As the conflict in Ukraine continues, COVID has all but vanished from the collective consciousness of the corporate press.
But what lessons can be learned from the two years of gaslighting, fearmongering, and misinformation propagated during the pandemic?
Dr. Fauci repeatedly urged us to “follow the science” — going so far as to call himself the personification of science. But that “science” is defined only by the opinions of Fauci’s chosen experts.
This same attitude parallels outlets reporting that “270 doctors” penned an open letter to Spotify, urging they deplatform Rogan for spreading “COVID misinformation.” Only 87 signatories were medical doctors. The remaining 183 included lab assistants, a veterinarian, a dentist, a podcaster, a TikTok teacher, and a cannabis researcher.
The credentials and expertise of an “expert” is subordinate to the narrative they parrot.
As cited in Senator Rand Paul’s interrogation, the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration were subjected to a coordinated disinformation campaign by Fauci and colleagues. The Declaration is a pandemic approach which shields the vulnerable — refuting Fauci’s assertions that lockdowns were effective and necessary. An American Institute for Economic Research freedom of information request obtained emails proving Fauci conspired with Outgoing National Institutes of Health Director, Francis Collins, to produce WIRED and Washington Post pieces dismissing “‘scientific divide’ over herd immunity.” The Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford academics were discredited as “fringe epidemiologists” posing plans that would “kill millions.”
This weaponizing of the lay press against accredited critics was Fauci’s way of fabricating the illusion of scientific consensus on the validity of his pandemic policies.
Other dissenting scientific voices were routinely marginalised.
Joe Rogan’s podcasts with Drs. Peter McCullough and Robert W. Malone introduced the concept of “Mass Formation Psychosis” into political discourse. Based on research by University of Ghent professor Mattias Desmet, Malone and McCullough theorise that free-floating personal and political anxiety was catalysed by the pandemic into a form of collective conformity akin to mass hypnosis. This mass hypnosis is leading people like a Pied Piper into complying with totalitarianism.
The 20th century was replete with psychological experiments exploring obedience and mind control such as Milgram’s Experiment, the Stanford Prison Experiment, and the CIA’s MK-Ultra project. Similar “psychological strategies” were weaponized by the UK government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies — staffed by psychologists, communists, and those glad they could “get away with” lockdowns modelled on Chinese government policy.
The UK’s scientific advisory council SAGE used propaganda to scare citizens into complying with public health decrees.
But if peer-reviewed research and historical precedent supports Malone and McCollough’s hypothesis, why are so-called “fact checkers,” and even the White House, trying to discredit them?
Lay press outlets conspired in similar fashion to Fauci’s smear on the Great Barington’s authors, to “combat spread of harmful vaccine disinformation.”
Trusted News Initiative outlets, including the BBC, Facebook, The Atlantic, Twitter, Reuters, the Associated Press, and The Washington Post, have dismissed Mass Formation Psychosis, and disparaged and deplatformed Malone. Forbes accused Malone of making “Unfounded COVID-19 Vaccine Claims.”
A reminder: Forbes is owned by a Chinese investment firm, and James C. Smith, chairman of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, sits on the board of directors for Pfizer.
The AP’s piece calling Mass Formation an “Unfounded theory” was authored by an academic who encouraged “behavioural nudging” to increase compliance with COVID restrictions. Said academic also quoted Joseph Goebbels on the efficacy of propaganda.
How come these profitable and ideological conflicts of interest never come up in frequent “fact-checks”?
Google also partnered with the above outlets and applied a “COVID-19 medical misinformation policy” to its YouTube content guidelines. Topics censored by the policy include claims that COVID-19 vaccines can cause deaths, that masks are ineffective at stopping the spread of COVID-19, and that COVID-19 vaccines both do not reduce transmission, but can prevent transmission.
Presumably, Dr. Fauci, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, and the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System are anti-vax heretics due for digital exile.
Unless, of course, Google are using Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s standard of misinformation, meaning whatever he says is true “according to the best evidence at the time.” Appropriating the language of freedom, Murthy stated that misinformation robs people of the ability to make informed choices, and that only government and Big Tech censorship can return that freedom to the people.
How deftly subversive.
Murphy’s pressure campaign was successful. The White House advised Silicon Valley on which individual accounts to censor — and is now pressuring Spotify to deplatform Joe Rogan. In Britain, where there is no First Amendment, an Online Harms Bill may pass which criminalises spreading “COVID misinformation.” Americans must beware the Biden regime does not make similar legal incursions on free speech.
But CNN’s coverage has been most telling: displacing “misinformation” with the term “disinformation.” Disinformation recontextualizes spreading falsehoods in international conflict scenarios. This is dangerous verbal mission creep by the White House, Big Tech, and the syndicated corporate press, who demonise those with legitimate concerns about COVID-19 vaccines and vaccine mandates as domestic terrorists.
We saw the same label applied to smear Capitol Hill trespassers and parents protesting school-board meetings. The demonization and polarisation stages of state-sanctioned persecution are playing out in real time, and we are being told we must support them if we are to “follow the science.”
But scientists and philosophers occupy different domains.
Science describes what is. Ethics describes what should be. Science is a process of inquiry, discovery, and continual debate. Ethics prescribes standards to strive to attain.
“Following the science” is not a suitable predicate for law.
“Following your conscience” is the only way to construct a society tolerable and prosperous enough to live in.
There is no evidence that any “expert” in a lab-coat could find or fabricate which allows us to trust them to tyrannise us. It is time elected officials, journalists, and the general public stopped asking “Where’s the data?” and started asking “Where are your morals?”
We shouldn’t need peer-reviewed studies to know right from wrong.
Follow your conscience, not “The Science”™.