How Officials Responded to the Coronavirus Has Set Science & Public Health Back
Updated
By Jefferey Jaxen
It didn’t take long for the corporate media machine to crank out the derogating early into the coronavirus response.
Labels such as skeptics, anti-science, conspiracy theorists and many others were hurled indiscriminately to neutralize certain voices and information coming from both the public to esteemed members of the scientific community.
Why?
In the early fog of the coronavirus response, counterintuitive and unprecedented steps were accepted by a frightened public and paralyzed medical community simply because of the lack of information about Covid-19.
Yet when the data (and negative consequences) began rolling in, questions were asked and better ways were suggested. Ignored at first, then increasingly met with censorship and targeted suppression campaigns.
In October, the Great Barrington Declaration suggested an approach that balanced the risks and benefits by allowing those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. It was called Focused Protection…and the pro-lockdown media went to war with the idea.
As the hard lockdowns took hold, opioid deaths sky-rocked, mental health disparities in children increased and unemployment steadily rose. All the while, public health officials arrogantly scoffed at alternatives. Cancer screenings were missed, heart attacks went unattended to and nursing homes became killing fields. Yet the results and hard science in juxtaposition of the ‘official’ narrative, clumsy and harmful as it has been, couldn’t be focused on. Instead of facing the hard questions, it was easier to viciously target and silence those who asked them.
Pro-lockdown governors are now grandstanding on opening schools citing the science and common sense, it was Dr. Scott Atlas who was crucified for suggesting it and communicating the same science in June of 2020.
For communicating the science before it was allowed, the Stanford Faculty Senate Steering Committee introduced a resolution to “forcefully disavow Atlas’ actions as objectionable and at odds with the university’s own policies and guidelines. A leading proponent of the Great Barrington Declaration’s path forward, directives many of its most vocal opponents are now openly embracing, Dr. Atlas was also vilified for suggesting such measures.
The message was clear. Stray from the official narrative, no matter how repugnant it is, or become a target. The censors and corporate media henchmen (and women) have now begun to erase any evidence of the Declaration itself. Facebook has removed The Great Barrington’s Declaration’s page with no prior warning or explanation and given no route to review the decision. Facebook’s move also undermines the nearly 800K concerned citizens, medical and health scientists and medical practitioners who have signed on to the declaration since October.
Former Vice President and Chief for Pfizer’s global research and development arm, Dr. Michael Yeadon, was the most recent high-profile casualty of ‘common sense public health measures.’
Arguably the most qualified and persistent critic of U.K. government health policy and the assumed science underpinning methods being used by the greater public health sector, Yeadon was out-front early to explain why the science behind the PCR tests was flawed.
A test used to ‘verify’ cases, justify extended lockdowns and their measures, and underpin rushed Covid vaccine trials was widely known to be incomplete and in effect useless – admissions the World Health Organization was recently forced to admit. Yeadon also dissected several scientific assumptions made by the U.K.’s shadowy SAGE group in steering the country’s coronavirus response.
For being a vocal pioneer questioning disastrous government decisions far-removed from science, creating open dialogue and a willingness to discuss the facts, Yeadon was targeted. A coordinated campaign was launched against him in full collaboration with Big Tech and corporate media to silence his voice and destroy his career. He, like Dr. Atlas, was turned on by his colleagues because of outside pressure from a coordinated smear campaign.
The message and aggression from corporate media towards those who won’t accept any and all public health measures, no matter how ridiculous and harmful, became chillingly clear days ago: MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace, attempted and miserably failed to cast her net wide enough to lump Americans who think the Covid restrictions are unnecessary with domestic terrorism.
What was her solution? Open debate to discuss the available science? An in-depth investigation into the easily quantifiable social, economic and public health harms lockdowns have caused thus far?
Nope! Wallace suggested using military drones to “kill those who incite it”…and by extension, using her logic, those who question Covid lockdowns.
Her fellow panel discussion guests carried on as if her suggestion was not something out of a dystopian novel.
Though perhaps not yet do those who question any measures taken by the government need to look to the skies for predator drones, the streets continue to be a hazard to any critical thinker’s health.
Police in several countries are doing their best to beat back, literally, any idea or person opposing Covid restrictions. The health of the public once involved offering solutions by politicians, elected by and beholden to The People, working in concert with an empathetic medical community bound by the hippocratic oath.
In today’s inversion of reality, bedside manner has been replaced by hardened police batons. Medical advice within the once-coveted doctor patient-relationship comes with a “do as you’re told” threat with one’s ability to function in society hanging in the balance. Public service announcements are now delivered by military armored vehicles donning high-pressure water cannons.
We are told the “science is settled” on masking the entire population in perpetuity. While those same people who tell us the noble lie enjoy great latitude in their ‘common sense’ suggestions despite what science says. A new decree by The U.S. Centers For Disease Control (CDC) has been announced on the back of Biden’s first executive order concerning masking-wearing.
The CDC, using Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents and “other federal authorities,” as well as state and local officials will now enforce masking wearing. A quasi homeland security…for your face.
“To the extent permitted by law…federal agencies are required to implement additional measures enforcing the provisions of this Order,” the CDC says. “CDC reserves the right to enforce through criminal penalties,” the agency adds
See a problem yet? Reason.com does as they write:
“Creating a vast network of law enforcement officials empowered to enforce these mask rules will of course provide a handy new excuse for monitoring and surveilling citizens. Meanwhile, deputizing federal agents, state authorities, and local cops to enforce transit mask rules will open up all sorts of new police harassment and abuse opportunities.”
As public health measures grind forward, often divorcing themselves from science and reality, one must pause at some point in this process to look at the fruits of such measures. Those warnings of dangerous public health measures such as hard, extended lockdowns, full school closures, inaccurate PCR tests were ridiculed and targeted for censorship at every turn.
These messages, warnings and evidence of available science was called dangerous. So they were ignored. Public health officials purporting to be acting according to the science achieved the response they wanted at every turn. We are in a worse position for it. Yet those same health officials have now attempted to shamelessly pivot, grabbing the very methods and science they once ridiculed, claiming it is now the law of the land.