COVID-19
Our dumb country: an update
Belated welcome to Canada, Sir. We’re like this sometimes
Posted with permission from Paul Wells
Here at the Paul Wells newsletter, we get results. It just always seems to take more work than it should. Today we have an update on Sir Mark Walport FRS FRCP FRCPath FMedSci FRSE, who was asked last summer by the government of Canada to look into Canada’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
I have known this since several days after Sir Mark’s work began. (Sir Mark is one of the UK’s leading medical research administrators. Over ’ome, I learn, if somebody is both a physician and a knight you address them as Sir Or Lady Firstname, followed by the appropriate abbreviations for their credentials, not as Dr.) I waited until November for the government to announce it, and was surprised when this didn’t happen. In fact I assumed my source was mistaken. (My source didn’t even want to be a source, they were just somebody who knew stuff and was chatting with me.) I have a longstanding interest in the notion that governments, being the creature of fallen humans, can benefit from introspection. So I thought some outside eyes-on the COVID response might help reduce the casualty count of some future catastrophe. The most recent of several posts I wrote to that effect is here.
My source kept assuring me that the Sir Mark thing was a real thing, and the government kept keeping schtum, so in November I finally gathered up my courage and wrote to the health ministry to ask whether this thing that I knew was happening was, you know, happening. The finest modern communications strategists have now perfected the government’s communications to the point where if you ask the government any question at all about anything at all, a process begins whereby dozens of people Working From Home figure out a way to suck your brains out through your nose using a ceremonial ceramic straw, and indeed this is what happened here.
Twelve days and two follow-up emails after I sent my query, a process I detailed with a kind of heartsick fascination in this post from November, I received this response:
The COVID-19 pandemic has had significant and complex health, social and economic impacts on our society.
As the Government of Canada continues its transition out of the COVID-19 pandemic response phase, internal and external partners are undertaking reviews of their role in the government’s response to COVID-19 and are identifying strategies to strengthen Canada’s preparedness for future health emergencies.
This reply was a thing of terrible maddening beauty, like the planet-smashing robot in the second-season Star Trek episode The Doomsday Machine, and I stared at it helplessly, the way William Windom did when the whale-shaped automaton finally turned in space and descended on him with its immense glowing orifice. This response, built up layer after layer by nameless armies of the powerless like the Pyramids themselves, managed to acknowledge the accuracy of my request while providing no actual information. It was the sound of one hand clapping, performed by committee.
Well, that was it for me. I tapped out. I was done. But Cathay Wagantall, whom I don’t believe I’ve met, picked up the baton from my shattered grasp. Wagantall is the Conservative MP for the riding of Yorkton — Melville, in Saskatchewan. Members of Parliament are allowed to send written questions to the government, which is required to reply. At the end of Nov., as I noted at the time, Wagantall put the following question on the Order Paper:
You can click on that to read it in full, but essentially she asked: What’s Sir Mark doing, when will we hear more, what’s it cost and why haven’t you said so?
The thing about the House of Commons is, it does have some powers, and thus cornered by one of its members, the government finally relented. On Monday the government tabled Sessional Paper 8555-441-2022 in response to Wagantall’s question. Here it is!
In this reply we learn real things, without quite learning the answer to everything Wagantall asked. In August Health Canada, PHAC and the Chief Science Advisor (that’s Mona Nemer) asked for an “independent expert panel” to “conduct a review of the federal approach to pandemic science advice and research coordination.” Sir Mark is indeed the panel’s chair.
Note that his mandate is narrow. He hasn’t been asked to look at medical supply, pharmaceutical production capacity, quarantine practice, stay-at-home orders, curfews, the wisdom of in-person vs. virtual schooling, or all the myriad of other issues that are worth looking at. This is neither proper nor improper, it just is what it is. Did you hear much about the advice Dr. Nemer provided the government during COVID, in her capacity as Chief Science Advisor? I bet you didn’t, though she wasn’t secretive about it, it just didn’t get much attention amid everything else that was going on. Sir Mark will apparently mostly be looking into how to make this little-noticed corner of the pandemic response work better. As for all the other stuff a government could look at — maybe they’ll leave it in the hands of a future generation of political staffers who are, for the moment, baristas! Maybe there’s some other after-action process going on, but we asked for the wrong one! One never knows, do one!
Sir Mark isn’t getting paid much, and, mirabile dictu, his report will be made public within two months. I’ve got a hunch that wasn’t the original plan.
The response to Wagantall’s Order Paper question is signed by Mark Holland, the Minister of Health. I notice that, like many ministers who were moved in 2023, Holland inherited his mandate letter from his predecessor, Jean-Yves Duclos. I also notice that mandate letters no longer contain this paragraph, which appeared in every mandate letter to the original 2015 cabinet:
We have also committed to set a higher bar for openness and transparency in government. It is time to shine more light on government to ensure it remains focused on the people it serves. Government and its information should be open by default. If we want Canadians to trust their government, we need a government that trusts Canadians. It is important that we acknowledge mistakes when we make them. Canadians do not expect us to be perfect – they expect us to be honest, open, and sincere in our efforts to serve the public interest.
I guess that was then.
COVID-19
The Vials and the Damage Done: Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory Scandal, Part II
From the C2C Journal
By Peter Shawn Taylor
In China, minor security infractions are routinely punished with lengthy jail terms in dreadful conditions. In Canada, it’s just the opposite. Clear evidence of espionage is rewarded with a free pass back home after the mission is complete. Neglecting our national security in this way may suit the Justin Trudeau government, but it is doing great harm to Canada’s relationship with its most important allies. In the concluding instalment of his two-part series, Peter Shawn Taylor examines the many ways in which the spy scandal at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg has damaged Canada’s international standing and contributed to the growing perception that Canada is a foreign agent’s happy place. (Part I is here.)
The Scientists Who Came in From the Cold: Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory Scandal, Part I
COVID-19
Top Fauci Aide Allegedly Learned To Make ‘Smoking Gun’ Emails ‘Disappear,’ Testimony Reveals
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By JASON COHEN
“Dr. David Morens, a senior advisor to Fauci for decades, wrote in an email to Dr. Daszak, ‘I learned from our FOIA lady here how to make emails disappear after I am FOIA’d, but before the search starts. So I think we are all safe.
National Institutes of Health (NIH) Principal Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak testified on Thursday that a former aide to Dr. Anthony Fauci allegedly violated the agency’s public records policy by disposing of certain emails.
Fauci’s senior advisor at the NIH Dr. David Morens allegedly intentionally obstructed the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic’s investigations into the origins of COVID-19 to protect his boss. Tabak told Republican House Oversight Chair James Comer in response to his questioning during a hearing that Morens allegedly violated NIH policy by getting rid of emails following public records requests.
WATCH:
“Dr. David Morens, a senior advisor to Fauci for decades, wrote in an email to Dr. Daszak, ‘I learned from our FOIA lady here how to make emails disappear after I am FOIA’d, but before the search starts. So I think we are all safe. Plus I deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to Gmail.’ Is that consistent with NIH document retention policies?” Comer asked, to which Tabak answered that it’s not.
EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak allegedly misled the federal government to receive grants that funded virus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where some suspect the COVID-19 pandemic originated.
“Does the NIH FOIA office teach employees how to avoid transparency?” Comer followed up.
“I certainly hope not,” Tabak said.
Daszak appeared for a transcribed interview in November 2023, where he called Morens a “mentor.”
“He also later wrote Dr. Daszak, ‘We are all smart enough to know to never have smoking guns and if we did, we wouldn’t put them in emails. And if we found them, ‘we would delete them,” Comer said, again asking if this is consistent with agency policy and Tabak again saying it’s not.
“Finally, emails show that Dr. Morens would share internal questions about upcoming FOIA releases with Dr. Daszak. He would then help Dr. Daszak craft responses to documents being released in these FOIAs. Are those actions consistent with NIH policies?” Comer asked.
Tabak expressed uncertainty about whether these actions took place, but said they would not be consistent with agency policy.
Morens in 2021 sent an email to Daszak, explaining that he tries “to always communicate on gmail because [his] NIH email is FOIA’d constantly,” The Intercept reported.
U.S. Right to Know is one organization that submitted public records requests to the NIH for emails Morens sent regarding content related to the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is currently engaged in litigation with the agency for its lack of compliance with a January 2022 request.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Wednesday informed EcoHealth Alliance that the federal government would be suspending current grants to the nonprofit and it is striving to block it from getting more grants. HHS cites a series of mistakes EcoHealth Alliance made, including issues with the organization’s monitoring of work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
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