When New Zealand Civil liberties activist, Billy Te Kahika, was arrested in 2021 at a peaceful freedom rally in Auckland, he had no idea the legal battle he would face. Currently out on appeal, hear about the shocking 4 month jail sentence he’s facing for simply organizing a peaceful protest.
Government regulatory agencies are not weapons to be used against political opponents. Dr. Jensen is preparing a lawsuit to vindicate the rights of physicians and other health care professionals, cosmetologists, and anyone else who recognizes this grave threat to free speech and the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution.
The purpose of the suit will be twofold: First, to aid the courts in further drawing the line between protected speech and professional conduct subject to regulation. Second, we will hold accountable those responsible for the outrageous weaponization of government against Dr. Jensen and countless other professionals with the courage to speak out against censors and regulators run amok.
After being an outspoken voice during the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Jensen had his medical license threatened 5 times by political activists who leveraged Minnesota’s Board of Medical Practice against him. These attacks on speech continued throughout his campaign for Governor of the State of Minnesota.
Others around the country lost their livelihoods and had their professional careers threatened because of similar government overreach. Their freedom to speak freely and question authority was crushed and their recourse was oftentimes nonexistent. We are pursuing this lawsuit to vindicate Dr. Scott Jensen and to set a precedent so that ALL healthcare professionals and beyond will have free speech protections.
Those who accepted lockdowns, virtuously donned their masks, and eagerly lined up for the jabs and the boosters – people who think that I’m crazy to suggest that the covid measures adopted by New Zealand were as reprehensible as they were inefficacious – the people who have swallowed hook, line and sinker the lies of State over lo these many years – share one important characteristic, perhaps the one that defines their unwillingness to think for themselves.
They cannot bring themselves to believe that their governmental authorities are capable of evil.
You see, it’s that simple.
Despite a list of State atrocities over the lifespan of our human species that is nearly infinite, we here in the post-World War II West, refuse to countenance the idea of a murderous power elite masquerading as government for the good of all.
But how did such a conviction in the truthfulness of the State occur? How can so many be so certain of the unfailing goodness of the West?
Yes, this is a Western phenomenon – the advanced democratic, virtuous and egalitarian West of superior moral values, led by America. It is, furthermore, directly linked to the Second World War – and, in particular, to a myth fostered by the Western victors, which goes like this:
In genocidal Nazism, the most heinous and exceptional evil was concentrated. We who vanquished this evil are therefore good, and will always be good, regardless of our occasional peccadilloes. State-sponsored evil is a phenomenon of Nazi Germany, and it has been laid to rest.
America in the Fifties, when I was born, through the Seventies as I grew into myself, provided comfort, opportunity and even wealth for the lower and middle classes, factors that contributed to a feeling that life was good and that the country creating such an environment was also good.
When JFK was murdered by the CIA/Deep State of the time, most looked the other way and naively bought the fish tale of a lone marksman and a magic bullet. When the Twin Towers – AND WTC Building 7, let’s not forget – collapsed at freefall speed into their footprints as pulverized rubble on 9/11, no amount of uncanny physics and just plain common sense and eyewitness reports of multiple explosions could unconvince a majority that a rag-tag group of fanatic hijackers guided by an Arab mastermind from a Middle Eastern cave were to blame.
The incident in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964 that became the pretext for American escalation in Vietnam was as much of a lie as the Colin Powell’s 2003 assertion at the United Nations that Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction. How many lives were lost, how many people were displaced, how much misery ensued as a result of these callous and willful deceptions?
You see, the American government could never be guilty of such heinous crimes, never. Other countries of the English-speaking West and most of Europe, though quick to expose Soviet criminality and the profligate depredations of Communist Mao, turned a blind eye to American State terrorism and murder, and refused to acknowledge the coterie of covert agencies engaged in secret destructive operations against their very own citizens.
So, here, and in our very now, a transnational terrorist and genocidal operation on a scale never yet seen – I am referring of course to the Corona Wars – has engulfed the globe. The covid jab is killing us softly, and sometimes loud, and everywhere, and yet people who themselves have experienced the dangerous adverse effects of this agent cannot or will not connect the dots.
For example, a fully jabbed and boosted neighbor of mine recently developed a deep venous thrombosis and, two days later, a life-threatening pulmonary embolism. At the time not one medical practitioner queried the role of the jab as a causative or contributing factor, she informed me. A week later, however, her healthcare personnel had miraculously grown wiser and managed to come up with a theory: they blamed it on covid, from which she had recovered months before. No surprise, I suppose. Covid, long or short or in-between, is the perfect fall-guy to take the rap for any jab-related malfeasance.
As I’ve written and spoken about many times before, good doctors here in New Zealand – who questioned the wisdom of universal inoculation, who offered treatments, who tailored their care to an individual’s needs, and who stuck to the necessity of informed consent – are being hounded, harassed and persecuted by a vacuous and corrupt medical council in league with a private organization based in Dallas, Texas – the Federation of State Medical Boards.
One exceptionally responsible and informed physician was recently put through the ordeal of a week-long Health Professionals Disciplinary Tribunal. The Medical Council of New Zealand accused him of undermining public confidence in the Pfizer jab by discussing covid prevention and treatment. Yes, you read that correctly.
Gaslighting, witch hunts – so it goes.
But allow me to return to my thesis. Since when did people fall lock, stock and barrel for the obvious deceptions of their overlords? And how, and why?
I grew up in an America full of promise – for its citizens at least. An avid hard-working soul could acquire a superb education without mortgaging his or her lifetime of labor. Gas was cheap, travel was easy and the open road could be a dream.
Psychologically speaking, the concentrated evil of the Holocaust, with the Nazi death camps and inconceivable horror, would become a convenient repository of all that was morally reprehensible, all that was bad, while our Good Leaders would ensure that we might live under their benevolent protective shield. Heck, even the nuclear incineration of two Japanese cities was consecrated as an act of merciful necessity.
On the long narrow road ahead how many of us will be left to mourn the fearful, the ignorant, the naive, or the just plain selfish who, nurtured in a transient era of Western abundance, sacrificed good sense to an illusion, refused to make a peep about the obvious, and in a cavalier ‘yep, yep’ created a society along the apartheid fault lines of vaccination?
Fear, ignorance, naivete, selfishness – these are the Horsemen of our New World Order apocalypse.
To fight them off we need a little courage, wit and love: it’s truly that simple.
For many people, the words ‘trust the experts’ now invoke a sort of pavlovian horror response. This trope serves as a visceral reminder of 3 years’ constant gaslighting for daring to question the narrative, the relentless stream of celebrity medics repeating the ‘safe and effective’ mantra and the bullying and coercion to take a ‘vaccine’ that millions of people didn’t feel they needed or wanted. It had all the hallmarks of an abusive relationship. Core medical ethical principles were destroyed, the weaknesses of protocolised top-down healthcare delivery were exposed and of course there was direct harm to individuals. Is it any wonder that a great many of the British public never want to hear the words ‘our NHS’ ever again, cringing as they remember the weekly clapping ritual.
An inclination to throw the baby out with the bathwater is now a strong instinct for many who feel completely let down. If the relationship with state healthcare stands any chance of being repaired, harms enacted in recent years need to be properly acknowledged and people’s concerns carefully listened to. The uncomfortable question as to whether the NHS can function in its current incarnation should be aired. For a lot of people a ‘great reset’ of the medical profession would be a necessary condition of return. Indeed, many medics wonder if they can remain in a system that is clearly failing those it is supposed to serve.
As one doctor with decades of experience laments:
“If I continue to practise conveyor belt and recipe book medicine under the current system, the benefit is only to the Medical Business Model; hospitals, laboratories, diagnostic centres and the pharmaceutical industry all benefit in a model designed to keep the patient sick.”
Another consultant doctor reflecting on the past few years, had the following comments:
“The most odious revelation to me was when early on the directive came forth forbidding doctors, on pain of GMC punishment, to use their own initiative to treat a Covid patient with any other substance, drug, or agent whatsoever than that which was approved officially (of course at this point there was nothing in that category), save only for using it in an officially approved Clinical Trial. I felt utterly betrayed as a doctor. The whole essence of the doctor-patient relationship was abruptly abolished. We were now in the CMO-patient relationship. My role was merely to be a minor minion box-ticking algorithm slave. No clinical discretion. No discussion along the principles of best interest of the patient with informed consent. Oh no, that’s old hat! I saw the moral authority and overshadowing support of the entire medical establishment wither up like Jonah’s gourd.”
Multiple articles are now appearing reporting that morale for those working within the NHS is at an all-time low.1,2,3 One can only imagine that bearing witness to some of the most inhumane policies in NHS history for 3 years straight has not helped. Add to this the long hours on low pay, with increasingly limited time to spend with patients due to unmanageable waiting lists, and you have a perfect recipe for abysmal job satisfaction. Do we really want those in charge of our healthcare decisions to be forced to work under these conditions?
So now to the question of trusting medical advice that has been co-opted, protocolised and politicised, not to mention censored and distorted by financial interests. The UKHSA is supposed to be the government gatekeeper that is ‘responsible for protecting every member of every community from the impact of infectious diseases’. Just yesterday the agency was still urging people on Twitter to go and get their first and second covid vaccine. This is now so ludicrously at odds with the available evidence that any sane member of the public should conclude that the regulatory system in the UK is officially broken. It is worth taking the time to read the comments under the tweet to see that the public’s natural survival instincts seem to have well and truly kicked in. This random selection suggests the UKHSA may need to read the room:
If you tuned in to the Twitter Space on Sunday ‘Are mRNA injections causing cancers?’ hosted by Dr Kat Lindley and Neil Oliver, you would have heard a heated exchange between consultant orthopaedic surgeon Dr Ahmad Malik and London-based oncology professor, Angus Dalgleish. Dr Malik wanted to get to the bottom of why Professor Dalgleish felt moved to write an article advocating for young people to take the covid vaccine in July 2021 entitled:
What every young person who fears the jab MUST be told: Vaccine expert ANGUS DALGLEISH dismantles beliefs that have seen rates stall among the 18-30s
Well that seems like a pretty clear message. Get the damned vaccine.
Given his background in vaccine research, Prof Dalgleish would have been very clear that long-term safety data is not an optional extra when injecting young people or pregnant women. When questioned, Prof Dalgleish revealed that he did not actually write the article himself. There was a phone interview with a Daily Mail journalist, which he described as ‘bullying’ and the article was an entirely perverted representation of that call. Nonetheless, his name appears alongside the article with the effect that the message therein appears to come from a distinguished professor of medicine.
Professor Dalgleish dramatically revised his position on covid injections after his son suffered acute myocarditis following the shots. Whilst it is obviously a good thing that he was courageous and open-minded enough to change his stance, it is very worrying that he is still an outlier. One can count on one hand the working medics willing to speak out on this issue. And it begs the question, what if Professor Dalgleish’s son hadn’t been injured? Would there have been more advertorials in the Daily Mail with his name alongside? Why are journalists ‘bullying’ through a particular narrative on medical matters? This rather suggests they have a particular agenda. As one Dr Roger Hodkinson, an eminent Cambridge educated pathologist says, “when politics plays medicine, that’s a very dangerous game.” Notably Dr Hodkinson is now only available to view on Bitchute, having been deplatformed from the more mainstream channels such as YouTube. More media censorship of highly qualified counter-narrative voices.
Working for a monopoly such as the NHS, with a mortgage and a family to feed, one might well find medical ethics end up somewhere below personal financial obligations. This is regrettable but understandable. Medics are human beings. Perhaps it is the fault of an increasingly secular society that somehow medics have been elevated to demi-gods and as a result their word is often deemed infallible. However, many more people now realise that this is simply not the case. If this disordered power dynamic is to be realigned, certain conditions need to be met:
A genuine admission that mistakes were made. Not that ‘The Science™’ changed. It did not change and millions of people who resisted the military grade psy-op are fully aware of this;
An overhaul of medical training so that clinicians do not feel afraid to speak out when they see something is wrong, and in fact should be encouraged to do so;
The gaslighting must stop altogether. Those who have suffered injury or trauma need to be given proper air time and have their concerns addressed. They also need to be properly and fairly compensated.
Open and unfettered discussions need to take place, allowing medics to speak freely about what has happened during the past 3 years, identifying with honesty and integrity what must not be repeated.
Taxpayers spend in excess of £220 billion per annum on the NHS. Weekly excess deaths are presently consistently way above average, whereas after a period of high mortality in the frail and elderly it should be well below normal levels. The public (and indeed the staff) deserve better. If this is impossible, perhaps the entire system needs to be completely reimagined.
The oversight board for Facebook’s parent company, Meta, on Thursday recommended the social media giant “maintain its current policy” of removing COVID-19 “misinformation” from its platform until the World Health Organization declares an end to the global pandemic.
The board made the recommendation despite widespread outcry about social media censorship after the Twitter Files and several ongoinglawsuits revealed collusion between state actors and social media companies to censor dissenting opinions and factual information that contradict official narratives, including those related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The recommendation came in response to a request by Meta in July that the oversight board — an independent panel of tech and legal experts selected by Meta to weigh in on content policy issues — assess whether “a less restrictive approach” to censoring misinformation might “better align with its values and human rights responsibilities.”
Meta’s current misinformation policy sets different categories of harm content might cause, making that content subject to removal. Content is censored if the platform deems that it contributes to the “risk of imminent physical harm,” could cause “interference” with the functioning of political processes or contains “certain highly deceptive manipulated media.”
But the board didn’t find inconsistency between Meta’s “misinformation policy” and its “values and human rights responsibilities.” Instead, it said Meta’s current “exceptional measures” of eliminating disinformation are “justified.”
The board also urged Meta to “begin a process” to reassess which “misleading claims” it removes, to be more transparent about government requests for information, to consider making its “misinformation” policies more localized and to investigate how the architecture of the platform facilitates the spread of misinformation.
Meta said Thursday it will publicly respond to the board’s non-binding recommendations within 60 days.
Suzanne Nossel, a board member and CEO of PEN America, told The Washington Post that the board’s recommendations are not just relevant to COVID-19, but could shape Meta’s approach to anticipated future global health emergencies.
“The decision is less perhaps about the COVID pandemic per se or exclusively than about … how Meta should handle its responsibilities in the context of a fast-moving public health emergency,” she said.
How Facebook and Instagram censor COVID ‘misinformation’
The recommendation specifically assessed Meta’s “misinformation about health during public emergencies” policy, under which it removes 80 distinct “COVID-19 misinformation claims” posted on its platforms, such as claiming masking or social distancing lack efficacy or that the vaccines can have serious side effects.
Between March 2020 and July 2022, Facebook and Instagram, also owned by Meta, removed 27 million instances of COVID-19 “misinformation,” 1.3 million of which were restored on appeal.
The social media giant also designates a second type of COVID-19 “misinformation,” which does not reach the standard of removal, but is still subject to manipulation by the platform.
For example, information in that category is “fact-checked” where it is labeled as “false” or “missing context,” and then linked to a fact-checking article. That content is then also demoted so that it appears less frequently and prominently in users’ feeds.
Meta also treated other information with what it calls “neutral labels,” where it labeled posts with statements such as “some unapproved COVID-19 treatments may cause serious harm” and then directed people to Meta’s COVID-19 information center, which provides approved information from public health authorities.
Last July, the company said it had connected more than 2 billion people across 189 countries to “trustworthy information” through the portal. But it decided to stop using the neutral labels in December 2022, to ensure they would remain effective in other health emergencies, according to the oversight board’s report.
The basis for determining what is misinformation is whether the information conforms to what public health authorities deem to be true, according to the board’s recommendation and the Facebook policy page.
But throughout the pandemic, public health authorities have had to concede they were wrong about things — and that they lied about things — they had previously pronounced to be science-backed facts.
That means the platforms eliminated and demoted facts and information that were true. Even CNN conceded that “the company applied the labels to a wide range of claims both true and untrue about vaccines, treatments and other topics related to the virus.”
‘This kind of abuse of power should terrify all of us’
The board recommendations don’t mention the events that led Meta to consider changing its policies — controversy over recent revelations about how government officials coerced social media companies into toeing the government line.
In 2021, President Biden directly criticized Facebook and other platforms, saying they allowed “vaccine misinformation” to spread and they contributed to deaths from COVID-19.
He said they were “killing people” and that the pandemic was only “among the unvaccinated.”
Biden’s accusation was accompanied by threats of regulatory action from from high-ranking members of the administration — including White House Press Secretary Jennifer Psaki, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas — if the social media companies did not comply.
Psaki said government officials were in regular touch with social media platforms, telling them what — and in some cases whom — to censor, Jenin Younes reported.
DHS even created a video in 2021, since removed from youtube, encouraging children to report their own family members to Facebook for ‘disinformation’ if they challenge U.S. government narratives on COVID-19.
Writing in Tablet Magazine this month, civil liberties attorney Jenin Younes recounted the story of a Facebook support group for people who experienced adverse events related to the COVID-19 vaccines being shut down for spreading harmful “misinformation.”
Last month, in the Twitter Files release about Stanford University’s Virality project, Matt Taiibbi revealed that Stanford, with the backing of several government agencies, had created a cross-platform digital ticketing system that was processing censorship requests for all of the social media platforms, including Meta’s.
The Virality Project claimed its objective “is to detect, analyze, and respond to incidents of false and misleading narratives related to COVID-19 vaccines across online ecosystems.”
Taibbi said the Virality Project was “defining true things as disinformation or misinformation or malformation,” which he said signifies “a new evolution of the disinformation process away from trying to figure out what’s true and what’s not and just going directly to political narrative.”
That reflects Meta’s policy to censor statements that don’t conform to official public health authority doctrine as “misinformation.”
Meta’s policies do not mention the tips and directions it receives from government agencies about misinformation.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Tuesday published an op-ed in The Hill calling for an end to censorship practices, pointing out that statements about COVID-19 made on platforms like Facebook that are now supported by evidence were flagged as disinformation.
”Statements including my own, that our government once labeled as ‘disinformation,’ such as the efficacy of masks, naturally acquired immunity, and the origins of COVID-19, are now supported by evidence,” he said.
“In reality, the most significant source of disinformation during the pandemic, with the most influence and greatest impact on people’s lives, was the U.S. government,” he added.
Rand pointed to critiques of DHS’s “abusive practices” by organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union and highlighted a Brennan Center for Justice report published last month that found at least 12 DHS programs for tracking what Americans are saying online.
“This kind of abuse of power should terrify all of us regardless of which side of the aisle you are on,” he said.
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
Gut microbiome specialist, Dr. Sabine Hazan, shares the shocking results of a long term study she performed comparing microbiomes in patients before and after taking the COVID-19 vaccine.
An article published by the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) has undertaken a formidable task: to engage in lockdown revisionism – while stating that it is fighting lockdown revisionism.
The lockdown here refers to the radically restrictive, invasive and long-lasting measures the authorities put in place during the Covid pandemic, but the article believes that the very word “lockdown” has now gained not only a powerful, but also “perverted” meaning.
Talk about “perverted” use of language – this development which worries CMAJ has taken place not only during the pandemic, but during “the infodemic.”
For those not in the know, “infodemic” is a pandemic-era neologism pushed by the likes of the World Health Organization (WHO) et al., meant to signify “an overabundance of information – some accurate and some not – that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and Access to the right reliable guidance when they need it.”
In other words, people don’t know what’s good for them, and in come all sorts of “trustworthy sources” to sort “the truth” out for them; the CMAJ article in particular wants to deal with “misinformation on lockdowns” and calls that – “lockdown revisionism.”
It is this – rather than any actions taken by governments – that has eroded trust in public health initiatives over the past three years, the journal is convinced.
The article’s authors also curiously insisted on peppering it with the mention of “democratic governments” engaging in these initiatives, possibly to bolster the “trustworthiness” of their own argument here (in reality, all sorts of governments did this – and some viewed as democratic then, did not emerge from the pandemic with that image unscathed.)
The CMAJ wants these “good” governments to now do more controversial things, such as, put euphemistically, “address the risks” of what is seen as misinformation amplification on social media.
Some of this “misinformation,” specifically regarding lockdowns as a tool of repression, not only physical, but also intellectual (considering censorship faced by those expressing their skepticism on those social sites), is defined pretty well – although, clearly from CMAJ’s point of view, as a negative phenomena (“elements of outlandish conspiracies”).
Things like this: “Lockdowns have been framed as reckless and unscientific, as junk science, as an excuse to permanently oppress populations, as gaslighting with ever-shifting goalposts.”
If that sounds about right, the CMAJ considers you a misinformation peddler with possibly a knack for outlandish conspiracies.
And now, how to fix that?
“Governments could consider strategies — including increased regulatory scrutiny — to address the risks of misinformation being amplified on social media,” is one of the ideas presented in the article.
Judicial Watch announced Wednesday it received 552 pages of records from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that include the initial grant application and annual reports to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from EcoHealth Alliance, describing the aim of its work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China to create mutant viruses “to better predict the capacity of our CoVs [coronaviruses] to infect people.”
Eco Health Alliance planned to sequence the spike protein from coronaviruses obtained from bats for the purpose of “creating mutants to identify how significantly each would need to evolve to use ACE2,” which is explained as “the receptor to gain entry to human cells.”
Judicial Watch obtained the records through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request it filed in December 2021 for:
“All reports submitted by EcoHealth Alliance to NIH or its sub-agencies related to NIH Grant No. 1R01A|110964 titled ‘Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence” during the term of the grant.’”
In the initial “Application for Federal Assistance” submitted on June 5, 2013, by EcoHealth Alliance, a section is titled “Specific Aims,” which notes the intention to create mutant bat viruses and “predict the capacity of our CoVs [coronaviruses] to infect people”:
“To understand the risk of zoonotic CoV [coronavirus] emergence, we propose to examine 1) the transmission dynamics of bat-CoVs across the human-wildlife interface; and 2) how this process is affected by CoV evolutionary potential, and how it might force CoV evolution.
“We will assess the nature and frequency of contact among animals and people in two critical human-animal interfaces: live animal markets in China and people who are highly exposed to bats in rural China.”
“Specific Aim 3” discusses “Testing predictions of CoV inter-species transmission”:
“We will test our models of host range (i.e. emergence potential) experimentally using reverse genetics, pseudovirus and receptor binding assays, and virus infection experiments in cell culture and humanized mice.
“With bat-CoVs that we’ve isolated or sequenced, and using live virus or pseudovirus infection in cells of different origin or expressing different receptor molecules, we will assess potential for each isolated virus and those with receptor binding site sequence to spill over.
“We will do this by sequencing the spike (or other receptor binding/fusion) protein genes from all our bat-CoVs, creating mutants to identify how significantly each would need to evolve to use ACE2, CD26/DPP4 (MERS-CoV receptor) or other potential CoV receptors.”
In the continuing discussion of the aims of the research, the report states:
“In vitro [outside the body] cell lines & Humanized mouse model: We have developed primary cell lines and transformed cell lines from 9 bat species using kidney, spleen, heart, brain and intestine. We have used these for virus isolation, infection assays and receptor molecule gene cloning.
“We also have a large number of cell lines from humans and animals that we will use for virus infectivity assays. We have obtained a letter of support from Dr. Ralph Baric, who is keen to collaborate with us initially to infect his humanized mouse model with our bat SL-CoV [SARS-Like Coronavirus] that uses ACE2, and subsequently to use other CoVs that we identify …
“The results will provide information whether bat-CoVs could use known bat and human ACE2, DPP4 or other known CoV receptors to enter cells, and allow us to determine critical receptor binding sites, viral host range, and to better predict the capacity of our CoVs to infect people.”
Three other Chinese sites follow: East China Normal University in Shanghai, Yunnan Institute of Endemic Disease Control and Prevention in Dali and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention of Guangdong in Guangzhou.
On May 27, 2014, the NIH awarded EcoHealth Alliance $3,086,735 over five years for “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.”
An EcoHealth Alliance grant application, received by the NIH on June 5, 2013, includes a list of “Senior/Key Personnel” including Shi Zhengli and Zhang Yun-Zhi of the WIV; Peter Daszak, CEO of EcoHealth Alliance; and other Chinese scientists, including Ke Changwen of the Chinese “CDC and Prevention of Guangdong Province.”
A section of the EcoHealth Alliance application titled “EcoHealth Alliance Budget Justification” describes some of the work to be conducted by EcoHealth scientists in China:
“A research scientist will be hired at 12 months time per year to provide direct assistance and oversight of field activities in China; maintain equipment and logistics; and coordinate animal and human sample shipment to the labs in China and in the US.
“Once we secure IRBs [Institutional Review Boards] for human sampling in Y1 [Year 1], we will hire three medical officers from China provincial CDCs [Centers for Disease Control] as consultants to work in Guangxi, Hunan, and Fujian during Y2-Y5. These medical officers will be responsible for IRB approved human sampling as well as maintaining cold chain for storage and shipping samples.
“Dr. Zhengli Shi, Senior Virologist. [Redacted] per year in Y1 -Y5. Dr. Shi will oversee the coronavirus screening for all samples collected in China. She will work with the PI [Principal Investigator], Co-Investigators, and Senior/Key Personnel to analyze data and write manuscripts. She will also coordinate data and material sharing with the co-investigators.”
In a budget calculation for the year 2014-15, the WIV as a sub-awardee of the grant was allocated to receive $128,718 in direct costs and $10,297 in indirect costs from NIH.
The salaries of Shi Zhengli and a WIV colleague Ge Xingyl are redacted from the budget. Over the five years of the grant, the Wuhan lab was to receive $749,976.
A section of the grant award titled “Wuhan Institute of Virology Budget Justification, Subaward” discusses “Other Direct Costs”:
RNA extractions
We will be running RNA extractions for 1,000 bats per year (three samples per bat: oral, anal and blood) in each year … Extracted RNA per animal will be pooled.
DNA Sequencing
In each year of the project, DNA sequencing will be performed on 3,200 samples at a cost of $2.91 per reaction. …
Laboratory Supplies
We request support for in vitro infection experiments using pseudoviruses carrying the spike proteins (wild type or mutants) or live viruses in cell lines of different origins, binding affinity assays between the spike proteins (wild types or mutants) and different cellular receptor molecules and humanized mouse experiments.
“Testing predictions of CoV inter-species transmission. The following experiments will be undertaken in Year 2:
Humanized mice with human ACE2 receptors will be infected with WIV1 and the two rescued chimeric SARS-like coronaviruses to determine the tissue tropism and pathogenicity of bat SL-CoV.
Isolation of novel bat coronaviruses. Live virus or pseudovirus will be used to infect cells of different origin or expressing different receptor molecules. Spillover potential for each isolated virus will be assessed.
An infectious clone of full-length MERS-CoV [Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus] will be constructed using reverse genetic method. Using the S [spike] sequence of different MERS-related viruses identified from Chinese bats, the chimeric viruses with S gene of bat MERS-related coronaviruses and backbone of the infectious clone of MERS-CoV will be constructed to study the receptor usage and infectivity of bat MERS-related coronaviruses.
“In Year 3, we successfully isolated Rs4874 from the single [bat] fecal sample. Using the reverse genetic system we previously developed, we constructed two chimeric viruses with the WIV1 backbone replaced with the S [spike] gene of Rs7327 and Rs4231, respectively.
“Vero E6 cells were respectively infected with Rs4874, WIV1-Rs4231S and WIV1-Rs7327S, and efficient virus replication was detected by immunofluorescence assay in all infections.
“To assess the usage of human ACE2 by the three novel SL-CoVs, we conducted virus infectivity studies using HeLa cells with or without the expression of human ACE2. All viruses replicated efficiently in the human ACE2-expressing cells.”
In the Year 4 annual report, budget period June 1, 2018, to May 31, 2019, submitted to NIH by EcoHealth on Sept. 16, 2020, in answer to the question “How Have the Results Been Disseminated to Communities of Interest,” the report details that Peter Daszak and WIV lab director Shi Zhenglibriefed their findings to, among others, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Among the accomplishments listed in the Year 4 report is:
“In vivo [experimentation done in a whole organism] infection of SARSr-CoVs with variants of S [spike] protein in human ACE2 (hACE2) expressing mice.”
The report also includes information about the construction of viruses of “varying pathogenicity” and testing them on humanized mice:
“Using the reverse genetic methods we previously developed, infectious clones with the WIV1 [bat SARS-like coronavirus] backbone and the spike protein of SHC014, W IV16 and Rs4231, respectively, were constructed and recombinant viruses were successfully rescued.
“In Year 4, we performed preliminary in vivo infection of SARSr-CoVs on transgenic mice that express hACE2. Mice were infected with 105 pfu of full-length recombinant virus of W IV1 (rWIV1) and the three chimeric viruses with different spikes.
“Pathogenesis of the 4 SARSr-CoVs was then determined in a 2-week course. Mice challenged with rWIV1-SHC014S have experienced about 20% body weight loss by the 6th day post infection, while rWIV1 and rWIV-4231 S produced less body weight loss.
“In the mice infected with rWIV1 -WIV16S, no body weight loss was observed (Fig. 35a). 2 and 4 days post infection, the viral load in lung tissues of mice challenged with rWIV1-SHC014S, rWIV1-WIV16S and rWIV1-Rs4231 S reached more than 106 genome copies/g and were significantly higher than that in rWIV1-infected mice (Fig. 35b). These results demonstrate varying pathogenicity of SARSr-CoVs with different spike proteins in humanized mice.”
In a revised award dated July 13, 2020, the NIH granted additional funds, including $77,750 to the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, $76,301 to the WIV and $75,600 to the Institute of Pathogen Biology of China.
The 2020 renewal application to extend funding for the Wuhan bat research projects states that EcoHealth would not be working with “select agents” (severe threats), such as SARS-CoV, but rather with a SARSr-CoV molecular clone designated WIV1 which, while a “BSL3” (biosafety level 3) pathogen, was not considered a select agent.
The select agent research was to be conducted at Baric’s lab at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
A section titled “P3CO Research” notes:
“Importantly, we are not proposing to genetically manipulate SARS-CoV over the course of this proposal. … However, we are proposing to genetically manipulate the full length bat SARSr-CoV WIV1 strain molecular clone during the course of this proposal, which is not a select agent, has not been shown to cause human infections, and has not been shown to be transmissible between humans.”
“This project is a multi-institutional collaboration led by EcoHealth Alliance, New York (Daszak, PI), which will subcontract funds to three institutions: the Wuhan Institute of Virology (Dr. Shi), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Dr. Baric), and the Institute of Pathogen Biology (Dr. Ren).”
“A review of these and other documents strongly suggest that U.S. funding in China and elsewhere for mutant virus, gain-of-function research may have been responsible for the emergence of the COVID pandemic in Wuhan,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
“This gain-of-function scandal should be the subject of criminal investigations.”
Through FOIA, Judicial Watch has uncovered a substantial amount of information about COVID-19 issues:
HHS records included emails of then-Director of the NIH Francis Collins showing a British physicians’ group recommended the use of Ivermectin to prevent and treat COVID-19.
Heavily redacted HHS records showed that just two days prior to FDA approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine a discussion was held between U.S. and U.K. health regulators regarding the COVID-19 shot and “anaphylaxis,” with the regulators emphasizing their “mutual confidentiality agreement.”
Judicial Watch obtained HHS records regarding data Moderna submitted to the FDA on its mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, which indicated a “statistically significant” number of rats were born with skeletal deformations after their mothers were injected with the vaccine. The documents also revealed Moderna elected not to conduct a number of standard pharmacological studies on the laboratory test animals.
Heavily redacted records from the FDA regarding the COVID-19 booster vaccine detailed pressure on COVID-19 booster use and approval.
HHS records detailed internal discussions about myocarditis and the COVID-19 vaccine. Other documents detail adverse “events for which a contributory effect of the vaccine could not be excluded.”
Judicial Watch uncovered HHS records detailing the extensive media plans for a Biden administration propaganda campaign to push the COVID-19 vaccine.
HHS records revealed previously redacted locations of COVID-19 vaccine testing facilities in Shanghai, China. The FDA had claimed the name and location of the testing facilities were protected by the confidential commercial information exemption of the FOIA.
NIH records showed an FBI “inquiry” into the NIH’s controversial bat coronavirus grant tied to the WIV. The records also show NIAID officials were concerned about “gain-of-function” research in China’s WIV in 2016. The Fauci agency was also concerned about EcoHealth Alliance’s lack of compliance with reporting rules and use of gain-of-function research in the NIH-funded research involving bat coronaviruses in Wuhan, China.
Texas Public Information Act (PIA) records showed the former director of the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Dr. James W. Le Duc, warned Chinese researchers at the WIV of potential investigations into the COVID-19 issue by Congress.
HHS records regarding biodistribution studies and related data for the COVID-19 vaccines showed how a key component of the vaccines developed by Pfizer/BioNTech, lipid nanoparticles, were found outside the injection site, mainly the liver, adrenal glands, spleen and ovaries of test animals, eight to 48 hours after injection.
Records obtained from HHS through a FOIA lawsuit related to hydroxychloroquine and COVID-19 revealed that a grant to EcoHealth Alliance was canceled because of press reports that a portion of the grant was given to the WIV.
HHS records revealed that from 2014 to 2019, $826,277 was given to the WIV for bat coronavirus research by the NIAID.
NIAID records showed that it gave nine China-related grants to EcoHealth Alliance to research coronavirus emergence in bats and was the NIH’s top issuer of grants to the Wuhan lab itself. The records also included an email from the vice director of the Wuhan Lab asking an NIH official for help finding disinfectants for the decontamination of airtight suits and indoor surfaces.
HHS records included an “urgent for Dr. Fauci ” email chain, citing ties between the Wuhan lab and the taxpayer-funded EcoHealth Alliance. The government emails also reported that the foundation of U.S. billionaire Bill Gates worked closely with the Chinese government to pave the way for Chinese-produced medications to be sold outside China and help “raise China’s voice of governance by placing representatives from China on important international counsels as high level commitment from China.”
HHS records included a grant application for research involving the coronavirus that appears to describe “gain-of-function” research involving RNA extractions from bats, experiments on viruses, attempts to develop a chimeric virus and efforts to genetically manipulate the full-length bat SARSr-CoV WIV1 strain molecular clone.
HHS records showed the State Department and NIAID knew immediately in January 2020 that China was withholding COVID-19 data, which was hindering risk assessment and response by public health officials.
HHS records show that NIH officials tailored confidentiality forms to China’s terms and that the World Health Organization conducted an unreleased, “strictly confidential” COVID-19 epidemiological analysis in January 2020.
Fauci emails include his approval of a press release supportive of China’s response to the 2019 novel coronavirus.
Judicial Watch, Inc. is a conservative, non-partisan educational foundation, which promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law.
U.S. health officials opposed a diplomatic letter requesting international scientists tour Wuhan’s coronavirus labs in the spring of 2020, according to emails obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
On May 15, 2020, the Department of State requested the Department of Health and Human Services cosign a letter “requesting that the PRC authorize and facilitate a visit of international scientists and public health experts to Wuhan,” the emails show.
The purpose: “To exchange information with counterparts who have conducted research on coronaviruses (including the origin and characteristics of SARS-CoV-2), examine all relevant data, and visit laboratory facilities where such research has been conducted, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention labs,” the request reads.
Secretary of State Michael Pompeo addressed the letter to Han Zheng, vice premier of the People’s Republic of China, and Yang Jiechi, the director of the Office of Foreign Affairs of the Communist Party of China. The letter’s contents are fully redacted, but are described in the request from the State Department to HHS.
HHS Secretary Alex Azar declined to cosign the letter and even recommended that the State Department reconsider sending it.
“After careful consideration, HHS respectfully declines to join the letter,” reads the reply.
The HHS media office did not respond to a request for comment.
Eight agencies and offices within HHS authorized the negative reply, including the National Institutes of Health — which funded high risk virology in Wuhan — as well as two senior aides to Azar, according to interagency communications. The communications indicate that the “authoring agency” was the HHS Office of Global Affairs.
The new emails further illustrate how fledgling efforts to gain a window into the coronavirus virology at the pandemic’s center have been obstructed from within the U.S. government.
Health officials and the U.S. intelligence community opposed publishing information related to the Wuhan lab in early 2021 in part because it “called out actions that we ourselves are doing” and “demanded access that we ourselves would never provide,” U.S. Right to Knowpreviously reported.
The NIH, which is a part of HHS, supported the discovery of new coronaviruses and experiments that enhanced their transmissibility and pathogenicity in the lab in Wuhan, according to federal records and grant reports.
Francis Collins, then the director of the NIH, and Anthony Fauci, director of its infectious diseases institute, helped conceive a 2020 scientific article that suppressed speculation about the possibility of a research related origin of the novel virus, according to other emails revealed through FOIA.
HHS outlined four reasons they opposed the diplomatic letter.
“We have sent our own letter to Mr. Azar’s counterpart at the National Health Commission, Minister Ma Xiaowei, regarding sample sharing,” the reply read. “We would like to ensure that line of inquiry remains open, and as such do not wish to confuse issues by joining this letter.”
The HHS response continues: “We recently ended funding to the institute that this letter is requesting access to. … A request for a visit could be construed as opening the possibility for that funding to again be available, something we do not wish to be suggested.”
The NIH had temporarily suspended a grant to EcoHealth Alliance, the infectious diseases group that served as an intermediary between NIH and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“HHS recommends that the State Department reconsider sending the letter as it could be used to curtail access to Chinese vaccine and therapeutic development — something that we also do not wish to do as it could impede other Presidential health initiatives, such as Operation Warp Speed,” the response also states.
The U.S. and China would ultimately undertake separate tracks in vaccine development.
Two top Food and Drug Administration officials — director of FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research Peter Marks, who coined the term “Operation Warp Speed,” and longtime FDA official Janet Woodcock, who led COVID-19 therapeutic development — were not involved in drafting the reply, the emails suggest.
The HHS response concludes that the desire for an inspection of the Wuhan labs by international scientists had already been “overtaken” by a resolution at the World Health Assembly in May 2020.
“Finally, the letter is now overtaken by the resolution agreed to at the 73rd World Health Assembly … to undertake an investigation into the origins of COVID-19,” the reply reads.
In fact, the World Health Assembly resolution called for an investigation to “identify the zoonotic source of the virus.” In other words, the resolution implicitly omitted a possible laboratory source.
Chinese authorities had final approval of the experts tapped to participate in the investigation. They included EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak. The investigation concluded that a lab origin was “extremely unlikely,” a conclusion immediately rejected by World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Emails used in this story can be reviewed here. All of the documents obtained in the course of our investigation can be reviewed here.
This week, CDC director Rochelle Walensky provided witness testimony to the House Committee on Appropriations responsible for overseeing the funding of various federal programs related to labour, health, education, and other related agencies.
But serious questions have been raised about the veracity of Walensky’s testimony.
Congressman Andrew Clyde (R-Ga) asked Walensky if her March 2021 public statement on MSNBC, in which she unequivocally said that “vaccinated people do not carry the virus, they do not get sick” was accurate.
“At the time it was [accurate]” Walensky replied confidently.
She then proceeded to explain, “We’ve had an evolution of the science and an evolution of the virus” and that “all the data at the time suggested that vaccinated people, even if they got sick, could not transmit the virus.”
However, there was no such evidence at the time and it prompted criticism from scientists who said there weren’t enough data to claim that vaccinated people were completely protected or that they could not transmit the virus to others.
One of those critics was Jay Bhattacharya, professor of health policy at Stanford University School of Medicine.
“Back then, Walensky didn’t know if it was true. It was just an irresponsible use of a bully pulpit as a CDC director to say something that she did not know for certain to be true at the time,” said Bhattacharya.
“Unfortunately, people used that information to discriminate against unvaccinated individuals and would certainly have been used as fuel for very destructive policies like vaccine mandates,” he added.
Notably, only days after Walensky made that statement to MSNBC, a spokesperson from her own agency had to walk back the comments saying, “Dr Walensky spoke broadly in this interview” adding that it was possible for fully vaccinated people to get COVID-19.
Walensky missed the memo
Walensky should have known that when mRNA vaccines were first authorised in 2020, the FDA listed critical ‘gaps’ in the knowledge base. One of them was the vaccine’s unknown effectiveness against viral transmission.
Also, in Pfizer’s and Moderna’s original pivotal trials, there were 8 and 11 people respectively, who developed symptomatic COVID-19 in the vaccine group, proving the vaccines never had absolute effectiveness, like Walensky had claimed.
Several months later, the FDA’s evaluation stayed the same. In a clinical review, the FDA wrote, “remaining uncertainties regarding the clinical benefits of BNT162b2 in individuals 16 years and older, include its level of protection against asymptomatic infection and transmission of SARS-CoV-2, including for the delta variant.”
Even today, the FDA remains clear that efficacy against transmission is unproven. The FDA’s website states, “While it is hoped this will be the case, the scientific community does not yet know if Comirnaty will reduce such transmission.”
Walensky says Cochrane summary ‘retracted’
Another astonishing falsehood made by Walensky was her response to Congressman Clyde’s question about the Cochrane review which found that wearing face masks in the community “probably makes little to no difference” in preventing viral transmission.
Walensky enthusiastically stated, “I think its notable, that the Editor-in-Chief of Cochrane, actually said that the summary of that review was…[stumble]..she retracted the summary of that review and said that it was inaccurate.”
However, the summary of the review was not retracted, nor have the authors of the review changed the language in the summary.
Misleading statements by New York Times columnist Zeynep Tufekci has likely led to this falsehood being repeated (which I cover in a previous article).
In response to Walensky’s comments, Tom Jefferson, lead author of the Cochrane study said, “Walensky is plain wrong. There has been no retraction of anything.”
“It’s worth reiterating that we are the copyright holders of the review, so we decide what goes in or out of the review and we will not change our review on the basis of what the media wants or what Walensky says,” remarked Jefferson.
Bhattacharya was also stunned by Walensky’s comments. “It’s irresponsible for her to claim that the Cochrane review [summary] was retracted when it was not. It damages her credibility and harms the scientific process, which requires public officials to be honest about scientific results,” he said.
Did Walensky lie to Congress or is she poorly informed?
Witnesses at these hearings are expected to provide truthful and accurate information to the committee and may be subject to legal penalties if they provide false information or knowingly make false statements.
But will Walensky be held accountable for misleading Congress? Unlikely.
In our book, The Courage to Face COVID-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex, Dr. McCullough and I give numerous examples of how anyone—even eminently qualified scientists and researchers—who questions the prevailing orthodoxy about a range of public policy issues will likely be labelled a “conspiracy theorist.” Since the JFK assassination, “conspiracy theorist” has become a pejorative, accusatory label like “racist” or “sexist.” Through common usage, the label has become charged with the power to smear and dismiss someone outright without supporting evidence.
The greatest trick that powerful interest groups ever pulled was convincing the world that everyone who detects and reports their activities is a conspiracy theorist. Only the naivest consumer of mainstream news reporting would fail to recognize that powerful interest groups in the military, financial, and bio-pharmaceutical industries work in concert to further their interests. Their activities cross the line into conspiracy when they commit fraud or other crimes to advance their interests. The term “conspiracy theory” suggests the feverish imaginings of a crackpot mind. This ignores the fact that the United States government prosecutes the crime of conspiracy all the time. As one prominent defense attorney describes this reality:
Any time the government believes that it can allege that two or more individuals were a part of a common agreement to commit the same crime, they will include a charge of conspiracy in the indictment. There is no requirement that all of the members of the conspiracy even know about each other, or even know each other personally.
A person may be charged with conspiracy to commit a crime even if he doesn’t know all of the details of the crime. History is full of well-documented conspiracies. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, there were three major conspiracies to murder her and replace her with Mary Queen of Scots. All were detected and foiled. The final “Babington Plot” was discovered by Elizabeth’s secretary, Sir Francis Walsingham (an astute intelligence gatherer) and this led to Mary’s execution for treason.
Are we really to believe that there are no longer power-hungry men who conspire to acquire greater power and wealth?
As far as “theory” goes, every prosecutor develops a theory of a crime and presents it to the jury. If you are a concerned citizen and you perceive that your government officials and media are not telling the truth about a vitally important matter, you have no choice but to formulate a theory of what is going on. Developing a theory to explain a pattern of ascertainable facts is a rational attempt to detect and expose criminal conduct. To be sure, some theories are more plausible than others. Some are logical and coherent; others are wild and contradictory.
When President Eisenhower left office in 1961, he expressly warned about what he called the Military-Industrial Complex acquiring “unwarranted influence” that could “endanger our liberties and democratic processes.” When COVID-19 arrived, the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex vigorously and exclusively pursued the vaccine solution instead of the early treatment solution. In order to realize their ambition, multiple actors simultaneously waged a propaganda campaign against hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, and other repurposed drugs.
It’s likely that only a relatively small number of these actors knew they were making fraudulent claims about the generic, repurposed drugs, and knew they were taking action to impede access to these drugs based on fraudulent claims. These actors were the conspirators. Countless others unwittingly played roles in the conspiracy because they themselves believed the propaganda.
Only two years ago numerous alternative media sources including Zero Hedge were accused of spreading “conspiracy theories” and false information relating to the origins of the Covid-19 virus. Specifically, anyone who dared to suggest that the Level 4 virology lab in Wuhan, China (right across town from covid ground zero) might be the source of the outbreak, faced outright censorship on social media. The question many people should have been asking is: “Why?” – Why was the censorship so aggressive over clearly reasonable investigations into Wuhan lab operations?
Not only that, but why were the denials and spin from officials like Anthony Fauci so swift? Why not simply examine the evidence instead of dismissing it out of hand?
The real reason for the campaign to silence discussion on the Wuhan lab becomes evident as the connections between Fauci, the NIH and the lab are revealed. Elements of the US government including Fauci were in fact bankrolling gain of function research on coronaviruses at Wuhan, and shielding it from government oversight. It is undeniable. If one accepts that the most likely source for the covid pandemic was the Wuhan laboratory then one must also accept that Fauci and his associates helped to create the pandemic.
Fauci lied about these connections incessantly under oath. Here is Anthony Fauci defending his initial lie to Congress using further lies during questioning by Sen. Rand Paul:
Evidence of the research includes documents from the Department of Defense (obtained by Project Veritas ) which confirm that EcoHealth Alliance approached DARPA in 2018 about gain of function research on bat borne coronaviruses under a proposal called Project Defuse. DARPA rejected the proposal on the grounds that it did not outline the risks of such experimentation and violated a moratorium on gain on function research. EcoHealth then went to Fauci and the NIH for funding, and Fauci was quick to support it using the labs in Wuhan.
Documents from the NIH itself also show that the group engaged in gain of function research at Wuhan focusing on developing coronaviruses that could be transferred from animals to humans. Fauci was aware of this research by at least 2021 (and was likely involved from the very beginning) and yet continued to lie about NIH involvement.
Meanwhile, the National Pulse– which has done multiple deep-dive investigations on the topic, uncovered in May of 2001 that the WIV scrubbed all mention of its partnership with the NIH from their website.
Scrutiny over Fauci’s disinformation campaign may be too little too late, and we have to wonder if the man will ever face consequences for his actions. However, the exposure of Fauci and the NIH is so overwhelming that the former Director of National Intelligence now admits that Fauci misled Congress and the American public.
The former Director of National Intelligence agrees with the former CDC Director that Dr. Anthony Fauci lied to Congress under oath about funding gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab:
"Some of Dr. Fauci's testimony is inconsistent with some of the intelligence that we have… pic.twitter.com/raoVCBQdyR
Hopefully, this revelation will help to discourage people from blindly following the claims of government bureaucrats during the next manufactured global crisis.
This is the second of our two-part series on the role played by ventilators in the pandemic phenomenon. In Part 1 published yesterday, which you can read here, we considered the dubious clinical rationale and adverse outcomes of the widespread use of ventilators, and today we explore the psychological purpose.
VENTILATORS AS A PSYCHOLOGICAL TOOL
‘LOOK her in the eyes and tell her you never break the rules’, exclaimed a billboard posted around the country in spring 2020, each version depicting a petrified patient with a breathing tube or mask. This was the State of Fear documented by Laura Dodsworth (2020) in the aftermath of the first lockdown, imposed purportedly to limit the spread of a deadly new coronavirus. To achieve compliance with an unprecedented deprivation of liberties, the government pushed propaganda at every opportunity, inducing fear of the disease and loathing of anyone daring to stray from pandemic discipline.
For the regime to work, the people needed to be sufficiently scared. The virus was portrayed as universally life-threatening, with an exaggerated fatality rate in the early weeks derived from a relatively low number of cases. The reported rate of about 5 per cent declined after mass testing, which reduced the IFR to nearer that of influenza (this inversion was useful in demonstrating the effectiveness of lockdown and social distancing), but the initial message was highly effective.
Alongside the seriousness of the contagion was an absence of cure. For a patient who developed severe symptoms, typically drowning in pneumonia, the only chance of survival was to be intubated and to rely on a ventilator in the hope of microbial mercy.
Nothing invokes public dread more than scenes of multiple patients on ventilators; even better if those working around them are covered in maximally protective clothing and face masks. Rows of patients in ordinary hospital beds would not have had the same effect; indeed, in some televised recordings politicians visiting wards were met by stoical Brits, inconveniently chatty or smiling. NHS hospitals became a tightly scripted stage show, as illustrated by nurses doing choreographed TikTok dances (often imploring people to ‘stay at home’), and activist Debbie Hicks arrested (and later fined almost £1,000) for filming in her local hospital corridors.
‘Ventilator’ became le mot du jour in conversations with friends and family. This was all part of the theatre: overwhelmed doctors and nurses, beds in the corridors, hurriedly built Nightingale hospitals (which never fully opened), and a treatment apparatus that filled minds with fear. Being put on a ventilator may be traumatising, one Covid-19 patient reflecting on it as the ‘worst experience of her life’. The blunt message was that if you wanted to avoid such drastic intervention you must follow all guidelines and mandates. Through their daily projection in mainstream media, ventilators were a useful tool for compliance with social distancing, lockdown, regular testing and mask-wearing.
Indeed, we suggest that the deployment of ventilators was primarily for psychological rather than clinical reasons. For many watching the news on television, this machine was as terrifying as the disease. Furthermore, it contributed to the government-desired yearning for a promised vaccine. Mainstream media, controlled by the authorities throughout the pseudo-pandemic, contributed to the fear by reporting that one’s chances of survival on a ventilator were at best 50:50. As discussed in Part One, the real odds were only about one in four.
Although ventilators aroused fear, their scarcity was also instrumental. As the outbreak reached the UK, people had seen images of chaotic hospitals in Italy, and wanted to believe that the wonderful NHS would be better prepared. Instead, they were told by news bulletins that only a fraction of the necessary machines were available. Reckless rule-breakers, perceived as tantamount to murderers running amok, were deemed undeserving of such resources.
On March 15 2020 prime minister Boris Johnson called on British manufacturing firms to adapt their production lines to making ventilators, with the Department of Health issuing specifications to companies that expressed interest. Yet despite the appearance of the government going on a war footing, there was no requisitioning, which you would expect if the need was so dire. Dyson designed a new machine, CoVent, but decided not to proceed with mass production after Covid-19 cases had passed a peak. Similarly in the US, the federal government announced a budget of a billion dollars for ventilator production, having lined up companies such as General Motors, but only a small fraction of the order was fulfilled.
Having failed to achieve its initial target of 18,000 mechanical ventilators by the end of April, the UK government was reportedly making substantial progress towards the later target of 30,000 by the end of June. Although incidence was falling, the authorities were preparing the public for a predicted second wave of the pandemic. Despite the disastrous results, and knowing that ultimately supply would vastly outstrip demand, ventilators remained centre-stage.
Like testing kits and other Covid-19 paraphernalia, ventilator provision was mired in allegations of ministers’ conflict of interest and corruption. As reported by Private Eye in Profits of Doom, thousands of these ventilators went into storage in Ministry of Defence warehouses. Nevertheless, the money for their purchase is stored in the bank accounts of the people who, subject to little scrutiny, supplied them.
Ventilators were elevated to a first-line treatment when they should have been a last resort. Their use as an instrument of fear is abhorrent, but worse is the suspicion that such equipment caused death. At the very least we can say that physicians continued to put Covid-19 patients on ventilators in the knowledge that this would most likely hasten their demise. This is quite a charge, but have we not seen enough crimes against humanity over the last three years to think the unthinkable?
Internment of civilian nationals belonging to opposing sides was carried out in varying degrees by all belligerent powers in World War Two. It was also the fate of those servicemen who found themselves in a neutral country.
At the outbreak of war there were around 80,000 potential enemy aliens in Britain who, it was feared, could be spies, or willing to assist Britain’s enemies in the event of an invasion. All Germans and Austrians over the age of 16 were called before special tribunals and were divided into one of three groups… continue
This site is provided as a research and reference tool. Although we make every reasonable effort to ensure that the information and data provided at this site are useful, accurate, and current, we cannot guarantee that the information and data provided here will be error-free. By using this site, you assume all responsibility for and risk arising from your use of and reliance upon the contents of this site.
This site and the information available through it do not, and are not intended to constitute legal advice. Should you require legal advice, you should consult your own attorney.
Nothing within this site or linked to by this site constitutes investment advice or medical advice.
Materials accessible from or added to this site by third parties, such as comments posted, are strictly the responsibility of the third party who added such materials or made them accessible and we neither endorse nor undertake to control, monitor, edit or assume responsibility for any such third-party material.
The posting of stories, commentaries, reports, documents and links (embedded or otherwise) on this site does not in any way, shape or form, implied or otherwise, necessarily express or suggest endorsement or support of any of such posted material or parts therein.
The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
Fair Use
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more info go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
DMCA Contact
This is information for anyone that wishes to challenge our “fair use” of copyrighted material.
If you are a legal copyright holder or a designated agent for such and you believe that content residing on or accessible through our website infringes a copyright and falls outside the boundaries of “Fair Use”, please send a notice of infringement by contacting atheonews@gmail.com.
We will respond and take necessary action immediately.
If notice is given of an alleged copyright violation we will act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the material(s) in question.
All 3rd party material posted on this website is copyright the respective owners / authors. Aletho News makes no claim of copyright on such material.
Aletho News 