Dr. Anthony Fauci was shown laughing off the widely accepted lab-leak theory as “molecularly impossible” in a new documentary — while also saying he would’ve implemented quarantines and mask mandates sooner.
The then-White House adviser was followed by PBS throughout 2021 and 2022 as he became a polarizing figure while leading President Biden’s response to the pandemic.
“Debunked.” “Dangerous.” “Unhelpful.”
These were some of the terms heaped on the theory that COVID-19 might have spilled from a lab in China, accidentally or not. Suggesting the virus may have been linked to a Chinese lab would swiftly earn one the label of “conspiracy theorist.”
That was the case for at least 18 months since the pandemic erupted from China, where the ruling communist regime has repeatedly thwarted efforts by citizen journalists and the outside world to probe the virus origins, and covered up the true death toll.
It’s their sheer smallness that is so striking. Their banality. Their triteness. I had hoped, reading The Lockdown Files, to find some explanation for the miseries that were inflicted on us in 2020. Perhaps decisions that looked imbecilic to the rest of us might make sense to those in the control room, able to survey information that we could not see. Perhaps there was a grand plan.
But not a bit of it. What we see in the leaked WhatsApp messages are petty, frightened men at the mercy of events. They obsess over tweets and news reports. They fret about how they are coming across.
The Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines were associated with an excess risk of serious adverse events of special interest in about one in every 565 people, a U.S. doctor testified at the National Citizen’s Inquiry (NCI).
“That is quite a high number of serious adverse effects from a vaccine. We typically have withdrawn vaccines for one in 10,000,” said Dr. Joseph Fraiman, an emergency physician based in Louisiana who was the lead author of a peer-reviewed study that re-examined the original Pfizer and Moderna clinical trials for the COVID-19 vaccines.
The doctor it cites has never claimed the Wuhan wet market was the source of the virus
There is new evidence pointing to the origin of Covid being in the seafood market in Wuhan. That, at least, is the substance of a breathless piece published in the Atlantic. Specifically, Katherine Wu, the journalist who wrote the piece, had evidence suggesting that “raccoon dogs being illegally sold at the venue could have been carrying and possibly shedding the virus at the end of 2019.” Notice: “could have,” that old fallback of hype and spin.
In the latest Twitter Files report published on Friday, journalist and author Matt Taibbi revealed that Twitter partnered with the Virality Project, which warned the social media platform that “true stories that could fuel hesitancy,” complained that “anti-vaccine” accounts were retweeting the CDC, and ironically ran searches for the term “surveillance state” while looking for more information to censor.
One of Norway’s leading epidemiologists has claimed that criticism of Sweden’s Covid strategy was excessive. Preben Aavitsland, who served as Director for Surveillance at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, argued that other countries “hid their own insecurities by scolding Sweden” because the country “undermined their mantra that we had no choice”.
This is just embarrassing, even by Toronto standards.
A scarf that Toronto’s medical officer of health Dr. Eileen de Villa wore at city hall during the earliest days of the pandemic is now on display in the building’s rotunda. pic.twitter.com/5y9iGcIW0F
— Ben Spurr (@BenSpurr) March 16, 2023
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former NIAID Director, recently appeared on the poorly watched NewNation show “Cuomo,” which is hosted by disgraced former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo. There, Fauci laughably claimed that the reason behind Republican attacks directed at him is his commitment to being truthful with the American public.
Outside of Germany, few people have heard of Karl Lauterbach, Germany’s Minister for Health. But he’s one of the key figures in the Western Covid response. Once hailed as a hero, he’s now engulfed in the biggest vaccine-injury scandal to have emerged since the pandemic.
More … Karl Lauterbach, in substantial reversal, says vaccine injuries are “dismaying,” complains of “exorbitant” pharmaceutical profits, calls for vaccine manufacturers to fund an institute for those harmed
h/t Mauser
The US government may have paid twice for grants it doled out to fund research at labs in Wuhan, China, according to a newly launched federal probe that found tens of millions of dollars in potentially fraudulent payments.
The “risky” projects bankrolled by the National Institutes of Health and the US Agency for International Development would have helped pay for medical supplies, equipment, travel expenses and salaries at the Wuhan labs, according to CBS News, which broke the story Monday.
COVID is an evolving story. No one has a monopoly on the truth on how and why the nightmare happened. Some now want to put it behind us. Others believe we should try to learn the lessons quickly to prevent the mistakes from being repeated.
Prominent among themes emerging from the Daily Telegraph’s Lockdown Files is that Matt Hancock behaved as an egotistical clown, seemingly taking pleasure from terrorising the public into submission to unprecedented restrictions on freedom.
When it comes to singling out the most ludicrous of pandemic restrictions that Canadians endured, the list of contenders is long. But there’s one that I continue to go back to as, if not the most ridiculous, then at least the most inhumane.
It was March 2021, and lockdowns had thankfully been lifted to some degree and schools were open at that point in Ontario. But I had been hearing from parents across the province that when a child in their kids’ class had tested positive for COVID-19, their child was sent home with some truly alarming guidelines.
There are many American Matt Hancocks. Thankfully your Founders saw them coming
If you happen to be having a bad day, spare a thought for someone called Matt Hancock, possibly the most hapless person on the planet.
A former British health minister, Mr. Hancock has become a national laughing stock across the Atlantic.
First, he got fired from his job presiding over the UK’s National Health Service for breaking his own Covid lockdown rules. Unlike Gavin Newsom or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who did something similar, Hancock managed to get caught out in spectacular fashion. After helping issue edicts making it illegal for anyone in Britain to socialize with someone outside their family, Hancock was filmed canoodling his mistress like a high-school senior at prom night.
The heat is rising on Dr. Anthony Fauci’s actions regarding COVID and even from the safe space of CNN his composure fell over the “insanity” that he be held to account: “Prosecute me for what?”
The departing director of the world’s second biggest philanthropic donor and one of the most influential funders of scientific research was doing his best to sound noble. In an interview marking his departure from the Wellcome Trust, Sir Jeremy Farrar was talking about the failures of political leaders, the threats of “zoonotic” diseases spilling over from animals to humans, the importance of scientists helping to shape the future, and how experts must speak out to prevent “conspiracy theories” being “amplified”.
