The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced on October 16, 2026 that its Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) had placed “Threat-X” among nine priorities for testing vaccine, drug, and diagnostic technologies.

The supposed threat has no identified biological agent. Yet HHS has placed it on a government list that could influence which pharmaceutical companies receive federal money.

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The Yakima Health District announced November 1, 2026 that a Washington resident died following an illness classified as bird flu after purported exposure to infected dairy cattle, while authorities continued monitoring workers and issuing public-health warnings without releasing the original laboratory evidence needed to independently verify the reported H5N1 diagnosis.

The revelation follows my November 2 investigation exposing how NIH-funded scientists claimed to engineer chimeric bird flu capable of replicating at 104°F using genetic components attributed to avian influenza and the 1918 pandemic, while exempting their experiments from dangerous gain-of-function restrictions and invoking the findings to justify expanded pandemic surveillance.

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An October 13, 2026, study published in the Journal of Virology by scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the University of Oxford claims researchers engineered experimental chimeric influenza material to replicate at 104°F (40°C) using genetic components they identified with bird flu and the 1918 pandemic, despite the Trump administration’s crackdown on dangerous gain-of-function research.

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) confirmed Arizona’s first New World screwworm infestation on October 28, 2026.

The infected animal was a dog in Cochise County, Arizona, which borders Sonora, Mexico.

Weeks before the Arizona case, authorities had already released 73.9 million laboratory-produced, irradiated screwworm flies across Sonora and Chihuahua, Mexico, through a USDA-supported “eradication” program.

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The National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded East Carolina University’s Roger Pechous $223,957 on September 2, 2026, for experiments using mutant plague bacteria to investigate mechanisms of immune resistance and virulence, according to federal grant R21AI192340, administered by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

The agency explicitly acknowledges:

“Yersinia pestis is one of the deadliest pathogens known to man.”

Yet the same federal award declares:

“we will use bacterial mutants”

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San Diego County’s 2026 aerial mosquito-control schedule identifies an October 29 helicopter operation involving biological pesticides containing bacterial spores and insecticidal toxins, despite manufacturer inhalation warnings, experimental findings of persistent lung inflammation, and a documented 2019 incident in which beachgoers reportedly witnessed an unexpected helicopter release of the same commercial pesticide near Camp Pendleton.

The county lists up to 54 potential treatment locations covering approximately 1,400 acres, including parks, lagoons, rivers, and other waterways.

Yet officials assure the public that the bacterial pesticides:

“don’t harm people, pets, plants, or wildlife.”

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA)

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A June 2, 2026, Texas Animal Health Commission (TAHC) briefing reveals that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released 123,201,290 allegedly sterile New World screwworm flies into Texas before the state’s first confirmed infestation, while additional federal records confirm millions of flies were already being released weekly in the area where the first infected animals were discovered.

The briefing, marked “Document not intended for distribution,” documents mass environmental releases despite no naturally occurring screwworms having been detected in Texas.

Just eight days after the recorded release total, officials confirmed the state’s first infestation in a calf in Zavala County.

Four months later, they announced the parasite’s first confirmed detection in U.S. wildlife, in an elk in Pecos County.

A documented 2003 sterilization failure (see section below) had already allowed at least 4 million fertile screwworm flies to be released into Mexico and Panama, triggering livestock infestations, while USDA’s own research confirms that irradiation does not automatically guarantee complete sterility.

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A March 2026 publication by The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) confirms that Children’s Hospital Colorado (CHCO) has injected “more than 18,000” pediatric patients under “deep sedation or general anesthesia” who were undergoing surgery or other medical procedures.

The revelation comes after this website reported yesterday that Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia has injected 2,054 children with flu vaccines under anesthesia.

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Editor’s Note: We corrected the subheadl…

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An October 16 Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit exposes 264 foreign-disclosure violations across 697 allegations involving National Institutes of Health (NIH) research from 2017 through 2025, including 41 cases without recorded action, within an agency distributing $35.3 billion annually in outside research funding.

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An open letter organized by independent researchers Jim Haslam and George Howard is calling on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) to release records and authorize an independent investigation into its coronavirus research, including experiments connected to the 2018 DEFUSE proposal.

DEFUSE is the project submitted the year before the COVID-19 pandemic to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that uncannily characterized a pandemic response to a future SARS-CoV-2-like outbreak.

Readers can sign the letter here to join the request for an independent examination of the university’s research, funding arrangements, and communications with federal agencies.

The initiative, CarolinaFlu.org, seeks access to laboratory notebooks, experimental sequences, freezer inventories, research funding records, biosafety reports, and communications involving UNC researchers.

The effort follows a public-records battle in which UNC produced more than 130,000 pages while withholding 5,205 documents, including 4,537 under a state university research exemption.

What experiments were conducted, who funded them, what did federal investigators learn, and why do thousands of university records remain beyond public examination?

Read Haslam’s Substack here.

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Investigator Warns of ‘Explosive’ Emails

In comments provided directly to JonFleetwood.com, Haslam described unpublished emails involving UNC coronavirus researcher Ralph Baric and Toni Baric as “explosive.”

Haslam says the correspondence raises questions about interactions with FBI agents and how research outlined in the rejected DEFUSE proposal was subsequently funded through other avenues.

In an October 8 Twitter/X post, Haslam wrote:

“If the American public read the Toni & Ralph Baric emails behind this congressional letter, J6 would look like recess.”

This raises questions about what communications occurred, what information federal investigators received, and whether the records reveal additional funding arrangements for pre-pandemic coronavirus research.

DEFUSE and Federal Funding Questions

The 2018 DEFUSE proposal involved EcoHealth Alliance, Baric, and other collaborators, and described plans to engineer SARS-related coronaviruses, including modifications involving SARS2-like cleavage sites and receptor-binding domains.

Although DARPA claims to have rejected the proposal, the Carolina Flu investigation raises questions about whether related experiments continued through other funding arrangements, including those involving Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

The funding question is:

• If research proposed to one federal agency was subsequently pursued through another, which agency authorized the experiments, what oversight applied, and where are the records documenting the work?

What the Letter Demands

The organizers are asking UNC Chancellor Lee Roberts to appoint an independent panel, preserve physical and electronic records, provide investigators access to relevant materials and personnel, and publish the findings.

The letter invokes Roberts’ own July 30, 2026, statement concerning an investigation into UNC’s football program:

“If something has gone wrong, we want to know about it. If something needs to be fixed, we will be sure to fix it.”

The signatories ask that the same standard apply to publicly funded coronavirus research.

The investigation would examine laboratory records, materials transferred between research institutions, biosafety incidents, federal grants, and communications involving university researchers and government officials.

The organizers also seek records capable of testing Haslam’s hypothesis concerning UNC-linked research and exchanges of coronavirus materials and technology between American and Chinese laboratories.

Bottom Line

UNC’s documented coronavirus engineering research, participation in the DEFUSE proposal, and thousands of withheld records establish a compelling public-interest case for independent scrutiny.

Haslam’s allegations concerning Baric’s communications, interactions with federal investigators, and subsequent research funding intensify questions about what the unreleased evidence could reveal.

• Who funded the relevant experiments, what materials were produced or transferred, what did federal investigators learn, and why do thousands of university records remain beyond public examination?

The American public financed research whose experimental records could answer consequential questions about the origins of the pandemic.

Those records deserve independent examination.

The Carolina Flu open letter gives readers an opportunity to join the request for those records and an independent investigation.

Read and sign the Carolina Flu open letter here.

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A January 15, 2026, lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James reveals that bacterial contamination, including dangerous endotoxins, forced Emergent BioSolutions to abort or reject COVID-19 vaccine batches representing up to 40 million dose-equivalents, while federal health officials were involved in discussions of the manufacturing failures.

Endotoxins are toxic bacterial components capable of triggering severe inflammation, septic shock, organ failure, and death.

The revelation comes as this website revealed that FDA testing failed to detect up to 30% of bacterial endotoxin activity added to Moderna’s COVID-19 mRNA vaccine, raising concerns that dangerous endotoxin contamination could be hidden in vaccine injections due to “masking” (hiding in, for example, lipid nanoparticles [LNPs]) and contribute to injuries and deaths.

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An August 12, 2026, National Institutes of Health (NIH) award reveals that the federal government awarded Stanford University $782,082 to investigate experimental influenza vaccine formulations designed to activate TLR4, the same immune receptor stimulated by bacterial endotoxin (LPS).

Endotoxins are toxic bacterial components capable of triggering severe inflammation, septic shock, organ failure, and death.

The payment comes as HHS plans for 660 million “pandemic influenza” vaccine doses, renewing a contract system established before the 2009 influenza pandemic.

HHS is also planning to suspend FOIA and pandemic oversight while continuing vaccine and biodefense contracts.

Which raises questions about the Stanford endotoxin-related funding:

• Why is NIH spending taxpayer money to develop injections that deliberately stimulate an endotoxin-responsive inflammatory pathway?

• Who authorized this approach, who benefits, and who consented to financing it?

• Will endotoxins or endotoxin-like substances be inside vaccines authorities push on the population during the next government-orchestrated pandemic response, as was the case with COVID-19 vaccines?

You can contact NIH here.

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NIH Funds Three Experimental Inflammatory Formulations

Stanford’s project identifies three combinations:

• T4Q: TLR4 agonist and QS-21 in liposomes.

• TRAC-478: TLR4 and TLR7/8 agonists in a squalene emulsion.

• T4M: TLR4 agonist and Mincle ligand on silica nanoparticles.

All three target TLR4, a receptor involved in the inflammatory response to bacterial endotoxin.

Experiments Reveal Synthetic Endotoxin-Related Compounds

A 2026 npj Vaccines study identifies INI-2002, a synthetic compound modeled on lipid A, the inflammatory component of bacterial endotoxin, as an ingredient in TRAC-478.

Researchers combined the formulation with experimental influenza proteins and documented measurable immune responses in animals.

TRAC-478 is one of the three formulations in Stanford’s newly funded project.

NIH is therefore financing further investigation of a formulation containing synthetic endotoxin-related chemistry already used to provoke experimental immune responses.

Bottom Line

The federal government is spending $782,082 to advance experimental influenza vaccine formulations designed to provoke endotoxin-responsive inflammatory signaling.

Americans are being compelled to finance this research while facing questions about inflammatory risks, future human exposure, commercial beneficiaries, and informed consent.

Many do not consent to their tax dollars funding the development of these experimental injections.

Many do not consent to receiving them.

Taxpayer funding is not public consent, and government authorization cannot override individual bodily autonomy.

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A July 2026 study published in Antibodies reveals that Harvard scientists funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Flu Lab computationally engineered digital sequences for what they identify as influenza hemagglutinin (HA), the purported functional equivalent of the coronavirus spike protein, for proposed vaccines against future influenza threats.

Researchers Victor Ovchinnikov and Martin Karplus explicitly invoke the emergence of pandemic influenza strains as part of their justification.

Which raises questions about pandemic orchestration:

• Could these computer-generated influenza sequences become the foundation for a future emergency in which purported threats, diagnostic targets, surveillance classifications, pharmaceutical products, and government responses are organized around an accepted digital reference?

• And who would independently establish the physical evidence underlying that reference before it acquires the authority to define an alleged pandemic?

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Gates Funds Influenza Sequence Engineering Before an Outbreak

The study, Computational Design and Expression of Headless Influenza Hemagglutinin Antigens Toward a Modular Universal Nanoparticle Vaccine, identifies Gates Foundation and Flu Lab funding under grant opportunity OPP1214161.

Researchers Victor Ovchinnikov and Martin Karplus computationally designed modified so-called HA amino-acid sequences representing 11 purported influenza subtypes, including H5.

They used artificial intelligence (AI) software developed by Google DeepMind called AlphaFold2 to generate hypothetical protein structures, then ran computer simulations to assess their supposed stability.

The researchers then performed laboratory experiments using human-derived HEK293 cells, interpreting their measurements as evidence that the intended engineered proteins had been produced.

The researchers measured the apparent size of the proteins they claimed to produce but provided no direct evidence establishing that their alleged complete amino-acid sequences matched the computer-generated designs.

Nevertheless, these computer-generated sequences could provide the molecular backstory for future influenza vaccines, supplying the basis for claims about their contents and intended effects before those claims are independently established in the finished injections.

As previously reported by JonFleetwood.com and after all these years post-COVID, published research on COVID-19 mRNA vaccines has yet to establish the complete physical identity of either an intact, full-length mRNA strand recovered from a finished injection or the complete protein allegedly produced inside vaccinated people.

The same question now applies to these Gates-funded influenza designs:

• Will future vaccines be justified by computer-generated sequences without independent proof that the finished injections contain the complete molecules they are claimed to contain?

Regardless, Gates-funded Harvard researchers are already engineering the computer-generated sequences that could be used to justify future influenza vaccines before a pandemic even occurs.

As was the case before COVID.

Influenza Engineering Mirrors the Pandemic Operating System

The sequence-first approach resembles a central feature of the pandemic architecture documented in our earlier investigation, DARPA’s Pandemic Stack: Building the Pandemic Operating System Before COVID.

Beginning in 2010, DARPA developed programs for predicting purported future pathogen characteristics, translating sequence information into countermeasures, operating from electronic sequences, and guiding so-called preventive interventions through computational models.

DARPA’s PREEMPT program explicitly stated:

“the output of TA1 in silico (digital) models will guide preventive method design.”

Meaning DARPA wanted computer predictions about future pandemic threats to guide the development of preventive measures before those threats had even appeared.

Putting computer-generated claims at the beginning of the process instead of independently established physical evidence of the threats themselves.

And with computer-generated sequences, you can make the two major components of government-led pandemic response: vaccine backstories and pandemic declaration-justifying, “case”-counting PCR test targets.

Under our In Silico Theory of Pandemic Orchestration, the operational center of a modern pandemic is the accepted digital sequence architecture rather than an independently demonstrated physical pathogen.

The Harvard study documents a contemporary influenza application of the same broad sequence-first principle: computationally specified designs guide proposed countermeasure development before an anticipated pandemic.

The question is whether the informational infrastructure built around coronavirus pandemic preparedness could be repurposed for influenza.

Using predicted sequences to organize the next threat narrative and response.

Bottom Line

Gates-funded Harvard researchers are already engineering computer-generated influenza sequences that could help justify future vaccines before a pandemic occurs.

The significance goes beyond vaccine development.

Computer-generated sequences can supply the scientific backstory for both a claimed pandemic threat and the pharmaceutical response to it, even as questions remain about what has been independently established in the physical world.

That is the concern at the heart of our In Silico Theory of Pandemic Orchestration.

A future influenza emergency could be organized around digital sequences used to justify PCR tests, reported cases, vaccine development, and government action.

If computer-generated sequences become the basis for declaring a pandemic and administering vaccines, who independently verifies the physical evidence behind those claims before the public is asked to accept them?

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An open letter demanding that President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. remove mRNA vaccines from the market has surpassed 3,300 signatures, according to Dr. Mary Talley Bowden.

Today, Dr. Bowden confirmed to JonFleetwood.com that the letter had collected 3,397 signatures as of her latest count.

The signatories reportedly have a combined social media following of more than 66 million.

Published September 18 by Americans for Health Freedom, the letter challenges the Trump administration over its failure to deliver on a central demand of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement: removing mRNA products from the market.

Doctors, scientists, legislators, and other public officials have signed a letter calling for greater transparency, independent investigation, and accountability over unresolved questions surrounding COVID-19 vaccine safety and efficacy.

You can sign the letter here.

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The signatories demand a ban on mRNA-based vaccines, termination of the COVID-19 emergency declaration under the PREP Act, repeal of the law’s liability protections, and reforms addressing conflicts of interest at federal health agencies.

The letter also warns Trump and Kennedy that continued inaction could cost them the support of health freedom voters ahead of the 2026 midterm elections and the 2028 presidential election.

The executive summary reads:

As influential leaders within the MAHA and health freedom movements, we are writing to object to policies under your oversight related to the mRNA platform, and to call you to act on our policy goals.

While the centerpiece of the MAHA and health freedom agenda has been removal of mRNA shots, you have failed to take decisive action on this front despite overwhelming credible evidence to the harm of this technology. Instead, your policies related to mRNA technology are neutered and self-defeating, putting pregnant women and children at risk, misleading parents and eroding their rights, and failing to help those harmed by vaccines.

If you continue to ignore our central issue of removing the mRNA platform, the MAHA and health freedom movements will withdraw their support of you, and you will face the political consequences.

Unanswered questions remain about whether COVID mRNA vaccines contain undetected endotoxin contamination, after FDA testing missed up to 30% of added endotoxin activity, and whether the complete physical identity of the injected material and the protein allegedly produced inside vaccinated humans has ever been directly established.

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U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is soliciting a 10-year pandemic vaccine manufacturing program with a 660-million-dose national planning target, renewing a procurement system established before the 2009 H1N1 pandemic.

HHS has also recently announced plans to suspend FOIA and pandemic oversight while continuing vaccine and biodefense contracts.

Which raises questions:

• Who stands to profit from the next pandemic?

• What safeguards exist against its deliberate orchestration?

• Who will investigate potential conflicts of interest and coordination when pandemic vaccine contracting continues while public records access and oversight are suspended?

You can contact HHS here.

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Five Documented Findings

1. 2005: HHS established its National Pre-Pandemic Influenza Vaccine Stockpile.

2. 2006–2007: HHS committed approximately $1.27 billion to vaccine manufacturing, adjuvants, and facility upgrades.

3. 2007: HHS established a 600-million-dose production target, with officials projecting that adjuvants could accelerate production capacity to 2008–2009.

4. 2009: H1N1 pandemic occurred, prompting HHS to activate preexisting vaccine contracts. Despite its 600-million-dose planning target, HHS ultimately purchased just over 190 million H1N1 vaccine doses, according to the Government Accountability Office’s 2011 investigation, GAO-11-632.

5. 2026: BARDA solicited contracts lasting up to 2036, specifying a 660-million-dose planning will “likely be required,” with provisions for emerging pathogens and Department of War participation.

6. 2026–20??: ???

Forced Inference

Before the 2009 influenza pandemic, HHS planned for 600 million influenza vaccine doses, invested more than $1 billion in pandemic influenza vaccine infrastructure, and activated its contracts when H1N1 emerged.

Seventeen years later, HHS is again planning for an entire nation’s vaccination (660 million doses) before another pandemic they’re confident will soon occur.

How did federal pandemic vaccine procurement become so closely aligned with the timing of a subsequent pandemic in 2009, and why is HHS preparing the same nationwide capacity again in 2026?

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The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) states in its September 9, 2026, shutdown contingency plan that its pandemic preparedness agency will suspend Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) execution and congressionally mandated preparedness evaluations while continuing to negotiate, award, and manage biodefense contracts.

The arrangement raises immediate questions:

• Why is HHS preparing to shut down public access to government records while keeping pandemic vaccine and biodefense contracting operational?

• What contracts could HHS award, modify, or advance while FOIA processing and congressionally mandated preparedness oversight are suspended?

• Who would be able to scrutinize those decisions in real time?

• What experimental products, safety findings, environmental exposure risks, and informed-consent concerns could escape timely public scrutiny while the government continues financing their development?

The documents establish a significant division of federal priorities.

Pandemic countermeasure operations receive continuity protections while public disclosure and certain accountability functions are designated for suspension.

You can contact HHS here.

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HHS Explicitly Suspends FOIA

The Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR), which houses the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), identifies activities that will stop during a lapse in congressional appropriations.

Under the Office of the Director, the plan lists:

“FOIA execution”

The same document suspends a statutory requirement for preparedness evaluations and reporting to the HHS Secretary.

Those evaluations concern evidence-based benchmarks and objective standards established under the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness and Advancing Innovation Act of 2019.

Other suspended activities include reviewing hospital preparedness performance reports, validating preparedness data, conducting site visits, and certain contract-management functions.

Meaning the public loses a records-access mechanism at the same time that congressionally mandated preparedness scrutiny is interrupted.

Biodefense Contracts Keep Moving

The same HHS plan identifies contracting activities that will continue.

ASPR states that personnel will keep negotiating, awarding, and managing contracts involving threats within the agency’s mission.

The plan also preserves eligible medical countermeasure development, procurement, stockpile management, and technical and financial contract oversight.

BARDA plans to use multiyear appropriations to maintain eligible advanced research and development staffing for up to five months.

HHS estimates that 663 ASPR employees (72% of the agency’s workforce) would remain working during a funding lapse.

Of those, 482 would remain under funding exemptions, while 181 would continue under statutory exceptions.

The consequence is that HHS has planned for pandemic-related contracting to continue during an interruption in FOIA execution and specified preparedness oversight.

HHS Centralized Public-Records Access

The department’s 2026 Chief FOIA Officer Report identifies another important feature of the arrangement.

During 2025, HHS consolidated several previously independent FOIA offices into its Office of the Secretary.

That office processes records requests for ASPR, including records associated with BARDA, as well as requests involving the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The result is a centralized public-records operation serving multiple agencies involved in federal health preparedness.

The shutdown plan then places FOIA execution among the functions designated to stop.

One part of HHS can continue making consequential countermeasure decisions while the office responsible for providing public access to those decisions faces interruption.

Who Protects the Public When Scrutiny Stops?

Pandemic countermeasure programs can involve experimental medical products, manufacturing contracts, emergency stockpiles, and technologies intended for deployment during declared public-health threats.

Their consequences raise questions extending beyond government procurement.

• What safety evaluations accompany the products being developed?

• Which contracts involve technologies capable of exposing people without their informed consent?

• Who reviews potential environmental exposure, adverse effects, and contractor conflicts of interest?

• And why should access to the government’s answers be interrupted while the underlying programs continue?

These questions become especially important when the government is financing technologies whose development, procurement, or eventual deployment could affect people who never agreed to participate.

Informed consent requires meaningful information about what people may be exposed to.

Public accountability requires access to the decisions authorizing those activities.

Suspending records processing while preserving procurement creates a period in which those decisions can move ahead of public examination.

Bottom Line

HHS’s own shutdown plan establishes a disturbing federal priority: Keep awarding pandemic vaccine and biodefense contracts while suspending FOIA execution and congressionally mandated preparedness oversight.

The arrangement creates a window in which government contractors can advance federally financed projects while public access to records and certain oversight activities are interrupted.

Congress should investigate who authorized this arrangement, which contracts can advance during these interruptions, and what safety findings, environmental exposure risks, and informed-consent concerns could remain beyond timely public scrutiny.

Why is HHS protecting the government’s ability to finance pandemic countermeasures while preparing to suspend the public’s ability to investigate what it is financing?

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According to a March 2018 U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA-APHIS) contract award to Colorado Serum Company, the federal government contracted for an estimated 6 million doses of recombinant raccoonpox plague vaccine, using the same vaccine-carrier platform Project DEFUSE proposed that month for spraying vaccine material onto bats.

The plague-vaccine order was six times the doses USDA said it needed for existing customers and equivalent to nearly 28 years of the depot’s subsequently reported annual vaccine-bait sales.

Meanwhile, DEFUSE’s proposed delivery partner, PARC, described aerosol technology for biological applications involving “animals/humans.”

DEFUSE is the project submitted the year before the COVID-19 pandemic to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that characterized a pandemic response to a future SARS-CoV-2-like outbreak.

• Why was the government contracting for millions of doses of a plague-vaccine platform while developing automated biological spraying?

• What would be sprayed, and what informed consent protections would exist for potentially exposed people?

You can contact USDA here.

Ja Rcn Vaccine

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Six Million Doses—28 Years of Bait Sales

USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) awarded Colorado Serum Company a roughly $1.3 million contract for an estimated 6 million doses of experimental recombinant raccoonpox vaccine, RCN-F1-V307.

The destination was USDA’s Pocatello Supply Depot in Idaho, where the vaccine would be mixed into wildlife bait.

Each vial held 4,000 doses.

The entire contracted quantity amounted to approximately 1,500 bottles, or 40 gallons.

The government’s justification said the depot needed 1 million doses to fill orders already received from federal, state, and tribal agencies.

Yet USDA contracted for six times that amount.

In fiscal 2019, the depot sold 216,000 finished plague-vaccine baits.

At that rate, 6 million doses represented nearly 28 years of sales.

The comparison measures the contract’s size, not how much inventory was actually delivered or stored.

A second delivery order worth $180,000 followed in April 2018.

• Why did USDA contract for so much more vaccine than its documented immediate demand?

DEFUSE Named the Same Carrier—and a Sprayer for ‘Animals/Humans’

That same March, EcoHealth Alliance submitted Project DEFUSE to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

The proposal named raccoonpox as a carrier for delivering vaccine material to bats, using sticky gel that bats would swallow while grooming.

It also proposed automated spraying technology developed with PARC.

The delivery team included Tonie Rocke of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), whose laboratory developed the raccoonpox vaccine platform already being manufactured for USDA.

DEFUSE-linked PARC material described large-area aerosol delivery of bioactive formulations and identified potential applications involving “animals/humans.”

In other words, the technology was not described exclusively for wildlife.

• Why was a delivery system with stated human applications being developed alongside a federally supported wildlife-vaccine platform?

USDA Advanced Outdoor Spraying Despite Incomplete Human-Safety Evaluation

In July 2019, USDA-APHIS published environmental assessment APHIS-2019-0043-0003, addressing field testing of a recombinant raccoonpox bat vaccine called RCN-CAL/SP.

The proposed method involved vaccine-laden glycerin jelly applied by hand or spray, including directly onto bats or bat houses.

The assessment acknowledged that human safety had not been fully evaluated, while describing protective equipment for workers and assessing the risk as low.

The vaccine was intended to be swallowed by bats during grooming.

The spray technology was also receiving financial support.

In 2018, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation supported a USGS-PARC bat-vaccine delivery project totaling approximately $829,466, including matching funds.

On May 13, 2020, USGS issued PARC a $198,940 purchase order, 140G0220P0134, to “DEVELOP&TEST SPRAY DEVICES.”

USGS subsequently reported treating more than 7,000 bats across seven states.

• What exactly was applied at those sites, what environmental exposure testing occurred, and how were people protected from involuntary exposure?

Bottom Line

The government contracted for 6 million doses of the DEFUSE-linked raccoonpox platform in March 2018, six times documented immediate demand and equivalent to nearly 28 years of subsequently reported annual bait sales.

That same month, DEFUSE proposed using the platform for bat vaccination with automated spraying technology whose described applications included “animals/humans.”

By 2019, USDA was evaluating outdoor spraying of a related raccoonpox bat vaccine despite incomplete human-safety evaluation. During COVID, USGS funded additional spray-device development.

The plague-vaccine formulation ordered in 2018, the fungal-antigen bat vaccine evaluated in 2019, and the coronavirus-spike formulation proposed in DEFUSE were different products built around the same carrier platform.

The public deserves answers about the extraordinary procurement scale, the coordination of these programs, the substances actually sprayed, and the informed consent of people potentially exposed to federally supported biological releases.

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The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) says it is moving its raccoonpox bat-vaccine program toward mass production and “hands-off, mass delivery” by spray in 2026, continuing a federal biological platform that used plague-associated material before the 2009 H1N1 pandemic and was deployed in wild bats immediately before COVID.

The chronology demands scrutiny.

Before 2009, USGS researchers were administering products they described as live recombinant raccoonpox carrying material attributed to Yersinia pestis (plague) to prairie dogs.

In September 2019, USDA authorized two USGS raccoonpox-vector vaccines for wild bats, and USGS says the field trial was “immediately initiated” in Wisconsin.

That same bat-vaccine and delivery lineage was subsequently incorporated into DEFUSE’s proposed biological-delivery work.

Now USGS says its bat program has shifted from individual experiments to population-level vaccination, is automating vaccine production, will add more colonies in 2027, and is developing “hands-off, mass delivery” by spraying vaccine onto bats for ingestion during grooming.

The forced question is simple:

• Why is the federal government scaling a live raccoonpox platform with a plague-linked history toward mass environmental delivery, and where is the informed consent of people sharing the environment in which it will operate?

You can contact USGS here.

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Before 2009, USGS Put Plague Material Into Raccoonpox

The plague connection is not speculative.

A 2008 USGS National Wildlife Health Center study led by Tonie Rocke reports administering prairie dogs bait containing what researchers described as recombinant raccoonpox expressing the F1 antigen of Yersinia pestis.

USGS separately described its National Wildlife Health Center as developing vaccines to protect prairie dogs and black-footed ferrets against plague.

Additional raccoonpox constructs were developed using material researchers attributed to the plague-associated V antigen.

The sequence is therefore documentary fact:

• USGS was developing and administering plague-linked raccoonpox vaccines before the 2009 H1N1 pandemic.

USDA Admitted Human Safety Was ‘Unknown’

The environmental-safety record makes the platform more consequential.

A 2013 USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) environmental assessment acknowledged a reported human exposure after a scientist accidentally punctured a finger while administering a recombinant raccoonpox product described as carrying Y. pestis F1 material.

A blister developed nine days later.

Then USDA made the critical admission:

“the safety of this experimental vaccine in humans has not been fully evaluated and, therefore, is unknown…”

APHIS nevertheless assessed the public-health risk as low and advanced field testing.

That creates an informed-consent problem regulators cannot erase by declaring expected exposure low.

• If government researchers put a live experimental biological product into an open environment while acknowledging that its human safety is unknown, who consented for the people sharing that environment?

Then Raccoonpox Moved Into Wild Bats Before COVID

A decade later, the platform was in bats.

USGS says it developed several white-nose syndrome vaccine candidates using raccoonpox as the vector.

Two were “registered and authorized for field use” by USDA in September 2019.

USGS says a field trial was “immediately initiated” at two Wisconsin bat hibernacula.

The timing matters.

Before COVID, the federal government was already administering experimental raccoonpox-vector products to wild bats.

The issue is not whether government agencies later assigned different biological labels to COVID and the raccoonpox products.

The watchdog question is physical:

• What exactly was administered to those bats, what could leave them, where could it go, and what independent measurements established those boundaries?

DEFUSE Joined the Vaccine to Mass Delivery

The next step was delivery.

Rocke’s raccoonpox work did not end with plague.

The same USGS researcher became part of DEFUSE’s bat-vaccine delivery work, while PARC brought spray technology for “large area and high throughput aerosol delivery” of fluids including “bioactive formulations.”

PARC identified an even broader potential application:

“large area inoculation of animals/humans with bioengineered formulations”

It proposed developing a “scalable aerosol delivery method for wide-scale inoculation.”

That makes the continuity much harder to miss.

The same research network connecting raccoonpox vaccination to bats was paired with aerosol technology whose developer explicitly identified humans among its potential large-area inoculation applications.

And the spray work continued through COVID.

USGS says its 2020–2021 field work included application “by hand, with a spray device” and application to bat-roost structures.

The questions are therefore bigger than how researchers vaccinate individual bats:

• How far did a biological spray system explicitly described as potentially applicable to large-area inoculation of “animals/humans” actually advance?

• And what became of that human application?

Now USGS Wants ‘Hands-Off, Mass Delivery’

The 2026 USGS White-nose Syndrome Vaccine Update shows where that progression has led.

Until this year, USGS says its work focused on individual bats.

In 2026, researchers shifted to what the agency calls a “population-focused approach.”

More than 2,000 bats were vaccinated at six sites.

USGS says additional paired colonies will be enrolled next year (2027) and treated over the following several years.

At the same time, NWHC is introducing more automated vaccine-production methods.

And USGS says it is developing “hands-off, mass delivery of vaccine to bats.”

One method:

Spray the vaccine onto the bats and let them ingest it while grooming.

That completes the progression:

plague-linked raccoonpox → wildlife administration → wild-bat vaccination → DEFUSE delivery work → population-level vaccination → automated production → hands-off mass delivery by spray.

Where Is the Informed Consent?

The consent problem is no longer limited to bats.

USGS is developing “hands-off, mass delivery” by spraying vaccine onto free-ranging bats.

Meanwhile, DEFUSE-linked PARC explicitly identified its aerosol technology as potentially applicable to “large area inoculation of animals/humans with bioengineered formulations.”

That raises two questions:

• Who consented to environmental exposure from mass vaccination of free-ranging animals?

• And what became of PARC’s stated potential application for large-area inoculation of humans?

Before the program expands in 2027, the government should disclose what will be sprayed, where, who or what can be exposed, and where informed consent enters the process.

And who will be held accountable for the next catastrophic government outbreak response.

Bottom Line

The record is remarkably simple.

• Before the 2009 pandemic: USGS researchers administered prairie dogs raccoonpox products carrying material they attributed to plague.

• Before the 2020 pandemic: USDA authorized USGS raccoonpox-vector vaccines for wild bats, and USGS says field deployment began immediately.

• DEFUSE then joined that bat-vaccine lineage to scalable aerosol delivery technology whose developer explicitly identified “large area inoculation of animals/humans with bioengineered formulations” as a potential application.

• Now: USGS has moved to population-level bat vaccination, is automating production, plans additional treatments in 2027, and is developing “hands-off, mass delivery” by spray.

The forced conclusion does not require assigning either pandemic a cause:

• The federal government advanced a plague-linked raccoonpox platform before 2009, put raccoonpox vaccines into wild bats immediately before COVID, connected that research lineage to DEFUSE technology proposed for large-area inoculation of “animals/humans,” and is now scaling bat vaccination toward mass delivery by spray.

Before that expansion continues, two questions require answers:

• What became of DEFUSE’s potential human-inoculation application?

• And where is the informed consent of people sharing the environment in which mass biological delivery is being developed?

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