8% represents an absolute difference of only 0.8 percentage points between the two groups.

Relative efficacy is used to make differences appear larger than they really are.

Relative risk is often the bigger, more attention-grabbing number because it measures the percentage change between groups, while absolute risk measures how much a person’s actual chances changed.

For example, if a risk falls from 2 people out of 10,000 to 1 person out of 10,000, marketers can advertise a 50% reduction even though only one additional person out of 10,000 benefited.

Likewise, Moderna’s 26.6% relative efficacy figure came from reducing the study endpoint from 2.8% of participants to 2.0% of participants—an absolute difference of just 0.8 percentage points.

Moreover, the adverse-event coding category “death” appeared 23 times in the mRNA-1010 group and only nine times in the comparator group.

But the committee believes the high death count in the mRNA-1010 group is “unlikely to represent a vaccine safety signal for mRNA-1010.”

Bottom Line

A committee drawn from former Moderna board members, vaccine manufacturers, vaccine research institutions, and government immunization programs unanimously endorsed Moderna’s mRNA flu shot despite trial data showing less than 1% absolute benefit, roughly six times more severe reactions, and 23 deaths in the mRNA group compared with 9 in the comparator group.

The vote highlights the growing divide between what regulators consider an acceptable risk-benefit profile and what many Americans would conclude after examining the underlying data for themselves.

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DARPA/NIH-Funded Scientists Reprogram Dormant Influenza Parts With New Replication and Competition-Suppressing Functions

Jon Fleetwood — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 18:49:31 GMT

DARPA- and NIH-funded scientists published a study on Tuesday in which they claim to have enhanced the defective parts of the influenza genome with new replication and competition-suppressing functions, transforming previously dormant components of influenza into more powerful ones.

The revelation comes as U.S. taxpayers fund research behind Moderna’s new mRNA-1010 (MFLUSIVA) influenza vaccine, raising questions about why Americans are funding both the manipulation of pathogens linked to outbreaks as well as the injectable “solution” to those outbreaks at the same time.

In the years before the COVID-19 pandemic, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) was working with Moderna on an mRNA coronavirus vaccine, while at the same time working with EcoHealth on how to engineer coronaviruses with a furin cleavage site, human-optimized receptor binding domain, and two-proline spike mutation—the defining characteristics of what would be the COVID-19 virus.

Published in Nature Communications, the new study focused on what researchers call deletion-containing viral genomes (DelVGs)—defective pieces of influenza that contain large deletions in essential viral genes.

According to the authors, these influenza-derived genetic elements are defective because they “cannot replicate independently.”

In other words, the researchers were not claiming to be working with normal influenza genomes.

They were working with defective ones.

Rather than leaving those defective influenza elements unchanged, the researchers say they experimentally enhanced them.

The paper states that a specific modification “significantly enhances DelVG replication and interference potency.”

Those are the study’s words.

Enhanced replication.

Enhanced interference potency.

The authors further reported that the modification “enhances the replication and intracellular competitive advantage” of the defective influenza genome.

In plain English, scientists took defective influenza genetic elements and made them better at replicating and better at competing.

You can contact DARPA here.

Critics argue that the simultaneous development of a pandemic problem and its solution raises questions about the government’s intent, international security, and informed consent.

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Enhanced Influenza Parts Suppress Natural Influenza Viruses

A striking aspect of the study is what those enhanced functions actually do.

The modified influenza elements did not merely gain stronger replication abilities.

They were also said to have become better at suppressing competing influenza viruses.

That is what the researchers mean by enhanced “interference potency.”

The engineered influenza-derived elements are said to have gained a stronger ability to interfere with the replication of normal influenza viruses sharing the same purportedly infected cells.

The stated result was a defective influenza-derived competitor that became better at suppressing the natural influenza viruses it depended on.

The paper repeatedly says that the modified influenza elements outperformed earlier versions.

According to the authors, the enhanced defective genome gained a competitive advantage and became increasingly dominant during laboratory experiments.

The researchers did not simply observe these changes.

They claim to have generated the modified influenza-derived particles and experimentally demonstrated the enhanced functions in the laboratory.

Scientists started with influenza-derived genetic elements that the paper describes as defective because they “cannot replicate independently.”

They ended with versions that replicated more effectively and more successfully suppressed competing influenza viruses.

Funded by DARPA & NIH

According to the funding disclosures, the work received support from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under contract DARPA-16-35-INTERCEPT-FP-018 along with National Institutes of Health grants R01AI139246, R01AI179910, and U01AI186993.

The paper’s conclusion is perhaps the most revealing section.

Rather than presenting the findings as a purely academic observation, the authors state that the results “point towards actionable approaches for engineering interference-optimized DelVGs for therapeutic purposes.”

That statement is significant because it moves beyond observation and into engineering.

The researchers are not merely describing defective influenza genetics.

They are describing how defective influenza genetics gained enhanced replication, enhanced competitive fitness, and enhanced influenza-suppressing functions—and how those findings could be used to engineer optimized versions in the future.

From Defective to Gain-of-Function

The central finding is difficult to miss.

Scientists say they began with influenza-derived genetic elements that could not replicate independently.

They then produced versions with enhanced replication, enhanced interference potency, and enhanced competitive advantage.

The modified influenza elements became better at reproducing themselves and better at suppressing competing natural influenza viruses.

The experiments align with published gain-of-function (GOF) definitions.

According to a 2022 review published in Advances in Applied Microbiology:

“Gain-of-Function research on viruses is enhancing transmissibility, virus replication, virulence, host range, immune evasion or drug and vaccine resistance to get insights into the viral mechanisms, to create and analyze animal models, to accelerate drug and vaccine development and to improve pandemic preparedness.”

For critics of GOF-style pathogen research, the study raises an obvious question:

Why are U.S. military and health agencies funding experiments that transform defective influenza genetics into more replicative, influenza-suppressing biological systems?

Whatever one’s answer, the paper documents a clear before-and-after transformation.

The starting point was defective influenza genetics.

The endpoint was influenza genetics with enhanced replication and a stronger ability to suppress competing influenza viruses.

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HHS Quarantines Symptomless American Against Her Will Even After Testing Negative for Hantavirus

Jon Fleetwood — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 16:58:19 GMT

On Monday, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ordered American cruise ship passenger Angela Perryman (47)—said to have been exposed to hantavirus—to remain in quarantine against her will and despite expert advice, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

Quarantine orders can be enforced with fines and prison time.

The U.S. federal government’s quarantine authority comes from Section 361 of the Public Health Service Act, which authorizes HHS/CDC to detain, examine, and conditionally release individuals reasonably believed to be infected with a quarantinable communicable disease, especially in connection with foreign entry or interstate spread.

Per the WSJ report:

Kennedy said the passenger, Angela Perryman, needed to remain isolated even though a review from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said she should be allowed to quarantine at home in Florida, according to his order viewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Perryman, 47, was one of more than a dozen Americans exposed to hantavirus aboard a cruise ship earlier this spring. The group had initially been placed at a Nebraska quarantine unit.
…
Some of the other passengers left the facility in recent weeks after the Trump administration asked their home states to heed certain requirements to continue monitoring them at home, including 24/7 surveillance of the people to ensure compliance.
Florida refused to meet those requirements, according to two CDC employees. They added that CDC experts on infection prevention and control, including quarantine requirements, disagreed with the decision to force Perryman to remain in Nebraska.
The Trump administration’s aggressive approach to isolation requirements amid the outbreak has surprised public-health experts, given several of the administration’s top health officials have a history of criticizing pandemic-era restrictions.

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Perryman had only agreed to stay in quarantine until May 22.

But the World Health Organization pushed for those said to be exposed to undergo quarantine at home or in a facility for 42 days, citing the purportedly long incubation period of the virus.

She was later told she couldn’t leave.

The quarantine period is set to expire at the end of the day on Sunday, June 21.

Perryman told WSJ that she’s the one being quarantined involuntarily and longs to be outside:

In a phone interview, Perryman said Kennedy’s quarantine order, slipped under her door Monday, was “ridiculous.”
“I’m in a room 23, 24 hours a day,” she said. “It does not serve public health.”
She said her quarantine was set to end on Sunday after 42 days. She expected some of the nine others in quarantine with her to head home this week. She said she believed Kennedy’s order was retaliation for speaking out against the quarantine measures.
“I’m the only one here involuntarily,” she said.
…
Perryman said she thought the quarantine rules had “been inconsistently applied from the very beginning.”
She said she has been locked in a room where workers bring her three meals a day. She can request an hour outside on the roof where she can take off her protective gear and sit in a chair, spaced far apart from others.
Perryman said she is “not good at all” but she has been able to stay connected with her family over the phone to help keep her going.
She said that when she is released from quarantine, she plans to fly home on a commercial flight to Florida, where she lives part time. Once she gets home, she said she plans to “put my feet in the grass and dirt, maybe even touch a tree.” She said her primary residence is in Ecuador.

An HHS spokeswoman claimed the administration’s quarantine order is “necessary to ensure both Ms. Perryman’s and her community’s wellbeing.”

But five weeks after she left the cruise ship, Perryman is still symptom-free, according to a report from The Associated Press (AP).

The report detailed her quarantine experience:

Perryman said life in the facility is like being confined in an airport hotel room. Sometimes she can go to its roof for an hour as armed guards watch. Nurses wearing gloves, masks and face shields deliver meals and take her temperature. She said it feels like a “prison.”
The 47-year-old learned that she would be required to stay in the facility until June 21 when Kennedy’s order was slipped under her door on Monday.
“I was appalled,” she said. “I was horrified that the secretary, who is not a physician, would override the doctor and violate the law just to keep me locked up.”
Perryman said she lives primarily in Ecuador but keeps a permanent home with friends in Florida. She said she wants the chance to cook her own food and spend time in more than one room, either in her home or a rental property.

She told Inside Medicine that she tested negative on both PCR and antibody blood tests.

Meaning an American is being held against her will without direct evidence that she poses a risk to anyone.

Lawrence Gostin is a public health law expert who helped shape current federal quarantine regulations.

He called the decision to keep Perryman in Nebraska “an egregious violation” of a U.S. citizen’s rights.

“She’s being held, deprived of her liberty,” he said.

If the federal government can confine a healthy American against her will under these circumstances, what meaningful limits remain on quarantine power during a purported public-health emergency?