Follow the Money: NIH Scientists Made $710 Million From Drug Makers During Pandemic

The New York Post reports that "NIH scientists made $710M in royalties from drug makers — a fact they tried to hide." From the article:

    New data from the National Institutes of Health reveal the agency and its scientists collected $710 million in royalties during the pandemic, from late 2021 through 2023. These are payments made by private companies, like pharmaceuticals, to license medical innovations from government scientists.

    Almost all that cash — $690 million — went to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the subagency led by Dr. Anthony Fauci, and 260 of its scientists.

    Information about this vast private royalty complex is tightly held by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). My organization, OpenTheBooks.com, was forced to sue to uncover the royalties paid from September 2009 to October 2021, which amounted to $325 million over 56,000 transactions.

    We had to sue a second time, with Judicial Watch as our counsel, to pry open this new release.

    Payments skyrocketed during the pandemic era: Those years saw more than double the amount of cash flow to NIH from the private sector, compared to the prior 12 combined. All told, it’s $1.036 billion.

    It’s unclear if any of the COVID vaccine royalties from Pfizer and Moderna, the latter of which settled with NIH by agreeing to pay $400 million, is even included in these new numbers. NIH isn’t saying.

    In related news, the Daily Mail reports that "Dr. Anthony Fauci confesses he 'made up' covid rules including 6 feet social distancing and masking kids." An excerpt:

    Speaking to counsel on behalf of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic earlier this year, Fauci told Republicans that the six foot social distancing rule 'sort of just appeared' and that he did not recall how it came about. 

    'You know, I don't recall. It sort of just appeared,' he said according to committee transcripts when pressed on how the rule came about. 

    He added he 'was not aware of studies' that supported the social distancing, conceding that such studies 'would be very difficult' to do. 

    In addition to not recalling any evidence supporting social distancing, Fauci also told the committee's counsel that he didn't remember reading anything to support that masking kids would prevent COVID.

The article also notes that:

    Kids' learning loss and social setbacks have been well documented, with one National Institute of Health (NIH) study calling the impact of mask use on students' literacy and learning 'very negative.'

    And the impacts from social distancing caused 'depression, generalized anxiety, acute stress, and intrusive thoughts,' another NIH study found. 

So Fauci and the NIH just made it all up without any scientific backing at the same time were told to "follow the science." Why did he do it? Did he think it was funny? Like making a trained monkey do tricks?