Columbia University's Public Health School and NYC's `Corona-Gates' Scandal: Part 6

Columbia U.s Public Health School: Also funded by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Columbia U. School of Public Health’s Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Connection

Besides receiving millions of dollars in “charitable grant” money since 1998 from the Mailman Foundation and the Gates Foundation, Columbia University and its Mailman School of Public Health has also received a lot of “charitable grant” money from the Robert Wood Johnson [RWJ] Foundation.

With assets then exceeding $9.6 billion, RWJ was the fifth–largest U.S. foundation in 2017; and, as long ago as 1980, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation controlled about 20 percent of the stock of the New Brunswick, New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson for-profit Big Pharma corporation, that had “a long history of secrecy” and preferred “to keep as low a profile as is humanly possible,” according to the 1980 edition of the Everybody’s Business Almanac: An Irreverent Guide To Corporate America. The same 1980 book also noted that “the Johnson Foundation funds programs in health care, thereby giving money,” coincidentally, “to institutions such as hospitals that are good J & J customers.”

But on July 30, 2008 the RWJ Foundation also gave a “charitable grant” of $4,446,132 to Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism because “this project will brand the Columbia effort as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Program in Health and Science Journalism thus promoting our influence with health and health care journalists,” according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation website. And between 2011 and 2013, three additional “charitable grants,” totaling over $3.6 million, were given to Columbia University by the RWJ Foundation.

Then, in 2014, yet another RWJ “charitable grant” of $1,465,000 was given to Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health.

In 2020, New York City’s public health system apparently also had not been adequately prepared during the 21st-century by the administrations of either former NYC Mayor Bloomberg or current NYC Mayor De Blasio to provide effective medical care and treatment medication for the more than 22,000 New York City residents,  many with underlying health conditions or living in local nursing homes, who are estimated to have died after contracting COVID-19. Yet according to a press release, headlined “Health Policy Insiders Reveal Details Of The Data-Driven Process Behind The City’s Public Health Successes; Approach Can Be A Model For Other Cities,” about the results of a RWJ Foundation-funded “research study” at Columbia‘s Mailman School of Public Health that was posted on the school’s website on Dec. 19, 2013, academic researchers there then claimed:

“As Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s term comes to a close, the latest research conducted by the Mailman School of Public Health indicates that he leaves a legacy of ambitious public health policies…that have improved the health and increased the life expectancy of New Yorkers. The paper takes a behind-the-scenes look at the Bloomberg Administration to evaluate the evidence and build public support for improving health in the city—which also can serve as a blueprint for health policy in cities across the country…Support for the study was provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.” (end of part 6)

Columbia University's Public Health School and NYC's `Corona-Gates' Scandal: Part 5

Columbia U./WHO Funder and Big Pharma Investor Bill Gates speaking at Columbia U. in 2005

Columbia U. School of Public Health’s Gates Foundation Connection
As Laurie Garrett noted in her 2000 book Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health, “the World Health Organization, once the conscience of global health, lost its way in the 1990s;” and “demoralized, rife with rumors of corruption, and lacking in leadership, WHO floundered.” And between 2016 and 2017, around 14 percent of the annual budget of the WHO (that apparently failed to prevent COVID-19 from spreading to NYC in 2020) came from Microsoft Multi-Billionaire Bill Gates’s Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation [BLGF], whose “research and funding favor pharmaceutical multinationals like GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, Roche, Sano, Gilead and Pfizer,” in which Gates and his foundation “hold shares in;” thus leading “to a clear conflict of interest,” according to a Nov. 19, 2017 Dandc.eu website article by Barbara Unmussig, titled “The Gates Foundation: Private-sector billionaires setting global agenda.” As the same 2017 article noted “the corporations profit from the Gates Foundation’s focus on pharmaceutical strategies, and the resulting corporate profits put dividends back into the donors’ pockets.”

Yet since 2019, the WHO still accepted over $200 million in “charitable grants” from Big Pharma Investor Bill Gates’s Gates Foundation.

As long ago as May 17, 2002, the Wall Street Journal, in an article titled “Gates Foundation Buys Stakes in Drug Makers” by David Bank and Rebecca Buckman, revealed that “the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has purchased shares in nine big pharmaceutical companies valued at nearly $205 million;” and in addition, the Los Angeles Times, in a Jan. 7, 2007 article by Charles Piller, Edmund Sanders and Robyn Dixon, reported that:

“…The Times found that the Gates Foundation has holdings in many companies that have failed tests of social responsibility because of environmental lapses, employment discrimination, disregard for worker rights, or unethical practices…In addition, The Times found the Gates Foundation endowment had major holdings in...pharmaceutical companies that price drugs beyond the reach of AIDS patients...As of this September [2007], the Gates Foundation held $169 million in Abbott stock. In 2005, the foundation held nearly $1.5 billion worth of stock in drug companies whose practices have been widely criticized as restricting the flow of key medicines to poor people in developing nations.

“On average, shares in those companies have increased in value about 54 per cent since 2002. Investments in Abbott and other drug makers probably have gained the foundation hundreds of millions of dollars….Microsoft monopolies in computer operating systems and business software depend upon the same intellectual-property and trade-law approaches favored by drug companies…”

So, not surprisingly, in a June, 2013 News Junkie blog post, titled “Bill Gates, Big Pharma, Bogus Philanthropy,” Ruben Rosenberg Corlorn noted that “as an investor in Merck & Co., Pfizer Inc., Johnson & Johnson and others, the Gates foundation shares financial interests with the makers of AIDS drugs, diagnostic tools, vaccines and other drugs;” and he characterized the foundation that funds the WHO in the following way:

“The Bill & Melinda Gates `Foundation’ is essentially a huge tax-avoidance scheme for enormously-wealthy capitalists who have made billions from exploiting the world’s people. The foundation invests, tax free, money from Gates and the `donations’ from others, in the very companies in which Gates owns millions in stocks, thus guaranteeing returns through both sales as well as intellectual-property rights. To add insult to injury, the system perpetuates the spread of disease rather than aids in their eradication, thus perpetually justifying his endeavors to `eradicate’ them (solving a problem they are creating)….It is almost certain that if enormously wealthy individuals and firms were held accountable for their actions instead of being allowed to `whitewash’ them in misleading and dishonest philanthropy, the world would be better. It is almost certain that if philanthropy was genuine, and not designed as a tax-avoidance scheme and one in which `donations’ serve as investments into the very firms in which the donors have enormous stakes, the world would be better….”

In his March 17, 2020 article in The Nation magazine about WHO Funder Bill Gates’s foundation, titled “Bill Gates’s Charity Paradox,” Tim Schwab also reported that “The Nation found close to $250 million in charitable grants from the Gates Foundation to companies in which the foundation holds corporate stocks and bonds: Merck, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Vodafone, Sanofi, Ericsson, LG, Medtronic, Teva, and numerous start-ups—with the grants directed at projects like developing new drugs and health monitoring systems and creating mobile banking services;” and noted that “a foundation giving a charitable grant to a company that it partly owns—and stands to benefit from financially—would seem like an obvious conflict of interest.” So, not surprisingly, the “non-profit” Gates Foundation’s “$50 billion endowment has generated $28.5 billion in investment income over the last five years,” yet “during the same period, the foundation has given away only $23.5 billion in charitable grants,” according to The Nation magazine’s March 17, 2020 article.

According to an article by Jacob Levich, titled “The Real Agenda of the Gates Foundation,” that appeared in the May 2014 issue of Aspects of India’s Economy:

“The Gates Foundation exercises power not only via its own spending, but more broadly through an elaborate network of `partner organizations’ including non-profits, government agencies, and private corporations. As the third largest donor to the UN's World Health Organization (WHO), it is a dominant player in the formation of global health policy….Such arrangements allow BMGF to leverage its stake in allied enterprises, much as private businesses enhance power and profits through strategic investment schemes….At the same time the Foundation supports NGOs that lobby governments to increase spending on the initiatives it sponsors.

“The Gates operation resembles…a massive, vertically integrated multinational corporation (MNC), controlling every step in a supply chain that reaches from its Seattle-based boardroom...Emulating his own strategies for cornering the software market, Gates has created a virtual monopoly in the field of public health… Vastly endowed, essentially unaccountable, unencumbered by respect for democracy…, it is ideally positioned to intervene swiftly and decisively on behalf of the interests it represents. As Bill Gates remarked, `I’m not gonna get voted out of office.’…

“In the wake of the 2007-08 financial crisis…the super-rich experienced popular anger more directly than at any time since the Great Depression….The avowedly anti-capitalist Occupy Wall Street movement received extensive…press coverage... Particularly worrisome to the mega-rich was the extent to which they themselves, rather than vague complaints about `the system,’ became the focus of discontent….BMGF’s publicity operation was quick to respond. The Foundation exploited `multiple messaging avenues for influencing the public narrative’ including the creation of `strategic media partners’ – ostensibly independent news organizations whose cooperation was ensured via the distribution of $25 million in annual grant money….At the same time BMGF expanded its online operations, using Twitter and Facebook to disseminate pseudo-scientific... images to millions of `followers’ worldwide…. Apart from the promotion of specific corporate interests and imperialist strategic aims, BMGF’s expertly publicized activities have the effect of laundering the enormous concentration of wealth in the hands of a few supremely powerful oligarchs….Thus the Gates Foundation, like the MNCs it so closely resembles, seeks to manufacture consent for its activities through the manipulation of public opinion.”

Coincidentally, the same foundation of Bill Gates that funds in a big way the WHO, which apparently failed to prevent the spread of COVID-19 to New York City in 2020, also has funded Columbia’s School of Public Health and Columbia University in a big way during the last two decades with tax-deductible “charitable grants.” In May 1999, for example, “Columbia University's Joseph L. Mailman School of Public Health” was “awarded $50 million from Bill and Melinda Gates,” according to a May 19, 1999 Columbia University Record website article. And although the $50 million “charitable grant” from Bill Gates’s foundation that Columbia’s School of Public Health received apparently did not improve New York City’s public health system’s capacity to prepare for expected 21st-century viruses like COVID-19, the same article quotes then-Columbia University president George Rupp as claiming that “the he Gates Foundation gift is of critical importance” and “with the combined efforts of a private foundation, a research university and government and community-based assistance organizations, we have the best chance of improving health care in areas of the world where the need is greatest."

Then, on Feb. 14, 2003, the Gates Foundation gave another tax-exempt “charitable grant” of $488,200 to Columbia University “to support a forum and broadcast production of a global health dialogue between Bill Gates and Bill Moyer at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health,” according to the Gates Foundation’s website. And on July 1, 2006, another $10 million in “charitable grant” money was given to Columbia University by the Gates Foundation “to support the Mailman School of Public Health Building Campaign.,” according to the Gates Foundation’s website.

In addition, between 1998 and Sept. 17, 2019, Gates’s Gates Foundation gave Columbia University and the Teachers College of Columbia University the following other “charitable grants:”

1. An April 1998 grant of $160,000 to Columbia University;

2. An April 10, 1998 grant of $610,000 to Columbia University;

3. A Sept. 1, 2002 grant of $4,746,533 to Columbia University “to support a randomized trial of male circumcision;”

4. A Nov. 2002 grant of $10 million to Columbia University;

5. A Nov. 15, 2006 grant of $240,687 to Teachers College of Columbia University “to carry out activities aimed at helping a national audience of journalists report on issues;”

6. A Nov. 2008 grant of $5,182,505 to Columbia University “to determine the causes of pediatric pneumonia…to inform prioritization of microbial targets for vaccine development;”

7. A March 23, 2012 grant of $2,502,000 to Teachers College of Columbia University “for general operating support;”

8. A July 2, 2013 grant of $273,083 to Columbia University “to examine key aspects of fecal sludge treatment;”

9. An April 1, 2016 grant of $1.3 million to Teachers College of Columbia University “for general operating support;”

10. A July 2016 grant of $7,905,046 to Columbia University “to support development of the Columbia Tutoring and Learning Center as a state of the art technology enabling tutoring program;”

11. A Nov. 2, 2016 grant of $1 million to Columbia University “to provide general operating support;”

12. A Jan. 29, 2018 grant of $1.5 million to Columbia University “for general operating support;”

13. A March 14, 2018 grant of $1.5 million to Columbia University “to support the development of computational methods for optimization of antibodies and vaccines and the application of these methods to important problems in global health;”

14. A March 16, 2018 grant of $1,911,540 to Columbia University;

15. An Aug. 2015 grant of $1,625,009 to Teachers College of Columbia University;

16. A Sept. 5, 2018 grant of $328,850 to Columbia University;

17. An Oct. 22, 2018 grant of $100,000 to Teachers College of Columbia University;

18. A Nov. 2018 grant of $250,000 to Columbia University; and

19. A Sept. 17, 2019 grant of $1.3 million to Teachers College of Columbia University “to provide general operating support.” (end of part 5)

Columbia University's Public Health School and NYC's `Corona-Gates' Scandal: Part 4

Columbia U.'s Mailman School of Public Health: Renamed in exchange for $33 million from Mailman Foundation

Columbia U. School of Public Health’s Historical Mailman Foundation Connection

One reason Columbia University’s School of Public Health was re-named the “Mailman School of Public Health” in 1998 was that, in the words of a Sept. 4, 1998 Columbia University Record website article, “the largest single gift ever made to a school of public health,” as of that year (prior to the Gates Foundation's subsequent "charity grant" of $50 million in 1999 [equal to over $78 million in 2020]), of $33 million [equal to over $52 million in 2020], “was received” that “summer by the Columbia School of Public Health (CSPH) from the New York City-based Mailman Foundation, Inc.” According to the same 1998 article:

“The family-run Mailman Foundation, founded by the late Joseph Lawrence Mailman,…was made possible by his business success. He and his brother, Abraham, formed the Utica Knife and Razor Company, the Pal Blade Company, and later the Mailman Corporation, one of the earliest conglomerates in North America. In the course of his enterprising career, Mailman was president of the Persona Blade Company and the British Rubber Company and chairman of the board of Air Express International.”

Prior to resigning in 1984 as chairman of the then-biggest cargo forwarder at the JFK airport in NYC, Air Express International (whose annual revenues exceeded $250 million in 1983), Joseph Mailman and his family owned around 30 percent of Air Express International [AEI]’s stock. But on Oct. 19, 1981, Circuit Court Judges Godbold, Morgan and Henderson issued a decision in Air Express International’s appeal of a National Labor Relations Board decision which stated:

“We enforce the Board's order as relevant to the remainder of miscellaneous violations of the Act. Based on substantial evidence, the Board found that AEI discriminatorily threatened to withhold raises from some employees while granting and promising raises to others all in order to discourage union activity and weaken the pro-union majority, that AEI threatened employees with various other reprisals because of their support of the union, and that AEI created the impression of surveillance and otherwise interfered with the freedom of employee's union activities by interrogating employees about such activities, by warning of `harassment’ from Board agents, and by soliciting employees not to testify before the Board.”

According to a July 10, 1990 New York Times obituary, Joseph Mailman and Abraham Mailman also later “acquired substantial interests” in “Diamond T Motors, Gulfstream Land and Development and Republic Aviation.” As a result of his special economic interest in the Gulfstream Land and Development real estate firm in Florida, the wealthy businessman for whom Columbia’s “School of Public Health” was renamed in 1998, ironically, also sat next to Canadian liquor mogul Edgar M. Bronfman, the then-chairman of both Seagram Company Ltd. and Joseph E. Seagram and Sons Inc.--whose corporations apparently profited, in part, from the sale of liquor to some folks whose health declined due to excessive drinking. (end of part 4)

Columbia University's Public Health School and NYC's `Corona-Gates' Scandal: Part 3

Chinese Government's NIVDC Funded Its Joint Research Lab "Arrangement" In China

Columbia U. Public Health School’s Chinese Government Connection Revisited

One reason the Center for Infection and Immunity [CII] of Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health may have neglected to spend enough of its time between 2013 and 2019 focused on preparing New York City’s public health system to respond more effectively to the spread of expected viruses like COVID-19 is that the Columbia’s CII director, Professor of Epidemiology Lipkin, was, instead, also apparently spending his time serving as one of the scientific directors of the “market socialist” Chinese state-capitalist government’s National Institute for Viral Disease Control[NIVDC]-funded Joint Research Laboratory for Pathogen Discovery in Beijing, China between 2013 and 2019.

According to a May 28, 2013 Columbia Mailman School of Public Health website article, titled “In An Historic Arrangement, Columbia University and the Chinese CDC Open Joint Pathogen Discovery Lab In Beijing,” the purpose of this “historic arrangement” was “to conduct surveillance, identify new infectious microbes, establish novel platforms for diagnostics, and develop drugs and vaccines to treat diseases in humans and animals..” And the same 2013 article also quoted Columbia’s Center for Infection and Immunity [CII] Director Lipkin as claiming that the Columbia’s arrangement with the Chinese Center for Disease Control [CDC]’s NIVDC would “enable CII and Chinese CDC investigators to work side-by-side developing solutions for pandemic threats to global health.”

Yet between 2013 and 2019 no effective “drugs and vaccines to treat” the over 21,000 estimated New Yorkers who possibly died from COVID-19 in 2020 were apparently developed from Columbia’s Chinese government connection; and Columbia’s “historic arrangement” with the Chinese CDC did not apparently help New York City’s public health system develop particularly “effective solutions for pandemic threats” to New York City’s public health.

Another reason the Center for Infection and Immunity of Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health may have also neglected to spend enough of its time between 2013 and 2019 focused on preparing New York City’s public health system to respond more effectively to COVID-19 is that the Columbia’s CII director, Professor of Epidemiology Lipkin, predicted in 2013 that “in 2013 the threat is not the SARS coronavirus—this time the imminent threats are the H7N9 influenza virus and the new coronavirus emerging in the Middle East,” according to the same May 2013 press release. Yet by 2020 the threat to New York City ‘s public health, which produced so many elderly patient fatalities and deaths of patients with underlying health conditions in New York City, apparently turned out to be a “coronavirus” that did not emerge “in the Middle East.”

After receiving an email from this writer, asking him why he predicted in May 2013 that “the threat is not the SARS coronavirus—this time the imminent threats are the H7N9 influenza virus and the new coronavirus emerging in the Middle East,” Mailman School of Public Health CII Director and Professor Epidemiology Lipkin, by email, provided the following reply:

“It seems that you are asking why I did not predict the emergence of SARS-Co-V-2 and suggesting that this failure means that the Mailman School of Public Health has failed to protect the health of New Yorkers.

“Perhaps your disappointment is rooted in nomenclature. COVID is not SARS. SARS-CoV-2 is not the same virus as SARS CoV.

“We do our best to promote public health. I told my colleagues at the NIH and the CDC about a new coronavirus circulating in Wuhan in December. I went to China in January and related my concerns in interviews while I was there and after my return. We have also produced public service messages, developed diagnostic tests, evaluated the utility of drugs, and are running plasma trials.”

Yet in an article posted on Apr. 6, 2020 on the Science Alert website, University of Texas A& M University-Texarkana Professor of Biology Benjamin Neuman noted that “SARS-CoV-2 is genetically very similar to other human respiratory coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV;” and “SARS-CoV-2 has all the same genetic equipment as the original SARS-COV…but with around 6,000 mutations sprinkled around in the usual places where coronaviruses change. Think whole milk versus skim milk.”

Ironically, despite the “historic arrangement” between “Columbia University and the Chinese CDC Open Joint Pathogen Discovery Lab In Beijing,” in a March 27, 2020 International Federation of Journalists website blog post, Louisa Lim asserted that “with its latest propaganda blitz on the novel coronavirus...Beijing is attempting to gaslight the world as it escalates its propaganda push to obscure the source of the disease;” and involved in “an effort to distract attention from accusations that its initial cover-up is responsible for the rest of the world’s plight, in particular the looming economic catastrophe.” According to Lim:

“The composition of China’s coronavirus task force highlights its priorities: Two out of nine members are from the propaganda bureau. They faced a challenging job in shifting the narrative when Beijing’s cover-up of the initial outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year allowed the virus to spread unabated. There was further dismal publicity after nine doctors who tried to raise the alarm were punished. When one of them, Li Wenliang, died from COVID-19, the domestic groundswell of anger was so intense that a gratitude campaign thanking the state for its efforts had to be dropped. That popular rage is still evident. Touring a residential compound in Wuhan, Vice Premier Sun Chunlan was greeted by a chorus of shouts of `Fake! All this fake!’ resounding out of the safe anonymity provided by high-rise apartments….”

According to an Apr. 17, 2020 TASS article, however, China’s Ambassador to Russia Zhange Hanhui claimed in April 2020 that “the virus was imported to China’s Wuhan, instead of emerging there;” and “although the novel coronavirus was first discovered in Wuhan, there are no facts determining that the source had originated from there.” The same Apr. 17, 2020 TASS article also reported that the Chinese government’s diplomat claimed “that in late December 2019, the Wuhan Center for Disease Prevention and Control (China CDC) discovered the previously unknown pneumonia cases;” and “starting Jan. 3, 2020, China `promptly and timely provided the World Health Organization (WHO), the US and nations’ relevant agencies with information on the epidemic" and, in addition, on Jan. 4, 2020 “the head of the Chinese CDC contacted the US CDC Director and briefed him on the epidemiologic situation," the envoy said.”

Coincidentally, in New York City-- on the same day that China’s Ambassador to Russia claimed that China “promptly and timely provided the World Health Organization [WHO], the US and other nations’ relevant agencies with information on the epidemic”— Professor of Epidemiology and director of the Center for Infection and Immunity (CII) at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health Lipkin (who was also a scientific director of the Chinese CDC Open Joint Pathogen Discovery Lab after 2013) was presented with a medal at the Chinese Consulate in new York City. According to a Jan. 7, 2020 article on the website of Columbia University’s School of Public Health:

“The government of China honored Ian Lipkin with a medal…During the Jan. 3 awards ceremony in the Chinese Consulate in New York, Counsel General Ping Huang presented Lipkin with the medal...The medal...was issued from the Central Government, Central Military Commission, and the State Council. Among attendees were Columbia Mailman School Dean Linda P. Fried and members of China’s Counsel of Science and Technology.

“`It is a great honor to receive this medal,’ said Lipkin. `I will cherish it as a reminder of my dear friends and colleagues in China and all we have accomplished together for the health of the Chinese people and all people around the world.’”

The same Columbia University School of Public Health website article also noted that “today,” Lipkin “continues to consult with the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Chinese Academy of Science, and the Ministry of Health.” And in 2019 “the Chinese Academy of Sciences awarded funding for a collaborative project between” Lipkin’s “CII and Sun Yat-Sen University in zoonotic diseases.” In addition, in 2016, the Columbia University professor of Epidemiology “was honored with the China International Science and Technology Cooperation Award, presented in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, presided by President Xi Jinping.”

Yet if China “promptly and timely provided the World Health Organization [WHO], the US and other nations’ relevant agencies with information on the epidemic” on the same day Professor of Epidemiology and director of the Center for Infection and Immunity (CII) at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health Lipkin was presented with a medal at the Chinese Consulate in New York City in early January 2020, why did Columbia University’s School of Public Health apparently fail in January 2020 to help New York City’s public health system adequately prepare to either prevent the virus from spreading rapidly in New York City or to provide effective treatment medication for the many New Yorkers, with underlying health conditions or living in local nursing homes, who contracted the virus a few months later, as effectively as the Cuban government’s public health system apparently did in January 2020?

According, for example, to an Apr. 17, 2020 article by Charles McKelvey, titled “Covid-19: Lessons from Cuba”:

“In late January, a short time following the confirmation in China that the new coronavirus could be transmitted from person-to-person, Cuban scientists formed two teams, one to assess the knowledge and resources that Cuba had available, and another to focus on the application of measures to respond to the pandemic. They determined that Cuba essentially had the medical personnel, medical equipment, and medicines necessary to respond, but they possibly were short on hospital beds. So, the Ministry of Public Health established the necessary conditions with respect to hospital beds, making adjustments in the hospital infrastructure and incorporating tourist lodging. At the same time, Cuba intensified its previously established structures for the surveillance of incoming travelers at airports and other points of entry. Subsequently, international tourism was stopped, as was the entrance of Cuban citizens living abroad, except for those on medical and educational missions. “

Yet in New York City in late January 2020, instead of , apparently, helping New York City’s public health system prepare more effectively prepare to confront the COVID-19 virus, Columbia University’s Center for Infection and Immunity Director Lipkin arrived in China on Jan. 30, 2020 (after saying in an article, updated Jan. 28, 2020 on Columbia University's website, that the novel coronavirus was not expected to spread to the same extent as SARS, which reached 33 countries), before he, himself, later eventually tested positive for COVID-19. As a Feb. 3, 2020 Xinhua website article noted, “Ian Lipkin, professor of epidemiology and director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, told Xinhua in a written interview Saturday that he” wanted “`to work hand in hand with Chinese scientists to create vaccines, drugs, diagnostic tests to address this outbreak, and to reduce disease and death among the Chinese people;” although the estimated number of New York City resident fatalities from COVID-19 is apparently turning out to be much higher than the number of estimated fatalities from COVID-19 in China. (end of part 3)

Columbia University's Public Health School and NYC's `Corona-Gates' Scandal: Part 2

Columbia University Public Health School: Spent 2009-2011 working for `Contagion' filmmakers

Columbia University Public Health School’s Hollywood Connection Revisited

One reason the Center for Infection and Immunity of Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health may have neglected to spend enough of its time between 2009 and 2011 focused on preparing New York City’s public health system to respond more effectively to the spread of expected 21st-century viruses like COVID-19 is that the Center for Infection and Immunity’s director, John Snow Professor of Epidemiology W. Ian Lipkin (whose lab was then on the 18th floor of the Rosenfield Building at 722 West 168th Street), apparently also worked during those years as a scientific consultant for the producers of the Hollywood movie Contagion-- which cost $60 million to make, but eventually grossed $135.5 million after the film was released in September 2011.

According to an Aug. 27, 2011 Columbia Mailman School of Public Health website article, Hollywood movie director Steven Soderbergh and Contagion screenwriter Scott Z. Burns “sought out” Columbia Professor Lipkin “to tap his scientific expertise” for use in their commercially-oriented Hollywood movie project; and “after early conversations about the movie concept, Lipkin signed on as technical adviser to Contagion in March, 2009 and played an active role throughout production,” suggesting “the movie’s plot might be triggered by an outbreak of a virus similar to Nipah, a deadly virus that has, on occasion, migrated from animals to people.”

The same Aug. 27, 2011 article also noted:

“Dr. Lipkin also coached Contagion actors on the practices and process of scientific research. Kate Winslet and Jennifer Ehle visited the Center for Infection and Immunity to learn the mechanics of being a bench scientist, working with the lab’s equipment to do technical procedures. And Elliott Gould, who plays a research scientist named `Ian,’ talked to Dr. Lipkin about the intellectual process of making a scientific breakthrough. Suggesting to the actor how to look through a microscope and reflect on what it reveals, `I told Elliott it’s important that you get this right, because you are playing me,’ Dr. Lipkin recalls.

“The laboratory at the Center for Infection and Immunity, where Dr. Lipkin and his team of 65 conduct their research, also has an invisible role in the movie….Contagion’s production crew traveled to the lab to record centrifuges whirring, liquid nitrogen hissing, and even the squeaky noise of opening animal cage doors for the film’s soundtrack.”

In a Sept. 10, 2011 interview with Wired magazine, Columbia Professor of Epidemiology Lipkin also described his School of Public Health department’s role in helping to make the Hollywood movie in the following way:

“Actors met with people whose work they represented in laboratories and the field. Where feasible we used bona fide equipment in lab scenes. My colleagues and I were on set for critical scenes to address questions from Soderbergh, actors and other artists, or to help with dialogue or makeup on the fly….”

Then, on the eve of Contagion’s film premiere in late September 2011, Columbia School of Public Health Professor of Epidemiology Lipkin announced that a tax-exempt $500,000 endowment--named after the Hollywood director and screenwriter with whom he and his Center for Infection and Immunity had collaborated with in making the commercially-oriented Contagion movie--the “Scott Z. Burns and Steven Soderbergh Fellowship in Emerging Infectious Diseases,” was being set-up; to purportedly “support postdoctoral research in global infectious diseases at the center for Infection and Immunity at the Mailman School of Public Health.”

But neither the research work nor the work for the Hollywood’s Contagion filmmakers that the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia’s School of Public Health did between 2009 and 2011 apparently did much to prevent the deaths of the over 21,000 New York City residents, many with underlying health conditions or local elderly nursing home residents, who are estimated to have lost their lives since COVID-19 reached the Big Apple in 2020—although Columbia’s Center for Infection and Immunity claims to be “establishing and implementing programs for diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of acute outbreaks of infectious disease.” (end of part 2)

Columbia University's Public Health School and NYC's `Corona-Gates' Scandal: Part 1

Columbia University's Public Health School at 722 W. 168th St. in Manhattan

“…What is this medical Columbia all about? It is a medical teaching, research, and service complex concentrated in the Washington Heights-Harlem-Upper West Side area in Manhattan…It is one of the richest medical centers in the world…The medical center has vast real estate holdings in the Washington Heights area…When the School of Public Health’s reputation began to skid in the early 1960s, it was commented that much of the faculty was doing consulting work or was active somewhere else in the nation or world…and was not spending the time doing…service…in the immediate environs…”
--from a 1970 report of the Health Policy Advisory Center, titled The American Health Empire: Power, Profits and Politics

“Columbia University's Joseph L. Mailman School of Public Health has been awarded $50 million from Bill and Melinda Gates…”
--from a May 19, 1999 Columbia University Record website article, headlined “GATES FOUNDATION GIVES $50 MILLION TO PUBLIC HEALTH “

Did Columbia’s School of Public Health Fail To Protect NYC’s Public Health?

One reason over 21,000 New York City residents, many with underlying health conditions or living in local nursing homes, are estimated to have died from COVID-19 in 2020 is that New York City’s public health system in the 21st-century was apparently unprepared to either prevent the virus from spreading rapidly or to provide adequate medical care and effective treatment medication for many New Yorkers who contracted the virus.

Yet according to a Sept. 4, 1998 Columbia University Record article, titled “Mailman Foundation Gives $33 Million to Public Health,” then-Columbia University President George Rupp “said that this landmark gift will help the School of Public Health continue to play a leadership role in influencing and defining health care well into the next century;” and the then-Columbia University president was also quoted as claiming that “`Over the years, the School has made many important contributions to our nation's health and is widely considered one of the country's leading schools of public health.’”

In addition, the same 1998 Columbia University Record article quoted Columbia’s then-vice president for the health sciences and dean of the faculty of medicine, Herbert Pardes, as also claiming that “`the School of Public Health is taking the lead in the development of a Medical Center-wide program of research on quality of care, use of technological innovation, cost effectiveness studies and many other important health services research questions of concern to the health and well-being of the American people.’”

But if tax-exempt Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health was purportedly developing since 1998, at its 722 West 168th Street location in Manhattan, “a Medical Center-wide program of research on quality of care” and “many other important health services research questions of concern to the health and well-being of the American people,” why did it apparently fail to prepare New York City’s public health system in the 21st-century to more adequately prevent COVID-19 from spreading so rapidly in 2020? And why did Columbia’s School of Public Health apparently fail to create and provide more effective treatment medication for the thousands of New Yorkers with underlying health conditions or living in nursing homes, who are estimated to have died after becoming infected during the last few months? (end of part 1)

`Hug Me Through The Night' folk song lyrics

A folk love song from the 1980's about expressing love feelings at home within a society that enslaves working-class people

There's nothing more to say, my friend,
There's nothing more to prove
There's nothing more to fear, my friend,
There's no need more to move;
There's love that flows from deep inside
Expressed in many ways:
So rest with me and live your dreams
And hug me through the night.

There's nothing more to seek, my friend,
There's nothing to possess
There's nothing more to keep, my friend,
There's no need more to test;
There's love that seeks to show itself
Revealed in many ways:
So rest with me and live your dreams
And hug me through the night.

There's nothing more to ask, my friend,
There's nothing more to know
There's nothing to protect, my friend,
There's no need more to show;
There's love that trusts quite easily
And kisses silently:
So rest with me and live your dreams
And hug me through the night.

There's slavery out there, my friend
There's prison and poverty
There's ignorance on top, my friend,
There's pigs and lies and greed;
There's love that's locked in chains by hate
And can't escape it seems:
So rest with me and live your dreams
And hug me through the night.

Did Multi-Billionaire Democratic Party Funder Bloomberg's Media Firm and Foundation Increase Wealth When Bloomberg Was NYC Mayor?

In his 2017 book, The Givers: Wealth, Power and Philanthropy, Inside Philanthropy media site editor David Callahan described Democratic Party Funder Michael Bloomberg's life after the multi-billionaire (who grew up in Massachusetts) ended his three terms as a "mayor" of New York City, in the following way:

"Michael Bloomberg prepared to step down as mayor of New York City after 12 years on the job...Bloomberg settled into his post-mayoral life...Bloomberg soon plunged back into...day-to-day management of his...media company, Bloomberg L.P....Bloomberg lived extravagantly...owning a private jet and some 13 properties around the world by 2013--which included estates in London, Bermuda, the Hamptons, and Westchester County...

"...Bloomberg...ended up owning 88 percent of a company that now has 19,000 employees and $9 billion in annual revenue. During his years as mayor, the value of the company had grown steadily. Bloomberg was worth just under $5 billion as he took office in 2002. By the time he left, that figure had soared to $33 billion. Within 2 years of leaving City Hall, his wealth had climbed higher still, to over $40 billion."

The same book also recalled how U.S. Multi-Billionaire Oligarch Bloomberg apparently used his "charitable" foundation to gain political power in New York City, to retain political power in New York City during his years as "mayor" and to continue to influence U.S. political decision-making after the Plutocrat from Massachusetts was no longer New York City's "mayor:"

"Bloomberg...started giving more once at City Hall...He gave many millions to nonprofit groups around the city--giving that some saw as a naked effort to co-opt critics and bolster his power...Never before had a major public official in the United States so adroitly used philanthropy to advance his agenda--just as Bloomberg set a new record for spending his own money to get elected in the first place.

"Bloomberg...quietly built up...his philanthropy during his years in government. He bought a $45 million...mansion on 78th and Madison in 2006 to house his foundation, and in 2010, he appointed his longtime aide Patricia Harris as CEO of Bloomberg Philanthropies, a job she took on while still working at City Hall...You may have imagined that Michael Bloomberg's run as a power player would end when he stepped down as mayor of New York. Of course, nothing of the kind was true. He simply pivoted to pull other levers of influence. Bloomberg...used his great wealth to buy his way into office...

"...Not long before he was elected mayor of New York in 2001, Michael Bloomberg ran into his old friend Vartan Gregorian on the street in New York. Gregorian led the Carnegie Corporation...Bloomberg...soon sent over a very large check to Carnegie, which the foundation was free to use as it saw fit. More big checks followed after Bloomberg took office, arriving each December...Carnegie spread the money...to hundreds of nonprofits around the city, particularly arts and cultural groups. Ultimately, by 2010 more than $200 million would flow from Bloomberg...While the grants were made by Carnegie,...Bloomberg stayed anonymous...The mayor had quietly become one of the largest...funders of nonprofits in the city...

"...The New York Times reported that when Bloomberg was pushing the City Council to revise the city's term limits law, to allow him to run for a third term as mayor, his `aides asked several groups that had received Carnegie grants to lobby for the change publicly'...The change in the law was ultimately approved, allowing Bloomberg to run for a third term in 2009...Bloomberg eked out a narrow victory...He spent $103 million on his final race for office, or about $183 per vote.

"The following year, Bloomberg pulled the plug on the Carnegie grants program for city nonprofits..."

Did U.S. Multi-Billionaire Oligarch Zuckerberg Use Chan Zuckerberg Initiative To Avoid Paying Fair Share Of Taxes?

Like U.S. Multi-Billionaire Oligarch Bill Gates, the U.S. Multi-Billionaire Oligarch Mark Zuckerberg apparently has avoided paying a fair share of local, state and federal taxes in the USA by setting up a "charitable" organization. As Inside Philanthropy media site editor David Callahan noted in his 2017 The Givers: Wealth, Power, and Philanthropy In A New Gilded Age book:

"On December 1, 2015, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan pledged to use 99 percent of their shares in Facebook to make the world a better place...These shares were worth about $45 billion...

"...ProPublica's Jesse Eisenberg...blasted the couple's choice to create a limited liability corporation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, to handle their good works. That structure would allow them to avoid taxes, as well as oversight, said Eisenberg, since LLCs don't have to disclose their activities...Eisenberg wrote that `we are turning into a society of oligarchs. And I am not...excited...to welcome the new Silicon Valley overlords.'

"Other critics echoed these points...with charges that Zuckerberg and Chan's `non-charity charity,' as The Atlantic dubbed it, amounted to tax avoidance and an undemocratic power grab...

"...Many funders, particularly the newer givers arriving on the scene with huge fortunes, don't reveal much about their giving, and nonprofit laws allow rivers of money to sluice through society in opaque ways...Philanthropists often operate subtly, working behind the scenes to set agendas and shape decisions...Their fingerprints can be hard to see...These givers are becoming more powerful while ordinary Americans struggle to get their voices heard at all..."

The same book also observed:

"Many techies like to think they are on a grand mission to improve life on earth...But the moral blind spots...can be enormous. For instance, Facebook and Google...have both engaged in elaborate tax avoidance schemes using offshore subsidiaries..."

How Super-Rich in USA Block Radical Democratization Of U.S. Society

In his 1975 book, More Power Than We Know: The People's Movement Toward Democracy, long-time U.S. antiwar Movement organizer and 1960's Chicago 8 Conspiracy Trial Defendant Dave Dellinger indicated how Super-Rich folks in the USA [like Multi-Billionair Oligarch Bill Gates in 21st-century, for example] block the creation of a radically democratized society in the United States:

"...The persons who rob through banks are enabled to throw their weight around in ways that would make a feudal baron envious...They can use some of their stolen money to set up tax-exempt foundations, which often play a more decisive role in determining public policy and implementation of the law than either elected officials or the courts. They can serve as trustees of both private and state universities...They can buy a string of newspapers and radio and television stations and see that the news is filtered to the public in accord with their private standards of public policy...By their ownership of the media they can decide which members of the Movement are accepted as national spokesmen [or spokeswomen] and which get favorable or unfavorable publicity. They can decide which Movement activities are sympathetically reported and which caricatured and condemned, which aspirants for office have their name and faces constantly in public view, an absolute pre-condition for a successful campaign. In these and other ways they can exercise grossly undemocratic influence on both the Establishment and the forces that oppose it..." 

Time To Limit Life Of Billionaire Oligarch Bill Gates's Foundation?

Obama Awarding  Medal To Billionaire Oligarch Bill Gates  In November 2016

As University of Virginia Commonwealth Professor of History  Oliver Zunz observed in his 2011 Philanthropy In America book, "the foundation that Bill and Melinda Gates created in 2000 with their Microsoft fortune, reinforced by investor Warren Buffett's gift of part of his own fortune to it, is the world's largest...foundation, today's counterpart of the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1970's and the Ford Foundation in the 1960's.

But as the Philanthropy In America book also recalled:

"In drafting...tax legislation in the Senate Finance Committee [in 1969], Senator [Albert] Gore [Sr.] introduced...clause that limited the life of foundations to 40 years. `The record shows,' Gore argued, `that in overwhelming proportions and instances foundations are created for the purpose of tax avoidance, to extend economic benefits to members of the creator's family and to continue family ownership and control of property.'...

"...There was also some support on the left for putting a legal limit on a foundation's life...But...liberal philanthropists were opposed...The foundations countered [Gore's] charges against them...and the amendment to defeat the death sentence [proposed by Gore Sr. to put a legal limit on a foundation's life] passed the Senate 53 to 35 [in 1969]..."

Democratic Party Leader Obama's 1990's Joyce Foundation Connection

"Non-profit" foundations that fail to pay a fair share of local, state and federal taxes, like the Chicago-based Joyce and MacArthur foundations, are supposed to be just politically non-partisan "charitable" organizations. Yet during the 1990's, both Joyce Foundation and MacArthur Foundation executives apparently helped launch Democratic Party leader and future Democratic President (and possible 2020 Democratic Party vice-presidential nominee/candidate?) Barack Obama's politically partisan office-seeking career; by arranging to have Obama sit on the Joyce Foundation's board of directors in 1994. As David Garrow noted in his 2017 Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama book:

"...Barack...talked [in 1994]...with Sokoni Karanja about a prospective leadership training and development project...Eighteen months earlier Sokoni had been awarded a $320,000 MacArthur Foundation `genius grant' and the Woods Fund already had committed a further $72,000 toward his effort...

"...Barack's range of acquaintances was growing too, and one of the most significant new onews was Deborah Leff...producer at ABC News before being recruited as president of the Joyce Foundation in 1992. Thanks to a family timber fortune, Joyce for a quarter century had been a significant grant maker...

"...Leff recommended Barack...as a...new board member...Barack's election to Joyce's board was announced just after Thanksgiving 1994."

The same book also recalled:

"Equally significant was Debbie Leff's recommendation of Barack to a pair of fellow presidents of prominent Chicago foundations, Adele Smith Simmons at MacArthur and Patricia A. Graham at Spencer. One year earlier publishing billionaire Walter Annenberg had pledged $500 million...Wieboldt Foundation executive director Anne Hallett had left that post to create a new national network...Professor Bill Ayers...immediately queried Hallett and new Joyce Foundation education program officer Warren Chapman about Annenberg's potential...They submitted a final proposal...requesting $49.2 million...Hallett and Ayers reached out to Patricia Graham at Spencer...

"A Chicago entity would be needed to administer the Annenberg grant...and Graham in turn asked her fellow foundation presidents Adele Simmons and Debbie Leff to join her. The three women met for breakfast in mid-December [1994], and then held several more meetings with Hallett and Ayers in early January [1995]...A local board for the new organization would have to be chosen, and Debbie strongly recommended Barack...Pat Graham agreed to ask Barack, and invited him to meet her for a mid-February [1995] dinner at a well-known Italina restaurant...

"At dinner that night with Barack, Pat Graham...popped the question, explaining how she, Debbie, and Adele all wanted him to chair the new Chicago Annenberg Challenge board...At another breakfast meeting, Pat, Debbie, and Anne introduced Barack and Bill Ayers to each other...Ayers was well known in Chicago...His father Thomas G. Ayers...had...been...the longtime head of Commonwealth Edison...

"...By mid-March [1995] a board...was in place, and at its first meeting, Pat Graham's motion to elect Barack as their chair was unanimously adopted...The Chicago Annenberg Challenge reached the midpoint of its five years in mid-1997, jsut as the board mad its largest allocation of dollars to date. Notable was a grant of $750,000 to Bill Ayers's {project]..."

Did Obama Falsely Claim Involvement in Columbia Students' 1980's Anti-Apartheid Divestment Movement?

Former Democratic President (and possible 2020 Democratic Party Vice-Presidential Nominee?) Barack Obama (who's now a Multi-Millionaire) apparently once claimed that he was "deeply involved" in the Columbia University students' anti-apartheid divestment movement during the 1980's. Yet according to David Garrow's 2017 Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama book:

"Obama would dramatically exaggerate his involvement in Columbia's divestment activism on several occasions, telling one interview that `I was a leader on the issues both at Occidental and at Columbia.' Talking about his two years there to a second questioner, Obama asserted that `while I was on campus, I was very active in a number of student movements,' and particularly `I was very active in the divestment movement on campus.' Several years later, on his first visit to South Africa, Obama declared that `I became deeply involved with the divestment movement,' and `i remember meeting with a group of ANC leaders' or at least `ANC members one day in New York City.' There are no contemporary records or other participants' memories that attest to any such encounter..."

During the 1980's in New York City, though, Obama did befriend Genevieve Cook--whose father was the Director General of Australia's Office of National Assessments [ONA], the country's top intelligence agency, between 1981 and 1989 and an Australian ambassador to the United States after 1989 for a few years (including the year that Australian troops joined U.S. troops in attacking Iraq in the 1991 "Kuwaitigate"/Gulf War) As David Garrow noted in the same 2017 book:

"...Sometime prior to New Year's Eve [in late December of 1983], his [Obama's] friend Andy Roth invited him to a party that Andy's brother was hosting on their 6th-floor apartment at 240 East 13th Street. Jon worked at Chanticleer Press...and other invitees included Genevieve Cook, a 25-year-old...who had worked at Chanticleer...She was born in 1958 to parents who were Australian: Helen Ibbitson, the daughter of a Melbourne banker, and Michael J. Cook, a conservative diplomat who would go on to head up Australia's top intelligence agency before serving 4 years as ambassador to the United States. Her parents had divorced when Genevieve was 10-years old, and Helen then married Philip C. Jessup Jr. an American lawyer and executive living in Jakarta during the 1970's...While she was at Swarthmore, her mother and stepfather Phil had moved from Jakarta to New York, and by late 1983 Genevieve was temporarily living in their spacious apartment on Park Avenue just below 90th Street...

"At the Roth brothers' party, Genevieve...and Obama struck up a conversation that lasted several hours after they discovered their mutual ties to Indonesia and expatriate similarities..."

1981-1989 Director-General of Australia's ONA Michael J. Cook