California Governor Gavin Newsom Has a New Coronavirus Crackdown Hypocrisy Scandal
By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | July 28, 2021
California Governor Gavin Newsom, over the last year and a half, has been one of the American governors imposing the most extensive crackdowns on freedom in the name of countering coronavirus. He also famously exhibited extreme hypocrisy in November by flagrantly violating his own California coronavirus-related mandates while taking part in a dinner party at the uber-expensive French Laundry restaurant. Newsom’s attitude seems to be that his rules are for regular people, not for himself and his friends.
Now comes word of another scandal in which Newsom has flaunted the mandate he has imposed in the state. Eric Ting reported Tuesday at the San Francisco Gate that two of Newsom’s children recently attended a basketball summer camp that had informed parents ahead of time that children would not be required to wear masks despite a state mandate that children ages two to 11 do so. After a picture of one of Newsom’s children, along with other children at the camp, with uncovered faces appeared on the internet, Newsom’s kids were pulled out of the camp early. Woops, the Newsom family had missed reading the camp’s email mentioning the camp’s mask policy, explained the communications director of Newsom’s governor office.
It is great that Newsom and his friends can enjoy an “old normal” dinner party with friends, though the dinner party at issue looks like it was also a get-together of government and special interest lobbyists. And it is great that Newsom’s children, who are in an age group for which risk of serious injury or death from coronavirus is nearly zero, can participate in a summer camp without wearing uncomfortable, dehumanizing masks that are known to cause health problems but have not been shown to provide any net protection from coronavirus. It would also be great if more summer camps followed freedom-friendly policies as did the camp Newsom’s children attended. Kudos for people taking part in such forbidden activities that bring joy to life. The problem with Newsom is that he takes these actions for himself and his children while, at the same time, he decrees that ordinary people are prohibited from doing so.
Copyright © 2021 by RonPaul Institute
Who Watches The Watchmen? – Fauci’s “Noble Lie” Exposed
By Charles Rixey, MA, MBA | Prometheus Shrugged | July 22, 2021
More than 100K pages of FOIA documents referenced here have been condensed into 173 pages of the most relevant selections in my appendix Prometheus Shrugged. It was here, last February, that the role of Dr. Fauci in ongoing academic censorship of COVID’s origin was first exposed.
A chronological narrative of the events described throughout my research will included in a forthcoming volume of DRASTIC’s set of published collections of evidence.
The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once wrote that truth goes through 3 stages:
1st, it is ridiculed; 2nd, it is violently opposed; and 3rd, it is accepted as being self-evident
Guess what’s next for us?
Six months ago, I began my first article on scientific censorship during COVID-19 by introducing Dr. Fauci as a surprise character that had emerged unexpectedly while digging through what was then 83,000 FOIA emails, published by US Right-to-Know over the course of the last year:
[see files related to Ralph Baric, Linda Saif, Rita Colwell, Colorado State/Rocky Mountain National Laboratory & the NCBI; other FOIA releases from Judicial Watch, Buzzfeed & the Washington Post include NIH funding of the WIV & Dr. Fauci’s emails]
I’ve been trying for quite some time to get people to understand the full scope of the Dr. Fauci ‘situation,’ but it’s clear that segments of our national leadership are preventing an honest and open inquiry into his actions because they fear the backlash/collateral damage that will result from the tarnishing of their sacred cow. It’s time Americans were told the truth – that the grant money sent to the Wuhan Institute of Virology [WIV] is merely a footnote in this narrative.
After all, Dr. Fauci controls nearly $4 billion of annual grant funding for the NIAID, the institute within the NIH he has directed since 1984; over 37 years, more than 50,000 research projects have been supported with more than $50 billion [conservatively] of taxpayer funds have been doled out to them.
It’s reasonable to hold him accountable for the results of his organization’s efforts, but the direct funding received by the WIV for Gain-of-Function (GOF) research represents only a tiny fraction of Fauci’s involvement in enabling risky research – the 2017 repeal of the GOF ban was decided without the consultation of the Trump administration, even though news coverage during the pandemic blamed him for the decision.
Neither Fauci nor his boss Francis Collins [the NIH director] bothered to clarify the record, which looks especially disgusting in the wake of persistent rejections of Senator Rand Paul’s assertions [with accompanying evidence] that the NIH ever financially supported such research:
Contents:
- Dr. Fauci’s true legacy
- The evidence of his involvement
- The questions Congress [and everyone else] should be asking Dr. Fauci
- The impact of his efforts
First, do no harm … to Fauci’s Legacy
It’s important to plainly state that I’m aware of the intense politicization of virtually every aspect of the pandemic and the pandemic response. Since many readers may not be aware, I’ll point out that my specific motivation for building a COVID-19 website and speaking to a broader audience about the various facets of the pandemic was to offer unfiltered information to counter the disgusting polarization I observed:
I felt obligated to re-iterate my stance, but the nature and importance of the situation can’t be ignored any longer, because Congress is now actively engaged in investigating the pandemic’s origins, and we must confront the truth if we are to gain meaningful insight that can help us prepare for future crises. There is no level of partisanship that justifies ignoring a tragedy of this magnitude.
“Everything rises and falls on leadership” – John Maxwell
It’s hard to place a dollar value on the impact of Fauci’s leadership decisions upon almost all aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is why it’s not difficult to understand the willingness of some to avoid a legitimate inquiry into the issue altogether. After all, he sits at the nexus of –
A) the NIH’s role in supporting the research & development of mRNA technology and new antiviral drugs like Remdesivir, and the resulting conflicts of interest that the NIH continues to ignore
B) His role in pushing those NIH-sponsored inventions; specifically, advocating for Remdesivir on the basis of weak evidence while rejecting legitimate investigations into generic alternatives with no less statistical support, as well as…
C) … His role in obfuscating concerning data and censoring public debate over the risk/benefit evidence emerging about COVID-19 vaccines. Had Fauci been bluntly honest about the unknowns involving the new technology throughout the pandemic, Americans would still largely have assumed the risk – at least, assuming that antibody dependent enhancement [ADE] was not a likely outcome. Oops.
D) His evolving stances on masking, lockdowns, school closures and other non-pharmaceutical interventions [NPI], largely the result of growing public awareness that those decisions have consistently been based upon reducing the accountability of cowardly officials, not the best interest of their constituents [Note: this is a conclusion from my research focus last year, that I will return to once the origin issue allows me to do so].
E) His refusal to address the blatant censorship of vaccine side-effect data; it takes a disturbing level of cynicism to witness the large-scale skepticism and uncertainty that has resulted from such censorship and then vilify those willing to speak up – and blaming them for any future vaccine breakout when one of the most likely causes would be ADE. ADE with SARS-CoV-2 would most likely result from the specific targeting of the MRNA vaccines, not vaccine hesitancy [in the absence of a simultaneous global administration of the jabs – which was never feasible under the geopolitical and temporal constraints of the pandemic.
Each of those factors has contributed to the fading perception of Fauci as ‘America’s Doctor, but each has also become a divisive litmus test for which the evidence for and against is hotly debated. My purpose here is not to offer judgment on those issues; rather, I want to highlight the fact that Dr. Fauci’s legacy includes elements far beyond the scope of my research – and the context of those debates is directly relevant for the proper framing of the failures illuminated here. The same hubris and gaslighting in defense of ‘Science’ has plagued everything.
My disgust doesn’t stem from casual reflection & an exaggeration of weak assertions to fan partisan flames. It stems from my analysis of 100K pages of FOIA documents, 1,000+ research articles reviewed, and my own published analysis of the the impact of Fauci’s censorship, which was the 1st of its kind.
My approach was external to science – from the perspective of an historian seeking to understand the ‘why’ behind the further collapse of trust in our institutions during the pandemic. My conclusions were formed over six months of investigation, and focused on the realization that one of the worst developments of the pandemic is the evaporation of public trust in scientists [see Edifice Wrecks].
I’ve never sought to inflame conspiracies or ignore evidence in support of zoonosis, but I’ve personally entered into discussions with a half-dozen of the scientists highlighted below, and none of them ever addressed the emerging evidence that, under normal circumstances, would’ve been part of the open debate that Fauci pretends already took place.
Every additional moment spent in denial and suppression just adds fuel to the coming backlash, and thus far discussions have ignored what I believe is the largest and most consequential elephant in the room:
F) Fauci quietly but directly ensured that scientific censorship was implemented, in large measure, to prevent public awareness of the extent of his role in GOF research and the controversies surrounding it. The evidence proves that, at the start of the pandemic, Dr. Fauci and many leading scientists moved to protect themselves – not us, who weren’t yet aware of the potential calamity at our doorstep.
Fauci LED the efforts to obstruct research into COVID’s origins, colluding with the President’s Science Advisor Kelvin Dreogemeier and Wellcome Trust head Jeremy Farrar, to proactively undermine consideration of the evidence that directly tied their global research initiatives to the lab at the center of the COVID-19 pandemic.
To date, all of their efforts have been focused on preventing disclosure of embarrassing connections – not preventing another novel pathogen from sparking a global pandemic; to prevent future scrutiny, not future tragedy.
Scientists, if you’re struggling to understand the distinction between degrees of commitment to truth, I offer the example of Thích Quảng Đức, pictured here protesting the corrupt S. Vietnam regime in a prologue of the Vietnam War:
You see, the message for scientists who believe that a threat is existential is that words gain true meaning when they are supported by the actions & sacrifices of the speaker. What message are we supposed to derive from the COVID-19 pandemic?
I’d recommend pausing for reflection – on the image above, specifically – because what the world is beginning to see is that the scientific establishment made a mockery of the trust it had been given. The world’s leading experts in virology and public health called attention to a threat by setting the world on fire, rather than themselves – and then blaming us for being too simple to believe their noble lie.
Priorities
The baseline assumption of the public at large has been that Dr. Fauci has earned the benefit of the doubt thanks to his five decades of public service and consistency in defending establishment science – the admiration of which has risen nearly to cult worship in recent decades. The cognitive dissonance between appearance and reality have created a situation where trust in ‘science’ has reached its sacred peak at the exact moment when such trust is least deserved.
At the center of this incestuous arrogance is Dr. Anthony Fauci, the recipient of unquestioned adulation by those in the political sphere who have spent more than a century arguing that a Platonic ‘philosopher-king’ ideal must be forced upon intellectually vacuous masses whom, left to their own devices, would inevitably self-immolate.
Scientists reached new heights in the ivory tower when they warned us that man’s evil nature had left previous generations protected only by the horrific death equation of Mutually Assured Destruction. Setting aside the obvious complicity of scientists in the creation of nuclear weapons, trusting science over many decades has simply led to a new formulation of that Faustian bargain – Mutually Assured Corruption.
A Study In Scarlet
Before heading down the long and winding road, it’s important to explain what zoonosis is and why Fauci’s denial of basic facts simply kicks the accountability can down the road. Should we really be surprised that Dr. Fauci is ‘confused’ by the definition of “Gain if Function?” After all, not that long ago, he also ridiculed the idea that the virus could’ve come from a lab before finally admitting that it was a statistical possibility.
Zoonosis in the context of viral emergence doesn’t mean a virus originally sprung from nature – all viruses do. It means that the jump from animals to humans happened in the wild, as the result of a fortuitous combination of mutations that allow a virus to survive the switch. If human intervention artificially encouraged the process of adaptation by experimentation, or simply by virtue of bringing a virus to a lab and increasing the odds of such exposure, then the origin of a viral pandemic is a lab.
What’s sickening about his tortured twisting of language is that Fauci knows this better than almost anyone; thus his lies aren’t borne of ignorance. What he’s done is use his scientific gravitas to pretend that observers’ understanding of literal definitions is flawed because we are too ignorant to appreciate the complexity of the issues. The truth, however, is that our generation’s most prominent infectious disease expert is gaslighting the citizens of the country he swore an oath to protect [one could also use the term epistemic injustice ].
How a Psychic Healer Blog Convinced the Government to Fund “Long Covid” Research
By Phillip W. Magness | AIER | July 27, 2021
The National Institutes for Health (NIH) is exceptionally keen on the study of “Long Covid.” The federal agency recently allocated over $1 billion in funding for this purpose, and NIH Director Francis Collins has made the claimed ailment a recurring subject of his press commentary over the last year. The Department of Health and Human Services similarly signaled that it intends to classify “Long Covid” as a recognized disability for government funding and classification purposes.
So what is Long Covid, and why is it drawing so much attention and funding out of the federal government? As with any respiratory illness, Covid-19 does appear to have long-term sufferers who do not follow the normal recovery pattern and continue to demonstrate symptoms for weeks or months after an infection. At the same time however, the push to make “Long Covid” a distinctive medical classification unto itself appears to be a political phenomenon, wrapped up in clear signs of pseudoscience and linked back to a fringe “alternative wellness” blog that originally coined the term in March 2020.
A recent study published in the Lancet-owned journal EClinicalMedicine purported to document over 200 symptoms of Long Covid, ranging from fairly common Covid-19 ailments such as fatigue, cough, or long-term loss of smell to an eclectic assortment of problems such as hallucination, brain fog, tearfulness, insomnia, and mood anxiety. Media reports breathlessly repeated these findings to press the urgency of funding for Long Covid research, while also hyping the syndrome as a further justification for alarmism in justifying lockdowns and similar measures. After all, if Long Covid afflicts a sizable subset of Covid patients – as some claim – and can strike young people who are at a much lower mortality risk from the virus itself, then perhaps more restrictive measures are warranted on the general population – or so the argument goes.
Many lockdown advocates have seized onto the Long Covid narrative, incorporating it into their defenses of the draconian non-pharmaceutical interventions they have advocated over the last year and a half. The CovidFAQ website – a UK-based project set up by “neoliberal” activist Sam Bowman and British MP Neil O’Brien – invokes the threat of Long Covid in its attacks the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD), arguing that the hypothesized syndrome undermines evidence that the virus is substantially less-severe among younger demographics. Several pro-lockdown scientists and epidemiologists issued coordinated statements attacking the GBD in October 2020 for “ignor[ing] the emerging burdens of long COVID.” These statements are usually offered as declarative assessments, treating Long Covid as an established medical fact.
With billion-dollar budgets and the prospect of additional sweeping policy measures at stake, it only makes sense to ask if the science behind Long Covid is sound. There is no doubt that some Covid-19 victims have symptoms that linger for weeks or months beyond the typical recovery, although that is true of many diseases. Whether it has 200 plus symptoms is another story – and a closer look reveals an alarming amount of outright quackery is currently shaping the scientific and media discourse around Long Covid.
The problem arises from the amorphous definition of the phrase “Long Covid” itself. Far from a careful clinical diagnosis, Long Covid has become a catch-all term for any extended medical ailment, real or imagined, attributed to the effects of the Covid-19 virus. An alarming amount of alleged data about the phenomenon traces back to a single source called the “Body Politic Wellness Collective” – an alternative medicine blog with dubious scientific credentials. To quote one recent study of the term’s origins, “the emergence and recognition of Long COVID as a potentially major public health problem is largely due to advocacy groups such as the Body Politic COVID-19 Support Group, and Patient Led Research For COVID-19” – the latter an affiliated survey administrator that, according to its own website, was “born out of the Body Politic Slack support group.”
The same Body Politic group frequently appears in an already large and growing literature on “Long Covid” in other scientific journals. In September 2020, NIH Director Collins devoted his personal column on the agency’s website to touting the group. He later credited their work when launching the aforementioned $1 billion research initiative. In July 2021, Body Politic reappeared at the center of the aforementioned EClinicalMedicine study along with a spinoff organization called the Patient-Led Research Collaborative. The two groups administered the survey behind the claim that Long Covid carries over 200 symptoms.
Before we get into the survey itself, it’s useful to take a closer look at the Body Politic group. TheWall Street Journal recently ran a lengthy expose of the organization by Jeremy Devine, an Ontario-based psychiatrist. Devine found that the group’s initiatives sprang to life at the outset of the pandemic in March 2020. They first coined the Long Covid moniker around this time, promoting it in a flurry of media appearances. In early April, the New York Times ran an op-Ed by Body Politic’s co-founder calling attention to the syndrome and recounting her own experience as a “long hauler” (which, at the time, consisted of experiencing symptoms for about three weeks after testing positive).
As Devine documented in the WSJ, the Body Politic group’s approach to scientific survey design appeared highly unorthodox. It frequently relied on self-reported descriptions of Long Covid symptoms, instead of independent medical verification. It also had a habit of diagnosing people with Long Covid even after they tested negative for Covid-19 itself. A March 2021 report by Adam Gaffney for StatNews called attention to similar problems with Body Politic’s research design. “[A]t least some people who identify themselves as having long Covid appear never to have been infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus,” Gaffney noted. They were nonetheless touted by the media as case studies in the alleged syndrome.
A closer look at the Body Politic group itself raises several red flags about their scientific qualifications. The group’s executive board boasts few, if any, actual medical practitioners or scientific experts. Instead we find an eclectic assortment of political activists, musicians, poets, and journalists, many of whom share common interests in “alternative medicine.” Body Politic’s Treasurer and principle support group organizer describes herself as a “practicing Spiritual Medium” who specializes in detecting “invisible illness.” The website’s Vice President is a “social & racial justice activist,” and its Secretary is an “aspiring sex coach.” Other affiliates include a self-described “socialist poet,” multiple “social justice activists,” and people who describe their careers as operating at the intersection between art and natural wellness. The group’s website and social media accounts frequently invoke political terminology from the critical theory literature. They describe themselves as “a queer feminist wellness collective and a space for inclusivity, accessibility, and crucial discussions about the very real connection between wellness, politics, and personal identity.” Their values statement espouses “patient-led” research to “democratize” medicine – descriptions that appear to forgo traditional scientific methods of testing and verification in favor of placing heavier reliance on patient testimonials and personal experience.
While the group’s activism alone does not disqualify their commentary, the unconventional qualifications of its leadership should raise suspicion about their claimed expertise on Long Covid. When NIH Director Collins personally promotes Body Politic’s work, he is creating a false sense of scientific credibility around their work. Few who read Collins’s statements are aware that the group he praises as “citizen scientists” might be better characterized as an odd assortment of psychic healers, magic crystal gurus, and alternative medicine activists. As a leading public health official, Collins’s many endorsements of this quackery border on irresponsible.
Turning to Body Politic’s survey projects, we quickly find that skepticism of their credibility is warranted. The group’s survey design specifically eschews requiring a positive Covid-19 test or antibody test to confirm that their respondents actually had the disease. “[W]e do not believe people’s experiences with COVID-19 symptoms should be discounted because they did not receive a positive test result,” states one justification for this unconventional data collection procedure. To qualify as a sufferer of Long Covid, it seems, a person needs only to claim that he or she suffers from Long Covid. Lived experience of the disease trumps any requirement of scientific verification.
The prevalence of unverified and untested Covid claimants being classified nonetheless as Long Covid sufferers is stunning. In the WSJ, Devine reports the numbers from the group’s first survey, administered through their website in 2020: “Nearly half (47.8%)” of Body Politic’s survey respondents “never had testing and 27.5% tested negative for Covid-19. Body Politic publicized the results of a larger, second survey in December 2020. Of the 3,762 respondents, a mere 600, or 15.9%, had tested positive for the virus at any time.” As Gaffney notes in StatNews, this practice raises the distinct possibility that survey respondents are misattributing other chronic symptoms to the virus.
Their new study in the Lancet’s journal EClinical Medicine does not offer much hope that Body Politic has improved its survey design. Its authors state that “We analyzed responses from 3762 participants with confirmed (diagnostic/antibody positive; 1020) or suspected (diagnostic/antibody negative or untested; 2742) COVID-19, from 56 countries.” Unconfirmed Covid patients with self-reported Long Covid symptoms outnumber confirmed Covid patients by almost 2.7 to 1. To their credit, the group discloses the lack of PCR or antibody testing confirmation among the majority of their respondents. The extremely high rates of unconfirmed cases, however, are more than sufficient to cast doubt upon their claims to have identified over 200 separate Long Covid symptoms.
The survey’s design also appears to self-select for people who are inclined to claim Long Covid symptoms, whether valid or not. According to the paper, the survey consisted of 257 questions, took almost 70 minutes on average to complete, allowed participants to revisit their answers for up to 30 days, and was primarily marketed to readers of the Body Politic group’s various blogs and Slack channels. This design practically ensures that the majority of the people who received and completed the survey were drawn from a readership that already gravitates towards the group’s political messaging and medical eccentricities.
Imagine if a survey on diet products collected its sample entirely from the mailing list of Gwyneth Paltrow’s “Goop” store. And imagine if the CDC decided to use that survey as a basis for a billion dollar program to revise its food nutrition guidelines, claiming that it is a representative study of the average American’s diet. Because that’s essentially what NIH Director Francis Collins has done with Body Politic’s surveys when justifying his current research initiative into Long Covid before the public.
With most Long Covid research at the moment, self-diagnosis by amateur groups appears to have supplanted scientific rigor in driving the NIH’s research priorities. Even minimal scrutiny should cast doubt upon the Body Politic group’s deficit of scientific credentials and surplus of outright “alternative medicine” quackery. Yet in January 2021 the New York Times heavily leaned on testimonials from Body Politic’s resident psychics and alternative wellness healers in a feature story on so-called Long Covid, aiming to demonstrate the scientific validity of the diagnosis.
So did an August 2020 piece in the Atlantic that is widely credited with popularizing the concept. Indeed, the New York Times has turned its opinion page over to Body Politic writers on multiple occasions over the last year, giving them free rein to promote unscientific claims about the concept. Simply scanning over mainstream media coverage of “Long Covid” in the last year reveals that Body Politic-affiliated activists with dubious scientific credentials have become go-to “experts” on the subject. Here they are being interviewed in Vox, in the Guardian, in the Washington Post, on NPR, in Buzzfeed, and on MSNBC.
In calling attention to Body Politic’s influence over shaping the Long Covid narrative, I do not question the possibility that some of the organization’s activists may exhibit genuine long-term Covid-related symptoms, even if they are not a distinct classification unto itself. But scientific assessment of their claims remains woefully inadequate relative to the authority that the media has bestowed upon them. In this sense, much of the Long Covid literature bears striking resemblance to other claimed chronic illnesses that have less-than-robust scientific grounding (for example, consider the difference between Celiac disease – a rare but severe dietary illness involving gluten – and the mid-2010s “gluten sensitivity” craze, which mixed together real and imagined but also self-diagnosed symptoms, fad dietary practices, and dubious scientific attestation)
Despite their scientific shortcomings, Body Politic’s own surveys have found a welcome audience among many academics who should know better. Even leading medical journals now regularly tout Body Politic’s dubious survey results as if they are scientific fact.
Last fall, the BMJ published an article on “Long Covid” from a team of scientists led by Oxford’s Trisha Greenhalgh, an outspoken pro-lockdown regular on the BBC and other UK media circuits. Greenhalgh’s team estimated that perhaps as many as 10% of people infected with Covid develop “Long Covid” symptoms – a number that has since become a standard estimate for Long Covid risks.
Their empirical “evidence” for Greenhalgh’s claim, in turn, derives primarily from Body Politic’s “patient-led survey” of alleged Long Covid sufferers – the same survey where half or more of respondents never even had a confirmed Covid diagnosis. This was no accidental reliance on a substandard source, deriving from insufficient scrutiny of the survey’s methods. Greenhalgh credited the Body Politic group by name on Twitter for inspiring their paper, endorsing the “lived experience” of their “patient-led research.” Echoing the Body Politic survey, Greenhalgh and her co-authors further embrace the proposition “that a positive test for covid-19 is not a prerequisite for diagnosis” for Long Covid. It’s apparently sufficient to simply believe that you had a prior bout with Covid, and attribute your claimed long-term symptoms to the same.
Not surprisingly, Long Covid has become a favored fallback argument among lockdowner epidemiologists to argue for prolonged restrictions. Duke University’s Gavin Yamey has made a name for himself by credulously circulating conspiracy theories about the Great Barrington Declaration by blogger Nafeez Ahmed. Sure enough, he’s also a Long Covid activist, promoting Greenhalgh’s study as well as an assortment of news articles that blur the lines between legitimate reporting of long-term symptoms and quackery.
Although Body Politic is far from the only group advocating for Long Covid research funding, their high-profile promotion by the NIH, by leading news outlets, and by medical journals suggests a similar phenomenon to the pattern seen among other lockdown advocates in allegedly-mainstream epidemiology. We’re witnessing a full-scale breakdown of the screening mechanisms that normally steer scientific discourse away from fringe and conspiracist viewpoints – provided that those viewpoints may be used to advance the alarmist ideologies that have emerged around Covid policy over the last year. The doors have, sadly, been thrown wide open to psychic healing and alternative wellness gibberish. Lockdowner scientists have, in turn, given these suspect claims and defective survey designs a welcome home in the most prestigious institutions of journalism, government, and the ivory tower.
Phillip W. Magness is a Senior Research Fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research. He holds a PhD and MPP from George Mason University’s School of Public Policy, and a BA from the University of St. Thomas (Houston).
Prior to joining AIER, Dr. Magness spent over a decade teaching public policy, economics, and international trade at institutions including American University, George Mason University, and Berry College.
Telegraph Exposes Massive Covid Hospital Fraud
By Richie Allen – July 27, 2021
In an exclusive in today’s Telegraph, journalists Laura Donnelly and Harry Yorke claim that more than half of covid hospitalisations are patients who tested positive AFTER they were admitted to hospital with something else.
This means that vast numbers of people are being labelled as hospitalised by covid when in reality they were admitted to hospital for something else and covid was only picked up during routine testing.
This is fraud. The government has always known this, yet it claimed that the NHS was under enormous pressure from covid-19 cases and imposed draconian and devastating lockdowns.
According to The Telegraph :
Experts said it meant the national statistics, published daily on the government website and frequently referred to by ministers, may far overstate the levels of pressures on the NHS.
The leaked data – covering all NHS trusts in England – show that, as of last Thursday, just 44 per cent of patients classed as being hospitalised with Covid had tested positive by the time they were admitted.
The majority of cases were not detected until patients underwent standard Covid tests, carried out on everyone admitted to hospital for any reason.
Overall, 56 per cent of Covid hospitalisations fell into this category, the data, seen by The Telegraph, show.
The Telegraph article goes on to make a crucial point. At no time was there any attempt to distinguish between those admitted with severe illness, later found to be caused by covid and those in hospital for different reasons who might otherwise never have known that they had picked it up.
Simply stated, when someone came in with heart palpitations or symptoms of stroke, they were given a PCR test. The test has been thoroughly discredited as it returns a high rate of false positives.
When the stroke or heart attack patient then tested positive for covid they were listed as a covid hospitalisation. This is breathtakingly corrupt. This wasn’t bad policy or mismanagement. They knew what they were doing. They’re still doing it.
Greg Clark, the chairman of the Commons Science and Technology Select Committee said that he would be writing to the Health Secretary, asking him to publish the breakdown on a regular basis following The Telegraph’s article. Clark said:
“If hospitalisations from Covid are a key determinant of how concerned we should be, and how quickly restrictions should be lifted, it’s important that the data is not presented in a way that could lead to the wrong conclusions being drawn.
While some of these people may be being admitted due to Covid, we currently do not know how many. And for those who are not, there is a big distinction between people who are admitted because of Covid and those who are in for something else but have Covid in such a mild form that it was not the cause of their hospitalisation.”
For 16 months, this government has been telling us that the NHS was overwhelmed by covid-19. They were lying. We knew they were lying. Now there is irrefutable proof.
The lies were used to justify tyrannical lockdowns that have done immeasurable damage to people’s health and wellbeing. What happens next? I don’t know. This is an example of outstanding journalism by Donnelly and Yorke.
It’s now over to SKY, BBC, ITV and Channel 4. It’s in their hands. It is their duty to put The Telegraph’s findings to government ministers and SAGE scientists and relentlessly pursue the truth.
Ineffective Coronavirus Vaccine
By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | July 26, 2021
On Thursday, United States President Joe Biden was hyping the supposed effectiveness of experimental coronavirus vaccine shots. He claimed in a CNN event that people who take the shots will not “get covid,” “be hospitalized,” “be in an ICU unit,” or “die.” It turns out Biden’s assurance is wrong.
The experimental coronavirus vaccines, some of which are not even vaccines under the normal meaning of the term, are not miracle drugs. Indeed, recent information from Israel, where shots were given very widely and early, indicates that whatever effectiveness the shots may have in countering coronavirus appears to wear off mighty quickly.
Nathan Jeffay provided in a Sunday Times of Israel article some of the details from experience in Israel, where Pfizer-BioNTech provides the “vaccine” of choice. Jeffay relates a new report from health care provider Leumit indicating that “[p]eople vaccinated before late February are twice as likely to catch the coronavirus than other inoculated Israelis.” Further, notes Jeffay, the Israel government’s Health Ministry released data on Thursday suggesting “that people vaccinated in January were said to have just 16% protection against infection now, while in those vaccinated in April the effectiveness was at 75%.”
So what’s the solution to the problem of the experimental coronavirus vaccines not being effective in countering coronavirus? Many people looking at the situation would conclude that it is wise for people to consider forgetting about taking the shots altogether, thereby forgoing subjecting themselves to the known and unknown risks that come with the less advantageous than advertised shots. People could pursue alternative actions to protect themselves, including taking certain vitamins and long-available drugs such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. They need not just wait to seek hospital admission if symptoms become severe, even if that is what government health “experts” tend to suggest.
Considering such an alternative approach makes sense. But, politicians and big money media seem to be on a tireless quest to promote people taking the experimental coronavirus vaccine shots no matter what.
Sadly, in the Times of Israel article, the only solution offered is to keep pumping more doses of experimental coronavirus vaccines into people’s arms: the shots did not work well the first time, so give everyone another dose after a few months. Oh yeah, and keep ignoring the continually piling up reports of deaths and major sickness after shots.
Copyright © 2021 by RonPaul Institute
Daily COVID Deaths in Sweden Hit Zero, as Other Nations Brace for More Lockdowns
Sweden isn’t in the news much these days. There’s a reason for that.
By Jon Miltimore | FEE | July 22, 2021
More than 100,000 people flooded streets in France over the weekend and multiple COVID vaccination centers were vandalized as opposition grew to the government’s most recent pandemic strategy. In President Emmanuel Macron’s latest incarnation of lockdowns, government officials have decreed that unvaccinated individuals will no longer be allowed to enter cafes, restaurants, theaters, public transportation and more.
Needless to say, people were not happy.
France’s approach is unique, but it’s just one of many countries around the world imposing new restrictions as fears grow over a new variant of COVID-19. Australia’s recent restrictions have placed half the country under strict lockdown—even though a record 82,000 tests had identified just 111 new coronavirus cases—while restaurants in Portugal are struggling to survive amid newly imposed restrictions.
One country not making much news is Sweden.
Sweden, of course, was maligned in 2020 for foregoing a strict lockdown. The Guardian called its approach “a catastrophe” in the making, while CBS News said Sweden had become “an example of how not to handle COVID-19.”
Despite these criticisms, Sweden’s laissez-faire approach to the pandemic continues today. In contrast to its European neighbors, Sweden is welcoming tourists. Businesses and schools are open with almost no restrictions. And as far as masks are concerned, not only is there no mandate in place, Swedish health officials are not even recommending them.
What are the results of Sweden’s much-derided laissez-faire policy? Data show the 7-day rolling average for COVID deaths yesterday was zero (see below). As in nada. And it’s been at zero for about a week now.
Even a year ago, it was clear the hyperbolic claims about “the Swedish catastrophe” were false; just ask Elon Musk (also see: here, here, and here). But a year later the evidence is overwhelming that Sweden got the pandemic mostly right. Sweden’s overall mortality rate in 2020 was lower than most of Europe and its economy suffered far less. Meanwhile, today Sweden is freer and healthier than virtually any other country in Europe.
As much of the world remains gripped in fear and nations devise new restrictions to curtail basic freedoms, Sweden remains a vital and shining reminder that there is a better way.
Disillusioned journalists form alliance against censorship of alternative coronavirus viewpoints
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | July 26, 2021
A group of 26 journalists has come together to object to the COVID-19 “fearmongering” and the censorship of alternative views by mainstream media and Big Tech platforms since the beginning of the pandemic.
According to the group, the result of the fearmongering and censorship has been the public receiving a “distorted view of the truth.”
The group calls itself “Holding the Line: Journalists Against COVID Censorship.”
It comprises mostly UK-based journalists working at newspapers, broadcasters, and PR companies as staffers or freelancers.
The members were interviewed by Press Gazette, with most preferring to remain anonymous for fear of retribution from their employers.
However, some were more than happy to be named, including Sonia Elijah and Karen Harradine, investigative journalists for The Conservative Woman, former BBC journalist Tony Gosling, and Laura Berril, a PR and tech journalist.
The group’s mission is to promote a “prejudice-free” environment where journalists can air their concerns and raise awareness on lesser-covered issues.
To them, the media is doing “incredible work.” But there are some failures, especially surrounding COVID reporting, such as “a lack of context for statistics, due coverage for alternative treatments, scrutiny of PCR testing, attention to adverse vaccine reactions, or balanced examinations of the costs of lockdown.”
The group accused the UK media of often publishing “fear-inducing and sometimes inaccurate” reports, which in turn create hostility towards those who would prefer not to get the vaccines.
“It’s been unprecedented the way COVID-19 has been reported in the UK but not just in the UK, worldwide,” said Sonia Elijah, one of the members of the group who allowed Press Gazette to mention her name.
“There’s only been one official narrative played out in the mainstream media and that has not changed over time.
“There’s only been one ‘scientific truth’ allowed to be discussed: the one endorsed by worldwide governmental regulatory bodies, even that has been very selective. This has given the public a distorted view of the truth which has been highly damaging.”
Elijah expressed her concern about censorship of information that contradicts the narrative provided by the Trusted News Initiative.
“For a long time, we’ve been in this dark era of censorship that’s been embodied by the Trusted News Initiative which cuts across big tech and all mainstream media,” she said.
“It’s been packaged around this war on disinformation or misinformation- where anything that’s gone against the official narrative has not just been ‘fact checked’ but has been suppressed or removed.”
According to Gosling, the group is championing for balanced debate.
Gosling said: “Our main concern is that there’s a very powerful lobby behind many of these COVID measures, including treatment, lack of treatment and vaccines, obviously, but there isn’t much of a lobby in the other direction. And I think most of us feel that our employers of various sorts have not been representing both sides.”
Gosling had two of his interviews featuring doctors advocating for early treatment post-diagnosis, the effectiveness of ivermectin, and the dangers of the “experimental” vaccines removed by YouTube.
As an example of the “sometimes inaccurate” coverage, he pointed to a BBC report where the contributor claims the Pfizer jab was “100% safe” for kids between the ages of 12 and 15. It was only after his complaint that the BBC removed the “shocking” and “disgusting” claim and provided a correction.
Gosling added: “My own aim is to provide balance, that’s it basically. And also to point out to the public that the journalists don’t always get to choose what gets published.
“It’s the owners and the editors that have the final say, so we are all of the same mind that we would like to see more journalists being editors and having their own newspapers, having their own TV/radio stations but that’s very, very rare. So there’s always an editor somewhere just saying no, I don’t want this, and particularly through this pandemic that’s the way it’s been, people have found it difficult to get stories in, and it’s been frustrating.”
Tory MP: “Tyranny Is Government Controlling Everything You Do!”
By Richie Allen | July 26, 2021
Speaking to Talk Radio’s Julia Hartley-Brewer this morning, Conservative MP Steve Baker asked, “What do people think that tyranny is? It’s this total control over what you do!”
He went on to say that people should write to their MP’s to tell them that they should vote against the introduction of vaccine passports. Baker is the deputy chair of the lockdown-sceptic Covid Recovery Group. He told Brewer this morning:
“…. you really do need to ask what’s going on. I’m pretty clear in my own mind that what it is is the government choosing effectively to coerce young people to get vaccinated.
I would have thought that we could do better surely than threatening vaccine passports. I do think it’s a proper slippery slope this one. We’re now looking at digital ID’s, we’re looking at a social credit system being trialled to get people to deal with obesity.
A central bank digital currency will enable the state to enormously intervene in our lives. And reasonably you can sit back and say wow what is going on with the change in the relationship between the individual and the state? I can see why some people are quite frightened.”
Sadly though, Baker went on to tell Hartley-Brewer that officials mean well. According to Baker, there is no wider agenda and there is no great conspiracy. He believes that the problem lies with good people making bad decisions. Does he know better? I can’t say. I don’t know him.
But this is why people like Baker refuse to come on The Richie Allen Show. I will go further. I will ask the hard questions. Talk Radio is mainstream light. When Brewer asked Baker to tell people what they can do to stop this madness, he said that they should write to their MP’s.
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From the Archives
Infertility: A Diabolical Agenda
Dr. Joseph Mercola | July 9, 2022
“Infertility: A Diabolical Agenda,” is the fourth vaccine-related documentary by Dr. Andrew Wakefield. It tells the story of an intentional infertility vaccine program conducted on African women, without their knowledge or consent.
While it’s been brushed off as a loony conspiracy theory for years, there’s compelling evidence showing it did, in fact, happen, and there’s nothing to prevent it from happening again. … continue
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