For those who opposed the censorship and cancel campaigns during the pandemic, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya became an iconic figure of resistance. Unfortunately, the same can be said of the anti-free speech movement and pandemic hawks. Bhattacharya, who co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration and was a vocal critic of COVID-19 policies, has been nominated as the next head of the National Institutes of Health. As I wrote this weekend in my column, the nomination was heralded by many as a turning point for the NIH. It is also a rallying cry for those who supported the earlier measures, as shown by a hit piece in Scientific American, accusing him of being a danger to the very lives of American citizens.
Bhattacharya was censored, blacklisted, and vilified for the last four years due to his opposing views on health policy, including opposing wholesale shutdowns of schools and businesses. He was recently honored with the prestigious “Intellectual Freedom” award from the American Academy of Sciences and Letters.
Before the pandemic, Bhattacharya was one of the most respected scientists in the world and served as the director of Stanford’s Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging.
That all changed when he dared to question the science behind pandemic policies, including suggesting that natural immunity would be as good if not better protection for young healthy individuals.
It did not matter that positions once denounced as “conspiracy theories” have been recognized or embraced by many.
Some argued that there was no need to shut down schools, which has led to a crisis in mental illness among the young and the loss of critical years of education. Other nations heeded such advice with more limited shutdowns (including keeping schools open) and did not experience our losses.
Others argued that the virus’s origin was likely the Chinese research lab in Wuhan. That position was denounced by the Washington Post as a “debunked” coronavirus “conspiracy theory.” The New York Times Science and Health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli called any mention of the lab theory “racist.”
Federal agencies now support the lab theory as the most likely based on the scientific evidence.
Likewise, many questioned the efficacy of those blue surgical masks and supported natural immunity to the virus — both positions were later recognized by the government.
Others questioned the six-foot rule, which shut down many businesses, as unsupported by science. In congressional testimony, Dr. Anthony Fauci recently admitted that the rule “sort of just appeared” and “wasn’t based on data.” Yet not only did it result in heavily enforced rules (and meltdowns) in public areas, but the media further ostracized dissenting critics.
Again, Fauci and other scientists did little to stand up for these scientists or call for free speech to be protected. As I discuss in my new book, “The Indispensable Right,” the result is that we never really had a national debate on many of these issues and the result of massive social and economic costs.
Now, those who supported these policies are gathering to oppose Bhattacharya.
It is hardly surprising that one of the first hit pieces came from Scientific American. The magazine not only helped lead the mob response to the pandemic but has also been criticized for abandoning neutrality in recent elections.
Only a few weeks ago, editor-in-chief Laura Helmuth posted a raving, profanity-laden meltdown on social media in which she effectively called over 77.3 million Americans who voted for President-elect Donald Trump both “fascists” and bigots.
Now the magazine has published an article by Dr. Steven Albert, a professor and the Hallen Chair of Community Health and Social Justice at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Public Health.
Two specific attacks stand out in the piece.
The “Personal Pique” of Censorship
First, Dr. Albert suggests that Dr. Bhattacharya was never actually censored. He insists that what Bhattacharya calls censorship was merely the fact that “social media venues … dropped his messaging.” It is curious wording and it is not quite clear what Dr. Albert is trying to say.
When Albert’s article appeared, various other outlets advanced the same claim. For example, MSNBC (which also was a leading outlet in the attacks on skeptics and dissenters during the pandemic) mocked the claim that Bhattacharya was censored.
“The problem is there’s basically zero evidence to support Bhattacharya and his supporters’ claims of censorship. It is true that some internet sites appeared to remove or limit access to the document. But, as with medical professionals not being sure how best to handle Covid, the same was true of social media companies, which struggled with how best to handle the spread of potentially dangerous information that could have resulted in harm to users.
Many companies chose, of their own free will and as they were allowed as private actors, to downplay certain information that they felt might do more harm than good. That is their own First Amendment-protected right as private entities in the United States.”
The article goes on to suggest that there is no proof of censorship without government direction or control.
As the ACLU has long maintained, censorship occurs in both private and governmental forums. The same figures insist that, if there is no violation of the First Amendment (which only applies to the government), there is no free speech violation. The First Amendment was never the exclusive definition of free speech. Free speech is viewed by many of us as a human right; the First Amendment only deals with one source for limiting it. Free speech can be undermined by private corporations as well as government agencies.
There is also ample evidence of government officials pushing social media companies to censor pandemic critics. MSNBC simply excuses the censorship by saying that these companies “struggled with how best to handle the spread of potentially dangerous information that could have resulted in harm to users.” In reality, the censorship itself cost the nation greatly. We never had the type of debate that we need on the efficacy of natural immunities, masks, or other precautions. We never explored the science supporting the six-foot rule. We suffered immense costs in education and the economy rather than allowing scientists on both sides to be heard equally on such forums.
Instead, Bhattacharya became a persona non grata in academia and was subjected to cancel campaigns. In the Los Angeles Times, columnist Michael Hiltzik decried how “we’re living in an upside-down world” because Stanford allowed these scientists to speak at a scientific forum. He was outraged that, while “Bhattacharya’s name doesn’t appear in the event announcement,” he was an event organizer. Hiltzik also wrote a column titled “The COVID lab leak claim isn’t just an attack on science, but a threat to public health.”
Critics of Bhattacharya have also cited the fact that he retained his position, unlike some who were dropped by their institutions or associations. Survival is hardly the test of whether someone was censored or canceled. Bhattacharya holds a position with academic protections, as do some of us fortunate to have tenure in this age of rage. The fact that he persisted and the American people rejected the establishment in this election is not proof that he was not targeted or blocked from academic settings or social media sites.
Dr. Albert dismisses the censorship debate as a “personal pique” and “a distraction” that “should not obscure the central focus of U.S. public health policy during the pandemic.” Obviously, for many of us who value free speech and a diversity of viewpoints, it is a bit more than a “personal pique.”
The “Vanity” of Personal Autonomy
The second point that stood out in the Scientific American article was the warning that Bhattacharya is too focused on individual rights and personal autonomy to be the head of NIH. Dr. Albert declares:
“Pitting personal autonomy against the application of science to policy is fine for vanity webcasts and think tanks, but inappropriate for NIH leadership. If he would rather focus on promoting personal autonomy in pandemic policy, perhaps he is being nominated to the wrong agency.”
It is a chilling observation from a leading public health figure. NIH leadership suggests policies impacting a nation and must balance the costs and benefits of any given course. The NIH states that it is focused not just on “scientific integrity” but “public accountability and social responsibility in the conduct of science.” Isn’t individual rights part of that responsibility?
I would hope that the head of NIH (indeed every NIH official) would place individual rights and personal autonomy as one of the most prominent considerations in setting policies.policy-making Indeed, the NIH routinely discusses and publishes papers on the importance of personal autonomy when discussing subjects like abortion.
These two points are linked on some level. The nation was divided on many COVID policies, and doubts only grew with the censorship and intolerance that was evident during the pandemic. The NIH contributed to that mistrust with its heavy-handed tactics and viewpoint intolerance. One of the victims of that period will now head the NIH. That experience could be invaluable as Dr. Bhattacharya steers his agency toward a more transparent and tolerant path.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
Ah the Medical “Profession” is finally showing itself as the criminal infrastructure that it has become – vaccines, public health, trials and studies that do not support current medical dogma, etc. The “establishment” high priests of medicine are now closing ranks to focus their ire on Bhattacharya and will of course deny their conspiracy by invoking an omerta when questioned! Time to turn the dinner table over so these swine no longer dine at the trough unimpeded and unaccountable!!!
I find the deep state and the democRATS absolutely despicable.
Excellent post, Professor Turley. I’m listing this for future reference. You summed up a lot of issues brilliantly.
I personally believe Fauci made a deal with the devil by cozying up to MSNBC, among others. He needed help in covering up his funding of gain-of-function research, and he got it. He has disgraced himself as the worst public servant in American history—I mean that literally.
For Fauci and the CDC, this story has just begun. If it were up to me, I’d defund the CDC and contract the services with Sweden and Israel. Those countries, almost alone, showed scientific integrity.
Diogenes: Agree entirely (…well, I’m not sure how much more flak is headed toward Fauci). I am of Scandinavian descent on my mother’s side. I was interested in how Sweden fared. Check this out: https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/sweden-during-pandemic
A good New Year to you and yours.
Happy New Year to you, too, Lin 🙂
Lin, the video provided by John D points out a different perspective of what happened in Sweden. Sweden did well, Stockholm fared poorly. Though no one point of view is able to dominate, he has an important view that carries with it a lot of truth. He focused on excess mortality which is something we discussed on the blog, but he has more data.
Hear hear
Raise your hand if you think the attacks on Bhattacharya are funded and coordinated by Big Pharma. Now that Bhattacharya has largely been vindicated, when will the Scientific American and other critics apologize. I’m old enough to remember when the Scientific American (SA) was a respected scientific journal instead of a mouthpiece and vanguard of the Woke Left. The editor’s shrill hit piece on Dr. Bhattacharya is particularly offensive and out of place for SA.
Agreed. SA has been a lost cause for years. There was a time when they were much better.
Wait for the Leftist lie, in 3, 2, 1 . . .
“Bhattacharya is anti-vaccines.”
The truth is that he is (and was) against *government-coerced* vaccines.
And the Leftist smear campaign . . .
“He’s not qualified.”
The truth is his CV.
* it’s an mRna virus. There aren’t any vaccines. Those just nestle into the genome, right? Treat symptoms asap. Steroids, antibiotics for secondary.
Nasty
The government did not coerce vaccines. People were not required to have them. HOWEVER, if people wanted to go to certain places or enroll their children in public school they were required to. BUT they also had the choice to homeschool or enroll in a private school where it was not necessary to vaccinate depending on private school policy.
The government CAN encourage vaccinations and it’s always been voluntary.
Bhattacharya was against vaccination; that’s his opinion. However, those who criticized him were also free to criticize and state that he was wrong. That’s not censorship. Social media are private organizations that CAN censor if they choose to. Elon Musk, an alleged free-speech absolutist, censored a GOP congresswoman because she was critical of him. Turley remained silent.
Turley is critical of businesses and private social media because he claims they violate people’s free speech rights. However, the First Amendment does not apply to them. Turley censors openly racist comments using that same principle. He can and does because the prohibitions of the 1st amendment don’t bind him. If he adhered to it, this site would be as toxic and rife with racist rhetoric as Xitter.
did you spit up your oatmeal pablum when your good mother tried to nourish you?
“HOWEVER, if people wanted to go to certain places . . .”
I see. So it’s only if they wanted to live their lives that the government forced them to be vaccinated.
Glad you cleared that up.
We must be able to understand the difference between herd immunity and herd mentality when establishing health/medical policy.
Having already been exposed to the potential pathogens of media and peer pressure, I would think that Dr. Bhattacharya is well equipped to effectively handle the job at hand.
Bhattacharya’s herd immunity theory was flawed from the outset. His approach could have resulted in millions more deaths, as it essentially advocated for exposing as many people as possible to the virus without considering new mutations or variants. Hospitals and medical supplies would not have been able to manage the surge in infections, especially since the healthcare system was already strained from the initial wave of the virus.
Moreover, his theory failed to acknowledge that Americans are generally less healthy than populations in countries like Sweden, which possesses a more robust healthcare system and a better collective understanding of pandemic responses. The Swedish population is also better educated and less susceptible to conspiracy theories and misinformation.
Many health professionals criticized Bhattacharya’s ideas as dangerous. He gained attention primarily because he confirmed the biases of those who already believed their conspiracy theories were validated. As he becomes more prominent in government, will he be perceived as part of a “deep state”? The moment he contradicts the views of conspiracy theorists, he could be subjected to the same criticism as others, like Dr. Fauci, because only the general public seems to know better than the experts, right?
George: It is very easy for me to ascertain from the get-go that you contemporaneously gain information to buoy your opposition, rather than possess any in-depth understanding of a topic. Perhaps you should try to expand your “research” on a topic from sources beyond Google and Wikipedia. The criticism of Battacharya was based on his criticism of MANDATORY LOCKDOWNS. Time has proven him correct: lockdowns produced far more harm than good.
I include this for your edification: https://www.hoover.org/research/man-who-talked-back-jay-bhattacharya-fight-against-covid-lockdowns
thanking you in advance for your consideration of my suggestion, yours truly, lin.
“Despite being based on sound scientific evidence that COVID mortality was dramatically different between old and young and that nonlethal infection produces strong immunity, Bhattacharya’s advocacy for a ‘compassionate approach that balances COVID risks and collateral damage to public health’ (aka the successful Swedish model) drew public and private criticism from several major governmental public health bureaucracies in the U.S.—including top NIH officials—and abroad. Indeed, Bhattacharya’s position on the public health approach to COVID remains a topic of intense debate,
“…particularly as increasing data supports Bhattacharya’s position, including evidence of the negative effects lockdowns have had on the health, psychological well-being, and learning in children. Ultimately, he was willing to advocate for policies that many scientists, physicians, and public health experts agreed with, or at least thought should be up for scientific debate, at a time when those speaking up risked public censure.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/why-dr-jay-bhattacharya-choice-074300574.html
They are offended. He won’t take their money, like his predecessors.
Let’s propose the ultimate test of just how stupid the pandemic hawks might be. Who will be the first of them to recommend naming a Federal building after Fauci. Maybe, the Norwegians will nominate Fauci for the Nobel Peace Prize.
It seems to be a woke senator, you must subscribe to any folly, no matter how stupid.
I would hope that the head of NIH (indeed every NIH official) would place individual rights and personal autonomy as one of the most prominent considerations in setting policies.
The problem with that way of thinking is it treats individual rights as merely an ingredient to be added to our public policy stew for taste. The reality is rights are not an ingredient of the stew, but rather a natural part of the body. The stew is either nutritious or toxic to our rights, period.
While free expression and personal autonomy are very important, neither is relevant to the question at hand.
The simple facts are that early in COVID, while most of us were being driven to panic, Battacharya did some actual empirical research and based on that, arrived at logical, science-based conclusions and recommendations, which we all would have been wiser to follow.
That is proof he is the right person to run NIH. When all around him were losing their heads, he kept his wits and did exactly what a scientist should do.
I fundimentally agree with you, but the ability to look at alternatives aside from what those in power dictate. is critical even if you are not one of the pre-eminent epidemiologists in the country.
One of the ways we KNOW that those in power are acting correctly (or that they are not) is because their positions are subject to challenge, whether that challenge is by those such as Battacharya or just ordinary people on the street.
Without diminishing Battacharya in the slightest one of the worst problems with our dealings with Covid is that most of our public health officials poor choices did NOT require special expertise to recognize as mistakes.
Just some simple math and logic.
No one has EVER stopped an airborn virus once it obtains a foothold.
We had this fight over masks from the start – but PRIOR to covid, 11 RCT’s the gold standard for scientific studies outside of perfect laboratory conditions, found that masks were ineffective against the FLU.
The R0 trasmission rate of the FLU is about 1.4, That of the earliest versions of Covid were about 2.8-3.5.
If you can not stop the FLU with masks how are you going to stop Covid ?
I beleive the initial claims were that masks were about 70% effective in stopping the transmission of Covid in the laboratory.
That is for a single exposure, for two exposures they are 49% effective
Even if masks were 95% effective – after about 10 exposures the effectiveness is down to 50%.
Lockdowns have the same problem. In theory they could work – if absolutely 100% of all people locked themselves into a hermetically sealed bubble and did not come out for any reason for about 45 days. But you would have to have 100% compliance and you could not have anyone working at anything, You would have to lock people 100% in their homes for about 45 days. That is not possible. People would starve to death, and a perfect lockdown was never acheivable, and an imperfect one will not work.
None of the above require you to be an epidemologist.
They just require you to do basic math.
I would note that it was also obvious the Vaccine would fail when the initial data claimed it was 95% effective initially and the effectiveness had a half life of 9 months.
Basic math tells you the vaccine will not work.
To be clear “Work” means eradicate Covid more rapidly than would occur if you did nothing.
Masks, lockdowns, Vaccines, etc CAN reduce the mortality rate,
BUT ONLY if they are done ONLY by those with the highest risk.
Measures with effectivness that declines over time CAN reduce mortality – but ONLY if you can keep the TIME as short as possible.
That means doing the OPPOSITE of “flattening the curve”
It means protecting the most vulnerable and NOT protecting everyone else so we get through this as fast as possible.
Put simply we did very nearly EXACTLY the wrong choices. And we did so when even a basic understanding of math would have told us we were wrong.
@John
Precisely. I am a medical layman, but my dad, who had passed by then, was a virologist for much of his life; I knew enough to see the entire debacle stank to high heaven. It was bald-faced, and actually quite simplistic dishonesty – the temerity required to blatantly lie right to our faces over and over again while revoking our most fundamental rights, as well as the multiplicity of the collusion – it borders on psychotic. It must never be forgotten and it must never be allowed to happen again. The only thing sick about any of it was the modern left and what they did to us.
And PS – I had it early, January of 2020; I was likely immune the entire time, and indeed never had even a sniffle throughout it all. Madness.
I am a grandma with a BS degree. But I could have been a high-school dropout, and my common sense would have thrown up the same red flags. Before the vaccine came out, I told my children and grandchildren, “Even if Trump gets them to create a vaccine DO NOT TAKE IT. You are not high risk from Covid, but everyone is at high risk of injecting an experimental toxin in their bodies using an experimental technology with unknown long-term consequences.
I investigated alternatives and suggested we use ivermectin as a preventative. Some got pills online and others used horse paste (no side effects). That first year, nobody got Covid. The second year my son’s family got Covid. They started on Ivermectin immediately, and the worst symptoms were over in 12 hours, but fatigue and a light cough persisted for five days. As far as I know, I have never had it. But one of two family members who took the vaccine has since developed heart disease—no previous or family history. The other gets sick a lot—immune system is clearly damaged. I wish they had listened.
The “consequences” are coming from covid itself. It’s nestling in and turning on genetic switches. It sleeps.
Excellent, Mhj. Spot on.
While free expression and personal autonomy are very important, neither is relevant to the question at hand.
I disagree. They are not simply “important”, they are the oxygen to this issue and relevant to every question at hand. Thought of in any other way, they will tend to be set aside and ultimately gone from debate altogether.
Exactly! Without freedom of expression (debate, data validation, etc.) and autonomy (the ability to separately examine and submit findings apart from demands of conformity by the collective) “science” doesn’t exist.
As I recall, Battacharya merely said the initial mandatory measures hadn’t been justified by cost-benefit analysis. For instance, shutting down entire industries was an extreme reaction. I don’t remember his message being that he had a superior counter-program, but simply don’t panic and consider carefully before issuing public health orders which might have unintended consequences.
I think that Jonathan Swift was onto the problem way back in 1726.
“Swift describes Yahoos as filthy with unpleasant habits, “a brute in human form,”[2] resembling human beings far too closely for the liking of protagonist Lemuel Gulliver. He finds the calm and rational society of intelligent horses, the Houyhnhnms, greatly preferable.
The Yahoos are primitive creatures obsessed with “pretty stones” that they find by digging in mud, thus representing the distasteful materialism and ignorant elitism Swift encountered in Britain. Hence the term “yahoo” has come to mean “a crude, brutish or obscenely coarse person”.[3]
Although they are human in form and feature, the Yahoos are, indeed, animals. They are filthy and they stink. They are omnivorous but seem to prefer meat and garbage. (Significantly, they eat nearly everything prohibited by the biblical and Levitical food codes.) They are “the most filthy, noisome, and deformed animals which nature ever produced . . . ” and they are “restive and indocible, mischievous and malicious.”
The Yahoos, however, are not merely animals; they are animals who are naturally vicious and represent Mankind depraved. Swift describes them in deliberately filthy and disgusting terms, often using metaphors drawn from dung. In terms of their evolution, the words used to describe the Yahoos are “degenerating by degrees.”
I think that people like Hellmouth and Dr. Albert see themselves in a struggle with the Yahoos of the world – and that they are above the fray, and only seeking to do good and to protect society from the yahoos. But they forget the rest of the story –
“Swift positions Gulliver midway — figuratively and literally — between the super-rational, innocent horses (the Houyhnhnms) and the filthy, depraved Yahoos. Gulliver, however, reacts to the Yahoos with immediate and overpowering detestation and is horrified by the Yahoos’ similarity to him. He lacks the humility to see himself as a sort of Yahoo. Rather, his pride leads him to try to become a horse. Gulliver will try with admirable determination to improve himself; he will try to change himself into a more horse-like state, but he will fail. He is, simply, more of a Yahoo than a Houyhnhnm.”
The same is true of Hellmouth and Dr. Albert, and Hillary Clinton, and Que Mala, and Stephen Colbert, and The View Viragos – etc. All the hoity-toity snobs on the Left – they are Yahoos, too. They just make more money, and live in better neighborhoods.
Simply, the issue is factual truth. Those arguing against Dr. Bhattacharya seem to be believe that he should have conformed to a preferred view with which he disagreed. No! Issues of factual truth should be freely debated to answer skeptics, who have a right to be skeptical after all we have seen of governments’ actions throughout Covid. Any action, argument, or behavior by any government entity, academic institution, scientific organization, or private or public publication to deny or denigrate any legitimate debate is abhorrent and contrary to the scientific method of determination of factual truth.
“Any action, argument, or behavior by any government entity, academic institution, scientific organization, or private or public publication to deny or denigrate any legitimate debate is abhorrent and contrary to the scientific method of determination of factual truth.”
You are working under the assumption that the prog/left have a sense of moral character and would find anything abhorrent other than resistance to their agenda. Therein lies the flaws from the right – we continually think that we could logically discuss a truth with a cult fanatic. There is no shaming them because they have no sense of shame based on a moral core – they are opportunists who use anyone or anything to achieve their end goals.
Overlooked by everyone commenting on this pandemic, including all the high priests in academia, was the underlying operating principle of the medical profession. It is named “the precautionary principle” and it drives their framing. So, if a virus “appears” to be fatal if contracted by any single person, the principle says all infections are assumed to be deadly-despite a lack of evidence-and no costs must be spared to save to our population. We saw the world’s leading economy nearly commit suicide based on this specious standard. And they justify it by how many were “saved” by this atrocity-a number which can never be known.
@ doug…
You have a point but I think the only precautionary principles at work with the Covid atrocity were precautions to protect the flood of money to big pharma, hospitals, and bureaucrats. And to protect their behinds from public outrage by controlling information.
I have come to suspect that a majority of the Covid deaths were caused by top down bureaucratic medical mandates. The one close acquaintance of ours who ‘died from Covid’ was likely killed by his ‘treatment’ that included Remdesivir, sedation and intubation.
On the other hand, everyone we know [including ourselves] who did well, treated Covid with protocols worked out by good doctors in the field working with actual patients. Real doctors and honest researchers rather than bureaucrats.
Dr. Bhattacharya was one of the heroes of the crisis and it is a relief to see such an outstanding man step into a prominent role in government.
Excellent.
Another fallacy of “the precautionary principle” is that it ignores the fact that we do not live in a binary world.
You noted the suicide of the worlds economy.
One of the easiest ways to understand the failure of the left is, asking if you should be concerned about contaminated water supplies, if the air you are breathing is full of chlorine gas.
We are still experiencing deaths due to the pandemic that are NOT directly from Covid itself, but suicides, drug overdoses, cancers that progressed too far before being caught as the medical community fixated on covid.
Your “precautionary principle” (“first do no harm”) was destroyed decades ago as Big Pharma took over and the remainder of the medical “profession” willingly became its boot licking handmaiden.
Bhattacharya was scientifically truthful in all that he claimed and social media companies arbitrarily applied their own unscientific opinions to block his messaging. They joined forces with the Fauci brigade that spread many lies and unscientific policy demands for our society. That is censorship. In reverse application, the leftist make the same claim of censorship when it happens to them. Uncouple the FD and CDC and the NIH from big pharma and the huge medical/health institutional complex. Hold the roles that lie and promote disinformation to account for their damage to society and human life.
Remdesivir anyone?
Has anyone else noticed that whatever is in opposition to the progressive agenda is a “danger to democracy, America and children’s lives? How can they lose and argument with those stances?
I’m coming from your op ed in the WSJ.
I’d disagree about the truth always coming out. If misinformation is widely disseminated it becomes the accepted truth. Remember that guy shot in Ferguson Missouri? Most, many, believe that guy was shot by a cop when he had his hands up in surrender. K Harris called his death a murder. We know both of those things are false, yet they are accepted as common knowledge.
Natural origin/lab leak is similar.
“I’d disagree about the truth always coming out. If misinformation is widely disseminated it becomes the accepted truth.”
A recent Jeffrey Tucker column is right on point with your comment:
The Fake News of 1917: The Origin of the Bathtub
https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/the-fake-news-of-1917-the-origin-of-the-bathtub-5782176
If there were a vaccine which cured stupidity, there would be an organized protest against its use.
Ahhh, the magic vaccine!!! But does your vax work? and against what… what is stupidity?
The magic Covid vax has had a huge impact of human health and social structure, but what was that impact? was there a disease? Was there a ‘pandemic’? Do pathogenic viruses exist? Quick censor this reply!!!
Re:”Quick censor this reply!!!” See!?!?! I told you!!
Maybe we need a fox to clean up an infected henhouse
Couldn’t like this. Had to log in and then was told site was private. Oh well, I’m sure Turley is a grown-up.
Simple guidance for government: First, do no harm.
Good start, but I’d like to expand on your thought. The medical institutions must be held to account for doing no harm and government must not be allowed to be the arbiters of defining what is help vs harm. Decouple government from scientific medicine from private sector business (ie. pharma). During COVID, it was one and the same.
Yes, a small shift to more rational thinking, but Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (was) is a well respected member of the establishment, a medical/scientific establishment that is equivalent to the military; incorporating education, medicine, medical insurance, media, research, Big Pharma and, of course, government. For a time he was censored, because he asked questions of people who brook no doubt.
Censorship continues of those who continue to question: Was there a pandemic? What is contagion? Do pathogenic viruses exist?
Just yesterday an interview with Dr. Denis Rancourt was censored, removed fro Google’s YT. Why? Because he does research which questions the Medical Industrial Complex’s assumptions. His research into Covid has been going on for five years, he has written dozens of papers with his reseach Grop Correlation https://correlation-canada.org/
The censored interview is here. I recommend it to those still able to question and confront logic.
Unfortunately Jay Battacharya does that, only to a point, and remains well ensconced in the bosom of the establishment.
https://denisrancourt.substack.com/p/far-reaching-interview-removed-from?publication_id=1767404&post_id=153740373&r=16nj3r&triedRedirect=true&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email