Dr. Nicolas Hulscher, epidemiologist, discussed how lone star ticks cause alpha-gal syndrome, an allergy to red meat, and suggested “serious investigations” be conducted.
COVID forced the public to ask whether a pandemic could come from a lab. Now, years later, Congress is hearing testimony about a COVID lab-leak coverup, and Tulsi Gabbard is reportedly investigating more than 120 U.S.-funded foreign biolabs.
Experts Warn Lab Leaks ‘Surprisingly Common’ After NIH Confirms Possible Exposure to Deadly Virus at Montana Lab
An employee at Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Montana was potentially exposed to Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever following a personal protective equipment breach in November 2025, according to the National Institutes of Health. The incident highlights the lack of a centralized federal system to track all laboratory incidents across agencies and institutions.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website.
A Rocky Mountain Laboratories employee in Hamilton, Montana, may have been exposed to Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) in November 2025 after an accidental breach of personal protective equipment, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
The incident was reported to NIH in February 2026, according to internal communications referenced in documents shared by White Coat Waste.
NIH officials said the employee did not become infected, and no transmission occurred.
“The employee was immediately isolated and monitored under appropriate care at a specialized medical facility before it was confirmed that no actual exposure or transmission had occurred,” NIH said in a statement. “At no time was there any risk to the public or to other staff.”
What is Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever?
CCHF is a rare but potentially fatal viral disease spread primarily through infected tick bites or contact with the blood and bodily fluids of infected animals or people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The disease, which is most common in parts of Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Eastern and Southern Europe, can cause high fever, severe headache, vomiting, internal bleeding and hemorrhaging. The CDC reported that up to 50% of hospitalized patients may die from the illness.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations said veterinarians and healthcare workers, and people who work closely with livestock, face an elevated risk of infection, while human-to-human transmission can occur through exposure to contaminated blood, medical equipment or bodily fluids.
There is no approved cure or available vaccine for CCHF, according to the World Health Organization.
Incident occurred at high-containment NIH lab
Rocky Mountain Laboratories, a Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) facility operated by NIH, conducts research on high-consequence infectious diseases, including tick-borne and emerging viral pathogens.
The facility is designed to study “confounding health issues, such as coronavirus, influenza, prion diseases, and antibiotic-resistant bacteria.”
It is part of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. It has historically focused on vector-borne and infectious conditions, including Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever and other pathogens.
Lab leaks ‘surprisingly common’
Lab leaks involving dangerous pathogens occur more often than widely understood, according to some biosafety researchers.
Richard Ebright, Ph.D., a molecular biologist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, said lab accidents that result in laboratory-acquired infections or releases are “surprisingly common.”
“The CCHF incident … was just one of an average of five such events that occur every week in the U.S., Canada and the U.K.,” he said.
Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist and professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, said these types of dangers are treated with vigilance.
“When there is a leak there is a response,” he said. “The general track record is an affirmation that this system is working around the world.”
‘Not mandatory’ to report all leaks
Oversight of high-containment biological research laboratories in the U.S., however, remains fragmented, without a centralized federal system to track all laboratory incidents across agencies and institutions.
“There is no national database because it’s not mandatory to report all leaks,” said Alina Chan, Ph.D., a vector and genetic engineering specialist.
However, reporting of accidents, exposures and potential containment breaches in the U.S. has “no federal accounting of incidents” beyond a narrow set of regulated pathogens and “no official registry” for many high-containment laboratories.
Korol’s analysis contrasted the U.S. system with Canada’s centralized Laboratory Incident Notification Canada program, which requires mandatory national reporting of biosafety incidents. She warned that inconsistent documentation and oversight can hinder transparency, risk assessment and coordinated responses to potential lab leaks.
‘Continual improvement’ needed
A 2024 scoping review in The Lancet documented 309 lab-acquired infections involving 51 pathogens and 16 reported accidental pathogen escape incidents between 2000 and 2021.
The authors concluded that “continual improvement” in biosafety management and reporting standards is essential, noting that underreporting and inconsistent oversight likely obscure the true scale of the problem.
Researchers said stronger reporting systems and root-cause investigations are necessary to reduce future incidents and improve laboratory accountability worldwide.
The authors wrote that “the question is not if a pathogen will escape, but rather which pathogen will and what measures are in place to contain an escape with serious consequences.”
Baric Published Traceless Coronavirus Genome Engineering Platform Just Days Before the 2002 SARS-CoV-1 Pandemic Began
NIH-funded project describes how to digitally assemble, manipulate, and reconstruct full coronavirus genomes while removing visible engineering fingerprints from the final sequence.
In November 2002—the same month Chinese officials later said the first SARS cases began appearing in Guangdong Province—a team led by University of North Carolina coronavirologist Ralph Baric published a paper describing a programmable, full-length coronavirus genome assembly system capable of reconstructing coronavirus genomes while removing visible assembly fingerprints from the final construct.
The paper, published November 1, 2002, in the Journal of Virology, was titled “Systematic Assembly of a Full-Length Infectious cDNA of Mouse Hepatitis Virus Strain A59” and described a new reverse-genetics platform for assembling an entire coronavirus genome from modular DNA fragments.
The work was financed by American tax dollars in the form of research grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH): “AI23946 and GM63228 to R.S.B., AI26603 to M.R.D., and AI17418 to S.R.W.”
The timing raises obvious questions about whether the emergence of sophisticated government-backed coronavirus engineering systems and the beginning of the SARS era were truly independent events.
Important excerpt:
Years later, Baric would outline and patent how to engineer coronaviruses with SARS-CoV-2’s defining traits—a furin cleavage site (PRRA) insertion at the S1/S2 junction, targeted human-optimizing mutations throughout the receptor-binding domain (including the critical Q498 residue), and the two-proline (V1060P/L1061P) substitution to stabilize the spike protein in its prefusion conformation—just months before the COVID-19 pandemic began.
(See link for article)
**Comment**
It’s important to update history when facts become known.
The reason it’s important to link Baric’s paper and work done on SARS is because the work led to COVID. It’s important to emphasize the bit about ‘removing visible assembly fingerprints.’ This simply means it was manipulated purposely to be invisible – a lot like Lyme/MSIDS.
Just to refresh your memory, President Trump declared a national emergency in March 2020, which consolidated power into the executive branch, placing COVID as a military operation and effectively declaring a medical martial law. According to Attorney Todd Callender, all federal legal cases regarding COVID crimes were dismissed because the military was prosecuting a war during a declared national emergency. This can happen again at any time.
An HHS-funded study published this month says that scientists have lab-engineered brand-new reassortant “Frankenstein” bird flu viruses said to carry genetic components from the 2024 dairy cow H5N1 outbreak and a purportedly fatal 2025 Washington H5N5 case, creating pathogens the paper warns may possess enhanced immune-evasion potential in humans.
The study, published in Nature Communications, was conducted by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and the University of Chicago.
The paper repeatedly warns that the bird flu constructs like the ones these researchers engineered may pose an increased risk to humans because much of the population possesses weak or nonexistent immunity against them.
The experiments align with published gain-of-function definitions involving enhanced immune evasion, altered host range dynamics, and pandemic-preparedness research.
“This project was funded in part with federal funds from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, under contract no. 75N93021C00015 and grant number R01AI08686.”
The disclosure section also states lead author Scott E. Hensley:
“is a co-inventor on patents that describe the use of nucleoside-modified mRNA as a vaccine platform.”
The paper further states Hensley received consulting fees from:
Sanofi
Pfizer
Lumen
Novavax
Merck
(See link for article)
According to investigative journalist Jon Fleetwood, newly released H.R. 8595, which readies $3.35 BILLION for future global health threats, keeps Bill Gates’ ‘vaccine’ syndicate GAVI plugged into the U.S. funding pipeline.
the bill is not merely funding emergency humanitarian aid.
It’s funding the continued buildout of international public health infrastructure capable of coordinating surveillance systems, outbreak-response mechanisms, immunization campaigns, emergency-response networks, and foreign health-crisis operations across multiple nations.
The legislation also explicitly authorizes programs tied to: “disaster preparedness training for health crises” and: “programs to prevent, prepare for, and respond to unanticipated and emerging global health threats.”
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has invoked the controversial PREP Act to shield FUJIFILM Toyama Chemical from legal liability for favipiravir (Avigan), an antiviral drug that is not approved for hantavirus treatment in any country and has never received FDA approval in the United States.
The declaration, signed May 22, 2026, provides broad liability protection to the Japanese manufacturer, distributors, and healthcare providers using the drug on people said to have been exposed during the MV Hondius cruise ship outbreak and their close contacts.
This PREP Act declaration, in effect through July 18, 2026, limits lawsuits for injuries or deaths caused by the drug.
The move raises major health freedom concerns involving informed consent, bodily autonomy, pharmaceutical liability shielding, experimental countermeasure deployment during a publicized outbreak event, and the use of emergency powers to protect manufacturers and administrators from accountability if Americans are injured or killed by the drug.
You can contact HHS here to voice opposition to the use of emergency powers to shield experimental hantavirus countermeasures and pharmaceutical manufacturers from legal liability. (See link for article)
Important Excerpts:
According to the official Japanese regulatory documents from the Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency (PMDA), preclinical animal studies have shown that favipiravir has the risk of teratogenicity and reproductive toxicity in experimental animals, including findings indicative of birth defects in mice, rats, rabbits, and monkeys, along with decreases in live fetal body weight and in the number of live fetuses.
The official Japanese product label for favipiravir warns that the drug can cause serious hepatic dysfunction and jaundice, including clinically significant elevations in liver enzymes (AST/GOT, ALT/GPT, γ-GTP), which may progress to life-threatening liver injury.
A July 2025 Pathogens publication confirms the U.S. military funded experiments aerosolizing hantavirus pathogens (making them airborne) with a 30% fatality rate.
Less than a year after the publication, the Andes hantavirus cruise ship outbreak would be declared.
Moreover, NIAID’s $70 million PROVIDENT program actively funded and operated a large-scale hantavirus preparedness initiative that engineered vaccine platforms, mapped Andes hantavirus structures in unprecedented detail, developed rapid-response countermeasure systems, and prioritized hantaviruses as future pandemic targets in the run-up to the 2026 international Andes hantavirus outbreak.
The Andes hantavirus genome was built from human blood at the infamous U.S. military biolab Fort Detrick.
In the mid-1970s, a cluster of unexplained illnesses appeared in a small town in Connecticut. It would later be called Lyme disease. But how was the investigation handled? What questions were closed? And what records still remain unseen? This 32-minute investigative documentary examines the early history of Lyme disease, the institutional response, and the broader issue of transparency in public health decision-making.
This is not about assigning blame. This is not about promoting a predetermined theory.
It is about one principle: If federal records exist regarding Lyme’s early history, the public deserves to see them. The MAHA movement has emphasized a simple idea: transparency strengthens trust. That applies here. If you believe transparency matters — watch the full investigation, share it, and use #ReleaseTheLymeFiles
Conspiracies don’t begin with imagination. They begin when transparency ends.
CHAPTERS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
0:00 The weapon that crawled, bit, and disappeared
RFK Jr. stirs controversy amid pledge to fight Lyme disease despite prior attacks on vaccine perception
Story by Kim LaCapria
April 2, 2026
As the prospect of a viable vaccine for Lyme disease approaches, experts feared that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s previous claim that no one would “fight harder” for a treatment than he might not bear out, CNN reported.
During the January 2025 Senate confirmation hearings before Kennedy’s appointment as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, an exchange pertaining to Lyme disease stood out to many who had long contended with the illness.
Kennedy’s sometimes dissonant positions on public health aside, he asserted that he and two of his children had endured the “devastating effects of Lyme disease” firsthand.
“There is nobody who will fight harder to find a vaccine or a treatment for Lyme disease than me,” Kennedy promised. He convened a roundtable HHS discussion on the illness in December, reiterating his stated commitment to improving treatment for affected Americans.
“We’ve got to figure out a way to make it safe for children to go back in the woods again,” he said at the sit-down.
On the other hand, Kennedy’s unconventional views on vaccines routinely run contrary to scientific consensus, and medical experts have warned that his positions undermine trust in preventive medicine and pose a risk to public health.
On March 23, Pfizer and French vaccine company Valneva announced that they would formally seek approval for the first new Lyme disease vaccine in over 20 years, a four-dose regimen that demonstrated efficacy of over 70% in clinical trials. (See link for article)
____________
**Comment**
Strap yourself in…..
The only ‘experts’ referred to in this article are adherents to the ‘vaccine’ religion where supposedly ‘vaccines’ are the answer to all of life’s problems.
Only an adherent of the ‘vaccine’ religion would state that a person who would ‘fight hard’ for a treatment, but happens to have questions about ‘vaccines’ as dissonant. The two things are not exclusive! Have we truly lost all ability to reason?
The author tips her hand completely by stating that RFK’s views on ‘vaccines’ are contrary to scientific consensus, demonstrating perfectly what is wrong with medicine today. Silly old me still believes that medical decisions should be between patient and doctor and that medical history, genetics, and all manner of issues should be taken into account – not a ‘one size fits all’ dictate where the only real winner is Big Pharma and its stake-holders making a mint off of sick people. Further, there are plenty of experts who hold a contrary view about vaccines, but they were conveniently left out of the article to further the illusion of scientific consensus.
Regarding undermining trust in preventative medicine and posing a risk to public health, that’s already been accomplished thanks to the handling of COVID by the very people entrusted with public health on down to the doctors and nurses who blindly followed orders. Every single thing our public health ‘experts’ said was patently false and killed thousands of people and maimed thousands more. In fact, many experts are stating the true down wind effects will be felt for decades.
Pfizer and Valneva should be out of business after the COVID clot shot. The results are in: they failed miserably on every point with these injections that don’t stop transmission or prevent illness, but have caused more adverse reactions than any other vaccine in history. What an utter farce, and yet……they are still pushing out their products – including a Lyme vaccine if you are foolish enough to ever trust them again and take it.
The author obviously neglected to study the bioweaponization issue for herself when she uses Dr. Richard Ostfeld (a scientist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies who is completely dependent and beholden to government grants to pay his bills and complete his research) to debunk that Lyme was an intentionally created bioweapon. He is not a bioweaponization expert. It is now officially on record via declassified documents that our government purposely force-fed tickspathogens, made them radioactive so they could track them when they dropped them from airplanes and via other forms of release, and has a vested interest in covering this all up via denial.
Ostfeld also tips is hand entirely when he states that Lyme can be cleared from your system with antibiotics within a couple of weeks. Talk about a ostrich with his head in the sand. There are thousands upon thousands suffering because the standard treatment failed to work. He also obviously believes our government is logical and sane and would never do something so mad.
Oh – lest we forget a more recent NIH Clinical Trial scandal,which has yet to be rectified where hundreds of New York City orphans were used by government agencies and pharmaceutical companies in deadly AIDS drug trials, where over 200 of them died and others had organ failure, deformities, and brain damage.
So yeah, our government is totally capable of creating and dispersing a bioweapon via ticks.
This is one of the most common — and most difficult —questions patients ask.
It often follows a long period of good health before the gradual or sudden onset of fatigue, joint pain, cognitive changes, neurologic symptoms, or unexplained inflammation. In many cases, patients never noticed a tick bite or it is recalled years later, once symptoms begin.
Questions about whether a tick bite can cause illness years later come up because tick-borne diseases don’t always follow a clear or predictable timeline. Unlike infections that cause sudden, obvious symptoms, illnesses like Lyme disease can develop slowly, come and go, or appear in stages.
Understanding this means looking at how the disease can progress over time, rather than focusing on a single tick bite or moment of exposure.
Tick-Borne Illness Timelines Are Confusing
After a tick bite, many people do experience symptoms within days or weeks. Fever, rash, fatigue, and musculoskeletal pain are common early manifestations, and when treatment occurs at this stage, recovery is often straightforward. This familiar pattern is what most people expect when they think about tick-borne illness.
However, not everyone follows this course. Some individuals never develop noticeable early symptoms, while others experience mild or nonspecific complaints that resolve and are quickly forgotten. When health problems surface years later, patients understandably revisit the question of whether a past tick bite could be relevant. At that point, the concern is no longer theoretical—it is personal.
Identifying When Illness Began
In typical cases, early infection is recognized and treated, and symptoms resolve. This reinforces the belief that tick-borne illness always presents quickly and clearly.
Yet clinical experience shows that timelines can vary widely, and absence of early symptoms does not always mean absence of infection.
When symptoms appear later, patients and clinicians struggle to reconstruct when the illness truly began. This uncertainty fuels the question of whether a tick bite could explain illness years later.
How a Tick Bite Can Be Linked to Illness Years Later
One explanation is that early infection was never recognized or treated. When Lyme disease is missed in its initial stages, it may later involve the joints, nervous system, or other organ systems. In these cases, symptoms can develop slowly and appear long after the original exposure.
Another possibility is that early symptoms were subtle and self-limited. Flu-like illness, headaches, fatigue, or migratory aches are often attributed to stress or viral infections. When these symptoms resolve, the connection to a tick bite is lost, only to resurface later when more persistent problems develop.
Immune and inflammatory effects may also evolve over time. Even after an initial infection, immune system activity can persist or shift, contributing to delayed or fluctuating symptoms involving cognition, energy levels, autonomic function, or pain perception. This helps explain how a tick bite can make someone sick years later without a dramatic early illness.
Triggers That Unmask Symptoms
Many patients report that symptoms became noticeable only after a triggering event such as another infection, major stress, surgery, trauma, or hormonal change. These events do not necessarily cause disease themselves, but they can reveal an underlying vulnerability that had previously been compensated for.
When this happens, it may feel as though illness appeared suddenly, even though the groundwork was laid years earlier.
Does a Tick Bite Making You Sick Years Later Mean Active Infection?
Not necessarily. When patients ask whether a tick bite made them sick years later, they are often asking two separate questions: whether an early infection was missed, and whether a past infection can lead to delayed or long-term effects.
Clinical guidelines recognize Lyme disease as a multisystem illness and emphasize careful evaluation of persistent or late-emerging symptoms while also stressing the importance of ruling out alternative diagnoses. Symptoms appearing long after exposure do not automatically prove ongoing infection, but they do warrant thoughtful assessment.
Why Clinicians Disagree About Tick-Bite Timelines
There is broad agreement that Lyme disease can affect multiple organ systems over time. Disagreement arises when symptoms appear well outside expected timelines. Some clinicians emphasize the possibility of persistent infection, while others focus on post-infectious or immune-mediated mechanisms.
Regardless of interpretation, symptoms that do not follow a classic pattern should not be dismissed simply because they are complex.
Clinical Takeaway
A tick bite can be linked to illness years later, but rarely in a simple or linear way. Delayed symptoms may reflect missed early infection, subtle initial illness, evolving immune or inflammatory effects, or life events that unmask disease. Understanding timelines helps reduce confusion and supports individualized care.
Madison Area Lyme Support Group 