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.
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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.”
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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.”
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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]
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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.
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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!
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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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