JOHN STOSSEL: COVID: Who was Right?

Twelve lies of COVID

Hilarious! Dr. Charles Hoffe, Dr. Stephen Malthouse & others who’ve been raising vaccine injury awareness with @voters_canadian sing a 🎶 12 Lies of COVID 🎶 Christmas jingle.
Report to come at https://t.co/Gi9Wj4L06E pic.twitter.com/W0nSQerUWk

— Drea Humphrey - Prepping and Politics (@DreaHumphrey) December 21, 2022

Ideological capture - Joe Rogan

“Love” in this context isn’t Eros, or even a love for common man, it’s solidarity with an ideology.

pic.twitter.com/sRyUETs0BF

— Rhyen Staley (@DunedainRanger9) January 5, 2023

Coming to terms: The COVID lockdowns were all for naught

 Guess which developed country had the lowest excess mortality between 2020 and 2022. Go on, have a guess. That’s right. Sweden, which refused to close shops or schools or to impose a mask mandate, saw cumulative excess deaths rise by 6.8%, the lowest figure in the OECD. By way of comparison, the equivalent figures were 18% in Australia, 24.5% in the U.K., and 54.1% in the U.S.

At this stage, various authoritarians, hypochondriacs and mask fetishists trot out bizarre arguments about Sweden having a low population density, as if Swedes were evenly spaced across their birch forests rather than living mainly in cities comparable to ours. What is striking about this argument is not so much its dishonesty (in March 2020, lockdowners claimed that Sweden faced total catastrophe, not that it might end up with a slightly higher mortality rate than Finland ) as its desperation. Across the world, we are in denial. We simply can’t bring ourselves to admit that everything we went through — the disrupted education, the spike in mental health problems, the ruined careers, the debts — was for nothing. Like the countries that emerged maimed from World War One, we tell ourselves that the sacrifice must have had some purpose. Perhaps, now as then, decades will pass before we can bring ourselves to face the hideous truth.

 

The Virginian Pilot's Sudden swerve on Covid - The Fisking

 The Headline:                                          Adapting to the virus

The sudden swerve is enough to give the reader whiplash.  Until Biden surrendered to Covid, the press (and that includes the Virginian Pilot) were all about eradicating the virus. Now suddenly, our press overlords tell us we have to live with it.

Better communication, guidance, testing, resolve all needed to fight COVID-19.

Wait, are we going to fight it or learn to live with it?  Think the common cold or the seasonal flu, both viral infections like Covid; do we constantly test for these?   

Just as the start of the new year provides individuals an opportunity for a fresh start, the omicron variant of COVID-19 should encourage public and health officials to rethink how our nation and our communities battle this disease from now on.

The hope for eradicating COVID is gone. We must find ways to manage the disease, to protect the vulnerable and to live with the virus in the safest, most workable way possible.

Biden gives the OK to admit that the virus will be with us and NOW the press decides that we must learn to live with it.  Something that got you labeled a conspiracy theorist mere weeks ago is now declared common sense. Many prominent virologists said this a year ago but were branded “fringe” by the CDC ,  Dr. “I am SCIENCE” Fauci and their allies in the press .

That should begin at the top. One year ago, President Joe Biden rolled out a comprehensive national strategy for battling the virus. It emphasized vaccinations, testing and other mitigation strategies, use of the Defense Production Act, and efforts to open schools and businesses.

The Pilot doesn’t explain how Biden’s “comprehensive national strategy” was any different from the plans developed by the previous administration.  Vaccines were developed under the Trump administration who also recommend looking for drugs to treat those who got sick, used the Defense Production Act to build ventilators and personal protective gear and advocated opening schools.  But that was in 2021 when the Pilot was blaming Covid on Trump and advocating closing in-person learning in schools.   

That strategy worked — until it didn’t.

Forget the fact that more people died under Biden than Trump.

COVID variants — first delta, then omicron — opened new fronts in the war on this virus.

Viruses mutate so the variants were totally expected, except to the Pilot’s editors.  In fact, viruses often mutate because of vaccines developed to manage the original variant. 

A stubborn reluctance to get the vaccine served as fuel for that fire.

Blaming the unvaccinated is becoming more and more laughable as the vaccinated are getting Covid despite getting the shot plus one, two, many boosters.  And it's begging to come out that the vaccinated are MORE likely to get the Omicron variant. 

And political differences proved too polarizing for some communities to overcome.

Right! Telling the people with natural immunity or who had medical doubts about the vaccines that they were killing grandma was not polarizing at all. Telling people who have their doubts about vaccinations that they would lose their jobs and could not leave their homes was not polarizing at all.

There are plenty of things the federal government should have done better, especially when it comes to testing. It is also inexcusable that Americans must translate instructions from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control about proper testing and quarantine procedures, and Biden’s December announcement that his administration would provide rapid tests to Americans free of charge came months too late.

Having a test to see what’s making you sick is a good idea, but how testing is supposed to be THE key to adapting to the virus is never made clear.  If you test positive for Covid but don’t get sick, what does that tell you?  One thing it tells you is that Covid is not nearly as deadly as the hysterics in the press pretended. 

The strain of those failures is evident in Hampton Roads.

On Friday, Sentara Healthcare announced it would postpone “all hospital-based non-emergent [sic] surgeries, procedures and diagnostic testing” in order to handle the growing influx of patients infected with omicron. A Chesapeake testing event scheduled for Monday was postponed for lack of staff (again, thanks to COVID infections).

A real newspaper would ask Sentara just how busy their facilities are with patients who are there because of the virus or because they are there for other reasons but tested positive.  In New Yor City emergency hospital facilities were constructed, and hospital ships were deployed that were never used.  That influx of Covid patients never happened even in the nation’s epicenter of Covid.  Remember “two weeks to flatten the curve?”   Incidentally, how many of the staffing problems were caused by firing staff who refused to get the shot?

It’s not just affecting health care. Schools are returning to virtual learning because teachers or critical support staff — bus drivers, in particular — are infected. Government agencies are shutting their doors temporarily; Virginia Beach Department of Human Services was closed on Monday. More will follow.

It’s simply not true that schools are closing because teachers are infected.  Teacher unions are refusing to teach for a number of reasons.  Children are simply not in serious danger because of the virus.  Teachers are not in serious danger because they can be infected by students.  European schools have been operating regularly all through this epidemic.  But getting paid for not working seems to be something that teachers like.

Some have called this the “D.I.Y. wave” of COVID because Americans have been left to determine for themselves when to get tested (and how to find a test), when to quarantine (and for how long), when to get a booster (and where), when to wear a mask (and where it’s required), and so on.

This was once called freedom.  People decding things for themselves.  Evidently, our overlords don’t like this. 

Two years into the global pandemic, you might think that we’d be better at this. You’d hope that the self-proclaimed “greatest country in the world” could come together to battle a virus that’s claimed more than 835,000 American lives.

The Virginian Pilot continues to parrot this claim of deaths attributed to Covid.  It's a lie and  even the CDC is gradually forced to admit that dying of Covid and dying with Covid are not the same thing.  Apparently, the Pilot employs hysterics who form their opinions  by watching “The View.”

We should be capable of providing clear, straightforward guidance so Americans know what to do when faced with another wave of infections, at providing the tools so people can make smart decisions to limit the spread of disease, and at demonstrating the collective resolve needed to help health care workers and health systems endure yet another wave of illness and death.

Who is the “we” the Pilot talks about?  The  American people have been willing to go along, or been bullied inbto going along, by institutions that have been revealed as liars.  Incompetent liars whose lies have been spread by organs of disinformation like the Virginian Pilot.

The virus has evolved but we have not evolved with it.

At this point, we should be worried about hospitalizations and deaths rather than case numbers, to better focus our concern on the problem.

Again: who is the “we” the Pilot talks about?  Look at yourself in the mirror.

We should be making decisions about schools and businesses based on factors such as community infection and vaccination rates, to make every effort to keep them open and operational.

Who is the “we” the Pilot talks about?  Is this the Pilot that every day advocates that schools should be closed and people wear masks indoors, outdoors and while driving alone in your car?

We should be focusing efforts on vaccination, testing and mitigation measures (such as masks) but also improving ventilation and rethinking how we use shared public spaces.

All efforts should be made to protect the vulnerable, but our public policies will have to increase our capacity for risk.

We need better communication from elected officials — Biden, yes, but also Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin as he prepares to take office and those in local positions — as well as leaders in public health.

And we will need more from individuals, who shouldn’t need government to tell them to wear a mask indoors, but who do it because it protects themselves and others.

Another call for Covid theater.  Masks, especially the masks people buy in the story, don’t work to stop the virus.  It’s theater for the uninformed. 

Thoughtful adaptation is our only way forward. All have a role to play.

The role of the Virginian Pilot is to shut up and let people make their own decisions about their own health care and stop spreading fear and hysteria with fake data.  How about setting up a Truth Commission to force the press to admit the lies they have spread, not just in the last two years but in the 4 years before that.  That may be the way for the press to begin the long, slow road to rehabilitation in the eyes of the public.  The nation needs a press it can trust, not a press that spreads lies.

 

Playskool Unveils Vaccinate Me Elmo Doll

Is Covid-19 a Bioweapon Deliberately Spread by China?

 Benjamin Weingarten ponders The US Intel Community’s Odd Case Against COVID-19 as a Bioweapon

The intelligence community (IC) recently declassified the detail backing its predictably inconclusive, highly equivocal analysis of the Chinese coronavirus’s origin. Remarkably, the sole point on which intelligence officials seem confident—that COVID-19 was not a bioweapon, the most disturbing theory of all—is the one on which they provide the thinnest, weakest, and most oddly-approached argument. ..

According to the newly-released analysis, the “IC assesses China did not develop SARS-CoV-2 as a biological weapon.” [To justify this postiion is claims that]

• ... bioweapon allegations are rooted in “scientifically invalid claims,” and 
• ... that proponents lack “direct access to the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” or 
• ... [proponents]“are suspected of spreading disinformation.”

Two of these three points do not actually refute the claim. They merely call into question the credibility of the claimants. One only counters the claim vaguely

The IC points readers to an annex for further reading wherein the IC, in an apparent bid to bolster its case, combats the argument of a single unnamed Hong Kong virologist, who worked in a WHO-affiliated lab. Said virologist, presumably Dr. Li-meng Yan, contends that the coronavirus was a bioweapon created by Beijing and intentionally released by researchers. Analysts write that this doctor’s view is: “inconsistent with available technical information on coronaviruses … [and] that … [her] articles contain several technical inaccuracies and omit key data points …. The scientific community did not peer review these articles and some publicly rejected the articles’ claims as scientifically unsound.” 

It does not rule out the bioweapon theory by addressing the basic questions it ought to have considered such as:

• Do Chinese authorities have the will and capability to develop and deploy a bioweapon akin to the Chinese coronavirus?
• Would they have had a motive to develop and deploy one in late 2019?
• What would the cost-benefit analysis have looked like in the eyes of the ruling communist regime?
• What direct evidence is there, if any, to suggest or dispel the idea China intentionally created and/or released the coronavirus?

 

So here are some answers to these questions.

1. The Chinese actually developed the virus so that answers the question of capability.
2. They had a motive: to get rid of President Trump, the first modern American President able and willing to stand up to them. 
3. They had every reason to believe that they would find an ally in the American Ruling Class, in the American Media, and the FBI/CIA/DOJ.
4. In releasing the virus globally, they were able to create pressure to panic Western governments into shutting down their economies as the primary defense against the virus.  
5. They had every reason to believe that leaders in government health agencies like Anthony Fauci would do their utmost to create a false narrative about the origin of the virus to hide the fact that they actually had a hand in funding the research that created the virus.
6. They knew that many leading corporations, Ruling Class figures, including members of the Biden family, were financially enmeshed in business dealings with the Chinese Communist Party.
7. They also believed that the US Government would be unwilling to blame China for deliberately spreading Covid because that would be considered an act of war.  

They managed to get Biden elected, reversing all of Trump's pro-America and anti-China initiatives.  Biden has fulfilled their fondest dreams, including exacerbating internal dissension in the US where half the country now no longer trusts the government. 

Conclusion: their gamble paid off.  

Got Conflict of Interest?

 

COVID Australia

 

COVID Approval Rating Skyrockets After Briefly Interrupting 'The View'

 

U.S.—COVID's approval rating has skyrocketed after briefly interrupting The View this week with a positive test scare. According to a Gallup poll, 96% of Americans now approve of COVID, up from just 2% before The View broadcast was interrupted with two of the hosts testing positive for the virus. "You know, this COVID thing isn't so bad," said one man in the waiting room at his doctor's office as he watched the show get stopped in its tracks by the virus. He coughed into his hand. "I actually think I have it right now—but to be honest, it's worth it if it even briefly stops them thar ladies from yappin'." COVID has said that it's satisfied with its work, though it was disappointed in itself for not getting the other two hosts as well and not stopping the show for longer. "I'm no hero—I'm just doing what any respiratory disease in my shoes would do," COVID said in an interview Friday. "I know any one of you other diseases would do the same for me."

More children in Chicago have been shot than died from COVID

•  Guess which deaths are the focus of the Left?  
• Guess the race of the dead children. 
• To the Left, Black Lives and Black children are disposable.

More children have been the victims of gun violence in Chicago this year than have died from COVID-19 across the entire country, according to police and the Centers for Disease Control and Protection.

The CDC reported that 214 children 17-years old or younger have died of COVID-19 nationwide so far this year — compared to 261 Chicago kids who have been victims of gunfire in Chicago, according to police statistics reported by Fox News.

More children have been fatally shot on the streets of Chicago than have died of COVID-19 in the state of Illinois.

Police reported 41 deaths of children under 18 in Chicago so far this year. In the state of Illinois, deaths of children from COVID-19 totaled 25, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health.