NIH internal emails reveal pandemic planning years before Covid
By the time Covid emerged in 2020, many of the global health power players moved seamlessly into roles they had spent years preparing for.
A cache of internal emails obtained from within the US National Institutes of Health has exposed years of strategic planning for future pandemics involving governments, foundations, international organisations, and pharmaceutical companies.
The documents, stretching back to at least 2016, show that Dr Francis Collins, Director of the NIH from 2009 to 2021, was at the centre of these efforts.
In that role, he oversaw the allocation of the agency’s substantial research budget, which ran into tens of billions of dollars annually.
The emails reveal Collins working closely with the Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, World Bank, World Economic Forum, the African Academy of Sciences, and major pharmaceutical companies to strengthen research infrastructure, regulatory readiness, and international coordination well before Covid appeared.
For the public, the Covid response was presented as an unexpected crisis. Governments appeared to be making difficult decisions while navigating profound uncertainty.
But these emails tell a different story.