Gates Foundation and Wellcome set up $125m coronavirus drug fund - 14 May 2020
Research foundations join forces with Mastercard-backed charity to develop treatments
https://www.ft.com/content/566acfb0-6216-11ea-b3f3-fe4680ea68b5
The world’s two largest medical research foundations, Wellcome and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Mastercard’s Impact Fund charity are jointly committing $125m in “seed funding” to develop treatments for coronavirus disease.
The Covid-19 Therapeutics Accelerator, as they have called it, will be a catalyst to draw in much more money for coronavirus drug development, said Jeremy Farrar, Wellcome director. He hopes other donors will see it as an attractive vehicle to support research.
He is on the board of the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, an independent health monitoring body, which estimated on Monday that a total of $1.5bn will be required for research and development of a portfolio of four Covid-19 treatments. “We have provided a place for others to join us and we hope many will,” Sir Jeremy said.
As Moderna’s COVID-19 Vaccine Takes the Lead, The Issue of “Gene-editing Vaccines”
By Whitney Webb
Global Research, May 22, 2020
https://www.globalresearch.ca/moderna-covid-19-vaccine-gene-editing-vaccines/5713568
More and more frequently, government officials, political pundits and self-appointed “global health experts” like billionaire Bill Gates have been instructing the public that mass gatherings and any semblance of “normalcy” will not return until a vaccine for the novel coronavirus Covid-19 is created and subsequently distributed to the masses. In recent weeks, it has quickly become apparent that the leading Covid-19 vaccine candidate is the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine being developed by Boston-based Moderna Inc.
Today, Moderna announced that its vaccine candidate, named mRNA-1273, “appeared to produce an immune response in eight people who received it.” Moderna’s response is odd given that the “study” in question is focused on safety and “is actually not designed to measure effectiveness of the vaccine,” according to a report in TIME. Notably, none of the study’s findings on vaccine safety were reported aside from claims it was “generally safe.” It is also worth noting that this “safety-focused” study only began in March and thus, to date, represents only an examination of the vaccine’s effects in the very short term.
Major media outlets in multiple countries ran with the headlines trumpeting that Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine “shows promising early results” and has presented “encouraging early signs” because of its purported ability to produce Covid-19 antibodies in humans. In addition, these media reports failed to raise other simple yet necessary questions such as how a sample size of only eight people can translate into scientific findings of any real significance without further testing involving larger sample sizes. They also failed to note that the study in question is not even finished as a U.S. government press release noted that the findings in question are merely “interim results.” In addition, the study is being led by the U.S.’ National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), itself headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is a key figure in the U.S. government’s coronavirus response.
Though it is unclear if these “encouraging early signs” will be replicated in future tests of larger samples that are actually designed to test the vaccine’s effectiveness, the news is surely welcome to Moderna, given that their past mRNA vaccines failed to produce hardly any immune response at all, explaining why the company has never brought an mRNA vaccine to market in its entire history as a company.
However, since at least last fall, Moderna has sought to resolve this issue by adding “nanoparticles” to its mRNA vaccine, a modification financed by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Moderna is a “strategic ally” of DARPA and has received millions from DARPA and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation several years prior to the current coronavirus crisis. DARPA’s plans for nanoparticles and nanotechnology and their potentially Orwellian applications were the subject of a recent The Last American Vagabond report.
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