“The world needs a new pandemic playbook,” headlined City Journal on Nov. 13, because “the old one failed to cope with Covid and may even have caused it.” The author is Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, who contends that the old playbook “failed catastrophically,” even though it was “breathtaking, even utopian in its ambition.” (RELATED: Bhattacharya Did Not Follow the COVID Herd) The old playbook charted every existing pathogen and brought biological samples to labs, “often located in city centers like Wuhan, China.” Each pathogen was then tested for its ability to penetrate human cells, “and sometimes even genetically modifying it to make this more likely,” a dangerous practice known as gain-of-function (dGOF) research. (RELATED: The Suppression of the ‘Lab Leak Theory’ Has Collapsed) In laboratory work, even if not classified as dGOF, “there is always a risk that a lab will inadvertently leak a pathogen that poses a catastrophic threat.” The playbook then developed “vaccines and therapeutics” to counter the pathogens. “Crucially, this step involves awarding large contracts to pharmaceutical manufacturers to develop and stockpile the countermeasures,” notes Dr. Bhattacharya, and “every step of this agenda is fraught with risk and danger.” (RELATED: The Wages of COVID — Part Three) For example, the collection of pathogens “risks a spillover of a pathogen that might never have occurred otherwise.” In laboratory work, even if not classified as dGOF, “there is always a risk that a lab will inadvertently leak a pathogen that poses a catastrophic threat.” As the NIH director notes, “lab leaks are common, and biosafety oversight is not harmonized worldwide, meaning these pathogens are often manipulated in relatively low-security environments.” The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) has problems beyond its location in a city. In a Communist dictatorship like the People’s Republic of China, fidelity to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), not scientific experience and expertise, determines who operates the lab. The Wuhan lab received a cargo of deadly pathogens, including Ebola and Nipah virus, from Xiangguo Qiu, a Chinese national who headed the special pathogens program at Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg. In 2017-18, Dr. Qiu made at least five trips to China, including one to train scientists at the WIV. In 2019, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), funded the WIV to conduct dangerous gain-of-function research. Dr. Fauci believed the COVID virus emerged naturally in the wild and branded those who saw evidence of a laboratory origin as “conspiracy theorists.” The NIH also had a problem with Dr. Bhattacharya. The Stanford professor of medicine joined colleagues from Harvard, Oxford, and many other universities in the Great Barrington Declaration, challenging Dr. Fauci’s rigid lockdown regime. Then-NIH director Francis Collins tasked Dr. Fauci to launch “a quick and devastating published takedown” of the “fringe epidemiologists,” most, if not all, more qualified than Collins and Fauci. (RELATED: Never Forget What They Did to Us Five Years Ago) Anthony Fauci earned an MD in 1966, but in 1968 hired on at NIH. His bio showed no advanced degrees in biochemistry or molecular biology, but in 1984, the NIH made him head of NIAID. Nobel laureate Kary Mullis, inventor of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, believed that Dr. Fauci did not understand medicine and “should not be in a position like he’s in.” Dr. Fauci remained in the powerful post, and in the pandemic playbook, he is clearly the quarterback. (RELATED: Dr. Anthony Fauci: What Exactly Did Biden Pardon?) Dr. Bhattacharya earned a PhD in economics, and as the NIH director observes, the old playbook creates “a group of well-funded scientists who benefit from scaring the public beyond what the evidence warrants and at the same time falsely minimizing the risk of lab accidents. These scientists make a living doing research for the traditional pandemic preparedness playbook — an extreme conflict of interest.”’ Call it the green side of white coat supremacy, and there’s more to it. The playbook also “creates an industry of vaccine and drug manufacturers to whom the government awards vast sums of money to produce the pharmaceutical stockpile that, by design, has never been tested in human populations.” As the American population might note, the vaunted COVID vaccines failed to prevent infection or transmission, which the fully boosted Dr. Fauci verified by testing positive. (RELATED: The Wages of COVID — Part Two) Instead of “wasting money on the traditional playbook,” the NIH director believes, we should improve understanding of pathogens “we know cause disease in humans” and “develop better prevention and treatment strategies for these existing pathogens.” There’s also work on the organizational side. Dr. Bhattacharya has already eliminated a huge conflict of interest by removing Christine Grady, Dr. Fauci’s wife, from her post as chief bioethicist of the NIH Clinical Center. In her 1995 The Search for an AIDS Vaccine, Grady touted Dr. Fauci but failed to reveal that she had been married to him for 10 years. The Fauci-Grady axis also went missing when the NIH made Grady bioethics chief in 2012. (RELATED: Fauci Allies Sent Packing) The NIH has also removed Dr. Fauci’s successor, Jeanne Marrazzo, and has proposed folding 27 NIH agencies into eight. Never again must a single person control public health policy and funding for medical research in the style of Dr. Fauci, who in 2021 claimed to represent science. On his last day in the White House, Joe Biden pardoned Dr. Fauci, “for any offense against the United States which he may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014, through the date of this pardon arising from or in any manner related to his service as Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force or the White House COVID-19 Response Team, or as Chief Medical Advisor to the President.” Maybe Dr. Bhattacharya can track down the exact offense that merits a “full and unconditional pardon.” Meanwhile, as the new NIH playbook proceeds, the struggle of the people against white coat supremacy is the struggle of memory against forgetting. READ MORE from Lloyd Billingsley: China’s New Hongqi Bridge Collapses — Could California’s Chinese Bridge Be Far Behind? World Series University: Life Lessons From the MLB Hike Taxes to Help the Homeless? Lloyd Billingsley is a policy fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif.