An NIH Interview the Press Wasn’t Invited To

And the Epstein files on pandemic prevention

When RFK Jr. was installed atop the $1.7 trillion Health and Human Services (HHS) bureaucracy, there was talk of a reset at the NIH. The healthy reset arrived with the appointment of Jay Bhattacharya as director. What did not arrive was a press conference. Instead, the new NIH leadership sidestepped scrutiny, rolling itself out through Twitter threads and “Podcast Jay.”

The political movement that helped enrich and elevate RFK Jr., called MAHA (Make America Healthy Again), is funding a $10 million Super Bowl ad this weekend. MAHA also hosted a celebratory Washington, D.C., event last weekend at the Willard luxury hotel, steps from the White House.

Critical journalists, including Emily Kopp, and mainstream science outlets such as Nature and STAT News, were denied access. Their absence helped lower the guard of the new NIH leadership, even though the event was livestreamed. The MAHA audience was told they were witnessing a second scientific revolution. What they actually saw was the old NIH, just rebranded and sold back to them as reform.

The event was titled Reclaiming Science. Nothing was reclaimed except the same gain-of-function research that caused the pandemic, lockdowns, and vaccine mandates that MAHA claims to oppose.

Fauci’s replacement at NIAID, Jeff Taubenberger, lied about his role in the lab leak cover-up. He claimed he was merely cc’d on emails involving Peter Daszak, David Morens, and Fauci. In reality, Taubenberger (grey suit) drafted the lab leak cover-up papers themselves.

Jay (far right) then changed the subject to vaccine mandates so that the MAHA crowd would clap and forget. Forget what?

Fauci (ASF) responding to email

Taubenberger co-authored two cover-up publications with Fauci, Daszak, and Morens, and even assisted Daszak in reviving a canceled grant: the same R01 grant that funded the DARPA DEFUSE proposal.

The new NIH leadership was then asked a basic question: What is gain-of-function? The answer was even more evasive than Fauci’s. That’s not an accident. Taubenberger and Matt Memoli (red tie) are both currently conducting dangerous GoF flu vaccine research.

Memoli opposed the mRNA vaccine mandate at NIH, making him a hero to Jay and MAHA. But Memoli wants to push his own flu vaccine technology, valued up to $500 million. He described the January 2025 call he got from the Trump White House to become interim director (before Jay was approved by the Senate)

Taubenberger was then asked a more pointed question: would he revive the 1918 flu virus again—the pandemic that killed nearly 100 million people? He explained why such work is done, but carefully avoided answering whether he would do it again.

Angie Rasmussen (Dr. Angela Rasmussen) supplied the missing answer. Taubenberger may enjoy a lifetime exemption for 1918 flu research.

DGOF: Uses reconstituted 1918

Hypocrisy Level: Obvious. 1918 was reconstituted twenty years ago, so it stopped being extinct in 2005. These studies are not themselves DGOF, although it’s debatable whether using 1918 at all would qualify, since it was resurrected from sequences using reverse genetics. Bringing back 1918 now, however, would be absolutely forbidden by the Executive Order. What about using 1918 now since it has already been brought back? Grants including 1918 work are likely being evaluated for DGOF compliance on a case by case basis since 1918 is also a Select Agent, but I would be very surprised if many researchers are submitting grants proposing any type of 1918 work. The only researcher in the country whose 1918 research is unaffected may be Taubenberger.

What happened to Fauci’s $2 billion biodefense budget? It never disappeared. It now sits under Taubenberger’s control. He basically repeated Fauci’s favorite line: nature is the worst bioterrorist.

Same money. Same logic. Same risks. Different name on the NIAID door.

Jay lied to Congress?

This week, Jay testified to Congress. He misled the Senators because 1 of the 40 grants he paused was gain-of-function competition for his deputy, Matt Memoli’s dangerous research.

As Angie wrote in her Substack:

Which brings me back to the seasonal flu grant that was cancelled. This grant was awarded to Christopher Brooke at the University of Illinois, who has done outstanding work demonstrating the impact of the host on virus evolution. His lab studies how host immune responses influence virus evolution, and the impact that has on both the virus and the host. It also does not constitute DGOF, as it uses low pathogenicity seasonal flu viruses that do not pose a pandemic risk, even when they are vaccine-evasive or antiviral-resistant. No serious societal consequences will ensue…

Since DGOF is proclaimed and enforced selectively, I wondered why this grant in particular caught Memoli and Bhattacharya’s merciless gaze. This is not the only research that NIAID funds on seasonal flu, and other labs use similar experimental approaches and address related research hypotheses. Why was this grant singled out?

Perhaps it reminded Memoli too much of his own work! Memoli also studies the impact of HA and NA immunity on virus evolution. He has identified immune escape, multiple antiviral resistance, and virulence mutants and done experimental evolution studies in which he selected them in cell culture and in his own human challenge model. Yes, that’s right: Memoli has created and also intentionally infected human volunteers with these supposedly dangerous and potentially pandemic-causing viruses. He then used these humans to select for seasonal flu viruses that evade host immune responses, including to therapeutic antibodies and vaccines. Being Principal Deputy Director of NIH can certainly give you new, tyrannical means of getting a competitive advantage, since you can tank their grants for allegedly doing DGOF that you do yourself (on humans!!!).

Notice the immune escape vaccine research for Memoli is similar to COVID’s asymptomatic spread.

What to do?

Reimplementing the October 2014 “pause” would end all gain-of-function:

As established in October 2014, the policy had required NIH to forward for the committee’s review experiments expected to generate certain flu and coronaviruses that would be “transmissible among mammals” and that might accidentally cause human infections.

But in December 2017, the policy was narrowed to cover only altered pathogens “likely capable of wide and uncontrollable spread in human populations.” The sweeping reference to mammals was eliminated.

As to why the reference to mammals was deleted, NIH said the revised policy identified “the subset of research” that could pose the greatest pandemic risk for humans.

NIH director Francis Collins, pressed on why the change was made, said that he was “not able to fully reconstruct” the details but added that agency staffers evaluate the research proposals “from the most sophisticated perspective.”

The mammalian ban ironically led Ralph Baric to defend his risky research in his safe humanized mice. Only Vincent Munster’s transmissible models (bats, mink, deer, deer mice, hamsters) could turn Baric’s genome into an airborne agent.

Virologist on the ongoing mad science at NIH

French flu virologist, Simon Wain-Hobson (Simon Wain-Hobson) watched Podcast Jay and Jeff Taubenberger above but commented below via Biosafety Now:

Dr. Taubenberger is a distinguished flu researcher best known for resurrecting the 1918 Spanish flu virus. At 15:08 he says that …the 1957 pandemic, the so called H2N2 [virus]…The problem with that is since 1968 nobody on earth has seen a H2 virus. That virus was completely human adapted. It is not a select agent. We work with it under the same conditions as we would the 1918 virus, but that’s not an obligation and it probably sits in clinical diagnostic and basic lab virology freezers all over the world, and that really scares me actually because I think we’re concerned about how a new flu pandemic would occur but here’s one that was actually a pandemic. Now, the vast majority of the world’s population born after the 1968 pandemic does not have immunity to H2, and so that’s something I worry about.

Ouch, he’s both scared and worried, so let’s kick off with a little background. Pandemic flu viruses strike anywhere between 11 to 41 years after the last one, which means that we’re already in the next window: 2026 – 2009 (last pandemic) = 15 years…

This is a conversation between arguably the two most powerful people in infectious disease research in the US if only by virtue of the size of the budgets and influence at their command. The world has just gone through COVID and instead of saying something like ‘this scary situation should be cleaned up, indeed we could clean it up’, the conversation moved on…

The conversation from 23:00 is also worth noting. They are talking about influenza in the context of pandemic preparedness. Dr. Taubenberger let’s drop we are not at a point yet, we do not have the fund of knowledge to predict what even next year’s seasonal flu will be like, much less when the next pandemic will occur. So, in my view, the only thing we can do is react to a pandemic when it happens, sadly, but that’s the truth.

Exactly. We must react as quickly as possible to an exploding pandemic…Don’t listen to those who pretend to predict the next pandemic or to have pandemics sewn up. Just as you’d not listen to the predictions of a soothsayer…

These are arguably the two most powerful men in infectious diseases in the world. Jeffrey, because he’s sitting on top of the NIAID, and Jay, because he’s the boss of the NIH. And if these two men, these two men could just say, okay, let’s do something about it, we can discuss what they should do. First thing is get it on the select list. Second, destroy as many lab samples as possible with US jurisdiction. But encourage this across the globe. Get these samples destroyed.

Did Jay ban humanized mice?

Pro-life conservatives pushed Jay’s NIH ban on human fetal tissue. Virologists like their humanized mouse models that use aborted baby parts, but the NIH policy does not clearly ban funding for animal models developed using fetal tissue in the past.

Government failure means reward

NIH blew up the world by funding DARPA Defuse, and gets rewarded. In May 2025, President Trump’s FY2026 budget proposal sought to cut NIH funding by $18 billion, reducing its budget from $48 billion to $30 billion.

This week, both chambers of Congress have now passed the FY26 minibus. A Republican Senator from Alabama lobbied Trump to restore the cuts. Trump will sign a bill allocating $48.7 billion to the NIH—an increase of $415 million over FY25—while preserving full indirect cost recovery and the agency’s current institute structure, averting proposed cuts and reorganizations.

Feldmann promoted to Fort Detrick

Last year, a “lover’s spat” between Fort Detrick scientists led to intentional holes cut into a spacesuit, but an official NIH report now claims it was “not possible to determine the cause of the hole or who created it.”

The lover was “confused and erratic.”

The NIH just promoted Munster’s Rocky Mountain Lab boss and self-spreading vaccine guru, Heinz Feldmann, as director of the NIH lab at Fort Detrick.

The Epstein files and pandemics

The Epstein files contain a lot of academics desperate for research grants. Nathan Wolfe of Microbiota was a competitor of Daszak and EcoHealth. Wolfe pitched his “vaginal and penile microbiota” sexual activity study to Jeffrey Epstein.

Wolfe told Inside Higher Ed he never witnessed or participated in any misconduct or inappropriate behavior during his meetings with Epstein. He also said he regrets going along with Epstein’s framing of the “horny virus hypothesis” study, and that the work was never pursued.

In 2017, Bill Gates was pitched by Epstein associates on “strain pandemic simulation.” Gates also funded some EcoHealth research.

The below Epstein email was likely sent to Bill Gates science advisor, Boris Nikolic:

The virus hunter, Ian Lipkin, pitched Epstein.

Lipkin was later caught up in a “butt lesion” scandal. And he co-authored a lab leak cover-up piece with Baric.

Above, Harvard Professor Nicholas Christakis pitched Epstein on social networks predicting pandemics. Did you know your friends have more friends than you do?

My take: the Epstein files are a Rorschach test for the friendless and whatever conspiracy we push.

Claude AI’s review of my book

Unlike OpenAI, Claude’s AI can digest up to 150,000 words or 500+ pages, so I uploaded my book for a review. Claude’s take: This is one of those books that either rewrites history or becomes a cautionary tale about conspiracy thinking.

COVID-19: Mystery Solved — The Lab Leak You Haven’t Heard About

It leaked from Wuhan, but the origin story is entirely backwards

The narrative you’ve been hearing about COVID-19’s origins? It’s wrong. And not in the way you think.

Yes, there was a lab leak in Wuhan. But what if I told you SARS-CoV-2 wasn’t Chinese-engineered bioweapon junk that escaped? What if it was an American-created bat vaccine that jumped species at the Wuhan Institute of Virology?

That’s the explosive claim in COVID-19: Mystery Solved, a book that draws on two whistleblowers—one from inside the Wuhan lab, one from the US military—to piece together what really happened in 2019.

The Bet That Was Lost

Here’s where it gets interesting: A $100,000 bet was lost because, until now, there was no biological evidence of a Wuhan lab leak in the traditional sense. Why? Because SARS-CoV-2 doesn’t infect humanized mice or Chinese bats. It transmits well in American lab bats.

The virus was designed to spread. Contagion wasn’t a bug—it was a feature. And that feature was baked in by design, as part of a bat vaccine project.

Enter DARPA Defuse

At the center of this story is a 2018 DARPA proposal called “Defuse”—a $14.2 million project to create self-spreading vaccines for bats. The team? Ralph Baric of UNC Chapel Hill, Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance, Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and Vincent Munster of NIH’s Rocky Mountain Laboratory.

According to the book’s findings:

• Baric had already created a novel coronavirus chimera 20% different from SARS1 (SARS-CoV-2 is also 20% different)

• The proposal included inserting a furin cleavage site at the S1/S2 border—exactly where SARS-CoV-2 has one

• The work involved “six contiguous cDNA pieces”—the same genetic signature found in SARS-CoV-2

DARPA rejected the proposal as too risky. But the work allegedly continued through other funding channels, including NIAID grants under Anthony Fauci.

The Wuhan Whistleblower & The Cover-Up

The book claims that on January 31, 2020, international scientists audited the Wuhan lab. They passed. But others didn’t.

What follows is a detailed account of:

• October 2019 “couriers and burner phones”

• A superspreader event that predates the Wuhan outbreak

• Egyptian and Jamaican fruit bat experiments at US facilities

• The infamous February 1, 2020 teleconference where “lab leak” became taboo

• Testimony contradictions from Fauci, Baric, and other key players

The author claims Fauci lied three times during congressional testimony, including about who was invited to that crucial February 2020 call and who first suggested calling the FBI.

The Self-Spreading Vaccine Theory

Here’s the paradigm shift: What if COVID-19 wasn’t an accidental release of a weapon, but an animal vaccine that jumped species?

Self-spreading vaccines—yes, they’re real—are designed to vaccinate wildlife populations without capturing every animal. They transmit from vaccinated animals to unvaccinated ones. The technology has been in development for decades.

According to this book:

• SARS-CoV-2 was designed as a transmissible bat vaccine

• It was meant to protect bats from coronaviruses

• Something went wrong during trials or handling

• The virus adapted to human transmission

The evidence? SARS-CoV-2’s unusual characteristics:

• High transmissibility from day one (most natural spillovers start slow)

• Immediate human-to-human spread without adaptation period

• Furin cleavage site insertion consistent with Baric’s proposal

• Compatibility with American lab bat species, not wild Chinese bats

The American Connection

The most uncomfortable claim: This wasn’t Chinese gain-of-function research gone wrong. It was American technology, created by American scientists, tested in various locations including Wuhan, Laos, and potentially Rocky Mountain Laboratory in Montana.

Key players named:

• Ralph Baric (UNC Chapel Hill) - The “coronavirus engineering” expert who pioneered chimera creation methods

• Vincent Munster (NIAID/RML) - Conducted aerosol transmission experiments on fruit bats

• Peter Daszak (EcoHealth Alliance) - The middleman coordinating international collaborations

• Anthony Fauci (NIAID) - Allegedly funded the work after DARPA’s rejection

What About RaTG13?

The book argues that believing the Wuhan lab engineered SARS-CoV-2 and published RaTG13 as a cover-up is “foolish.” Instead, RaTG13 may itself be suspicious—possibly a planted reference to muddy the waters or misdirect from the vaccine’s true origins.

The Timeline That Changed Everything

A few key dates worth noting:

• 2015: Baric and Shi publish their controversial gain-of-function paper in Nature

• 2018: DARPA Defuse proposal submitted and rejected

• 2019: Funding continues through other channels; suspicious October events

• January 2020: Wuhan whistleblower’s account begins; international audit

• February 1, 2020: The teleconference that killed lab leak discourse

• 2024: Congressional testimonies reveal contradictions and memory gaps

The Evidence Trail

The author claims every assertion can be verified online, encouraging readers to DYOR (do your own research). The book includes:

• Testimonies from 100 scientists asked to disprove the hypothesis

• Extensive timelines and bibliographies

• Analysis of public statements by key players before and after the pandemic

• FOIAs and leaked documents (including the Defuse proposal)

Why It Matters

If this account is accurate, it means:

• The pandemic originated from American biodefense research

• Key scientists and officials misled the public and investigators

• Universities and agencies are hiding documents (UNC has withheld 50,000 pages of Baric’s records)

• International collaboration on dangerous research continues

• The actual origin mechanism (vaccine spillover vs. weapon release) changes how we prevent the next pandemic

The Open Questions

The book ends with open letters to Ralph Baric and Anthony Fauci, asking pointed questions about their roles, their knowledge, and their silence.

Perhaps most provocatively, it asks: Was SARS-CoV-2 a planned mistake or an honest academic crime?

My Take

This is one of those books that either rewrites history or becomes a cautionary tale about conspiracy thinking. The author isn’t a scientist, but claims to have connected dots that experts missed or ignored.

The central thesis—that COVID was an American-created bat vaccine rather than Chinese biowarfare—is certainly original. Whether it’s true is another matter entirely.

What’s undeniable: there are documents, testimonies, and timelines that don’t quite add up in the official narratives. The DARPA Defuse proposal is real. The scientific players are real. The questionable funding trails are documented.

Whether these pieces form the picture the author claims... well, that’s for you to investigate.

The book’s subtitle says it all: “It leaked from a Wuhan lab, but it is not Chinese junk.”

If nothing else, it’s a reminder that the most important question isn’t where it leaked, but what leaked—and who made it in the first place.