From TrialSite News, February 17:
The Epstein Switchboard: Pandemic Planning, Philanthropic Finance — and the Questions That Won’t Go Away
What if the most disturbing part of the Epstein files isn’t what they prove — but what they reveal about proximity?
For years, Jeffrey Epstein was described as a financier, a predator, a manipulator of elite networks. But buried inside thousands of pages of newly released correspondence, thanks to the law passed by Congress, is something less sensational and arguably more unsettling: Epstein positioned himself at the crossroads of global health philanthropy, financial engineering, and pandemic preparedness years before COVID-19.
Was he simply inserting himself into powerful conversations? Or was he orbiting something much larger — a structural transformation in how public health crises would be financed, insured, and governed?
The documents don’t give us a smoking gun. But they do give us a map.
The 2017 Email That Sparked the Storm
One of the most widely circulated exhibits is a May 24, 2017, email from Boris Nikolic — a science advisor with ties to Bill Gates — addressed to both Epstein and Gates. In it, Nikolic writes that a donor-advised fund strategy “might be a great path forward for some key areas such as Energy, pandemic, etc.”That single word — pandemic — has ignited speculation.
The email confirms something narrow but real: Epstein was copied into conversations involving Gates-linked philanthropy where pandemic risk was explicitly discussed as a funding domain.
It does not describe disease planning. It does not outline operational response. It reads like a philanthropic portfolio strategy. But it shows Epstein was not merely a social acquaintance — he was inside conversations where global health priorities were being structured financially.
That proximity alone raises questions.
Project Molecule: Building the Financial Plumbing
Even more revealing is a 2011 J.P. Morgan draft proposal titled “Project Molecule.”The document outlines a proposed Gates–J.P. Morgan charitable giving platform — a donor-advised fund structure designed to aggregate global capital, offer donor anonymity, and create what the deck calls an “institutional bridge” for large-scale philanthropic deployment.
Embedded in the presentation are global health examples: vaccine purchasing, disease surveillance infrastructure, and cross-border health initiatives.
The structure included:
• U.S. donor-advised accounts• International “tax-neutral” components• Institutional investment management overlaysTo critics, this looks like the financialization of public health — a world where philanthropy, capital markets, and disease response are woven together in institutional frameworks. And of course, TrialSite News reported during the pandemic how Bill Gates at one point was generating a 10X return on his investment in BioNTech (the German company that partnered with Pfizer to generate one of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine).
To defenders, it looks like large-scale philanthropy operating at scale.
Either way, the architecture is clear: elite financial infrastructure was being designed to channel massive capital into global health long before COVID-19 emerged.
The 2015 “Preparing for Pandemics” Email
Then there is the March 2015 email chain referencing a meeting on “preparing for pandemics.”The message discusses involving the WHO and the ICRC for “co-branding” and closes with, “I hope we can pull this off!”
The language is ambiguous. It suggests coordination, positioning, and institutional alignment. It does not describe pathogen engineering or outbreak planning.
But it confirms that pandemic preparedness was circulating within Epstein’s network years before COVID.
To be clear: pandemic preparedness was already mainstream policy discourse at the time. Global frameworks, including WHO- and World Bank-linked preparedness initiatives, were active well before 2020. In 2018, the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board was convened. In 2019, its report A World at Risk warned of catastrophic pandemic vulnerability.
Preparedness discussions were not secret.
But Epstein’s appearance in those email chains adds a layer of discomfort to an already controversial figure.
Pandemic as a Financial Instrument
A separate 2017 iMessage thread references “pandemic simulation” expertise and discusses designing pandemic-linked products with Swiss Re using “parametric triggers.”Parametric triggers are common in catastrophe bonds and reinsurance — payouts tied to measurable events such as earthquake magnitude or hurricane wind speed.
In other words, pandemic risk was being treated as a quantifiable financial variable.
This is perhaps the most provocative theme in the released material: pandemic risk wasn’t merely a humanitarian concern. It was increasingly something that could be modeled, insured, and structured into financial products.
That does not imply orchestration. But it does demonstrate that by the mid-2010s, pandemic events were already embedded in financial innovation discussions....
....MUCH MORE
As noted in a June 2025 post:
"Hedge fund strategy built on catastrophes taps a hot new trend"
Parametrics can result is some odd-looking payouts and are susceptible to gaming by those offering the product. More after the jump.
And the outro from that post:
Some posts on parametric insurance:
April 2020
"World Bank pandemic cat bonds & swaps not triggered for payout yet"
I'll recycle the introduction we used a month ago:
"Coronavirus: The World Bank should care that the public does not understand its pandemic bonds"
Although the WHO declaration of "PANDEMIC" was not required for payout you'd think the money would have started flowing right? I mean both of the important triggers tripped, secondary markets have already marked the riskiest tranche down to zip but none of the relatively paltry $320 million has started moving.
As we said during the last Ebola pandemic, these things appear to be designed and structured to not pay out.
Here with some defense is EuroMoney:...
...The 3-year notes mature in July 2020.
For our outro, some more recycling, this time from February [2020]:
World Bank Pandemic Catastrophe Bond Under Pressure As Coronavirus Spreads
I have become convinced these things were designed to NOT pay.
As noted previously:
Reinsurance: "No coronavirus price response from World Bank’s pandemic cat bond yet"July 2020We saw with Ebola that, even after both triggers—1) a minimum 250 victims and 2) the crossing of an international border—were reached, the World Bank's Pandemic Emergency Facility was very reluctant to declare the payout, eliciting some snark from yours truly:"And if the cross-border contagion is reported on a day ending in a 'Y' all contracts will be null-and-void and coverage denied."
Re/Insurance: Chubb Proposes Giant $1.25 Trillion Pandemic Facility
Two quick points:
1) Insuring against pandemics is frightfully complicated meaning lots of opportunity to structure product to ones advantage.
2) Be wary of your friendly neighborhood re/insurance salesman, even if he is as down-home and folksy as that fellow from Omaha.
Much less the verzekering/herverzekering or London or München boys and girls....
November 2021
"COP26: Munich Re calls out global failure to hit $100bn climate finance goal"
Huh.
....As noted in the intro to October 11's Cat Bonds/Reinsurance: "City of Zurich pension to double insurance-linked securities allocation":
The next time Munich Re starts moaning about climate change and how we're all going to die, or at minimum go broke, just remember reinsurance/cat bonds are a for-profit business and that some folks a couple hundred miles southwest of München, who might have access to some very sharp minds in the reinsurance/cat bond business, seem to think this is a profitable place to put some longer term money.Ditto for Covéa, they seem to think they can make a go of it, come hell or high water.
(a little reinsurance/cat bond wordplay)
October 2023
"Weather derivative market activity soars on belief extremes to increase: Report"
Action, baby, action!
We will be looking for the first reports of the proverbial "dentist from Peoria" (Los Angeles Times, Jan. 21, 1989) stepping up to the betting window....
"Why catastrophe bonds are failing to cover disaster damage"
It is a financial contract, read the fine print.
From The Economist...
***
As an old insurance bigwig (not Mr. B) once said to me, "These things are for writing, not buying
***
Somewhat related (reaching for returns), June 2025:
Ummmmm—Tokenized Real World Assets: Reinsurance Products Targeting 20% And 42% Returns
Grandmother
always said "If you are getting more than the risk-free rate of return
you are taking on risk somewhere." She was really emphatic about
that....
And many, many more. Use the 'search blog' box upper left if interested.
