This post revisits the story of Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, who was appointed the CDC Director by President Trump in July 2017. Dr. Fitzgerald was perfect for the position, having had experience as a physician, Commissioner of the Department of Public Health of Georgia, and multiple other public service positions. Previous CDC Director Thomas Frieden praised her and wrote that she had “put excellent people in key positions.” The CDC Director position did not require Senate approval. Democrat Congresspersons, aided and abetted by the hostile media and Big Tech, chased her out by phony accusations of conflicts of interest. If she remained in the position, the Clinton cabal in the HHS would be unable to sabotage President Trump in his response to the COVID-19 epidemic, and it would not become a pandemic.
This is what happened in 2017-2018.
Phony Conflict of Interest
Democrats made accusations of conflict of interest out of nothing. Patty Murray (D-WA) was a Ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (“HELP”). The Committee Chairperson was spineless Lamar Alexander (R-TN), so Patty Murray called the shots. (A similar situation was in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, where cunning Mark Warner (D) was pushing around Chairperson Richard Burr (R)). When the committee held hearings that required testimony from the CDC, Patty Murray invited CDC officials other than Director Fitzgerald, falsely alleging that Director Fitzgerald had a conflict of interests. Then, in a circular logic, she claimed that Director Fitzgerald could not attend because of the alleged conflict of interest. Example: “Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the committee’s ranking Democrat, said Fitzgerald has declined three other opportunities to testify since taking the helm at the CDC last July.” Even Politico admitted that: “Fitzgerald’s office said she was prepared to testify but that the committee asked CDC to send another official…” Another committee member was Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), which might explain why Democrats wanted the scalp of Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald so much.
Director Fitzgerald had no actual conflicts of interest. Together with her husband, she had about $300k (out of their declared net worth between $4M and $16M) invested in two tiny niche companies. She signed an agreement promising to recuse herself from making decisions in those niche matters. At that time, it became a norm for CDC officials to have significant financial stakes central to their responsibilities. From Brownstone Institute, unrelated to Dr. Fitzgerald:
“The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) plays a major role. The 12-member ACIP Committee has extraordinary influence on the health of virtually all US citizens as it is the body tasked with “adding to and/or altering the national recommended vaccine schedule.”
The CDC and various members of this committee, in what can charitably be called ‘conflicts of interest’, currently own and have profited from an array of vaccine patents. These include vaccine patents for Flu, Rotavirus, Hepatitis A, Anthrax, West Nile virus, SARS, Rift Valley Fever, and several other diseases of note.”
Books have been written about conflicts of interest between the CDC, the FDA, and the HHS. I will add that the deadly COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel, assembled by Dr. Fauci in April 2020, could be called the Gilead Panel because at least a third of its members have financial ties to Gilead Corporation, and some hid those ties.
Dr. Fitzgerald resigned in January 2018 after another fake scandal – her investment manager purchased a small amount of a Japanese tobacco stock, and the media whipped itself into a frenzy about it. I think that this search and destroy politics by Democrats, aided by the media and Big Tech, was too much for her.
Related Developments
When COVID-19 struck, Hillary Clinton connected infectious diseases mafia easily sidelined Robert Redfield, appointed the CDC Director after the resignation of Dr. Fitzgerald, with tragic consequences:
“Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a virologist, voiced the concern that a lab accident occurred at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. He shared this concern… Despite these early warnings, Redfield was not included in subsequent conversations about the issue.’ They wanted a single narrative and I obviously had a different point of view,’ Redfield said.”
Back to 2017.
“On January 9, 2017, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy announced it had issued “Recommended Policy Guidance for Departmental Development of Review Mechanisms for Potential Pandemic Pathogen Care and Oversight.” This document, in the final days of President Obama’s second term, lifted the moratorium on federal funding of gain-of-function research.”
Was it another insurance policy against the Trump administration?
The EcoHealth Alliance participated in bat coronavirus experiments in 2017, although it might have received a waiver from the moratorium, possibly fraudulently. Toward the end of 2017, American diplomats learned of dangerous experiments on bat virus in the Wuhan Institute of Virology and inadequate security measures and sounded alert. Later, they learned that work was done on RaTG13, the natural bat coronavirus closest to SARS-COV-2.
In 2018, EcoHealth Alliance head Peter Daszak became a member of the National Academy of Medicine despite having no medical achievements or a medical degree — a disgrace and corruption!
Some think that SARS-COV-2 virus was already in the wild as early as 2018. See also (1), (2).