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New York City officials are planning a tabletop simulation later this month to prepare for a hypothetical bird flu outbreak, a city health official revealed at the International Bird Flu Summit, taking place this week in Fairfax, Virginia.
The summit is sponsored by Gingko Biosecurity, which says it is “building and deploying the next-generation infrastructure and technologies that global leaders need to predict, detect, and respond to a wide variety of biological threats.”
Public health officials, doctors, scientists, researchers and pharmaceutical company representatives convened at the summit amid more reports of bird flu hotspots, including a cluster of eight possible bird flu cases in Missouri.
According to U.S. News & World Report, the Missouri cases “could be the first cases of bird flu spreading between humans in the United States.”
Italy and Hungary recently announced they detected bird flu outbreaks at farms, Reuters reported. According to CBS News, bird flu killed 47 tigers, three lions and a panther at zoos in Vietnam.
Epidemiologist Nicholas Hulscher told The Defender that the Missouri and other global outbreaks should not be feared.
“The current outbreaks of H5N1 among animal populations have not resulted in mass mortality with the exception of government-mandated culling,” Hulscher said. “Genotype B3.13, the currently circulating strain in U.S. cattle, is currently a very mild illness for humans. There has never been a reported human H5N1 death in the U.S.”
Dr. Clayton J. Baker, an internal medicine physician, told The Defender the latest news reports strike him “as classic ‘fear porn.’” He noted that before the U.S. News & World Report story, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a report stating that only one H5N1 case in humans had been detected in Missouri.
Journalist and author John Leake is attending the Bird Flu Summit. He told The Defender that while mainstream media reports are hyping purported bird flu outbreaks, the atmosphere at the summit is subdued, albeit aligned with the prevailing narrative.
“They’re following, I’d say, the narrative that we’ve been treated to all year, that this new H5N1 is jumping from birds into mammals — for example, dairy cattle, marine mammals, which are genetically, genomically far closer to humans,” Leake said.
“So, the prevailing orthodoxy is that this pathogenic avian influenza is getting closer to making the evolutionary jump from animals into humans. And if that happens, it’s going to place a big burden on human health and the public healthcare system,” Leake added.
As for the Missouri outbreak, Leake said it’s been a topic of discussion at the summit — but no evidence has been presented to confirm that human-to-human bird flu transmission has occurred.
In addition to the news about New York City’s planned bird flu simulation, the topic of gain-of-function research involving the H5N1 virus came up, with some attendees speculating that the current predominant H5N1 strain may be a product of such research.
Simulation of bird flu outbreak ‘cause for tremendous concern’
According to Leake, Syra Madad, senior director of the System-wide Special Pathogens Program at NYC Health + Hospitals, told summitt attendees that her agency is planning a “full pandemic tabletop exercise” on Oct. 21.
Noting the similarities with similar simulations that took place shortly before the COVID-19 and monkeypox outbreaks in 2019 and 2022, respectively, Leake said, “In my experience, once these guys start doing this kind of thing, they’re signaling that they think it’s for real.”
Baker said news of the tabletop simulation “is cause for tremendous concern.” He called the timing of the COVID-19 tabletop exercise, Event 201, which took place in October 2019, “in retrospect, ‘suspicious in the extreme.’”
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, the World Economic Forum and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation organized the 2019 simulation of a coronavirus outbreak.
In March 2021, the Nuclear Threat Initiative, in conjunction with the Munich Security Conference, organized a “tabletop exercise on reducing high-consequence biological threats,” based on a hypothetical global monkeypox outbreak in May 2022.
The simulation preceded the May 2022 monkeypox outbreak.
“Any full-scale exercises for a pathogen should raise concerns about possible pre-planned release,” Hulscher said. “Event 201 should remind us that ‘drills’ are usually held before the real event.”
Hulscher suggested a bird flu outbreak could be weaponized to disrupt this year’s U.S. presidential election or the next administration.
“Peter Hotez, Bill Gates and Robert Redfield have warned of future pandemics worse than SARS-CoV-2 with high confidence that it will be avian influenza,” Hulscher said. “Many groups would benefit from disrupting the 2024 election and/or society in general. Thus, I think there’s a high probability of another intentional laboratory leak.”
‘Abundant evidence’ current bird flu strain a product of gain-of-function research
According to Baker, the H5N1 bird flu virus is the subject of gain-of-function research by several scientists and laboratories, including Yoshihiro Kawaoka, Ph.D., at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Ron Fouchier, Ph.D., at Erasmus University in the Netherlands; and the Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory (SEPRL) in Georgia.
Leake said Kawaoka and Fouchier “have published papers in which they have proclaimed that they have successfully created an H5N1 variant that is transmissible by aerosolized droplets amongst ferrets,” noting that “the pulmonary tract or the respiratory tract of Ferrets is considered very almost eerily close to that of humans.”
According to Hulscher, “There is abundant evidence that the current circulating strain of H5N1 in the United States — Genotype B3.13 Clade 2.3.4.4b — is a consequence of serial passage gain-of-function research being conducted at SEPRL.”
“The accelerated evolution of H5N1 via serial passage in mallard ducks may be the reason behind the adaptations to new species,” Hulscher said, referring to a preprint study he co-authored with Leake and cardiologist Peter McCullough, which Hulscher said “provides the entire rationale for a possible laboratory leak.”
The preprint has been accepted by a journal and is awaiting publication, Hulscher said.
According to Baker, “It’s a documented fact that gain-of-function manipulation of bird flu has been going on for many years. There is no legitimate reason to perform this type of research, other than to weaponize these viruses.”
Writing for the Brownstone Institute, Baker said there are at least five laboratories in the U.S. conducting gain-of-function research on H5N1, in violation of the Biological Weapons Convention of 1975.
In a recent post on Substack, Leake said that the “Pandemic Flu Industry will likely need lab assistance to amplify human-to-human transmission and virulence.”
Baker said, “All a malicious group of people would have to do is have their meeting, ‘get their ducks in a row,’ so to speak, then release those gain-of-function-infected ducks into the environment. Or use whatever vector of spread they choose.”
Leake told The Defender that during the Bird Flu Summit, he asked Karen Murphy, senior director of biosecurity for Gingko Biosecurity, if the company is “doing any kind of surveillance of this pathogen being manipulated and released from a lab.”
In her response, Murphy confirmed that her company has developed a product that can detect whether a pathogen developed organically or is man-made — but that this product is only being made available to government and intelligence agencies.
She said:
“When we think about biosecurity surveillance at large, we’re thinking about things that develop organically.
“We actually do have a product on the market today. It’s called NR, and NR will help — It is mostly for government organizations and the intelligence community, but the concept behind NR is to help understand if something has been man-made or female-made or if it’s organic.”
Remarking on Murphy’s response, Leake said “We’re once again left with these national security state assurances.”
“How are we the citizens going to know if it’s another example of what we saw coming out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Leake asked, referring to the likelihood that the SARS-CoV-2 virus leaked out of that facility.
Leake said companies like Gingko Biosecurity are “well within the biopharmaceutical complex,” adding that they represent “commercial interests that seem pretty revved up about pandemics, when the money flows.”
“Until we outlaw gain-of-function research entirely and enforce the Biological Weapons Convention, which is being flouted by gain-of-function researchers, we’ll have this sword of Damocles hanging over our heads forever,” Baker said.
Several key scientists and researchers, including Redfield, former director of the CDC, have called for a moratorium on gain-of-function research or for the total cessation of such research.
Last month, the U.S. Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee passed S.4667, the Risky Research Review Act, out of committee, sending the bill to the full Senate. If passed, the bill will subject research involving risky pathogens, including gain-of-function research, to strict oversight.
NYC plan includes isolating bird flu patients, administering Tamiflu
Leake said there has been only limited discussion of bird flu vaccines so far during the summit.
“We were excited to attend a vaccine talk that was in the published program … but when we got our updated program electronically at the conference, that vaccine presentation had apparently been removed,” Leake said.
In contrast, Leake said that there was plenty of discussion around pandemic preparedness and response during this week’s Bird Flu Summit.
According to Leake, Madad, an infectious disease epidemiologist, said New York City hospitals are preparing a bird flu outbreak preparedness plan focused on isolating people suspected of infection and administering antiviral medications.
“She really didn’t offer a satisfactory answer at all,” Leake said. “She said, ‘We have got an idea or a concept for isolation [and] we’ve got antivirals like Tamiflu.’”
“Antivirals administered in the hospital setting to an acutely ill patient? It’s too late by then,” Leake said. “Based on her testimony, they don’t have a hospital treatment plan. Instead, vague talk of isolating the patient, which of course is cold comfort if you’re severely ill, if you can’t breathe in a hospital.”
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