COVID And Money

Yesterday I posted about the Hunter Biden venture capital firm's investment in a for-profit startup that worked with the Wuhan lab to perform gain-of-function research. The image above is a screen shot that comes from another Natalie Winters piece in the National Pulse, dated yesterday, where she refers to a 2018 presentation at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill by Ralp;h Baric, a close colleague of Peter Daszak, entitled “Imagining the Next Flu Pandemic – and Preventing it!”

In yesterday's post I offered half-crazy speculation that anti-computer virus tech tycoon John McAfee was suspected of creating the computer viruses for which his company sold the antidotes only as a way to suggest such opportunities conceivably exist. Natalie Winters seems to be on a similar wavelength.

The slide outlines what type of stocks and industries surged during the Ebola outbreak, which he uses to extrapolate financial advice on how to “make money in the next pandemic.”

“I wanted to give you good news. There are winners out there, right? So if you ever want to be prepared and make money in the next pandemic, if that’s what you want to do, buy stock in Hazmat suit makers and protective clothing or companies that make antiviral drugs for that particular pandemic,” he notes.

Baric adds that the aforementioned sectors and stocks would “probably do pretty well” before highlighting that “there are actually mutual funds for pandemic preparedness.”

. . . “There is an opportunity for people to have political gain, financial gain, and personal gain during times of social upheaval, and that will probably occur,” he adds.

In yesterday's post, Winters uncovers a colleague of Ralph Baric who works with him as an assistant professor at UNC, Dr. Timothy Sheahan. Sheahan, with financial and professional conflicts, remains on the Lancet COVID task force from which Peter Daszak was recently recused.

Sheahan has worked alongside Baric for nearly two decades, including working at his lab while in graduate school and later teaching at the same institution: the University of North Carolina (UNC) Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health.

Prior to the current likely lab outbreak of COVID, Baric and Sheahen were working with the for-profit biotech company Gilead Sciences to test the drug Remdesivir to treat coronaviruses.

If nothing else, this paints a continuing picture of the close relationship between the virology establishment, which is already rife with personal and professional conflicts, and the for-profit drug industry, where the credentialed doctors and professors are routinely paid to work as consultants and researchers. Baric's 2018 presentation makes it plain that these figures are all acutely aware of the opportunities for personal aggrandizement that this enviornment fosters.

Meanwhile, according to the Wall Street Journal,

Biden administration officials are cautioning that a 90-day review into the origins of the Covid-19 virus may not produce a definitive explanation as intelligence agencies take on the challenge of unraveling the global pandemic.

Spy agencies conducting the review have yet to find conclusive evidence that would settle the debate over whether the virus came from human contact with an infected animal or was leaked from a Chinese government virology lab, a person familiar with the efforts said.

Did anyone seriously expect any other outcome? The WSJ just spent x amount of staff time -- though probably far less than it would had it wanted a different outcome -- to establish yet again that opinions are divided, there are different theories, nobody knows how COVID started, and that'll likely never change.