Wednesday, July 7, 2021

Global – 184,000,000/4,000,000; USA – 33,600,000/604,000 We are stuck at ~12,000 to 14,000 cases per day: See below. It is very clear that the Israelis are increasing greatly their testing that could explain their results on asymptomatic infections in vaccinated people (see above and figure below): I had a very important meeting today with the NSC led by Beth Cameron and Maher Bitar who is the senior director for intelligence programs at NSC. We met in the EEOB SCIF and discussed the briefing document that the NSC had presented to the President a week or so ago. Beth wanted me to have an official briefing because of the catastrophic briefing that the amateurs from the CIA gave me several weeks ago. There were no new surprises for me in the briefing except that it became clear that the FBI has no idea what they're talking about since they are convinced that the origin of COVID-19 is from a laboratory leak. The reasons that they give do not make any sense. In contrast the NSA gave some reasonable hypotheses leaning heavily towards a natural jump of species in the environment. I spent some time explaining to Maher and Beth my own theories that the Chinese act like they're covering up something even when they have nothing to cover up. They manifested this in their response to the original SARS-CoV-1 when they insisted this was just an atypical influenza when in fact it was the beginning of a coronavirus pandemic. In addition, they likely shot themselves in the foot when they denied the presence of wild animals in the market when we know they were present and the Chinese cleaned out the market before adequate testing of animals could occur. In essence, they clouded the possibility of proving a natural emergence. I urged the NSC folks to work closely with qualified card-carrying evolutionary virologists such as Kristian Andersen, Eddie Holmes, Bob Garry, Andy Rambaut, among others. I also explained to them the multiple reasons epidemiologically and molecularly why it is almost certain that the virus evolved naturally from a species jump, even though I emphasized that I keep an open mind about the possibility of a lab leak . However, in this regard , I emphasized that just because two alternatives are possible that does not mean that they are equally probable. I believe that they understood where I was coming from and that it turned out to be a very good meeting. PRESS: Interview with Frank Bruni for his book on aging; interview with Betsy McKay of WSJ on GoF; Sirius XM Radio with Marc Siegel; MSNBC with Chris Hayes;