(March 1, 2019) Studies of Deadly Flu Virus, Once Banned, Are Set to Resume
[link to www.nytimes.com (secure)]

(May 22, 2019) AstraZeneca joins with BenevolentAI for drug discovery
Strategic partnership between AstraZeneca and BenevolentAI to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to identify new kidney and lung drugs.
Pharma giant AstraZeneca has announced a new long-term collaboration with artificial intelligence experts BenevolentAI.
The collaboration aims to combine AstraZeneca’s world-leading clinical data with BenevolentAI’s machine learning capabilities
and artificial intelligence to discover new drugs for chronic kidney disease (CKD) and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF).
As a recent study in Respiration shows, CKD and IPF are two of the most fatal and prevalent age-associated diseases.
[link to www.longevity.technology (secure)]

(May 23, 2019) How did six migrant children die on the US border?
Six children have died since September while in US custody.
Just this week, US authorities said a 16-year-old Guatemalan migrant
had died on Monday and revealed that a 10-year-old girl from El Salvador died back in September.
Previously no migrant children had died in federal custody since 2010, according to US government officials.
[link to www.bbc.com (secure)]

(June 11, 2019) Tweets from Turkish psychic-insider close to authorities
"The U.S. sent an aircraft of biological weapons to China.
Epidemics may begin in China soon.
They should not forget that if there is a Turk on earth, there is hope."
[link to twitter.com (secure)]

(June 19, 2019) Sanofi, Google Launch “Innovation Lab” Aimed at Drug Discovery
Sanofi will apply Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing capabilities toward developing new drugs,
through a collaboration whose value was not disclosed. The companies said they have agreed to create a virtual
Innovation Lab to “radically” transform how future medicines and health services are developed and delivered.
[link to www.genengnews.com (secure)]

(July 17, 2019) Cause of Respiratory Illness Still Unknown After Dozens Sickened at Virginia Retirement Community
Fairfax County health officials said they don't yet have a cause of the respiratory illness that sicked more than 60 residents
at a Northern Virginia senior living community.
The outbreak at Greenspring Retirement Community in Springfield began June 30.
Sick residents had symptoms such as coughs, fevers and pneumonia.
[link to www.nbcwashington.com (secure)]

(July 17, 2019) Second Fairfax County retirement community suffers respiratory illness outbreak
The Fairfax County Health Department in a press conference included information regarding Greenspring Retirement
Community and another long-term care facility, Heatherwood, in Burke.
“Of the outbreaks that are not flu, there are somewhere we never identify [them],” Schwartz said.
“It’s just difficult to do the testing and to identify the cause in older adults.”
[link to wjla.com (secure)]

(July 17, 2019) Third person has died after respiratory illness outbreak at Greenspring Village, Fairfax officials say
A third person has died following an outbreak of respiratory illness at a Fairfax County assisted-living
facility that began more than two weeks ago, county health officials said Wednesday.
The outbreak at Greenspring Village in Springfield also spread to the unit’s staff, affecting 19 employees,
Fairfax County Health Department officials said.
At a news conference Wednesday at the agency’s headquarters, Benjamin Schwartz, director of epidemiology
and population health at the Fairfax County Health Department, said tests,
including those conducted on 17 samples by the federal Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention, have failed to identify a likely cause. Tests for Legionnaires’ disease
have also come up negative. Officials tested for a range of common virus- or bacteria-borne respiratory illnesses.
[link to www.washingtonpost.com (secure)]

(July 2019) Fort Detrick lab shut down after failed safety inspection; all research halted indefinitely
[link to anon.to (secure)]

Premise:
Hon Lik (or Han Li) a Chinese native, born in Shenyang, China registered a patent for the modern e-cigarette design in 2003. The e-cigarette was first introduced to the Chinese domestic market in 2004., entered the European market and the US market in 2006 and 2007. In the UK, users have increased from 700,000 in 2012 to 2.6 million in 2015, and in 2015 around 10% of American adults were users. About 60% of UK users are smokers and about 40% are ex-smokers, while use among never-smokers in the UK is negligible.

(Jul 29, 2019) Eight Milwaukee-area teens hospitalized with severe lung damage that may have been caused by vaping
The teens were brought to Children's Hospital of Wisconsin with extreme cough, significant shortness of breath and fatigue.
Some had lost weight from vomiting and diarrhea, hospital officials said Thursday.
[link to eu.jsonline.com (secure)]

(August 17, 2019) Mystery lung illness linked to vaping. Health officials investigating nearly 100 possible cases.
In the past month, the teenagers presented symptoms that appeared manageable and consistent with viral-type infections or bacterial pneumonia —
shortness of breath, coughing, fever and abdominal discomfort, Chapman said. But they continued to deteriorate despite appropriate treatment,
including with antibiotics and oxygen support. Some suffered respiratory failure and had to be put on ventilators, she said.
[link to www.washingtonpost.com (secure)]

(August 22, 2019) Merck teams up with Themis to develop vaccines
Merck has struck a deal to work with Themis Bioscience on vaccine R&D.
The agreement sees Merck invest in Themis and commit up to $200 million (€180 million) in milestones to secure vaccines against an undisclosed target.
Using research funding from Merck, Themis will develop vaccine candidates against the target using its measles virus vector-based platform.
Themis licensed the measles vector from the Pasteur Institute
and has since worked to industrialize the production process,
giving it a platform it thinks can support an upcoming phase 3 trial
of its internal lead asset. The result is a setup Themis CEO Erich Tauber describes as a “true plug-and-play platform.”
The progress of Themis’ internal programs and its work with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI)
have provided evidence of the company’s success in building on the licensed vector.
[link to www.fiercebiotech.com (secure)]

(September 9, 2019) Respiratory Disease Outbreak Summary
The initial findings from the investigation revealed that the respiratory illness cases were clustered in an Assisted Living and Skilled Nursing facility.
Cases diagnosed as pneumonia generally required hospitalization. Affected residents were very elderly with underlying medical conditions.
All testing at Inova Central Lab was negative for etiology, and no severe illness in Independent Living or among staff occurred.
Dr. Schwartz reviewed each step in the investigation, which included maps and floor plans of confirmed cases.
At the conclusion of the outbreak, there were 63 cases and 7 deaths. Among the fatalities, it is not clear how pneumonia
may have contributed to infection as most residents had other health conditions.
[link to www.fairfaxcounty.gov (secure)]

(September 12, 2019) Europe’s missing ‘vaping sickness’
Europe does not appear to be experiencing an outbreak of the “vaping sickness” gripping the U.S.
It’s not clear anyone would know if it was. U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday moved to finalize a ban
on flavored e-cigarettes in light of the country’s outbreak of a vaping-related illness that’s made 450 people sick and resulted in at least six deaths.

“We have not seen anything like what we’ve seen in the U.S. recently in Europe, to my knowledge as a scientist,
and I’m pretty aware of the field,” said Constantine Vardavas, the European Respiratory Society’s scientific relations director with the EU.
[link to www.politico.eu (secure)]

(September 27, 2019) Flu season threatens to complicate diagnoses of vaping-related illness
The issue, experts say, is that flu and other respiratory viruses can, in many ways, look strikingly similar
to a case of vaping-related illness: Symptoms include shortness of breath, night sweats, low oxygen levels,
and hazy spots on a lung X-ray.

“It’s going to be difficult to tease apart a bad flu case and a vaping case,” said Dr. Sean Callahan,
a University of Utah Health pulmonologist who has treated several cases of vaping-related illness.
The CDC, when asked, didn’t respond directly to the question of whether its definition might need to be revised.
[link to www.statnews.com (secure)]

(September 2019) Trump administration cut pandemic early warning program
The Trump administration decided to end a $200m early warning program designed to alert
it to potential pandemics just three months before it is believed Covid-19 began infecting people in China.

The project, called Predict, had been run by the US Agency for International Development since 2009.
It had identified more than 160 different coronaviruses that had the potential to develop into pandemics,
including a virus that is considered the closest known relative to Covid-19.
[link to www.theguardian.com (secure)]

(September 2019) Bill Gates made a Netflix video
which made an eerie imaginary scenario. The video, part of the “Explained” series, imagined a wet market in China
where live and dead animals are stacked and a highly deadly virus erupts that spreads globally.
Gates appears as an expert in the video to warn “If you think of anything that could come along
that would kill millions of people, a pandemic is our greatest risk” threatening if nothing was done
to better prepare for pandemics, the time would come when the world would look back and wish it had invested more into potential vaccines.
[link to www.netflix.com (secure)]

(October 4, 2019) US vaping illness deaths rise to 18 with 1,000 cases reported
At least 18 deaths and more than 1,000 cases of a mysterious lung illness
have been linked with vaping by US health authorities.
Doctors have been unable to establish what is causing the illness,
whose symptoms include chest pain, fatigue and shortness of breath.
[link to www.bbc.com (secure)]

(October 3, 2019) Conservative groups urge Trump to back off ban on flavored vaping products
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is expected to issued guidance on the prohibition soon,
arguing the flavors are appealing to children and leading to rising youth vaping rates.
But conservatives say the ban, which doesn't apply to tobacco flavors,
would hurt small vape businesses and adults trying to quit cigarettes.
[link to thehill.com (secure)]

(October 18, 2019) Event 201 - global pandemic exercise
Event 201 was a large scale simulation of a global coronavirus pandemic.
The final presentation was held in front of an audience on 18 October 2019.
The "exercise players" were prominent individuals from global business, government,
and public health, including Avril Haines, who was Deputy Director of the CIA under Obama.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum
and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hosted Event 201.
[link to wikispooks.com (secure)]
[link to www.centerforhealthsecurity.org (secure)]

(October 25, 2019) Scientists Were Hunting for the Next Ebola. Now the U.S. Has Cut Off Their Funding
In a move that worries many public health experts, the federal government is quietly shutting down a surveillance program
for dangerous animal viruses that someday may infect humans.
[link to www.nytimes.com (secure)]

Five foreign athletes from military world games in Wuhan infected with malaria, not COVID-19 in October 2019: hospital head
[link to www.globaltimes.cn (secure)]

(November 15, 2019) CDC begin hiring Quarantine Public Health Advisors
Location: Anchorage, Alaska, Los Angeles, California, San Diego, California, San Francisco, California,
Miami, Florida, Atlanta, Georgia, Honolulu, Hawaii, Chicago, Illinois, Boston, Massachusetts, Detroit, Michigan,
Minneapolis, Minnesota, Newark, New Jersey, New York, New York, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Dallas, Texas, El Paso, Texas, Houston, Texas, Seattle, Washington, San Juan
[link to jobs.cdc.gov (secure)]

(November 17, 2019) U.S. and South Korea postpone military drills in bid to save North Korea dialogue
The United States and South Korea have postponed joint air drills that were scheduled this month in an attempt
to save a faltering dialogue process with North Korea, officials announced Sunday.
[link to www.washingtonpost.com (secure)]

(November 23, 2019) CDC Approves Partial Resumption of USAMRIID Select Agent Research
[link to globalbiodefense.com (secure)]

(November 23, 2019) ‘Not enough pork in the world’ to deal with China’s demand for meat
With hundreds of millions of pigs dead from swine fever, exporters are scrambling to fill the gap. But prices are soaring.
The cost of living in China has outstripped the 3% government target for the first time in a decade,
and a big part of the problem is the soaring price of pork, which is being driven up by a widespread outbreak of African swine fever.
[link to www.theguardian.com (secure)]

(December 19, 2019) Quantum Dots Deliver Vaccines and Invisibly Encode Vaccination History in Skin
Researchers headed by a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have created a microneedle platform
using fluorescent microparticles called quantum dots (QD), which can deliver vaccines and at the same time invisibly encode vaccination
history directly in the skin. The quantum dots are composed of nanocrystals, which emit near-infrared (NIR) light that can be detected
by a specially equipped smartphone.
[link to www.genengnews.com (secure)]

(December 12, 2019) Australia, Canada look to digital identity solutions to get rid of physical ID cards
Mastercard has rolled out a new digital identity pilot in Australia this week that can identify a person in both digital and physical environments,
the company announced. Mastercard is testing different ways of proving identity without having to rely on multiple physical documents or centralized identity databases.
The project is based on a distributed model that, when activated, uses information from the mobile device
which has been checked through additional reference points, such as the person’s bank or government agencies taking part in the pilot.
The pilot program is carried out in partnership with Australia Post which will use the existing digital ID solution to enable Australians
to identify themselves when using the services, and with Deakin University where student volunteers
will test an identity verification process for student registration and digital exams.
Canadian province Quebec is also looking into biometrics to confirm online identity and get rid of traditional physical government IDs by 2021, writes CBC.
The government is waiting to see if any companies in the private sector would be interested in taking over the project. Details about cost have not been revealed.
[link to www.biometricupdate.com (secure)]

Exclusive: U.S. Axed CDC Expert Job in China Months Before Virus Outbreak
[link to www.nytimes.com (secure)]