As a Gen Xer, I’m old enough to remember the Cold War and US-Russian tensions in the ‘arms race’.
I recall political cartoons depicting the growing nuclear stockpiles on each side in an alarming game of ‘one-upmanship’. It was an anxiety-ridden time as an adolescent. Thankfully, they didn’t blow the world up.
It seems we have another emerging ‘arms race’ with reports of the ‘not so secret’ UK military lab, Porton Down, focusing on the mission to produce a vaccine against ‘Disease X’. The UK Health Security Agency says the new Vaccine Development and Evaluation Centre (VDEC):
‘…will help to ensure that the UK has the vaccines we need to protect the public from major infectious disease threats we face in future.’
With two new state-of-the-art laboratories and over 200 highly trained scientists to run approximately 100 projects a year, the VDEC is well-placed to produce a vaccine against ‘Disease X’ within 100 days of identifying a new pandemic threat – the ‘100 Days Mission’.
The VDEC represents a collaborative effort, partnering with national and international stakeholders including the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), US government funding agencies (such as BARDA and the NIAID), and commercial interests including vaccine developers and manufacturers.
The UK is by no means alone. There is a global push to get the world ready for the seemingly inevitable next pandemic. This effort is not new. The term ‘Disease X’ was first used in 2018 by the World Health Organisation very soon after the birth of CEPI in 2017.
It seems that CEPI was created at the perfect time. Launched in Davos in 2017, the organisation identifies as an:
‘…innovative partnership between public, private, philanthropic, and civil society. With contributing members from the World Economic Forum, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, the World Bank, the WHO, and BARDA.’
CEPI’s mission is to:
‘Accelerate the development of vaccines and other biologic countermeasures against epidemic and pandemic threats so they can be accessible to all people in need.’
CEPI’s Preliminary Business Plan (2017-2021) makes for some enlightening reading with one of its first objectives to ‘invest USD 1 billion … in order to advance 4-6 vaccine candidates to proof of concept in 5 years.’ That 5 years would be up being roughly 2021.
CEPI landed on a coincidence with the start date of the pandemic
Covid provided the perfect opportunity for CEPI to consolidate their efforts in a collaboration known as ‘COVAX’ alongside GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, the WHO, and delivery partner UNICEF. In what seemed like a ‘proof of concept’ opportunity for the coalition, the learnings from COVAX, in terms of coordinating and collaborating between the main players of the biopharmaceutical complex, are now being used to forward plan for the arrival of the next pandemic – known as ‘Disease X’.
In March 2021, CEPI released their 2022-26 strategy shortly followed by the ‘100 Days’ plan in 2022. The plan set the goal that ‘vaccines should be ready for initial authorisation and manufacturing at scale within 100 days of recognition of a pandemic pathogen, otherwise known as Disease X’.
CEPI Chair, Australia’s former Secretary of the Department of Finance and current National Covid-19 Advisory Board Member said we should prepare for Disease X.
‘We’ve taken amazing strides in vaccinology. In this last period, we’ve taken 10 years’ worth of initiatives in under a year. And we believe we need to be ambitious. Looking forward our ambition should be to eliminate the threat of epidemics and pandemics and CEPI has a $3.5 billion plan to achieve that ambition. But we can’t do this alone. COVAX has shown us the power of collaboration. And so, we need commitment and investment, and that collaboration to achieve our ambition. We look forward to working with you to make that ambition a reality.’
CEPI is just one component of the biopharmaceutical-military complex which has formed over the last decade. Renowned Cardiologist Dr Peter McCullough explains how the complex is a carefully organised syndicate.
‘You know the complex is active just by watching the movement,’ says McCullough. And it’s a lucrative affair. ‘The Gates Foundation invested just a few million in bio and tech and they got out billions. Millions to billions… It’s a money orgy right now.’
In the US, the framework for the pandemic response is provided by the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act (2005) which says, ‘We will have waves of pandemics … and we will be prepared … And it’ll be a national security operation … and we will have countermeasures.’ Says McCullough, ‘And in the military … it’s not about medical freedom. It’s not about freedom of choice. It’s not about keeping your business open and closed. It’s the military, and One will respond.’ This military-style framework extends to Australia, as outlined by Senator Roberts recently in a speech describing the Medical Countermeasures Consortium.
With the pandemic officially over, CEPI’s focus has shifted to the next ‘Disease X’ to coordinate with labs worldwide to develop a library of potential vaccine candidates to have shelf-ready in 100 days.
Let’s just take a brief pause to remind ourselves where Covid came from: a lab meddling with gain-of-function research on viruses. What are the chances this collaborative effort might result in the man-made creation of the next Disease X?
Arms race anyone?
In a recent interview, former WHO medical Advisor Dr David Bell says this single-minded focus on Disease X is distracting people from the real health emergency.
‘Disease X is about worrying about a new virus or new pathogen bacteria that is suddenly going to emanate from somewhere on Earth and be of the bubonic-plague-type disaster for humanity. Such a thing hasn’t happened in the West since good sanitation, and … since we’ve had the advent of antibiotics. So almost certainly is not going to happen.’
Instead, Bell describes how health epidemics like obesity and chronic disease, and the explosion in autism are really where we should be focusing our efforts.
This is unlikely to happen.
‘The problem is that you’re not going to make money out of these,’ explains Bell. ‘I think there’s a fear if they look into (it) they will find pharmaceutical contributors, and that could cost tens of billions or hundreds of billions of dollars to the industry. The industry is where most of this funding (for medical research) comes from. So, they’re not going to fund research into something that risks a major hit on their profits. They would rather look at pushing something like ‘Disease X’ where you can scare the population into thinking that just around the corner is another massive plague… (which is an) incredibly unlikely event unless you surmise that human manipulation of pathogens is going to cause a leak or an outbreak.’
Even more concerning is the framework that has been set up in plain sight to fast-track these military-style countermeasures. When considered through the lens of the WHO’s proposed international pandemic treaty and International Health Regulation amendments, the picture is truly alarming. The nightmare of a man-made Disease X pandemic resulting in an internationally coordinated military-style response isn’t outside the realms of possibility. Déjà Vu
‘We have this huge industry being set up to surveil for variants,’ says Bell. ‘And the model they are pushing for public health is that they will find variants, and they will lock people down. They will mandate … them to have a vaccine to get their freedom back. And then the vaccine will make a vast profit and then the cycle will go around and find another variant. This is a future that is sort of mapped out and it’ll be very hard to get out of once we have things like the Central Bank Digital Currency, a program where if you don’t get the vaccine, they could stop you buying groceries.’
These aren’t conspiracy theories. These are what the people who are making money out of this and involved in the finance world are saying they intend to happen,’ warns Bell.
As this biopharmaceutical-military complex forms in plain sight, the situation looks grim. But we have a choice, there’s always a choice.
‘We can go down that road which is a sort of almost an international fascist state, where we will have a technocracy at the top based on health and mandates and on restricting freedom unless you comply,’ explains Bell. ‘Or people can step back now and say this isn’t what we fought for in World Wars. It’s not what this country … or democracies around the world was supposed to be built on.’
‘We have to stop complying with this direction and go back to a system of democracy where the individual is sovereign and all these other agencies can give advice, but they can’t tell someone how to live their lives and they can’t take away freedom.’
It’s a choice we might have to make very soon.
