Below is my column in The Hill on the recent Wall Street Journal report on the Biden Administration’s resistance to experts who voiced support for the lab theory on the origins of COVID-19. As with many academics in higher education, government experts were warned not to question the natural or zoonotic theory. In the meantime, figures like Dr. Anthony Fauci said little to support other experts who were being censored and targeted for opposing views. Call it the Silence of the Labs. The effort to marginalize such figures continues this week as pandemic hawks circle Dr. Jay Bhattacharya in anticipation of his confirmation as head of the National Institutes of Health.
Here is the column:
This week, the Wall Street Journal released an alarming report on how the Biden administration may have suppressed dissenting views supporting the lab theory on the origin of the COVID-19 virus. Not only were the FBI and its top experts excluded from a critical briefing of President Biden, but government scientists were reportedly warned that they were “off the reservation” in supporting the lab theory.
The chilling suggestion is that, despite the virus ultimately killing more than 1.2 million Americans and over 7 million people worldwide, there was still an overriding interest in the administration to downplay the Chinese responsibility for the pandemic.
The Journal lays out how that unfolded, but the more disturbing question is why.
The article provides many examples of how dissenting views were marginalized and discouraged within the government. After President Trump described the virus as the “China virus” and alleged that it likely came from a lab, dismissing the lab theory became an article of faith in politics and academia.
The problem was that FBI researchers had concluded that the lab theory was the most credible explanation. But their lead researcher, Dr. Jason Bannan, was kept out of the key meeting, and their opposing research was discounted or ignored.
They were not alone. The Journal reported that Defense Department experts John Hardham, Robert Cutlip and Jean-Paul Chretien conducted a genomic analysis that found evidence of human manipulation of the virus. It also concluded that it was done using a specific technique developed by the Chinese at the Wuhan lab. They suggested that the Chinese appeared to have altered the “spike protein” that enables the virus to enter the human body in a “gain of function” operation.
They were reportedly told to stop sharing their work and warned that they had to effectively get with the team. Later, the three wrote an unclassified May 2020 paper that was prevented from being shown outside the medical intelligence center.
At the same time, letters and articles that dismissed the lab theory were organized for public consumption. The government worked with social media companies to censor those with opposing views.
Much of the media showed the same confirmation bias and intolerance. During the Trump presidency, many journalists used the rejection of the lab theory to paint Trump as a bigot. By the time Biden became president, not only were certain government officials heavily invested in the zoonotic or natural origin theory, but so were many in the media.
Reporters used opposition to the lab theory as another opportunity to pound their chests and signal their virtue.
MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace mocked Trump and others for spreading one of his favorite “conspiracy theories.” MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt insisted that “we know it’s been debunked that this virus was manmade or modified,”
MSNBC’s Joy Reid also called the lab leak theory “debunked bunkum,” while CNN reporter Drew Griffin criticized spreading the “widely debunked” theory. CNN host Fareed Zakaria told viewers that “the far right has now found its own virus conspiracy theory” in the lab leak.
NBC News’s Janis Mackey Frayer described it as the “heart of conspiracy theories.”
The Washington Post was particularly dogmatic. When Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark) raised the theory, he was chastised for “repeat[ing] a fringe theory suggesting that the ongoing spread of a coronavirus is connected to research in the disease-ravaged epicenter of Wuhan, China.”
Likewise, after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) mentioned the lab theory, Post Fact Checker Glenn Kessler mocked him: “I fear @tedcruz missed the scientific animation in the video that shows how it is virtually impossible for this virus jump from the lab. Or the many interviews with actual scientists. We deal in facts, and viewers can judge for themselves.”
As these efforts failed and more information emerged supporting the lab theory, many media figures just looked at their shoes and shrugged. Others became more ardent. In 2021, New York Times science and health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli was still calling on reporters not to mention the “racist” lab theory.
In Kessler’s case, he wrote that the lab theory was “suddenly credible” as if it had sprung from the head of Zeus rather than having been supported for years by scientists, many of whom had been canceled and banned.
One fact, however, is already well established. The suppression of the lab theory and the targeting of dissenting scientists show the true cost of censorship and viewpoint intolerance.
The very figures claiming to battle “disinformation” were suppressing opposing views that have now been vindicated as credible. It was not only the lab theory. In my recent book, I discuss how signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration were fired or disciplined by their schools or associations for questioning COVID-19 policies.
Some experts questioned the efficacy of surgical masks, the scientific support for the six-foot rule and the necessity of shutting down schools. The government has now admitted that many of these objections were valid and that it did not have hard science to support some of the policies. While other allies in the West did not shut down their schools, we never had any substantive debate due to the efforts of this alliance of academic, media and government figures.
Not only did millions die from the pandemic, but the United States is still struggling with the educational and mental health consequences of shutting down all our public schools. That is the true cost of censorship when the government works with the media to stifle scientific debate and public disclosures.
Many still hope that Congress and the incoming Trump administration will conduct a long-needed investigation into the origins to allow for a more credible and open debate. That hope was increased by the nomination of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, one of the organizers of the Great Barrington Declaration, to be the next head of the National Institutes of Health.
The suppression of the lab theory proves the ultimate fallacy of censorship. Throughout history, censorship has never succeeded. It has never stopped a single idea or a movement. It has a perfect failure rate. Ideas, like water, have a way of finding their way out in time.
Yet, as the last few years have shown, it does succeed in imposing costs on those with dissenting views. For years, figures like Bhattacharya (who was recently awarded the prestigious Intellectual Freedom Award by the American Academy of Sciences and Letters) were hounded and marginalized.
Others opposed Bhattacharya’s right to offer his scientific views, even under oath. For example, in one hearing, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) expressed disgust that Bhattacharya was even allowed to testify as “a purveyor of COVID-19 misinformation.”
Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik decried an event associated with Bhattacharya, writing that “we’re living in an upside-down world” because Stanford University allowed dissenting scientists to speak at a scientific forum. Hiltzik also wrote a column titled “The COVID lab leak claim isn’t just an attack on science, but a threat to public health.”
One of the saddest aspects of this story is that many of these figures in government, academia and the media were not necessarily trying to shield China. Some were motivated by their investment in the narrative while others were drawn by the political and personal benefits that came from joining the mob against a minority of scientists.
We have paid too high a cost to simply shrug with the media and walk away. It is a question not only of whether China is responsible for millions of deaths but of whether our own government effectively helped conceal its culpability.
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.”
In other MSM fails,
On Face the Nation, @JanCBS Crawford: Most under-reported story “would be, to me, Joe Biden’s obvious cognitive decline that became undeniable.” Robert @CostaReports: “Pres. Biden has said repeatedly he was sick during the debate…and he’s always been fine and he leaves fine.” pic.twitter.com/cJvMEYa16P
— Brent Baker 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) December 29, 2024
Ah! How I enjoy it when the good professor points out the follies and lies of MSM. Thank you professor! Keep up the good work!
You mean recycled nonsense? Turley seems to be running low on fresh ideas…fast. Pretty soon, he’ll have to start calling out Trump and the Republicans since they’ll be in charge of both houses and the White House.
Will he finally notice Trump backtracking on his promises and bring up that shady influence peddling he usually criticizes?
He’s already ignoring Elon silencing conservatives on X who are calling him out.
You mean recycled nonsense? Turley seems to be running low on fresh ideas…fast.
George, you cheap fake member of The Three Democrat Stooges:
Do you have ANYTHING other than your daily “I declare I am right and my host is completely wrong – no matter what the subject”?
The election is over, Trump won, your lies didn’t work… SO WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE???????
Hey! Slow and dumb one. They are only stale ideas to you as you are nothing but a DNC troll and a world class jerk. You add nothing to this site other than your DNC talking points and are a loser. Remember, every day when you look in the mirror, you are a loser and a world class jerk. The world would of been a far better place had your mother aborted you. We all wish she would of.
@Upstate
Indeed. And the question remains: who then, was running the country (*cough*Obama regime, third term*cough*)?
And I honestly do not know why anyone wastes their money on paying trolls at this juncture, as they still are, as clearly illustrated by today’s both random and usual suspects troll activity.
NEWSFLASH: That era is over, right along with Obama. They honestly literally sound like five year-olds whistling in the dark at this point. 🤷🏻♂️ Imagine if they put that money toward the actual betterment of their fellow humans rather than their own desperate clinging to power and self-aggrandizement. We will move on in spite of them.
Many professionals were attacked for failing to follow the ‘scientific consensus’ on Covid.
Consensus isn’t the magic that advances science or innovation.
Others who ignored the consensus include:
Copernicus
Galileo
Newton
Jenner
Wright Brothers
Einstein
Ford
Musk
True leaps require departure from the consensus.
Now we punish it.
“True leaps require departure from the consensus.
“Now we punish it.”
Well said.
Wake Up!
The West Sleeps Through Chinese Military Expansion And World Domination
____________________________________________________________________________________
China must be sued in the International Court of Justice and compelled to compensate all nations $200 trillion (to be increased) for deliberate or derelict and negligent release of “China Flu, 2019.”
Instead, China is rapidly building its Navy to accomplish global force projection and world domination.
Europe and America have paid for the Chinese military buildup and transferred funds for Chinese military development for more than half a century.
China should not be building its military, China should be recompensing for damages in the extreme.
(The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip. – NPR – The ICC can certainly prosecute China for “China Flu, 2019”)
_____________________________________________________________
“China’s First Supercarrier Nears Completion: More Ships Closely Follow As Massive Carrier Fleet Expansion Gains Momentum”
“China Launches Eighth Aircraft Carrier: How Capable is the New 40,000 Ton Type 76 Class?”
“Chinese Shipyards to Launch Fourth Carrier By Year’s End – Seventh Expected by 2025”
– Military Watch https://militarywatchmagazine.com/
______________________________________________________________
“China directs largest military build-up since 1930s Nazi Germany, expert warns, citing Pentagon report”
Defense report says China seeks ‘mind dominance’ through AI, tech in latest ‘psychological warfare’ operation
– Fox News
Some reasons for prosecution of some government officials responsible for the Covid disruption.
https://pjmedia.com/benbartee/2024/12/30/help-get-this-simple-fauci-prosecution-playbook-to-trump-please-n4935517
Article 3, Section 3
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.
Medical boards are often overlooked agents of censorship.
I am not referring to state licensing boards but to the private tangle of organizations that do board certification in various specialties.
Board certification that is needed for some professional positions costs physicians time, aggravation and money. Loss of board certification can cost a career. The board certification system is increasingly looking like a giant bureaucratic, arbitrary money sponge.
In the recent Covid fiasco medical boards appeared to have joined in the persecution of reputable physicians who dared to dissent from the false narratives promulgated by government and media and thus contributed to the damage to their careers.
Because the board system is a private entity it does not enjoy the same legal shields that protect state licensing boards. They can be sued.
But a lawsuit can be stressful and costly. Perhaps state legislation is needed to aver that no professional medical position or compensation can be dependent upon board certification.
Medical boards were allowed great power when they only ‘certified’ skills and they appear to have abused that power for political [or maybe financial] reasons during the Covid crisis of truth.
Some executive or legislative authority should also have a look to determine just how much Big Pharma money, if any, finds its way into the pockets and coffers of medical boards and officers.
Strangely, nowhere is the question asked of why? What is the motive for denying the Chinese lab leak? The answer is obvious. The Chinese lab was connected at the hip to Faucci. This was first an American experiment, banned by Congress in 2002, and not buried but sent to China and several other countries.
Yes. And at least as important:
biden had to follow his orders or China would expose his corruption.
Defected Chinese virologist Dr. Yan Li-Meng has confirmed that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was man-made. She further stated that the PLA managed the Wuhan lab. The revelation that the amino acid sequence of the original virus was deliberately falsified to cover up China’s bioengineering through gain-of-function research shows how desperate China was (and still is) to mislead and confound efforts by the WHO and others to determine the true origins of the virus.
Fox News contributor Gordon Chang has reported that not only was the virus manmade but that he believes China is using its technology to create bioengineered viruses targeting specific ethnicities. His views are informed partially by the Wuhan Institute of Virology being led by China’s top biowarfare expert — Major General Chen Wei. She currently works at the Academy of Military Medical Sciences and is an Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
Scientific research has all kinds of horrible stored diseases for research. When chernobyl blew the world got incurable TB. it’s incredibly serious when nations implode.
Who’s minding the nuclear waste dumps? The guy in dress ? Or maybe the guy in women’s sports or how about Rachel Levine as you all have your heads up your arses.
J H Kunstler has up a good article on the Media’s lies –
an excerpt:
“Journalism had some simple rules for reporting the facts about anything — and it’s hilarious that anyone thought it required a graduate degree from some credentialing mill like the Columbia U. School of Journalism. The news was often meddled-with by interested parties, government and business, but they did not completely overwhelm the ant-like labors of x-thousands of reporters in the field, and the stream of fact they circulated. Not all of it was subject to dispute, meddling, or opinion because it was self-evident: Joe Blow got shot. . . a helicopter crashed in Ohio. . . a volcano erupted in Peru. . . .
Only over time, the past thirty years especially, our government grew and grew and one of the things that grew out of it was the nefarious “blob” dedicated to protecting the self-enlarging perquisites and interests of that government. Blobs will absorb things they encounter, and in a predatory way, the US government blob absorbed the US news media. The blob transformed the news into an engine for suppressing the facts or spinning them narratively when they could not be suppressed, in order to maximize the advantage of the government and to protect the operations of the blob itself.
It is also a fact that this blob is aligned mostly with Democratic Party, because that party is most avid for the continuing growth of government, and its members overwhelmingly dominate in the officialdom that dwells inside the DC Beltway. The numbers speak for themselves on the DC voter rolls.
So, a new government under Mr. Trump is feared cringingly by the news media. For one thing, the incoming government has tasked itself with reducing government substantially, eliminating many of its perquisites, and surgically excising the nefarious blob that is draining the purpose, meaning, and vitality out of our national life. The news media is terrified of being found-out for having acted as the blob’s chamberlain. We may find out exactly how that worked — how, for example, professional liars such as Joy Reid and Rachel Maddow of MSNBC were paid. What accounted for the amazing coordination of talking-points from day-to-day across all networks and newspapers?
We are about to find out how a whole lot of mystifying things have happened in recent years. For instance, those fantastic vote switcheroos in “Joe Biden’s” favor that occurred visibly right on TV in the wee hours of November 4, 2020? How did William Barr conceal the existence of Hunter Biden’s laptop from Mr. Trump’s defense attorneys in the 2019 impeachment over a phone call to Ukraine? Who really has been making “presidential” decisions behind the false front of “Joe Biden?” Who in White House news reporters’ pool among the Cable News networks, The New York Times, and The Washington Post happened to know which officials were running the White House operation (did they not have sources)? How did the FBI engineer the Jan. 6, 2021, riot and with how many agents and operatives on-site? Who was in charge of the DNC pipe bomb caper? How has George and Alex Soros’s network of money-dispensing NGOs been allowed to buy law enforcement offices all over country? How did Merrick Garland’s errand boys get to New York Attorney General Letitia James and Fulton County DA Fani Willis? What has been done with the billions of dollars sent to Ukraine? Why is the CDC still advertising and promoting mRNA Covid vaccines that they must know have killed and disabled millions of people? Who thought it was a good idea to fill the ranks of the US military with transexuals? How did the order to throw the US-Mexican border wide open move through the chain-of-command, exactly? Things like that.”
https://www.kunstler.com/p/no-the-truth-is-not-just-another
Great commentary, questions are so very relevant.
This behavior will continue until it is stopped, and the ONLY thing that stops it is pain. One of the most critical things that Dr. Bhattacharya needs to do is identify every individual associated with the censorship effort — in government, academia, and the fake-news media — publicize their names, eliminate them from any role whatsoever in the government and its agencies, and terminate funding for any institution that continues to employ them.
The objective is that these people are forced to live the rest of their lives under a freeway overpass and be forced to survive on dog food. They must be held accountable and severely punished for their behavior, or else it will recur.
I don’t know about the freeway underpass, but they must be held to account. Justice children if they are not called on it, they will do it again.
Long. For educational purposes only.
Cheers
===
The chilling suggestion is that, despite the virus ultimately killing more than 1.2 million Americans and over 7 million people worldwide, there was still an overriding interest in the administration to downplay the Chinese responsibility for the pandemic.
As regulars know, I commented frequently from 2020 – 2022 on all things COVID, infectiousness, immunology and mortality rates. It is very apparent now, 4 years later, that the facile paradigms of 4 years ago are still accepted and propagated today. The “educated” public health leaders fail to pivot to new paradigms, as our / their understanding of the immune system evolves.
Our understanding of science is constantly evolving. It is never fixed. To be stagnant in scientific understanding is to be obsolete.
The immune system has 2 branches: adaptive and innate. The adaptive immune system is possessed only by vertebrates. It has the ability for naive (unexposed) T and B Cells to undergo genetic rearrangement. No other cells in vertebrates can do this. Genes are said to be fixed; genetic sequences cannot be altered. A gene, is a gene, is a gene no matter where it is located and no matter the lifespan of the organism. There is one exception however: adaptive immune cells.
Adaptive immune cells undergo genetic rearrangement and then clonal expansion – no other cells can do this in the human body. Naïve T cells and B cells synthesize programmed T cells and antibodies (from B cells) precisely configured spatial-temporally to the antigen (e.g. viral protein) that entered the body. Our adaptive immune cells respond commensurate to the threat at the genetic level, much like a lock and key system or hand in glove.
However, recent findings have revealed that the innate immune system is far more involved in protecting us, that it controls the adaptive immune system, and that our bone marrow can be literally trained (aka trained immunity) to synthesize innate immune cells commensurate with the antigen that entered the host. These come right from the bone marrow. Trained immunity is governed via epigenetic mechanisms not genetic rearrangements nor clonal expansion. See:
Netea, M.G., et al. (2020) Defining trained immunity and its role in health and disease. Nature Reviews Immunology, 20(6), pp.375-388.
https://ttxdiscovery.com/content-files/uploads/2020/04/s41577-020-0285-6.pdf
Hematopoietic stem cells in the bone marrow daily synthesize millions of new innate immune cells (e.g. monocytes, macrophages, dendritic cells, neutrophils, mast cells, etc.). These cells have been thought to provide limited immune defense and had very short lives compared to the adaptive immune cells. That was completely wrong. Most of everything taught in medical schools up until today in immunology is obsolete. Medical schools and most physicians/researchers are stuck in paradigms that no longer hold true. Immunology is a new field, no longer relegated to seasonal allergies and transplant rejections.
To be a good physician requires reviewing basic medical sciences (BMS) often. Twenty percent of a physician’s time needs to be spent in reviewing the BMS. Given the general business schema of health care today, few physicians have the time nor energy to review what they learned in medical school and update their learning. This is why the NIH, CDC and “health experts” have misled Americans and did much harm: they are stuck in old paradigms. Being stuck in old medical paradigms is fairly common. This is why some very sick patients with difficult maladies are best served by going to top ranked medical centers where presumably the physicians and researchers are up to date on BMS. But not always. This is the crux of the “COVID fatality” fallacy. Let me explain:
Hematopoietic stem cells, as stated earlier, are found in the bone marrow. HSCs have Pattern Recognition Receptors (PRRs) that detect, within the bone marrow, molecular perturbations in the body, be they pathogen or damage related molecular patterns. Type II Diabetes, hypertension, obesity, hypoxia (sleep apnea), are examples of damage associated molecular patterns or DAMPs. Pathogens come in 4 types: viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites, and these present to the innate immune system in what is called Pattern Associated Molecular Patterns (PAMPs). PAMPs and DAMPs are detected by PRRs which are found on innate immune cells, platelets and endothelial cells. Once the PRRs in the HSCs detect PAMPs or DAMPs, they synthesize cells with a predetermined phenotype (physical/functional structure) and various proteins (e.g. cytokines, chemokines, transcription factors) based on the PAMPs and DAMPs presented. It was once believed that the adaptive immune system did most of the heavy lifting when it came to infections. Researchers and physicians who continually bang the drums of “antibodies” and nothing more, should be seen as deficient in their BMS knowledge. Immunology has evolved considerably in 20 years, and those who have failed to keep up to date are deficient.
See:
Janeway, C.A., 1989, January. Approaching the asymptote? Evolution and revolution in immunology. In Cold Spring Harbor symposia on quantitative biology (Vol. 54, pp. 1-13). Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. There is a free copy on the internet if you search by the name of the article
All this is to say, that, for example, a virus like SARS-CoV-2 may be completely benign or lethal depending on the individual’s immune system. Polymorphisms are variations in proteins that can affect a person’s ability to respond to an infectious agent, for example. The presenting of an antigen from a virus, for example, is highly complex, beginning with a monocyte, dendritic cell, neutrophil or macrophage taking a “piece” of the virus and presenting it to the naïve T cells within the adaptive immune system. However, presentation of antigens from, for example, Dendritic Cell to naïve T cell occurs through a molecular bridge known as major histocompatibility complex (MHC) proteins which are synthesized by the HLA – Human Leukocyte Antigen – system, a collection of genes on chromosome 6.
MHC Proteins can differ due to HLA genetic polymorphisms, and those differences can determine whether your immune system can protect you from a virus or whether you succumb to it. MHC proteins exhibit more polymorphisms in humans than any other protein. This is significant.
There are sex workers in Africa who are exposed to HIV, yet many of these never become infected, sick nor die of AIDS. They have functional MHC proteins that can present the HIV antigen to naïve T cells and eradicate the virus. Those sex workers who succumb to HIV and then AIDS exhibit polymorphisms in their HLA genes and hence faulty MHC proteins.
The mortality rate of COVID was about 1% which is on par with Poliovirus. Poliovirus is an excellent example of how a virus has no effect to over 75% of those infected. About 75% of infected poliovirus individuals do not suffer any symptoms. Less than 24% exposed to poliovirus get flu like symptoms but nothing else. Less than 1% actually get any polio-related neurological symptoms, many of whom clear it. Less than 0.05% die from poliomyelitis. Yet, when Americans think of polio, they think immediately of the less than 1% who get neurological symptoms. This is the same phenomena with COVID. Very few actually die from COVID. Most that died did so while having COVID but not because of COVID. Most of the death certificates that stated death came from COVID were wrong. Death certificates can be signed by nurse practitioners, poorly trained physicians, even funeral directors. They are very subjective instruments.
The story of COVID is not that the virus is lethal as if it were a vial of cyanide thrown our way. No, the story is whether the individual has polymorphisms in any number of immune proteins like HLA, MHC and PRRs that do not function appropriately
Why isn’t this articulated to Americans? If you read this far, you’re likely one of the few who did which explains why public health leaders do not educate Americans. It is super complex and evolving. Besides, panic porn sells and it controls a civilization, bringing them to their knees like cowards. This was the ultimate goal of Democrats and elitists across the globe, like World Health Organization. Power is the name of their game and they played it well, at our expense.
–Fin –
NB: from memory, not checked for inaccuracies, do your own homework
The death certificates had Covid or “Covid-like symptoms” because FEMA gives out up to $9K to cover funeral expenses.
Additionally, I believe hospitals were paid a premium for Covid patients so I wonder how many times the diagnosis was stretched to meet the bonus.
* yeah, your memory has made some errors. Just for you, Estovir, genetics is God’s game. EVER wonder the reason the 1st cloned mammal was a lamb? Whose lamb was that?
An Anonymous coward posted this Just for you, Estovir, genetics is God’s game.
Speaking of God, Anonymous, you do know he HATES a coward, don’t you?
Old Airborne Dog.
fun fact:
“Dolly is derived from a mammary gland cell and we couldn’t think of a more impressive pair of glands than Dolly Parton’s.”
– Dr Ian Wilmut, who led the team of Scottish scientists who were behind the birth of Dolly
Dolly the sheep is cloned
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/22/newsid_4245000/4245877.stm
They should remake an old movie about this, the scientific insanity and all-
One Flu Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
Once Trump has bee inaugurated, watch out. Some Deep Staters are going to try to make a Bird Flu Pandemic happen. They will probably fail because H5N1 is really not very suitable for a human pandemic (asymptomatic transmission is essential to a pandemic, and Bird Flues cause extreme eye irritation in people), but they will attempt mass releases of the virus anyway.
There has never been a time in history where it was the ‘good guys’ who favored censorship.
Maybe one of our esteemed s@@tlib friends could explain why censorship is bad when done by regimes such as National Socialist Germany or the USSR but good in the context of hate speech laws or outright censorship when done in the modern west?
I don’t expect an answer but calling me a slur is not a reply.
antonio
Facebook and Google developed censorship algorithms in order to meet government demand and expand their businesses into China. After making huge investments and succeeding, the opportunity/pressure to leverage those investments into the U. S. and Europe became irresistible.
Turley is one of the nation’s top experts on the U.S. Constitution and American law. Thank you for your expertise and tackling sometimes unpopular issues.
Here is a huge constitutional crisis in plain sight to consider investigating:
The non-governmental family members of security and intelligence personnel have been severely abused by the top management of America’s agencies.
These are Americans that never signed up and never waived any constitutional rights being essentially shanghaid by their parents or relatives employers.
Since it’s fraudulently designated secret or national security, judges and members of Congress refuse to correct these abuses of power.
More importantly it misleads American leaders and voters as to the “costs” of intelligence operations. For example, if these agency leaders destroy the children of CIA, NSA or FBI officials – that collateral damage is not included in the post Mortem analysis. If you destroy 100 innocent Americans (family of American officials) in a figuratively friendly-fire exercise, many operations are not successful but a failure.
The government officials themselves are then apparently prohibited from telling their kids and relatives about their secret service. Also prohibited from making their family members whole again.
Why would any young person join any security/intelligence agency if they knew they were also potentially harming their current or future family members?
If these real statistics were revealed, maybe most civil rights abuses are within the intelligence community itself – exceeding all other crimes. At minimum Turley should debate the issue even hypothetically since Congress and judges won’t intervene.
Maybe the most vital reform idea is make 20 year declassifications the norm for 99% of cases. Allowing classifications of 50-100 years creates an incentive for intelligence abuses. The president or official knows they won’t be living to be held accountable.
Biden likes to take credit for COVID losing its grip on America. The truth is just the opposite. As of January 20, 2021, the US had reported over 400,000 COVID-19 deaths. Currently, the total number of COVID-19 deaths in the US has surpassed 1.2 million.
A lot of the work meant to lessen the impact of COVID on America had its nascence in the Trump Administration. Let’s recount a few:
(1) One-time rebate check $1200 per individual/$2400 per couple/$500 per eligible child; (2) expanded unemployment insurance to cover gig workers, the self-employed, and non-profit employees; (3) SBA-backed loan program to help small businesses pay for expenses; (4) loans taken by small business to keep employees on payroll could be forgiven, including 501(c)(3)s; (5) federal government would forgive 8 weeks of cash flow, rent and utilities at 100% up to 2.5X average monthly payroll; (6) assistance to distressed job creators included loans, loan guarantees, and investment authority totaling $529B, with $454 billion to be used by Treasury, working with the Federal Reserve for all sectors and $75B in loans, guarantees and grants for passenger airlines, cargo carriers, and businesses critical to national security; (7) use of the Defense Production Act to produce 9M N95 masks, 20M face masks, 3.1M face shields, nearly 6M ventilators, 2.6M gowns, and 14.6M pairs of gloves.
Other actions: created a White House Coronavirus Task Force, implemented early travel restrictions on China and other global hotspots, agreements with Mexico and Canada to restrict non-essential travel, expanded airport screenings, FDA issued emergency approval for new tests, funding to accelerate the development of rapid diagnostic tests, airlifted hundreds of thousands of swabs and sample test kits from Italy to the US, directed DOE to purchase crude oil, moved tax day from 4/15 to 7/15, signed legislation providing funding and flexibility for emergency nutritional aid, USDA announced collaboration to deliver nearly 1M meals a week to rural students; halted foreclosures and evictions for families with FHA-insured mortgages, provided continuity in educational benefits for veterans and families, VA established 19 emergency operations centers, Navy deployed two hospital ships — 1 on each coast, and Carnival Cruise Lines made shjps available for hospitals.
We should also remember the Democrat wish list in the $2T coronavirus relief bill: post office bailout, new emissions mandates for airlines, require greenhouse gas stats for individual flights, student loan forgiveness, new corporate board diversity rules, early voting requirements in all states, same-day voter registration, expansion of wind and solar tax credits, and providing $35M for D.C. Kennedy Center.
Who does Biden think he’s kidding?
There is a good chance the Wuhan lab leak was intentional; destroying Trump’s presidency being the goal. The timing is just too “coincidental” and the deep state too corrupt. I hate thinking this way about my county.
Before China shut down all news about Covid, there were stories about one or more lab workers from the Wuhan facility who went to the hospital with Covid symptoms. The stories reported that medical staff at the hospital talked about the illness being something new, not seen before. The virus leak could also still have been intentional, two things can be true, but the hospital visits make me think there was an accidental leak.
Setting aside government censorship, how does the U.S. have 1/6th of global COVID-19 deaths when its population is 1/23rd of global population? That means there were 4 times as many deaths per capita in the U.S. than the rest of the world. That seems extremely unlikely. Over-reporting COVID-19 deaths in the US or under-reporting them in other countries? Everything about the handling of COVID-19 by governing elites and their panicked minions was messed up.
Hang in there, cap. The struggle with reality is bound to get less painful eventually.
Hospitals were aware that they would get additional $ support for every death that could be attributed in whatever microscopic part to COVID, plausible or not. When the government is giving out free money, there’s always takers.
An extra $39K for every patient you put on a respirator.
We know that C-19 preferentially kills old and unhealthy people, and the death rate is exponential with age. The US has an old population (although certainly not the oldest in the world), and has an exceptionally large concentration of fat people. It would not surprise me if the US really did have a disproportionate share of the worldwide C-19 deaths, although deaths were certainly under-reported in places like China.
If you tested positive for covid and died, the cause of death was listed as covid.
I had a relative who lost his battle with colon cancer in April 2020, weighed 120 lbs and his official cause of death was listed as covid.
antonio
One of the unfortunate things that happened under Trump (which I hoped would have changed) was that deaths from COVID-19 were over-represented on death certificates. I believe it was HHS that said the death certificates of all patients who died WITH COVID were to be considered as having did BECAUSE of COVID.
Dear Mr. Turley, the common folk, like me and others writing here, knew that the virus came from the lab. There was simply no other explanation for it. But, what on earth could we do as the media screamed that anyone who even thought about the possibility of a lab leak were condemned outright as “not following the science”. The more the Democrats tried to discredit anything Mr. Trump said regarding the virus the more we knew the leak theory was correct.
Even Bill Maher had it right. If tainted chocolate was discovered in Hershey, Pennsylvania wouldn’t the first place you’d look for the problem be at the chocolate factory? Fauci should be in jail.