At the Bird Flu Summit

Pandemic Flu Industry will likely need lab assistance to amplify human-to-human transmission and virulence.

The International Bird Flu Summit initially billed itself as taking place in Washington D.C., illustrating its brochure with an image of the majestic Washington Monument soaring toward heaven.

The brochure is deceptive. In fact the Summit is taking place at the Hilton Hotel in Fairfax, Virginia—a small suburban town of 24,000 located about fourteen miles from Washington D.C. and twelve miles from Langley, where the CIA is headquartered.

The actual speakers’ program also varies significantly from the published program. We were looking forward to hearing the published presentation on H5N1 vaccines in development, but this talk seems to have been axed at the last minute.

The Summit’s primary commercial sponsor is Ginkgo Biosecurity—a major biosecurity outfit headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts that works closely with governments, institutions, and companies all over the world.

McCullough Foundation Intern Nic Hulscher and I arrived in Fairfax last night. Our mission is to learn about what Summit speakers and participants are saying about H5N1 bird flu and its purported threat to humans.

The timing of the Summit is auspicious. Like COVID-19, which arrived in the United States during the election year of 2020, the introductory speaker emphasized that the first case of human to human transmission of H5N1 was just detected in Missouri (less than two months before the 2024 presidential election).

As Dr. McCullough mentioned in his posted conversation this morning (Will New Pandemic Scare Shut Down Voting Booths?) we are concerned that an emerging infectious disease—fabricated, exaggerated, or real—could disrupt normal voting procedures.

So far it’s been an extremely eventful morning, with McCullough Foundation intern Nic Hulscher attempting to perform a breech delivery of a bagel from a conveyor belt toaster. For all of his youthful vigor and intelligence, Nic lacks decisive dexterity.

I took over, and like an old veteran obstetrician, I performed the breech extraction with remarkable elan.

The morning speakers’ session got off to a slow start, so I decided to shake up the joint by asking Ginkgo Biosecurity Senior Director, Karen Murphy, about what her company is doing to detect H5N1 viruses that have been manipulated in a lab. She replied that her company has indeed developed a test that can detect traces of lab manipulation, though she hastened to add that this application was primarily for use by government and intelligence agencies. I then asked if her company is in touch with H5N1 GoF gurus Yoshihiro Kawaoka and Ron Fouchier. She said she’d look into it and get back to me.

Next on deck was a presentation by Syra Madad, Chief Biopreparedness Officer, NYC Health + Hospitals. She is going to talk about hospital preparedness. I asked her about how NYC hospitals plan to treat H5N1 if it becomes highly transmissible and virulent among humans.

QUESTION: How will New York City hospitals treat it?

ANSWER: So I think the first thing that I'll say is, you know, right now, as we've seen in most all the cases, all patients recovered, only one required hospitalization. So the 50% case mortality luckily hasn't held up here. In the case that we've seen in the United States, there has been no deaths reported. Now, in the event that we have an unstable patient, and this is much more critical, as I mentioned, we actually have a bio-containment unit within our facility. We've utilized that bio-containment unit to treat this patient, but there are many limitations. The first is being that these bio-containment units only have a two-bed availability. If you have more than two patients, you can't use the VCU. And so this is a first and very close collaboration with the local health department. But we would initially use our bio-containment unit for the initial cases that require more extensive hospital-level care. And if it goes on from there, where there's more patients, then it would be an all-hands-on-deck approach, similar to the kind of Covid-19.

QUESTION: What kind of medications would you use to actually treat the illness?

ANSWER: There are antiviral medications available, so those have no stops. There's been no spot shortages, and those are the first line antiviral treatment that we use. And if we need something more, we need close collaboration with public health.

QUESTION: Would you use corticosteroids for lung inflammation, pulmonary inflammation?

ANSWER: So I am not a clinician, so I'm not going to answer specific questions on patient management. So I would refer that to our clinical colleagues if there's a need to utilize any storage steroid treatment.

QUESTION: Well, the reason why I ask is because during the Covid-19 pandemic, there was frustration that the hospitals seem to be adept at isolating patients and putting them on ventilators. But there seemed to be a lack of preparedness in how do we actually help these people to get better, to recover? It sounds like the first line is antivirals. Can you speak about what kind of antivirals would be used against human H5N1?

ANSWER: Absolutely. So this is all public knowledge, public information. It's also posted on the CDC website. There are four sign antiviral medications like Tamiflu and others that would be utilized in these instances. If additional medication and therapeutics are needed, and if it fits the criteria for treating these patients, we would work in close collaboration with our local health department. I will say, you know, as we look back at Covid-19, right? It's easy to judge healthcare systems. It's easy to judge public health on what went wrong and what didn't. But at that time, when you're in that specific situation, it's a kitchen sink approach. Right? You're trying to do whatever you can to save these patients, and you have very limited information of what works and doesn't work. And so, again, you're utilizing the best available knowledge to make that decision. And then as more resources become available and you understand what works and what doesn't work, you're able to adjust.

So far, I get the impression that the participants sincerely believe that H5N1 is rapidly evolving to achieve high infectiousness and virulence among humans. Most strike me as people of average intelligence and education and lacking Machiavellian guile. They are acquainted with orthodox representations of H5N1 and do not question these representations. At the same time, they too seem to sense that the purported threat of an evolutionary jump from birds to humans still seems remote.

I have a hunch that if the Pandemic Flu Industry is going to realize the commercial opportunities provided by a spillover of H5N1 into humans, its going to need lab assistance to amplify human-to-human transmission and virulence.

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