In a June Request for Information (RFI) titled “Protection Before Day One Vaccine: Advancing Broadly Protective Seasonal Influenza Vaccines with Pandemic Coverage,” the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is asking the biotechnology industry to develop influenza vaccines before the next pandemic begins, reflecting a level of planning that treats another influenza pandemic as a matter of when, not if.
HHS is therefore confident that there will be a future determination by authorities that an influenza pandemic has begun.
The proposal follows a series of federal future influenza pandemic-orchestrating initiatives, including Congress seeking $3.3 billion for a future influenza pandemic, HHS funding experiments determining how to make H5 influenza more pathogenic, HHS funding the creation of never-before-seen chimeric H6Nx bird flu viruses said to carry immune-evasion traits, and DARPA/NIH-funded scientists reprogramming dormant influenza parts with new replication and competition-suppressing functions.
It also comes after U.S. taxpayers funded the research behind Moderna’s new mRNA-1010 influenza vaccine and an FDA—which is under HHS—advisory committee backed the shot despite providing less than a 1% absolute benefit.
The initiatives raise a fundamental national security question: Why is the government simultaneously investing in making influenza viruses more dangerous while preparing “Day One” vaccines for the influenza pandemic it appears to expect?
You can contact HHS here to ask why the agency is planning for another influenza pandemic while simultaneously funding research that seeks to increase the capabilities of influenza viruses (see list of many such projects at the end of this article).
The RFI lists Wendy Rehman (wendy.rehman@ati.org) as the “Primary Point of Contact” for the Protection Before Day One Vaccine project.
Hellbound and Down 