(Dr. Anthony Fauci. Photo HHS)

Well, this morning started out with a bang. There wasn’t an actual detonation, mind you, but with the number of geopolitical hot-spots on active boil at the moment (Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Taiwan, et alia), it was a muffled sort of explosion. Part of the underpinning of it is the plague, of course, which has people talking about due to the severity of the current influenza season.

Vic has been threatening to write about his involvement in infectious disease for years. It started with the release of the 2019 Navy Flag Selection list. Vic’s name was not on the document and in a fit of pique, he immediately submitted his retirement letter. He was only halfway through his three-year orders to the Community Management Staff, so his abrupt departure left the opportunity to fill the position early with someone who still had some gas in the career track.

Which is how we get around to the matter of “timing” and the nature of luck. With his retirement date now set, early for job rotation, Vic found himself as an extra body on the CMS roster and available to perform in the Good Ideas We Don’t Have People to Execute (GIWDHTPTE).

And that, naturally, led to a vigorous discussion of the Wuhan 2019 Military Games.

A call had been made about a great new idea for which there was no existing body to implement. Vic always liked e Great ideas, so it was a natural match.

Subsequent events revealed how Vic was a gift from Heaven in his availability, and Doctor Fauci and the Wuhan Games the beneficiaries of the use of Vic’s salary for almost a year.

That single sentence would be worth a morning Daily all by itself, so we need to pick up the pace on delivery. You will recall that Dr. Fauci was director of the National Institute of Infectious Disease for four decades. In view of his longevity and brilliance, he had become the coordinator for research across all the health services with enormous equity in how the money was ginned up for worthy investigation.

This is where the story gets interesting and some of it disappears as the Wuhan Games loomed. The idea that thousands of athletes from 110 nations would be in close association for weeks made it an attractive environment for infectious diseases. But wait, there’s more!

An international spirit had been rising in opposition to the inhumanity of Biologic Warfare. The Biological Weapons Convention, or Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, was passed in 1975. It was a disarmament treaty that effectively prohibited development, production, acquisition, transfer, stockpiling and use of biological weapons. Decades of delays, some of them caused by the bureaucracy that reported to Dr. Fauci. Remember this, since it is the pivot point for one of the follies with a long tail.

Some nations were more strict in their attention to compliance to the Treaty than others. The United States managed to keep a lid on curtailing research until the turn of the last century.

(Doctor David Morens. Photo HHS).

But it was clear that no additional funds would be forthcoming for areas worthy of continued examination. The planning for that contingency was handled by the bureaucracy under the leadership of Doctor David Morens, special adviser to Anthony Fauci for 20 years. We cast no aspersions on his illustrious career, but we know he devised strategies for evading the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) since he inexplicably left an email trail explaining how he evaded the law.

He told fellow researchers that he’d been taught by “our FOIA lady here” how to “make emails disappear,” even after they’d been subpoenaed. He explained to others how to replace the vowels in people’s names with symbols like the dollar sign to evade getting caught up in FOIA requests. It was a simple tactic to evade Government restriction on research and development.

Inserting dollar signs into people’s names was not the only misdirection, though can see the heritage. The US was not the only nation seeking to exploit BIOWAR research. China was behind and determined to catch up. Doctor Fauci had cash and great ideas (CGIs). China had lab space. Just about the time Vic failed to make flag, someone came up with a bold plan.

Through a series of cut-outs not attributable to any specific individual, a BIOWAR lab was founded at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2018. It was Mainland China’s first Biosafety Level 4 Laboratory. The question was who dredged up the cash to pay for it.

The Wuhan Military games provided a concentrated environment for active, healthy military to spend time in close proximity, and it was coincident with the Good Idea that the Chinese efforts were not un-noticed by anyone in particular. But rumors of the Chinese interest began about the sme time as the Wuhan Games.

We will not do anything to identify in particular anyone involved in the SARS epidemic. The Severe Acoustic Respiratory Syndrome began it’s spread just after the Games concluded. Investigation of the situation was a Good Idea and Vic was available as free labor. And that is how a career intelligence officer, well versed in the manner secrets are kept or penetrated, wound up as a special assistant to HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson.

SARS had been the pivot. Vic then found himself with a seat in the SARS working Group, led by Doctor Fauci. It was a distinguished group of medical professionals reporting direct to him. Except for Vic, who found himself in the enviable position of fifteen minutes on the Secretary’s daily schedule.

Secretary Thomspon was a veteran bureaucrat, and had a suspicion that there was something going on over at the Hubert H. Humphrey Building HQ of HHS. He wanted ears on the SARS Task Force that reported to him, not the Research Bureaucracy. As events have played out, it seems the Secretary .was correct.

Vic came to an understanding with Tommy, which was if anything seemed to have a screw loose on BIOWAR research. It was never stated overtly, but it seems that there was a lack of trust in the Department and who might be playing fast and loose with it.

SARS petered out as an infectious disease issue just as the Wuhan Games were coming up. Doctor Fauci announced a last meeting of the SARS Task Force to wrap things up on that front and topics regarding the various aspects of the SARS experience for lessons-learned on the next sudden outbreak of an infectious disease.

We know (as you do) what that turned out to be. But the last meeting of the Task Force had a bunch of lessons, though not all were shared. One was who was funding advanced research at the Wuhan Institute. Another was whether an inadvertent leak of an acute respiratory virus had occurred in a manner that would promote the spread of such a virus in a place where a test could plausibly be attributed to a lab leak from an institution with a history of them.

Vic said he was going to say more, but Socotra Legal had to pay him a visit to remind him that all government researchers are honorable and sometimes accidents can happen. He was clearly agitated by the visit in which he had to agree not to spread any wild stories about how SARS may have had enhanced gain of function (GOF) research.

“I remember that last meeting of the SARS Task Ftorce. Cloudy Day. Some of the researchers were concerned that BIOWAR research was going to be curtailed in their home labs. Doctor Fauci paused by the door on his way out of that Last Working Group Meeting, after which nothing further would be covered in a Press Release.

One of the bright young scientists was skeptical of Dr. Fauci’s assurances that everything involving SARS was complete and the matter was done. Fini. Over.

Vic said there were only four or five folks who were with the Doctor as he swept out of the conference room. “Are we sure we have got all this covered?” asked one of the post-Docs.

Dr. Fauci paused in mid-turn as he exited. He had a thin smile as he gave a farewell wave. “Trust me, folks. I’ve got it covered.”

That is all Vic would say about his time at HHS. “I think he did.”

Copyright 2026 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotraa.com