Timeline to Covid Tyranny – Part Two:

The Year 2019 and The Coming Storm

Mar 27, 2025

In Timeline to Covid Tyranny: Part Two – The Year 2019 and The Coming Storm, HFDF writer and researcher, Mike Bryant, expands on Timeline to Covid Tyranny: Part One – Constructing the Biosecurity Empire (1999–2018) which takes a deep dive into the events leading up to the covid-19 pandemic, arguing that it wasn’t just a sudden crisis but the result of years of planning by powerful entities.

INTRODUCTION

Appreciating the full impact of the covid “shock and awe” campaign requires an understanding of not only the extensive planning that went into constructing the massive pandemic machine but also an awareness of how today’s healthcare management systems are being exploited to funnel trillions of dollars into the coffers of the world’s banker barons, pharmaceutical industry, and global ruling elites.

We should not underestimate the windfall that has accrued to financial institutions (publicly traded and private banks, brokerage houses, investment firms, wealthy individuals, and family dynasties) from the healthcare sector of the securities markets. In the US alone, national health expenditures (NHE) — that is, total spending on healthcare and related activities — constitute the largest sector of the US economy. Last year, NHE was more than $5 trillion, or 17.7% of the US gross domestic product (GDP). By 2032, NHE are projected to rise to $7.7 trillion, or 19.7% of GDP.

In other words, “disease” has replaced war as the primary money-spinner of the US — and the globe. The titans who control the nation’s politicians and the economy’s purse strings, including the details and direction of monetary and fiscal policy, need to create lengthy, large-scale health crises in order to keep their drowning-in-red-ink financial systems afloat. Manufactured pandemics have become mammoth investment opportunities that increase the wealth of these billionaires and further consolidate their power.

The covid phenomenon itself cannot be fully comprehended without understanding the behind-the-scenes, un-televised, unprecedented economic collapse of 2019–2020 that threatened the entire global financial system.

In the words of David A. Hughes, author of COVID-19 — Psychological Operations and the War for Technocracy, “This was not to be just any recession, however. This was, potentially, to be a system-destroying recession.”

In September 2019, world markets were faced with an emergency debt crisis that popped up in formerly (mostly) liquid markets — namely, money markets, repurchase agreement (repo) markets, and foreign exchange (FX) markets. A crisis in the US repo market saw the secured overnight lending rate briefly hit 10% (versus its prior 2019 rate of 2%–3%), prompting the Federal Reserve to step in and begin dumping hundreds of billions of dollars a week into Wall Street’s trading firms. That repo loan operation, effectively a Wall Street bailout program, started September 17 and over the next six months came to more than $9 trillion in cumulative loans made at super-cheap borrowing rates.

John Titus, a lawyer by training who, ever since the pandemic, has been applying his forensic skills to rooting out banking fraud, suggests that the Federal Reserve loan activity led to the decision to put BlackRock’s “Dealing with the next downturn” plan into action. Curiously, that white paper, whose central tenet is the “going direct” plan, was written by four BlackRock investment officers even before the World Health Organization (WHO) had declared the pandemic in March 2020.

All of this suggests that the covid crisis was timed to coincide with the emergency debt crisis the world markets were facing. It looks like Western governments, at the beck and call of the big banks, instigated an operation to stem the cataclysmic economic landslide, bail out large investors, and proactively install a security infrastructure to control the inevitable social disorder that would result from this global catastrophe.

Put another way, without an external threat like a “killer virus,” without the Covid-19 smokescreen, this massive financial collapse and historic wealth transfer would be seen for what it was: colossal theft by the ruling aristocracy of financial fraudsters.

As I wrote in my January 2, 2023, article for Off-Guardian, “That’s the coup: global hyperinflation to vaporize the assets of the masses and the states in order to hand over public assets to private investors. This allows the ruling class to mop up properties (bankrupted small businesses, foreclosed homes, etc.) in order to stake limitless claims on everything in the world.”

And, as John Titus wrote in his Summary — Going Direct Reset: “In a nutshell, the arrival of the 2020 pandemic was about as accidental as an assassination. The pandemic narrative is nothing but a cover story to conceal from the public what in reality is the biggest asset transfer ever.”

January 16, 2019 — The World Health Organization (WHO) publishes Ten Threats to Global Health in 2019. Climate change and a looming influenza pandemic are some of the significant global health threats the world can expect in 2019, according to the WHO. The organization also names vaccine hesitancy as one of the world’s top ten global health threats.

January 23, 2019 — CNBC’s Becky Quick interviews Bill Gates at the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, Switzerland. Echoing what he wrote in his Wall Street Journal essay, “The Best Investment I’ve Ever Made,” Gates cites his investments in global health organizations aimed at increasing access to vaccines as his most lucrative to date, earning him a 20-to-1 ($200 billion made on $20 billion) return.

January 24, 2019 — “Imperial College scientists present vaccine revolution to world leaders at the WEF in Davos,” reads a headline in that London university’s campus newspaper. The article contains this breaking news: “Professor Robin Shattock, Head of Mucosal Infection and Immunity within the Department of Medicine, is working on the manufacturing of RNA vaccines to create quicker and more accessible responsiveness to outbreaks of known pathogens — such as flu, and unknown pathogens, called Disease X. His team is improving the production system of vaccines to quickly provide tens of thousands of new vaccine doses within weeks of a new threat being identified. Currently, vaccines can take 10 years or more to develop.”

January 24, 2019 — Operation Crimson Contagion begins. The series of exercises simulating a global influenza pandemic is conducted by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and includes participants from numerous federal, state, and local agencies. It runs eight months, from January until August. In this made-up scenario, a group of thirty tourists returns to the US from China. Several of them fall ill with a novel respiratory virus that they picked up in China. The first identified case of the virus, dubbed H7N9, is found in a 52-year-old man who lives in Chicago (the host city for the actual tabletop exercise). Then other members of the travel group come down with the same virus. It spreads like wildfire, resulting in 110 million Americans becoming infected in less than two months. A total of 7.7 million patients end up requiring hospitalization and ultimately 586,000 people die from the H7N9 respiratory virus.

NOTE: In real life, on January 24, 2020—exactly a year after Crimson Contagion simulation exercise kicks off—a woman in her 60s who had traveled to Wuhan, China, returns to the Chicago area. She is announced as the second confirmed case of the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) in the United States.

February 14, 2019 — Then-US Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) sends a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg expressing his concerns about “medically inaccurate information on vaccines” that might “violate Facebook’s terms of service.”

Schiff (who has since been elected to the US Senate) also sends a letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos wanting to know what Amazon has been doing to fight anti-vaccine “misinformation” and to ask if Amazon plans to take such misinformed books and movies out of its search results.

The California congressman’s campaign to remove “anti-vaccination content” sets the stage for censorship of anyone who questions vaccines. It is also a precursor to his 2021 US House campaign and to his ongoing legislative efforts to stop “the spread of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation” on respective platforms. In a September 9, 2021, letter, Schiff asks both Facebook and Amazon to give “a more thorough explanation” of their efforts to “mitigate the dangerous spread of vaccine misinformation.”

February 14, 2019 — In Munich, on the eve of the 2019 Munich Security Conference, the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) and its partners from Georgetown University and the Center for Global Development convene a tabletop exercise with senior leaders from around the world with the goal of making recommendations to improve the global system for responding to deliberate, high-consequence biological events.

According to an NTI bulletin, “The tabletop simulation highlighted the unique challenges faced by the complex web of international stakeholders, leaders, and response communities when coordinating action against a deliberate biological attack. To add to the challenge,” NTI writes, “this particular scenario highlighted the catastrophic potential of a genetically modified agent resistant to available medical treatment.” [Emphasis added.]

Importantly, the event is sponsored in part by the Open Philanthropy Project, an organization that would a few months later fund the Event 201 tabletop exercise.

Also notable is the fact that the Munich exercise was inspired by a speech Bill Gates gave two years earlier—at the 2017 Munich Security Conference (MSC), during which he said, “The good news is that with advances in biotechnology, new vaccines and drugs can help prevent epidemics from spreading out of control. First and most importantly, we have to build an arsenal of new weapons—vaccines, drugs, and diagnostics. Vaccines can be especially important in containing epidemics. But today, it typically takes up to ten years to develop and license a new vaccine. To significantly curb deaths from a fast-moving airborne pathogen, we would have to get that down considerably—to 90 days or less. The really big breakthrough potential is in emerging technology platforms that leverage recent advances in genomics to dramatically reduce the time needed to develop vaccines.”

Another point of special interest: The NTI’s final report on the 2019 tabletop drill, titled “A Spreading Plague: Lessons and Recommendations for Responding to a Deliberate Biological Event,” quotes Gates’ speech verbatim: “We ignore the link between health security and international security at our own peril.”

February 27, 2019 — The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) announces that it has awarded a $34 million contract to CureVac to advance The RNA Printer™,” which it calls “a mRNA vaccine platform that can rapidly combat multiple diseases.” CEPI CEO Dr. Richard Hatchett is quoted in the announcement as saying: “CureVac’s vaccine platform could be a game-changer, radically improving our ability to respond to the emergence of Disease X. Disease X could emerge suddenly and have deadly consequences—we’ve seen this happen with Ebola, MERS coronavirus, Zika, and countless other diseases. That’s why we’re striving to develop rapid-response vaccine platforms—like CureVac’s mRNA technology—to defend against these unknown pathogens.”

CEPI regards itself as “an influential entity coordinating global vaccine investment in close collaboration with the pharmaceutical industry.” It is a brainchild of the WEF and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Dr. Hatchett served on the White House Homeland Security Council under President George W. Bush and was a member of the White House National Security Staff under President Barack Obama. When the so-called Global War on Terror (GWOT) started in 2001, he recommended obligatory confinement of entire populations.

March 11, 2019 — The United Nations unveils a global influenza strategy to prevent the “real” threat of pandemic. Meanwhile, the WHO announces a revised Global Influenza Strategy for 2019–2030. WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus warns, “The threat of pandemic influenza is ever-present. The on-going risk of a new influenza virus transmitting from animals to humans and potentially causing a pandemic is real. The question is not if we will have another pandemic, but when.”

March 13, 2019 — Moderna submits its Form 10-K Annual Report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). On page 150, Moderna notes:

“Currently, mRNA is considered a gene therapy product by the FDA.“

“In addition, because no product in which mRNA is the primary active ingredient has been approved, the regulatory pathway for approval is uncertain. The number and design of the clinical and preclinical studies required for the approval of these types of medicines have not been established, may be different from those required for gene therapy products or may require safety testing like gene therapy products.”

“Moreover, the length of time necessary to complete clinical trials and to submit an application for marketing approval for a final decision by a regulatory authority varies significantly from one pharmaceutical product to the next, and may be difficult to predict.”

Directly after these statements, Moderna confesses:

“We have incurred significant losses since our inception and anticipate that we will continue to incur significant losses for the foreseeable future.“

“We have incurred net losses in each year since our inception in 2009, including net losses of $384.7 million, $255.9 million and $216.2 million for the years ended December 31, 2018, 2017 and 2016, respectively. As of December 31, 2018, we had an accumulated deficit of $1.0 billion.”

[In the above Moderna quotations, all the bold emphases are added.]

NOTE: In 2020, due to “emergency measures,” mRNA products would be excluded from gene therapy regulations (GTP). In the US and the EU, mRNA products fighting infectious diseases would be considered a new class of vaccine and would thus slip into the established regulatory pathway of a “biologic.” Speaking at the 2021 Global Health Summit, Bayer Pharmaceuticals Division President Stefan Oelrich praised this “BioRevolution” in health sciences: “We are really taking that leap [to drive innovation] — us as a company, Bayer — in cell and gene therapies. Ultimately, the mRNA vaccines are an example for that cell and gene therapy.” He added: “I always like to say: if we had surveyed two years ago in the public, ‘would you be willing to take a gene or cell therapy and inject it into your body?’ — we probably would have had a 95% refusal rate. “I think this pandemic has opened many people’s eyes to innovation.”

April 23, 2019 — Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (CHS) publishes a report, “Vaccine Platforms: State of the Field and Looming Challenges,” that sums up a project designed to “elucidate the promise and challenges of vaccine platform technologies.” Explaining the background of the project, the report comments: “[O]ver the past several years, platform technologies have been developed that could make it possible for multiple vaccines to be more rapidly produced from a single system.”

The CHS report continues:

“The overarching aim of the project was to develop a state-of-the-art conceptual understanding of various vaccine platform technologies, with special attention to how they may speed development of vaccines for global catastrophic biologic risks (GCBRs) and emerging infectious disease outbreaks. This report describes major scientific and policy issues related to platforms and how they are understood in government, academia, and industry, and it provides recommendations aimed at helping realize the potential benefits of vaccine platform technologies.” [Emphasis added.]

The report also notes:

“When a vaccine technology can be labeled a platform, it is often given heightened attention by the media, investors, funders, and public health leaders. Such a scenario has created a multiplicity of uses of the concept of ‘platform’ that, in many instances, see it stretched beyond its intended use.”

[In the above quotations from the CHS report, all the bold emphases are added.]

The project that the report describes was sponsored by the Open Philanthropy Project, which, as this timeline has already observed (see February 14), will sponsor the Event 201 coronavirus simulation later in the year. Worthy of note is the fact that Open Philanthropy Project’s project director, Tom Inglesby, has worked for DARPA and BARDA and will be playing a lead role in the upcoming Event 201.

May 8, 2019 — Germany convenes the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag to discuss the topic “Strengthening global health — implementing the UN Sustainable Development Goals.” The conference is part of the German federal government’s strategy of developing, in coordination with the WHO, an action plan on “global health” and “cross-border health threats.” In attendance is German Chancellor Angela Merkel, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and members of the Global Health subcommittee, represented by the Gates Foundation, by Christian Drosten (who would later establish the PCR protocol) and by the Wellcome Trust’s Jeremy Farrar, among others.

Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn says Germany must also do its part to strengthen global health. Recalling that the WHO counts anti-vaccination campaigners among the ten greatest risks to global health, he cites vaccination fatigue in Germany in relation to a resurgence of measles and voices his support for compulsory vaccination.

May 9, 2019 — The One Health Lancet Commission holds its first meeting in Oslo, Norway.

BACKGROUND: The One Health concept was developed in September 2004 by leading health experts during a World Conservation Society symposium held at Rockefeller University. The symposium slogan was “One World, One Health” and its final product was The Manhattan Principles, which contained twelve recommendations for “a more holistic approach” to preventing epidemics. The symposium’s keynote speaker was William H. Foege, MD, MPH, and Emeritus Presidential Distinguished Professor at Emory University. Between 1984 and 2000, he and colleagues from the WHO, UNICEF, the World Bank, and UN Development Program, and the Rockefeller Foundation formed and ran a working group called the Task Force for Child Survival and Development, whose primary goal was to accelerate childhood immunization. Later, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) would establish the William H. Foege Fellowship in Global Health to honor the career and achievements of “one of the world’s leading figures in public health.”

May 13, 2019 — At the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, WEF founder Klaus Schwab (whose title later became executive chairman) proclaims that the Fourth Industrial Revolution has begun. To quote Schwab: “As new technologies disrupt our political, economic, and personal lives, the notion that we can revert to the booming manufacturing towns of yesteryear is wishful thinking. A successful global future will require states, individuals, and organizations to innovate and cooperate in entirely new ways.”

May 15, 2019 — The WHO and the Wellcome Trust join forces to combat epidemics and drug-resistant infections. The partnership will focus on health emergencies, on epidemic preparedness, on anti-microbial resistance, and on accelerating the health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through research, innovation, and data. Epidemic preparedness will be the prime focal point of their efforts. NOTE: In 2020, the UK’s Wellcome Trust will have a financial endowment of £29.1 billion, making it the fourth wealthiest charitable foundation in the world and one of the world’s top funders of biomedical and pharmaceutical research.

June 13, 2019 — New York State ends the religious exemption to vaccine mandates. The Democrat-led Senate and Assembly both vote to repeal the exemption, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo signs the measure minutes after the final vote.

June 13, 2019 — The WEF (also known as “the Forum”) and the UN sign a Strategic Partnership Framework for the 2030 Agenda, outlining areas of cooperation to deepen institutional engagement. The agreement is signed in a meeting of the UN Economic and Social Council Partnership Forum, held at United Nations headquarters in New York City. Its purpose is to accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

June 30, 2019 — In its Annual Economic Report, the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), based in Basel, Switzerland, sets off international alarm bells. The document, subtitled “Time to ignite all engines,” highlights “overheating in the leveraged loan market,” where “credit standards have been deteriorating” and “collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) have surged.” BIS General Manager Agustín Carstens warns, “Navigating the way to clearer skies means balancing speed with stability and conserving some fuel to cope with possible headwinds.”

July 2019 — The European Union publishes its 2019–2022 “Roadmap On Vaccination,” which includes a series of “timelines and deliverables” that are designed to reach the EU’s goal of combining an EU vaccine card with a passport for EU citizens. This roadmap explores the feasibility of developing a common EU vaccination card.

July 11, 2019 — The Trusted News Initiative (TNI) is created by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) with the “specific aims of flagging disinformation during elections” and censoring what it deems misinformation. Besides the BBC, partners of the initiative include the Associated Press, CBC/Radio-Canada, the European Broadcasting Union, Meta (parent of Facebook), Microsoft, Thomson Reuters, Google, Twitter, and The Washington Post. NOTE: In 2020, TNI will change its focus from elections to “combating the spread of harmful vaccine disinformation” during the pandemic.

August 1, 2019 — Pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Glaxo-SmithKline announce a joint venture to create a premier global consumer healthcare company.

August 5, 2019 — The first draft of the WHO’s Immunisation Agenda 2030: Towards a Vision and Strategy for Vaccines and Immunization for the Decade Ahead is released. The document outlines the WHO’s global vision and strategy for a new decade (2021–2030) of vaccines and immunization.

August 7, 2019 — Kary Mullis, the 1993 Nobel Prize-winning inventor of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) device, dies. Mullis has stated on numerous occasions that the PCR is not a tool for diagnosing the presence of a disease but is only a research tool.

“PCR testing has been erroneously chosen as the gold standard for diagnosing COVID-19 infection and disease, even if it has never been validated, nor standardized. The symptoms of COVID-19 disease cannot be specified, because they can be anything, everything, and nothing at all according to the authorities. They range from clinically observable symptoms likely to lead to death to no symptoms at all — from near death to complete health. All the foregoing shows the entire scope of COVID-19 diagnostic science is flawed.” — Fabio Franchi, MD, and Jerneja Tomsic, PhD, Comments on Kämmerer, et al. (2023) regarding RT-PCR Testing

August 9, 2019 — The BIS issues a working paper called “(Un)conventional policy and the effective lower bound” that describes “unconventional monetary policy measures” that would “insulate the real economy from further deterioration in financial conditions.” The paper indicates that, by offering “direct credit to the economy” during a crisis, central bank lending “can replace commercial banks in providing loans to firms.” As described by famed historian Carroll Quigley in one of his influential books, the BIS was the apex of efforts by elite bankers “to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole” (Tragedy and Hope, Chapter 20).

August 9, 2019 — Remdesivir is dropped from the Ebola trial in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) after increased risk of death and kidney failure are reported. The independent Data and Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) recommends the early termination of an Ebola Therapeutics Trial in the DRC, explaining: “The mortality rate in the remdesivir treatment group, 53% (93/175), was similar to ZMapp.” NOTE: Three years later, emergency room physician Paul Maric would testify in the Covid-19 hearings held by US Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) that remdesivir’s use during the “pandemic” had provably increased the risk of death and caused renal failure.

August 12–19, 2019 — US Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL) takes part in the Aspen Institute’s week-long conference in Rwanda, East Africa, which is underwritten by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. While attending the event, Rush meets with Gates Foundation representatives to discuss which companies a future government contact tracing program will award contracts to. This is before any mention of a pandemic.

NOTE: Nine months after these meetings, on May 1, 2020, Rush would introduce in Congress HR 6666, the $100 billion COVID-19 Testing, Reaching and Contacting Everyone (TRACE) Act. Then, thirteen days later, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi slides $75 billion for “Covid-19 testing, tracing and isolation efforts” into the $3 trillion Covid relief package.

August 15, 2019 — BlackRock, the world’s most powerful investment fund (managing around $7 trillion in stock and bond funds), issues a white paper, “Dealing with the Next Downturn,” which points to a pending financial cataclysm. The paper suggests the US Federal Reserve may need to inject liquidity directly into the financial system to prevent this “dramatic downturn.” It notes: “Unprecedented policies will be needed to respond to the next economic downturn. Monetary policy is almost exhausted as global interest rates plunge towards zero or below. An unprecedented response is needed when monetary policy is exhausted and fiscal policy alone is not enough. That response will likely involve ‘going direct‘ — that is, finding ways to get central bank money directly in the hands of public and private sector spenders.”

August 22–24, 2019 — The central bankers of the Group of Seven (G7) industrialized nations meet in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to discuss BlackRock’s “going direct” paper and to weigh in on emergency measures that can be taken to prevent the looming financial meltdown. At that meeting, James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, famously states: “We just have to stop thinking that next year things are going to be normal.” NOTE: In 2020, BlackRock will be hired by the Federal Reserve, the Bank of Canada, and Sweden’s central bank to implement a bailout plan.

August 29, 2019 — The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and fellow philanthropy Flu Lab announce they have awarded grants to eight researchers in the field of vaccinology. The hope is that the recipients’ research will pave the way for a universal flu vaccine:

Alice McHardy (Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research), who will design variants of the influenza surface protein neuraminidase that have improved stability. It is thought that inclusion of more neuraminidase in flu vaccine would promote a more robust and broadly neutralizing antibody response.
Jonah Sacha (Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute, Oregon Health and Science University), who proposes to use a Trojan horse virus approach, inserting conserved influenza virus sequences into a stealth vector virus to stimulate a T cell immune response in the lungs.
Jonathan Heeney (Laboratory of Viral Zoonotics, University of Cambridge), who will use an existing DNA vaccine approach for influenza.
Yoshihiro Kawaoka (University of Tokyo and University of Wisconsin), who will use a cocktail of synthetic proteins designed to focus the immune system’s response to vaccine on parts of flu viruses that are common to all flu viruses.
Peter Kwong (Vaccine Research Center, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases), who will apply lessons from HIV research to identify sites of vulnerability suitable to the development of a universal influenza vaccine.
Patrick Wilson (Antibody Biology Lab, University of Chicago), who will mine a library of human antibodies to influenza to design a new protein sequence for a novel, potent vaccine that should provoke a broader antibody response.
Martin Karplus (Harvard University), who will use a computational approach to design an improved flu vaccine tailored to generate production of antibodies that are active against a broad spectrum of influenza strains.

September 1, 2019 — The Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) releases a white paper titled “Driving Public Health in the Fast Lane: The Urgent Need for a 21st Century Data Superhighway.” The paper, a snapshot of the current state of the public health data infrastructure, is funded by the de Beaumont Foundation.

September 1, 2019 — The CDC’s Data Modernization Initiative (DMI) is launched, including its Public Health 21st Century Surveillance Superhighway plan. The DMI is designed to harmonize state, tribal, local, and territorial public health jurisdictions and private and public sector partners to create modern, interoperable, and real-time public health data and surveillance systems.

The DMI signals a significant transformation in public health data management across the US. It was funded by Congress before COVID-19 erupted. Further funding for this program would later be procured via the CARES Act.

September 12, 2019 — The European Commission (EC) and the WHO jointly launch the first Global Vaccination Summit. The event, held in Brussels, includes 400 invited political leaders and stakeholders from scientific, medical, philanthropic and civil society organizations and from the pharmaceutical industry. They discuss the problem of vaccine shortages, the growing issue of misinformation, and the diminishing public confidence in the value of vaccines. Their stated goal is to propel global action against vaccine-preventable diseases and against the spread of vaccine misinformation. At the end of the summit, the EC and WHO release a report, “Ten Actions Towards Vaccination For All.” Among their recommendations:

Tackle the root causes of vaccine hesitancy;
Continue efforts and investments in novel models of funding and incentives, in research, and in development and innovation of new or improved vaccine[s] and [vaccine] delivery devices;
Empower healthcare professionals at all levels as well as the media to provide effective, transparent and objective information to the public and to fight false and misleading information;
Align and integrate vaccination in global health and development agendas through a renewed Immunization Agenda 2030.

Attendees include:

Joe Cerrell (Managing Director for Global Policy and Advocacy for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), who focused on how to bring cutting-edge surveillance tools and advanced technologies to health workers in remote parts of the world.
Professor Stewart Cole (President of the Pasteur Institute), who highlighted the problem of how vaccine development process is lengthy and has a high risk of failure.
Dr. Seth Berkley (CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, or GAVI), who emphasized that strong political leadership has a profound impact on vaccine uptake and noted children missing out on the first dose of diphtheria/pertussis/tetanus (DPT) vaccine are “not plugged into the system.”
Nanette Cocero (of Vaccines Europe and Global President, Vaccines Pfizer Biopharmaceuticals Group), who described the development of vaccines as a success story “second only to clean water.”
Dr. Richard Hatchett (CEO of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, or CEPI), who pointed to how the public health community can respond to a crisis and locate public funding sources in order to help bring academic and biotech partners on board to develop vaccines.
Dr. Heidi J. Larson (Director of The Vaccine Confidence Project), who noted that defining misinformation can be challenging.
Jason Hirsch (Public Policy Manager at Facebook), who reported how Facebook is reducing the distribution of misinformation about vaccination and increasing users’ exposure to credible, authoritative information.

In Round Table 1, titled “In Vaccines We Trust: Stepping up action to increase vaccine confidence,” the panel explored strategies for increasing vaccine confidence and improving vaccination coverage rates. The role of the media, including search engines and social networks, was highlighted. A call was made to create a coalition of vaccine champions: The United Forces for Vaccination. Also, a call was issued for a “social movement for vaccination,” which would include positive messages about immunization to be incorporated into television shows to reinforce vaccination as a social norm.

September 17, 2019 — The repo market explodes, causing panic in the financial markets, writes Georg Erber, author of “The Repo-Crisis of September 2019.” Erber explains: “The repo market is pivotal to other financial markets, particularly those in bonds and derivatives, as it is the main source of financing for dealers. Repo, being a collateralized loan, provides a secure means of lending and, for borrowers, an economic means of leverage.”

A repurchase agreement, or repo, is an overnight trade in government securities where a dealer sells the securities to investors and buys them back the next day for a slightly higher price. Such trades are typically used to raise short-term capital, the dealer is effectively borrowing money overnight from investors, or lenders.

A sudden and unexpected spike, mirroring the financial panic of 2007–2008, saw secured overnight financing rates increase from 2.43% on September 16 to 5.25% on September 17 and reach as high as 10% during the trading day.

The Fed was forced to supply a $53.2 billion liquidity injection on Tuesday the 17th and again immediately to inject an additional $75 billion on Wednesday the 18th. The New York Fed continued to lend a daily amount of $75 billion overnight to market participants every morning of the week, through Friday, September 20. Also, the New York Fed continued to offer liquidity to market participants for several months in an effort to control and limit volatility.

September 19, 2019 — An article in Biometric Update announces that ID2020 has launched a program to establish a vaccine digital passport. ID2020, also known as the Digital Identity Alliance, is an electronic identification program that uses vaccination as a platform for digital identity. Among the founding partners of ID2020 are Microsoft (founded by Bill Gates), GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance (funded by Gates), the Rockefeller Foundation, and IDEO, an international design and consulting firm that works for transnational pharmaceutical corporations and technology firms.

September 19, 2019 — The White House announces that Donald Trump has signed Executive Order 13887 to modernize influenza vaccines in the US for the purpose of promoting national security and public health. The modernization is intended to:

Reduce reliance on more time-consuming, egg-based vaccine production;
Improve the speed of vaccine production; and
Advance the development of new, more effective vaccines.

EO 13887 establishes a National Influenza Vaccine Task Force, whose aim is to develop “a five-year national plan to promote the use of more agile and scalable vaccine manufacturing technologies and to accelerate development of vaccines that protect against many or all influenza viruses.”

September 19, 2019 — The Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB), a monitoring and advocacy body that was co-convened by the World Bank Group and the WHO in May 2018, today announces it has released its first annual report, “A World at Risk: Accelerating Global Preparedness for Health Emergencies.” The report (whose cover features an enlarged photo of a coronavirus cell) warns that the world is not prepared for a “fast-moving airborne pandemic that could kill up to 80 million people, disrupt economies and create social chaos.”

Its key messages include:

Our world is at acute risk from potentially devastating epidemics/pandemics that would not only cause tremendous loss of life, but significantly disrupt economies and create social chaos;
Leaders are responsible for protecting the security of their people, including health security, yet time and again, world leaders have failed to follow through on commitments around preparedness;
The world has many of the collective tools to prevent and prepare for an outbreak, but current efforts are grossly insufficient and THE NEED FOR NEW VACCINES AND DRUGS IS CRITICAL.

The illustrious members of the GPMB board are: Gro Harlem Brundtland, co-chair and former WHO Director-General; Dr. Chris Elias, president of the Global Development Program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF); Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the UK’s Wellcome Trust; Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID); Dr. George Gao, director-general of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention in the People’s Republic of China; and Henrietta Fore, the executive director of UNICEF.

September 20, 2019 — The Council on Foreign Relations’ Foreign Policy magazine publishes “The World Knows An Apocalyptic Pandemic Is Coming. But nobody is interested in doing anything about it” by Laurie Garrett. Garrett, who joined the CFR in 2004 as a senior fellow of the Global Health Program, has worked on a variety of public health issues, including SARS, avian flu, and the intersection of HIV and AIDS with national security. NOTE: Another significant Garrett article, “The Next Pandemic?,” would be published in the July/August 2005 issue of the same magazine.

October 2019 — A so-called “Coordinating Draft” of the Crimson Contagion 2019 Functional Exercise Key Findings After-Action Report is distributed “for official use only” by the HHS’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR), headed by Dr. Robert Kadlec. For details on the report, click on the above link. For information on the exercise itself, see January 24, 2019, in this timeline. And for more facts on this secretive exercise, read Jeffrey A. Tucker’s December 22, 2022, article, What Is Crimson Contagion?, at the Brownstone Institute website.

October 10, 2019 — Renaissance Capital announces that BioNTech’s US IPO has raised $150 million. The German immunotherapy developer’s stock is valued at $3.4 billion, making it one of the largest biotech listings ever. BioNTech (BNTX) is also one of the three largest biotech IPOs (Moderna is another) to go public in the past decade.

October 15, 2019 — The International Monetary Fund releases its 2019 World Economic Outlook Report. At its press briefing, Gita Gopinath, the IMF’s Economic Counselor and Director of the Research Department, observes, “[T]he global economy is in a synchronized slowdown. And we are, once again, downgrading growth for 2019 to 3 percent, its slowest pace since the global financial crisis.”

October 18, 2019 — The Event 201 Pandemic Exercise—the fifth of five tabletop exercises sponsored by the John Hopkins Center for Heath Security between 2001 and 2019—is conducted in New York City. Co-sponsors include the WEF and the BMGF. Its main financier is George Soros’ Open Philanthropy Foundation.

NOTE: This simulation of a coronavirus pandemic accurately—and, looking back on it, eerily—portrays many of the events that would happen during the real-world coronavirus “pandemic” a full six weeks later. The scenario simulates an outbreak of a novel zoonotic coronavirus that eventually becomes transmissible from person to person, leading to a severe pandemic. The pathogen and the disease it causes are modeled on SARS.

The “exercise players” draw these conclusions (paraphrased below):

Industry, national governments, and international organizations must work together to build up international stockpiles of medical countermeasures (MCMs), which will enable rapid and equitable distribution during a severe pandemic;
The ability to rapidly develop, manufacture, distribute, and dispense large quantities of MCMs will be needed to contain and control a global outbreak. Coordinating with the WHO, CEPI, GAVI, and other relevant multilateral and domestic mechanisms, investments should be made in new technologies and industrial approaches, which will require addressing legal and regulatory barriers;
There is a need to identify critical nodes of the banking system and the global and national economies considered too essential to fail (some will likely need emergency international financial support);
Governments and the private sector (particularly traditional and social media companies) should give greater priority to developing methods to combat misinformation and disinformation prior to the next pandemic response. This will require flooding the media with fast, accurate, and consistent information. Media companies should commit to ensuring that authoritative messages are prioritized and that false messages are suppressed, including through the use of technology;
Accomplishing the above goals will require collaboration among governments, international organizations and global business.

Event 201 is introduced by Anita Cicero, Deputy Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, and chaired by Tom Inglesby, MD, director of the John Hopkins Center for Health Security. The high-ranking participants who simulate the worldwide coronavirus pandemic include:

Sofia Borges, Senior Vice President at the United Nations Foundation
Brad Connett, President of the U.S. Medical Group, owned by Henry Schein, Inc.
Christopher Elias, President of the Global Development division of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Tim Evans, former Senior Director of Health at the World Bank Group
George Gao, Director-General of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention
Avril Haines, former Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and former Deputy National Security Advisor
Jane Halton, Senior Board Member of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and appointed to the Australian National COVID-19 Coordination Commission
Matthew Harrington, Global Chief Operations Officer of Edelman (the largest public relations firm in the world by revenue)
Martin Knuchel, Senior Director and Head of Crisis, Emergency & Business Continuity Management for Lufthansa Group Airlines
Eduardo Martinez, President of the UPS Foundation, formerly Chairperson of the WEF’s Global Agenda Council on Humanitarian Response, and currently (in 2019) serving on the WEF’s Managing the Risk and Impact of Future Epidemics Steering Committee
Rear Admiral Stephen C. Redd, Director of the Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Hasti Taghi, Vice President and Executive Advisor of NBCUniversal Media
Adrian Thomas, Vice President of Johnson & Johnson
Lavan Thiru, Chief Representative of the Monetary Authority of Singapore

October 28–30, 2019 — The Milken Institute’s Future of Health Summit is held in Washington, D.C. The annual summit bills itself as an event that brings together “thought leaders and decision-makers to confront some of the world’s most significant health challenges by matching human, financial, and educational resources with the most innovative and impactful ideas.” At this year’s summit, the most notable discussion occurs on the 29th at the workshop “Making Influenza History: The Quest for a Universal Vaccine.” Key speakers at this plenary session include Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the NIAID; Margaret Hamburg, former FDA commissioner; Bruce Gellin, President of Global Immunization at the Sabin Vaccine Institute; and Rick Bright, former director of HHS Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA).

The primary theme of the discussion is “the need for more funding for research, better collaboration between the private and government sectors, advances in technology in flu research and the goal of a universal flu vaccine.” Moderator Michael Specter kicks off the workshop by making the strong point that the current system of vaccine development and procurement needs to be “blown up” and replaced with a new way of producing vaccines that would reduce time and costs of vaccine production and commercialization. Rick Bright, for his part, suggests problems of lengthy clinical trials and regulations could be sidestepped if “there were an urgent call for an entity of excitement that is completely disruptive and is not beholden to bureaucratic strings and processes.”

Another theme of the discussion was the “need” for a newer and more frightening disease to emerge, as the flu no longer creates enough fear in the population to warrant a “universal vaccine.” [Emphasis added.]

Foreshadowing the about-to-be-released corona event, Bright ominously said: “[I]t is not too crazy to think that an outbreak of a novel avian virus could occur in China somewhere.” [Emphasis added.]

November 7, 2019 — Netflix features billionaire Bill Gates in Episode 7 of Season 2 of “The Next Pandemic” documentary. In it, Gates predicts that a killer virus could originate in China’s wet markets and would rapidly infect the world.

November 16, 2019 — Foreign Policy magazine publishes “The Real Reason to Panic About China’s Plague Outbreak,” by Laurie Garrett. Its subtitle: “It’s not the disease that’s worrisome—it’s the Chinese government’s response to it.”

Garrett writes:

“The Chinese government’s response to this month’s outbreak of plague has been marked by temerity and some fear, which history suggests is entirely appropriate. But not all fear is the same, and Beijing seems to be afraid of the wrong things. Rather than being concerned about the germs and their spread, the government seems mostly motivated by a desire to manage public reaction about the disease. Those efforts, however, have failed—and the public’s response is now veering toward a sort of plague-inspired panic that’s not at all justified by the facts.” [Emphasis added.]

Those “facts,” according to Garrett’s article, include the following: On November 3, Li Jifeng, a doctor at Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, the capital city’s key infectious diseases treatment and quarantine center, attended to a middle-aged man who was struggling to breathe and to the man’s wife, who was likewise gasping for air and also running a high fever. The couple had been ailing for at least ten days by the time Li saw them. They had initially sought care some 250 miles north of China’s capital in Inner Mongolia—a frigid region that straddles the borders of China, Mongolia, and North Korea—before being sent to Beijing for observation.

November 17, 2019 — The first case of a person allegedly infected with Covid-19 is diagnosed in Hubei Province, China.

December 1, 2019 — Two weeks after the first Covid-19 case is diagnosed (see the November 17th entry), a man in his 70s starts experiencing flu-like symptoms. He allegedly becomes the first case of Covid-19. He is later admitted to a hospital in Wuhan, China. The disease is not transmitted to his family. No epidemiological link is found between him and other laboratory-confirmed cases.

December 2–3, 2019 — The WHO holds a Global Vaccine Safety Summit in Geneva. During the summit, the WHO develops the Global Vaccine Safety Blueprint 2.0 (GVSB 2.0) strategy for 2021–2023. Multiple objectives emerge from this meeting, including:

All countries must have provisions (laws, regulations, infrastructure, lines of accountability to establish vaccine pharmacovigilance;
Vaccine pharmacovigilance must be a national, regional, and international responsibility;
The exchange of information between vaccine manufacturers (or marketing authorization holders) and national regulatory authorities at local, regional, and global levels must be coordinated;
The capacity and infrastructure needed to communicate vaccine safety information and manage the communication response to vaccine safety-related events must be strengthened;
Coordination and exchange of information must take place between health authorities and advisory bodies at local, regional, and global levels;
The safety of novel vaccines for emerging infectious diseases during emergencies must be monitored.

December 4, 2019 — The House’s Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations holds a hearing on “Flu Season: U.S. Public Health Preparedness and Response.” At that meeting, Dr. Robert Kadlec, HHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, provides extensive answers to legislators’ questions highlighting the need for “novel vaccines” that could be produced rapidly. Here are some of the questions:

In order to improve both seasonal and pandemic influenza preparedness, should the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) consider preferential reimbursements—reimbursing certain products at a higher rate—to incentivize a greater domestic manufacturing footprint for different types of flu vaccines, such as the cell-based and recombinant vaccines?
Given the issues associated with derivation of vaccines from eggs, both in time and efficacy, do you support investment in late-stage non-egg-based technologies?
Do you believe HHS, specifically BARDA, should ensure novel, multi-modal technologies are being supported to better respond to influenza?
Is there a benefit to our population to invest in platform technology that cannot only respond rapidly to influenza, but also to Ebola and other emerging threats?
How can the growth and expansion of cell-based vaccines technologies improve our ability to respond to a flu pandemic and protect the American people?
Does the government have plans to procure additional doses of cell-based vaccines through agencies such as the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense to support the growth and usage of these innovative technologies?

In that meeting, Susan Brooks (R-IN) brought up the White House Executive Order “Modernizing Influenza Vaccines in the United States to Promote National Security and Public Health” (see September 19th) and the need to “speed up” vaccine production as well as the need for more funding. She asked:

“The EO recommended a range of government actions to improve the 80-year-old egg-based technology used in today’s vaccines and speed the vaccine manufacturing process. We know that HHS lacks sufficient congressional funding to achieve these goals. Dr. Kadlec, we know that once a pandemic is identified, the US government will immediately need $10–12 billion just to provide vaccines to protect the American people. Do you agree we need to devote substantially more funding to pandemic preparedness?” [Emphasis added.]

Later, information from Chinese authorities (Wuhan City Health Committee, 2020) and from the WHO (WHO, 2020a) indicate that December 8, 2019, marked the onset of the first forty-one cases that were tested and later confirmed positive with Covid-19—known at this time as “2019-nCoV.”

December 8, 2019 — As described in the December 4th entry of the timeline, December 8th marks the date of the alleged onset of the first forty-one people who were tested and later confirmed positive for Covid-19. This information, as mentioned above, would be publicly reported by the WHO in 2020.

December 9–10, 2019 — On the fortieth anniversary of the WHO’s declaration of the eradication of smallpox, a pandemic tabletop exercise called Pacific Eclipse is conducted in three US cities simultaneously: Washington, D.C., Phoenix, and Honolulu. Connected by two forms of digital software, the drill’s participants simulate a multi-threat bioterrorism disaster precipitated by the deliberate release of variola virus (the causative agent of smallpox) in the South Pacific.

The exercise, according to Science Direct, is “designed to identify potential gaps in preparedness and modifiable factors which could prevent a pandemic or mitigate the impact of a pandemic.” A PubMed Central article later commented that the drill had successfully “predicted a range of changes” that a new pandemic will bring to the world.

Funded by Emergent Biosolutions, Bavarian Nordic, Siga, and Meridien Medical Technologies, the exercise is sponsored by the US Indo-Pacific Command, based in Honolulu, and PLuS Alliance. The latter is described as “a global partnership which combines the strengths of three leading research universities on three continents — Arizona State University, King’s College London, and the University of New South Wales — to solve global challenges.”

Pacific Eclipse brings together stakeholders who hail from the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. They include epidemiologists, infectious disease experts, immunologists, vaccinologists, public health experts, pathologists, emergency clinicians, senior planners from health authorities, leaders in defense and law enforcement and other first responder organizations, political scientists, industry representatives, and cybersecurity experts.

A notable quote from a participant: “Although we discussed vaccine shortages in our scenario, one issue that we did not explore was the role that vaccine hesitancy plays in pandemic response. Thus, future pandemic planning should not only focus on vaccine supply and distribution, but also how to promote vaccine acceptance.”

In a 2022 retrospective published in Science Direct, the authors who reviewed the Pacific Eclipse exercise concluded: “We showed that vaccination provides an effective exit strategy to a pandemic, and that this requires high and rapid coverage, as well as vaccine to be supplied to the areas of greatest need. Countries that cannot achieve high coverage due to lack of access or hesitancy, will determine the duration of the pandemic and the level of global disruption, which may extend to many years in some hot spots.” [Emphasis added.]

The retrospective’s lead author, Prof. Raina MacIntyre, also published an editorial in PubMed’s Special Issue — Pacific Eclipse, in which she concluded: “Many issues that subsequently arose during the COVID-19 pandemic were anticipated — testing, tracing, isolation, quarantine, vaccination response, stockpiling, social distancing, masks, border control, protecting critical infrastructure, business continuity and protecting first responders.” [Emphasis added.]

December 12–29, 2019 — This eighteen-day period is said to be the range of dates of the original onset of a pneumonia of unknown etiology (PUE) in Wuhan, China. A few days later, in early January 2020, the CDC would issue a report titled “Outbreak of Pneumonia of Unknown Etiology (PUE) in Wuhan, China.” The CDC report, which came from the World Health Organization, is about the Wuhan patients who, according to the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission (WMHC), came down with the PUE between December 12 and 29, 2019 — said to be the earliest symptom onset dates of the “unexplained viral pneumonia.” The report notes: “Patients involved in the cluster reportedly have had fever, dyspnea, and bilateral lung infiltrates on chest radiograph. Of the 59 cases, seven are critically ill, and the remaining patients are in stable condition. No deaths have been reported and no health care providers have been reported to be ill. The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission has not reported human-to-human transmission.”

December 17, 2019 — The European Investment Bank (EIB) and BioNTech announce the signing of a contract that provides financing of €50 million to BioNTech. The German company’s CFO, Dr. Sierk Poetting, said of the financing: “We see the funding of the European Investment Bank as a token of trust in BioNTech as a innovative, and fast-growing company. We aim to build a global biotechnology leader. Our focus is to develop and commercialize the next generation of immunotherapies, as we aspire to individualize cancer medicine. The EIB’s funding will increase the production capacities for our mRNA-based product candidates and also create new jobs.”

December 18, 2019 — Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) report the development of a “novel way to record a patient’s vaccination history,” using smartphone-readable nanocrystals called “quantum dots” that are embedded in the skin using micro-needles. The research is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Koch Institute Support Grant from the National Cancer Institute.

December 28, 2019 — Evidence allegedly emerges that the first genetic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 was deposited in a database on this date, earlier than had been thought. According to Science.org, “[a] U.S. House of Representatives panel yesterday released evidence that a Chinese research team submitted a SARS-CoV-2 genome to a U.S. database on 28 December 2019, nearly 2 weeks before a sequence from another group became public and kick-started the race to develop vaccines and drugs for COVID-19.”

According to the documents shared with US lawmakers, virologist Dr. Lili Ren of the Institute of Pathogen Biology at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College submitted the genetic sequence to GenBank, a “genetic sequence repository that collects, preserves, and provides public access to assembled and annotated nucleotide sequence data from all domains of life.” So says a letter sent by Dr. Melanie Egorin, assistant secretary of legislation at HHS, to US House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers. GenBank is managed by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Ren’s submission “was incomplete and lacked the necessary information required for publication,” the letter from Dr. Egorin says. Three days later, Ren was sent a request to resubmit her document, but “NIH never received the additional information requested.” Because her submission was removed from a processing queue on January 16, 2020, “the sequence was never made publicly available on GenBank.”

However, a different submission of the genetic sequence that was “nearly identical” to Ren’s was published on GenBank on January 12, 2020. According to Egorin, this new submission arrived one day after the WHO said it had received the sequence from Ren.

Notably, Ren was on the payroll of the NIH in December 2019, according to a grant awarded to EcoHealth Alliance. The grant shows that taxpayers paid Ren a salary, although NIH redacted the amount of her salary and benefits.

December 30, 2019 — The BBC reports that 34-year-old ophthalmologist Dr. Li Wenliang sent a message to fellow medics alleging seven cases of SARS at Wuhan Central Hospital, all connected to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. Li noticed seven cases of a virus “that he thought looked like SARS” — the virus that purportedly led to a global epidemic in 2003. Dr. Li allegedly contracted “the virus” while working at Wuhan Central Hospital and died there.

December 30, 2019 — On the night of December 30, 2019, Dr. Marjorie Pollack, deputy editor of ProMED, posted “a request for information to the ProMED network after being contacted by a trusted colleague about a cluster of undiagnosed pneumonia cases in Wuhan, China,” according to the International Society for Infectious Diseases (ISID). “Through her previous experience with SARS decades earlier, Marjorie knew this new threat must be taken seriously. Luckily, she sounded the alarm, and in doing so was the first to provide a detailed report alerting the international infectious diseases community to what evolved into what we now know as the global COVID-19 pandemic.”

ProMED, which stands for Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases, is a low-tech, crowdsourced listserv network run by the ISID. Three months after Dr. Pollack’s alert, she and ProMED Editor Dr. Larry Madoff tell the story in a Wired interview titled, “How ProMED Crowdsourced the Arrival of Covid-19 and SARS.”

NOTE: FluTrackers, an international disease-tracking website established in 2006, was the first report on the situation in Wuhan that reached an international audience, according to The Washington Post.

December 31, 2019 — The last day of 2019 marks the first official day that Covid-19 attracts the attention of the WHO and the CDC. The WHO is informed of cases of pneumonia of unknown cause in Wuhan, China. “A total of 44 cases have been reported: 11 patients are severely ill, while the remaining 33 are in stable condition. The cause has not yet been identified or confirmed.” Meanwhile, the CDC says it first learned of a “cluster of 27 cases of pneumonia” of unexplained origin in Wuhan.

Süddeutsche Zeitung, one of the largest and most influential daily newspapers in Germany, reports this news with the headline: “Mysterious lung disease breaks out in central China.” The newspaper article states:

“A mysterious lung disease has broken out in the central Chinese metropolis of Wuhan. So far, 27 patients have been identified, the city’s health commission reported. The People’s Daily countered online rumors that this could be a new outbreak of the SARS lung disease. The health commission reported that many of the infections could be traced back to visits to Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Market.”

This question must be asked: How is it that a “mysterious lung disease” that caused a mere 27 cases of illness in a Chinese city of 11 million people receives such extensive attention in the Western media on the other side of the world?

In Part Three, we will document the corruptions, contradictions, and catastrophes of a world torn asunder by the 2020 “shock and awe” campaign of Covid-19.

Originally posted on healthfreedomdefense.org.