"I always try to communicate via Gmail because my NIH email is FOIA'd… I can't be FOIA'd on my personal email."
FDA's EUA statute (Section 564) requires a finding that no adequate approved alternatives exist before a vaccine can receive EUA. If any alternative COVID treatment had been formally approved, the mRNA vaccines would have been ineligible for EUA. Simultaneously: NIH held co-inventorship patents on the Moderna mRNA platform. Moderna settled a patent dispute for $400 million to NIH. NIAID received $690 million in royalties during the pandemic. Fauci's aide routed communications through personal Gmail to avoid FOIA.
The royalty payments story ran briefly in 2022. Coverage framed it as partisan grandstanding. The EUA statutory language was never examined as a structural conflict of interest. The Morens Gmail emails were covered as a process story. The connective tissue was never assembled in a single piece by any major outlet.
An agency that holds patents on a product, receives royalties from that product's manufacturer, determines what counts as an adequate alternative, and routes internal communications through FOIA-immune channels has a documented conflict of interest on every decision it makes about that product's competitors. The press covered each fact individually. It never covered the structure they form together.