The Pandora Report

Pandora Report 6.30.2023

June 30, 2023 by dkellogg97, posted in Pandora Report

This week focuses on the recent release of a ten-page declassified report on the origins of COVID-19 from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. New publications, an interview with a Biodefense PhD alumnus, upcoming events, and a new publishing opportunity are also covered.

ODNI Releases Declassified Report on Link Between Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Start of the COVID-19 Pandemic

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a highly anticipated declassified report on the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic late last week. The report was released in response to the passage of the COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023 in March which compelled the IC to release within 90-days intelligence related to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). Specifically, the act required the IC to release intelligence covering reported WIV researchers who fell ill in the fall of 2019, any connections between WIV and the PLA, and coronavirus research taking place at the facility.

The act specifically outlines that “…the Director of National Intelligence should declassify and make available to the public as much information as possible about the origin of COVID-19 so the United States and like minded countries can–

A) identify the origin of COVID-19 as expeditiously as possible, and

B) use that information to take all appropriate measures to prevent a similar pandemic from occurring again.”

Naturally, the short length of the document and the lack of information outside of what was outlined in the law has attracted criticism. Furthermore, the report also doesn’t provide much in the way of new information or insight into whether the community has come to favor one possible origin more in the months since the Department of Energy assessed with low confidence that the pandemic began with a lab leak. All this has many arguing this further demonstrates a serious need to improve awareness and funding for pandemic response-related programs across the government, with NTI’s Jaime Yassif telling Vanity Fair “The fact that it’s proven so challenging to answer this question in a way that is satisfying to everyone highlights that the capabilities in the United States and internationally to resolve these kinds of open questions are very weak…We have a lot of work to do domestically and internationally to shore up our capabilities.”’

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists‘ Matt Field summarized the report’s contents, writing “The report, The Potential Links Between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Origin of the COVID-19 Pandemic, disclosed a lot of information that has previously been reported about the virological research center in Wuhan, the city where the first cases of COVID-19 were detected in late 2019. Some biosafety standards and equipment at the facility were found to be lacking, including appropriate precautions for working with SARS-like coronaviruses and aging infrastructure. Workers at the lab had been ill at around the time the pandemic started. The lab held an incredibly large collection of bat samples, conducted genetic engineering experiments on coronaviruses, and conducted experimentation on making hybrid coronaviruses. Also previously reported, the lab had links to the Chinese military—reportedly for public health work.”

In addition to these criticisms and concerns in the United States has come alongside pushback from those working at the WIV in late 2019, particularly concerning allegations scientists at the lab were sick with a COVID-19-like illness at the time. Science reports ‘“The recent news about so-called ‘patient zero’ in WIV are absolutely rumors and ridiculous,” Ben Hu emailed Science in his first public response to the charges, which have been attributed to anonymous former and current U.S. Department of State officials. A WIV colleague who has also been named as one of the first COVID-19 cases denies the accusation as well.”

“Hu and two of his WIV colleagues were thrown into the furious COVID-19 origin debate on 13 June when an online newsletter called Public said the three scientists developed COVID-19 in November 2019. That was prior to the outbreak becoming public when a cluster of cases at the end of December 2019 surfaced in people linked to a Wuhan marketplace. Public’s report was quickly embraced by a camp that argues COVID-19 came from a virus stored, and possibly manipulated, at WIV, rather than from infected animal hosts, perhaps being sold at the Wuhan market. A Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article on 20 June that said it had “confirmed” the allegations against the three, without referring to any public evidence or named sources with direct knowledge, fueled the flames even more. Social media and other publications spread the charges—and the scientists’ names.”

Ultimately, not only did the report fail to include a “smoking gun” to settle the debate, but it also left many with more questions than answers about the IC’s ability to handle similar situations in the future and greater concern about the overarching state of the US government’s ability to effectively respond to pandemics.

report-on-potential-links-between-the-wuhan-institute-of-virology-and-the-origins-of-covid-19-20230623 Download

“COVID-19, Religious Freedom and the Law: The United States’ Case”

Biodefense PhD Student Ryan Houser published an article with Acting Director of Health Law Programs at O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, Andrés Constantin, in the American Journal of Law & Medicine. During his master’s program at Georgetown University, Ryan was a Global Health Initiative student fellow, and he conducted research under Dr. Constantin to provide legal analysis of the policies meant to curb the COVID-19 pandemic and their implications for religious freedom. During the COVID-19 pandemic, public health officials often exercised their police powers to combat the spread of the virus. The pandemic-related legal interventions which were meant to promote the general welfare of the public, in defense of common good, were met with legal challenges, especially in opposition to interventions’ impact on the exercise of religion. The aim of their piece was to contribute to future legal analyses concerning the balance between public health and religious freedom in the context of pandemic legal preparedness efforts. The analysis sheds light on an ongoing dilemma faced by the United States, and other countries, whether religious freedom should supersede the protection of public health. The article contributes to the ongoing discussions on pandemic legal preparedness and looks to guide future decision-making processes that protect public health.”

“Dan Gerstein – COVID, Bioterror & The Next Pandemic”

Tim Ventura interview Biodefense PhD program alumnus, Dr. Dan Gerstein in this video: “What can we learn from COVID, and can it prevent bioterrorism & future pandemics? Dr. Dan Gerstein, author of “Bioterror in the 21st Century”, provides insights into rapid disease response in the modern world.”

“Dr. Dan Gerstein is a National Security author with extensive experience in the security and defense sectors across a variety of positions. He is the author of numerous books on national security topics including leadership, strategy, technology innovation, arms control, immigration & border control, bioterrorism, and his latest title, “Assignment Pentagon”, published in 2019.”

“Dan’s remarkable career includes experience in prestigious past roles such as the Acting Under Secretary & Deputy Under Secretary for Science & Tech at the Department of Homeland Security, the Principal Director for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction, a full career in the US Army, retiring as a Col., and several C-level executive leadership roles in the private sector.”

“Dan has a PhD in Biodefense from George Mason University, a MNSS in National Security Strategy from National Defense University, an MMAS in National Security from the US Army Command & General Staff, an MSOR from Georgia Tech, and Graduated West Point as an engineer.”

“Building Sustainable Infection Prevention in the Era of COVID-19”

In a recent article in Health Security, Dr. Saskia Popescu and Rebecca Leach discuss the importance of IPC as part of a holistic approach to healthcare biopreparedness. They explain in their introduction, “For years, many working in hospital infection prevention and control (IPC) and healthcare biopreparedness drew attention to the gaps in response and virtually nonexistent attention and funding that plagued the US healthcare infrastructure. IPC programs are responsible for reducing the risk of disease spread within a healthcare setting, but they also ensure education, training, epidemiological investigations of outbreaks, disease reporting and surveillance, and a multitude of other efforts to keep patients and healthcare workers safe.¹ Unfortunately, IPC is often viewed as a cost center and not a revenue generator, meaning that these programs and departments have been inadequately funded and staffed.² The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the critical role that IPC departments have in biopreparedness efforts for healthcare settings. Unfortunately, even the mpox (monkeypox) outbreak during this pandemic could not avoid the institutional hurdles that led to woefully inadequate support for IPC programs. As the world inches toward a sustainable approach to managing COVID-19 and a growing realization that infectious disease threats are only increasing, there are several key lessons learned and strategic shifts needed for continuous IPC programs and healthcare biopreparedness efforts.”

“Personal Protective Equipment and Personal Protective Technology Product Standardization for a Resilient Public Health Supply Chain”

“The National Strategy for a Resilient Public Health Supply Chain lays out the U.S. government’s vision to protect the health and security of Americans by ensuring a supply chain for personal protective equipment (PPE) and technology (PPT), medical devices, medicines, and other public health supplies that is resilient against disruptions from pandemics and other biological threats. Additional forethought and collaboration amongst policy makers, manufacturers, and users is needed to make PPE and PPT innovation, standardization, stockpiling, and use more resilient.”

“The National Academies convened a public workshop in March 2023 to explore innovative approaches and technologies needed to update and streamline the U.S. standardization system for PPE and PPT in support of supply chain resiliency. Discussions included ways to improve the effectiveness, safety, supply stability, and accessibility of PPE and PPT designed for use in health care settings, by critical infrastructure workers, and by the general public. This Proceedings of a Workshop summarizes the discussions held during the workshop.”

“Review: The UK Government’s Updated Biological Security Strategy”

CSR’s Shannon L. Green and Skandan Ananthasekar discuss the UK’s new Biological Security Strategy in this piece, explaining that “The United Kingdom released its updated Biological Security Strategy on June 12, 2023. The UK has long had strong capabilities for addressing biological risks, yet more than ever its national strategy now recognizes the potential for biological threats to have catastrophic impacts and seeks to continue expanding on lessons from and capabilities developed during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also recognizes that future biological threats can be defeated through a combination of scientific innovation and government leadership and coordination with public, private, and international efforts.”

“…CSR applauds the efforts of experts and leaders from across the UK government in shaping the Biological Security Strategy. The strategy is an important step in improving health security in the UK and internationally. There will now need to be sustained attention on implementation, in addition to political leaders fully backing what its nation’s top experts recommend.”

“Will Invasive Fungal Infections be The Last of Us? The Importance of Surveillance, Public Health Intervention, and Antifungal Stewardship”

Rodríguez Stewart et al. discuss the growing threat of invasive fungal infections and the importance of antifungal stewardship in this article for the Expert Review of Anti-infective Therapy: “The video game-turned-HBO show ‘The Last of Us’ is a fanciful representation of a zombie apocalypse caused by a fungal infection. Although Ophiocordyceps, the ‘zombie fungi’ featured in the show, do not infect vertebrates, the show serves as a reminder that many fungi can cause life-threatening invasive fungal infections (IFIs). Candida and Aspergillus species are the most common and well-known causes of IFIs, but at least 300 species of opportunistic human pathogenic yeasts and molds exist.”

“Each year, IFIs are responsible for over 1.5 million deaths globally and, in the United States alone, impose health-care costs ranging from five to seven billion dollars [1,2]. During the COVID-19 pandemic, rates of death from fungal infections have increased [3], and the burden of IFIs is poised to grow given the expanding population of patients living with immunosuppressive conditions (e.g. solid organ and stem cell transplantation), increasing antifungal resistance, and potential climate-change related expansion of the geographic ranges in which pathogenic fungi live. Despite the morbidity and mortality associated with fungal infections and their growing public health importance, we still have much to learn about their diagnosis and management. In this review, we discuss gaps and global disparities in fungal laboratory capacity including antifungal susceptibility testing, the paucity of fungal surveillance, and the importance of antifungal stewardship, all against the backdrop of increasing antifungal resistance and a limited armamentarium of antifungal therapies.”

“Cyberattacks on Hospitals ‘Should Be Considered a Regional Disaster,’ Researchers Find”

Jenna McLaughlin breaks down the growing threat of cyberattacks targeting hospitals in this article for NPR, writing in part “According to Allan Liska, a ransomware expert at the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, the numbers of attacks against hospitals dipped slightly in 2022, but are so far on track to increase in 2023. Part of the reason for that, Liska explained, is that the ransomware ecosystem is changing. For years, small-time cybercriminals were paying ransomware gangs to access their attack methods and malware. Ransomware gangs have professionalized over the years, and had some measure of control over their affiliates. But now, many of those groups’ hacking tools have been stolen and are easily accessible online. “Those guardrails, such as they were, are no longer in place,” said Liska.”

“What to Know About Malaria After U.S. Cases Were Reported”

Sareen Habeshian offers a quick rundown of malaria basics and answers FAQs in this piece for Axios after “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Monday that four people in Sarasota County, Florida, and a person in Cameron County, Texas, contracted the disease between late May to late June through local transmission.”

Online Conversations: Reflections on the Fifth Review Conference and Looking Ahead

With the Fifth Five-Year Review Conference (RC-5) behind us and the end of United States chemical weapons stockpile destruction approaching, 2023 is a year of important milestones for the CWC. We will meet to assess the past, present, and future civil society participation in the CWC.

You are invited to join us for a CWC Coalition virtual discussion on Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 4 pm CET. Topics will include:

A substantive overview of the Fifth Five-Year CWC Review Conference (if you missed it, here is the article from the June 2023 issue of Arms Control Today on the conference)

A discussion of civil society engagement at RC-5 and what can be improved for future Conferences of States Parties

Planning what is ahead: upcoming milestones, CWCC workshops, and other opportunities for civil society engagement

CWC Coalition Project Coordinator Mina Rozei will moderate a discussion on Coalition members’ thoughts on RC-5. Paul Walker, Chair of the CWC Coalition, will provide a brief update on the CWC Coalition’s work and upcoming plans for Coalition-organized events.

Please help us get your feedback by filling out this quick survey with your thoughts on the RevCon by Monday, July 10.

This discussion will be off-the-record. This session is open to all members of the CWC Coalition, and other members of civil society committed to supporting the goals of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Registration for GHS 2024 Now Open

Registration is now open for the Global Health Security 2024 conference in Sydney, Australia. This iteration will take place 18-21 June, 2024. The call for abstracts is also still open. “The mission of the Global Health Security conference is to provide a forum where leaders, researchers, policy-makers, and representatives from government, international organisations, civil society, and private industry from around the world can engage with each other, review the latest research and policy innovations, and agree solutions for making the world safer and healthier. To that end, our mission is to help foster a genuinely multidisciplinary community of practice that is committed to working collaboratively to enhance global health security and eliminate disease, irrespective of its origin or source.”

Biorisks, Biosecurity And Biological Disarmament Conference

“Advances in science and technology are taking place at an unprecedented rate, making vital contributions to addressing major societal challenges. Yet, transformative developments in a wide range of fields can also pose risks to society. As such, it has become more important than ever to monitor opportunities and risks posed by advances in science and technology for the biosecurity regime. This cannot be done by any one actor alone, rather it will require collaborative efforts by states and stakeholders from civil society, academia and industry, along with other actors.”

“In order to facilitate multi-stakeholder engagement around biological security and biological disarmament, the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) with the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) and the World Health Organization (WHO) are co-organizing a stakeholder conference designed to bring together actors from civil society, academia and industry, along with diplomats, to stimulate the exchange of ideas and thinking around how to build biosecurity and bolster biological disarmament. The event will provide an opportunity to discuss ongoing diplomatic processes and current and upcoming issues in the areas of biorisk, biosecurity and biological disarmament.”

This hybrid event will take place July 4-5. Learn more and register here.

Gordon Research Conference: Cross-Cutting Science Facilitating Collaboration Across the Threat-Science Research Community

“The Nonproliferation, Counterproliferation and Disarmament Science GRC is a premier, international scientific conference focused on advancing the frontiers of science through the presentation of cutting-edge and unpublished research, prioritizing time for discussion after each talk and fostering informal interactions among scientists of all career stages. The conference program includes a diverse range of speakers and discussion leaders from institutions and organizations worldwide, concentrating on the latest developments in the field. The conference is five days long and held in a remote location to increase the sense of camaraderie and create scientific communities, with lasting collaborations and friendships. In addition to premier talks, the conference has designated time for poster sessions from individuals of all career stages, and afternoon free time and communal meals allow for informal networking opportunities with leaders in the field.”

This conference will take place July 9-14 in Ventura, CA. Learn more and register here.

Journal of Responsible Innovation – Special Issue Call for Papers

How Do Scandals Shape the Understanding and Practice of Responsible Research and Innovation?

“Scientific scandals are particularly important to our understanding and practice of responsible research and innovation (RRI). There is a shared belief that research scandals are most instrumental in shaking up scientific systems (Robaey, 2014) and a shared recognition of a rising frequency of research misconduct (Fanelli 2009, Drenth, 2010, Kornfeld and Sandra, 2016, O’Gardy, 2021, Roy and Edwards, 2023). Yet there is a dearth of systematic examination on how irresponsible research activities shape governance and scientific norms and on how we should engage with scandals or scandalous individuals responsibly and effectively to inform the future (Vinck, 2010, Owen, Macnaghten and Stilgoe, 2012, Meyer, 2022). This special issue aims to fill this gap. We invite empirically grounded and conceptually rigorous investigations on the mutual impacts of scandals and RRI.”

Key deadlines: 300 words abstract by 15 October 2023. Full papers by 31 January 2024

Learn more and submit here.

Weekly Trivia Question

You read the Pandora Report every week and now it’s time for you to show off what you know! The first person to send the correct answer to biodefense@gmu.edu will get a shout out in the following issue (first name last initial). Our question this week is: What 2002 book by Richard Preston, author of The Hot Zone, primarily focuses on smallpox and anthrax?

Our question was “What does “yellow” in yellow fever refer to?” The answer, as PAHO explains, is that “The “yellow” in the name refers to the jaundice that affects some patients.”

Pandora Report 6.23.2023

June 23, 2023 by dkellogg97, posted in Pandora Report

This week covers recent speculation about the US Intelligence Community’s assessments of COVID-19’s origin, a recent biosecurity-focused meeting between China and Russia, and updates on the case of a 22-year-old Iranian man arrested on suspicions he was plotting an extremist attack using chemical agents in Germany. New publications, upcoming events, and new professional opportunities are also included.

US Intelligence Agencies Still Haven’t Released Expected COVID-19 Materials

President Biden signed the COVID-⁠19 Origin Act of 2023 into law in late March, setting up a requirement for the US Intelligence Community to release as much information possible about the origin of COVID-19. Earlier that month, the Department of Energy and Federal Bureau of Investigation attracted controversy for their low and moderate confidence assessments that the virus originated in a lab. Other agencies maintained their assessments that it originated naturally, and one refused to commit to either hypothesis, similar to the breakdown in the 2021 declassified assessment. This week, the Wall Street Journal released an article that included the names of three Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers who were ill in November of 2019. Some have speculated that one of these researchers could have been the first person infected with COVID-19. However, according to an article from the New York Times this week, this information did not sway any agencies’ assessments:

“This week, intelligence agencies are expected to release declassified material on what they have learned about Covid’s origins, a subject of intense interest and scrutiny among American lawmakers. But people briefed on the material say there is no smoking gun, no body of evidence that sways the intelligence community as a whole, or top C.I.A. analysts, that a lab leak was the more likely origin of the pandemic than natural transmission, or vice versa…In fact, senior intelligence officials remain more convinced than ever that the agencies are not going to be able to collect a piece of evidence that solves the puzzle. Local and national authorities in China, U.S. officials say, destroyed some virus samples and used up others in research, all of which might have helped answer the questions over Covid’s origins. But those officials also caution against overstating the importance of the destroyed samples.”

Lawrence Gostin and Dr. Gigi Gronvall recently authored a piece in the New England Journal of Medicine discussing this last part, in which they write “When health emergencies arise, scientists seek to discover the cause — such a how a pathogen emerged and spread — because this knowledge can enhance our understanding of risks and strategies for prevention, preparedness, and mitigation. Yet well into the fourth year of the Covid-19 pandemic, intense political and scientific debates about its origins continue. The two major hypotheses are a natural zoonotic spillover, most likely occurring at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, and a laboratory leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). It is worth examining the efforts to discover the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the political obstacles, and what the evidence tells us. This evidence can help clarify the virus’s evolutionary path. But regardless of the origins of the virus, there are steps the global community can take to reduce future pandemic threats.”

Another important piece of the problem highlighted by the New York Times is that “American intelligence officials also believe the Chinese government impeded the international community’s efforts to better understand the coronavirus in the early months of the outbreak and refused to gather other information that could have aided the investigation.”

Irrespective of if SARS-CoV-2 came from a lab or not, the fact is the Chinese government delayed notifying the international community and has continuously refused to cooperate with ongoing efforts to respond appropriately to this pandemic. This should be addressed in future pandemic planning given the PRC’s past with this exact issue during earlier outbreaks.

Finally, this highlights the importance of transparency and good communications during global health crises. In the context of the Intelligence Community, however, this is more complicated. The IC has to protect its sources and methods, meaning declassification of even relatively mundane information may not always be possible. However, as mirrored by CDC’s challenges throughout this pandemic, it is still worth trying to release information when possible. As Zeynep Tufekci explained this week, “By keeping evidence that seemed to provide ammunition to proponents of a lab leak theory under wraps and resisting disclosure, U.S. officials have contributed to making the topic of the pandemic’s origins more poisoned and open to manipulation by bad-faith actors.”

“Treating crucial information like a dark secret empowers those who viciously and unfairly accuse public health officials and scientists of profiting off the pandemic. As Megan K. Stack wrote in Times Opinion this spring, “Those who seek to suppress disinformation may be destined, themselves, to sow it.”’

Biological Security Consultations Between China and Russia Take Place

This week, representatives of Russia and China met in Moscow for the first Russian-Chinese consultations on biological security. According to the Russian MID, “An exchange of biological security threat assessments was carried out. Particular attention was paid to the military and biological activities of the United States and strengthening the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC). The issues of bilateral cooperation in the field of biosecurity were discussed.”

“The meeting confirmed the unity of approaches of Russia and China to the biological security. The need for further close coordination and constructive interaction both in bilateral format and at relevant multilateral fora, primarily within the framework of the BTWC, the UN and the SCO was noted.”

The Russian News Agency TASS published multiple statements about the meeting from President Vladimir Putin, including ‘”Our country consistently advocates the strengthening of supranational mechanisms to prevent the development and proliferation of biological and toxin weapons,” the head of state said in his greeting telegram to the participants of the 4th International Scientific and Practical Conference ‘Global Threats to Biological Security: Problems and Solutions’.”

The same piece continued with “The president stressed that “in the current difficult international conditions, it is very important to preserve and strengthen the existing mechanisms of multilateral cooperation in combating various threats of a biological nature.” This concerns first and foremost the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, which entered into force almost half a century ago.”

‘”Unfortunately, the principles established by this fundamental document have recently been systematically violated,” the head of state said. “Useful initiatives to strengthen the relevant non-proliferation regime are often opposed by a number of states that seek to use existing international problems to ensure their own biological security at the expense of others,” Putin pointed out.’

Iranian Man Charged in Alleged Chemical Attack Plot in Germany

A 26-year-old Iranian man who was arrested in Castrop-Rauxel in January was charged with preparing to conduct a serious act of violence and terror financing in Dusseldorf this week. The man, known only as J.J., was arrested following a tip from US officials indicating he was “plotting an Islamist attack using ricin or cyanide,” according to German prosecutors. The man’s 32-year-old brother, who was initially suspected of also being involved in the plot, had his case dropped due to lack of sufficient evidence. Prosecutors “…said the younger man had decided by the end of October to carry out an attack in line with the ideology of the Islamic State group by spreading ricin or a cyanide compound, and intended to kill as many people as possible by spreading the chemicals.”

Documents from the Dusseldorf Attorney General also indicate the suspect allegedly was in contact with extremists on messaging apps, where they provided him with instructions for how to prepare and disseminate the agents. J.J. also allegedly acquired the materials needed for the attack. Details on the nature of the US tip were not made available. A court in Dortmund will decide if this case will go to trial.

“The Rise of Maximum Containment Laboratories”

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists interviews Dr. Filippa Lentzos in this video, “to review the four biosafety levels and to understand the benefits these labs provide for studying pandemic capable diseases, as well as the risks they pose in a future during which pandemics may become more common,” covering insights gained from the Global Biolabs project she co-directs with George Mason’s Dr. Gregory Koblentz.

“Response to the UK Government’s Refreshed Biological Security Strategy (BSS)”

Experts in biosecurity react to the UK’s new Biological Security Strategy in this piece from the Centre for Long-Term Resilience. Summary “We are pleased to see many important commitments to strengthening the UK’s capabilities for preventing, detecting and responding to biological threats in the Biological Security Strategy (BSS), published on 12 June 2023.”

“We particularly welcome commitments to formalise the Government’s biosecurity leadership, governance and accountability structures, to invest in the UK’s real-time biosurveillance and detection capabilities, and to lead internationally in establishing standards of best practice for responsible innovation.”

“We also commend the Government on allocating £1.5 billion per year to support this work, but urge the Government to continue to sustain a level of investment commensurate with the urgency and importance of implementing the BSS’ priority outcomes.”

“To facilitate the delivery of the Strategy’s 15 priority outcomes on such an ambitious timeline, we suggest the Government should:

Identify reporting milestones and specific, measurable targets for each of the priority outcomes within the Strategy.
Set out how it will develop thoughtful regulatory standards and practices for ensuring responsible innovation.
Establish mechanisms for identifying and accessing the diversity of relevant expertise needed to support the Strategy’s implementation.
Ensure a variety of intervention options are being evaluated and appropriately incorporated into future biological event response planning.”

“VIEWPOINT: U.S. Must Strengthen Biodefense, Reauthorize Laws”

In this piece for National Defense, Retired Brig. Gen. William King discusses the need to improve the United States’ biodefense policies. He writes in his introduction, “Many Americans are tired of the trauma, life challenges and losses of Covid-19 and the scare of continued pandemics and catastrophic weapon of mass destruction events. Over the past three years of living through this pandemic, more than 1.1 million Americans lost their lives, costing more than $30 trillion of national treasure…Despite this, the nation is still dragging its feet and — in some cases — reversing efforts already made to prepare for the next pandemic.”

“Epidemiology of Pathogens Listed as Potential Bioterrorism Agents, the Netherlands, 2009‒2019”

Broertjes et al. discuss the potential for bad actors to isolate bioterrorism agents from natural sources in the Netherlands in this recent article for Emerging Infectious Diseases. Abstract: “We provide incidences (cases/10 million persons) in the Netherlands during 2009–2019 for pathogens listed as potential bioterrorism agents. We included pathogens from the highest categories of the European Medicines Agency or the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Notifiable diseases and recently published data were used to calculate the average annual incidence. Coxiella burnetii had the highest incidence because of a Q fever epidemic during 2007–2010. Incidence then decreased to 10.8 cases/. Pathogens with an incidence >1 were Brucella spp. (2.5 cases), Francisella tularensis (1.3 cases), and Burkholderia pseudomallei (1.1 cases). Pathogens with an incidence <1 were hemorrhagic fever viruses (0.3 cases), Clostridium botulinum (0.2 cases), and Bacillus anthracis (0.1 cases). Variola major and Yersinia pestis were absent. The generally low incidences make it unlikely that ill-meaning persons can isolate these pathogens from natural sources in the Netherlands. However, the pathogens are stored in laboratories, underscoring the need for biosecurity measures.”

“Have Chemical Weapons Been Used in Ukraine?”

This piece from RUSI discusses recent reports that Russia has used riot control agents in Ukraine and potential implications of these claims. The authors explain in their conclusion, “There appear to be minimal benefits for Russia in using CW in Ukraine, although conversely, there are not many downsides from a Russian perspective either. Negative public opinion certainly does not seem to concern those in the Kremlin, and the use of CW is unlikely to deter supporters of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, who already turn a blind eye to allegations of Russian forces breaking international law. Regardless, the indications are that Ukraine is collecting evidence for potential prosecution at the international level.”

“Could Chatbots Help Devise the Next Pandemic Virus?”

“Tech experts have been warning that artificial intelligence (AI) could turn against humanity by taking over everything from business to warfare. Now, Kevin Esvelt is adding another worry: AI could help someone with no science background and evil intentions order a virus capable of unleashing a pandemic.”

“Esvelt, a biosecurity expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, recently asked students to create a dangerous virus with the help of ChatGPT or other so-called large language models, systems that can generate humanlike responses to broad questions based on vast training sets of internet data. After only an hour, the class came up with lists of candidate viruses and companies that could synthesize their genetic code and assemble the pieces.”

Pandora Report 6.16.2023

June 16, 2023 by dkellogg97, posted in Pandora Report

This week we discuss the UK’s new Biological Security Strategy and a recent report from the United Nations Investigative Team for Accountability of Da’esh/ISIL on ISIL’s crimes in Iraq. Several new publications are included as well as multiple new job openings.

UK Announces New Biological Security Strategy

The United Kingdom recently unveiled its new Biological Security Strategy. The strategy describes a vision “…that, by 2030, the UK is resilient to a spectrum of biological threats, and a world leader in responsible innovation, making a positive impact on global health, economic and security outcomes.” The strategy is split into two parts. The first provides context, describing the strategic drivers of the strategy and identifying risks. The second outlines a strategic framework the country will use to meet its priorities. A concise high-level implementation plan is also included in the document.

However, despite initial praise for this strategy, it comes amid growing criticism of the UK’s dismantling of plans and programs put into place to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. A recent piece from the Guardian outlines many of these concerns, with Dr. Clive Dix, the former chair of the UK’s vaccine taskforce describing this abandonment as “fraught with danger.” Dix was quoted saying “The government has basically put all their money on mRNA vaccines. They’ve gambled recklessly. They have basically assumed mRNA is going to solve the problem. ‘Let’s forget about all these other vaccine technologies. Let’s forget about manufacturing. Let’s just encourage the likes of Pfizer and Moderna to come to the UK, then we’re covered.’…That’s our pandemic preparedness. Quite frankly, it’s not just reckless. It’s fraught with danger.”’

UNITAD Releases Latest Report on Da’esh/ISIL Crimes, Including CW Use

The United Nations Investigative Team for Accountability of Da’esh/ISIL (UNITAD) recently released its tenth report to UNSC on crimes committed by ISIL. As the report’s summary explains, “Following previously reported investigative achievements, the Team successfully launched new lines of inquiry on the development and use of biological and chemical weapons, the destruction of cultural and religious heritage and the crimes committed against various communities of Iraq. The Team has started to be engaged in building criminal case files with its Iraqi counterparts – investigative judges, prosecutors and forensic and law enforcement experts – against Da’esh/ISIL perpetrators who escaped from Iraq and are residing in third States.”

The report outlines these findings in depth on page 5, explaining that substantial evidence to support the Team’s case assessment was found, and that its focus is on investigating main sites of CW production, better understanding ISIL/Da’esh’s delivery systems, and collecting and preserving evidence linked to 12 separate attacks.

During the UNSC meeting where this report was discussed, “…numerous Council members commended UNITAD’s progress in its investigative priorities, including the launch of new lines of inquiry on the development and use of biological and chemical weapons; the destruction of cultural and religious heritage; and crimes committed against different Iraqi communities. However, several speakers emphasized that handing evidence over to the law enforcement and judicial bodies of Iraq is a key part of UNITAD’s mandate.”

UN coverage of that meeting recalls several council members’ comments on the report, explaining in part “While the number of attacks has decreased and its capability has been degraded, Da’esh “remains a critical threat in Iraq and globally”, said the representative of the United States. Accordingly, he highlighted UNITAD’s essential role in reducing this threat by supporting the Government of Iraq in repatriating Iraqi Da’esh members from detention centres in north-east Syria to face justice before national courts. Also, the Team can help other countries prosecute the thousands of Da’esh foreign fighters in detention centres in Iraq and Syria.”

However, despite the praise for UNITAD’s work on this issue, there is still the question of if the international community or domestic authorities will actually do something about it. In another UN post on this topic, the author explained “Christian Ritscher, Special Adviser and Head of UNITAD, recalled that chemical weapons use is outlawed internationally and could constitute a crime against humanity, war crime or even contribute to genocide, if a specific group is targeted…“To the best of my knowledge, the use of chemical weapons by non-State actors has rarely been adjudicated, if at all, in any court – whether national or international – around the world. As UNITAD, we would like to play our part and aim to change this,” he said.”

“Building Sustainable Infection Prevention in the Era of COVID-19”

“Examining the Impacts of Title 42 in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas: Perceptions From Stakeholders in Immigrant Health and Wellbeing”

In this Health Security article, Dr. Christine Crudo Blackburn and Ava Garrett discuss the recently-expired Title 42 and its impact on the spread of COVID-19 in the Rio Grande Valley. They explain in their abstract, “During the initial weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, the Department of Health and Human Services implemented a little-known public health law, referred to as “Title 42.” The law immediately received criticism from public health professionals and pandemic response experts around the country. Years after its initial implementation, however, the policy has been consistently maintained through numerous court decisions as necessary to prevent COVID-19. This article explores the perceived impact of Title 42 on COVID-19 containment and overall health security in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas, based on interviews conducted with public health professionals, medical professionals, nonprofit staff, and social workers. Our findings show that Title 42 was not perceived to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and likely decreased overall health security in this region.”

Applied Biosafety Biosafety Research Roadmap Special Issue

Applied Biosafety recently produced a special issue with multiple articles covering the new Biosafety Research Roadmap, a projected shared by the Organization for Animal Health, the WHO, and Chatham House. The introductory article explains the context behind this in its abstract:

“Introduction: Lack of evidence-based information regarding potential biological risks can result in inappropriate or excessive biosafety and biosecurity risk-reduction strategies. This can cause unnecessary damage and loss to the physical facilities, physical and psychological well-being of laboratory staff, and community trust. A technical working group from the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH, formerly OIE), World Health Organization (WHO), and Chatham House collaborated on the Biosafety Research Roadmap (BRM) project. The goal of the BRM is the sustainable implementation of evidence-based biorisk management of laboratory activities, particularly in low-resource settings, and the identification of gaps in the current biosafety and biosecurity knowledge base.”

“Methods: A literature search was conducted for the basis of laboratory design and practices for four selected high-priority subgroups of pathogenic agents. Potential gaps in biosafety were focused on five main sections, including the route of inoculation/modes of transmission, infectious dose, laboratory-acquired infections, containment releases, and disinfection and decontamination strategies. Categories representing miscellaneous, respiratory, bioterrorism/zoonotic, and viral hemorrhagic fever pathogens were created within each group were selected for review.”

“Results: Information sheets on the pathogens were developed. Critical gaps in the evidence base for safe sustainable biorisk management were identified.”

“Conclusion: The gap analysis identified areas of applied biosafety research required to support the safety, and the sustainability, of global research programs. Improving the data available for biorisk management decisions for research with high-priority pathogens will contribute significantly to the improvement and development of appropriate and necessary biosafety, biocontainment and biosecurity strategies for each agent.”

“Once ‘Defanged,’ H5N1 Bird Flu is Gaining Teeth Again”

In this article for The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Dr. Lynn C. Klotz discusses the potential for H5N1 to become a pandemic threat, writing in part “Now we are seeing the prolific spread of avian H5N1. Writing this year in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, scientists noted that for “the first time, in 2021, the virus remained present year-round in wild birds in Europe, spread to North America, and spread onwards to South America in 2022, where it is still expanding southward.” So far, H5N1 has caused the deaths of 100 million poultry birds in the United States and Europe. And worse still, repeated outbreaks among mammals could allow the virus to mutate and begin to pose a greater threat to humans, especially given worrying signs that mammals are already spreading the virus through the air. H5N1 has infected some 30 mammalian species and has sparked outbreaks and deaths in seals in North America and farmed mink in Spain. “It’s certainly plausible that those animals are spreading virus by droplet or aerosol to each other,” Tufts University veterinarian Jonathan Runstadler said of the seal outbreak in an interview with the Journal of the American Medical Association. “They’re having interactions at close range, and a lot of vocalizations…. But there’s other routes in that scenario that we can’t rule out.”

Biorisks, Biosecurity And Biological Disarmament Conference

This hybrid event will take place July 4-5. Learn more and register here.

Gordon Research Conference: Cross-Cutting Science Facilitating Collaboration Across the Threat-Science Research Community

This conference will take place July 9-14 in Ventura, CA. Learn more and register here.

Job Opening: Consultant-WHO Training On Responsible Use of the Life Sciences and Dual-Use Research

The WHO Science Division is currently hiring for a six-month consultancy focused on developing an online training on the responsible use of the life sciences and dual-use research. The post includes this background: “The Science Division, through the EPS Unit, issued a Global guidance framework for the responsible use of the life sciences: mitigating biorisks and governing dual-use research in September 2022. The guidance calls on WHO Member States and other stakeholders to mitigate biorisks and safely govern dual-use research, which has a clear benefit but can be misused to harm humans, other animals, agriculture and the environment. The framework underlines that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to mitigate biorisks and governing dual-use research. The framework adopts an integrated approach of biorisk management, which relies on three core pillars: biosafety, laboratory biosecurity and the oversight of dual-use research. The framework raises awareness about the importance of undertaking biorisk management within the context of the One Health approach to optimize the health of people, animals and ecosystems. To ensure uptake and use of these foundational elements, awareness raising, education, codes of conduct, ethical reviews, training and capacity-building are required for stakeholders in the research ecosystem. Therefore, the development of a training course to accompany the implementation of the different elements of the framework would be essential.”

The application and more information can be accessed here. This posting will close on June 23.

Job Opening: Two Full-Time Researchers for Research Group on Chemical and Biological Weapons Control

Learn more and apply here. This application closes on June 30.

Weekly Trivia Question

You read the Pandora Report every week and now it’s time for you to show off what you know! The first person to send the correct answer to biodefense@gmu.edu will get a shout out in the following issue (first name last initial). Our question this week is: In 1893, the German physician Richard Pfeiffer incorrectly identified which microbe as that causative agent of influenza?

Our question last week was “Boston opened a smallpox quarantine hospital on which island in 1717?” The answer is Spectacle Island.

Pandora Report 6.9.2023

June 9, 2023 by dkellogg97, posted in Pandora Report

This week is another mixed bag, covering suspected schoolgirl poisonings in Afghanistan, the introduction of the Disease X Act of 2023 in the US House of Representatives, and growing concern about generic drug safety in the Department of Defense. Several new publications, upcoming events, and announcements are also included.

Suspected Schoolgirl Poisonings in Afghanistan

Multiple poisonings of primary schoolgirls were reported this week in Afghanistan’s Sar-e-Pul province. The Guardian reports that nearly 80 girls were attacked and hospitalized in two separate incidents in the northern province, according to local education officials. According to CBS, “The first incident took place Saturday, when 63 people, including three female teachers, one male teacher, another school staffer and a parent of one student “were poisoned at Kabud Aab school” for girls, according to Mawlavi Sadruddin Adib Faroogi, the Sancharak district education director, who was quoted in the statement released by the governor’s office…In the second incident, which happened Sunday in the same district, the statement said 22 female students and four female teachers were poisoned at Faizabad school.”

This is not the first time Afghan schoolgirls have been deliberately poisoned, with the Taliban previously having been accused of conducting numerous similar attacks. For example, the Taliban was blamed for several attacks in multiple provinces in 2012. However, this is thought to be the first of this kind of attack since the Taliban took power in the country in August 2021.

CBS’ Ahmad Mukhtar explains, “Sodaba Bayani, an Afghan education and women’s rights activist, told CBS News she believed the Taliban authorities were “using chemicals to scare people off, and somehow prevent parents from letting their girls attend school, as this has occurred in Iran so many times.”‘

Disease X Act of 2023 Introduced

A bipartisan group of US representatives recently introduced the Disease X Act of 2023, which aims to ensure that the country is able to prepare for and rapidly develop medical countermeasures for future pandemics. This legislation would “Direct BARDA to accelerate and support the advanced research, development, and procurement of countermeasures and products to address Disease X threats,” and “Allow HHS to award contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements, or enter into other transactions, to promote the development of Disease X medical countermeasures for viral families with pandemic potential.”

Rep. Lori Trahan’s office explained in a press release about the bill “In addition to bipartisan support in Congress, the Disease X Act of 2023 is supported by leaders and experts in academia, industry, and think tanks, including Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, Biotechnology Innovation Organization, Infectious Diseases Society of America, CEPI U.S., Dr. Caroline Schuerger, Research Fellow, Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology, Dr. Steph Batalis, Research Fellow, Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology, Ginkgo Bioworks, Institute for Progress (IFP), Big Cities Health Coalition, FluGen Inc., US Biologic, Inc., Vir Biotechnology, The Gerontological Society of America, Global Health Technologies Coalition, Helix, New Orleans BioInnovation Center, Medical Countermeasures Coalition, 1Day Sooner, and Dr. Gregory D. Koblentz, Director, Biodefense Graduate Program, Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University.”

A summary of the bill and relevant background is also available here.

Department of Defense Concerned About Quality of Generic Drugs

Bloomberg News reported this week that the Department of Defense is in talks with Valisure, an independent lab, to test the safety and quality of generic drugs purchased by the Department for servicemembers and their families. Bloomberg explains further: “The move raises questions about the Food and Drug Administration’s ability to adequately police generic medicines. With mounting drug shortages, most of which are caused by quality problems, military officials have gone so far as to call vulnerabilities in the drug supply chain a national security threat.”

“The FDA is responsible for ensuring that America’s drugs are safe, but it’s gotten harder for the agency to police quality because generic drugmakers have shifted operations to India and China where costs are lower and the US has little oversight. The Pentagon’s proposed program isn’t currently targeting the expensive, brand-name drugs advertised on TV, but rather the older copycat drugs that make up more than 9 out of 10 prescription medications that Americans take.”

“Aware of growing quality problems, the White House has convened a task force that’s exploring whether testing could be expanded more broadly in the US. If the Pentagon pilot is successful, it could serve as a model for Medicare or the Department of Veterans Affairs, people familiar with the matter said. But there are tensions in Washington: In conversations with the White House, the FDA has pushed back against additional quality checks, questioning the accuracy of third-party labs like Valisure.”

This comes after years of concerns about the safety and stability of the United States’ drug supply, such as those outlined in the 2018 book, China Rx, by Rosemary Gibson and Janardan Prasad Singh. The US Congress passed the Drug Quality and Security Act in November 2013. At the time, the FDA said of the act “…[it] outlines steps to achieve interoperable, electronic tracing of products at the package level to identify and trace certain prescription drugs as they are distributed in the United States. This will enhance FDA’s ability to help protect consumers from exposure to drugs that may be counterfeit, stolen, contaminated, or otherwise harmful. These requirements will also improve detection and removal of potentially dangerous drugs from the drug supply chain to protect U.S. consumers.”

“Chinese Media Is Wrong, US Funded Lab in Kazakhstan Is to Prevent Bioterrorism”

This piece by Polygraph.info’s Lin Yang tackles ongoing Chinese allegations that the US is creating in Central Asia pathogens for use in bioterrorist attacks. Yang writes in part, “On May 26, China’s state-run Global Times newspaper claimed that the U.S. is investing in building biological weapons in Central Asia:

“Funded by the United States Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), the Central Reference Laboratory near Almaty, Kazakhstan’s most populous metropolis, is researching lethal pathogens that could be used in bio-terrorist attacks like plague and cholera, according to media reports.”

“That is misleading…This is a recurring conspiracy theory, pushed by Russia and China, about U.S. funding of biological research facilities around the world. While the Central Reference Laboratory in Kazakhstan does conduct research on lethal pathogens, its mission is to prevent these dangerous pathogens from being used as biological weapons or becoming the next pandemic, exactly the opposite of what the Global Times claimed.”

This has coincided with pushback in Chinese state media against the BBC’s late May article-“Covid: Top Chinese scientist says don’t rule out lab leak“-that said the former director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. George Gao, told the BBC not to rule out the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 leaked from a laboratory. China Daily recently published an article on this, reporting “However, when guancha.cn sought verification from Gao regarding the accuracy of the story, Gao told them that John Sudworth and Simon Maybin, the co-authors of the BBC article, had never interviewed him, and he had not participated in any activities organized by the BBC recently….Gao stated that the BBC’s “outrageous” quotation of his words was taken out of context from an online conversation he had with several scientists at the end of 2022.”

“Preventing Pandemics by (Not) Seizing the Low-Hanging Fruit (Bat)”

This post from Cornell’s College of Veterinary Medicine discusses how faculty members are working with the Wildlife Conservation Society in a partnership with The Lancet Planetary Health to understand “…how such surges in deaths, illness, and suffering – as well as their economic costs – can be prevented in the future. One basic solution, the authors argue, may lie in a global taboo against harming or disturbing bats and their habitats.”

The post explains later that, “Given that most, but not all, of the identified bat-related activities of concern – such as bat hunting, consumption, and trade; bat guano harvesting, use, and trade; cave tourism; and incursions into key bat habitats with livestock, homesteads, mines, and crop agriculture at smallholder and industrial scales – occur in low-income and middle-income countries, the authors recognize the need to try to mitigate any socioeconomic or cultural burdens that voluntary changes in behavior would cause, and call for wealthier countries to provide logical forms of compensation. “Such compensation would undoubtedly be a small price to pay to lessen the risk of future pandemics,” said Osofsky, who believes that preventing pandemics at the source is the most equitable way to benefit all of humanity.”

“The key, the authors say, is not to fear, chase away or cull bats – which may be counterproductive, because dispersing the animals only increases the odds of zoonotic spillover. On the contrary, allowing bats to survive and thrive by letting them exist undisturbed in their habitats can pay other dividends around the world. The ecosystem services bats provide – from control of mosquitos and other harmful insects to crop pollination – are worth many billions of dollars annually.”

“Health Security Intelligence: Intelligence, Biosecurity, and the Bioeconomy”

In this article in International Studies, Gaudys L. Sanclemente and Fredy Rivera-Vélez uses the actor-network theory to better understand the intersection of security, intelligence, health, and cybersecurity. They write in their abstract: “Technology advancements and instruments present a beneficial influence in the bioeconomy at the intersection of security, intelligence, health, and cybersecurity. The actor–network theory inspires theoretical reflections on the importance of key actors interweaving in the information ecosystem, including human and nonhuman actors. Alliances, instruments, and public representation can raise awareness of research and development in the life sciences. The analysis focuses on the bioeconomy where the economy, biological sciences, and Big Data intersect as a source for understanding how boundary objects influence avenues of potential threats. As an emerging sector, the bioeconomy proposes using biological sciences and resources and transforming them into valuable products to enhance economic activity and drive innovation. However, the growth of the bioeconomy may lead to an expansion of security risks and threats. The increasing amount of information, coupled with data sharing and technology advancements in the biosphere, raises security concerns. The research reflects on two emerging fields, biosecurity and cyberbiosecurity, safeguarding the bioeconomy. This contribution highlights the value of knowledge production, preserving security, and awareness of vulnerabilities and risks regarding nefarious activities while not hindering research, development, and innovation in the bioeconomy. As the sector grows, more strategic protection may be necessary for the betterment of sustainable growth and development. The research contributes to the intelligence, security studies, and science and technology studies disciplines and as a source for military experts, security professionals, researchers, and intelligence analysts.”

What We’re Listening To 🎧

Fever: The Hunt for Covid’s Origin

“Cover-ups, coincidences, and conspiracy theories: where did Covid come from?”

“John Sudworth was the BBC’s China correspondent when an unexplained pneumonia started worrying Wuhan doctors in December 2019. Since then, he’s been investigating the origin of the virus that would turn into a devastating global pandemic.”

“From the beginning, there have been claims of certainty. Many scientists say the virus that causes Covid came from nature – probably carried from bats to other animals, and then to humans in a Wuhan market.”

“But an alternative possibility – that it leaked from a laboratory – has refused to go away. And other scientists claim there’s uncertainty. For them, the mystery of Covid’s origin remains unsolved.”

“So, where did Covid come from? For every one of the millions of lives lost, for every long sufferer, for the pain, the isolation, and the incalculable economic cost, the answer matters. It might also help us prevent another – maybe even worse – pandemic.”

“But it’s a debate that’s become politicised, toxic, and a bit crazy.”

Listen to all available episodes here.

FP Global Health Forum 2023

“Global health is more than a humanitarian issue — it’s a critical component of foreign policy, international security, and economic stability. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed glaring weaknesses in global healthcare systems and medical supply chains, prompting urgent calls for reform and resilience-building. Meanwhile, shifting demographics have increased the burden of non-communicable diseases that disproportionately impact some of the world’s most impoverished nations. Climate change further complicates the situation, as rising temperatures and extreme weather events impact well-being, and populations flee sea-level rise, drought, and resource scarcity to regions ill-equipped to handle an influx of migrants.”

“In the face of these unprecedented challenges, the global health community acknowledges the need to develop sustainable solutions that can withstand the trials of an ever-changing world. FP’s Global Health Forum is an opportunity to engage with those leading the charge, and to discuss how investments in health can ultimately strengthen resilience and stability around the globe.”

This hybrid event will take place June 13 from 8-11:30 am EST. Learn more and register here.

CSWMD 2023 Annual Symposium: WMD in the Decisive Decade

“The National Defense University’s Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction (CSWMD) invites you to join us on 14 June 2023 for the virtual Annual CSWMD Symposium, titled WMD in the Decisive Decade.”

“This year’s symposium will explore the cognitive impacts WMD has on strategic decision making and the challenges associated with operating in an environment where WMD has been employed. It will be an opportunity for the WMD community to engage with officials and thought leaders on current WMD challenges at the unclassified level, including keynote addresses by Richard Johnson, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear and CWMD Policy and Rebecca Hersman, Director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.”

“For more information and to register for this event click here. Please RSVP by 9 JUNE 2023.”

“We look forward to hosting you for the event. For more information about the WMD Center and reference our research, please visit our website at https://wmdcenter.ndu.edu/ and follow us on Twitter and on LinkedIn.”

Intelligent Immunity – Drawing from Innate Immune Mechanisms to Design Pathogen-agnostic Diagnostics for Emerging Threats

From PNNL: “Join us as we welcome Harshini Mukundan, program manager for the chemical and biological technologies at the Office of National Homeland Security (OHNS), and scientist in the biosciences area. Her talk, titled “Intelligent Immunity – Drawing from Innate Immune Mechanisms to Design Pathogen-agnostic Diagnostics for Emerging Threats” will be Thursday, June 15, at noon PT.“

“The human innate immune system is a classic example of a pathogen agnostic diagnostic and therapeutic system. Mimicking innate immunity in the laboratory can allow for the universal identification of emerging threats, increasing our preparedness against future pandemics and biowarfare events. We have been working on understanding core principles guiding host-pathogen interactions and adapting them to design tailored assays for the direct detection of pathogen signatures in complex clinical samples. A snapshot of design to deployment of this approach – including preliminary clinical studies in blinded cohorts will be presented. Finally, we will touch on current work intended to expand the scale of this understanding in order to achieve a machine learning model of innate immunity that is truly agnostic.”

Biorisks, Biosecurity And Biological Disarmament Conference

This hybrid event will take place July 4-5. Learn more and register here.

Gordon Research Conference: Cross-Cutting Science Facilitating Collaboration Across the Threat-Science Research Community

This conference will take place July 9-14 in Ventura, CA. Learn more and register here.

Job Announcement: Director, Office of Biodefense Research and Surety at National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

“The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) is seeking an exceptional and visionary leader to serve as director, Office of Biodefense Research and Surety (OBRS) reporting to the Deputy Director for Science Management, NIAID.”

“OBRS serves as the NIAID focal point for coordinating, planning, and implementing the biodefense research supported by NIAID. OBRS disseminates information on the Institute’s biodefense research programs, policies, and funding opportunities and coordinates biodefense and biodefense-related research issues across NIH. A key responsibility of OBRS is oversight of the Chemical Countermeasures Research Program (CCRP), which consists of an annual discovery research and early development budget of approximately $52M and includes the participation of eight NIH institutes and centers. OBRS oversees the NIAID Emergency Preparedness planning and Continuity of Operations planning offices. In addition, OBRS participates in the governance of the high-containment taskforce and serves as the NIAID liaison with the NIH Office of the Director, the Department of Health and Human Services, and other Federal departments and agencies regarding intelligence gathering and analysis which may impact NIH programs and operations.”

“The OBRS director provides overall executive direction and scientific leadership to this complex operation. The director oversees and coordinates both branches of the OBRS: the Biodefense Research Countermeasures Branch and the Surety and Preparedness Coordination Branch. Additionally, the director serves as principal advisor to the Director, NIAID and Deputy Director for Science Management on matters related to biosafety, biocontainment, and surety. The director represents NIAID/NIH on interagency and interdepartmental committees, working groups, and professional meetings, as well as international forums and symposia dealing with biodefense, emerging infections, biosecurity, and biocontainment. The director participates in the governance of the NIH High Containment Taskforce and provides support to the NIH Biodefense Research Coordination Committee, a central resource for trans-NIH communication and planning of biodefense activities.”

Learn more and apply to this position here.

Medical Countermeasures- Expanding Delivery and Increasing Uptake Through Public-Private Partnerships: A Workshop Series: Call for Experts

From the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine: “The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine is seeking nominations for experts to participate in a workshop planning committee for the “Medical Countermeasures- Expanding Delivery and Increasing Uptake Through Public-Private Partnerships: A Workshop Series”. This planning committee will plan and conduct a virtual workshop series to examine lessons learned and future opportunities for public-private partnerships to facilitate delivery, monitoring, uptake, and utilization of medical countermeasures (MCM) to the public during a public health emergency.”

“The workshop will build on lessons learned from various models deployed during the COVID-19 response, such as retail pharmacies as points of diagnosis and MCM dispensing, outpatient infusion centers and home health care providers as collaborators in administering monoclonal antibodies, employer-led initiatives, uses of telehealth, and collaborations between telehealth providers and various dispensing options to provide access to MCMs for the public.”

Learn more and submit nominations here.

Application for iGEM Judges Open Now

“Judging in iGEM is a fun, rewarding experience and requires commitment! Through the judging process, our judges will evaluate, celebrate, and help guide the next generation of synthetic biologists. Judges help the entire iGEM community celebrate the hard work and achievements of our iGEM teams.”

“We need judges — both experienced and new — who understand and value iGEM. Many of our judges come back year after year, and we gladly welcome new judges to apply as well.”

Learn more and apply here.

BARDA Announces New FDA Approval for Medical Countermeasures Supported by BARDA Under Novel-Public Private Partnerships

From BARDA: “BARDA is excited about the recent U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of OPVEE (nalmefene) nasal spray, an emergency opioid overdose reversal treatment, from our partner Indivior (through its wholly owned subsidiary, Opiant Pharmaceuticals, Inc). This drug-device combination product is approved as a fast and long-acting emergency treatment for known or suspected opioid overdoses. This decision marks the newest FDA approval for medical countermeasures supported by BARDA under novel public-private partnerships.”

Biodefense Representation at the 2022 NACCHO Preparedness Summit

June 5, 2023 by dkellogg97, posted in Program News

Emily Lu, Biodefense MS Graduate

COVID-19 has had an enormous negative impact on healthcare systems. The 2022 Preparedness Summit, hosted by the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) in Atlanta, Georgia, took place April 4-7 and aimed to cover the entire scope of issues and solutions discussed during these two years. The main purpose of this summit was to collaborate and share information as well as collaboration on what actions have been taken.

This conference covered a variety of topics, including biodefense, biosecurity, public health awareness, and biotechnologies and their role in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The conference’s slogan-“Reimagining Preparedness in the Era of COVID-19”- is evidence of that. The conference was organized into several sessions. Track 5, Strengthening Global Health Security, is one that I chose to focus on, specifically biosecurity and public health emergency preparedness and management. One of the key highlights of Track 5: Strengthening Global Health Security was Ryan Houser’s presentation, “The Security Threat of Infectious Disease: Applying a Public Health Emergency Management Approach to Biodefense”. Houser, an emergency preparedness professional and Biodefense PhD student, defines biodefense as “any actions designed to counter biological threats, reduce risks, and prepare for, respond to, and recover from bio incidents.” Houser’s definition of biosecurity is the “strategic and integrated approach to analyzing and managing relevant risks to human, animal, and plant life.” He explained that, in examining the COVID-19 pandemic from a biodefense and biosecurity viewpoint, shortcomings are most obvious in the inadequate amount of funding that the government gives out via routine congressional appropriations.

Funding

Houser highlighted that “public health emergency preparedness grants decreased from $939 million in 2003 to $675 million in 2020.” These grants, funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), are designed to prevent and respond to terrorism and future natural disasters. This number is similar to the Public Health Emergency Preparedness budget in 2020, which totaled $622,850,000 and increased to $637,850,603 in 2021. Regarding the argument that $675 million may not be enough funding for the United States, it would be difficult to assess partially because the amount and how this money is distributed within each state can have an impact on their response.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, FEMA conducted a study in New Jersey that found the pandemic response was successful in providing support and coordination efforts, improving relationships between the urban area security initiative members, and enhancing communications with the public and other stakeholders. However, the success of this 2020 study may have to do with the total amount of funding available to New Jersey, which, in 2020, was $15,144,167. However, this is not the case for all states, which have different amounts of funding.

Funding for each state is calculated by adding a base amount to an amount relative to the state’s population, which is then added to that amount set aside by each state. Chemical laboratory funding is also included if there is a chemical laboratory available within the state. Therefore, money may impact response efforts, but there is not enough evidence to determine if it is the main factor in response success. However, what can be said is that the amount of financial support given towards hospital preparedness as well as public preparedness has increased slightly for each state. It’s more likely that how this money is spent and where it is being distributed within the state impacts the situation even more.

Healthcare Response

The lack of cohesion between government funding and healthcare was a recurring theme at the conference. Healthcare management during the COVID-19 pandemic has tended to fare better in some areas over others. For example, around 95% of hospitals passed a compliance check conducted by the Unified Hospital Data Surveillance System with scores between 90 and 100% that was conducted by the Unified Hospital Data Surveillance System (UHDSS) during its enforcement period in 2020.

However, the COVID-19 pandemic has also created many challenges for healthcare institutions. For example, hospitals can quickly near maximum capacity based on the circumstances in their state and local area. An example of this was when, due to Arizona re-opening early, ICU units in the state’s hospitals rapidly came close to 80% capacity as new cases were admitted in 2020. In some states, circumstances make it difficult for individuals to follow protocols. Again, using Arizona as an example, the state re-opened due to many different factors, including high temperatures motivating individuals to violate regulations and seek indoor shelter, and a general avoidance of hospital environments.

Other issues in the healthcare system include shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE), including the shortage of N95 respirators, surgical/procedure masks, eye protection (including face shields and goggles), single-use gowns, and exam gloves. This could be attributed to a lack of funding, though this may not necessarily be the case.

Lastly, there may have been difficulties regarding the coordination of staff within large hospital systems. In larger systems, changes can become difficult to execute during a short amount of time. Throughout the COVID-19 response, hospital staffing has been inconsistent and limited. For example, at the start of the pandemic, according to ECRI (formerly the Emergency Care Research Institute), a nonprofit patient safety organization, “staffing shortages are the nation’s top safety concern”, especially in 2022. Ways to compensate for this have come in the form of adding staff and bringing more interest to keep medical students within the field.

Highlights

Despite the issues discussed above, there are some examples of successes in the United States’ COVID-19 response. An example of this is the successes of fusion centers in assisting institutions and the public with accessing quality resources during this crisis. Fusion centers, according to the Department of Homeland Security, “are state-owned and operated centers that serve as focal points in states, and major urban areas for the receipt, analysis, gathering, and sharing of threat-related information…”. Individuals can report certain concerns, which then allows the fusion center to connect them to the right resources.

One example of this was offered by Jarad Modaber of the Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center, in which there was a case of counterfeit N95s being stored and distributed from a warehouse. These were seized by the Department of Homeland Security with this news reported on Feb 18, 2021. Later, it was revealed that China was the source of the fake masks with around 6,000 victims of the massive scam. This demonstrates that during the pandemic, attention towards biosecurity measures and reporting them was helpful in the long run. For biosecurity and biodefense, there is a sense of coordination between law enforcement and healthcare backers that exists within the fusion center. Individuals from different backgrounds are grouped to help with calls regarding healthcare and suspicious activity.

For the 2022 Preparedness Summit, biodefense representation and its impact on decisions was only a small part of the entire picture. Funding, hospital management and coordination within organizations also plays a part in response efforts for the COVID-19 pandemic. However, despite its small role, biodefense, and biosecurity play an important role in being part of the solution in improving healthcare funding and communication between organizations. As shown by this summary, every part plays a critical role in successful response.

Pandora Report 6.2.2023

June 2, 2023June 2, 2023 by dkellogg97, posted in Pandora Report

This week is another mixed bagged, covering updates on several different topics, including the recently acknowledged Enzo Biochem ransomware attack. Several recent publications, write-ups of recent events, and multiple upcoming events are also covered.

Stimson Center Releases The Nonproliferation Cheminformatics Compliance Tool (NCCT) Proof-of-Concept

The Stemson Center recently released this complete proof of concept for a low-cost and accessible tool for front-line customs officers to identify controlled chemicals. The Center explained in this recent post “Frontline officers for border security and trade controls must quickly determine whether chemicals declared for export can be utilized as a chemical warfare agent or precursor. A proposed web-based Nonproliferation Compliance Cheminformatics Tool (NCCT) would digitize and automate this complex and time-consuming task and address vulnerabilities to the CW nonproliferation regime caused by manual cross referencing of chemical export declarations with lists of chemicals of proliferation concern.”

Dr. Gregory Koblentz, Director of George Mason’s Biodefense Graduate Program, serves as a consultant on the project. Learn more about it here.

DHS Completes Construction, Commissioning of National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility

From DHS: “The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has completed the construction and commissioning of the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) in Manhattan, Kansas. NBAF is the first U.S. laboratory with biosafety level-4 containment, capable of housing large livestock animals; and one of only a few facilities in the world with these capabilities. With contract administration support from DHS’s Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC), the DHS Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) managed and completed the project under the $1.25 billion budget for the construction and commissioning effort, which spanned 17 years from initial planning to completion.”

“DHS is preparing to formally transfer ownership of the NBAF site to USDA in the coming weeks as the final step of a unique phased transition of operations that began in April 2021. Full mission transfer from the PIADC to NBAF is projected to take a couple of years…While the completion of construction and commissioning ends DHS’s responsibility for NBAF, DHS and USDA will maintain a strategic partnership by utilizing this national security asset to successfully execute their joint mission to protect the nation’s food supply, agriculture economy, and public health.”

Pandora Report 5.26.2023

May 26, 2023May 26, 2023 by dkellogg97, posted in Pandora Report

This week’s edition of the Pandora Report focuses primarily on the recent release of Senator Marco Rubio’s COVID-19 origins report. Updates on the ongoing 76th World Health Assembly, new publications, and upcoming events are also included. Have a safe Memorial Day weekend!

Congratulations Again to Our Biodefense MS Graduates!

We would like to give one more round of congratulations to our incredible Biodefense MS students, who walked the stage last week. Check out some pictures from graduation below!

Senator Marco Rubio’s COVID-19 Origins Report: Circumstantial Evidence or Just a Lack of Context?

Last week, Senator Marco Rubio’s office released a 328-page report titled “A Complex and Grave Situation: A Political Chronology of the SARS-CoV-2 Outbreak.” This write-up aims to address some reoccurring issues in the report as well as broader implications of these problems. The report, which the office self-describes as “groundbreaking,” claims to present “…a mountain of circumstantial evidence that the Covid-19 pandemic came from a lab accident in Wuhan, China.” Furthermore, according to the report’s executive summary, “This study draws on English and Chinese sources to examine the origins of COVID-19. It indicates that a serious biosafety incident occurred at the state-run Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) during the second half of 2019.”

Video produced by Sen. Marco Rubio’s office covering this report

The report’s summary explains that the authors borrowed the legal standard of the preponderance of the evidence in their analysis. This is a type of evidentiary standard that can be used in burden of proof analysis. Under this standard, the burden of proof is met if the party that is burdened convinces the fact finder that there is a greater than 50% chance the claim is true. In other words, the party that has the burden of proof has to convince the court that it is more probable than not that their argument is correct. The utility of this standard in a report that admits it relies on circumstantial evidence and lacks a “smoking gun” is questionable given that the report focuses on a hotly contested question about a virus’s origin, rather than a known and agreed upon event.

The report also quickly runs into factual trouble, such as in its Summary of Findings where it reads in part:

“The inconsistency between Beijing’s urgent and aggressive reaction to the outbreak itself and its lackluster efforts to ascertain the virus’s origin – alas, its policy has been to actively frustrate international efforts to identify the origin and to punish PRC citizens who try to investigate on their own – suggests that Beijing already knows the origin, and fears that public confirmation of the origin could precipitate an existential crisis for the CCP and therefore must be avoided at all costs. The failure of local authorities to regulate the trade of wildlife at wet markets giving rise to the zoonotic spillover of a novel human pathogen is a crisis that the CCP has weathered before. There is no reason to believe that they could not survive it again.“

This last bit appears to reference the 2002-2004 SARS outbreak and outbreaks of H7N9 avian influenza (which were much smaller than those of SARS and COVID-19) in China in the last decade. While China was praised internationally for its response to the latter, its management of the former is a notorious failure that every subsequent Chinese outbreak response has been compared to-including its response to H7N9. Given the Party’s failure to stage good responses to HIV/AIDS in Henan province and SARS in recent decades, this statement implying the Party is good to go on handling something like a zoonotic origin of COVID-19 is nonsensical, let alone the idea that this is good evidence that such an origin is unlikely.

This apparently poor understanding of the gravity of SARS and the impact it had on the field of global health security is demonstrated throughout the piece as the authors appear perplexed at the frequent mention of SARS and SARS-like diseases. However, this is just the start of the report’s problems.

The document also dives into lengthy discussion of China’s background in BW disarmament and increasing strategic interests in biotechnology. This section, which borrows substantially from Elsa B. Kania’s work for the National Defense University and Defense One (in which she does a great job contextualizing what is being said and analyzing what it means in terms of long-term Chinese interests), aims to “…aid the reader in understanding the political, economic, and security backdrop against which the initial outbreak occurred in China.”

While there are sub-sections dedicated to topics like China’s embrace of Military-Civil Fusion, which is relevant in discussing Chinese life sciences research, it also devotes a lot of space to discussing assessments of China’s compliance with international disarmament treaties. To be clear, the State Department has concerns about China engaging in activities with potential BW applications and concerns that China has not eliminated its assessed historical BW program, but what does this have to do with a lab leak at the WIV? This is especially troubling given ongoing problems in the US and globally with BW-related disinformation.

The early portion of the report devotes space to explaining how shengwu anquan (生物安全) is used in Chinese, noting that it is commonly translated to biosecurity and biosafety in English. The authors point to a definition provided to Xinhua by Wu Guizhen of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention: “Shengwu anquan is classified as non-traditional security. It includes emerging and sudden outbreaks of infectious disease, erroneous use and deliberate misuse of new biotechnology, biosafety in laboratories, and the loss of national important hereditary materials and genetic data, etc.”⁴

This is worth highlighting now, particularly as the video released by Senator Rubio’s office emphasizes a statement from Gao Hucheng in which he said “…the biosecurity situation in our country is grim.” However, as the report does actually include, this was part of a larger statement that reads:

“At the same time that biotechnology has brought progress and benefits to humanity, it has also brought new biosecurity problems and threats. Currently the biosecurity situation in our country is grim. Bio-warfare and traditional biological threats from major emerging and sudden outbreaks of infectious diseases represented by SARS, Ebola, and African Swine Fever, as well as animal and plant epidemics, are occurring as frequently as ever before. Non-traditional biological threats, [such as] bioterrorist attacks, the erroneous use and deliberate misuse of biotechnology, and laboratories that leak biological agents, are clear and obvious.⁷⁰²“

From the start, this report seems to confuse biosecurity and biosafety in its efforts to present “circumstantial evidence” to prove a pre-determined conclusion.

A Big Ball of Wibbly-Wobbly, Timey-Wimey Stuff (Emphasis on Wibbly-Wobbly)

The big promise of this report is its chronicling of events, actions, statements, etc. “…in the PRC that pertain to biosecurity, biosafety, and public health – both as general matters and specifically in response to the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2.” The authors note they likely missed important events. They also seem to have predicted the criticism that several of their entries are irrelevant to the focus of this report, as they explain:

“Not every entry that follows should be seen as somehow directly related to the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2, because no such implication was intended by its inclusion in the chronology. Some entries beginning in 2019 are clearly related to the outbreak. Others could very well be related, but it is hard to draw a clear conclusion based on the information currently available. Some entries are most likely unrelated, or only tangentially related, but they nevertheless captured the prevailing pressures of the day and preexisting concerns about biosafety and biosecurity that may have influenced the authorities’ response. To be clear, many entries appear simply for the purpose of providing broader context to the reader. The result is a report that is far from concise, and some might even call cumbersome, but there is no glide path to clarity on the origin of this virus. We could only plod patiently through the confusing morass that surrounded the initial outbreak in China in the hope that clues would be gathered along the way”

However, as this is a report published by a US Senator promising to give the American people answers about the origins of this pandemic, this is not a helpful explanation. The political back-and-forth over where this virus came from has harmed public discourse on the troubled state of public health in this country, and Senator Rubio has directly involved himself in this, which is highlighted on his official Senate website and is evident in his repeated efforts to downplay the severity of COVID-19. Sen. Rubio said himself of this report, “After years of censorship, there is growing evidence that some type of lab accident is responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic. This report, which took two years to compile, edit, and refine, is a groundbreaking look at what was happening in China during the years and months leading up to the known outbreak of the pandemic.”

As such, inclusion of events on this timeline either implies to the public that the event is considered relevant to the start of the pandemic, or is admittedly inclusion of irrelevant information (which the general public is still likely to interpret as being relevant to the start of the pandemic). The video released in conjunction with the report also does not make this distinction, though it references several seemingly irrelevant events. An example of this is the dramatically presented response exercise hosted in China in late 2019 that focused on a novel coronavirus which, again, makes sense given the severity of the outbreak of SARS in 2002. The report even mentions an exercise hosted by Johns Hopkins in 2019 that also focused on a novel coronavirus, which only further highlights how important SARS and, later, MERS were/are to the field. The fact is there are implied connections throughout this document and its accompanying materials that warrant substantial criticism, particularly given the flawed information provided in this section.

For example, on page 44, the timeline includes a description for January 2018, titled “U.S. Diplomats Visit WIV and Report Safety Issues to Washington.” The description reads:

“After visiting the WIV and speaking with its researchers, U.S. diplomats conveyed concerns about the training of personnel and biosafety conditions at the newly constructed BSL-4 laboratory complex located on the WIV’s Zhengdian Research Industrial Park campus in Jiangxia District²⁸³ in an internal cable transmitted to Foggy Bottom on January 19, according to the Washington Post.²⁸⁴ “During interactions with scientists at the WIV laboratory, they noted the new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high containment laboratory,” the January 19 cable stated, relaying comments from WIV researchers. The cable further cautioned that the WIV’s work with bat coronaviruses potentially posed a risk of new SARS-like pandemic.²⁸⁵“

The Washington Post opinion piece referenced was widely criticized at the time of its release for its misrepresentation of this cable. The Post itself later acknowledged that the piece “…sparked unproven speculation from senior U.S. officials beginning in April that the outbreak occurred as a result of an accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” In short, the cable is talking about how the state-of-the art WIV facility was limited in its productivity because of a “…shortage of the highly trained technicians and investigators required to safely operate a BSL-4 laboratory and a lack of clarity in related Chinese government policies and guidelines.”

The cable later says “Thus, while the BSL-4 lab is ostensibly fully accredited, its utilization is limited by lack of access to specific organisms and by opaque government review and approval processes. As long as this situation continues, Beijing’s commitment to prioritizing infectious disease control – on the regional and international level, especially in relation to highly pathogenic viruses, remains in doubt.”

It continues with, “REDACTED noted that the new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory. University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston (UTMB), which has one of several well-established BSL-4 labs in the United States (supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID of NIH)), has scientific collaborations with WIV, which may help alleviate this talent gap over time. Reportedly, researchers from GTMB are helping train technicians who work in the WIV BSL-4 lab. Despite this REDACTED they would welcome more help from U.S. and international organizations as they establish “gold standard” operating procedures and training courses for the first time in China. As China is building more BSL-4 labs, including one in Harbin Veterinary Research Institute subordinated to the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) for veterinary research use REDACTED the training for technicians and investigators working on dangerous pathogens will certainly be in demand.”

While the Rubio report indicates this cable “…further cautioned that the WIV’s work with bat coronaviruses potentially posed a risk of new SARS-like pandemic…”, that kind of warning does not appear in the cable. Rather, the cable positively discusses WIV scientists’ efforts to undertake productive research related to the origin of SARS despite the limitations on the new BSL-4 facility which the researchers were frustrated by and working to address. So, to summarize, the cable was about the WIV opening a state-of-the-art BSL-4 laboratory that it could not fully use because of the Chinese government’s concerns about the need for more trained personnel at the WIV.

cable Download

There are other points of ambiguity and concern throughout the chronology portion, such as poorly contextualized references to “SARS-like” diseases and more quotes seemingly taken out of context. For example, the Rubio report discusses an event in September 2018 on page 54, stating:

“On September 10 and 14, the WIV held political study sessions at which a number of its strategic goals and challenges were discussed.³⁴⁴ Brief reports of the meetings posted on the WIV’s website brought into clear focus the state-run nature of the WIV, including its obligations to meet goals set by the central CCP authorities in Beijing. It further suggested that the WIV leadership was already aware of problems that could later have implications for biosafety and biosecurity – problems that would be discussed with greater frequency and urgency in 2019.”

“Chen Xinwen, director of the WIV from 2008 to late 2018, was described as having brought attention to unspecified “shortcomings and inadequacies in the current work at the CAS,” ³⁴⁵and having “highlighted the imperative to tightly grasp the critical [technological] fields and the ‘stranglehold’ problem that affects the overall situation of the nation and its long-term development.”³⁴⁶ The “stranglehold problem” is a recurring theme of concern at the WIV and among other state-run research entities charged with meeting the science and technology goals set by Beijing. It refers to the “direct [deleterious] effects created by cutting off the supply of foreign key and core technologies” to China,³⁴⁷ which means technologies that China “must import because it is unable to produce them domestically in sufficient quality or quantity.”³⁴⁸“

However, the section of the WIV’s post the authors quoted in English as “shortcoming and inadequacies in the current work at the CAS, (“陈新文从中科院当前工作的短板和不足…”)” is part of a much larger paragraph that provides helpful context to what Chen actually said. Chen’s speech, which the post’s author says conveyed the spirit of Xi Jinping’s previous speeches on the matter, began with discussion and praise of the country’s scientific and technological achievements. He then made a statement about improving the work of CAS (from its shortcoming and deficiencies) so that the organization can better support strategic goals and address the stranglehold issues referenced throughout. He then concluded with some goals the WIV should strive towards meeting, such as clarifying its work priorities, strengthening its party building work, and providing a strong political and organizational guarantee for the scientific and technological advancement of the WIV. So, in context, this is a much more general statement of how the WIV should try to continuously improve, rather than some statement about specific problems at the Institute. This makes sense given the public-facing nature of the website.

Another particularly troublesome section begins on page 197, where the report discusses a COVID-19 patent application made in February 2020. The report says:

“On February 24, Zhou Yusen, a virologist at the PLA AMMS Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology, led a team of 11 researchers that filed a patent application with the PRC National Intellectual Property Administration for a COVID-19 vaccine, becoming the first in China to do so.¹²⁶² The application indicated that the patent rights would belong to two organizations, the PLA AMMS Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology where Zhou worked and a biopharmaceutical firm in Beijing called JOINN Biologics.¹²⁶³ The vaccine was developed under the auspices of an “emergency project” authorized by the MOST, according to JOINN Biologics.¹²⁶⁴“

“Zhou’s filing came only 35 days after the PRC authorities admitted to the public that human-to-human transmission was occurring, only 46 days after they had confirmed that the causative agent of the pneumonia outbreak was a novel coronavirus, and only 55 days since their first public acknowledgment that a pneumonia outbreak had been detected. The genomic sequence used in the patent, which remains unexploited insofar as can be determined through the available literature, may represent the earliest available sequence of SARS-CoV-2.”

“Based on the methodology that Zhou’s team used to develop the vaccine and the three experiments conducted to complete the underlying study, U.S. experts in vaccinology and immunology consulted during this study estimated that a minimum of 12-16 weeks lead time (three to four months) would have been required to conduct the necessary technical and animal experimentation to prepare this patent application for submission by February 24. This estimated timeline places the beginning of Zhou’s research in early November 2019 at the latest, perhaps as early as mid-October.”‘

While the names of the US experts in vaccinology and immunology are not included in the report, the overarching claim in this section is reminiscent of that made in the ProPublica piece last year and the recent report from the Senate HELP Committee. Unfortunately, these arguments about these patent filings’ timelines have still struggled to find acceptance-including among those who are prominent proponents of the lab leak hypothesis.

The vaccine date argument made its way to a @HouseIntelGOP report, with an erroneous description of the Feb patent application (WT/humanized mice infections in May preprint)@R_H_Ebright, is there any way you can let them know about what you said?⏬https://t.co/ym3csCSQtC p12-13 https://t.co/U7VIZJXUv9 pic.twitter.com/kis6blDvVl
— Flo Débarre (@flodebarre) December 16, 2022

That Pandora’s Box Line Strikes Again

The myth of Pandora and the theodicy that branched from her story has influenced theologies, stories, and other works for centuries…including a certain global health security newsletter you know and love. The same appears to be true for the WIV, as they referenced Pandora’s mythical box in a November 2019 post on their website. That reference is, again, at the center of the debate over COVID-19’s origin. On pages 115 and 116, the Rubio report references the post dated November 12, 2019, just as ProPublica and Vanity Fair did last year, as evidence that there were significant concerns about the WIV’s day-to-day operations. We discussed the problems with this in our post about the ProPublica piece last year, but we will go over this a bit more now too.

The Rubio report says in this section:

“The second issue of particular significance that featured in this November 12 report was its surprisingly frank description of the routine dangers of the work at the WIV’s BSL-4 lab, including its insinuation that a biosafety incident involving a dangerous pathogen had occurred:”

“Owing to [the fact] that the subject of research at the P4 lab is highly pathogenic microorganisms, inside the laboratory, once you have opened the stored test tubes, it is just as if having opened Pandora’s Box. These viruses come without a shadow and leave without a trace. Although [we have] various preventive and protective measures, it is nevertheless necessary for lab personnel to operate very cautiously to avoid operational errors that give rise to dangers. Every time this has happened, the members of the Zhengdian Lab Party Branch have always run to the frontline, and they have taken real action to mobilize and motivate other research personnel.⁷³⁶“

“Third, this WIV report described a high-pressure work environment and other disadvantageous conditions that could create biosafety risk factors. “In the laboratory, they often need to work for four consecutive hours, even extending to six hours,” the report revealed: “During this time, they cannot eat, drink, or relieve themselves. This is an extreme test of a person’s will and physical endurance. This not only demands that research personnel possess proficient operational skills, but they also…possess the ability to respond to various unexpected situations.”⁷³⁷ U.S. biosafety experts who have managed BSL-4 labs told Senator Rubio’s staff that exceeding two consecutive hours of work in a BSL-4 environment is likely to lead to fatigue, and that they would not recommend going beyond three hours. The report noted that the lab’s political leadership, specifically Tong Xiao, was constantly pushing the researchers at the BSL-4 lab to do more: “Don’t look at your work duties as pressure. Every task is an opportunity and a ladder for continuous self-improvement. Our team’s belief is that suffering losses is good fortune….”⁷³⁸“

“Fourth, the WIV report referenced problems with the construction of the BSL-4 lab, inadequate standards, and a lack of experience with relevant technologies. The party branch reported:”

“From the outset of construction, the Wuhan P4 Lab had been facing a predicament [caused by] the “three nos”: no equipment and technology standards, no design and construction teams, and no experience operating or maintaining [a lab of this caliber]. Through the party members of the Zhengdian Lab Party Branch taking the lead to attack and conquer these difficulties, [and] bravely pressing forward, in the end, [we] brought into reality the “three haves” of a complete system of standards, a superior team that operates and maintains [the lab], and valuable experience with construction.⁷³⁹“

This is also cited in the report’s two-page executive summary, which reads in part:

“In November 2019, the Chinese government documented several cases of COVID-19, but kept the matter hidden. CCP officials at the WIV published a report that said: “Once you have opened the stores test tubes, it is just as if having opened Pandora’s Box. These viruses come without a shadow and leave without a trace.” Seven days later, a Chinese official traveled from Beijing to the WIV to deliver “important oral and written instructions” from Xi Jinping in response to “the complex and grave situation currently facing safety work.”

Viruses slipping out of Pandora’s test tube and vanishing without a trace is pretty scary…until you consider that this was written in a post on the WIV’s general news page as part of a peppy update on the facility’s work. It will likely come as a shock to nobody that it is in fact dangerous to work in a BSL-4 facility. According to the CDC’s very quick and openly accessible Recognizing the Biosafety Levels training, “The microbes in a BSL-4 lab are dangerous and exotic, posing a high risk of aerosol-transmitted infections. Infections caused by these microbes are frequently fatal and without treatment or vaccines. Two examples of microbes worked with in a BSL-4 laboratory include Ebola and Marburg viruses.”

This is helpful context for a news post bragging about the progress the WIV has made and how dedicated its staff is, which is what this “report” actually is. This post talks about how researchers have to wear space suit-like protective gear, work in a physically challenging environment, and go through multiple layers of decontamination, including a chemical shower. The dramatic language of this post makes sense in context. This is the cool kind of cool work that makes for great scenes in Hollywood outbreak movies, so of course a Party-run page would want to brag about it on its public site.

The piece about the “three nos” has also been addressed at length, including by Brendan O’Kane, a career translator, in an interview with James Fallows. O’Kane explained in that interview that his translation of the portion in question would be “At the outset of construction, the Wuhan P4 lab faced the dilemma of the “three ‘nos’”: no equipment or technical standards, no design and construction teams, and no operations or maintenance experience — but with Party members from the Zhengdian Lab [BSL4]’s Party branch leading the charge and bravely pushing forward, [the lab] achieved the ‘Three ‘Yes’es’: a well-developed set of standards, a seasoned operations and maintenance team, and invaluable construction experience.”

More simply, as Fallows explained and O’Kane agreed, “…this would be like a sentence in English saying “we used to be so terrible, but now we’re great.”’ So, rather than discussing an ongoing problem with a lack of equipment, the section about the “three nos” was actually yet another example of Party members bragging about their progress at the facility, something that is, again, expected on a publicly-facing WIV webpage.

As we argued previously, there is a major logical flaw here in relying so heavily on the WIV’s webpage (even if ProPublica, Vanity Fair, and multiple Senate committees want to call them reports, dispatches, etc. or any other cooler sounding term). If the overarching argument is that the CCP is so deeply secretive and worried about the international community knowing the truth about how the pandemic started, why would a state-owned facility (particularly one as high-profile as the WIV) be allowed to post publicly about its supposed biosafety failures? Why would those posts remain up for years after the supposed event at the lab that led to the COVID-19 pandemic?

These are just some of the flaws of this report, which are particularly troubling because the document admittedly relies on circumstantial evidence to lend credence to the lab leak hypothesis. The next sections discuss recent assessments of China’s biosecurity and biosafety, the problems of these kinds of flawed reports on the pandemic’s start, and concluding thoughts.

How Does China Actually Fare in Biosecurity?

Though China, like any country, could stand to improve its regulations and enforcement of biosafety and security rules, the country scores fairly well on measurements of both its biosafety and biosecurity governance. However, this report, in including several examples of concerns and challenges and different Chinese facilities, paints a picture contrary to this.

In this year’s Global BioLabs Report (a report produced by a project led by George Mason’s Dr. Gregory Koblentz, King’s College London’s Dr. Filippa Lentzos, and supported by The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists), China scored high in both biosafety governance (18/20) and biosecurity governance (15/18), outscoring countries like South Korea and Sweden. When combined with poor use of other materials like the State Department cable obtained by The Washington Post, this report from Sen. Rubio paints a picture of a country completely incompetent in these areas, when it is clear the situation is much more nuanced.

Don’t Throw the Baby Out With the Bathwater

Furthermore, on multiple occasions, this report from Senator Rubio’s office highlights an important issue that is generally agreed upon, but the authors take it in a direction not supported by their sourcing and critical analysis. For example, the report’s summary reads in part:

“Awareness of a laboratory incident seemed to have shaped the CCP leadership’s response to SARS-CoV-2: a response characterized by strict controls of information, obfuscation, misdirection, punishment of whistleblowers, and the destruction of key clinical evidence. A closer look at the early days of the pandemic revealed that even when Beijing shared information with the international community – such as the initial notice of a pneumonia outbreak, the later admission that a novel coronavirus was its causal agent, and the publishing of its genomic sequence – it did so belatedly. In all three cases, Beijing possessed the relevant information for some time before sharing it, and disclosed it only when compelled to do so by circumstances beyond its control.”

The CCP undeniably mounted “…a response characterized by strict controls of information, obfuscation, misdirection, punishment of whistleblowers, and the destruction of key clinical evidence [albeit from unauthorized labs].” However, this doesn’t mean the virus began to spread in Wuhan because of a lab incident, as evidenced by the Party’s historical outbreak response failures that progressed in similar manners following natural origins. Why is more emphasis not placed on doing something about what we do know happened, both in China and at home?

As we explained earlier this year, “…it is important to address the question of to what extent we can know this [how SARS-CoV-2 came to be] and what it would change at this point. China is clearly not going to cooperate on any kind of investigation into COVID-19’s origin. That has been clear since the early days of the pandemic and is part of a pattern of behavior on the part of the CCP. Irrespective of where this virus actually came from, it is clear that China did cover up its initial spread in the population, censoring netizens and healthcare professionals until it was impossible to conceal further. While an in-depth investigation into the start of this pandemic has always been needed, hyper focusing on this runs the risk of diverting attention from other critical issues we have much more information readily available on. China did cover up the initial spread of this virus and has been disingenuous in its reporting and handling of it ever since. The United States failed to adequately respond to this pandemic for a variety of reasons, a fact that does not depend on how the virus initially spread. It is vital to balance desires to find the truth of COVID-19’s origins, something that is indisputably important, with using the information that is available and can reasonably be acquired to address these problems before the next pandemic. This information could inform debates on laboratory safety and oversight, though, as Biodefense Graduate Program Director Dr. Gregory Koblentz demonstrated in his interview with the New York Times…there is a wealth of information available already driving these discussions.”

Concluding Thoughts

Like we said during the publication of the ProPublica piece, Vanity Fair article, and Senate HELP Committee reports, bad faith takes on China, COVID-19, and biosafety hurt us all. This report is correct in that it highlights that scientific analysis alone cannot tell us what all went wrong with China’s response to COVID-19. Political and social analysis is absolutely needed, but that has to be based in linguistic and area expertise in addition to an agnostic approach to the facts. Trying to gather circumstantial evidence, specifically poorly contextualized quotations, to support a pre-determined conclusion is not going to cut it.

The report’s reliance on circumstantial evidence to meet a borrowed legal standard for burden of proof analysis is also flawed. If this were a debate about how an outbreak originated from the WIV, then perhaps that legal standard would be more useful, but this is a debate about how an event with an uncertain timeline began-and one with substantial evidence for a zoonotic origin at that.

This flawed reporting appears to be symptomatic of hawkish attitudes in Washington that employ poor translation and analysis in order to reach a politically convenient conclusion about China. The Chinese Communist Party is not innocent in this matter by any stretch of the imagination, but throwing the same flawed materials at the wall repeatedly in hopes something will stick does nothing but arm the Party with potential propaganda and talking points. At a time where the US-China relationship is on shaky ground and scientific collaborations are suffering as a result, it is vital that US leadership addresses the established issues and helps the nation and world prepare for future global health crises. It is clear that the PRC is not interested in handling outbreaks appropriately, irrespective of where this pandemic started. Acknowledging this and working to address it and prepare for the likelihood it will happen again is a more productive way to move forward than rehashing these same points over and over again.

Seventy-Sixth World Health Assembly Convenes

The 76th World Health Assembly (WHA) is currently being held in Geneva under the theme “WHO at 75: Saving lives, driving health for all.” Livestreams and interpretations are available here in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish. So far, the meeting has seen 80 WHO member states vote to move the Moscow-based European Office for the Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases to Copenhagen, while also urging Russia to stop attacking hospitals and other healthcare facilities in Ukraine. 52 states abstained while eight, including North Korea, China, and Belarus, voted against the draft decision.

‘“Far from politicising the situation, [the draft decision] focuses specifically on lingering health impacts of the war,” said Ukraine’s delegate, addressing the assembly before Wednesday’s vote.”

‘“The full-scale aggression launched by Russia against Ukraine … has triggered one of the largest health and humanitarian crises,” she said. “More than 1,256 health facilities have been damaged and 177 reduced to rubble leaving about 237 health workers and patients dead or injured.”’

While not part of the WHA meeting, the WHO is also currently working on negotiations for a new pandemic accord. Reuters explains, “A new pact is a priority for WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus who called it a “generational commitment that we will not go back to the old cycle of panic and neglect” at the U.N. agency’s annual assembly. It seeks to shore up the world’s defences against new pathogens following the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed nearly 7 million people.”

Elaine Ruth Fletcher explains in Health Policy Watch “A new “Zero+” version of a proposed World Health Organization pandemic accord being negotiated by member states has dropped previously strong language that conditioned use of public R&D funds to private sector commitments to price transparency and tech transfer of end products, among other measures.”

“However, the updated draft text, obtained by Health Policy Watch, still contains ‘optional’ language linking developing countries’ sharing of pathogen information to a guaranteed supply of drugs, vaccines and other health tools that they would access a WHO distribution scheme.”

“While not a formal part of this week’s World Health Assembly (WHA) proceedings, the text drafted by the “Bureau” of six member states guiding the talks is being circulated this week as they prepare for another round of negotiations over the new accord, scheduled by the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) 12-16 June.“

“The latest draft of the “WHO Convention, Agreement or other International Instrument”, dubbed WHO CA+, offers a range of “options” where there are diverging opinions between member states with consensus yet to be reached.”

“Russia Must Stop Its Attacks on Food Security”

This new bulletin from the State Department’s Global Engagement Center covers a wide-range of food security issues stemming from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including Kremlin officials’ calls to weaponize hunger. The document explains in part “The Kremlin’s unprovoked and unjustifiable war against Ukraine has severely damaged Ukraine’s economy and exacerbated global food insecurity, especially in developing countries. Ukraine has long been the “breadbasket of Europe,” feeding millions across the globe. It was a top grain supplier to dozens of African and Middle Eastern countries in 2021, but after Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion, Russia blockaded Ukrainian trade routes through the Black Sea, mined Ukrainian agricultural fields, burned crops, destroyed Ukraine’s food storage supplies, created labor shortages, and attacked merchant shipping vessels and ports. Russia is also stealing Ukraine’s grain for its own profit, according to Ukrainian authorities, media reports, and the Kremlin’s own proxies in the occupied areas of Ukraine. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine has “disrupted agricultural production and trade in the Black Sea region, triggering an unprecedented peak in international food prices in the first half of 2022.”’

New Digital Report Warns That World Not Prepared for the Next Pandemic

A new interactive, digital report from the Nuclear Threat Initiative and Munich Security Conference finds that the world is underprepared for biological catastrophes. The report relies on a table top exercise of an outbreak of AKMV in cattle in the fictional country of Andoriban. The outbreak quickly spills over into the human population, first causing a local epidemic that soon becomes a global pandemic. The scenario incorporates response challenges and flawed intelligence that fails to attribute the attack to the fictional country’s adversary. The exercise ended in 2.2 billion AKMV cases and 120 million deaths in just 20 months. In the end, “Tabletop exercise participants agreed that, despite some improvements following the global response to COVID-19, the international system of pandemic prevention, detection, and response is woefully inadequate to address current and anticipated future biological threats.”

“Biosafety Needs to Redefine Itself as a Science”

In this piece for Issues in Science and Technology, Antony Schwartz, Andrea Vogel, and Mary Brock discuss the growing demand for biosafety workers and issues with the field being viewed more as a compliance problem than a science. They write in part, “Risk assessment is already at the core of most biosafety professionals’ daily work. Some hazards can indeed be mitigated with standardized practices and procedures. However, most circumstances require careful study of the biohazards, the procedures performed, the equipment used, and the mitigation measures available (facilities, containment devices, or personal protective equipment, for instance). Establishing biosafety as an innovative research discipline will enable the field to keep pace with a sector that is going through momentous changes.”

“A Shot of Resilience: A Critical Analysis of Manufacturing Vulnerabilities in Vaccine Production”

Steph Batalis and Anna Puglisi explain in this policy brief for the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, “Vaccines are a key aspect of national security and underpin U.S. strategies for public health, biosecurity, and pandemic preparedness. Routine vaccinations keep the American public healthy, decrease healthcare spending, and increase workforce productivity. In a public health emergency, vaccines are an important line of defense against new and emerging threats…Despite the importance of a secure vaccine supply, our analysis finds two major vulnerabilities in the biomanufacturing landscape for U.S. vaccines: a reliance on foreign manufacturers and a lack of manufacturing redundancy. Together, these two factors limit the country’s ability to respond to emerging health threats.”

“Deaths From Drug-Resistant Infections Set To Skyrocket”

Statista’s Anna Fleck discusses the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance in this analysis. She explains in part, “Deaths from drug-resistant infections are set to skyrocket by 2050, according to the UN 2023 report ‘Bracing for Superbugs: Strengthening environmental action in the One Health response to antimicrobial resistance.’ Unless drastic action is taken to tackle the problem, it could also lead to a GDP shortfall of $3.4 trillion annually in the next decade and push 24 more people into extreme poverty.”

“Although the risks of AMR will impact people worldwide, Low-Income Countries (LICs) and Lower-Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) are expected to see the highest death tolls. By region, Asia is predicted to see the highest number of AMR-related deaths per 10,000 population in 2050 (4,730,000), followed by Africa (4,150,000), Latin America (392,000), Europe (390,000), North America (317,000) and Oceania (22,000).”

https://www.statista.com/chart/3095/drug-resistant-infections/

“Up To 500,000 Killed by Fake Medicines in Sub-Saharan Africa”

Anna Fleck also recently published this work for Statista covering the challenges of counterfeit medications in sub-Saharan Africa. She explains “Nearly half a million people are estimated to be killed by counterfeit medicines in sub-Saharan Africa every year, according to data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Of these, 267,000 deaths are believed to be linked to falsified or substandard antimalarial medicines, while a further 169,271 are linked to falsified or substandard antibiotics for severe pneumonia in children.”

https://www.statista.com/chart/30068/falsified-medicines-in-sub-saharan-africa/

Fast Updates

“The World’s Top Chemical-Weapons Detectives Just Opened a Brand-New Lab”

From Nature News: “The international body that banned chemical weapons is due to celebrate its first major milestone sometime this year — the completed destruction of the world’s declared stockpiles of banned substances. But at the organization’s brand-new facility in the Netherlands, scientists from around the world will continue its work to prevent, spot and respond to chemical warfare.”

“On 12 May, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) officially inaugurated its new Centre for Chemistry and Technology near The Hague, where the international body will bring together its existing laboratories and add new monitoring and training programmes.”

“IARPA Pursuing Breakthrough Biointelligence and Biosecurity Innovations”

From Homeland Security Today: “The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) — the advanced research and development arm of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — recently launched a program to develop new innovations for tackling threats and advances inherent within the rapidly changing biointelligence and biosecurity landscapes.”

“The Biointelligence and Biosecurity for the Intelligence Community (B24IC) program represents the Intelligence Community’s (IC) latest investment in research that pushes the boundaries of our biointelligence and biosecurity understanding and technologies. The resulting innovations could have far-reaching impacts, with the potential to develop new ways to collect, detect, analyze, and prevent traditional biothreats, while addressing possibilities and dangers associated with biotechnology. To address these challenges, the IC seeks to advance research across multiple biology sub-disciplines.”

“Plan for UK ‘Genomic Transformation’ Aims to Act on Lessons of COVID”

From The Guardian: “Health officials in the UK have drawn up plans for a “genomics transformation” that aims to detect and deal with outbreaks of infectious diseases faster and more effectively in the light of the Covid pandemic.”

“Information gleaned from the genetics of Covid proved crucial as the virus swept around the globe, revealing how the pathogen spread, evolved, and responded to a succession of vaccines and medicines developed to protect people.”

“The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) now aims to build on the lessons of the pandemic by embedding genomics into routine public health practice. The move intends to bolster surveillance for outbreaks, drive down cases of infections such as TB, measles, hepatitis C and HIV/Aids, and predict the course of future threats, such as avian flu and diseases borne by mosquitoes and ticks as they gain ground in a warming climate.”

NEW: Fighting Antimicrobial Resistance with Vaccine Innovation: Obstacles & Insights

“What are some of the challenges being faced in vaccine innovation and development? How can the biotech industry come together to bring innovative AMR-relevant vaccines to the market?”

NEW: Biorisks, Biosecurity And Biological Disarmament Conference

This hybrid event will take place July 4-5. Learn more and register here.

Building Capacity for Dual-Use Oversight in the Life Sciences through the IEGBBR

Join the International Experts Group of Biosafety and Biosecurity Regulators for this virtual event on May 30 at 7 am EDT. This event will discuss “how to identify, assess, and mitigate dual-use concerns in the life sciences – two examples of oversight measures in a national oversight system”. Register here.

Soft Launch of the Biological Weapons Convention Implementation Measures Database

From UNIDIR: “The Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) National Implementation Measures Database is a searchable, publicly accessible database containing information about the national implementation measures undertaken by BWC States Parties. The database is designed to strengthen the implementation of the BWC, allowing States Parties, Signatories, and other stakeholders to better understand different approaches to national implementation from around the world and identify possible gaps and limitations in BWC implementation.”

“As part of the development of the database, UNIDIR’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programme and VERTIC’s National Implementation Measures Programme are organising an online event to introduce the tool and showcase its structure and functions.”

This event will take place on May 31, at 1 pm CEST. Learn more and register here.

CSWMD 2023 Annual Symposium: WMD in the Decisive Decade

“For more information and to register for this event click here. Please RSVP by 9 JUNE 2023.”

Gordon Research Conference: Cross-Cutting Science Facilitating Collaboration Across the Threat-Science Research Community

This conference will take place July 9-14 in Ventura, CA. Learn more and register here.

Weekly Trivia Question

You read the Pandora Report every week and now it’s time for you to show off what you know! The first person to send the correct answer to biodefense@gmu.edu will get a shout out in the following issue (first name last initial). Our question this week is: In 1968, the so-called “Hong Kong flu” killed an estimated one million people globally. What strain of Influenza A caused this pandemic?

Our question last week was: “In late 2019, what two nerve agents were added to the CWC’s Schedule 1?” Many on Twitter recognized it was a trick question and did correctly note that two families of nerve agents-Novichoks and carbamates-were added to Schedule 1. You can read more about this in “Updating the CWC,” an article published in Arms Control Today by Drs. Stefano Costanzi and Greg Koblentz.

Pandora Report 5.12.2023

May 19, 2023 by dkellogg97, posted in Pandora Report

This week covers the failure to reach consensus at the Chemical Weapons Convention Fifth Review Conference and the recent release of a Senate Republican-led probe into the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. New publications and upcoming events are also discussed, including recent congressional testimony by a Biodefense PhD Program alumnus and a new publication discussing the full economic toll of the pandemic on the United States.

Biodefense PhD Student Wins Boren Fellowship

Biodefense PhD Student Danyale C. Kellogg recently received a David L. Boren Fellowship from the Defense Language and National Security Education Office. Named after former US Senator David L. Boren, the Boren Awards provide students with funding to study languages and cultures deemed critical to national security in exchange for a public service commitment. According to the program, “Through a competitive, national, merit-based annual competition, successful applicants distinguish themselves as highly motivated in their academic and career goals and in their strong commitment to public service. In return for support, award recipients agree to work in qualifying national security positions for at least one year.”

Kellogg will spend one year in Taiwan studying Mandarin at National Taiwan Normal University’s Mandarin Training Center in Taipei. She previously earned a Master of International Affairs concentrated in China Studies and Pandemics and Biosecurity from Texas A&M. Her research is focused on China’s failed outbreak responses, particularly the inner-workings of the Chinese Communist Party and the broader implications of China’s rise for global health security.

To read more about this and other national awards won by Mason students-including several from the Schar School-this cycle, check out this article.

Chemical Weapons Convention Review Conference Held This Week

The Fifth Chemical Weapons Convention Review Conference was held this week in The Hague, a little over a year after the 25th anniversary of the treaty’s entrance into force in 1997. As CBW Events explains, “The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) was the second treaty to globally prohibit an entire class of weapons of mass destruction but the first to do so with a system of multilateral verification measures. The CWC was signed in 1993 and entered into force in 1997. Treaties are always shaped by the concerns at the forefront of the minds of the negotiators during the period they were being negotiated, making them creatures of their time. Yet treaties have to operate within constantly evolving contexts – from the scientific and technical to the political – and be able to respond to events. With that in mind, a common feature of treaties dealing with active problems is a review process in order to ensure they stay relevant and up to date in their activities.”

The evolving nature of the security environment and its effect on the CWC was the subject of much discussion leading into this review conference, particularly as this is supposed to be the last of the review conferences to deal with CW stockpile destruction. Issues with non-compliance, such as Syria and Russia’s use of these weapons, were also important points of consideration heading into the week. The review conference also had to address more mundane, administrative tasks regarding the OPCW’s day-to-day functions, particularly as its mission evolves.

However, in a potential sign of the fragility of multilateral disarmament, the week ended in a failure to reach consensus of the conference’s final report. Richard Guthrie recalls this, writing “Immediately after lunch, the CoW was convened behind closed doors in the main meeting room to take the procedural steps to forward the text resulting from the informal group to the plenary. Immediately following this, the plenary received an oral report from the Chair of the CoW who informed delegates that there were still ‘outstanding issues’ on which ‘fundamental divergence of views’ continue to exist and so it had been impossible to reach consensus.”

“The Chair of the Conference announced that the plenary would reconvene on Friday afternoon to adopt the report of the Conference which would reflect that no consensus could be found. The plenary was then adjourned.”

“The atmosphere in the room was one of surprise at the suddenness of the end of the process. Some delegates wandered around the room speculating whether anything could be done to retrieve the situation but it was clear that the challenges were too great.”‘

Summaries of each day’s happenings are available on CBW Net.

Senate Republicans Release Another COVID-19 Origins Report

This week, Senator Marco Rubio released the findings of a probe into the origins of COVID-19 initiated nearly two years ago. Rubio, the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, led the initial probe and released the report through his office. The report claims that new information discovered by the team involved with this probe lends credibility to the “lab leak theory.” However, the report’s introduction explains plainly “To be clear, it is the aggregate picture that emerges from this report – not any particular piece of information standing as a proverbial “smoking gun” – which matters most when assessing the origin question.”

Later in the introduction, the report also reads “It is not the limits of science that constrain our understanding of the origin of SARSCoV-2. It was the political decision to block scientists from accessing the clinical and genomic data that would have allowed them to methodically reconstruct what happened. For this reason, we approached the origin question as a political puzzle, first and foremost, with a scientific component that is important, but not decisively so. This report borrowed a legal standard – the preponderance of the evidence – to assess what we know at this juncture, using the admittedly incomplete information we have available. Whatever its limitations, we trust that most readers will judge this report to be a useful contribution to the search for answers and accountability.”

In the end of its introduction, the report makes a hefty promise: “Risky research conducted at a state-run laboratory having inadvertently unleashed a novel pathogen, which then set in motion a once-in-a-century pandemic of almost unimaginable devastation, is a decidedly different and unprecedented problem with a path of culpability that leads unquestionably back to Beijing. When one further considers that this state-run laboratory was built to showcase China’s growing scientific prowess, and at least some segment of its research involved state secrets, it is not hard to imagine the extreme embarrassment and sensitivity that such a scenario would elicit in CCP leaders, even if the accident had not precipitated a pandemic. Needless to say, we do not yet know with complete certainty that a biocontainment failure was responsible for the first human infection of SARS-CoV-2, but what we present below is a substantial body of circumstantial evidence that supports the plausibility of such a scenario.“

The 329-page report is available here. An in-depth analysis of this report will be available from the Pandora Report next week. Our discussion of last year’s reporting from the Senate HELP Committee and the corresponding article published by ProPublica and Vanity Fair is also available here.

“Biological Weapons Convention: In the Crosshairs of Geopolitical Tensions, Part 1”

Filippa Lentzos and Tancredi Francese explain in this piece that “The Biological Weapons Convention has become an outlet for geopolitical tensions heightened by the war in Ukraine. This two-part article charts how the diplomatic battle between Moscow and Washington for control of the narrative on treaty compliance and verification is at a precarious point.”

The first portion offers an in-depth recalling of Russia’s efforts last year to bring allegations of BWC non-compliance before the UNSC and into the consultative meeting process. The second discusses the outcome of last year’s BWC review conference with the authors writing “Ultimately, it seems clear that Russia will continue to demand clarifications from the United States, at least as long as the war in Ukraine continues. These allegations and their impacts on the international security community are part of the conflict; they are not a side show but instead a dimension of the clash between two different visions of the world. In terms of biosecurity, imagining reconciliation as long as this clash continues seems difficult, and it risks significantly eroding what remains of the international architecture against the proliferation of biological weapons. If there is a lesson to draw from the events in 2022, particularly the review conference, it is that the BWC still matters for many. Even when interests were far apart, states were still able to negotiate and agree on an ambitious plan for the next several years.”

“Public Health Preparedness: Critical Need to Address Deficiencies in HHS’s Leadership and Coordination of Emergencies”

In this recent report, the Government Accountability Office found “…persistent deficiencies in the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) ability to lead and coordinate the nation’s preparedness for, and response to, public health emergencies. Specifically, HHS has consistently fallen short in five areas of an effective national response…”

These areas are:

“Establish clear roles and responsibilities
Collect and analyze complete and consistent data
Provide clear, consistent communication
Establish transparency and accountability
Understand key partners’ capabilities and limitations”

The report continues, explaining “For example, GAO found that HHS has not

developed clear roles and responsibilities, including exercising them;
developed an interoperable network of systems for near real-time public health situational awareness, as required in statute since 2006;
provided clear, consistent communication about disease outbreaks, including information about COVID-19 testing;
been transparent when disseminating information during an emergency, such as the scientific reasoning for changes to the COVID-19 testing guidelines; and
undertaken key workforce planning to meet its emergency planning and response mission and goals.”

“Sustained leadership and attention from the executive branch and Congress in this area is needed to ensure the systemic issues GAO has identified are sustainably addressed so that the U.S. is adequately prepared for future emergencies. A whole-of-nation multidisciplinary approach to preparedness and response is essential. HHS partnership and engagement with nonfederal entities, including state, local, tribal, and territorial governments, and the private sector are key elements of this approach. GAO will continue to monitor HHS’s efforts in this area.”

“COVID-19’s Total Cost to the Economy in US Will Reach $14 Trillion by End of 2023 – New Research”

In this piece for the Conversation Jakub Hlávka and Adam Rose hash out the economic toll of the COVID-19 pandemic on the United States. Their modeling suggests that, by the end of 2023, that cost will total USD 14 trillion. They discuss this shocking sum, writing in part “The COVID-19 pandemic’s economic consequences are unprecedented for the U.S. by any measure. The toll we estimate that it took on the nation’s gross domestic product is twice the size of that of the Great Recession of 2007-2009. It’s 20 times greater than the economic costs of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and 40 times greater than the toll of any other disaster to befall the U.S. in the 21st century to date.”

“Although the federal government has now lifted its COVID-19 Public Health Emergency declaration, the pandemic is still influencing the U.S. economy. The labor force participation rate, which stood at 62.6% in April 2023, has only recently neared the February 2020 level of 63.3%.”

War on All Fronts

“It is now widely recognized that disease pandemics are a threat to national and global security. Yet the field of health security remains under theorized, in particular in its relation to civil and human rights. In War on All Fronts, Nicholas G. Evans provides a novel theory of just health security and its relation to the practice of conventional public health. Using COVID-19 as a jumping-off point to examine wider issues, including how the US thinks about and prepares for pandemics, He asks what ethical principles justify declaring, and taking action during, a public health emergency such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic; and arrives at principles that parallel those of the ethics of armed conflict. Just as just war theory properly understood begins with pacifism and a commitment to the right not to be killed and then steps back to ask under what limited conditions it is permissible to kill, Evans argues that in a similar way a just health security must also begin with the idea that public health should hold human rights sacrosanct and then ask under what limited conditions other concerns might prevail. Evans’s overall goal is to formulate a guide to action, particularly as the world deals with the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. Turning to the transition from war back to peace in public health, he looks at reparation, rebuilding, and the accountability of actors during the crisis.

Available from MIT Press“

“Woke Virology? Ron DeSantis Finds Another Thing to Ban in Florida”

In this piece for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Matt Field explains “On Thursday, the governor signed a host of bills on hot-button issues-of-the-day among Republican politicians and voters, including one that would prevent research involving potentially pandemic capable viruses that result from “enhancing the transmissibility or virulence of pathogen.” The US Department of Health and Human Services is reviewing recommendations to tighten its requirements for funding such projects, known colloquially as “gain of function” research, but DeSantis has now leapfrogged any federal decision.”

‘“We are the first state in the United States to ban, formally, gain of function research,” DeSantis said to cheers from a Florida audience.”

“According to the law, “any research that is reasonably likely to create an enhanced potential pandemic pathogen or that has been determined by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, another federal agency, or state agency…to create such a pathogen is prohibited in this state.”’

NEW: Soft Launch of the Biological Weapons Convention Implementation Measures Database

This event will take place on May 31, at 1 pm CEST. Learn more and register here.

ICYMI: Oversight And Investigations Subcommittee Hearing: “Protecting Critical Infrastructure from Cyberattacks: Examining Expertise of Sector Specific Agencies”

The House Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations held a hearing this week titled “Protecting Critical Infrastructure from Cyberattacks: Examining Expertise of Sector Specific Agencies.” The hearing’s recording is available here. Among the witnesses was Biodefense PhD Program alumnus and current Schar School adjunct Dr. Brian Mazanec, Deputy Director, Office of Preparedness, Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, Department of Health and Human Services. A copy of Mazanec’s testimony is available here.

Nobel Prize Summit-Truth, Trust and Hope

Taking place May 24-26 this year in DC and virtually, this Nobel Prize Summit asks “How can we build trust in truth, facts and scientific evidence so that we can create a hopeful future for all?”

“Misinformation is eroding our trust in science and runs the risk of becoming one of the greatest threats to our society today.”

“Join us at this years’ Nobel Prize Summit which brings together laureates, leading experts and you in a conversation on how we can combat misinformation, restore trust in science and create a hopeful future.”

Learn more and register here.

Building Capacity for Dual-Use Oversight in the Life Sciences through the IEGBBR

CSWMD 2023 Annual Symposium: WMD in the Decisive Decade

“For more information and to register for this event click here. Please RSVP by 9 JUNE 2023.”

Gordon Research Conference: Cross-Cutting Science Facilitating Collaboration Across the Threat-Science Research Community

This conference will take place July 9-14 in Ventura, CA. Learn more and register here.

Weekly Trivia Question

You read the Pandora Report every week and now it’s time for you to show off what you know! The first person to send the correct answer to biodefense@gmu.edu will get a shout out in the following issue (first name last initial). Our question this week is: In late 2019, what two nerve agents were added to the CWC’s Schedule 1?

Shout out to Alexander G. for correctly answering last week’s question. Our question was: “On what date did the CWC enter into force?” The answer is April 29, 1997.

Pandora Report 5.12.2023

May 12, 2023 by dkellogg97, posted in Pandora Report

Happy Friday! This week we’re covering the end of the US COVID-19 public health emergency, the upcoming CWC Review Conference, and the resumption of the NIH’s funding for the EcoHealth Alliance’s bat coronavirus research. Several new publications and events are also covered, including new books on cyberbiosecurity and infodemics.

Congrats to Our Graduating Biodefense Students

A big congratulations to all of our graduating Biodefense MS students this semester, and a special shout out to Cassidy Bilskie-this year’s Outstanding Masters Student in Biodefense Award recipient! We’re so proud of you all and can’t wait to see what you do next!

Biodefense PhD Student Wins BioRisk Reduction Award

“PhD student Ryan Houser recently won an award from BioRisk Reduction for this work within the organization. Ryan was awarded the Stanley Hall Award which was handed out at the company’s 2022 Awards meeting. Stanley Hall was a dear friend of the CEO and President Ryan McAllister who he came to know through officiating K-12 football during the McAllister’s time in graduate school. The relationships and life skills McAllister possess from this time are as important to his personal and career success as his scientific knowledge and understanding. Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, Stanley was unfortunately taken from us by the illness, despite being a younger athletic individual. Stanley’s name lives on through the annual Stanley Hall award within BioRisk Reduction to the team member who best represents some of Stanley’s best qualities: Role Model to their peers, Loyal to their team, and Amicable.”

“Houser started with Biorisk Reduction in October 2021 as an Associate Team Member. He was promoted to Team Member in June 2022. Houser also serves as a Class III Consultant and a Business Biosafety Committee (BBC) Community Member within Biorisk Reduction. Houser has supported various ongoing projects which include facilitating and translating biosafety-related education and training programs (First Aid and Airborne Pathogen Training), academic journal publications, and a novel Credentialing Program.”

“BioRisk Reduction is a global network of experts in infectious disease who have come together to reduce the stress, time, and cost for clients associated from every day diseases such as COVID-19. Our network is comprised of Scientists, Physicians, Nurses, Public Health Professionals, High Containment Researchers and Engineers, Combat Medics, Legal analysts, Educators, Public Safety Officers, and other professionals. BioRisk Reduction provides communities and businesses direct access to infectious disease experts both virtually or in-person. BioRisk Reduction Business to Business and professional development services include Consulting, Technical Writing, Education and Training, Risk Assessments, and Committee Accreditation. For more information inquire through email at mailto:bioriskreduction@bioriskreduction.com or phone at tel:3072280981. http://www.bioriskreduction.com“

US COVID-19 Public Health Emergency Ends

The United States officially ended the COVID-19 public health emergency yesterday, May 11, over three years after its initial declaration. This came on the heels of the WHO announcing last week that it no longer considers COVID-19 a public health emergency of international concern. The Washington Post explains that “Starting in early 2020, the emergency declaration, along with subsequent declarations, legislation and administrative actions, gave the federal government flexibility to waive or modify certain rules in the Medicare and Medicaid programs as well as in private health insurance. The goal has been to help the nation fight the worst public health crisis in a century and help some patients get care in a time of shutdowns.”

“As this long emergency period expires, experts say, the biggest impact for consumers will be the end of free coronavirus tests — both at-home tests and those performed by clinicians and analyzed by commercial labs — with broad implications for people’s ability to get timely covid diagnoses, prevent disease transmission and track the virus.”

Importantly, this will also impact COVID-19 data collection tools. With hundreds of people dying from the disease in the US every day, this is especially concerning. In fact, COVID-19 was the fourth leading cause of death in the United States in 2022, down from third place in 2020 and 2021. COVID-19 was superseded only by unintentional injuries (including drug overdoses and car wrecks), heart disease, and cancer. The New York Times writes “The death rate went down by a lot, but we also want to emphasize we’re not out of the woods here,” said Dr. Robert Anderson, the chief of the mortality statistics branch at the National Center for Health Statistics. “There are still a lot of people who died, and we’re still seeing deaths in 2023 as well.”

This comes at a time when the US is seeing a shakeup in public health leadership, with CDC Director Rochelle Walensky announcing her resignation last week and the Biden administration struggling to find a new pandemic czar. Politico quoted GMU Biodefense Assistant Professor Dr. Saskia Popescu on this problem, writing “This is a critical resource to ensuring there is awareness for biopreparedness at the highest level,” said Saskia Popescu, an epidemiologist and assistant professor in George Mason University’s biodefense program, adding that among its chief jobs will be breaking “a cycle of neglect in preparedness efforts.’…Still, the top job is proving a difficult sell amid worries the director will get stuck with a long to-do list and little influence to get it done.”

While these are concerning signs that US public health might struggle even more in the coming years, there is some positive news. It was recently reported that a bipartisan group of senators are attempting to revive efforts to create a national COVID-19 taskforce. This would be modeled after the 9/11 Commission and it would be tasked with investigating the federal government’s response to the pandemic in addition to debates about the virus’s origin.

Check out this Q&A piece from The Conversation about what the end of the COVID-19 national emergencies means in terms of domestic policies and the end of the pandemic.

CWC Review Conference Begins Next Week

The Fifth Review Conference (RC) for the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) will be held next week from May 15 through 19 in The Hague. The RC is a special session convened by the Conference of the States Parties every five years to examine the CWC’s operation, evaluate its implementations status, and outline priorities for the OPCW for the next five years. Event schedules, press releases, relevant documents, webcasts, and more can be accessed at: https://www.opcw.org/calendar/rc.

Ahead of the big event, here are some relevant recent works to check out:

“The Future of Chemical Disarmament in an Eroding Global Order”-This conference report and annotated bibliography from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Center for Global Security Research address questions about how the CWC and OPCW can adapt to technical and political challenges, lessons learned from the treaty’s first 25 years, and what prospects there are for continued progress in chemical disarmament.

“Countering the Future Chemical Weapons Threat”– In this piece for Science, Dr. Tuan Nguyen explains that “After decades of difficult negotiations, the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) was adopted in 1993 and entered into force on 29 April 1997, banning the development, production, stockpiling, transfer, and use of chemical weapons (CW). As the CWC celebrates the 25th anniversary of its entry into force, it can document considerable success, much of it attributed to the CWC implementing body—the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Yet, facing a volatile international security environment and an everchanging chemical industry, the OPCW must transform to meet its mission and remain an exemplar for multilateralism. As the next CWC review conference approaches in 2023, a next-generation OPCW 2.0 can be effective and credible only if it reinforces international norms against CW, anticipates future challenges posed by advancements in science and technology (S&T), incorporates more qualitative elements into the verification and compliance system, and keeps pace with technological change.”

“Report of the Scientific Advisory Board on Development in Science and Technology to the Fifth Special Session of the Conference of the States Parties to Review the Operation of the Chemical Weapons Convention”-This Director General report covers findings from the OPCW’s Scientific Advisory Board, noting issues and concerns in CWC implementation like developments in science and technology such as AI and the convergence of different fields of science. It offers several recommendations, including ones focused on how best to address increasing threats posed by newly scheduled chemicals and CNS-acting chemicals.

“Developing a Plan B for the Chemical Weapons Convention 5th Review Conference”-In this piece for the European Leadership Network, Alexander Ghionis discusses the polarization and lack of consensus in recent years, driven in large part by Syria’s use of CW. He argues “…State Parties should pursue agreements on individual issues likely to command consensus rather than seeking to adopt a watered-down consensus final document with little vision or impetus to shape the future.”

“Two Years On, Syria’s Suspension from the OPCW Was Beneficial”-The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ Andrea Stricker tackles efforts led by Russia, China, and Iran to prevent the OPCW from fully functioning, both in holding CWC violators accountable and in conducting routine business. She writes in part “Building such a coalition will require intensive diplomacy. Officials close to the OPCW say that while Damascus’ suspension was “one hundred percent useful” for the OPCW’s functioning, there is no appetite to suspend Russia. Western countries still prefer Moscow inside the system. What they evidently fail to grasp: so long as Russia remains a member in good standing, the Kremlin will undermine serious efforts to eliminate chemical weapons.”

“Ponghwa Chemical Factory: North Korea’s Chemical Facilities: Site Profile 1”-The first of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies’ site profiles, this report covers North Korea’s Ponghwa Chemical Factory in Sinŭiju: “This report on the Ponghwa Chemical Factory is the first in a series exploring different chemical production facilities throughout North Korea. The project seeks to map out the North Korean chemical industry and its potential links to a chemical weapons programme. There is nothing in open sources that suggests this site is involved in producing chemical weapons. However, it is the main oil refinery in North Korea and, as such, would provide the building-block raw materials for the production of organic chemicals. Ponghwa Chemical Factory is therefore a central part of North Korea’s chemical industry, and no networked assessment of the country’s national industrial-chemical capacity, and its potential to produce chemical warfare agents (CWAs) would be complete without analysis of a site producing these basic raw materials.”

“The report covers a brief history of the site from its construction and commissioning in the 1970s through to satellite imagery demonstrating that it is still operational. Individual areas are identified and analysed in relation to their purpose. Finally, local links to the site are explored to give it a wider context within the area.”

“The features and areas of the site are consistent with those expected in a refinery, making it unlikely that it is directly involved in the manufacture of chemical weapons. The site manufactures various fractions from crude oil. These fractions include liquid petroleum gas/refinery gas, petrol/gasoline, kerosene/paraffin, diesel oil, heavy fuel oil and bitumen/tars/coke.”

▶️ Watch #RevCon5 Chairperson, Amb. @henkvdKwast, explain the Review Conference's importance in charting future priorities for the #OPCW and the #ChemicalWeaponsConvention. https://t.co/UrWBRTGpUL
— OPCW (@OPCW) May 11, 2023

EcoHealth Alliance Back in Bat Business

The NIH has resumed its grant funding to the EcoHealth Alliance, providing the organization with $576,000 annually for the next four years to continue its research on bat-origin coronaviruses. Science explains “The new 4-year grant is a stripped-down version of the original grant to the EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit research organization in New York City, providing $576,000 per year. That 2014 award included funding for controversial experiments that mixed parts of different bat viruses related to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), the coronavirus that sparked a global outbreak in 2002–04, and included a subaward to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The new award omits those studies, and also imposes extensive new accounting rules on EcoHealth, which drew criticism from government auditors for its bookkeeping practices.”

“But EcoHealth’s embattled director, Peter Daszak, says his group is pleased: “Now we have the ability to finally get back to work,” he says.”‘

Cyberbiosecurity: A New Field to Deal with Emerging Threats

“Biocybersecurity applies cybersecurity research to the field of biology, and, to a lesser degree, applies biological principles to the field of cybersecurity. As biologists increasingly research, collaborate, and conduct research online, biocybersecurity has become crucial to protect against cyber threats. This book provides an overview of biocybersecurity through the lens of researchers in academia, industry professionals, and government, in both biology and cybersecurity fields. The book highlights emerging technologies, and identifies emerging threats connected with these technologies, while also providing a discussion of the legal implications involved.”

“This book takes on a multidisciplinary approach, and appeals to both professionals and researchers in the synthetic biology, bioinformatics, and cybersecurity fields.”

“Benchtop DNA Synthesis Devices: Capabilities, Biosecurity Implications, and Governance”

From NTI: “Synthetic DNA is used by bioscience laboratories globally and plays a fundamental role in bioscience, biotechnology, and biomanufacturing advances applied to a range of areas from agricultural products to pharmaceuticals to advanced fuels. A new generation of benchtop DNA synthesis devices—machines designed to be used on any lab workbench—will soon enable users to print DNA more quickly and easily in their own laboratories. This new technology could disrupt the traditional DNA synthesis market, in which customers order DNA online from a select set of providers, making it harder to safeguard DNA synthesis technology and to prevent bad actors from obtaining the building blocks of dangerous pathogens. A new NTI | bio report released today, Benchtop DNA Synthesis Devices: Capabilities, Biosecurity Implications, and Governance, describes the status of this rapidly advancing technology, explains the risks for biosecurity, and recommends action and oversight by governments, industry, and the scientific community to reduce the risks.”

“We Could Easily Make Risky Virological Research Safer”

New York Times opinion writer David Wallace-Wells recently published this piece discussing biosecurity risks and recent recommendations from the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity. He writes in part “Lab accidents happen, and they aren’t especially rare. A 2014 USA Today investigation by Alison Young, whose book “Pandora’s Gamble: Lab Leaks, Pandemics, and a World At Risk” is a shocking accounting of the problem, identified more than a thousand accidents reported to federal regulators from 2008 to 2012. Some were not especially dangerous. But if you’ve read accounts of them at any point over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic as debate continued over its origins, chances are they’ve shaken you a bit. Many of the touchstone examples have been tied to quotidian causes — sloppy procedures and lax oversight. But lately debate has focused on the dangerousness of the experiments themselves, in part because knowing what is risky suggests what extra precautions might be taken and in part because it raises a more bracing fundamental question: What kind of work is worth this risk?”

“In January the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity issued a series of draft recommendations for tightening regulation and oversight. The proposed framework would expand the list of pathogens that would require rigorous review and close some loopholes that allowed some researchers to avoid that oversight. But for the moment, the recommendations sit in a kind of regulatory limbo, awaiting a green light from the White House and implementation at the National Institutes of Health.”

“The Rise and Fall of the Raccoon Dog Theory of COVID-19”

In this piece for The Intercept, Jimmy Tobias discusses recent debate about Jesse Bloom’s recent preprint. Tobias explains “Late last month, Jesse Bloom, a computational virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle released a paper in which he analyzed raw genomic data from hundreds of environmental swabs that Chinese scientists collected from cages, carts, and other surfaces at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China. The swabs were collected beginning on January 1, 2020, after Chinese authorities abruptly shut down the market amid the worsening Covid-19 outbreak in the city.

“…the raw data from the environmental swabs have long been seen as a possible clue to what happened at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. But the data only became available to the global research community in 2023, after years in which Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and its researchers kept it out of the public domain. The data has since sparked a firestorm of discussion, including numerous stories in mainstream news outlets that have relied on the data to report a link between raccoon dogs and Covid’s origin. Bloom’s new paper helps clarify what has become something of a confused, and confusing, media spectacle.”

“Bloom’s paper, which was published as a preprint on bioRxiv on April 26, found that the data from the swabs provide no evidence one way or another about whether raccoon dogs or other animals at the market were infected with SARS-CoV-2. It also highlights what is perhaps the most significant limitation of the data from the environmental swabs collected by Chinese scientists. The swabs were collected, Bloom writes, “at least a month after the first human infections in Wuhan.”’

Managing Infodemics in the 21st Century

“This open access book on infodemic management reviews the current discussions about this evolving area of public health from a variety of perspectives.”

“Infodemic management is an evidence-based practice underpinned by the science of infodemiology that offers guidance to better manage pandemic and epidemic risks and more quickly tackle new and resurgent health threats. Infodemic management has added much visibility and recognition for the importance of social-behavioural sciences, health communication, participatory and human-centered approaches, and digital health as complementary scientific and practical approaches that also must be strengthened in public health practice through a whole-of-society and whole information ecosystem approach. This volume makes a case that health of the information ecosystem in the digital age has emerged as the fourth ecosystem that public health is challenged by, along with the triad of environment-human-animal health.”

“The book brings together scientists and practitioners across disciplines to offer insights on infodemic management. The tools, methods, analytics, and interventions that they discuss in the context of acute health events also can be applied to other public health areas. Topics covered include:

People’s Experience of Information Overload and Its Impact on Infodemic Harms
Smart Health! Expanding the Need for New Literacies
To Debunk or Not to Debunk? Correcting (Mis)information
Partnering with Communities for Effective Management of Health Emergencies”

“Managing Infodemics in the 21st Century is required reading for public health practitioners in need of an overview of this evolving field of practice that has made major scientific and practical leaps forward since early 2020. Global, regional, and local health authorities are increasingly recognizing the need to expand their capacities for infodemic management in their efforts to better prepare for future health emergencies. This book is the resource they need to build toward a mature infodemic management process. The text also can be used as supplemental reading for graduate programs and courses in public health.”

“Lessons Learned from the COVID-19 Pandemic – May 2023”

From the ECDC: “This document aims to collate and present the lessons identified from the public health stakeholders who responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is intended to serve as input for countries revising their pandemic or emergency preparedness plans.”

“A structured review of the response to a public health threat in order to learn lessons for future response should be built into the continuous preparedness cycle of anticipation, response and recovery from an incident. The COVID-19 pandemic presents a unique example of public health response to a severe incident and lessons should be quickly identified and used for the updating of pandemic preparedness plans. After-Action Reviews (AAR) and In-Action Reviews (IAR), for which ECDC has developed guidance, are valuable tools to assist countries in this process.”

“During 2021 and 2022, ECDC carried out a number of activities to identify lessons and collect insights from the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. These activities took the form of an internal exercise with ECDC experts; a review of country lessons reports; discussions with the Member States and two consultation sessions: an expert consultation on the evaluation and implementation of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), and an expert meeting on lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic. Lessons from these activities were collected systematically, initially in nine thematic areas. The information was then further collated into four lesson areas, each one representing a critical component of the response to a health threat:

Lesson Area 1: Investment in the public health workforce
Lesson Area 2: Preparing for the next public health crisis
Lesson Area 3: Risk communication and community engagement
Lesson Area 4: Collection and analysis of data and evidence.”

“This report presents the lessons identified in each of the areas, together with activities and future action where ECDC can contribute. Discussions on the prioritisation of ECDC follow-up actions are ongoing with the countries of the EU/EEA (European Union/European Economic Area) through the ECDC networks and governing bodies.”

“COP 28 Will be the First to Dedicate a Day to Health and Climate”

In this piece for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Fiona Harvey discusses the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference and the decision to dedicate more time during it to health issues. She writes in part, “The next UN climate summit will be the first to consider health issues in depth, with a meeting of global health ministers to highlight the consequences of the climate crisis for wellbeing.”

“Sultan Al Jaber, the president of Cop28, which will take place in Dubai this November, said on Tuesday: “We will be the first Cop to dedicate a day to health and the first to host a health and climate ministerial. And we need to broaden our definition of adaptation to enable global climate resilience, transform food systems and enhance forestry land use and water management.”’

“Ministers from around the world are gathered in Berlin this week for the Petersberg Climate Dialogue, an annual meeting on climate held by the German government. Al Jaber, addressing the conference, vowed to use Cop28 to fulfill the goals of the 2015 Paris agreement.”

“At Cop28, countries will for the first time formally assess progress since Paris, a process known as the global stocktake. This is likely to show that most countries are falling well short of the cuts in greenhouse gases needed to limit global temperature rises to 1.5C, the more stringent of the two goals in the Paris agreement, in line with scientific advice.”

ICYMI: A Roadmap for Biosecurity

This Milken Institute event was hosted on May 1, and moderated by Biodefense PhD alumnus Dr. Yong-bee Lim. “Many experts refer to climate change as a “threat multiplier” because it can exacerbate such global stressors as poverty, food insecurity, and political instability. Climate change is also linked to an increased risk of infectious diseases, as rising temperatures enable more pathogens to survive and spread. That risk is compounded as we encroach ever more on the natural habitat, creating more opportunities for human-animal interaction, thus increasing the risk for zoonotic spillover. To mitigate these risks, there must be greater coordination across and within government agencies, but the public sector cannot and should not do it alone. In this panel, experts will lay out a path to enable broader multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder collaboration in responding to the threats to global biosecurity.”

Watch the event recording here.

Nobel Prize Summit-Truth, Trust and Hope

“Misinformation is eroding our trust in science and runs the risk of becoming one of the greatest threats to our society today.”

Learn more and register here.

Building Capacity for Dual-Use Oversight in the Life Sciences through the IEGBBR

CSWMD 2023 Annual Symposium: WMD in the Decisive Decade

“For more information and to register for this event click here. Please RSVP by 9 JUNE 2023.”

Gordon Research Conference: Cross-Cutting Science Facilitating Collaboration Across the Threat-Science Research Community

This conference will take place July 9-14 in Ventura, CA. Learn more and register here.

Call for Feedback: Questionnaire on the United States Government’s Definition for Long COVID

The National Academies’ Committee on Examining the Working Definition for Long COVID invites you to participate in a questionnaire about how to best define Long COVID from different perspectives.

The term Long COVID was developed by patients experiencing lingering symptoms of COVID-19. Long COVID is a serious global issue with medical, social, economic, and personal impacts.

Results of this questionnaire and other input being gathered in Spring 2023 will be reviewed by the National Academies committee to understand more about defining Long COVID.

The questionnaire should take approximately 10-15 minutes to complete and will remain open through May 12, 2023. Submit feedback here.

To learn more about the study, please visit the project webpage.

Weekly Trivia Question

Shout out to Detlef M. for correctly answering last week’s question. Our question was: “What nerve agent has the military designation “GB”?” The answer is sarin.

Pandora Report 5.5.2023

May 5, 2023 by dkellogg97, posted in Pandora Report

It’s the Revenge of the Fifth! This week we are discussing ongoing poisonings of schoolgirls across Iran, the WHO’s announcement that it is ending the COVID-19 PHEIC declaration, the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s request for a GAO scientific audit, and more. We also have several new publications, including many from Biodefense PhD students and alumni. There are new events as well, including an upcoming event on climate change and national security with the Schar School’s Hayden Center.

Iran Schoolgirl Poisoning Attack Threat Continues

Since November, more than 13,000 schoolgirls in Iran have reportedly been hospitalized due to poisonings in twenty-eight of Iran’s thirty-one provinces. Mahnaz Vahdati discussed this recently for the Atlantic Council, writing in part “Since the first poisoning incident in November 2022, thousands of female students in different regions of the country have reported experiencing severe symptoms, including shortness of breath, dizziness, numbness in limbs, and nausea, after inhaling scents often described as citrus and chloride. In the first few weeks, reports of schoolgirl poisonings were limited to the holy city of Qom. However, the frequency and geographic spread of the incidents quickly escalated, such that many parents across the country refused to send their daughters to school. In the meantime, the Islamic Republic’s response followed a pattern similar to past crises: denial, cover-ups, silencing of protesting students and families, and detention of at least one journalist covering the issue. The Islamic Republic’s inadequate and irresponsible response to the safety of schoolgirls quickly fueled public outrage, prompting parents and teachers in at least twenty cities to gather in front of the Education Ministry buildings, demanding accountability for the perpetrators.”

They continued “From the outset, many individuals and analysts directed blame toward the government. Since the beginning of the Women, Life, Freedom movement in September 2022, young women and girls—particularly those in high schools and universities—have been at the forefront of this movement. Consequently, girls’ schools were repeatedly targeted and attacked by security forces. Some analysts believe that serial attacks against girls’ schools are a means of punishment and revenge by the government against female students. They argue that the government seeks to control and silence one of the main sites of protests by creating fear among female students. This theory suggests that the government, which has failed to indoctrinate the young generation—Generation Z—through ideological education, may also be allowing its extremist supporters to act against schoolgirls. As Nadia Aghtaie, a senior lecturer on Gender and Violence at the University of Bristol, states, “Currently, education in Iran is a mobilizing force for women, and the government’s attempt to Islamize society through education has failed. This is why insiders want to reverse the government’s education policies and force girl students to stay at home.”

An anonymous analyst in Tehran authored a piece about this for the Stimson Center, writing “Originally, it seemed that religious extremists with Taliban-like mentality were responsible, especially given the fact that the attacks began in Qom not long after nationwide protests erupted over the death in police custody of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, for wearing supposedly inadequate hijab. Since then, however, the security forces’ lack of concern; the crackdown on people who raised questions about the attacks; the suppression of students, their families, and medical staff; and a disinformation campaign by the government, the parliament, and the judiciary have only intensified suspicions that the regime is responsible.”

They continued, writing “Mohammad Reza Hashemian, an emergency room doctor at Daneshvari hospital in Tehran, told the Ham-Mihan newspaper that the gas used in the attack “is a complicated combination of several gas agents impossible for ordinary people to access.” He added that the compound “has been cleverly produced” to cause illness but not death. Students have said they smelled rotten fish, rotten oranges, and diesel fuel before experiencing dizziness, headaches, nausea, and partial and mild paralysis.”

“The health ministry, despite weeks of testing, has yet to announce any cause. A ministry statement said tens of its best scientists had tested the samples but have not been able to isolate and identify the gas involved. Worse, the ministry has downplayed the severity of the incidents, saying that “in 95 percent of the cases, symptoms were the result of mental and psychological tensions and not gas attacks.” Yet, the minister contradicted his ministry’s own official statement, saying the symptoms “may have been due to a mild poisoning by an unknown factor.”’

They conclude with “It seems that Khamenei has learned a lot from his mentor, Putin. And like the Russian dictator known for his brutality in Chechnya and now Ukraine, it will be hard for him to escape ultimate blame.”

Amnesty International said in a statement, “The rights to education, health and life of millions of schoolgirls are at risk amid ongoing chemical gas attacks deliberately targeting girls’ schools in Iran. Since November 2022, thousands of schoolgirls have been poisoned and hospitalized. The authorities have failed to adequately investigate and end the attacks and dismissed girls’ symptoms as “stress”, “excitement” and/or “mental contagion”.”

Vahdati urges in their conclusion, “As the primary organization responsible for promoting children’s rights under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), UNICEF must immediately start a prompt investigation into these incidents. Furthermore, the World Health Organization (WHO) and Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) must utilize their technical expertise to discover the nature of these poisonings and deliver their findings to the UN Human Rights Council. Additionally, given that several analyses suggest a potential link between these attacks and the recent protests in Iran, it is within the mandate of the fact-finding mission on Iran, recently established by the UN Human Rights Council, to investigate these poisonings in the context of the government’s response to these protests. Their findings can be the basis for the decision-making process of international courts and the UN Human Rights Council.”

“Through these channels, the international community must take decisive and expeditious measures to ensure accountability and safeguard the human rights of Iranian citizens, especially women and girls. Further passivity by international organizations conveys the message that hardliners and extremists in Iran will not face any consequences on the international stage, regardless of how heinous their actions might be.”

WHO Ends COVID-19 Emergency Designation, US CDC Reportedly to End COVID-19 Community Level Tracking, Walensky Out as CDC Director

The John Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center’s Beth Blauer, Lauren Gardner, Sheri Lewis and Lainie Rutkow authored an opinion essay in the New York Times this week in which they explain, “The four of us spent the last three years immersed in collecting and reporting data on Covid-19 from every corner of the world, building one of the most trusted sources of information on cases and deaths available anywhere. But we stopped in March, not because the pandemic is over (it isn’t), but because much of the vital public health information we need is no longer available.”

They continue, writing “This is a dangerous turn for public health. The data on cases and deaths is critical for tracking and fighting the coronavirus, which has killed more than 1.1 million people in the United States and nearly 6.9 million worldwide. For the week of April 13 to April 19, 1,160 people were reported to have died from the virus in the United States. This is, in all likelihood, an underestimate…Unfortunately, nearly all states have stopped frequent public reporting of new cases and deaths, making it difficult to enable us to see how the virus is trending. And the widespread use of at-home tests has meant that most positive results almost never get recorded in public health databases, making it virtually impossible to detect and monitor outbreaks in a timely way.”

This comes amid reports the CDC will end its community levels tracking of COVID-19, President Biden’s ending of the pandemic emergencies in the US, and the WHO’s announcement today that it will end its COVID-19 emergency declaration. The WHO said in a statement today, “On 5 May 2023, more than three years into the pandemic, the WHO Emergency Committee on COVID-19 recommended to the Director-General, who accepted the recommendation, that given the disease was by now well-established and ongoing, it no longer fit the definition of a PHEIC [public health emergency of international concern]. This does not mean the pandemic itself is over, but the global emergency it has caused is, for now. A Review Committee to be established will develop long-term, standing recommendations for countries on how to manage COVID-19 on an ongoing basis.”

Regarding the CDC’s decision, the Guardian reports “Instead of using its colour-coded Covid-19 tracking system that focuses on the spread of the virus by counties, the CDC will pivot its tracking focus mostly to hospitalisation rates, CNN first reported on Friday.”

With the US national emergency over, the US public health emergency expiring next week, and the WHO’s announcement today, Dr. Rochelle Walensky submitted her letter of resignation as the Director of CDC to President Biden today. The AP reports “Walensky, 54, has been the agency’s director for a little over two years. In her letter to Biden, she expressed “mixed feelings” about the decision and didn’t say exactly why she was stepping down, but said the nation is at a moment of transition as emergency declarations come to an end.”

So is this the end of the COVID-19 era? Not quite. As many have already pointed out today, the WHO’s announcement won’t change much, particularly as so many countries have already seemingly abandoned all COVID-19 precautions. It does mark a significant point as ending the PHEIC is a move many point to as the closest thing to the definitive end of a pandemic. The first week of April saw 525,841 cases of COVID-19 reported globally, which is a far cry from the 45 million reported weekly at the pandemic’s height, but it’s still far from a small number of cases, particularly as global reporting declines. Furthermore, as Dr. Raed Dweik recently explained for the Cleveland Clinic, the death rate is still pretty high. He explained “While the death rate has dropped significantly from its peak in January 2021 — when more than 102,000 people died in a single week — the numbers still fluctuate. That’s partly because of the virus and partly because reporting procedures differ from country to country. For example, only 260 people officially died of COVID-19 on April 4, 2023; but 2,438 deaths were reported just three days earlier. To put that number in perspective, the worst day on record saw approximately 20,000 COVID-19 deaths reported.”

So where does that leave us? In the end, there have been 765,222,932 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 6,921,614 deathsthat the WHO knows about. The world is fundamentally different in many ways because of this pandemic, especially because several million of us are no longer here because of it. While these kinds of administrative changes may not mean much to many, the fact is people are still contracting and dying from this disease every day, it remains a highly politicized issue, and it has showed us how vulnerable many of us are. The PHEIC may be over, but the hard work to get ready for the next pandemic has just begun.

House E&C Committee Republicans Ask GAO to Conduct Scientific Audit on Prospecting Unknown Viruses

The House E&C Committee announced this week that “House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Chair Morgan Griffith (R-VA), and Subcommittee on Health Chair Brett Guthrie (R-KY) today asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to conduct a scientific audit to analyze whether the dangers of prospecting for unknown viruses outweighs the benefits.” This requested scientific audit would address several questions outlined in the announcement, including “Have any of these activities resulted in the infection of research personnel or the spread of pathogens in a larger geographic area? and “What is known about whether field-based collection of virus samples from wildlife and the environment improves our ability to predict, prevent, and respond to pandemics?”

“The request comes on the heels of an Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee hearing titled “Biosafety and Risky Research: Examining if Science is Outpacing Policy and Safety,” which was held on Thursday, April 27.” Biodefense Graduate Program Director Dr. Gregory Koblentz was a witness at this hearing.”

“Who Will Vaccinate People During the Next Pandemic? The US Public Health Sector is Falling Behind”

In this piece for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Kimberly Ma discusses the warning signs that US public health remains unprepared for the next pandemic, paying particular attention to the instability of the public health work force. She writes in part, “Despite its critical role in responding to biological threats (and more), public health has always faced difficulty with sufficient investment. Each year, or with each crisis, Congress passes funding for the CDC, which then distributes resources to states. Despite arguably greater needs, the CDC has suffered an overall 2 percent budget decrease over the past decade (after adjusting for inflation). And while Congress may point to one-time pandemic-era funding pots like the Infectious Disease Rapid Response Reserve Fund, these are primarily restricted to COVID-19 response activities; they’re the opposite of the sustained, steady funding needed.”

She writes in her conclusion “The Biden administration will lift the COVID-19 public health emergency declaration on May 11, an official end, of sorts, to the pandemic response in the United States. To ensure US biodefense capabilities are robust and ready, whether for the next variant tomorrow or a bioweapon attack in ten years, every single critical component, public health staff included, cannot just exist, hanging by a thread. Rather, they all need to be well-resourced, diverse, and thriving.”

Kimberly Ma is a Biodefense PhD student and a senior analyst at ASTHO. She is currently a Bulletin Editorial Fellow.

“Can a 50-Year-Old Treaty Still Keep the World Safe From the Changing Threat of Bioweapons?”

Jen Kirby tackles the changing threat landscape for Vox in this piece, quoting several biodefense rockstars, including Drs. Yong-Bee Lim and Saskia Popescu, both alumni of the Biodefense Graduate Program:”Biological weapons are the “poor man’s atom bomb,” said Yong-Bee Lim, the deputy director of the Converging Risks Lab and Biosecurity Projects Manager at the Council on Strategic Risks. They are weapons that can often be built on the cheap, using materials found in nature. Even before the world understood what caused disease, countries used things against their enemies they knew carried contagion: catapulting plague-infested corpses over fortified walls, or giving or selling clothes or blankets from smallpox patients.”

Kirby continues writes later in the piece, “Biological attacks can also be difficult to verify because pathogens are naturally occurring, and even if scientists detect a new one, it’s difficult — if not impossible — to know if it’s something that has been deliberately created or something that emerged accidentally from nature or a lab. And given what Covid-19 demonstrated about the cracks in our defense against biological threats — and how little has been done to fix them over the past few years — a future bioweapon might “prey upon those existing vulnerabilities that haven’t been addressed,” said Saskia Popescu, a biodefense expert at George Mason University.”

Kirby covers a broad spectrum of issues in this piece, including disinformation, writing in their conclusion “In the meantime, the threats to the BWC are accelerating. The world is a more dangerous and tense place. Disinformation around bioweapons is also eroding the taboo against the use. This includes Russia’s playbook of continued accusations about bioweapons in Ukraine and elsewhere. But a top Republican recently claimed, with zero evidence, that the Chinese spy balloon shot down over the Atlantic Ocean in February was equipped with bioweapons.”

“Battling Catastrophic Biological Threats: Cost-Effective Solutions for National Security”

New from the Council on Strategic Risks: “This report begins by outlining biological risks and their evolution, followed by discussions on approaches to addressing these risks and how the landscape is changing. It concludes by demonstrating the cost-effectiveness of pursuing more aggressive investment to mitigate these risks to save lives.”

“The 21st century presents an increasingly challenging and complex risk landscape, with thousands of biological laboratories worldwide and rapid democratization of biology. Countering biological threats is imperative for the US, as every goal of national and strategic importance is jeopardized by these risks. The article suggests investing additional resources in developing pathogen-agnostic defensive measures and other steps to reduce pandemic risks, which could save countless lives in the future.”

This report was edited by Dr. Yong-Bee Lim, an alumnus of the Biodefense MS and PhD programs, Deputy Director, Converging Risks Lab and Biosecurity Projects Manager, Council on Strategic Risks.

“A Road Map for a World Protected from Pandemic Threats”

This new report from Her Excellency Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and the Right Honourable Helen Clark “warns that patchy and limited implementation of recommendations from previous reports reviewing major outbreaks, including Ebola in West Africa in 2014-2016, left gaps and contributed directly to the COVID-19 outbreak becoming a pandemic.” They aim to “provide a global road map that if implemented in full, will contribute to protecting the world’s peoples from the development of another devastating pandemic like COVID-19. The leaders underscore the role of the UNGA to commit to a comprehensive reform agenda that can ensure the multisectoral, multilateral collaboration required, led by Heads of State and Government.”

“The CWC at 25: From Verification of Chemical Weapons Destruction to Attribution of Their Use”

In this recent article in the Nonproliferation Review, Alexander Kelle discusses the changing security environment and its impact on the CWC: “This article analyzes the shifting focus of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) during the first 25 years of its implementation, from the verification of destruction of declared chemical-weapon (CW) stockpiles to the attribution of CW use. The article identifies the repeated use of chemical weapons by Syria and the resultant creation of a new attribution norm under the CWC as a critical juncture in the regime’s evolution. Repeated calls for accountability for the use of so-called Novichok nerve agents for assassination purposes serve as the first manifestation of the new attribution norm. The article further outlines steps CWC states parties should take in the context of the Fifth CWC Review Conference in May 2023 to prepare the CW-prohibition regime for its next 25 years of operation by (1) adapting the implementation of key regime norms following the anticipated completion of CW destruction later in 2023 and (2) incorporating the investigation and attribution work of the Investigation and Identification Team into the programmatic work of the OPCW.”

“Lost in the Gap: Toxin and Bioregulator Weapons”

In this piece for Arms Control Today, Michael Crowley and Malcolm Dando discuss the widening gap between the BWC/CWC and rapidly advancing science. They write in part “Building on the existing capabilities of the chemical, life, and associated sciences and postulating potential research trajectories, it can be imagined how the malign application of future developments, if insufficiently regulated, could enable states to chemically manipulate and subjugate large swaths of their own or foreign populations. Although such repressive capabilities are speculative now, the world’s rapidly increasing knowledge of and ability to manipulate the body’s bioregulatory pathways, coupled with advances in wide-area agent dissemination, mean that such threats are likely to increase in the coming years if not addressed now.”

“The BWC and CWC were primarily intended to prevent and address the development and use of biological and chemical weapons in armed conflict and to facilitate the destruction of all extant weapons production capacity and stockpiles. There are serious questions about whether these conventions and the associated control regimes can respond adequately to the diverse and potentially malign applications of the chemical and life sciences on the battlefield and beyond. The CWC review conference beginning May 15 will be an important indicator about whether that treaty can meet the challenges of today and tomorrow.”

Informing Blueprint 2.0: Know the Enemy

Join the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense on May 9, at 10:30 am. This meeting will “Provide the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense with a better understanding of: (1) prevention; (2) deterrence; and (3) attribution of biological threats. This is the fourth Commission meeting to inform our refresh of the National Blueprint for Biodefense.” Learn more and register here.

The Heat is On: Climate Change, the Arctic, and National Security

“Join the Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy, and International Security as we host a discussion on climate change and its intersection with national security and intelligence. In October 2022, the Biden Administration released its National Security Strategy, in which climate change is noted as one of the most significant challenges for all nations. In February 2023, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence followed with its Annual Threat Assessment, in which climate change is mentioned first on the topic of shared global challenges. The growing concerns of climate change have greatly impacted traditional security challenges, and are affecting migration, agriculture-dependent communities, natural resources, illicit activities, violence, and geopolitics. Additionally, it has spurred a dramatic growth in strategic competition over critical minerals, technologies, and economic opportunities in the Arctic.”

This hybrid event will take place on May 10 at 7 pm EST. Register for the in-person event here, and for the livestream here.

Benchtop DNA Synthesis Devices: Capabilities, Biosecurity, Implications, and Governance

From NTI: “Synthetic DNA is used by bioscience laboratories globally and plays a fundamental role in a wide range of science and biotechnology advances. A new generation of benchtop DNA synthesis devices will soon enable users to print DNA more quickly and easily. This advanced technology has the potential to disrupt the DNA synthesis market and its associated biosecurity practices and could allow malicious actors to more easily obtain pathogen or toxin DNA.”

“This new report, Benchtop DNA Synthesis Devices: Capabilities, Biosecurity Implications, and Governance, draws on more than 30 interviews with experts from benchtop DNA synthesis companies, the broader biotechnology industry, the biosecurity and bioscience research communities, and other sectors. The report addresses the anticipated capabilities, biosecurity implications, and governance of benchtop DNA synthesis devices, and it makes recommendations for future oversight.”

“Refreshments will be served from 10:30 am. The event will start promptly at 11:00 am.”

Learn more and register for this May 10 hybrid event here.

Nobel Prize Summit-Truth, Trust and Hope

“Misinformation is eroding our trust in science and runs the risk of becoming one of the greatest threats to our society today.”

Learn more and register here.

Building Capacity for Dual-Use Oversight in the Life Sciences through the IEGBBR

CSWMD 2023 Annual Symposium: WMD in the Decisive Decade

“For more information and to register for this event click here. Please RSVP by 9 JUNE 2023.”

Gordon Research Conference: Cross-Cutting Science Facilitating Collaboration Across the Threat-Science Research Community

This conference will take place July 9-14 in Ventura, CA. Learn more and register here.

Weekly Trivia Question

Shout out to Jeffrey L. for correctly answering last week’s question. Our question was: “Before their famous work finding the source of the 1854 cholera outbreak in London’s Soho district, which physician administered chloroform to Queen Victoria during childbirth?” The answer is John Snow.

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