Democracy Now-Featured Disease Testimony of a Curious Character

Americans have a Silly Soft spot for a British (or  favored foreign) Accent

A Briton (or Ukrainian) who graduated from a nondescript East London college with a technical degree, hopped over to the United States and landed gigs with one or another US university and government agency, such as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), White House revolving door advisory,  and the questionable and shadowy US Agency for International development (USAID).

What is left out of the biographical brief accompanying his Democracy Now performance is this bit.

P

eter Daszak holds a Bachelor of Science in zoology from Bangor University in North Wales and a doctorate in parasitic infectious diseases from the University of East London (formerly West Ham Technical Institute).

His work is said to be “funded by [US taxpayers] the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Fogarty International Center, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Google.org, Rockefeller, and other foundations.

Presumably an Englishman (Ukrainian…? Cossack…?), Peter Daszak, as far back as 1999, was “a guest worker at the CDC.”

He has been employed as

advisor on global health issues to the director for medical preparedness policy on the White House National Security staff; advisor to the World Health Organization “on pathogen prioritization for R&D” (research and development); and a member of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) Committee on global surveillance for emerging zoonoses [infectious diseases caused by a pathogen that has jumped from non-human animals (usually vertebrates) to humans].

Daszak currently heads the US-based EcoHealth Alliance (formerly Wildlife Trust), a nonprofit non-governmental global enterprise employing “a ‘One Health’ approach to protecting the health of people, animals, and the environment from emerging infectious diseases,” that partners with USAID in an emerging pandemic threats program.

Though he seems not to be an actual laboratory scientist or on-site research scientist either by experience, training, or education; it is, nevertheless, curious, given his access, that he waited two decades to broadcast his pathogen concerns to the American public.

Mr. Daszak today tells the Democracy Now interviewers that “there are viruses related to Ebola that we don’t know much about. We don’t know if they infect people. There are viruses related to influenza out there that we don’t know what they do in people.”

Y

et Daszak claimed:

“… [W]e’ve done the science on this. We’ve been working on this for 20 years. We tracked every known emerging disease to its origin, from the scientific literature. And then we tested, with mathematical models: what’s driving that, what are the causes that could underlie the emergence of these new diseases. And what we found is they emerge in places where human populations are very dense and growing. …”

I think everybody knows this last bit by now. What has he been doing for 20 years to just now arrive at this foregone conclusion?

“[T]he way to deal with this is not to wait for them to emerge and make us sick. The way to do this is to get out there ahead of the curve [curve has suddenly come into the American English language], find out what’s out there in wildlife, find out who’s at risk, work with the people on the frontline and reduce that risk.”

B

io labs everywhere

About bacteria escaping bio labs, of which the US has hundreds across the world and within United States, Daszak seems to be covering his and his connections’ negligence.

“We have a few hundred technicians and scientists working in these labs. They do not have a problem with staff or with security or with loose controls. These are very well-run labs.

They’ve been inspected by the US CDC [not much of an endorsement, given its privatized track record], by people working in BSL-4 labs, high-security labs, in the US, in France, and internationally.

They’re accredited by the US [still not much of an endorsement, given privatization protecting and securing private wealth].

So, it’s ironic that now we’re saying they’re not very well organized. We actually inspected them properly and allowed them to open. [Speaking of baloney]

[Bracketed Emphasis added]

B

SL-4 Clarification

A biosafety level (BSL), or Pathogen/Protection level, is a set of biocontainment precautions required to isolate dangerous biological agents in an enclosed laboratory facility.

Biosafety level 4 laboratories are used for diagnostic work and research on easily transmitted pathogens which can cause fatal disease. These include a number of viruses known to cause viral hemorrhagic fever such as Marburg virus, Ebola virus, Lassa virus, and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever.

Biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) is the highest level of biosafety precautions, and is appropriate for work with agents that could easily be aerosol-transmitted within the laboratory and cause severe to fatal disease in humans for which there are no available vaccines or treatments. BSL-4 laboratories are generally set up to be either cabinet laboratories or protective-suit laboratories.

The levels of containment range from the lowest biosafety level 1 (BSL-1) to the highest at level 4 (BSL-4).

• At the lowest level of biosafety, precautions may consist of regular hand-washing and minimal protective equipment. 
• At higher biosafety levels, precautions may include airflow systems, multiple containment rooms, sealed containers, positive pressure personnel suits, established protocols for all procedures, extensive personnel training, and high levels of security to control access to the facility.

I

n the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have specified these levels. In the European Union, the same biosafety levels are defined in a directive. In Canada the four levels are known as Containment Levels.

Such facilities with these designations are also sometimes given as P1 through P4 (for Pathogen or Protection level), as in the term P3 laboratory.

Democracy Now! describes Daszak as a “disease ecologist,” a field of study for which there was no clarification. He concludes with an opinion that, perhaps, reflects his chosen field of study.  The disease ecologist concludes, again, with the obvious.  

“We’ve got to reassess our relationship with the environment and reduce our ecological footprint. It’s to the benefit of conservation. It’ll reduce climate change. It will also stop us getting sick. …”

Wait, here comes the parting shot.

“For folks on the right who aren’t interested in conservation or climate change, what about your own health? You know, we are making ourselves sick by making the planet sick.”

So there, you dummies!

W

e the people of the world have a problem, a big, complex, deadly serious problem, a whole bunch of problems; and all the baloney in the world—no matter who is slicing it up and spitting it out, Brit or Yank—is not going to solve our problems or save us.

“Baloney” was Daszak’s Democracy Now word captured and crafted as a headline. It seems this gentleman, too, has acquired a taste—for baloney.   

We’ve had our fill of the Brit-Yank performance— East to West, Columbia, Yale, Harvard, Chicago, Stanford via Wharton— it’s all the same: duck and blame.

Where were you, Peter Daszak, when the bats first flew?

Sources

National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine 8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda MD, 20894 USA

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK114496/

https://www.mailman.columbia.edu/research/center-infection-and-immunity/peter-daszak-phd

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EcoHealth_Alliance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoonosis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosafety_level#Biosafety_level_4

Democracy Now! “’Pure Baloney’: Zoologist Debunks Trump’s COVID-19 Origin Theory, Explains Animal-Human Transmission.” April 16, 2020. https://www.democracynow.org/2020/4/16/peter_daszak_coronavirus

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