Daily readings from Brownstone Institute authors, contributors, and researchers on public health, philosophy, science, and economics. en-us https://brownstone.org https://beyondwords.io https://audio.beyondwords.io/f/49654/150638 https://brownstone.org https://beyondwordsneproduction.blob.core.windows.net/production/public-upload/2025-07-10/5d90bcc3-0c5c-4e33-beae-bdf404548f4a-bi-player.png ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] Brownstone Institute services@brownstone.org false episodic Brownstone Institute Sun, 12 Jul 2026 11:08:51 +0000 72187 Let's begin with what we know with the proviso that much in this case has been shielded from public view.
Andrea Shaw (23, of Payette, Idaho) has been indicted on two counts of first-degree murder by suffocation in the deaths of her 18-month-old fraternal twins, Dallas and Tyson Shaw. She is in prison now and faces a life sentence or possible death penalty for murder.
The story begins on April 23, 2025, when the twins received three vaccines (Hepatitis A, flu, and DTaP) on the same day during a wellness visit. Andrea warned ahead of time that the father's family has a history of negative reactions to the flu shot. The next day (April 24), the children developed diarrhea, lethargy, a low-grade fever, sunken eyes, and blue lips.
Shaw took them to the emergency room. They were diagnosed with a "post-immunization reaction," given Tylenol and popsicles, and discharged. The symptoms continued in the following days and improved slightly by April 30.
On the morning of May 1, 2025, Shaw found the twins dead in their shared bed. Police responded around 11:30 a.m. to a report of a possible deceased child. Andrea was home alone. The police investigated this as a possible asphyxiation, i.e. murders.
Three days later, Shaw and her husband Nathaniel appeared in a Children's Health Defense (CHD) interview, saying that the vaccines caused the deaths. They described the timeline and said police had suggested asphyxiation and possible postpartum blackout during questioning. How a person strangles children while blacked out is not explained.
In January of 2026, Shaw became the lead plaintiff in a RICO lawsuit against the American Academy of Pediatrics, alleging vaccine harm. The vaccine maker cannot be sued, of course, due to indemnification nor the doctors who administered the shots. That leaves the professional organization, which is largely funded by pharmaceutical companies. AAP functions as a pharma lobby.

Police supposedly conducted a 14-month investigation with assistance from other agencies (e.g., Idaho State Police Forensic Services). No public cause of death was released during this period. Autopsy details are withheld pending the criminal case.
On June 29, 2026, a Payette County grand jury indicted Shaw on two counts of first-degree murder, alleging she intentionally suffocated the twins (premeditated or during aggravated battery). They did this based on a lower level of evidence (probably cause) than is required in a trial (beyond a reasonable doubt). It is typical of such cases that the jury is presented a plausible scenario and timeline by experts and asked to accept it.
The grand jury deferred to the experts called by the prosecution.
On June 30, 2026, Shaw was arrested in Boise by Boise police. She had recently given birth and was breastfeeding a new child. She is now held on a $2 million bond in Ada County Jail, pending extradition/transfer to Payette County. On July 2, 2026, she was arraigned in Payette County Court. Her attorney stated that she denies the charges and that the state cannot prove them.
That's all we know of the case. Here are the complete court documents we have thus far, none of which speak to any evidence of murder. The evidence we do have includes the fact of three shots each on one day, the resulting adverse reactions, the hospital's judgment that it was vaccine injury, and the deaths one week later.
The case has garnered a level of press attention not usually associated with such a case. It's been a barrage of news coverage. We have NYT, WSJ, Washington Post, CNN, USA Today, Epoch, ABC News, Independent, Newsweek, Gizmodo, Associated Press, Daily Beast, and so on.
All this attention suggests that pharma-backed media believes it has an ace in the hole, a clear case of a crime that the anti-vaccine movement wrongly believes is a case of vaccine death. The hope here is to humiliate the movement and use the case as paradigmatic of anti-vax fanaticism used to cov...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-deeply-troubling-case-of-andrea-shaw-and-her-twins/ Let's begin with what we know with the proviso that much in this case has been shielded from public view.
Andrea Shaw (23, of Payette, Idaho) has been indicted on two counts of first-degree murder by suffocation in the deaths of her 18-month-old fraternal twins, Dallas and Tyson Shaw. She is in prison now and faces a life sentence or possible death penalty for murder.
The story begins on April 23, 2025, when the twins received three vaccines (Hepatitis A, flu, and DTaP) on the same day during a wellness visit. Andrea warned ahead of time that the father's family has a history of negative reactions to the flu shot. The next day (April 24), the children developed diarrhea, lethargy, a low-grade fever, sunken eyes, and blue lips.
Shaw took them to the emergency room. They were diagnosed with a "post-immunization reaction," given Tylenol and popsicles, and discharged. The symptoms continued in the following days and improved slightly by April 30.
On the morning of May 1, 2025, Shaw found the twins dead in their shared bed. Police responded around 11:30 a.m. to a report of a possible deceased child. Andrea was home alone. The police investigated this as a possible asphyxiation, i.e. murders.
Three days later, Shaw and her husband Nathaniel appeared in a Children's Health Defense (CHD) interview, saying that the vaccines caused the deaths. They described the timeline and said police had suggested asphyxiation and possible postpartum blackout during questioning. How a person strangles children while blacked out is not explained.
In January of 2026, Shaw became the lead plaintiff in a RICO lawsuit against the American Academy of Pediatrics, alleging vaccine harm. The vaccine maker cannot be sued, of course, due to indemnification nor the doctors who administered the shots. That leaves the professional organization, which is largely funded by pharmaceutical companies. AAP functions as a pharma lobby.

Police supposedly conducted a 14-month investigation with assistance from other agencies (e.g., Idaho State Police Forensic Services). No public cause of death was released during this period. Autopsy details are withheld pending the criminal case.
On June 29, 2026, a Payette County grand jury indicted Shaw on two counts of first-degree murder, alleging she intentionally suffocated the twins (premeditated or during aggravated battery). They did this based on a lower level of evidence (probably cause) than is required in a trial (beyond a reasonable doubt). It is typical of such cases that the jury is presented a plausible scenario and timeline by experts and asked to accept it.
The grand jury deferred to the experts called by the prosecution.
On June 30, 2026, Shaw was arrested in Boise by Boise police. She had recently given birth and was breastfeeding a new child. She is now held on a $2 million bond in Ada County Jail, pending extradition/transfer to Payette County. On July 2, 2026, she was arraigned in Payette County Court. Her attorney stated that she denies the charges and that the state cannot prove them.
That's all we know of the case. Here are the complete court documents we have thus far, none of which speak to any evidence of murder. The evidence we do have includes the fact of three shots each on one day, the resulting adverse reactions, the hospital's judgment that it was vaccine injury, and the deaths one week later.
The case has garnered a level of press attention not usually associated with such a case. It's been a barrage of news coverage. We have NYT, WSJ, Washington Post, CNN, USA Today, Epoch, ABC News, Independent, Newsweek, Gizmodo, Associated Press, Daily Beast, and so on.
All this attention suggests that pharma-backed media believes it has an ace in the hole, a clear case of a crime that the anti-vaccine movement wrongly believes is a case of vaccine death. The hope here is to humiliate the movement and use the case as paradigmatic of anti-vax fanaticism used to cov...]]> Sun, 12 Jul 2026 07:08:00 -0400 The Deeply Troubling Case of Andrea Shaw and Her Twins Let's begin with what we know with the proviso that much in this case has been shielded from public view.
Andrea Shaw (23, of Payette, Idaho) has been indicted on two counts of first-degree murder by suffo...]]> Let's begin with what we know with the proviso that much in this case has been shielded from public view.
Andrea Shaw (23, of Payette, Idaho) has been indicted on two counts of first-degree murder by suffocation in the deaths of her 18-month-old fraternal twins, Dallas and Tyson Shaw. She is in prison now and faces a life sentence or possible death penalty for murder.
The story begins on April 23, 2025, when the twins received three vaccines (Hepatitis A, flu, and DTaP) on the same day during a wellness visit. Andrea warned ahead of time that the father's family has a history of negative reactions to the flu shot. The next day (April 24), the children developed diarrhea, lethargy, a low-grade fever, sunken eyes, and blue lips.
Shaw took them to the emergency room. They were diagnosed with a "post-immunization reaction," given Tylenol and popsicles, and discharged. The symptoms continued in the following days and improved slightly by April 30.
On the morning of May 1, 2025, Shaw found the twins dead in their shared bed. Police responded around 11:30 a.m. to a report of a possible deceased child. Andrea was home alone. The police investigated this as a possible asphyxiation, i.e. murders.
Three days later, Shaw and her husband Nathaniel appeared in a Children's Health Defense (CHD) interview, saying that the vaccines caused the deaths. They described the timeline and said police had suggested asphyxiation and possible postpartum blackout during questioning. How a person strangles children while blacked out is not explained.
In January of 2026, Shaw became the lead plaintiff in a RICO lawsuit against the American Academy of Pediatrics, alleging vaccine harm. The vaccine maker cannot be sued, of course, due to indemnification nor the doctors who administered the shots. That leaves the professional organization, which is largely funded by pharmaceutical companies. AAP functions as a pharma lobby.

Police supposedly conducted a 14-month investigation with assistance from other agencies (e.g., Idaho State Police Forensic Services). No public cause of death was released during this period. Autopsy details are withheld pending the criminal case.
On June 29, 2026, a Payette County grand jury indicted Shaw on two counts of first-degree murder, alleging she intentionally suffocated the twins (premeditated or during aggravated battery). They did this based on a lower level of evidence (probably cause) than is required in a trial (beyond a reasonable doubt). It is typical of such cases that the jury is presented a plausible scenario and timeline by experts and asked to accept it.
The grand jury deferred to the experts called by the prosecution.
On June 30, 2026, Shaw was arrested in Boise by Boise police. She had recently given birth and was breastfeeding a new child. She is now held on a $2 million bond in Ada County Jail, pending extradition/transfer to Payette County. On July 2, 2026, she was arraigned in Payette County Court. Her attorney stated that she denies the charges and that the state cannot prove them.
That's all we know of the case. Here are the complete court documents we have thus far, none of which speak to any evidence of murder. The evidence we do have includes the fact of three shots each on one day, the resulting adverse reactions, the hospital's judgment that it was vaccine injury, and the deaths one week later.
The case has garnered a level of press attention not usually associated with such a case. It's been a barrage of news coverage. We have NYT, WSJ, Washington Post, CNN, USA Today, Epoch, ABC News, Independent, Newsweek, Gizmodo, Associated Press, Daily Beast, and so on.
All this attention suggests that pharma-backed media believes it has an ace in the hole, a clear case of a crime that the anti-vaccine movement wrongly believes is a case of vaccine death. The hope here is to humiliate the movement and use the case as paradigmatic of anti-vax fanaticism used to cov...]]> Brownstone Institute 05:33 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 100 66440 A friend and I got into it recently. He's smart, freedom-minded, and totally gets the danger of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC). Expiring money, programmable control, carbon budgets – he sees most of the expanding tyranny clearly. And yet he dismisses Digital ID as a distraction. When I try to make the case that digital ID is the gateway to the gulag in the metaverse, he demands I name ONE thing Digital ID gives the government that they can't already do.
My answer: it enables CBDC.
Of course, governments have already encroached on our privacy and freedoms in ways our forefathers couldn't have imagined. But even with the creeping surveillance state, the government can't fully implement programmable currency without authenticated identity on every transaction. They're components of the same beast. Digital ID is the authentication layer, while CBDC is the currency that runs on top of it.
Stop Digital ID and you prevent CBDC from being built at any scale that matters.
The institutions driving this, the usual suspects including the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) and the United Nations, are quite explicit about their intentions. Their own documentation spells it out: digital identity is a requirement for centralized digital currency. And in case the documents aren't clear enough, Agustín Carstens, the former GM of the BIS couldn't have been more explicit about their goals:
"A key difference with the CBDC is that central banks will have absolute control on the rules and regulations that will determine the use of that expression of central bank liability, and also we will have the technology to enforce that."
Perhaps we should take these institutions at their word?
What my friend is missing isn't really about capability. The game has never been about what the government can do. It's about the cost of doing it.
Right now, controlling what you buy, where you go, what you read – all of that requires boots on the ground. Investigations, warrants, real people making decisions. The friction is the protection.
Digital ID eliminates that friction entirely. What was once selective tyranny becomes universal tyranny. Code restricts transactions based on compliance status. No human oversight required.
Here's an easy way to think about it: police can break into your home right now. Most people don't lose sleep over that. Would they feel the same about automated drones entering every home simultaneously based on AI-triggered criteria? The capability itself isn't the threat…the automation at scale is.
And for anyone thinking "the government already has my Social Security number and my phone tracks my GPS" – you're missing the difference. Right now those systems are siloed – your bank doesn't know what your doctor said, your DMV doesn't know your browser history, etc. Digital ID is the interoperability layer – one key someone else controls – and can revoke. Five keys for five doors means losing one is manageable. One master key for everything means someone else decides whether you get in at all.
In 2021, getting into my own taproom legally required a vaccine card. New York City had rolled out some half-baked digital pass, but for the most part it was still paper back then. Still, it was obvious where this was headed. When I started warning friends, co-workers, the guy in the coffee shop – really, anyone who'd listen – that this was a dry run for digital identity infrastructure, that the compliance checkpoint they'd just accepted would eventually become programmable and permanent, most thought I was insane.
After getting tired of long emails and late-night rants, I started publicly documenting what I thought was coming. It was painfully obvious that centralized digital money meant rations, expiring savings, compliance-based access to daily life. A sort of digital cage. A few people in my life perked up, but most still scoffed.
Fast forward a few years and what's being rolled out right now is ex...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-authentication-layer/ A friend and I got into it recently. He's smart, freedom-minded, and totally gets the danger of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC). Expiring money, programmable control, carbon budgets – he sees most of the expanding tyranny clearly. And yet he dismisses Digital ID as a distraction. When I try to make the case that digital ID is the gateway to the gulag in the metaverse, he demands I name ONE thing Digital ID gives the government that they can't already do.
My answer: it enables CBDC.
Of course, governments have already encroached on our privacy and freedoms in ways our forefathers couldn't have imagined. But even with the creeping surveillance state, the government can't fully implement programmable currency without authenticated identity on every transaction. They're components of the same beast. Digital ID is the authentication layer, while CBDC is the currency that runs on top of it.
Stop Digital ID and you prevent CBDC from being built at any scale that matters.
The institutions driving this, the usual suspects including the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) and the United Nations, are quite explicit about their intentions. Their own documentation spells it out: digital identity is a requirement for centralized digital currency. And in case the documents aren't clear enough, Agustín Carstens, the former GM of the BIS couldn't have been more explicit about their goals:
"A key difference with the CBDC is that central banks will have absolute control on the rules and regulations that will determine the use of that expression of central bank liability, and also we will have the technology to enforce that."
Perhaps we should take these institutions at their word?
What my friend is missing isn't really about capability. The game has never been about what the government can do. It's about the cost of doing it.
Right now, controlling what you buy, where you go, what you read – all of that requires boots on the ground. Investigations, warrants, real people making decisions. The friction is the protection.
Digital ID eliminates that friction entirely. What was once selective tyranny becomes universal tyranny. Code restricts transactions based on compliance status. No human oversight required.
Here's an easy way to think about it: police can break into your home right now. Most people don't lose sleep over that. Would they feel the same about automated drones entering every home simultaneously based on AI-triggered criteria? The capability itself isn't the threat…the automation at scale is.
And for anyone thinking "the government already has my Social Security number and my phone tracks my GPS" – you're missing the difference. Right now those systems are siloed – your bank doesn't know what your doctor said, your DMV doesn't know your browser history, etc. Digital ID is the interoperability layer – one key someone else controls – and can revoke. Five keys for five doors means losing one is manageable. One master key for everything means someone else decides whether you get in at all.
In 2021, getting into my own taproom legally required a vaccine card. New York City had rolled out some half-baked digital pass, but for the most part it was still paper back then. Still, it was obvious where this was headed. When I started warning friends, co-workers, the guy in the coffee shop – really, anyone who'd listen – that this was a dry run for digital identity infrastructure, that the compliance checkpoint they'd just accepted would eventually become programmable and permanent, most thought I was insane.
After getting tired of long emails and late-night rants, I started publicly documenting what I thought was coming. It was painfully obvious that centralized digital money meant rations, expiring savings, compliance-based access to daily life. A sort of digital cage. A few people in my life perked up, but most still scoffed.
Fast forward a few years and what's being rolled out right now is ex...]]> Sat, 11 Jul 2026 07:55:00 -0400 The Authentication Layer When Enforcement Goes on Autopilot The Cover Story May Change. The Agenda Doesn't. It's Not Just Governments But Who's Building It? Hiding in Plain Sight What You Can Do A friend and I got into it recently. He's smart, freedom-minded, and totally gets the danger of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC). Expiring money, programmable control, carbon budgets – he sees most of the ex...]]> A friend and I got into it recently. He's smart, freedom-minded, and totally gets the danger of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC). Expiring money, programmable control, carbon budgets – he sees most of the expanding tyranny clearly. And yet he dismisses Digital ID as a distraction. When I try to make the case that digital ID is the gateway to the gulag in the metaverse, he demands I name ONE thing Digital ID gives the government that they can't already do.
My answer: it enables CBDC.
Of course, governments have already encroached on our privacy and freedoms in ways our forefathers couldn't have imagined. But even with the creeping surveillance state, the government can't fully implement programmable currency without authenticated identity on every transaction. They're components of the same beast. Digital ID is the authentication layer, while CBDC is the currency that runs on top of it.
Stop Digital ID and you prevent CBDC from being built at any scale that matters.
The institutions driving this, the usual suspects including the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) and the United Nations, are quite explicit about their intentions. Their own documentation spells it out: digital identity is a requirement for centralized digital currency. And in case the documents aren't clear enough, Agustín Carstens, the former GM of the BIS couldn't have been more explicit about their goals:
"A key difference with the CBDC is that central banks will have absolute control on the rules and regulations that will determine the use of that expression of central bank liability, and also we will have the technology to enforce that."
Perhaps we should take these institutions at their word?
What my friend is missing isn't really about capability. The game has never been about what the government can do. It's about the cost of doing it.
Right now, controlling what you buy, where you go, what you read – all of that requires boots on the ground. Investigations, warrants, real people making decisions. The friction is the protection.
Digital ID eliminates that friction entirely. What was once selective tyranny becomes universal tyranny. Code restricts transactions based on compliance status. No human oversight required.
Here's an easy way to think about it: police can break into your home right now. Most people don't lose sleep over that. Would they feel the same about automated drones entering every home simultaneously based on AI-triggered criteria? The capability itself isn't the threat…the automation at scale is.
And for anyone thinking "the government already has my Social Security number and my phone tracks my GPS" – you're missing the difference. Right now those systems are siloed – your bank doesn't know what your doctor said, your DMV doesn't know your browser history, etc. Digital ID is the interoperability layer – one key someone else controls – and can revoke. Five keys for five doors means losing one is manageable. One master key for everything means someone else decides whether you get in at all.
In 2021, getting into my own taproom legally required a vaccine card. New York City had rolled out some half-baked digital pass, but for the most part it was still paper back then. Still, it was obvious where this was headed. When I started warning friends, co-workers, the guy in the coffee shop – really, anyone who'd listen – that this was a dry run for digital identity infrastructure, that the compliance checkpoint they'd just accepted would eventually become programmable and permanent, most thought I was insane.
After getting tired of long emails and late-night rants, I started publicly documenting what I thought was coming. It was painfully obvious that centralized digital money meant rations, expiring savings, compliance-based access to daily life. A sort of digital cage. A few people in my life perked up, but most still scoffed.
Fast forward a few years and what's being rolled out right now is ex...]]> Josh Stylman 22:15 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 99 72067 The recent earthquake in Venezuela brought back memories I have spent nearly 40 years trying not to relive. Watching images of collapsed buildings, frightened families searching desperately for loved ones, rescuers digging through mountains of broken concrete with little more than their hands, and physicians struggling to care for the injured under impossible conditions transported me to another place and another time.
Trauma has an extraordinary memory. It does not matter how many decades have passed or how many lives you have saved since then. Sometimes all it takes is another earthquake, another cloud of dust rising over a broken city, another exhausted physician covered in debris, and suddenly you are no longer watching the evening news. You are there again.
My heart aches for the people of Venezuela because I know, at least in some small measure, what they are living through. I remember the disbelief that follows the shaking, the strange silence that descends after the noise stops, the desperate hope that someone beneath the rubble is still alive, and the emotional exhaustion that follows days spent searching, treating, comforting, and grieving. Long after the television cameras disappear and the headlines move on to another story, survivors continue carrying that day within them. Every earthquake that follows becomes a reminder of the one that changed their lives forever.
Some moments divide life into two chapters. There is the person you were before, and there is the person you become afterward. Most of us never recognize those moments while we are living them. Only years later do we understand that the person who existed before a certain morning never truly returned. For me, that morning was September 19, 1985. It was the day I stopped being merely a young medical intern and began learning lessons that no classroom, no residency, and no textbook could ever teach. The last ordinary evening of my youth began with dinner.
On September 18 1985, three other people and I crossed the street from the Hospital General de Salubridad in Ciudad de México, to a modest Chinese restaurant that had become our refuge during internship. There were two fellow interns, my girlfriend Sara who, more than forty years later, is still my wife, and me. Ironically, we rarely went there for Chinese food. We went for what we affectionately called orejas de Elefante ("elephant ears"), enormous veal Milanese cutlets that extended well beyond the edges of the plate. They were inexpensive, delicious, and large enough to satisfy four perpetually hungry interns who spent far more time inside the hospital than anywhere else.
Like every generation of young physicians before us, we were convinced that nobody had ever worked as hard as we did. Internships have a remarkable way of making young doctors believe that they have discovered exhaustion for the first time in history. We complained about the endless hours, the overwhelming patient load, the lack of sleep, and the fact that we barely had enough time to sit down and eat before another patient needed us. We laughed because sometimes laughter was the only thing that kept us going. Looking back now, I smile at the innocence of those conversations. We believed we understood fatigue. We believed we understood responsibility. We believed we understood stress. We even believed we understood fear. We did not.
The following morning, at exactly 7:19 a.m., the earth decided to teach us otherwise. At seven o'clock I was sitting in a classroom located in the basement of the hospital. Even now, writing those words feels surreal. The basement. The very building that, within minutes, would simply cease to exist. It was another lecture, another ordinary morning in the life of a medical intern. Upstairs, patients were being examined. Nurses were changing shifts. Families were arriving to visit loved ones. The hospital pulsed with the familiar rhythm of medicine. None of us quest...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-day-the-hospital-disappeared/ The recent earthquake in Venezuela brought back memories I have spent nearly 40 years trying not to relive. Watching images of collapsed buildings, frightened families searching desperately for loved ones, rescuers digging through mountains of broken concrete with little more than their hands, and physicians struggling to care for the injured under impossible conditions transported me to another place and another time.
Trauma has an extraordinary memory. It does not matter how many decades have passed or how many lives you have saved since then. Sometimes all it takes is another earthquake, another cloud of dust rising over a broken city, another exhausted physician covered in debris, and suddenly you are no longer watching the evening news. You are there again.
My heart aches for the people of Venezuela because I know, at least in some small measure, what they are living through. I remember the disbelief that follows the shaking, the strange silence that descends after the noise stops, the desperate hope that someone beneath the rubble is still alive, and the emotional exhaustion that follows days spent searching, treating, comforting, and grieving. Long after the television cameras disappear and the headlines move on to another story, survivors continue carrying that day within them. Every earthquake that follows becomes a reminder of the one that changed their lives forever.
Some moments divide life into two chapters. There is the person you were before, and there is the person you become afterward. Most of us never recognize those moments while we are living them. Only years later do we understand that the person who existed before a certain morning never truly returned. For me, that morning was September 19, 1985. It was the day I stopped being merely a young medical intern and began learning lessons that no classroom, no residency, and no textbook could ever teach. The last ordinary evening of my youth began with dinner.
On September 18 1985, three other people and I crossed the street from the Hospital General de Salubridad in Ciudad de México, to a modest Chinese restaurant that had become our refuge during internship. There were two fellow interns, my girlfriend Sara who, more than forty years later, is still my wife, and me. Ironically, we rarely went there for Chinese food. We went for what we affectionately called orejas de Elefante ("elephant ears"), enormous veal Milanese cutlets that extended well beyond the edges of the plate. They were inexpensive, delicious, and large enough to satisfy four perpetually hungry interns who spent far more time inside the hospital than anywhere else.
Like every generation of young physicians before us, we were convinced that nobody had ever worked as hard as we did. Internships have a remarkable way of making young doctors believe that they have discovered exhaustion for the first time in history. We complained about the endless hours, the overwhelming patient load, the lack of sleep, and the fact that we barely had enough time to sit down and eat before another patient needed us. We laughed because sometimes laughter was the only thing that kept us going. Looking back now, I smile at the innocence of those conversations. We believed we understood fatigue. We believed we understood responsibility. We believed we understood stress. We even believed we understood fear. We did not.
The following morning, at exactly 7:19 a.m., the earth decided to teach us otherwise. At seven o'clock I was sitting in a classroom located in the basement of the hospital. Even now, writing those words feels surreal. The basement. The very building that, within minutes, would simply cease to exist. It was another lecture, another ordinary morning in the life of a medical intern. Upstairs, patients were being examined. Nurses were changing shifts. Families were arriving to visit loved ones. The hospital pulsed with the familiar rhythm of medicine. None of us quest...]]> Fri, 10 Jul 2026 07:10:00 -0400 The Day the Hospital Disappeared Returning to the Ruins What the Earth Taught Me Dedication The recent earthquake in Venezuela brought back memories I have spent nearly 40 years trying not to relive. Watching images of collapsed buildings, frightened families searching desperately for loved ones, rescuer...]]> The recent earthquake in Venezuela brought back memories I have spent nearly 40 years trying not to relive. Watching images of collapsed buildings, frightened families searching desperately for loved ones, rescuers digging through mountains of broken concrete with little more than their hands, and physicians struggling to care for the injured under impossible conditions transported me to another place and another time.
Trauma has an extraordinary memory. It does not matter how many decades have passed or how many lives you have saved since then. Sometimes all it takes is another earthquake, another cloud of dust rising over a broken city, another exhausted physician covered in debris, and suddenly you are no longer watching the evening news. You are there again.
My heart aches for the people of Venezuela because I know, at least in some small measure, what they are living through. I remember the disbelief that follows the shaking, the strange silence that descends after the noise stops, the desperate hope that someone beneath the rubble is still alive, and the emotional exhaustion that follows days spent searching, treating, comforting, and grieving. Long after the television cameras disappear and the headlines move on to another story, survivors continue carrying that day within them. Every earthquake that follows becomes a reminder of the one that changed their lives forever.
Some moments divide life into two chapters. There is the person you were before, and there is the person you become afterward. Most of us never recognize those moments while we are living them. Only years later do we understand that the person who existed before a certain morning never truly returned. For me, that morning was September 19, 1985. It was the day I stopped being merely a young medical intern and began learning lessons that no classroom, no residency, and no textbook could ever teach. The last ordinary evening of my youth began with dinner.
On September 18 1985, three other people and I crossed the street from the Hospital General de Salubridad in Ciudad de México, to a modest Chinese restaurant that had become our refuge during internship. There were two fellow interns, my girlfriend Sara who, more than forty years later, is still my wife, and me. Ironically, we rarely went there for Chinese food. We went for what we affectionately called orejas de Elefante ("elephant ears"), enormous veal Milanese cutlets that extended well beyond the edges of the plate. They were inexpensive, delicious, and large enough to satisfy four perpetually hungry interns who spent far more time inside the hospital than anywhere else.
Like every generation of young physicians before us, we were convinced that nobody had ever worked as hard as we did. Internships have a remarkable way of making young doctors believe that they have discovered exhaustion for the first time in history. We complained about the endless hours, the overwhelming patient load, the lack of sleep, and the fact that we barely had enough time to sit down and eat before another patient needed us. We laughed because sometimes laughter was the only thing that kept us going. Looking back now, I smile at the innocence of those conversations. We believed we understood fatigue. We believed we understood responsibility. We believed we understood stress. We even believed we understood fear. We did not.
The following morning, at exactly 7:19 a.m., the earth decided to teach us otherwise. At seven o'clock I was sitting in a classroom located in the basement of the hospital. Even now, writing those words feels surreal. The basement. The very building that, within minutes, would simply cease to exist. It was another lecture, another ordinary morning in the life of a medical intern. Upstairs, patients were being examined. Nurses were changing shifts. Families were arriving to visit loved ones. The hospital pulsed with the familiar rhythm of medicine. None of us quest...]]> Joseph Varon 21:18 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 98 63349 Picture it. You're lucky enough to live in the late 19th century. Van Gogh is wandering around the Netherlands painting haystacks and stars. Spiritualism is everywhere: séances, mediums, table-turning, and seers who communicate with the dead. Some dude named PT Barnum is criss-crossing America with this crazy melange of traveling circus and sly hoaxes. There are side shows and peep shows, theatrical extravaganzas in every town. Ragtime is just taking hold.
And for the first time in the history of man, books are available to the everyone with a few ha'penneys to rub together. The print industry has exploded, becoming more systematized, and better at shipping. Suddenly, even ordinary people can read – in their parlors, at saloons and libraries, and after dinner, once the harpsichord recital is done. Novels are everywhere: Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, George Eliot. In France, Victor Hugo. The Russians? They're producing metric tons of pages. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky. People are inhaling these stories, 900 pages at a time.
Academics refer to this period as the "reading revolution." Reading was as much an indulgence as carnivals and music halls. People didn't HAVE to read, they GOT to read. They did it ostentatiously and with zeal. And this habit lasted, in one form or another, until recently when reading for enjoyment started to tank. Blame the Internet and social media and our fractured attention span. Blame Oprah, who in her quest to 'get people reading' promoted one title and focused every English-speaking woman's attention on it, to the exclusion of every other book on the planet.
But the real culprit, if you ask me, is politics. When identity and partisanship become your defining feature, when you adhere to rigid ideas and philosophies – and fear anything that challenges your beliefs – reading becomes dangerous. All those random ideas floating around? Problems that have no easy answers? Bah! Who needs that?
So here's where we are: reading for enjoyment has fallen by 40% in the past 20 years. And despite bullshit feel-good essays about how we're not really reading less, it just seems that way – and online influencers who hawk the classics without a single specific detail about plot, theme, or character – literacy in every single cohort is falling off a cliff. Publishing is becoming narrower, more ideological, and preachy. The books that face out in shop windows reinforce pat answers instead of asking hard questions. And the world seems smaller, because it is.
Séances, circuses, live music, theater, art…they're all on the decline. Instead we have performative costumed protests and Netflix shows that are contractually bound to restate their plot three to four times for the benefit of distracted viewers.
And original stories, with unique characters built word-by-word and impossible quests and existential messages? These days, you cannot give them away. To wit: my friend Christina Dalcher, author of Vox and Master Class, has a new novel called Lexecution that I have read and loved. She is offering it in sections – for FREE – on X (a work that would cost ~$27 in hardcover) and takeup has been less than pale.
LEX, as Christina calls it, is about a future (present?) British society where speech crimes are policed by drone. Authoritarian rule outlaws gendered words, adjectives that imply degrees of quality (it's unkind to say, for instance, that a person is beautiful or smart, because it might injure those who are not), and all anti-government rhetoric. Children are enlisted, through the public schools, to report their parents for what they say. Re-education of offenders becomes a growth industry. Saira Rao, anyone?
Turns out LEX hit too close to real life, plus Christina was being punished – predictably – for counter-narrative things she'd said. First her agent and then a series of publishers backed out of negotiations to publish. Hence, she is putting this cutting and very real ...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-death-of-reading/ Picture it. You're lucky enough to live in the late 19th century. Van Gogh is wandering around the Netherlands painting haystacks and stars. Spiritualism is everywhere: séances, mediums, table-turning, and seers who communicate with the dead. Some dude named PT Barnum is criss-crossing America with this crazy melange of traveling circus and sly hoaxes. There are side shows and peep shows, theatrical extravaganzas in every town. Ragtime is just taking hold.
And for the first time in the history of man, books are available to the everyone with a few ha'penneys to rub together. The print industry has exploded, becoming more systematized, and better at shipping. Suddenly, even ordinary people can read – in their parlors, at saloons and libraries, and after dinner, once the harpsichord recital is done. Novels are everywhere: Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, George Eliot. In France, Victor Hugo. The Russians? They're producing metric tons of pages. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky. People are inhaling these stories, 900 pages at a time.
Academics refer to this period as the "reading revolution." Reading was as much an indulgence as carnivals and music halls. People didn't HAVE to read, they GOT to read. They did it ostentatiously and with zeal. And this habit lasted, in one form or another, until recently when reading for enjoyment started to tank. Blame the Internet and social media and our fractured attention span. Blame Oprah, who in her quest to 'get people reading' promoted one title and focused every English-speaking woman's attention on it, to the exclusion of every other book on the planet.
But the real culprit, if you ask me, is politics. When identity and partisanship become your defining feature, when you adhere to rigid ideas and philosophies – and fear anything that challenges your beliefs – reading becomes dangerous. All those random ideas floating around? Problems that have no easy answers? Bah! Who needs that?
So here's where we are: reading for enjoyment has fallen by 40% in the past 20 years. And despite bullshit feel-good essays about how we're not really reading less, it just seems that way – and online influencers who hawk the classics without a single specific detail about plot, theme, or character – literacy in every single cohort is falling off a cliff. Publishing is becoming narrower, more ideological, and preachy. The books that face out in shop windows reinforce pat answers instead of asking hard questions. And the world seems smaller, because it is.
Séances, circuses, live music, theater, art…they're all on the decline. Instead we have performative costumed protests and Netflix shows that are contractually bound to restate their plot three to four times for the benefit of distracted viewers.
And original stories, with unique characters built word-by-word and impossible quests and existential messages? These days, you cannot give them away. To wit: my friend Christina Dalcher, author of Vox and Master Class, has a new novel called Lexecution that I have read and loved. She is offering it in sections – for FREE – on X (a work that would cost ~$27 in hardcover) and takeup has been less than pale.
LEX, as Christina calls it, is about a future (present?) British society where speech crimes are policed by drone. Authoritarian rule outlaws gendered words, adjectives that imply degrees of quality (it's unkind to say, for instance, that a person is beautiful or smart, because it might injure those who are not), and all anti-government rhetoric. Children are enlisted, through the public schools, to report their parents for what they say. Re-education of offenders becomes a growth industry. Saira Rao, anyone?
Turns out LEX hit too close to real life, plus Christina was being punished – predictably – for counter-narrative things she'd said. First her agent and then a series of publishers backed out of negotiations to publish. Hence, she is putting this cutting and very real ...]]> Thu, 09 Jul 2026 07:10:00 -0400 The Death of Reading Picture it. You're lucky enough to live in the late 19th century. Van Gogh is wandering around the Netherlands painting haystacks and stars. Spiritualism is everywhere: séances, mediums, table-turning, and seers who ...]]> Picture it. You're lucky enough to live in the late 19th century. Van Gogh is wandering around the Netherlands painting haystacks and stars. Spiritualism is everywhere: séances, mediums, table-turning, and seers who communicate with the dead. Some dude named PT Barnum is criss-crossing America with this crazy melange of traveling circus and sly hoaxes. There are side shows and peep shows, theatrical extravaganzas in every town. Ragtime is just taking hold.
And for the first time in the history of man, books are available to the everyone with a few ha'penneys to rub together. The print industry has exploded, becoming more systematized, and better at shipping. Suddenly, even ordinary people can read – in their parlors, at saloons and libraries, and after dinner, once the harpsichord recital is done. Novels are everywhere: Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, George Eliot. In France, Victor Hugo. The Russians? They're producing metric tons of pages. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky. People are inhaling these stories, 900 pages at a time.
Academics refer to this period as the "reading revolution." Reading was as much an indulgence as carnivals and music halls. People didn't HAVE to read, they GOT to read. They did it ostentatiously and with zeal. And this habit lasted, in one form or another, until recently when reading for enjoyment started to tank. Blame the Internet and social media and our fractured attention span. Blame Oprah, who in her quest to 'get people reading' promoted one title and focused every English-speaking woman's attention on it, to the exclusion of every other book on the planet.
But the real culprit, if you ask me, is politics. When identity and partisanship become your defining feature, when you adhere to rigid ideas and philosophies – and fear anything that challenges your beliefs – reading becomes dangerous. All those random ideas floating around? Problems that have no easy answers? Bah! Who needs that?
So here's where we are: reading for enjoyment has fallen by 40% in the past 20 years. And despite bullshit feel-good essays about how we're not really reading less, it just seems that way – and online influencers who hawk the classics without a single specific detail about plot, theme, or character – literacy in every single cohort is falling off a cliff. Publishing is becoming narrower, more ideological, and preachy. The books that face out in shop windows reinforce pat answers instead of asking hard questions. And the world seems smaller, because it is.
Séances, circuses, live music, theater, art…they're all on the decline. Instead we have performative costumed protests and Netflix shows that are contractually bound to restate their plot three to four times for the benefit of distracted viewers.
And original stories, with unique characters built word-by-word and impossible quests and existential messages? These days, you cannot give them away. To wit: my friend Christina Dalcher, author of Vox and Master Class, has a new novel called Lexecution that I have read and loved. She is offering it in sections – for FREE – on X (a work that would cost ~$27 in hardcover) and takeup has been less than pale.
LEX, as Christina calls it, is about a future (present?) British society where speech crimes are policed by drone. Authoritarian rule outlaws gendered words, adjectives that imply degrees of quality (it's unkind to say, for instance, that a person is beautiful or smart, because it might injure those who are not), and all anti-government rhetoric. Children are enlisted, through the public schools, to report their parents for what they say. Re-education of offenders becomes a growth industry. Saira Rao, anyone?
Turns out LEX hit too close to real life, plus Christina was being punished – predictably – for counter-narrative things she'd said. First her agent and then a series of publishers backed out of negotiations to publish. Hence, she is putting this cutting and very real ...]]> Ann Bauer 05:39 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 97 71937 A few months ago, I was one of several candidates under consideration for Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). While I did not make the final cut, I was honored to be considered for such an important position. The administration has nominated a highly qualified team to lead the CDC and I wish them well. The experience gave me the opportunity to reflect on what reforms I would like to see at the CDC as it faces a pivot point in the history of medicine and public health. Here are six themes that I see as most important and urgent.
1. Develop a new ethical framework for public health practice. Too often during the pandemic, policies were justified by the intended effects with little attention paid to the means used to reach those ends. The Hippocratic Oath and its modern derivatives have served as that ethical framework for medical practice for over 2,000 years and they have made the health professions (until recently) one of the most trusted institutions in our society. Public health practice needs its own version and should adopt many of its principles, including:
Respect for individual rights: The US just celebrated the 250 Anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. America is the "Land of the Free and Home of the Brave." Public health practice in the US must be consistent with our legal framework, traditions, and Constitution, including the Bill of Rights.
Subsidiarity: Problems are solved best by those closest to the problem. This idea has already been espoused by the CDC in its new priorities statement. The US is a vast and diverse country with over 50 state and territorial jurisdictions, each with its own constitution and separate police powers. A "one-size-fits-all" public health policy dictated by Washington or Atlanta will rarely be successful. While some public health leaders lamented lack of uniformity in the Covid pandemic response, federalism served us well and allowed states with less restrictive pandemic policies to lead the country away from the worst of other states' policies. The current US measles outbreaks have also demonstrated that local public health officials with local knowledge are better able to gain the trust of communities affected by outbreaks to bring them under control.
Non-maleficence: Avoiding harm is a basic Hippocratic principle in medicine which was largely ignored during the pandemic. Former NIH Director Francis Collins has belatedly acknowledged that US pandemic leaders paid little or no attention to the massive collateral damage caused by policies focused exclusively on preventing every possible Covid infection. "First, do no harm" is a dictum which should apply to public health practice as well as medicine.
Consideration of expertise of others: Public health is also public policy, not just science. A public health program must include expertise in economics, childhood development, psychology, and other fields which are not part of formal public health training. Dr. Fauci famously disclaimed responsibility for understanding the economic and social consequences of pandemic policies as being outside his field of concern. This attitude is not acceptable in medicine or surgery, where practitioners are expected to fully understand the consequences of the treatments that they recommend. It should not be acceptable in public health practice.
Use of least restrictive means to accomplish public health goals. This is already an acknowledged principle of public health policy, but it was ignored during the pandemic in favor of a misguided "precautionary principle" and "swiss cheese-layered protection" approach that promoted maximalist policies in almost all circumstances. Restraint needs to be reapplied.
Rejecting fear-based messaging. We recognize that manipulating patients through fear is unethical in the practice of medicine. It should be also in the practice of public health. Fear brings out the worst in h...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/how-to-make-the-cdc-great-again/ A few months ago, I was one of several candidates under consideration for Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). While I did not make the final cut, I was honored to be considered for such an important position. The administration has nominated a highly qualified team to lead the CDC and I wish them well. The experience gave me the opportunity to reflect on what reforms I would like to see at the CDC as it faces a pivot point in the history of medicine and public health. Here are six themes that I see as most important and urgent.
1. Develop a new ethical framework for public health practice. Too often during the pandemic, policies were justified by the intended effects with little attention paid to the means used to reach those ends. The Hippocratic Oath and its modern derivatives have served as that ethical framework for medical practice for over 2,000 years and they have made the health professions (until recently) one of the most trusted institutions in our society. Public health practice needs its own version and should adopt many of its principles, including:
Respect for individual rights: The US just celebrated the 250 Anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. America is the "Land of the Free and Home of the Brave." Public health practice in the US must be consistent with our legal framework, traditions, and Constitution, including the Bill of Rights.
Subsidiarity: Problems are solved best by those closest to the problem. This idea has already been espoused by the CDC in its new priorities statement. The US is a vast and diverse country with over 50 state and territorial jurisdictions, each with its own constitution and separate police powers. A "one-size-fits-all" public health policy dictated by Washington or Atlanta will rarely be successful. While some public health leaders lamented lack of uniformity in the Covid pandemic response, federalism served us well and allowed states with less restrictive pandemic policies to lead the country away from the worst of other states' policies. The current US measles outbreaks have also demonstrated that local public health officials with local knowledge are better able to gain the trust of communities affected by outbreaks to bring them under control.
Non-maleficence: Avoiding harm is a basic Hippocratic principle in medicine which was largely ignored during the pandemic. Former NIH Director Francis Collins has belatedly acknowledged that US pandemic leaders paid little or no attention to the massive collateral damage caused by policies focused exclusively on preventing every possible Covid infection. "First, do no harm" is a dictum which should apply to public health practice as well as medicine.
Consideration of expertise of others: Public health is also public policy, not just science. A public health program must include expertise in economics, childhood development, psychology, and other fields which are not part of formal public health training. Dr. Fauci famously disclaimed responsibility for understanding the economic and social consequences of pandemic policies as being outside his field of concern. This attitude is not acceptable in medicine or surgery, where practitioners are expected to fully understand the consequences of the treatments that they recommend. It should not be acceptable in public health practice.
Use of least restrictive means to accomplish public health goals. This is already an acknowledged principle of public health policy, but it was ignored during the pandemic in favor of a misguided "precautionary principle" and "swiss cheese-layered protection" approach that promoted maximalist policies in almost all circumstances. Restraint needs to be reapplied.
Rejecting fear-based messaging. We recognize that manipulating patients through fear is unethical in the practice of medicine. It should be also in the practice of public health. Fear brings out the worst in h...]]> Wed, 08 Jul 2026 07:10:00 -0400 How to Make the CDC Great Again A few months ago, I was one of several candidates under consideration for Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). While I did not make the final cut, I was honored to be considered for s...]]> A few months ago, I was one of several candidates under consideration for Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). While I did not make the final cut, I was honored to be considered for such an important position. The administration has nominated a highly qualified team to lead the CDC and I wish them well. The experience gave me the opportunity to reflect on what reforms I would like to see at the CDC as it faces a pivot point in the history of medicine and public health. Here are six themes that I see as most important and urgent.
1. Develop a new ethical framework for public health practice. Too often during the pandemic, policies were justified by the intended effects with little attention paid to the means used to reach those ends. The Hippocratic Oath and its modern derivatives have served as that ethical framework for medical practice for over 2,000 years and they have made the health professions (until recently) one of the most trusted institutions in our society. Public health practice needs its own version and should adopt many of its principles, including:
Respect for individual rights: The US just celebrated the 250 Anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. America is the "Land of the Free and Home of the Brave." Public health practice in the US must be consistent with our legal framework, traditions, and Constitution, including the Bill of Rights.
Subsidiarity: Problems are solved best by those closest to the problem. This idea has already been espoused by the CDC in its new priorities statement. The US is a vast and diverse country with over 50 state and territorial jurisdictions, each with its own constitution and separate police powers. A "one-size-fits-all" public health policy dictated by Washington or Atlanta will rarely be successful. While some public health leaders lamented lack of uniformity in the Covid pandemic response, federalism served us well and allowed states with less restrictive pandemic policies to lead the country away from the worst of other states' policies. The current US measles outbreaks have also demonstrated that local public health officials with local knowledge are better able to gain the trust of communities affected by outbreaks to bring them under control.
Non-maleficence: Avoiding harm is a basic Hippocratic principle in medicine which was largely ignored during the pandemic. Former NIH Director Francis Collins has belatedly acknowledged that US pandemic leaders paid little or no attention to the massive collateral damage caused by policies focused exclusively on preventing every possible Covid infection. "First, do no harm" is a dictum which should apply to public health practice as well as medicine.
Consideration of expertise of others: Public health is also public policy, not just science. A public health program must include expertise in economics, childhood development, psychology, and other fields which are not part of formal public health training. Dr. Fauci famously disclaimed responsibility for understanding the economic and social consequences of pandemic policies as being outside his field of concern. This attitude is not acceptable in medicine or surgery, where practitioners are expected to fully understand the consequences of the treatments that they recommend. It should not be acceptable in public health practice.
Use of least restrictive means to accomplish public health goals. This is already an acknowledged principle of public health policy, but it was ignored during the pandemic in favor of a misguided "precautionary principle" and "swiss cheese-layered protection" approach that promoted maximalist policies in almost all circumstances. Restraint needs to be reapplied.
Rejecting fear-based messaging. We recognize that manipulating patients through fear is unethical in the practice of medicine. It should be also in the practice of public health. Fear brings out the worst in h...]]> Joseph Marine 11:03 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 96 71913 Conventional political philosophy has a blindspot over what turns out to be a crucial concept: the precise nature of the legal relationship between the human person and the regime under which he lives. In the US, we call this citizenship but how precisely is that different from the old-world notion of being a subject to a sovereign?
Confusion over this issue led the majority in the Supreme Court decision in Trump vs. Barbara to overrule an executive order that challenged automatic birthright citizenship. Only a few years back, anyone who would have challenged this idea would have been considered some kind of civic heretic, despite how rare this legal right is in the world.
Justice Clarence Thomas's dissenting opinion was more than a passing disagreement. He penned a treatise of monumental importance to our time. He has completely reframed the distinctly American idea of citizenship as a two-way agreement between the person and the political community. It is not conferred by birth alone but also requires domicile, which means allegiance and the forsaking of other political loyalties.
Thomas's mighty dissent, extracted in full at this link, is really for the ages and teaches this generation something substantial about our history. The purpose of the 14th Amendment was to admit blacks as full members of the polity. "Blacks were entitled to citizenship because they were Americans," Thomas explains.
"They had no other homeland, owed no allegiance to any foreign power, and were subject to no other authority. They 'fought and bled in the same battles,' 'gained and gloried in the same victories,' and were 'liable to be called upon to defend [America] in time of war' alongside every other citizen. The Citizenship Clause thus guaranteed them the 'dignity and glory of American citizenship," so as to ensure that they would never be treated as second class under the law."
They were not considered citizens simply because they were born here. This distinction has more significance than first appears. Thomas then explains the difference between the feudal concept of subjection vs. the free society's understanding of citizenship. There is mighty meaning here, one that is central to the uniquely American understanding of the relationship between the people and the government – a topic that reaches to the core of who we are and what the Founders were attempting to do.
The majority in this case plainly reinvented a feudal concept that the Founders pledged their fortunes, lives, and sacred honor to overthrow. Did they know or understand what they were doing? Not likely.
The emergence of birthright citizenship turns the entire history of its head and introduces a notion concerning individuals and the state that is contrary to the entire American idea. For the majority of the court to do this – probably without understanding the implications – on the 250th anniversary of the Founding only adds to the insult.
He concludes: "The Court's interpretation is not only contrary to the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, it produces grotesque results. While foreigners who wish to immigrate lawfully must sometimes wait for many years, a child born here to a birth tourist is automatically a citizen." He warns "the Court has made a mistake that will seriously affect the country's future."
Thomas's full opinion is extracted here. Please circulate.]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/subjects-and-citizens-a-treatise-by-justice-clarence-thomas/ Conventional political philosophy has a blindspot over what turns out to be a crucial concept: the precise nature of the legal relationship between the human person and the regime under which he lives. In the US, we call this citizenship but how precisely is that different from the old-world notion of being a subject to a sovereign?
Confusion over this issue led the majority in the Supreme Court decision in Trump vs. Barbara to overrule an executive order that challenged automatic birthright citizenship. Only a few years back, anyone who would have challenged this idea would have been considered some kind of civic heretic, despite how rare this legal right is in the world.
Justice Clarence Thomas's dissenting opinion was more than a passing disagreement. He penned a treatise of monumental importance to our time. He has completely reframed the distinctly American idea of citizenship as a two-way agreement between the person and the political community. It is not conferred by birth alone but also requires domicile, which means allegiance and the forsaking of other political loyalties.
Thomas's mighty dissent, extracted in full at this link, is really for the ages and teaches this generation something substantial about our history. The purpose of the 14th Amendment was to admit blacks as full members of the polity. "Blacks were entitled to citizenship because they were Americans," Thomas explains.
"They had no other homeland, owed no allegiance to any foreign power, and were subject to no other authority. They 'fought and bled in the same battles,' 'gained and gloried in the same victories,' and were 'liable to be called upon to defend [America] in time of war' alongside every other citizen. The Citizenship Clause thus guaranteed them the 'dignity and glory of American citizenship," so as to ensure that they would never be treated as second class under the law."
They were not considered citizens simply because they were born here. This distinction has more significance than first appears. Thomas then explains the difference between the feudal concept of subjection vs. the free society's understanding of citizenship. There is mighty meaning here, one that is central to the uniquely American understanding of the relationship between the people and the government – a topic that reaches to the core of who we are and what the Founders were attempting to do.
The majority in this case plainly reinvented a feudal concept that the Founders pledged their fortunes, lives, and sacred honor to overthrow. Did they know or understand what they were doing? Not likely.
The emergence of birthright citizenship turns the entire history of its head and introduces a notion concerning individuals and the state that is contrary to the entire American idea. For the majority of the court to do this – probably without understanding the implications – on the 250th anniversary of the Founding only adds to the insult.
He concludes: "The Court's interpretation is not only contrary to the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, it produces grotesque results. While foreigners who wish to immigrate lawfully must sometimes wait for many years, a child born here to a birth tourist is automatically a citizen." He warns "the Court has made a mistake that will seriously affect the country's future."
Thomas's full opinion is extracted here. Please circulate.]]> Tue, 07 Jul 2026 07:10:00 -0400 Subjects and Citizens: A Treatise by Justice Clarence Thomas Conventional political philosophy has a blindspot over what turns out to be a crucial concept: the precise nature of the legal relationship between the human person and the regime under which he lives. In ...]]> Conventional political philosophy has a blindspot over what turns out to be a crucial concept: the precise nature of the legal relationship between the human person and the regime under which he lives. In the US, we call this citizenship but how precisely is that different from the old-world notion of being a subject to a sovereign?
Confusion over this issue led the majority in the Supreme Court decision in Trump vs. Barbara to overrule an executive order that challenged automatic birthright citizenship. Only a few years back, anyone who would have challenged this idea would have been considered some kind of civic heretic, despite how rare this legal right is in the world.
Justice Clarence Thomas's dissenting opinion was more than a passing disagreement. He penned a treatise of monumental importance to our time. He has completely reframed the distinctly American idea of citizenship as a two-way agreement between the person and the political community. It is not conferred by birth alone but also requires domicile, which means allegiance and the forsaking of other political loyalties.
Thomas's mighty dissent, extracted in full at this link, is really for the ages and teaches this generation something substantial about our history. The purpose of the 14th Amendment was to admit blacks as full members of the polity. "Blacks were entitled to citizenship because they were Americans," Thomas explains.
"They had no other homeland, owed no allegiance to any foreign power, and were subject to no other authority. They 'fought and bled in the same battles,' 'gained and gloried in the same victories,' and were 'liable to be called upon to defend [America] in time of war' alongside every other citizen. The Citizenship Clause thus guaranteed them the 'dignity and glory of American citizenship," so as to ensure that they would never be treated as second class under the law."
They were not considered citizens simply because they were born here. This distinction has more significance than first appears. Thomas then explains the difference between the feudal concept of subjection vs. the free society's understanding of citizenship. There is mighty meaning here, one that is central to the uniquely American understanding of the relationship between the people and the government – a topic that reaches to the core of who we are and what the Founders were attempting to do.
The majority in this case plainly reinvented a feudal concept that the Founders pledged their fortunes, lives, and sacred honor to overthrow. Did they know or understand what they were doing? Not likely.
The emergence of birthright citizenship turns the entire history of its head and introduces a notion concerning individuals and the state that is contrary to the entire American idea. For the majority of the court to do this – probably without understanding the implications – on the 250th anniversary of the Founding only adds to the insult.
He concludes: "The Court's interpretation is not only contrary to the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, it produces grotesque results. While foreigners who wish to immigrate lawfully must sometimes wait for many years, a child born here to a birth tourist is automatically a citizen." He warns "the Court has made a mistake that will seriously affect the country's future."
Thomas's full opinion is extracted here. Please circulate.]]> Brownstone Institute 03:02 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 95 71787 Healthcare in the United States is in a death spiral. Costs continue to rise, chronic diseases consume 90% of healthcare spending, and millions of Americans feel trapped in a system that often limits choice. Patients increasingly want insurance for a broader spectrum of care — from functional/integrative medicine, to preventive, and more holistic approaches — yet insurers frequently fail to recognize these services due to a lack of billing codes. The result is a healthcare environment where innovation is constrained, patient autonomy is reduced, and effective alternatives to conventional medicine remain invisible to insurers and financially inaccessible to most patients.
Two forces could fundamentally change the US landscape. ABC codes for non-allopathic caregivers and Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). Together, they provide a powerful framework for health freedom and empower Americans to make personalized healthcare decisions.
Healthcare systems (insurers and other payers) only reimburse what is coded and billable. The lack of codes for all healthcare options started in 1983 when the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the American Medical Association (AMA) agreed that HHS would only use the AMAs codes to process Medicare and Medicaid claims.
In 2002, HHS mandated use of the AMA's codes for filing electronic claims. ABC codes were mentioned as an option but not adopted and the AMA currently has a monopoly on billing codes.
In 2003, HHS provided an exception to test ABC codes as a standard for two years. Alaska Medicaid successfully paid for over 2 million ABC-coded claims filed electronically. Yet government reviewers of the exception data advised HHS in 2005 not to adopt ABC codes. The cost savings of using non-physician practitioners and functional/integrative care remained invisible due to this decision, and our healthcare spending has continued to skyrocket. Chronic disease drives nearly 90% of healthcare expenditures, yet our healthcare system remains largely structured around acute-care treatment.
As a result, patients frequently experience long wait times and expensive interventions only after disease has advanced. Integrative and alternative practitioners offer a different approach — one centered on prevention and addressing root causes rather than managing symptoms alone.
By intervening earlier and promoting healing, they can improve outcomes while reducing the need for costly medical interventions. Existing studies of nurse practitioner and advanced practice nurse care demonstrate cost reductions ranging from approximately 6% to over 30% compared with physician-led care while maintaining similar outcomes in many settings. ABC Codes provide a mechanism to identify, document, and measure those lower-cost care pathways across a much broader healthcare workforce.
X12, the standard for all electronic transactions, created the ability for ABC Codes to be transmitted within certain healthcare electronic transaction standards.
In practical terms this makes it possible to use ABC codes in electronic claims without HHS approval. This establishes a broader, more inclusive healthcare coding framework capable of documenting services that have historically been invisible to traditional reimbursement systems.
By providing standardized codes for a much wider range of healthcare services, practitioners and payers gain the ability to track outcomes, analyze utilization, and understand the real-world impact of therapies that patients are already using every day. The data from ABC coded claims can uncover how to create a more affordable healthcare system.
ABC Codes will help us to solve the chronic disease crisis. Conditions such as diabetes, obesity, autoimmune disorders, cardiovascular disease, anxiety, depression, and chronic pain are not being resolved using conventional medicine. They require sustained lifestyle support, prevention strategies, nutritional counseling, beh...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-reimbursement-code-monopoly-is-a-threat-to-health/ Healthcare in the United States is in a death spiral. Costs continue to rise, chronic diseases consume 90% of healthcare spending, and millions of Americans feel trapped in a system that often limits choice. Patients increasingly want insurance for a broader spectrum of care — from functional/integrative medicine, to preventive, and more holistic approaches — yet insurers frequently fail to recognize these services due to a lack of billing codes. The result is a healthcare environment where innovation is constrained, patient autonomy is reduced, and effective alternatives to conventional medicine remain invisible to insurers and financially inaccessible to most patients.
Two forces could fundamentally change the US landscape. ABC codes for non-allopathic caregivers and Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). Together, they provide a powerful framework for health freedom and empower Americans to make personalized healthcare decisions.
Healthcare systems (insurers and other payers) only reimburse what is coded and billable. The lack of codes for all healthcare options started in 1983 when the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the American Medical Association (AMA) agreed that HHS would only use the AMAs codes to process Medicare and Medicaid claims.
In 2002, HHS mandated use of the AMA's codes for filing electronic claims. ABC codes were mentioned as an option but not adopted and the AMA currently has a monopoly on billing codes.
In 2003, HHS provided an exception to test ABC codes as a standard for two years. Alaska Medicaid successfully paid for over 2 million ABC-coded claims filed electronically. Yet government reviewers of the exception data advised HHS in 2005 not to adopt ABC codes. The cost savings of using non-physician practitioners and functional/integrative care remained invisible due to this decision, and our healthcare spending has continued to skyrocket. Chronic disease drives nearly 90% of healthcare expenditures, yet our healthcare system remains largely structured around acute-care treatment.
As a result, patients frequently experience long wait times and expensive interventions only after disease has advanced. Integrative and alternative practitioners offer a different approach — one centered on prevention and addressing root causes rather than managing symptoms alone.
By intervening earlier and promoting healing, they can improve outcomes while reducing the need for costly medical interventions. Existing studies of nurse practitioner and advanced practice nurse care demonstrate cost reductions ranging from approximately 6% to over 30% compared with physician-led care while maintaining similar outcomes in many settings. ABC Codes provide a mechanism to identify, document, and measure those lower-cost care pathways across a much broader healthcare workforce.
X12, the standard for all electronic transactions, created the ability for ABC Codes to be transmitted within certain healthcare electronic transaction standards.
In practical terms this makes it possible to use ABC codes in electronic claims without HHS approval. This establishes a broader, more inclusive healthcare coding framework capable of documenting services that have historically been invisible to traditional reimbursement systems.
By providing standardized codes for a much wider range of healthcare services, practitioners and payers gain the ability to track outcomes, analyze utilization, and understand the real-world impact of therapies that patients are already using every day. The data from ABC coded claims can uncover how to create a more affordable healthcare system.
ABC Codes will help us to solve the chronic disease crisis. Conditions such as diabetes, obesity, autoimmune disorders, cardiovascular disease, anxiety, depression, and chronic pain are not being resolved using conventional medicine. They require sustained lifestyle support, prevention strategies, nutritional counseling, beh...]]> Mon, 06 Jul 2026 08:05:00 -0400 The Reimbursement Code Monopoly Is a Threat to Health Healthcare in the United States is in a death spiral. Costs continue to rise, chronic diseases consume 90% of healthcare spending, and millions of Americans feel trapped in a system that often limits choice. P...]]> Healthcare in the United States is in a death spiral. Costs continue to rise, chronic diseases consume 90% of healthcare spending, and millions of Americans feel trapped in a system that often limits choice. Patients increasingly want insurance for a broader spectrum of care — from functional/integrative medicine, to preventive, and more holistic approaches — yet insurers frequently fail to recognize these services due to a lack of billing codes. The result is a healthcare environment where innovation is constrained, patient autonomy is reduced, and effective alternatives to conventional medicine remain invisible to insurers and financially inaccessible to most patients.
Two forces could fundamentally change the US landscape. ABC codes for non-allopathic caregivers and Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). Together, they provide a powerful framework for health freedom and empower Americans to make personalized healthcare decisions.
Healthcare systems (insurers and other payers) only reimburse what is coded and billable. The lack of codes for all healthcare options started in 1983 when the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the American Medical Association (AMA) agreed that HHS would only use the AMAs codes to process Medicare and Medicaid claims.
In 2002, HHS mandated use of the AMA's codes for filing electronic claims. ABC codes were mentioned as an option but not adopted and the AMA currently has a monopoly on billing codes.
In 2003, HHS provided an exception to test ABC codes as a standard for two years. Alaska Medicaid successfully paid for over 2 million ABC-coded claims filed electronically. Yet government reviewers of the exception data advised HHS in 2005 not to adopt ABC codes. The cost savings of using non-physician practitioners and functional/integrative care remained invisible due to this decision, and our healthcare spending has continued to skyrocket. Chronic disease drives nearly 90% of healthcare expenditures, yet our healthcare system remains largely structured around acute-care treatment.
As a result, patients frequently experience long wait times and expensive interventions only after disease has advanced. Integrative and alternative practitioners offer a different approach — one centered on prevention and addressing root causes rather than managing symptoms alone.
By intervening earlier and promoting healing, they can improve outcomes while reducing the need for costly medical interventions. Existing studies of nurse practitioner and advanced practice nurse care demonstrate cost reductions ranging from approximately 6% to over 30% compared with physician-led care while maintaining similar outcomes in many settings. ABC Codes provide a mechanism to identify, document, and measure those lower-cost care pathways across a much broader healthcare workforce.
X12, the standard for all electronic transactions, created the ability for ABC Codes to be transmitted within certain healthcare electronic transaction standards.
In practical terms this makes it possible to use ABC codes in electronic claims without HHS approval. This establishes a broader, more inclusive healthcare coding framework capable of documenting services that have historically been invisible to traditional reimbursement systems.
By providing standardized codes for a much wider range of healthcare services, practitioners and payers gain the ability to track outcomes, analyze utilization, and understand the real-world impact of therapies that patients are already using every day. The data from ABC coded claims can uncover how to create a more affordable healthcare system.
ABC Codes will help us to solve the chronic disease crisis. Conditions such as diabetes, obesity, autoimmune disorders, cardiovascular disease, anxiety, depression, and chronic pain are not being resolved using conventional medicine. They require sustained lifestyle support, prevention strategies, nutritional counseling, beh...]]> Margaret Hampton 09:03 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 94 71790 As the United States turns 250 years old, the Declaration of Independence is being quoted almost everywhere, both in lavish celebration of the glory of America as a nation, and in praise of the nearly unlimited freedom that Americans supposedly enjoy.
Curiously, the quotations used for these purposes come almost exclusively from the first two or three sentences of the Declaration. True, those opening lines are brilliant and profound. Who can resist words like these:
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness…
Consider however, that this celebratory and self-congratulatory use of the Declaration completely ignores the last 1,100 or so words of the 1,300 word document. As a born and bred patriotic American, I wanted to know why this is so. I began by rereading the entire Declaration. It raised a lot of questions.
For example, why does no one seem to reference this statement?
Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.
Why doesn't anyone remind us that
… when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.
I believe a careful rereading of the entire Declaration of Independence reveals why it is so selectively and incompletely referenced today. It is a sobering realization: if one thoroughly reviews the entire Declaration within the context of modern American politics, the parallels are unmistakable. It becomes obvious that the United States Government is itself guilty of "a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations" at least as tyrannical as the British Crown's actions a quarter millennium ago.
As such, the right and duty of patriotic Americans is made clear in the words of the Declaration of Independence itself – especially in the portions that we never seem to hear.
The majority of the Declaration of Independence consists of a detailed description of the "long Train of Abuses and Usurpations" that the Founders accused the British Crown of committing, followed by an account of the unsuccessful appeals for justice that the American colonists made to the British.
After its much-quoted opening flourish, the Declaration begins its litany of the Crown's abuses. It includes a lengthy description of the Crown's manipulation of the legislative process for the benefit of the British government and to the detriment of the American people:
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing Importance, unless suspended in their Operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them
He has refused to pass other Laws…unless those People would relinquish the Right of Representation in the Legislature
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly
Serious as those offenses are, one wonders how the Founders would have reacted to the legislative malfeasance of our modern American government. In the interest of time I will stop at three:
The routine passage into law of 1,000-page bills that nobody reads, loaded with endless hidden riders that the public would never accept as stand-alone legislation (e.g., every "omnibus" bill ever written)
The routine creation of laws that blatantly contradict the Constitution, stripping citizens of their fundamental rights (e.g., the Patriot Act, the PREP Act, and many more)
The frequent creation of laws granting legal shields to corporations and denying citizens legal recourse for harms they suffer (e.g., the 1986 National Chi...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-declaration-of-independence-at-250-what-does-it-tell-us/ As the United States turns 250 years old, the Declaration of Independence is being quoted almost everywhere, both in lavish celebration of the glory of America as a nation, and in praise of the nearly unlimited freedom that Americans supposedly enjoy.
Curiously, the quotations used for these purposes come almost exclusively from the first two or three sentences of the Declaration. True, those opening lines are brilliant and profound. Who can resist words like these:
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness…
Consider however, that this celebratory and self-congratulatory use of the Declaration completely ignores the last 1,100 or so words of the 1,300 word document. As a born and bred patriotic American, I wanted to know why this is so. I began by rereading the entire Declaration. It raised a lot of questions.
For example, why does no one seem to reference this statement?
Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.
Why doesn't anyone remind us that
… when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.
I believe a careful rereading of the entire Declaration of Independence reveals why it is so selectively and incompletely referenced today. It is a sobering realization: if one thoroughly reviews the entire Declaration within the context of modern American politics, the parallels are unmistakable. It becomes obvious that the United States Government is itself guilty of "a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations" at least as tyrannical as the British Crown's actions a quarter millennium ago.
As such, the right and duty of patriotic Americans is made clear in the words of the Declaration of Independence itself – especially in the portions that we never seem to hear.
The majority of the Declaration of Independence consists of a detailed description of the "long Train of Abuses and Usurpations" that the Founders accused the British Crown of committing, followed by an account of the unsuccessful appeals for justice that the American colonists made to the British.
After its much-quoted opening flourish, the Declaration begins its litany of the Crown's abuses. It includes a lengthy description of the Crown's manipulation of the legislative process for the benefit of the British government and to the detriment of the American people:
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing Importance, unless suspended in their Operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them
He has refused to pass other Laws…unless those People would relinquish the Right of Representation in the Legislature
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly
Serious as those offenses are, one wonders how the Founders would have reacted to the legislative malfeasance of our modern American government. In the interest of time I will stop at three:
The routine passage into law of 1,000-page bills that nobody reads, loaded with endless hidden riders that the public would never accept as stand-alone legislation (e.g., every "omnibus" bill ever written)
The routine creation of laws that blatantly contradict the Constitution, stripping citizens of their fundamental rights (e.g., the Patriot Act, the PREP Act, and many more)
The frequent creation of laws granting legal shields to corporations and denying citizens legal recourse for harms they suffer (e.g., the 1986 National Chi...]]> Sun, 05 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0400 The Declaration of Independence at 250: What Does It Tell Us? Two Long Trains of Abuses and Usurpations A Multitude of New Offices Imposing Taxes on Us without Our Consent He Has Endeavored to Bring on the Inhabitants of Our Frontiers He Has Affected to Render the Military Independent of and Superior to the Civil Power "Classified" Operations Completely Ignore the Consent of the Governed We Have Petitioned for Redress Removing the Corruption and Restoring Lost Principles As the United States turns 250 years old, the Declaration of Independence is being quoted almost everywhere, both in lavish celebration of the glory of America as a nation, and in praise of the nearly unli...]]> As the United States turns 250 years old, the Declaration of Independence is being quoted almost everywhere, both in lavish celebration of the glory of America as a nation, and in praise of the nearly unlimited freedom that Americans supposedly enjoy.
Curiously, the quotations used for these purposes come almost exclusively from the first two or three sentences of the Declaration. True, those opening lines are brilliant and profound. Who can resist words like these:
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness…
Consider however, that this celebratory and self-congratulatory use of the Declaration completely ignores the last 1,100 or so words of the 1,300 word document. As a born and bred patriotic American, I wanted to know why this is so. I began by rereading the entire Declaration. It raised a lot of questions.
For example, why does no one seem to reference this statement?
Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.
Why doesn't anyone remind us that
… when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.
I believe a careful rereading of the entire Declaration of Independence reveals why it is so selectively and incompletely referenced today. It is a sobering realization: if one thoroughly reviews the entire Declaration within the context of modern American politics, the parallels are unmistakable. It becomes obvious that the United States Government is itself guilty of "a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations" at least as tyrannical as the British Crown's actions a quarter millennium ago.
As such, the right and duty of patriotic Americans is made clear in the words of the Declaration of Independence itself – especially in the portions that we never seem to hear.
The majority of the Declaration of Independence consists of a detailed description of the "long Train of Abuses and Usurpations" that the Founders accused the British Crown of committing, followed by an account of the unsuccessful appeals for justice that the American colonists made to the British.
After its much-quoted opening flourish, the Declaration begins its litany of the Crown's abuses. It includes a lengthy description of the Crown's manipulation of the legislative process for the benefit of the British government and to the detriment of the American people:
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing Importance, unless suspended in their Operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them
He has refused to pass other Laws…unless those People would relinquish the Right of Representation in the Legislature
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly
Serious as those offenses are, one wonders how the Founders would have reacted to the legislative malfeasance of our modern American government. In the interest of time I will stop at three:
The routine passage into law of 1,000-page bills that nobody reads, loaded with endless hidden riders that the public would never accept as stand-alone legislation (e.g., every "omnibus" bill ever written)
The routine creation of laws that blatantly contradict the Constitution, stripping citizens of their fundamental rights (e.g., the Patriot Act, the PREP Act, and many more)
The frequent creation of laws granting legal shields to corporations and denying citizens legal recourse for harms they suffer (e.g., the 1986 National Chi...]]> Clayton J. Baker, MD 15:21 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 93 71794 Most Americans think nothing of referring to our nation's birthday as "the Fourth of July." But I learned the hard way not to do that in my Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) days in college.
I'll never forget one of the times Sgt. Thayer, a regular Army soldier, decided to randomly quiz our ROTC squad on military regulation and history while we were in formation, following an early-morning inspection. One of the questions was:
"What American holiday do we celebrate in July?"
"The Fourth of July, Sergeant."
Sgt. Thayer's response?
"GET ON THE GROUND! COUNT THEM OUT!"
Then he called on another cadet. Same question, same answer, more pushups.
This pattern repeated several times until one of the putatively better-educated members of the squad, whose family had an extended and extensive military past, finally answered: "Independence Day."
I suppose I'd never really given it due consideration until then.
I learned plenty from being a cadet, but the appropriate labeling of this historically significant event is one lesson I think all Americans should also commit to as we prepare to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our Founding Fathers' declaration of Colonial independence from Great Britain.
America was founded on a set of beliefs and convictions—what Thomas Jefferson described as self-evident truths (actually, Jefferson originally wrote "sacred and undeniable" which was revised to the more secular "self-evident") that were proclaimed in the 1776 Declaration of Independence and then protected by the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.
The Declaration established the first modern country founded on principles of individual freedoms. It also led to the selection of America's government leaders by the people, rather than through an inherited bloodline of kings and nobles.
Can you imagine what your life would have been like if Great Britain ruled over us?
Why is the American holiday reduced to its calendar date by seemingly everyone? Can you recall the last time anyone wished you a Happy Independence Day versus a curt "Happy Fourth?" That kind of labeling debases the magnitude of what the day represents. And the problem seems to get worse with every passing year.
Nobody refers to Christmas Day as "the 25th of December." Nobody greets you on New Year's Day with "Happy January first." Calling it "Independence Day" honors the foundational designation and the values of liberty and freedom that the holiday represents.
Calling the holiday "Independence Day" connects the event directly to its historical significance. It's become necessary because a shocking number of young people are clueless about what the "4th of July" is supposed to represent—let alone the importance of the Committee of Five or the location of Valley Forge. They do not know who the Founding Fathers were or what they accomplished. According to the above-linked video, most Americans can't even spell "independence."
Public schools and teachers' unions have failed to educate American students on the fundamentals of civics. Leftist universities tend to focus their lenses on far-left Colonial/ anti-Founder indoctrination to students on America's failures rather than its successes. And putting John Trumbull's famous painting of the Declaration of Independence signing on the back of the two-dollar bill apparently wasn't enough. Perhaps a verbal grassroots renaissance using the proper convention will at least audibly point American citizens in the right direction.

Independence Day is unlike the adjacently occurring Memorial Day, which was intended as a somber day meant to valorize those who died in wars to protect our liberties. Many Americans unfortunately see Memorial Day as nothing more than a long weekend for vacations, barbecues, and other leisurely indulgences. Even outspoken "progressive" Democratic members of Congress endlessly lecturing Americans about our Constitution and fairness pathetically fail to compreh...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-army-rotc-taught-me-to-never-call-independence-day-the-4th-of-july/ Most Americans think nothing of referring to our nation's birthday as "the Fourth of July." But I learned the hard way not to do that in my Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) days in college.
I'll never forget one of the times Sgt. Thayer, a regular Army soldier, decided to randomly quiz our ROTC squad on military regulation and history while we were in formation, following an early-morning inspection. One of the questions was:
"What American holiday do we celebrate in July?"
"The Fourth of July, Sergeant."
Sgt. Thayer's response?
"GET ON THE GROUND! COUNT THEM OUT!"
Then he called on another cadet. Same question, same answer, more pushups.
This pattern repeated several times until one of the putatively better-educated members of the squad, whose family had an extended and extensive military past, finally answered: "Independence Day."
I suppose I'd never really given it due consideration until then.
I learned plenty from being a cadet, but the appropriate labeling of this historically significant event is one lesson I think all Americans should also commit to as we prepare to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our Founding Fathers' declaration of Colonial independence from Great Britain.
America was founded on a set of beliefs and convictions—what Thomas Jefferson described as self-evident truths (actually, Jefferson originally wrote "sacred and undeniable" which was revised to the more secular "self-evident") that were proclaimed in the 1776 Declaration of Independence and then protected by the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.
The Declaration established the first modern country founded on principles of individual freedoms. It also led to the selection of America's government leaders by the people, rather than through an inherited bloodline of kings and nobles.
Can you imagine what your life would have been like if Great Britain ruled over us?
Why is the American holiday reduced to its calendar date by seemingly everyone? Can you recall the last time anyone wished you a Happy Independence Day versus a curt "Happy Fourth?" That kind of labeling debases the magnitude of what the day represents. And the problem seems to get worse with every passing year.
Nobody refers to Christmas Day as "the 25th of December." Nobody greets you on New Year's Day with "Happy January first." Calling it "Independence Day" honors the foundational designation and the values of liberty and freedom that the holiday represents.
Calling the holiday "Independence Day" connects the event directly to its historical significance. It's become necessary because a shocking number of young people are clueless about what the "4th of July" is supposed to represent—let alone the importance of the Committee of Five or the location of Valley Forge. They do not know who the Founding Fathers were or what they accomplished. According to the above-linked video, most Americans can't even spell "independence."
Public schools and teachers' unions have failed to educate American students on the fundamentals of civics. Leftist universities tend to focus their lenses on far-left Colonial/ anti-Founder indoctrination to students on America's failures rather than its successes. And putting John Trumbull's famous painting of the Declaration of Independence signing on the back of the two-dollar bill apparently wasn't enough. Perhaps a verbal grassroots renaissance using the proper convention will at least audibly point American citizens in the right direction.

Independence Day is unlike the adjacently occurring Memorial Day, which was intended as a somber day meant to valorize those who died in wars to protect our liberties. Many Americans unfortunately see Memorial Day as nothing more than a long weekend for vacations, barbecues, and other leisurely indulgences. Even outspoken "progressive" Democratic members of Congress endlessly lecturing Americans about our Constitution and fairness pathetically fail to compreh...]]> Sat, 04 Jul 2026 07:05:00 -0400 The Army ROTC Taught Me to Never Call Independence Day 'The 4th of July' Stating a Date Versus an Occasion A True Celebration of America Most Americans think nothing of referring to our nation's birthday as "the Fourth of July." But I learned the hard way not to do that in my Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) days in college.
I'...]]> Most Americans think nothing of referring to our nation's birthday as "the Fourth of July." But I learned the hard way not to do that in my Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) days in college.
I'll never forget one of the times Sgt. Thayer, a regular Army soldier, decided to randomly quiz our ROTC squad on military regulation and history while we were in formation, following an early-morning inspection. One of the questions was:
"What American holiday do we celebrate in July?"
"The Fourth of July, Sergeant."
Sgt. Thayer's response?
"GET ON THE GROUND! COUNT THEM OUT!"
Then he called on another cadet. Same question, same answer, more pushups.
This pattern repeated several times until one of the putatively better-educated members of the squad, whose family had an extended and extensive military past, finally answered: "Independence Day."
I suppose I'd never really given it due consideration until then.
I learned plenty from being a cadet, but the appropriate labeling of this historically significant event is one lesson I think all Americans should also commit to as we prepare to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our Founding Fathers' declaration of Colonial independence from Great Britain.
America was founded on a set of beliefs and convictions—what Thomas Jefferson described as self-evident truths (actually, Jefferson originally wrote "sacred and undeniable" which was revised to the more secular "self-evident") that were proclaimed in the 1776 Declaration of Independence and then protected by the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.
The Declaration established the first modern country founded on principles of individual freedoms. It also led to the selection of America's government leaders by the people, rather than through an inherited bloodline of kings and nobles.
Can you imagine what your life would have been like if Great Britain ruled over us?
Why is the American holiday reduced to its calendar date by seemingly everyone? Can you recall the last time anyone wished you a Happy Independence Day versus a curt "Happy Fourth?" That kind of labeling debases the magnitude of what the day represents. And the problem seems to get worse with every passing year.
Nobody refers to Christmas Day as "the 25th of December." Nobody greets you on New Year's Day with "Happy January first." Calling it "Independence Day" honors the foundational designation and the values of liberty and freedom that the holiday represents.
Calling the holiday "Independence Day" connects the event directly to its historical significance. It's become necessary because a shocking number of young people are clueless about what the "4th of July" is supposed to represent—let alone the importance of the Committee of Five or the location of Valley Forge. They do not know who the Founding Fathers were or what they accomplished. According to the above-linked video, most Americans can't even spell "independence."
Public schools and teachers' unions have failed to educate American students on the fundamentals of civics. Leftist universities tend to focus their lenses on far-left Colonial/ anti-Founder indoctrination to students on America's failures rather than its successes. And putting John Trumbull's famous painting of the Declaration of Independence signing on the back of the two-dollar bill apparently wasn't enough. Perhaps a verbal grassroots renaissance using the proper convention will at least audibly point American citizens in the right direction.

Independence Day is unlike the adjacently occurring Memorial Day, which was intended as a somber day meant to valorize those who died in wars to protect our liberties. Many Americans unfortunately see Memorial Day as nothing more than a long weekend for vacations, barbecues, and other leisurely indulgences. Even outspoken "progressive" Democratic members of Congress endlessly lecturing Americans about our Constitution and fairness pathetically fail to compreh...]]> David Gortler, Pharm. D 06:39 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 92 71781 I had a very good laugh a while back. A few actually. So many, they are worth sharing.
T'was in May of this year when the storied New England Journal of Medicine published a study about a new and novel influenza vaccine, designed to conquer the seasonal flu. Lucky for us, this new bit of medical innovation was made from the same sort of whizbang mRNA technology that went into the Covid vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna.
Yippee. Clearly this new jab is designed for those who didn't get the joke last time when a big corporation came looking for us carrying a syringe full of what-the-heck-is-that?
But I digress. Even the premise of this vaccine study is like the setup to a stand-up routine, where you know that stuff is going to get weird fast. Soon you find some in the audience are busting a gut as others are looking befuddled and scratching their heads over which the joke flew.
For starters, the biggest warning sign of any study is its size. A big study almost always means a small effect. Yup. In this case, to show some sort of effect they had to cadge together a group of over 40,000 people over 50, randomly injecting them with the trivalent mRNA-1010 or a "different licensed standard-dose flu shot" and following them for about 6 months.
We're all in the dark about what "mRNA 1010" is but rest assured that this "investigational messenger RNA (mRNA)-based vaccine encodes hemagglutinin glycoproteins from World Health Organization-recommended influenza strains." That should make everyone start feeling all warm and fuzzy, thanking their lucky stars that the WHO is all over this.
Speaking of which, the backstory of the annual flu campaign, often led by the big infectious disease brains in Geneva, is typically marked by hefty amounts of flu-mongering and vaccine salesmanship. There's science and there's marketing but when we're talking the good old flu, the twain shall never meet.
For the most concise breakdown of the study, we can turn to the good folks at ICAN (the Informed Consent Action Network) who sent a letter to FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) and cut to the chase:

Moderna's new mRNA flu vaccine, mFlusiva was a joke, especially if you take "the science" behind it seriously.
Of the 40,000 people in this trial, those who got "Mal-flusiva" (do I get bonus points for coining the first nickname for this mRNA miracle?) reduced their absolute influenza risk by 0.8%. That's right, it might help 8 people out of 1,000. Meanwhile 6.4% of recipients (64 out of 1,000) suffered severe reactions (pain, fatigue, weakness, headaches), at rates which were five times the rate of the standard flu shot.
But did it prevent deaths from the flu?
No, fool. It caused them. In the "Phase 3 Immunogenicity trial" of the new vaccine, five patients died (versus one in the standard shot group). Hard to put lipstick on that one.
What about cardiac risks? Ah, you have a good memory, grasshopper. Events such as fatal cardiac arrest and congestive cardiac failure—similar to what was documented in the Covid mRNA vaccine technology– was also a feature here.
What about cancer? Also, good catch. As to that issue, ICAN blithely noted the "growing body of peer-reviewed scientific literature that identifies potential biologically plausible oncogenic or tumor-promoting mechanisms and purported preliminary population-level cancer signals." A little verbose, but ICAN's suggestion is sound. Let me translate its substance: "Wouldn't it be better to find out if these vaccines cause cancer before injecting them into everyone, instead of after?"
Oh Prudence, you're such a stickler. Doing so would kill this new vaccine in its tracks so the committee, predictably, shot Prudence in the foot. Clearly these "peripheral" issues identified by ICAN can be dealt with after it gets on the market and used by everyone. Funny indeed.
Here's the penultimate laugh: we tend to push flu vaccines on the ...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/malflusiva-and-the-wheeking-guinea-pigs/ I had a very good laugh a while back. A few actually. So many, they are worth sharing.
T'was in May of this year when the storied New England Journal of Medicine published a study about a new and novel influenza vaccine, designed to conquer the seasonal flu. Lucky for us, this new bit of medical innovation was made from the same sort of whizbang mRNA technology that went into the Covid vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna.
Yippee. Clearly this new jab is designed for those who didn't get the joke last time when a big corporation came looking for us carrying a syringe full of what-the-heck-is-that?
But I digress. Even the premise of this vaccine study is like the setup to a stand-up routine, where you know that stuff is going to get weird fast. Soon you find some in the audience are busting a gut as others are looking befuddled and scratching their heads over which the joke flew.
For starters, the biggest warning sign of any study is its size. A big study almost always means a small effect. Yup. In this case, to show some sort of effect they had to cadge together a group of over 40,000 people over 50, randomly injecting them with the trivalent mRNA-1010 or a "different licensed standard-dose flu shot" and following them for about 6 months.
We're all in the dark about what "mRNA 1010" is but rest assured that this "investigational messenger RNA (mRNA)-based vaccine encodes hemagglutinin glycoproteins from World Health Organization-recommended influenza strains." That should make everyone start feeling all warm and fuzzy, thanking their lucky stars that the WHO is all over this.
Speaking of which, the backstory of the annual flu campaign, often led by the big infectious disease brains in Geneva, is typically marked by hefty amounts of flu-mongering and vaccine salesmanship. There's science and there's marketing but when we're talking the good old flu, the twain shall never meet.
For the most concise breakdown of the study, we can turn to the good folks at ICAN (the Informed Consent Action Network) who sent a letter to FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) and cut to the chase:

Moderna's new mRNA flu vaccine, mFlusiva was a joke, especially if you take "the science" behind it seriously.
Of the 40,000 people in this trial, those who got "Mal-flusiva" (do I get bonus points for coining the first nickname for this mRNA miracle?) reduced their absolute influenza risk by 0.8%. That's right, it might help 8 people out of 1,000. Meanwhile 6.4% of recipients (64 out of 1,000) suffered severe reactions (pain, fatigue, weakness, headaches), at rates which were five times the rate of the standard flu shot.
But did it prevent deaths from the flu?
No, fool. It caused them. In the "Phase 3 Immunogenicity trial" of the new vaccine, five patients died (versus one in the standard shot group). Hard to put lipstick on that one.
What about cardiac risks? Ah, you have a good memory, grasshopper. Events such as fatal cardiac arrest and congestive cardiac failure—similar to what was documented in the Covid mRNA vaccine technology– was also a feature here.
What about cancer? Also, good catch. As to that issue, ICAN blithely noted the "growing body of peer-reviewed scientific literature that identifies potential biologically plausible oncogenic or tumor-promoting mechanisms and purported preliminary population-level cancer signals." A little verbose, but ICAN's suggestion is sound. Let me translate its substance: "Wouldn't it be better to find out if these vaccines cause cancer before injecting them into everyone, instead of after?"
Oh Prudence, you're such a stickler. Doing so would kill this new vaccine in its tracks so the committee, predictably, shot Prudence in the foot. Clearly these "peripheral" issues identified by ICAN can be dealt with after it gets on the market and used by everyone. Funny indeed.
Here's the penultimate laugh: we tend to push flu vaccines on the ...]]> Fri, 03 Jul 2026 07:05:00 -0400 Malflusiva and the Wheeking Guinea Pigs I had a very good laugh a while back. A few actually. So many, they are worth sharing.
T'was in May of this year when the storied New England Journal of Medicine published a study about a new and novel influenza v...]]> I had a very good laugh a while back. A few actually. So many, they are worth sharing.
T'was in May of this year when the storied New England Journal of Medicine published a study about a new and novel influenza vaccine, designed to conquer the seasonal flu. Lucky for us, this new bit of medical innovation was made from the same sort of whizbang mRNA technology that went into the Covid vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna.
Yippee. Clearly this new jab is designed for those who didn't get the joke last time when a big corporation came looking for us carrying a syringe full of what-the-heck-is-that?
But I digress. Even the premise of this vaccine study is like the setup to a stand-up routine, where you know that stuff is going to get weird fast. Soon you find some in the audience are busting a gut as others are looking befuddled and scratching their heads over which the joke flew.
For starters, the biggest warning sign of any study is its size. A big study almost always means a small effect. Yup. In this case, to show some sort of effect they had to cadge together a group of over 40,000 people over 50, randomly injecting them with the trivalent mRNA-1010 or a "different licensed standard-dose flu shot" and following them for about 6 months.
We're all in the dark about what "mRNA 1010" is but rest assured that this "investigational messenger RNA (mRNA)-based vaccine encodes hemagglutinin glycoproteins from World Health Organization-recommended influenza strains." That should make everyone start feeling all warm and fuzzy, thanking their lucky stars that the WHO is all over this.
Speaking of which, the backstory of the annual flu campaign, often led by the big infectious disease brains in Geneva, is typically marked by hefty amounts of flu-mongering and vaccine salesmanship. There's science and there's marketing but when we're talking the good old flu, the twain shall never meet.
For the most concise breakdown of the study, we can turn to the good folks at ICAN (the Informed Consent Action Network) who sent a letter to FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) and cut to the chase:

Moderna's new mRNA flu vaccine, mFlusiva was a joke, especially if you take "the science" behind it seriously.
Of the 40,000 people in this trial, those who got "Mal-flusiva" (do I get bonus points for coining the first nickname for this mRNA miracle?) reduced their absolute influenza risk by 0.8%. That's right, it might help 8 people out of 1,000. Meanwhile 6.4% of recipients (64 out of 1,000) suffered severe reactions (pain, fatigue, weakness, headaches), at rates which were five times the rate of the standard flu shot.
But did it prevent deaths from the flu?
No, fool. It caused them. In the "Phase 3 Immunogenicity trial" of the new vaccine, five patients died (versus one in the standard shot group). Hard to put lipstick on that one.
What about cardiac risks? Ah, you have a good memory, grasshopper. Events such as fatal cardiac arrest and congestive cardiac failure—similar to what was documented in the Covid mRNA vaccine technology– was also a feature here.
What about cancer? Also, good catch. As to that issue, ICAN blithely noted the "growing body of peer-reviewed scientific literature that identifies potential biologically plausible oncogenic or tumor-promoting mechanisms and purported preliminary population-level cancer signals." A little verbose, but ICAN's suggestion is sound. Let me translate its substance: "Wouldn't it be better to find out if these vaccines cause cancer before injecting them into everyone, instead of after?"
Oh Prudence, you're such a stickler. Doing so would kill this new vaccine in its tracks so the committee, predictably, shot Prudence in the foot. Clearly these "peripheral" issues identified by ICAN can be dealt with after it gets on the market and used by everyone. Funny indeed.
Here's the penultimate laugh: we tend to push flu vaccines on the ...]]> Alan Cassels 05:41 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 91 71735 When I was a first-year medical student, I happened across The Citadel, a novel published in 1937 by A.J. Cronin, himself a physician. The following is from the review on Amazon:
The Citadel follows the life of Andrew Manson, a young and idealistic Scottish doctor, as he navigates the challenges of practicing medicine across interwar Wales and England. Based on Cronin's own experiences as a physician, The Citadel boldly confronts traditional medical ethics and has been noted as one of the inspirations for the formation of the National Health Service. The Citadel has been adapted into several successful film, radio, and television productions around the world, including the Oscar-nominated 1938 film starring Ralph Donat, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Richardson, and Rex Harrison.
From the Wikipedia entry:
Cronin once stated in an interview, 'I have written in The Citadel all I feel about the medical profession, its injustices, its hide-bound unscientific stubbornness, its humbug …The horrors and inequities detailed in the story I have personally witnessed. This is not an attack against individuals, but against a system.'
Reading this novel had a profound impact on me, and that impact has lasted up until today, more than 50 years later.
Medical school always had its own set of peculiar struggles, as does everything. Certainly, Basic Training in the military is an eye-opener. What makes medical school unique is the profound contrast of the reality with the ideal. Like many students, perhaps most, I entered medicine with a deep sense of the magnitude of what I was doing. It had a "spiritual" element, almost as though I was entering a religious order and now would be taking on the mantle of responsibility that was more than just a job. I had read the Oath of Hippocrates and could sense the heavy responsibility that had been felt by the ancients and the duty that this road would take.
It would serve no purpose to recount those years in detail. Suffice it to say that, like those of Andrew Manson, the protagonist in The Citadel, my experiences were intense. They ranged from the utter heights to the deepest depths. The mettle of my character was refined and amalgamated in ways difficult to fully understand, even now. I graduated having many of the same feelings described by Cronin in the interview referenced above. I was conscious of my own mortality. I understood what it was like to make mistakes, but over all of it I had a firm desire to really make a difference in a system that was filled with obstacles.
The worst aspects of medical education have improved significantly since the time I spent there. The 40-bed wards are gone. Attending physicians take a more active role in the care of patients. Medical students and resident physicians no longer spend an exhausting 80 hours or more a week in patient care. There are multiple safety measures in place for patients and those caring for them. Up until Covid, I thought that we had made real progress in things.
But those are the externals. Has the internal moral compass really changed? Yes, it has in many individuals, but what about collectively in our profession? Consider those who told their patients, "I would sooner watch you die than give you hydroxychloroquine." Has their moral compass changed? What about the medical leaders who allowed patients to die without allowing them to try ivermectin, despite the pleas of their family? Did their moral compass change? Or those who treated the unvaccinated as lepers? What about the medical ethicists who advocated denying care to those unvacinated?
How about the late-night comic on this YouTube clip who advocated a similar policy? Or those in the audience of that comic who thought this was outrageously hysterical? True, he was not a healthcare professional, but the problems we see run very deep in our society as evidenced by the audience response.
Now it is known that the premise upon which those people based ...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/a-j-cronin-on-medical-ethics/ When I was a first-year medical student, I happened across The Citadel, a novel published in 1937 by A.J. Cronin, himself a physician. The following is from the review on Amazon:
The Citadel follows the life of Andrew Manson, a young and idealistic Scottish doctor, as he navigates the challenges of practicing medicine across interwar Wales and England. Based on Cronin's own experiences as a physician, The Citadel boldly confronts traditional medical ethics and has been noted as one of the inspirations for the formation of the National Health Service. The Citadel has been adapted into several successful film, radio, and television productions around the world, including the Oscar-nominated 1938 film starring Ralph Donat, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Richardson, and Rex Harrison.
From the Wikipedia entry:
Cronin once stated in an interview, 'I have written in The Citadel all I feel about the medical profession, its injustices, its hide-bound unscientific stubbornness, its humbug …The horrors and inequities detailed in the story I have personally witnessed. This is not an attack against individuals, but against a system.'
Reading this novel had a profound impact on me, and that impact has lasted up until today, more than 50 years later.
Medical school always had its own set of peculiar struggles, as does everything. Certainly, Basic Training in the military is an eye-opener. What makes medical school unique is the profound contrast of the reality with the ideal. Like many students, perhaps most, I entered medicine with a deep sense of the magnitude of what I was doing. It had a "spiritual" element, almost as though I was entering a religious order and now would be taking on the mantle of responsibility that was more than just a job. I had read the Oath of Hippocrates and could sense the heavy responsibility that had been felt by the ancients and the duty that this road would take.
It would serve no purpose to recount those years in detail. Suffice it to say that, like those of Andrew Manson, the protagonist in The Citadel, my experiences were intense. They ranged from the utter heights to the deepest depths. The mettle of my character was refined and amalgamated in ways difficult to fully understand, even now. I graduated having many of the same feelings described by Cronin in the interview referenced above. I was conscious of my own mortality. I understood what it was like to make mistakes, but over all of it I had a firm desire to really make a difference in a system that was filled with obstacles.
The worst aspects of medical education have improved significantly since the time I spent there. The 40-bed wards are gone. Attending physicians take a more active role in the care of patients. Medical students and resident physicians no longer spend an exhausting 80 hours or more a week in patient care. There are multiple safety measures in place for patients and those caring for them. Up until Covid, I thought that we had made real progress in things.
But those are the externals. Has the internal moral compass really changed? Yes, it has in many individuals, but what about collectively in our profession? Consider those who told their patients, "I would sooner watch you die than give you hydroxychloroquine." Has their moral compass changed? What about the medical leaders who allowed patients to die without allowing them to try ivermectin, despite the pleas of their family? Did their moral compass change? Or those who treated the unvaccinated as lepers? What about the medical ethicists who advocated denying care to those unvacinated?
How about the late-night comic on this YouTube clip who advocated a similar policy? Or those in the audience of that comic who thought this was outrageously hysterical? True, he was not a healthcare professional, but the problems we see run very deep in our society as evidenced by the audience response.
Now it is known that the premise upon which those people based ...]]> Thu, 02 Jul 2026 07:00:38 -0400 A.J. Cronin on Medical Ethics When I was a first-year medical student, I happened across The Citadel, a novel published in 1937 by A.J. Cronin, himself a physician. The following is from the review on Amazon:
The Citadel follows the life of ...]]> When I was a first-year medical student, I happened across The Citadel, a novel published in 1937 by A.J. Cronin, himself a physician. The following is from the review on Amazon:
The Citadel follows the life of Andrew Manson, a young and idealistic Scottish doctor, as he navigates the challenges of practicing medicine across interwar Wales and England. Based on Cronin's own experiences as a physician, The Citadel boldly confronts traditional medical ethics and has been noted as one of the inspirations for the formation of the National Health Service. The Citadel has been adapted into several successful film, radio, and television productions around the world, including the Oscar-nominated 1938 film starring Ralph Donat, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Richardson, and Rex Harrison.
From the Wikipedia entry:
Cronin once stated in an interview, 'I have written in The Citadel all I feel about the medical profession, its injustices, its hide-bound unscientific stubbornness, its humbug …The horrors and inequities detailed in the story I have personally witnessed. This is not an attack against individuals, but against a system.'
Reading this novel had a profound impact on me, and that impact has lasted up until today, more than 50 years later.
Medical school always had its own set of peculiar struggles, as does everything. Certainly, Basic Training in the military is an eye-opener. What makes medical school unique is the profound contrast of the reality with the ideal. Like many students, perhaps most, I entered medicine with a deep sense of the magnitude of what I was doing. It had a "spiritual" element, almost as though I was entering a religious order and now would be taking on the mantle of responsibility that was more than just a job. I had read the Oath of Hippocrates and could sense the heavy responsibility that had been felt by the ancients and the duty that this road would take.
It would serve no purpose to recount those years in detail. Suffice it to say that, like those of Andrew Manson, the protagonist in The Citadel, my experiences were intense. They ranged from the utter heights to the deepest depths. The mettle of my character was refined and amalgamated in ways difficult to fully understand, even now. I graduated having many of the same feelings described by Cronin in the interview referenced above. I was conscious of my own mortality. I understood what it was like to make mistakes, but over all of it I had a firm desire to really make a difference in a system that was filled with obstacles.
The worst aspects of medical education have improved significantly since the time I spent there. The 40-bed wards are gone. Attending physicians take a more active role in the care of patients. Medical students and resident physicians no longer spend an exhausting 80 hours or more a week in patient care. There are multiple safety measures in place for patients and those caring for them. Up until Covid, I thought that we had made real progress in things.
But those are the externals. Has the internal moral compass really changed? Yes, it has in many individuals, but what about collectively in our profession? Consider those who told their patients, "I would sooner watch you die than give you hydroxychloroquine." Has their moral compass changed? What about the medical leaders who allowed patients to die without allowing them to try ivermectin, despite the pleas of their family? Did their moral compass change? Or those who treated the unvaccinated as lepers? What about the medical ethicists who advocated denying care to those unvacinated?
How about the late-night comic on this YouTube clip who advocated a similar policy? Or those in the audience of that comic who thought this was outrageously hysterical? True, he was not a healthcare professional, but the problems we see run very deep in our society as evidenced by the audience response.
Now it is known that the premise upon which those people based ...]]> Russ Gonnering 09:58 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 90 71707 Five years is a significant milestone in any chronic illness. People can endure extraordinary physical pain, financial hardship, and emotional suffering if they that believe recovery is just around the corner. Hope often carries them through.
But after five years, hope itself begins to erode.
Savings have been exhausted. Careers have been interrupted or lost. Retirement plans have disappeared. Marriages have been strained by the relentless burden of chronic illness and caregiving. Medical appointments that once promised answers begin to feel repetitive and futile.
Gradually, the realization sets in that life may never return to what it once was. Temporary hardship becomes permanent reality. When physical suffering is compounded by financial ruin, social isolation, and the loss of future expectations, despair can become overwhelming.
For thousands of Americans permanently harmed during the Covid-19 vaccine rollout, that five-year milestone is arriving now.
Over the past several months, a disturbing number of Covid-19 vaccine-injured individuals have either taken their own lives or survived suicide attempts. As a board member of React19, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting those injured by the Covid-19 vaccines, I have come to know many of these stories personally. These are not statistics. They are husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters who believed that if they persevered long enough, help would eventually arrive.
For many, it never did.
What made their suffering especially devastating was not only the physical injury itself, but years spent feeling invisible. Many lost careers, homes, and financial security. Others depleted retirement savings or accumulated overwhelming medical debt. Almost all experienced some combination of disbelief, dismissal, and isolation. After years of being told their injuries were unlikely, unrelated, or simply impossible, many began to question whether anyone in authority would ever acknowledge what had happened.
Against that backdrop, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations' recent interim report, Failure to Warn: How Federal Health Agencies Downplayed and Hid Myocarditis and Other Adverse Events Associated with the Covid-19 Vaccines, represents an important turning point.
Drawing on internal government records and documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, the report concludes that federal health officials delayed acknowledging vaccine safety signals, withheld important information from the public, failed to respond fully to Congressional oversight, and repeatedly placed concerns about preserving public confidence above full transparency.
For the vaccine-injured community, that public acknowledgment matters. For the first time, many who were dismissed for years can point to official government findings confirming that safety concerns existed, were recognized internally, and were not fully communicated to the public.
Yet transparency alone is not enough.
A report that documents misconduct but produces no consequences may satisfy historians, but it offers little comfort to those whose lives were permanently altered by the conduct it describes. Facts matter. Investigations matter. But they matter most when they lead to accountability.
Fortunately, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), the chairman of the Subcommittee, has made clear that this report is not the end of his work—it is the beginning.
Throughout the pandemic and the years that followed, Senator Johnson has courageously pressed federal agencies for answers, demanded documents, convened hearings, and, perhaps most importantly, gave Covid-19 vaccine-injured Americans an opportunity to tell their stories publicly. His message has remained remarkably consistent: transparency is essential, but transparency must ultimately be followed by accountability.
That accountability cannot stop with institutions.
Too often, government failures are blamed on agencies, dep...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/accountability-for-the-vaccine-injured-a-senator-steps-up/ Five years is a significant milestone in any chronic illness. People can endure extraordinary physical pain, financial hardship, and emotional suffering if they that believe recovery is just around the corner. Hope often carries them through.
But after five years, hope itself begins to erode.
Savings have been exhausted. Careers have been interrupted or lost. Retirement plans have disappeared. Marriages have been strained by the relentless burden of chronic illness and caregiving. Medical appointments that once promised answers begin to feel repetitive and futile.
Gradually, the realization sets in that life may never return to what it once was. Temporary hardship becomes permanent reality. When physical suffering is compounded by financial ruin, social isolation, and the loss of future expectations, despair can become overwhelming.
For thousands of Americans permanently harmed during the Covid-19 vaccine rollout, that five-year milestone is arriving now.
Over the past several months, a disturbing number of Covid-19 vaccine-injured individuals have either taken their own lives or survived suicide attempts. As a board member of React19, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting those injured by the Covid-19 vaccines, I have come to know many of these stories personally. These are not statistics. They are husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters who believed that if they persevered long enough, help would eventually arrive.
For many, it never did.
What made their suffering especially devastating was not only the physical injury itself, but years spent feeling invisible. Many lost careers, homes, and financial security. Others depleted retirement savings or accumulated overwhelming medical debt. Almost all experienced some combination of disbelief, dismissal, and isolation. After years of being told their injuries were unlikely, unrelated, or simply impossible, many began to question whether anyone in authority would ever acknowledge what had happened.
Against that backdrop, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations' recent interim report, Failure to Warn: How Federal Health Agencies Downplayed and Hid Myocarditis and Other Adverse Events Associated with the Covid-19 Vaccines, represents an important turning point.
Drawing on internal government records and documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, the report concludes that federal health officials delayed acknowledging vaccine safety signals, withheld important information from the public, failed to respond fully to Congressional oversight, and repeatedly placed concerns about preserving public confidence above full transparency.
For the vaccine-injured community, that public acknowledgment matters. For the first time, many who were dismissed for years can point to official government findings confirming that safety concerns existed, were recognized internally, and were not fully communicated to the public.
Yet transparency alone is not enough.
A report that documents misconduct but produces no consequences may satisfy historians, but it offers little comfort to those whose lives were permanently altered by the conduct it describes. Facts matter. Investigations matter. But they matter most when they lead to accountability.
Fortunately, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), the chairman of the Subcommittee, has made clear that this report is not the end of his work—it is the beginning.
Throughout the pandemic and the years that followed, Senator Johnson has courageously pressed federal agencies for answers, demanded documents, convened hearings, and, perhaps most importantly, gave Covid-19 vaccine-injured Americans an opportunity to tell their stories publicly. His message has remained remarkably consistent: transparency is essential, but transparency must ultimately be followed by accountability.
That accountability cannot stop with institutions.
Too often, government failures are blamed on agencies, dep...]]> Tue, 30 Jun 2026 07:30:00 -0400 Accountability for the Vaccine-Injured: A Senator Steps Up Five years is a significant milestone in any chronic illness. People can endure extraordinary physical pain, financial hardship, and emotional suffering if they that believe recovery is just around the co...]]> Five years is a significant milestone in any chronic illness. People can endure extraordinary physical pain, financial hardship, and emotional suffering if they that believe recovery is just around the corner. Hope often carries them through.
But after five years, hope itself begins to erode.
Savings have been exhausted. Careers have been interrupted or lost. Retirement plans have disappeared. Marriages have been strained by the relentless burden of chronic illness and caregiving. Medical appointments that once promised answers begin to feel repetitive and futile.
Gradually, the realization sets in that life may never return to what it once was. Temporary hardship becomes permanent reality. When physical suffering is compounded by financial ruin, social isolation, and the loss of future expectations, despair can become overwhelming.
For thousands of Americans permanently harmed during the Covid-19 vaccine rollout, that five-year milestone is arriving now.
Over the past several months, a disturbing number of Covid-19 vaccine-injured individuals have either taken their own lives or survived suicide attempts. As a board member of React19, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting those injured by the Covid-19 vaccines, I have come to know many of these stories personally. These are not statistics. They are husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters who believed that if they persevered long enough, help would eventually arrive.
For many, it never did.
What made their suffering especially devastating was not only the physical injury itself, but years spent feeling invisible. Many lost careers, homes, and financial security. Others depleted retirement savings or accumulated overwhelming medical debt. Almost all experienced some combination of disbelief, dismissal, and isolation. After years of being told their injuries were unlikely, unrelated, or simply impossible, many began to question whether anyone in authority would ever acknowledge what had happened.
Against that backdrop, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations' recent interim report, Failure to Warn: How Federal Health Agencies Downplayed and Hid Myocarditis and Other Adverse Events Associated with the Covid-19 Vaccines, represents an important turning point.
Drawing on internal government records and documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, the report concludes that federal health officials delayed acknowledging vaccine safety signals, withheld important information from the public, failed to respond fully to Congressional oversight, and repeatedly placed concerns about preserving public confidence above full transparency.
For the vaccine-injured community, that public acknowledgment matters. For the first time, many who were dismissed for years can point to official government findings confirming that safety concerns existed, were recognized internally, and were not fully communicated to the public.
Yet transparency alone is not enough.
A report that documents misconduct but produces no consequences may satisfy historians, but it offers little comfort to those whose lives were permanently altered by the conduct it describes. Facts matter. Investigations matter. But they matter most when they lead to accountability.
Fortunately, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), the chairman of the Subcommittee, has made clear that this report is not the end of his work—it is the beginning.
Throughout the pandemic and the years that followed, Senator Johnson has courageously pressed federal agencies for answers, demanded documents, convened hearings, and, perhaps most importantly, gave Covid-19 vaccine-injured Americans an opportunity to tell their stories publicly. His message has remained remarkably consistent: transparency is essential, but transparency must ultimately be followed by accountability.
That accountability cannot stop with institutions.
Too often, government failures are blamed on agencies, dep...]]> Christopher Dreisbach 05:32 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 89 71702 The future of the United Nations (UN) is in play, largely because of its refusal to censure Iran—a member nation. In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio reprimanded the UN: "If you're telling me that the international community and hundreds of countries cannot rally behind that, then I don't know what the utility of the UN system is."
Severing all ties to the UN could require an act of Congress, but the US is moving in this direction. On February 4, 2025, Executive Order 14199 directed the US to withdraw from 31 UN organisations. A great deal hinges on how highly Rubio still prizes America's permanent seat on the UN Security Council which comes with a veto.
The UN is often viewed as an ineffectual bureaucracy that occasionally does some good. It is nothing so benevolent. Its origins may have been well-meaning, but the current UN has become what it claims to oppose. The US should leave the UN altogether and immediately, especially since its unjust policies are likely to get worse…and soon.
The UN Charter (1945) opens,
WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED…to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women…
The Preamble of its Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) states,
Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
Article 2 of the Declaration provides,
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex…
'All human beings are equal' is the basis of Western justice, whether the equality is under nature, God, or law. Instead of pursuing equality, however, the UN is now a woke and corrupt actor that creates inequality and division. The UN's financial malfeasance, the sexual abuse by field personnel, its demonization of the West…are well documented in the 104-page report From Watchdogs to Ideologues: How Politicized UN Rapporteurs Are Subverting Human Rights by the Geneva-based NGO UN Watch.
The UN's demonstrated commitment is to social justice or a wokeness rooted in equity, not equality. Equity seeks the redistribution of wealth and power to those who are considered oppressed from those who are considered oppressors. Equity is the opposite of equality under the law.
Consider its treatment of men who clearly are not viewed as equal to women, as the UN's mission claims. An obvious example is the prominent presence of the UN Women commission that claims to be "the global champion for gender equality." The commission identifies its goal as ensuring "every woman and girl lives up to her full potential." No mention of men or boys. No comparable UN Men agency, although males are included peripherally by recognizing a need to train them to oppose patriarchy. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) explains,
UNFPA works with men and boys around the world to advance gender equality and end violence. These programmes are encouraging men and boys to abandon harmful stereotypes, embrace respectful, healthy relationships, and support the human rights of all people, everywhere.
Men face many of the same global problems as women, however, including poverty, lack of education, violence, disease and harmful stereotypes. Men also face unique problems, including male-only conscription, paternity fraud, false rape accusations, and longer sentences for the same crimes. Nevertheless, compared to the UN's emphasis on women, men are virtually ignored. And deliberately so.
The UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) is considered by many to be the international bill of rights for women. Again, no comparable agency exists for men. The FAQ of one CEDAW branch speaks of substantive justice for women.
Substantive justice judges fairness by results rath...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-us-should-exit-the-un/ The future of the United Nations (UN) is in play, largely because of its refusal to censure Iran—a member nation. In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio reprimanded the UN: "If you're telling me that the international community and hundreds of countries cannot rally behind that, then I don't know what the utility of the UN system is."
Severing all ties to the UN could require an act of Congress, but the US is moving in this direction. On February 4, 2025, Executive Order 14199 directed the US to withdraw from 31 UN organisations. A great deal hinges on how highly Rubio still prizes America's permanent seat on the UN Security Council which comes with a veto.
The UN is often viewed as an ineffectual bureaucracy that occasionally does some good. It is nothing so benevolent. Its origins may have been well-meaning, but the current UN has become what it claims to oppose. The US should leave the UN altogether and immediately, especially since its unjust policies are likely to get worse…and soon.
The UN Charter (1945) opens,
WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED…to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women…
The Preamble of its Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) states,
Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
Article 2 of the Declaration provides,
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex…
'All human beings are equal' is the basis of Western justice, whether the equality is under nature, God, or law. Instead of pursuing equality, however, the UN is now a woke and corrupt actor that creates inequality and division. The UN's financial malfeasance, the sexual abuse by field personnel, its demonization of the West…are well documented in the 104-page report From Watchdogs to Ideologues: How Politicized UN Rapporteurs Are Subverting Human Rights by the Geneva-based NGO UN Watch.
The UN's demonstrated commitment is to social justice or a wokeness rooted in equity, not equality. Equity seeks the redistribution of wealth and power to those who are considered oppressed from those who are considered oppressors. Equity is the opposite of equality under the law.
Consider its treatment of men who clearly are not viewed as equal to women, as the UN's mission claims. An obvious example is the prominent presence of the UN Women commission that claims to be "the global champion for gender equality." The commission identifies its goal as ensuring "every woman and girl lives up to her full potential." No mention of men or boys. No comparable UN Men agency, although males are included peripherally by recognizing a need to train them to oppose patriarchy. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) explains,
UNFPA works with men and boys around the world to advance gender equality and end violence. These programmes are encouraging men and boys to abandon harmful stereotypes, embrace respectful, healthy relationships, and support the human rights of all people, everywhere.
Men face many of the same global problems as women, however, including poverty, lack of education, violence, disease and harmful stereotypes. Men also face unique problems, including male-only conscription, paternity fraud, false rape accusations, and longer sentences for the same crimes. Nevertheless, compared to the UN's emphasis on women, men are virtually ignored. And deliberately so.
The UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) is considered by many to be the international bill of rights for women. Again, no comparable agency exists for men. The FAQ of one CEDAW branch speaks of substantive justice for women.
Substantive justice judges fairness by results rath...]]> Tue, 30 Jun 2026 07:10:00 -0400 The US Should Exit the UN The UN's Original Mission The future of the United Nations (UN) is in play, largely because of its refusal to censure Iran—a member nation. In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio reprimanded the UN: "If you're telling me that the internat...]]> The future of the United Nations (UN) is in play, largely because of its refusal to censure Iran—a member nation. In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio reprimanded the UN: "If you're telling me that the international community and hundreds of countries cannot rally behind that, then I don't know what the utility of the UN system is."
Severing all ties to the UN could require an act of Congress, but the US is moving in this direction. On February 4, 2025, Executive Order 14199 directed the US to withdraw from 31 UN organisations. A great deal hinges on how highly Rubio still prizes America's permanent seat on the UN Security Council which comes with a veto.
The UN is often viewed as an ineffectual bureaucracy that occasionally does some good. It is nothing so benevolent. Its origins may have been well-meaning, but the current UN has become what it claims to oppose. The US should leave the UN altogether and immediately, especially since its unjust policies are likely to get worse…and soon.
The UN Charter (1945) opens,
WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED…to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women…
The Preamble of its Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) states,
Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
Article 2 of the Declaration provides,
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex…
'All human beings are equal' is the basis of Western justice, whether the equality is under nature, God, or law. Instead of pursuing equality, however, the UN is now a woke and corrupt actor that creates inequality and division. The UN's financial malfeasance, the sexual abuse by field personnel, its demonization of the West…are well documented in the 104-page report From Watchdogs to Ideologues: How Politicized UN Rapporteurs Are Subverting Human Rights by the Geneva-based NGO UN Watch.
The UN's demonstrated commitment is to social justice or a wokeness rooted in equity, not equality. Equity seeks the redistribution of wealth and power to those who are considered oppressed from those who are considered oppressors. Equity is the opposite of equality under the law.
Consider its treatment of men who clearly are not viewed as equal to women, as the UN's mission claims. An obvious example is the prominent presence of the UN Women commission that claims to be "the global champion for gender equality." The commission identifies its goal as ensuring "every woman and girl lives up to her full potential." No mention of men or boys. No comparable UN Men agency, although males are included peripherally by recognizing a need to train them to oppose patriarchy. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) explains,
UNFPA works with men and boys around the world to advance gender equality and end violence. These programmes are encouraging men and boys to abandon harmful stereotypes, embrace respectful, healthy relationships, and support the human rights of all people, everywhere.
Men face many of the same global problems as women, however, including poverty, lack of education, violence, disease and harmful stereotypes. Men also face unique problems, including male-only conscription, paternity fraud, false rape accusations, and longer sentences for the same crimes. Nevertheless, compared to the UN's emphasis on women, men are virtually ignored. And deliberately so.
The UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) is considered by many to be the international bill of rights for women. Again, no comparable agency exists for men. The FAQ of one CEDAW branch speaks of substantive justice for women.
Substantive justice judges fairness by results rath...]]> Wendy McElroy 08:03 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 88 71643 A cache of internal emails obtained from within the US National Institutes of Health has exposed years of strategic planning for future pandemics involving governments, foundations, international organisations, and pharmaceutical companies.
The documents, stretching back to at least 2016, show that Dr Francis Collins, Director of the NIH from 2009 to 2021, was at the centre of these efforts.
In that role, he oversaw the allocation of the agency's substantial research budget, which ran into tens of billions of dollars annually.
The emails reveal Collins working closely with the Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, World Bank, World Economic Forum, the African Academy of Sciences, and major pharmaceutical companies to strengthen research infrastructure, regulatory readiness, and international coordination well before Covid appeared.
For the public, the Covid response was presented as an unexpected crisis. Governments appeared to be making difficult decisions while navigating profound uncertainty.
But these emails tell a different story.
Many of the same organisations that later shaped the Covid response had already spent years building capacity, influence, and institutional power under Collins' leadership.
Billions of dollars flowed through the sprawling network. Careers were built around it, reputations depended on it, and political and financial interests became invested in its success.
By the time Covid arrived, much of the framework was already in place.
The planning gained momentum after the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak highlighted gaps in global preparedness. Vaccines took too long to develop, trials were hard to organise, and funding was fragmented.
The response, according to the emails, was to build permanent capacity in advance rather than react after the fact.
One major outcome was the launch of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) in 2017 at the World Economic Forum (WEF), which hosts an annual gathering of globalist elites in Davos, Switzerland.
CEPI focused on vaccines against emerging infectious diseases and became a key part of pandemic planning alongside the NIH and major foundations.
During Covid, CEPI became one of the major funders of vaccine development, investing hundreds of millions of dollars in multiple vaccine platforms that eventually led to vaccines from companies such as Moderna.
The internal documents show there was particular focus on expanding research capacity in Africa, a region long criticised for weak regulatory oversight and less stringent enforcement of clinical trial standards.
Collins chaired a 2017 WEF meeting on building a sustainable biomedical research enterprise in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The call brought together senior figures from the Wellcome Trust and other partners to advance plans for major new investment, including a proposed $10 billion African science, technology and innovation fund.

Collins appeared keen to ensure there was no confusion about who was in charge. After one teleconference with the WEF he wrote to his NIH colleagues:
"In the last call there was a bit of confusion about who was leading (NIH or WEF). I think this time it should be me. Agree?"

By 2018, senior pharmaceutical executives were discussing long-term investments in infrastructure designed to endure well beyond any single outbreak.
One project focused on SMART Vaccines, a decision-support tool designed to help governments and funders systematically prioritise vaccine candidates and guide investment decisions ahead of future outbreaks.
Workshops for the project brought together a who's who of global health institutions, government agencies, philanthropic foundations, vaccine manufacturers, and international organisations.

The language of the initiative emphasised "consensus-building" and "public-private partnerships," to keep major organisations and stakeholders in lockstep—many of whom would later play influential roles during Covid.
By 2019, the cor...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-nih-emails/ A cache of internal emails obtained from within the US National Institutes of Health has exposed years of strategic planning for future pandemics involving governments, foundations, international organisations, and pharmaceutical companies.
The documents, stretching back to at least 2016, show that Dr Francis Collins, Director of the NIH from 2009 to 2021, was at the centre of these efforts.
In that role, he oversaw the allocation of the agency's substantial research budget, which ran into tens of billions of dollars annually.
The emails reveal Collins working closely with the Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, World Bank, World Economic Forum, the African Academy of Sciences, and major pharmaceutical companies to strengthen research infrastructure, regulatory readiness, and international coordination well before Covid appeared.
For the public, the Covid response was presented as an unexpected crisis. Governments appeared to be making difficult decisions while navigating profound uncertainty.
But these emails tell a different story.
Many of the same organisations that later shaped the Covid response had already spent years building capacity, influence, and institutional power under Collins' leadership.
Billions of dollars flowed through the sprawling network. Careers were built around it, reputations depended on it, and political and financial interests became invested in its success.
By the time Covid arrived, much of the framework was already in place.
The planning gained momentum after the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak highlighted gaps in global preparedness. Vaccines took too long to develop, trials were hard to organise, and funding was fragmented.
The response, according to the emails, was to build permanent capacity in advance rather than react after the fact.
One major outcome was the launch of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) in 2017 at the World Economic Forum (WEF), which hosts an annual gathering of globalist elites in Davos, Switzerland.
CEPI focused on vaccines against emerging infectious diseases and became a key part of pandemic planning alongside the NIH and major foundations.
During Covid, CEPI became one of the major funders of vaccine development, investing hundreds of millions of dollars in multiple vaccine platforms that eventually led to vaccines from companies such as Moderna.
The internal documents show there was particular focus on expanding research capacity in Africa, a region long criticised for weak regulatory oversight and less stringent enforcement of clinical trial standards.
Collins chaired a 2017 WEF meeting on building a sustainable biomedical research enterprise in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The call brought together senior figures from the Wellcome Trust and other partners to advance plans for major new investment, including a proposed $10 billion African science, technology and innovation fund.

Collins appeared keen to ensure there was no confusion about who was in charge. After one teleconference with the WEF he wrote to his NIH colleagues:
"In the last call there was a bit of confusion about who was leading (NIH or WEF). I think this time it should be me. Agree?"

By 2018, senior pharmaceutical executives were discussing long-term investments in infrastructure designed to endure well beyond any single outbreak.
One project focused on SMART Vaccines, a decision-support tool designed to help governments and funders systematically prioritise vaccine candidates and guide investment decisions ahead of future outbreaks.
Workshops for the project brought together a who's who of global health institutions, government agencies, philanthropic foundations, vaccine manufacturers, and international organisations.

The language of the initiative emphasised "consensus-building" and "public-private partnerships," to keep major organisations and stakeholders in lockstep—many of whom would later play influential roles during Covid.
By 2019, the cor...]]> Mon, 29 Jun 2026 07:14:21 -0400 The NIH Emails Building the Machinery Covid Emerges A Potential Land Mine The Birth of "Germ Games" Fauci's Reply From "Germ Games" to Global Agenda A cache of internal emails obtained from within the US National Institutes of Health has exposed years of strategic planning for future pandemics involving governments, foundations, international organisations,...]]> A cache of internal emails obtained from within the US National Institutes of Health has exposed years of strategic planning for future pandemics involving governments, foundations, international organisations, and pharmaceutical companies.
The documents, stretching back to at least 2016, show that Dr Francis Collins, Director of the NIH from 2009 to 2021, was at the centre of these efforts.
In that role, he oversaw the allocation of the agency's substantial research budget, which ran into tens of billions of dollars annually.
The emails reveal Collins working closely with the Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, World Bank, World Economic Forum, the African Academy of Sciences, and major pharmaceutical companies to strengthen research infrastructure, regulatory readiness, and international coordination well before Covid appeared.
For the public, the Covid response was presented as an unexpected crisis. Governments appeared to be making difficult decisions while navigating profound uncertainty.
But these emails tell a different story.
Many of the same organisations that later shaped the Covid response had already spent years building capacity, influence, and institutional power under Collins' leadership.
Billions of dollars flowed through the sprawling network. Careers were built around it, reputations depended on it, and political and financial interests became invested in its success.
By the time Covid arrived, much of the framework was already in place.
The planning gained momentum after the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak highlighted gaps in global preparedness. Vaccines took too long to develop, trials were hard to organise, and funding was fragmented.
The response, according to the emails, was to build permanent capacity in advance rather than react after the fact.
One major outcome was the launch of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) in 2017 at the World Economic Forum (WEF), which hosts an annual gathering of globalist elites in Davos, Switzerland.
CEPI focused on vaccines against emerging infectious diseases and became a key part of pandemic planning alongside the NIH and major foundations.
During Covid, CEPI became one of the major funders of vaccine development, investing hundreds of millions of dollars in multiple vaccine platforms that eventually led to vaccines from companies such as Moderna.
The internal documents show there was particular focus on expanding research capacity in Africa, a region long criticised for weak regulatory oversight and less stringent enforcement of clinical trial standards.
Collins chaired a 2017 WEF meeting on building a sustainable biomedical research enterprise in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The call brought together senior figures from the Wellcome Trust and other partners to advance plans for major new investment, including a proposed $10 billion African science, technology and innovation fund.

Collins appeared keen to ensure there was no confusion about who was in charge. After one teleconference with the WEF he wrote to his NIH colleagues:
"In the last call there was a bit of confusion about who was leading (NIH or WEF). I think this time it should be me. Agree?"

By 2018, senior pharmaceutical executives were discussing long-term investments in infrastructure designed to endure well beyond any single outbreak.
One project focused on SMART Vaccines, a decision-support tool designed to help governments and funders systematically prioritise vaccine candidates and guide investment decisions ahead of future outbreaks.
Workshops for the project brought together a who's who of global health institutions, government agencies, philanthropic foundations, vaccine manufacturers, and international organisations.

The language of the initiative emphasised "consensus-building" and "public-private partnerships," to keep major organisations and stakeholders in lockstep—many of whom would later play influential roles during Covid.
By 2019, the cor...]]> Maryanne Demasi 12:19 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 87 71619 Americans assume that when they pick up a prescription from their pharmacy, an FDA quality control professional has verified that the contents are manufactured to rigorous agency standards. Unfortunately, that assumption is becoming harder to defend.
For decades, the FDA's drug oversight model has depended on in-person inspections of the manufacturing practice and independent verification of product quality. While no regulatory system is perfect, the underlying principle was straightforward: companies seeking to profit from selling medicine to the American people would be held to strict and independently assessed FDA-enforced standards. However, that principle has recently been eroded with a newly enacted FDA policy.
During Covid, the FDA sharply curtailed – then mostly eliminated – routine in-person inspections as part of its five-year-plus "work at home" policy. The repercussions of that poorly thought-through initiative are still being felt by patients and consumers today. Manufacturers now know that no FDA inspector is going to knock on their doors for an unannounced in-person inspection as they once did. Today, approximately 90% of FDA overseas inspections are announced in advance through State Department travel communication requests initiated by the FDA.
Beginning in January 2021, almost immediately following Biden's presidential inauguration, FDA career employees quickly and quietly proposed an agency-wide "remote" inspection system for almost everything it regulated.

Both the significance and folly of that misguided FDA policy implementation cannot be overstated.
What began as an emergency, temporary Covid-era "work at home" accommodation solidified into a permanent FDA policy. And the result has been a striking failure. Recalls soared and continued to do so even after the FDA ended its "work from home" policy in March 2025, illustrating that underlying remote/announced inspection methodology isn't as effective as live inspections.
Even with remote testing, right before Trump was elected president in September 2024, the FDA had an inspection backlog numbering in the thousands—and that was just in the US alone. Fast-forward to 2026, and that FDA inspection backlog persists, placing Americans in perpetual danger from unsafe pharmaceuticals and medical devices.
It's to the point that even the US Government Accountability Office publicly scolded the FDA in February 2026 about not effectively inspecting manufacturing plants.
Today, hardly a weekday goes by at the FDA where they don't announce at least one recall. This means that the limited number of "remote" drug inspections conducted by the FDA apparently aren't being conducted effectively.
Recalls may be caused by things such as: contamination issues, falsified records, manipulated testing data, and questionable manufacturing practices that should otherwise have prompted immediate, regulatorily punitive consequences above and beyond just the recall itself.
A vast majority of America's pharmaceutical supply chain has moved overseas, with Chinese and Indian manufacturers now producing anywhere from 80 to 90% of active pharmaceutical ingredients. The remaining percentage tends to be brand-name drugs, narcotic, or controlled substances which China isn't allowed to manufacture by their government, having definitively learned their lesson from the Opium War of the 1800s.
American consumers and patients rely heavily on overseas Indian and Chinese manufacturers, where quality control is widely known to have not only serious shortcomings, but in some cases, deliberate product manipulation, adulteration, and/or fraud. This creates obvious dangers for American patients, particularly when regulators fail to independently or proactively verify quality before products reach America's pharmacies, hospitals, and patients.
Over the past couple of years, a growing drumbeat of reports has detailed increasingly worrisome findings about ...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/fda-leaderships-blind-spots-leads-to-a-surge-in-medical-device-and-drug-recalls/ Americans assume that when they pick up a prescription from their pharmacy, an FDA quality control professional has verified that the contents are manufactured to rigorous agency standards. Unfortunately, that assumption is becoming harder to defend.
For decades, the FDA's drug oversight model has depended on in-person inspections of the manufacturing practice and independent verification of product quality. While no regulatory system is perfect, the underlying principle was straightforward: companies seeking to profit from selling medicine to the American people would be held to strict and independently assessed FDA-enforced standards. However, that principle has recently been eroded with a newly enacted FDA policy.
During Covid, the FDA sharply curtailed – then mostly eliminated – routine in-person inspections as part of its five-year-plus "work at home" policy. The repercussions of that poorly thought-through initiative are still being felt by patients and consumers today. Manufacturers now know that no FDA inspector is going to knock on their doors for an unannounced in-person inspection as they once did. Today, approximately 90% of FDA overseas inspections are announced in advance through State Department travel communication requests initiated by the FDA.
Beginning in January 2021, almost immediately following Biden's presidential inauguration, FDA career employees quickly and quietly proposed an agency-wide "remote" inspection system for almost everything it regulated.

Both the significance and folly of that misguided FDA policy implementation cannot be overstated.
What began as an emergency, temporary Covid-era "work at home" accommodation solidified into a permanent FDA policy. And the result has been a striking failure. Recalls soared and continued to do so even after the FDA ended its "work from home" policy in March 2025, illustrating that underlying remote/announced inspection methodology isn't as effective as live inspections.
Even with remote testing, right before Trump was elected president in September 2024, the FDA had an inspection backlog numbering in the thousands—and that was just in the US alone. Fast-forward to 2026, and that FDA inspection backlog persists, placing Americans in perpetual danger from unsafe pharmaceuticals and medical devices.
It's to the point that even the US Government Accountability Office publicly scolded the FDA in February 2026 about not effectively inspecting manufacturing plants.
Today, hardly a weekday goes by at the FDA where they don't announce at least one recall. This means that the limited number of "remote" drug inspections conducted by the FDA apparently aren't being conducted effectively.
Recalls may be caused by things such as: contamination issues, falsified records, manipulated testing data, and questionable manufacturing practices that should otherwise have prompted immediate, regulatorily punitive consequences above and beyond just the recall itself.
A vast majority of America's pharmaceutical supply chain has moved overseas, with Chinese and Indian manufacturers now producing anywhere from 80 to 90% of active pharmaceutical ingredients. The remaining percentage tends to be brand-name drugs, narcotic, or controlled substances which China isn't allowed to manufacture by their government, having definitively learned their lesson from the Opium War of the 1800s.
American consumers and patients rely heavily on overseas Indian and Chinese manufacturers, where quality control is widely known to have not only serious shortcomings, but in some cases, deliberate product manipulation, adulteration, and/or fraud. This creates obvious dangers for American patients, particularly when regulators fail to independently or proactively verify quality before products reach America's pharmacies, hospitals, and patients.
Over the past couple of years, a growing drumbeat of reports has detailed increasingly worrisome findings about ...]]> Sun, 28 Jun 2026 08:10:00 -0400 FDA Leadership's "Blind Spots" Lead to a Surge in Medical Device and Drug Recalls FDA "Remote" and "Announced" Inspections Began During Covid….But Never Stopped China and India Manufacturing Quality Delayed Messaging to Patients by FDA Blind Trust on Complex FDA Devices and Other Products FDA-Regulated Device Recalls The Current FDA Inspection Policy Isn't Adequately Protecting Americans Summary Americans assume that when they pick up a prescription from their pharmacy, an FDA quality control professional has verified that the contents are manufactured to rigorous agency standards. Unfortunatel...]]> Americans assume that when they pick up a prescription from their pharmacy, an FDA quality control professional has verified that the contents are manufactured to rigorous agency standards. Unfortunately, that assumption is becoming harder to defend.
For decades, the FDA's drug oversight model has depended on in-person inspections of the manufacturing practice and independent verification of product quality. While no regulatory system is perfect, the underlying principle was straightforward: companies seeking to profit from selling medicine to the American people would be held to strict and independently assessed FDA-enforced standards. However, that principle has recently been eroded with a newly enacted FDA policy.
During Covid, the FDA sharply curtailed – then mostly eliminated – routine in-person inspections as part of its five-year-plus "work at home" policy. The repercussions of that poorly thought-through initiative are still being felt by patients and consumers today. Manufacturers now know that no FDA inspector is going to knock on their doors for an unannounced in-person inspection as they once did. Today, approximately 90% of FDA overseas inspections are announced in advance through State Department travel communication requests initiated by the FDA.
Beginning in January 2021, almost immediately following Biden's presidential inauguration, FDA career employees quickly and quietly proposed an agency-wide "remote" inspection system for almost everything it regulated.

Both the significance and folly of that misguided FDA policy implementation cannot be overstated.
What began as an emergency, temporary Covid-era "work at home" accommodation solidified into a permanent FDA policy. And the result has been a striking failure. Recalls soared and continued to do so even after the FDA ended its "work from home" policy in March 2025, illustrating that underlying remote/announced inspection methodology isn't as effective as live inspections.
Even with remote testing, right before Trump was elected president in September 2024, the FDA had an inspection backlog numbering in the thousands—and that was just in the US alone. Fast-forward to 2026, and that FDA inspection backlog persists, placing Americans in perpetual danger from unsafe pharmaceuticals and medical devices.
It's to the point that even the US Government Accountability Office publicly scolded the FDA in February 2026 about not effectively inspecting manufacturing plants.
Today, hardly a weekday goes by at the FDA where they don't announce at least one recall. This means that the limited number of "remote" drug inspections conducted by the FDA apparently aren't being conducted effectively.
Recalls may be caused by things such as: contamination issues, falsified records, manipulated testing data, and questionable manufacturing practices that should otherwise have prompted immediate, regulatorily punitive consequences above and beyond just the recall itself.
A vast majority of America's pharmaceutical supply chain has moved overseas, with Chinese and Indian manufacturers now producing anywhere from 80 to 90% of active pharmaceutical ingredients. The remaining percentage tends to be brand-name drugs, narcotic, or controlled substances which China isn't allowed to manufacture by their government, having definitively learned their lesson from the Opium War of the 1800s.
American consumers and patients rely heavily on overseas Indian and Chinese manufacturers, where quality control is widely known to have not only serious shortcomings, but in some cases, deliberate product manipulation, adulteration, and/or fraud. This creates obvious dangers for American patients, particularly when regulators fail to independently or proactively verify quality before products reach America's pharmacies, hospitals, and patients.
Over the past couple of years, a growing drumbeat of reports has detailed increasingly worrisome findings about ...]]> David Gortler, Pharm. D 12:35 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 86 64816 This morning the New York Times published an essay by an immunologist who wasn't vaccinated as a child, found science, got her shots, and now wants to help other parents see the light. It's got that signature NYT sheen, is well written and emotionally compelling. And yet, if you've been paying attention to the media machine you can see that this piece is merely emotional blackmail. It's sophisticated and speaks in the language of maternal love. The fact that it's dressed in a lab coat is the tell.
The essay's argument is simple: the author's mother didn't vaccinate her out of love. The author now vaccinates her own children out of love. The only difference is information and emotional support. The moral of the story? Parents who don't vaccinate aren't bad people – they just haven't been guided to the correct conclusion yet.
Anyone not asleep through the last few years may recognize the game.
In 2021, New York's Governor Kathy Hochul stood before a congregation and told them the vaccinated were "the smart ones," that those who refused were "not listening to God," and that the faithful needed to go out as "apostles" and convert the unbelievers. It was cheap, crude, and disgraceful on so many layers.
And then there was Bill de Blasio. In the middle of the city's vaccine push, the mayor of New York went on camera dangling a plate of burger and fries, moaning "Mmm, vaccination" like he was filming a McDonalds commercial.
I've never been more ashamed to be a New Yorker than watching those two represent my hometown during that period.
The Times essay is precisely the same sermon for a different congregation. Three pitches for the exact same product. De Blasio dangled fries at people who couldn't afford to say no. Hochul played to the soul. The Times aims square at the laptop class. The approach may look different but the reveal is obvious: there is only one correct answer and the institutions hold it. These are all merely tactics to get the holdouts to convert.
Interestingly, the Times piece never mentions that the United States has the most aggressive childhood vaccine schedule in the developed world. It never mentions that in 1986, Congress passed a law shielding vaccine manufacturers from traditional liability – we were told that wasn't because the products were dangerous but rather because manufacturers were threatening to leave the market without protection from lawsuits. Perhaps most tellingly, it never asks the obvious common-sense question: why did Congress decide that the only way to keep vaccines flowing was to remove the legal accountability that applies to virtually every other product you put in your body? And what has that tradeoff cost in public trust?
It never mentions the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, which has paid out over $4 billion to families over the decades – a federal court that exists for the sole purpose of acknowledging that these injuries are real. You'd think that would make conversations about risk perfectly reasonable. Apparently not. Instead, raising the topic at all gets you labeled dangerous.
It never mentions the work of researchers like Toby Rogers or organizations like Children's Health Defense who've spent years digging into the actual data on adverse events, pushing back on the accepted risk-benefit math, and demanding that manufacturers and regulators show their work. For what it's worth, agreeing with everything they publish isn't the point. These people don't exist in any mainstream conversation about vaccines. They're not debated. They're not refuted. Just absent. If I didn't know better I'd call that a guardrail, not a mere oversight.
I would argue that absence is doing more to erode public trust than anything those researchers have ever published. When parents go looking for answers and find a whole world of data the New York Times pretends doesn't exist, they may conclude the Times is handling its readers, not informing them.
You don't hav...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-empathy-weapon/ This morning the New York Times published an essay by an immunologist who wasn't vaccinated as a child, found science, got her shots, and now wants to help other parents see the light. It's got that signature NYT sheen, is well written and emotionally compelling. And yet, if you've been paying attention to the media machine you can see that this piece is merely emotional blackmail. It's sophisticated and speaks in the language of maternal love. The fact that it's dressed in a lab coat is the tell.
The essay's argument is simple: the author's mother didn't vaccinate her out of love. The author now vaccinates her own children out of love. The only difference is information and emotional support. The moral of the story? Parents who don't vaccinate aren't bad people – they just haven't been guided to the correct conclusion yet.
Anyone not asleep through the last few years may recognize the game.
In 2021, New York's Governor Kathy Hochul stood before a congregation and told them the vaccinated were "the smart ones," that those who refused were "not listening to God," and that the faithful needed to go out as "apostles" and convert the unbelievers. It was cheap, crude, and disgraceful on so many layers.
And then there was Bill de Blasio. In the middle of the city's vaccine push, the mayor of New York went on camera dangling a plate of burger and fries, moaning "Mmm, vaccination" like he was filming a McDonalds commercial.
I've never been more ashamed to be a New Yorker than watching those two represent my hometown during that period.
The Times essay is precisely the same sermon for a different congregation. Three pitches for the exact same product. De Blasio dangled fries at people who couldn't afford to say no. Hochul played to the soul. The Times aims square at the laptop class. The approach may look different but the reveal is obvious: there is only one correct answer and the institutions hold it. These are all merely tactics to get the holdouts to convert.
Interestingly, the Times piece never mentions that the United States has the most aggressive childhood vaccine schedule in the developed world. It never mentions that in 1986, Congress passed a law shielding vaccine manufacturers from traditional liability – we were told that wasn't because the products were dangerous but rather because manufacturers were threatening to leave the market without protection from lawsuits. Perhaps most tellingly, it never asks the obvious common-sense question: why did Congress decide that the only way to keep vaccines flowing was to remove the legal accountability that applies to virtually every other product you put in your body? And what has that tradeoff cost in public trust?
It never mentions the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, which has paid out over $4 billion to families over the decades – a federal court that exists for the sole purpose of acknowledging that these injuries are real. You'd think that would make conversations about risk perfectly reasonable. Apparently not. Instead, raising the topic at all gets you labeled dangerous.
It never mentions the work of researchers like Toby Rogers or organizations like Children's Health Defense who've spent years digging into the actual data on adverse events, pushing back on the accepted risk-benefit math, and demanding that manufacturers and regulators show their work. For what it's worth, agreeing with everything they publish isn't the point. These people don't exist in any mainstream conversation about vaccines. They're not debated. They're not refuted. Just absent. If I didn't know better I'd call that a guardrail, not a mere oversight.
I would argue that absence is doing more to erode public trust than anything those researchers have ever published. When parents go looking for answers and find a whole world of data the New York Times pretends doesn't exist, they may conclude the Times is handling its readers, not informing them.
You don't hav...]]> Sat, 27 Jun 2026 07:00:31 -0400 The Empathy Weapon This morning the New York Times published an essay by an immunologist who wasn't vaccinated as a child, found science, got her shots, and now wants to help other parents see the light. It's got that signature NYT ...]]> This morning the New York Times published an essay by an immunologist who wasn't vaccinated as a child, found science, got her shots, and now wants to help other parents see the light. It's got that signature NYT sheen, is well written and emotionally compelling. And yet, if you've been paying attention to the media machine you can see that this piece is merely emotional blackmail. It's sophisticated and speaks in the language of maternal love. The fact that it's dressed in a lab coat is the tell.
The essay's argument is simple: the author's mother didn't vaccinate her out of love. The author now vaccinates her own children out of love. The only difference is information and emotional support. The moral of the story? Parents who don't vaccinate aren't bad people – they just haven't been guided to the correct conclusion yet.
Anyone not asleep through the last few years may recognize the game.
In 2021, New York's Governor Kathy Hochul stood before a congregation and told them the vaccinated were "the smart ones," that those who refused were "not listening to God," and that the faithful needed to go out as "apostles" and convert the unbelievers. It was cheap, crude, and disgraceful on so many layers.
And then there was Bill de Blasio. In the middle of the city's vaccine push, the mayor of New York went on camera dangling a plate of burger and fries, moaning "Mmm, vaccination" like he was filming a McDonalds commercial.
I've never been more ashamed to be a New Yorker than watching those two represent my hometown during that period.
The Times essay is precisely the same sermon for a different congregation. Three pitches for the exact same product. De Blasio dangled fries at people who couldn't afford to say no. Hochul played to the soul. The Times aims square at the laptop class. The approach may look different but the reveal is obvious: there is only one correct answer and the institutions hold it. These are all merely tactics to get the holdouts to convert.
Interestingly, the Times piece never mentions that the United States has the most aggressive childhood vaccine schedule in the developed world. It never mentions that in 1986, Congress passed a law shielding vaccine manufacturers from traditional liability – we were told that wasn't because the products were dangerous but rather because manufacturers were threatening to leave the market without protection from lawsuits. Perhaps most tellingly, it never asks the obvious common-sense question: why did Congress decide that the only way to keep vaccines flowing was to remove the legal accountability that applies to virtually every other product you put in your body? And what has that tradeoff cost in public trust?
It never mentions the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, which has paid out over $4 billion to families over the decades – a federal court that exists for the sole purpose of acknowledging that these injuries are real. You'd think that would make conversations about risk perfectly reasonable. Apparently not. Instead, raising the topic at all gets you labeled dangerous.
It never mentions the work of researchers like Toby Rogers or organizations like Children's Health Defense who've spent years digging into the actual data on adverse events, pushing back on the accepted risk-benefit math, and demanding that manufacturers and regulators show their work. For what it's worth, agreeing with everything they publish isn't the point. These people don't exist in any mainstream conversation about vaccines. They're not debated. They're not refuted. Just absent. If I didn't know better I'd call that a guardrail, not a mere oversight.
I would argue that absence is doing more to erode public trust than anything those researchers have ever published. When parents go looking for answers and find a whole world of data the New York Times pretends doesn't exist, they may conclude the Times is handling its readers, not informing them.
You don't hav...]]> Josh Stylman 08:06 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 85 62904 I was reading an academic paper recently that made me pause. It was discussing something called the "third space" or "third place" and its quiet disappearance from modern life.
I had never encountered the term before, but the more I read, the more I realized it was describing something many of us are feeling without having language for it. The paper was not simply sociological. It focused on the brain, on neurological health, and on how the loss of these spaces is affecting our sense of connection, safety, and belonging.
As someone who is deeply interested in community and real human connection, this immediately captured my attention. I wanted to understand what the paper was actually talking about, especially for those who may not be familiar with the concept.
The idea is simple. The first space is home. It is where our domestic identity lives. Family, rest, intimacy, and routine. The second space is work. It is where we contribute, produce, and create value. The third space exists in between. It is the neutral, shared place where people gather informally, without obligation or performance. Historically, these were cafés, churches, town squares, barber shops, libraries, local diners, pubs, and markets. Places where you could show up, be recognized, and belong without needing to achieve or prove anything.
What struck me most in reading this research was how essential these spaces are for neurological health. The brain depends on low-stakes, embodied social interaction. Eye contact. Familiar faces. Casual conversation. Shared laughter. These interactions activate the part of the nervous system associated with safety and connection. They help regulate stress. They pull us out of constant vigilance and threat detection.
Third spaces also offer something many of us are now missing: identity flexibility. They are places where we are not reduced to our roles. Not just a parent. Not just a worker. We are simply human among other humans. Without that middle space, identity collapses inward. Life becomes dominated by home and work alone. The brain narrows. Thinking becomes more rigid. Anxiety and loneliness increase, even when we are constantly connected online.
As I sat with this, I realized something uncomfortable. Many of us, myself included, no longer have a third space. And in many cases, we have also lost the second space entirely.
I work from home. I live where I work. I host where I live. My domestic identity, my work identity, and my social identity are all compressed into the ranch. There is very little physical or neurological separation. The nervous system never fully resets. Home is no longer purely restorative, and work never truly ends.
In some ways, public speaking, conferences, and book signings have become my second space. When I travel, when I step outside the land, I feel that shift. But that realization led me to a deeper question. If I am missing a third space, how many others are as well?
And more importantly, can we intentionally create one?
I have always believed that land, food, and shared meals are powerful connectors. We have a ranch. We have a restaurant. We have a place where people come to eat, to gather, to feel welcomed. But this research pushed me to think more carefully. Is it enough to simply have a space? Or do we need to create containers within the container?
A true third space rarely happens accidentally anymore. It has to be designed with intention. It needs rhythm and consistency. It needs repetition without rigidity. Something that draws people out of their homes and into relationship. Something that says, this happens here, regularly, and you belong.
That is when the idea of monthly gatherings began to take shape. Regular events that build familiarity and trust. Spaces where people can show up, be seen, be heard, and engage in real conversations in the physical world.
I am deeply honored that the first of these gatherings is launching in partnersh...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/reclaiming-the-third-space/ I was reading an academic paper recently that made me pause. It was discussing something called the "third space" or "third place" and its quiet disappearance from modern life.
I had never encountered the term before, but the more I read, the more I realized it was describing something many of us are feeling without having language for it. The paper was not simply sociological. It focused on the brain, on neurological health, and on how the loss of these spaces is affecting our sense of connection, safety, and belonging.
As someone who is deeply interested in community and real human connection, this immediately captured my attention. I wanted to understand what the paper was actually talking about, especially for those who may not be familiar with the concept.
The idea is simple. The first space is home. It is where our domestic identity lives. Family, rest, intimacy, and routine. The second space is work. It is where we contribute, produce, and create value. The third space exists in between. It is the neutral, shared place where people gather informally, without obligation or performance. Historically, these were cafés, churches, town squares, barber shops, libraries, local diners, pubs, and markets. Places where you could show up, be recognized, and belong without needing to achieve or prove anything.
What struck me most in reading this research was how essential these spaces are for neurological health. The brain depends on low-stakes, embodied social interaction. Eye contact. Familiar faces. Casual conversation. Shared laughter. These interactions activate the part of the nervous system associated with safety and connection. They help regulate stress. They pull us out of constant vigilance and threat detection.
Third spaces also offer something many of us are now missing: identity flexibility. They are places where we are not reduced to our roles. Not just a parent. Not just a worker. We are simply human among other humans. Without that middle space, identity collapses inward. Life becomes dominated by home and work alone. The brain narrows. Thinking becomes more rigid. Anxiety and loneliness increase, even when we are constantly connected online.
As I sat with this, I realized something uncomfortable. Many of us, myself included, no longer have a third space. And in many cases, we have also lost the second space entirely.
I work from home. I live where I work. I host where I live. My domestic identity, my work identity, and my social identity are all compressed into the ranch. There is very little physical or neurological separation. The nervous system never fully resets. Home is no longer purely restorative, and work never truly ends.
In some ways, public speaking, conferences, and book signings have become my second space. When I travel, when I step outside the land, I feel that shift. But that realization led me to a deeper question. If I am missing a third space, how many others are as well?
And more importantly, can we intentionally create one?
I have always believed that land, food, and shared meals are powerful connectors. We have a ranch. We have a restaurant. We have a place where people come to eat, to gather, to feel welcomed. But this research pushed me to think more carefully. Is it enough to simply have a space? Or do we need to create containers within the container?
A true third space rarely happens accidentally anymore. It has to be designed with intention. It needs rhythm and consistency. It needs repetition without rigidity. Something that draws people out of their homes and into relationship. Something that says, this happens here, regularly, and you belong.
That is when the idea of monthly gatherings began to take shape. Regular events that build familiarity and trust. Spaces where people can show up, be seen, be heard, and engage in real conversations in the physical world.
I am deeply honored that the first of these gatherings is launching in partnersh...]]> Fri, 26 Jun 2026 07:12:33 -0400 Reclaiming the Third Space I was reading an academic paper recently that made me pause. It was discussing something called the "third space" or "third place" and its quiet disappearance from modern life.
I had never encountered the term...]]> I was reading an academic paper recently that made me pause. It was discussing something called the "third space" or "third place" and its quiet disappearance from modern life.
I had never encountered the term before, but the more I read, the more I realized it was describing something many of us are feeling without having language for it. The paper was not simply sociological. It focused on the brain, on neurological health, and on how the loss of these spaces is affecting our sense of connection, safety, and belonging.
As someone who is deeply interested in community and real human connection, this immediately captured my attention. I wanted to understand what the paper was actually talking about, especially for those who may not be familiar with the concept.
The idea is simple. The first space is home. It is where our domestic identity lives. Family, rest, intimacy, and routine. The second space is work. It is where we contribute, produce, and create value. The third space exists in between. It is the neutral, shared place where people gather informally, without obligation or performance. Historically, these were cafés, churches, town squares, barber shops, libraries, local diners, pubs, and markets. Places where you could show up, be recognized, and belong without needing to achieve or prove anything.
What struck me most in reading this research was how essential these spaces are for neurological health. The brain depends on low-stakes, embodied social interaction. Eye contact. Familiar faces. Casual conversation. Shared laughter. These interactions activate the part of the nervous system associated with safety and connection. They help regulate stress. They pull us out of constant vigilance and threat detection.
Third spaces also offer something many of us are now missing: identity flexibility. They are places where we are not reduced to our roles. Not just a parent. Not just a worker. We are simply human among other humans. Without that middle space, identity collapses inward. Life becomes dominated by home and work alone. The brain narrows. Thinking becomes more rigid. Anxiety and loneliness increase, even when we are constantly connected online.
As I sat with this, I realized something uncomfortable. Many of us, myself included, no longer have a third space. And in many cases, we have also lost the second space entirely.
I work from home. I live where I work. I host where I live. My domestic identity, my work identity, and my social identity are all compressed into the ranch. There is very little physical or neurological separation. The nervous system never fully resets. Home is no longer purely restorative, and work never truly ends.
In some ways, public speaking, conferences, and book signings have become my second space. When I travel, when I step outside the land, I feel that shift. But that realization led me to a deeper question. If I am missing a third space, how many others are as well?
And more importantly, can we intentionally create one?
I have always believed that land, food, and shared meals are powerful connectors. We have a ranch. We have a restaurant. We have a place where people come to eat, to gather, to feel welcomed. But this research pushed me to think more carefully. Is it enough to simply have a space? Or do we need to create containers within the container?
A true third space rarely happens accidentally anymore. It has to be designed with intention. It needs rhythm and consistency. It needs repetition without rigidity. Something that draws people out of their homes and into relationship. Something that says, this happens here, regularly, and you belong.
That is when the idea of monthly gatherings began to take shape. Regular events that build familiarity and trust. Spaces where people can show up, be seen, be heard, and engage in real conversations in the physical world.
I am deeply honored that the first of these gatherings is launching in partnersh...]]> Mollie Engelhart 07:24 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 84 71532 Medicine is fundamentally oriented toward healing. Physicians have cured diseases, alleviated pain, extended life expectancy, and expanded collective self-understanding beyond what was conceivable a century ago. Few professions have contributed more to human well-being. However, medicine also confers significant power. Physicians influence individual behavior, shape public policy, direct scientific research, and, particularly during crises, wield considerable authority within society. This power can be beneficial, yet it also risks transforming confidence into unwarranted certainty and rendering authority resistant to challenge.
Power itself is not inherently dangerous; the greater risk lies in excessive certainty.
The most significant ethical failures in medicine rarely stem from malicious intent. More commonly, they arise from overconfidence, hasty decision-making, and the belief that challenging circumstances necessitate drastic measures. The transition from beneficence to harm is seldom abrupt; it typically unfolds gradually, propelled by good intentions and increasing confidence in one's own judgment. Numerous troubling episodes in medical history were initiated by individuals who sincerely believed they were acting appropriately.
The authority of medicine is grounded in general trust. Patients disclose their most profound concerns to physicians, trusting that truth, compassion, and respect will be prioritized. Society grants physicians special privileges, with the expectation that their expertise will be exercised judiciously and with humility. Perfection is not expected; rather, honesty, acknowledgment of uncertainty, and a commitment to continual reassessment are essential. These responsibilities are foundational to contemporary medical ethics and research regulations.¹⁻⁵ Yet, uncertainty is uncomfortable.
Uncertainty is broadly uncomfortable for patients, governments, the public, and physicians alike. During crises, this discomfort intensifies. Emergencies such as pandemics or wars generate a collective demand for definitive answers, even in the absence of sufficient information. Leaders may feel compelled to project confidence, while experts experience pressure to alleviate public anxiety. The inherent uncertainty of scientific inquiry can, under these conditions, become particularly difficult to tolerate.
In these situations, medicine faces a big risk: mistaking confidence for real knowledge.
Scientific progress is driven not by consensus, but by the continual questioning of established ideas, the challenging of prevailing norms, and the willingness to adapt in response to new evidence. Experienced physicians have witnessed the abandonment of once-celebrated treatments. Medical paradigms have shifted repeatedly; interventions once embraced have been discarded, and regulations once considered immutable have been revised. These changes do not signify failure; rather, they demonstrate the ongoing vitality of scientific inquiry.⁶⁻⁸
Science moves forward because of doubt, not because everyone agrees.
Throughout medical history, episodes abound in which certainty yielded to humility. Bloodletting persisted for centuries under the mistaken belief that its rationale was sound. Frontal lobotomy, initially regarded as a breakthrough and recognized with a Nobel Prize, was later discredited due to its harmful consequences. Hormone therapy for postmenopausal women was widely adopted until large-scale studies raised concerns about its safety and efficacy. Certain antiarrhythmic drugs, intended to prevent sudden cardiac death, were subsequently found to increase risk in some populations. Numerous critical care practices once deemed reasonable have since been revised or abandoned.
These stories do not mean science is incompetent. Instead, they remind us to stay humble. They show that our knowledge can change, and we should remember that we might not see the whole picture. Being willing to q...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/from-healing-to-harm/ Medicine is fundamentally oriented toward healing. Physicians have cured diseases, alleviated pain, extended life expectancy, and expanded collective self-understanding beyond what was conceivable a century ago. Few professions have contributed more to human well-being. However, medicine also confers significant power. Physicians influence individual behavior, shape public policy, direct scientific research, and, particularly during crises, wield considerable authority within society. This power can be beneficial, yet it also risks transforming confidence into unwarranted certainty and rendering authority resistant to challenge.
Power itself is not inherently dangerous; the greater risk lies in excessive certainty.
The most significant ethical failures in medicine rarely stem from malicious intent. More commonly, they arise from overconfidence, hasty decision-making, and the belief that challenging circumstances necessitate drastic measures. The transition from beneficence to harm is seldom abrupt; it typically unfolds gradually, propelled by good intentions and increasing confidence in one's own judgment. Numerous troubling episodes in medical history were initiated by individuals who sincerely believed they were acting appropriately.
The authority of medicine is grounded in general trust. Patients disclose their most profound concerns to physicians, trusting that truth, compassion, and respect will be prioritized. Society grants physicians special privileges, with the expectation that their expertise will be exercised judiciously and with humility. Perfection is not expected; rather, honesty, acknowledgment of uncertainty, and a commitment to continual reassessment are essential. These responsibilities are foundational to contemporary medical ethics and research regulations.¹⁻⁵ Yet, uncertainty is uncomfortable.
Uncertainty is broadly uncomfortable for patients, governments, the public, and physicians alike. During crises, this discomfort intensifies. Emergencies such as pandemics or wars generate a collective demand for definitive answers, even in the absence of sufficient information. Leaders may feel compelled to project confidence, while experts experience pressure to alleviate public anxiety. The inherent uncertainty of scientific inquiry can, under these conditions, become particularly difficult to tolerate.
In these situations, medicine faces a big risk: mistaking confidence for real knowledge.
Scientific progress is driven not by consensus, but by the continual questioning of established ideas, the challenging of prevailing norms, and the willingness to adapt in response to new evidence. Experienced physicians have witnessed the abandonment of once-celebrated treatments. Medical paradigms have shifted repeatedly; interventions once embraced have been discarded, and regulations once considered immutable have been revised. These changes do not signify failure; rather, they demonstrate the ongoing vitality of scientific inquiry.⁶⁻⁸
Science moves forward because of doubt, not because everyone agrees.
Throughout medical history, episodes abound in which certainty yielded to humility. Bloodletting persisted for centuries under the mistaken belief that its rationale was sound. Frontal lobotomy, initially regarded as a breakthrough and recognized with a Nobel Prize, was later discredited due to its harmful consequences. Hormone therapy for postmenopausal women was widely adopted until large-scale studies raised concerns about its safety and efficacy. Certain antiarrhythmic drugs, intended to prevent sudden cardiac death, were subsequently found to increase risk in some populations. Numerous critical care practices once deemed reasonable have since been revised or abandoned.
These stories do not mean science is incompetent. Instead, they remind us to stay humble. They show that our knowledge can change, and we should remember that we might not see the whole picture. Being willing to q...]]> Thu, 25 Jun 2026 07:10:00 -0400 From Healing to Harm References Medicine is fundamentally oriented toward healing. Physicians have cured diseases, alleviated pain, extended life expectancy, and expanded collective self-understanding beyond what was conceivable a century ago. F...]]> Medicine is fundamentally oriented toward healing. Physicians have cured diseases, alleviated pain, extended life expectancy, and expanded collective self-understanding beyond what was conceivable a century ago. Few professions have contributed more to human well-being. However, medicine also confers significant power. Physicians influence individual behavior, shape public policy, direct scientific research, and, particularly during crises, wield considerable authority within society. This power can be beneficial, yet it also risks transforming confidence into unwarranted certainty and rendering authority resistant to challenge.
Power itself is not inherently dangerous; the greater risk lies in excessive certainty.
The most significant ethical failures in medicine rarely stem from malicious intent. More commonly, they arise from overconfidence, hasty decision-making, and the belief that challenging circumstances necessitate drastic measures. The transition from beneficence to harm is seldom abrupt; it typically unfolds gradually, propelled by good intentions and increasing confidence in one's own judgment. Numerous troubling episodes in medical history were initiated by individuals who sincerely believed they were acting appropriately.
The authority of medicine is grounded in general trust. Patients disclose their most profound concerns to physicians, trusting that truth, compassion, and respect will be prioritized. Society grants physicians special privileges, with the expectation that their expertise will be exercised judiciously and with humility. Perfection is not expected; rather, honesty, acknowledgment of uncertainty, and a commitment to continual reassessment are essential. These responsibilities are foundational to contemporary medical ethics and research regulations.¹⁻⁵ Yet, uncertainty is uncomfortable.
Uncertainty is broadly uncomfortable for patients, governments, the public, and physicians alike. During crises, this discomfort intensifies. Emergencies such as pandemics or wars generate a collective demand for definitive answers, even in the absence of sufficient information. Leaders may feel compelled to project confidence, while experts experience pressure to alleviate public anxiety. The inherent uncertainty of scientific inquiry can, under these conditions, become particularly difficult to tolerate.
In these situations, medicine faces a big risk: mistaking confidence for real knowledge.
Scientific progress is driven not by consensus, but by the continual questioning of established ideas, the challenging of prevailing norms, and the willingness to adapt in response to new evidence. Experienced physicians have witnessed the abandonment of once-celebrated treatments. Medical paradigms have shifted repeatedly; interventions once embraced have been discarded, and regulations once considered immutable have been revised. These changes do not signify failure; rather, they demonstrate the ongoing vitality of scientific inquiry.⁶⁻⁸
Science moves forward because of doubt, not because everyone agrees.
Throughout medical history, episodes abound in which certainty yielded to humility. Bloodletting persisted for centuries under the mistaken belief that its rationale was sound. Frontal lobotomy, initially regarded as a breakthrough and recognized with a Nobel Prize, was later discredited due to its harmful consequences. Hormone therapy for postmenopausal women was widely adopted until large-scale studies raised concerns about its safety and efficacy. Certain antiarrhythmic drugs, intended to prevent sudden cardiac death, were subsequently found to increase risk in some populations. Numerous critical care practices once deemed reasonable have since been revised or abandoned.
These stories do not mean science is incompetent. Instead, they remind us to stay humble. They show that our knowledge can change, and we should remember that we might not see the whole picture. Being willing to q...]]> Joseph Varon 13:49 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 83 71487 The closest thing we have in this country to a pandemic plan is called the Pandemic Action Crisis Plan or PanCap. It remains the prevailing unclassified document. It posits stay-at-home orders, school closures, business shutdowns, office closures, travel restrictions, testing, track-and-trace, and the creation and distribution of countermeasures called vaccines.
So far as anyone knows, it is still the prevailing document. It's one of many. Nothing has changed about any of them in light of what we learned from Covid. The CDC currently hosts all these documents:
National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza
National Strategy Implementation Plan
MMWR: Updated Preparedness and Response Framework for Influenza Pandemics
2017 HHS Pandemic Influenza Plan Update
2009 HHS Pandemic Influenza Plan Update
2006 HHS Pandemic Influenza Plan Update
2006 HHS Pandemic Influenza Plan Update
Allocating & Targeting Pandemic Influenza Vaccine Guidance
This approach has no precedent in the long history of public health. The old way was to keep calm, understand the illness, treat those affected, and use rational approaches to mitigate the impacts. The new way invented in 2005 is about command and control, pretending to manage the microbial kingdom like an engineering project.
This is still the operational manual. If a pathogen should leak and the machine clicks into gear, this is what will happen. It will be profoundly disturbing to civil society. Like last time, the results will not be good. The medicine will be worse than the disease. We can say this based on the experience from 2020 to 2023. And yet the plan survives.
The existing plan is PanCap-Adapted. It is still not posted on any government website. It was leaked to the New York Times and, again, so far as anyone knows, this remains the architecture of control. Why the latest is not posted is unclear. Don't the American people deserve to know what their government plans for them?
It is supplemented by dozens of other documents that pertain to nearly every federal government agency and are expected to be followed by downstream agencies in states, counties, cities, and towns. This is what is called an all-of-government response.
This is not some conspiracy theory. We need only look at one related document, the Biological Incident Annex to the Response and Recovery Federal, Interagency Operational Plan as produced by FEMA. It is out of classification and available for anyone to observe. It comes into operation with any pathogen that is new, perhaps manufactured in a lab as many of them are.
Halfway through this document you find a presumption of business closures, transportation restrictions and disruptions, widespread commodities hoarding by the public, stay-at-home orders, workforce shift to virtual environment, school and childcare closures, restaurant closures, hotel closures, reduced workforce, and plant closures.
This plan is still out there, waiting to be implemented under the right circumstances. The US Constitution does not pertain. American expectations of liberty do not pertain. Law does not pertain. Even now, the idea that an emergency requires the end of all normal expectations for freedom is baked into all pandemic protocols.
At this point, you might already be asking the very obvious question. How could this be true in light of the last experience? The answer points to the core problem. We've never had a reckoning for the Covid period. There has been no commission, no push for changes in underlying protocols, no fundamental shifts at the top other than new political appointees, and no real national statement that what happened was wrong and destructive.
In short, nothing has changed other than public opinion. That too is extremely malleable. People these days routinely say that they won't comply. What they mean is that under similar circumstances, they won't comply. But the circumstances will not be similar. A strain of Ebola, for example, ...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-pandemic-plan-needs-to-be-torn-up/ The closest thing we have in this country to a pandemic plan is called the Pandemic Action Crisis Plan or PanCap. It remains the prevailing unclassified document. It posits stay-at-home orders, school closures, business shutdowns, office closures, travel restrictions, testing, track-and-trace, and the creation and distribution of countermeasures called vaccines.
So far as anyone knows, it is still the prevailing document. It's one of many. Nothing has changed about any of them in light of what we learned from Covid. The CDC currently hosts all these documents:
National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza
National Strategy Implementation Plan
MMWR: Updated Preparedness and Response Framework for Influenza Pandemics
2017 HHS Pandemic Influenza Plan Update
2009 HHS Pandemic Influenza Plan Update
2006 HHS Pandemic Influenza Plan Update
2006 HHS Pandemic Influenza Plan Update
Allocating & Targeting Pandemic Influenza Vaccine Guidance
This approach has no precedent in the long history of public health. The old way was to keep calm, understand the illness, treat those affected, and use rational approaches to mitigate the impacts. The new way invented in 2005 is about command and control, pretending to manage the microbial kingdom like an engineering project.
This is still the operational manual. If a pathogen should leak and the machine clicks into gear, this is what will happen. It will be profoundly disturbing to civil society. Like last time, the results will not be good. The medicine will be worse than the disease. We can say this based on the experience from 2020 to 2023. And yet the plan survives.
The existing plan is PanCap-Adapted. It is still not posted on any government website. It was leaked to the New York Times and, again, so far as anyone knows, this remains the architecture of control. Why the latest is not posted is unclear. Don't the American people deserve to know what their government plans for them?
It is supplemented by dozens of other documents that pertain to nearly every federal government agency and are expected to be followed by downstream agencies in states, counties, cities, and towns. This is what is called an all-of-government response.
This is not some conspiracy theory. We need only look at one related document, the Biological Incident Annex to the Response and Recovery Federal, Interagency Operational Plan as produced by FEMA. It is out of classification and available for anyone to observe. It comes into operation with any pathogen that is new, perhaps manufactured in a lab as many of them are.
Halfway through this document you find a presumption of business closures, transportation restrictions and disruptions, widespread commodities hoarding by the public, stay-at-home orders, workforce shift to virtual environment, school and childcare closures, restaurant closures, hotel closures, reduced workforce, and plant closures.
This plan is still out there, waiting to be implemented under the right circumstances. The US Constitution does not pertain. American expectations of liberty do not pertain. Law does not pertain. Even now, the idea that an emergency requires the end of all normal expectations for freedom is baked into all pandemic protocols.
At this point, you might already be asking the very obvious question. How could this be true in light of the last experience? The answer points to the core problem. We've never had a reckoning for the Covid period. There has been no commission, no push for changes in underlying protocols, no fundamental shifts at the top other than new political appointees, and no real national statement that what happened was wrong and destructive.
In short, nothing has changed other than public opinion. That too is extremely malleable. People these days routinely say that they won't comply. What they mean is that under similar circumstances, they won't comply. But the circumstances will not be similar. A strain of Ebola, for example, ...]]> Wed, 24 Jun 2026 07:06:00 -0400 The Pandemic Plan Needs to be Torn Up The closest thing we have in this country to a pandemic plan is called the Pandemic Action Crisis Plan or PanCap. It remains the prevailing unclassified document. It posits stay-at-home orders, school closure...]]> The closest thing we have in this country to a pandemic plan is called the Pandemic Action Crisis Plan or PanCap. It remains the prevailing unclassified document. It posits stay-at-home orders, school closures, business shutdowns, office closures, travel restrictions, testing, track-and-trace, and the creation and distribution of countermeasures called vaccines.
So far as anyone knows, it is still the prevailing document. It's one of many. Nothing has changed about any of them in light of what we learned from Covid. The CDC currently hosts all these documents:
National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza
National Strategy Implementation Plan
MMWR: Updated Preparedness and Response Framework for Influenza Pandemics
2017 HHS Pandemic Influenza Plan Update
2009 HHS Pandemic Influenza Plan Update
2006 HHS Pandemic Influenza Plan Update
2006 HHS Pandemic Influenza Plan Update
Allocating & Targeting Pandemic Influenza Vaccine Guidance
This approach has no precedent in the long history of public health. The old way was to keep calm, understand the illness, treat those affected, and use rational approaches to mitigate the impacts. The new way invented in 2005 is about command and control, pretending to manage the microbial kingdom like an engineering project.
This is still the operational manual. If a pathogen should leak and the machine clicks into gear, this is what will happen. It will be profoundly disturbing to civil society. Like last time, the results will not be good. The medicine will be worse than the disease. We can say this based on the experience from 2020 to 2023. And yet the plan survives.
The existing plan is PanCap-Adapted. It is still not posted on any government website. It was leaked to the New York Times and, again, so far as anyone knows, this remains the architecture of control. Why the latest is not posted is unclear. Don't the American people deserve to know what their government plans for them?
It is supplemented by dozens of other documents that pertain to nearly every federal government agency and are expected to be followed by downstream agencies in states, counties, cities, and towns. This is what is called an all-of-government response.
This is not some conspiracy theory. We need only look at one related document, the Biological Incident Annex to the Response and Recovery Federal, Interagency Operational Plan as produced by FEMA. It is out of classification and available for anyone to observe. It comes into operation with any pathogen that is new, perhaps manufactured in a lab as many of them are.
Halfway through this document you find a presumption of business closures, transportation restrictions and disruptions, widespread commodities hoarding by the public, stay-at-home orders, workforce shift to virtual environment, school and childcare closures, restaurant closures, hotel closures, reduced workforce, and plant closures.
This plan is still out there, waiting to be implemented under the right circumstances. The US Constitution does not pertain. American expectations of liberty do not pertain. Law does not pertain. Even now, the idea that an emergency requires the end of all normal expectations for freedom is baked into all pandemic protocols.
At this point, you might already be asking the very obvious question. How could this be true in light of the last experience? The answer points to the core problem. We've never had a reckoning for the Covid period. There has been no commission, no push for changes in underlying protocols, no fundamental shifts at the top other than new political appointees, and no real national statement that what happened was wrong and destructive.
In short, nothing has changed other than public opinion. That too is extremely malleable. People these days routinely say that they won't comply. What they mean is that under similar circumstances, they won't comply. But the circumstances will not be similar. A strain of Ebola, for example, ...]]> Jeffrey A. Tucker 09:51 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 82 71326 If there is one thing we have learned since 2020 it is the power of confirmation bias. The public health establishment has presented a mass of data and analysis to show that it was right all along about the Covid-19 pandemic and saved millions of lives. This finding has been accepted at face value and incorporated into policy, but rests on shaky foundations.
We need to look at the big picture. Apologists for vaccination generally use point-to-point comparisons – they pick an arbitrary date near the peak of the epidemic curve and compare it to a later date to show that an intervention is correlated with a reduction in infections or mortality. This is open to case-counting window bias and immortal time bias – another selection of dates could yield an entirely different result.
To counteract this, we need to look at the epidemic curve as a whole and see whether the intervention changed its trajectory.
What we see in the Euromomo statistics of European all-cause mortality below, is a series of declining peaks and broadening curves after the anomalous peak in April 2020. All-cause mortality is crucial, as it avoids distortion due to misclassification of deaths between Covid-19, vaccine adverse effects, and other causes of death.

There was a gradual return to a more normal pattern, usually attributed to a combination of increasing natural immunity and the effects of vaccination. This falls far short of the exaggerated claims made for vaccination when the first clinical trial results were released. We were told by political and public health leaders that vaccination gave 95% protection, a figure that was based on the rate of Covid-19 symptoms paired with positive PCR tests in the vaccine group, compared with the placebo group. It was not based on improved mortality.
Vaccination may have contributed to the improving trend, but there is no basis for finding that it was solely responsible for returning to a more normal seasonal pattern of mortality. And hidden in the count of all-cause excess mortality may be deaths caused by Covid-19 vaccination. There is no way of excluding this possibility.
For example, vaccine-related deaths could be driven through cardiac adverse events. The Cohort study of cardiovascular safety of different Covid-19 vaccination doses among 46 million adults in England by Ip et al showed that incidence rates of cardiovascular events were substantially higher (nearly double for arterial events) after the first dose of the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines, compared to no vaccination (Table 2).
The authors then concluded the opposite by adjusting the figures. But they selectively only employ adjustment factors that place downward pressure on vaccine hazard ratios, and ignore factors that might exert upward pressure, such as the well-known healthy vaccinee bias.
Chemaitelly et al corrected for this by assessing the association between Covid-19 vaccination and non-Covid-19 mortality as a control. They found that 'A pronounced healthy vaccinee effect was observed during the first 6 months following vaccination, despite meticulous cohort matching,' possibly due to seriously ill individuals not being suitable candidates for vaccination and so being underrepresented in the vaccinated group.
Some studies adjust for case-counting window bias or immortal time bias, but healthy vaccinee bias is too problematic to correct, so the full range of confounding effects is not brought to bear on the results, leaving the field to partially corrected studies which may be more misleading than uncorrected results.
Finding our way through this maze is difficult and the mass of observational studies are not a reliable basis for public health policy.
Have pandemics ever been defeated by vaccination? The greatest case study of them all is said to be polio vaccination. Everyone knows that the world was saved from polio by vaccination – and yet in fact it made no difference to the trajectory of poli...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/interpreting-epidemic-curves-the-big-picture/ If there is one thing we have learned since 2020 it is the power of confirmation bias. The public health establishment has presented a mass of data and analysis to show that it was right all along about the Covid-19 pandemic and saved millions of lives. This finding has been accepted at face value and incorporated into policy, but rests on shaky foundations.
We need to look at the big picture. Apologists for vaccination generally use point-to-point comparisons – they pick an arbitrary date near the peak of the epidemic curve and compare it to a later date to show that an intervention is correlated with a reduction in infections or mortality. This is open to case-counting window bias and immortal time bias – another selection of dates could yield an entirely different result.
To counteract this, we need to look at the epidemic curve as a whole and see whether the intervention changed its trajectory.
What we see in the Euromomo statistics of European all-cause mortality below, is a series of declining peaks and broadening curves after the anomalous peak in April 2020. All-cause mortality is crucial, as it avoids distortion due to misclassification of deaths between Covid-19, vaccine adverse effects, and other causes of death.

There was a gradual return to a more normal pattern, usually attributed to a combination of increasing natural immunity and the effects of vaccination. This falls far short of the exaggerated claims made for vaccination when the first clinical trial results were released. We were told by political and public health leaders that vaccination gave 95% protection, a figure that was based on the rate of Covid-19 symptoms paired with positive PCR tests in the vaccine group, compared with the placebo group. It was not based on improved mortality.
Vaccination may have contributed to the improving trend, but there is no basis for finding that it was solely responsible for returning to a more normal seasonal pattern of mortality. And hidden in the count of all-cause excess mortality may be deaths caused by Covid-19 vaccination. There is no way of excluding this possibility.
For example, vaccine-related deaths could be driven through cardiac adverse events. The Cohort study of cardiovascular safety of different Covid-19 vaccination doses among 46 million adults in England by Ip et al showed that incidence rates of cardiovascular events were substantially higher (nearly double for arterial events) after the first dose of the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines, compared to no vaccination (Table 2).
The authors then concluded the opposite by adjusting the figures. But they selectively only employ adjustment factors that place downward pressure on vaccine hazard ratios, and ignore factors that might exert upward pressure, such as the well-known healthy vaccinee bias.
Chemaitelly et al corrected for this by assessing the association between Covid-19 vaccination and non-Covid-19 mortality as a control. They found that 'A pronounced healthy vaccinee effect was observed during the first 6 months following vaccination, despite meticulous cohort matching,' possibly due to seriously ill individuals not being suitable candidates for vaccination and so being underrepresented in the vaccinated group.
Some studies adjust for case-counting window bias or immortal time bias, but healthy vaccinee bias is too problematic to correct, so the full range of confounding effects is not brought to bear on the results, leaving the field to partially corrected studies which may be more misleading than uncorrected results.
Finding our way through this maze is difficult and the mass of observational studies are not a reliable basis for public health policy.
Have pandemics ever been defeated by vaccination? The greatest case study of them all is said to be polio vaccination. Everyone knows that the world was saved from polio by vaccination – and yet in fact it made no difference to the trajectory of poli...]]> Tue, 23 Jun 2026 07:00:00 -0400 Interpreting Epidemic Curves: The Big Picture If there is one thing we have learned since 2020 it is the power of confirmation bias. The public health establishment has presented a mass of data and analysis to show that it was right all along about the C...]]> If there is one thing we have learned since 2020 it is the power of confirmation bias. The public health establishment has presented a mass of data and analysis to show that it was right all along about the Covid-19 pandemic and saved millions of lives. This finding has been accepted at face value and incorporated into policy, but rests on shaky foundations.
We need to look at the big picture. Apologists for vaccination generally use point-to-point comparisons – they pick an arbitrary date near the peak of the epidemic curve and compare it to a later date to show that an intervention is correlated with a reduction in infections or mortality. This is open to case-counting window bias and immortal time bias – another selection of dates could yield an entirely different result.
To counteract this, we need to look at the epidemic curve as a whole and see whether the intervention changed its trajectory.
What we see in the Euromomo statistics of European all-cause mortality below, is a series of declining peaks and broadening curves after the anomalous peak in April 2020. All-cause mortality is crucial, as it avoids distortion due to misclassification of deaths between Covid-19, vaccine adverse effects, and other causes of death.

There was a gradual return to a more normal pattern, usually attributed to a combination of increasing natural immunity and the effects of vaccination. This falls far short of the exaggerated claims made for vaccination when the first clinical trial results were released. We were told by political and public health leaders that vaccination gave 95% protection, a figure that was based on the rate of Covid-19 symptoms paired with positive PCR tests in the vaccine group, compared with the placebo group. It was not based on improved mortality.
Vaccination may have contributed to the improving trend, but there is no basis for finding that it was solely responsible for returning to a more normal seasonal pattern of mortality. And hidden in the count of all-cause excess mortality may be deaths caused by Covid-19 vaccination. There is no way of excluding this possibility.
For example, vaccine-related deaths could be driven through cardiac adverse events. The Cohort study of cardiovascular safety of different Covid-19 vaccination doses among 46 million adults in England by Ip et al showed that incidence rates of cardiovascular events were substantially higher (nearly double for arterial events) after the first dose of the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines, compared to no vaccination (Table 2).
The authors then concluded the opposite by adjusting the figures. But they selectively only employ adjustment factors that place downward pressure on vaccine hazard ratios, and ignore factors that might exert upward pressure, such as the well-known healthy vaccinee bias.
Chemaitelly et al corrected for this by assessing the association between Covid-19 vaccination and non-Covid-19 mortality as a control. They found that 'A pronounced healthy vaccinee effect was observed during the first 6 months following vaccination, despite meticulous cohort matching,' possibly due to seriously ill individuals not being suitable candidates for vaccination and so being underrepresented in the vaccinated group.
Some studies adjust for case-counting window bias or immortal time bias, but healthy vaccinee bias is too problematic to correct, so the full range of confounding effects is not brought to bear on the results, leaving the field to partially corrected studies which may be more misleading than uncorrected results.
Finding our way through this maze is difficult and the mass of observational studies are not a reliable basis for public health policy.
Have pandemics ever been defeated by vaccination? The greatest case study of them all is said to be polio vaccination. Everyone knows that the world was saved from polio by vaccination – and yet in fact it made no difference to the trajectory of poli...]]> Michael Tomlinson 07:07 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 81 71252 Democrats cannot answer "What is a Woman?" so it is not surprising that they struggle to answer "What is a Man?" But answer they must because the 'young male vote' could mean winning or losing the midterms. And, if Democrats persist in treating men in an insulting manner, they will lose and should lose..
The question of how to connect with men arose in the 2024 Presidential election because Democrats were desperate to draw on the 'young male vote,' which was skewing strongly toward Trump. Moreover, in 2024, only 58.3% of 18 to 24 year-olds were registered to vote compared to 80.5% of those 65 to 74; unregistered young men were an untapped demographic, but only if they could be reached.
About 9 weeks before the 2024 election, culture columnist Claire Cain Miller warned Democrats in a New York Times article entitled "Many Gen Z Men Feel Left Behind." Miller explained, "Some see Trump as an answer" to the demonization of men by identity politics. "Men under 30 are much more likely to support Donald Trump than women their age. It's a far bigger gender gap than in older generations." The Democrats tried but badly failed to bridge this gap.
And after the election? The post-analysis confirmed the rightward shift of young voters, especially young Black and Latino men. The Harvard Kennedy Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation explains why. "I think the Democratic Party's vision for men has been to be more like women. That's really been the cultural message: you are not really supposed to embrace masculinity." Instead, the post-analysis suggests sending men the political message "that you have control over your own circumstances and with enough work, you can rise above and lead your family."
But Democrats chose to double down on their defining issues, such as identity politics, transgender rights, abortion, hating Trump, and mandating wokeness—issues that were likely to alienate many if not most young men.
Now it's 2026, and it is ballot season again; Democrats are desperate for the male vote again. This is especially true after the 192-page Democratic National Committee autopsy of the bungled 2024 Presidential campaign was finally released in May 2026. The report states, "Harris saw dramatic drops in support among young Latino men and young Black men compared to Biden's 2020 performance." Again, the recommendation is to shift from identity politics to directly engaging male voters on the basis of their concerns.
But the DNC autopsy has a curious omission in its recommendation to engage with male voters: it says nothing about the best issues to discuss. Nothing. Perhaps they should have consulted the International Council for Men and Boys (ICMB) that lists 12 issues that are paramount for many men. Consider a representative sampling of 4 issues from the ICMB list; compare ICMB's findings in 2024 with my own research on the same issues in 2026.
Health. 2024: According to (2021) World Data, the average US male lives 74.8 years; the average female, 80.2. 2026: According to Worldometer, males live 77.39 years; females 82.23. The ratio is the same and, yet, women's health is consistently better funded.
Partner Abuse. Little seems to have changed. 2024 and 2026 both report 1 in 4 men are victims of domestic violence. Yet, compared to women, next to no shelters or services exist for men.
Homelessness. 2024: Of the nations that keep sex-specific data on homelessness, ICMB Research finds 76% of the homeless are men. 2026: Stats vary but recent estimates for the US place homeless males at 60% of this population. Nevertheless, males are less likely to have access to shelters and services.
Reproduction. 2024 and 2026 are identical. Men must legally support a biological child with no right to refuse the responsibility. Women can often terminate their pregnancies at will but men have no legal say in this matter either.
The 12-item list is an opportunity for Democrats to gain male votes because—...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/do-democrats-know-what-a-man-is/ Democrats cannot answer "What is a Woman?" so it is not surprising that they struggle to answer "What is a Man?" But answer they must because the 'young male vote' could mean winning or losing the midterms. And, if Democrats persist in treating men in an insulting manner, they will lose and should lose..
The question of how to connect with men arose in the 2024 Presidential election because Democrats were desperate to draw on the 'young male vote,' which was skewing strongly toward Trump. Moreover, in 2024, only 58.3% of 18 to 24 year-olds were registered to vote compared to 80.5% of those 65 to 74; unregistered young men were an untapped demographic, but only if they could be reached.
About 9 weeks before the 2024 election, culture columnist Claire Cain Miller warned Democrats in a New York Times article entitled "Many Gen Z Men Feel Left Behind." Miller explained, "Some see Trump as an answer" to the demonization of men by identity politics. "Men under 30 are much more likely to support Donald Trump than women their age. It's a far bigger gender gap than in older generations." The Democrats tried but badly failed to bridge this gap.
And after the election? The post-analysis confirmed the rightward shift of young voters, especially young Black and Latino men. The Harvard Kennedy Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation explains why. "I think the Democratic Party's vision for men has been to be more like women. That's really been the cultural message: you are not really supposed to embrace masculinity." Instead, the post-analysis suggests sending men the political message "that you have control over your own circumstances and with enough work, you can rise above and lead your family."
But Democrats chose to double down on their defining issues, such as identity politics, transgender rights, abortion, hating Trump, and mandating wokeness—issues that were likely to alienate many if not most young men.
Now it's 2026, and it is ballot season again; Democrats are desperate for the male vote again. This is especially true after the 192-page Democratic National Committee autopsy of the bungled 2024 Presidential campaign was finally released in May 2026. The report states, "Harris saw dramatic drops in support among young Latino men and young Black men compared to Biden's 2020 performance." Again, the recommendation is to shift from identity politics to directly engaging male voters on the basis of their concerns.
But the DNC autopsy has a curious omission in its recommendation to engage with male voters: it says nothing about the best issues to discuss. Nothing. Perhaps they should have consulted the International Council for Men and Boys (ICMB) that lists 12 issues that are paramount for many men. Consider a representative sampling of 4 issues from the ICMB list; compare ICMB's findings in 2024 with my own research on the same issues in 2026.
Health. 2024: According to (2021) World Data, the average US male lives 74.8 years; the average female, 80.2. 2026: According to Worldometer, males live 77.39 years; females 82.23. The ratio is the same and, yet, women's health is consistently better funded.
Partner Abuse. Little seems to have changed. 2024 and 2026 both report 1 in 4 men are victims of domestic violence. Yet, compared to women, next to no shelters or services exist for men.
Homelessness. 2024: Of the nations that keep sex-specific data on homelessness, ICMB Research finds 76% of the homeless are men. 2026: Stats vary but recent estimates for the US place homeless males at 60% of this population. Nevertheless, males are less likely to have access to shelters and services.
Reproduction. 2024 and 2026 are identical. Men must legally support a biological child with no right to refuse the responsibility. Women can often terminate their pregnancies at will but men have no legal say in this matter either.
The 12-item list is an opportunity for Democrats to gain male votes because—...]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 07:10:00 -0400 Do Democrats Know What a Man Is? Democrats cannot answer "What is a Woman?" so it is not surprising that they struggle to answer "What is a Man?" But answer they must because the 'young male vote' could mean winning or losing the midterms. And, ...]]> Democrats cannot answer "What is a Woman?" so it is not surprising that they struggle to answer "What is a Man?" But answer they must because the 'young male vote' could mean winning or losing the midterms. And, if Democrats persist in treating men in an insulting manner, they will lose and should lose..
The question of how to connect with men arose in the 2024 Presidential election because Democrats were desperate to draw on the 'young male vote,' which was skewing strongly toward Trump. Moreover, in 2024, only 58.3% of 18 to 24 year-olds were registered to vote compared to 80.5% of those 65 to 74; unregistered young men were an untapped demographic, but only if they could be reached.
About 9 weeks before the 2024 election, culture columnist Claire Cain Miller warned Democrats in a New York Times article entitled "Many Gen Z Men Feel Left Behind." Miller explained, "Some see Trump as an answer" to the demonization of men by identity politics. "Men under 30 are much more likely to support Donald Trump than women their age. It's a far bigger gender gap than in older generations." The Democrats tried but badly failed to bridge this gap.
And after the election? The post-analysis confirmed the rightward shift of young voters, especially young Black and Latino men. The Harvard Kennedy Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation explains why. "I think the Democratic Party's vision for men has been to be more like women. That's really been the cultural message: you are not really supposed to embrace masculinity." Instead, the post-analysis suggests sending men the political message "that you have control over your own circumstances and with enough work, you can rise above and lead your family."
But Democrats chose to double down on their defining issues, such as identity politics, transgender rights, abortion, hating Trump, and mandating wokeness—issues that were likely to alienate many if not most young men.
Now it's 2026, and it is ballot season again; Democrats are desperate for the male vote again. This is especially true after the 192-page Democratic National Committee autopsy of the bungled 2024 Presidential campaign was finally released in May 2026. The report states, "Harris saw dramatic drops in support among young Latino men and young Black men compared to Biden's 2020 performance." Again, the recommendation is to shift from identity politics to directly engaging male voters on the basis of their concerns.
But the DNC autopsy has a curious omission in its recommendation to engage with male voters: it says nothing about the best issues to discuss. Nothing. Perhaps they should have consulted the International Council for Men and Boys (ICMB) that lists 12 issues that are paramount for many men. Consider a representative sampling of 4 issues from the ICMB list; compare ICMB's findings in 2024 with my own research on the same issues in 2026.
Health. 2024: According to (2021) World Data, the average US male lives 74.8 years; the average female, 80.2. 2026: According to Worldometer, males live 77.39 years; females 82.23. The ratio is the same and, yet, women's health is consistently better funded.
Partner Abuse. Little seems to have changed. 2024 and 2026 both report 1 in 4 men are victims of domestic violence. Yet, compared to women, next to no shelters or services exist for men.
Homelessness. 2024: Of the nations that keep sex-specific data on homelessness, ICMB Research finds 76% of the homeless are men. 2026: Stats vary but recent estimates for the US place homeless males at 60% of this population. Nevertheless, males are less likely to have access to shelters and services.
Reproduction. 2024 and 2026 are identical. Men must legally support a biological child with no right to refuse the responsibility. Women can often terminate their pregnancies at will but men have no legal say in this matter either.
The 12-item list is an opportunity for Democrats to gain male votes because—...]]> Wendy McElroy 09:22 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 80 71226 The reader who follows the unraveling of the Covid-19 origins coverup may be aware that I observed the DEFUSE proposal while a military fellow at DARPA and reported it to investigating authorities. Time and FOIA records have publicly revealed why the DEFUSE documents were placed where I observed them. Time and FOIA records, however, have not revealed why DEFUSE went unreported to investigators before I did so in 2021.
DEFUSE, Defusing the Threat of Bat-borne Coronaviruses, was an EcoHealth Alliance submission to DARPA's Preventing Emerging Pathogenic Threats (PREEMPT) program call for proposals. DEFUSE involved American, foreign, and Wuhan Institute of Virology scientists proposing to modify the spike proteins of SARS-related coronaviruses in order to model the probability of disease jump to and spread amongst US Pacific forces. In between was high-risk, arguably gain-of-function dual-use research of concern related to vaccine vector and dispersal development. The exactness of the proposed research to SARS-CoV-2's features makes DEFUSE a leading hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2's origin.
DEFUSE was pitched to DARPA in March 2018. Fifteen government agencies saw the proposal in the winter 2018 timeframe. DARPA did not select, though features of the proposal mirror features of future NIH grants. Most importantly, no one who knew of DEFUSE mentioned DEFUSE to authorities or to the public once the pandemic began. DEFUSE was ultimately publicized by DRASTIC, whom I shared it with, in September 2021. With publication, the question emerged as to why the DEFUSE files remained unreported since SARS-CoV-2 emerged, which was one of my questions in my memo to the DOD Office of the Inspector General (DODOIG) (a memo later leaked to Project Veritas).
I FOIA'd the DODOIG for records associated with my case (after being told by Senate staff that the investigation was complete). Senator Roger Marshall (R-KS) publicized previous records in November 2024 in his demand that the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) investigate the origins coverup within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the Intelligence Community (IC). These records reveal that DARPA staff uploaded DEFUSE to the top-secret network in response to an IC call for information. They also reveal that 1) no one who knew of DEFUSE reported its existence since the time SARS-CoV-2 emerged – about 1.5 years and 2) the DODOIG investigating officer did not investigate why no one who knew of DEFUSE reported its existence for 1.5 years.
I recently received the last of the records FOIA'd from DOD. [The latest FOIA records publicly confirm the July 2021 call for information was specific to DEFUSE.]. DODOIG pushed part of the investigation to Defense Health Agency (DHA), but DHA declined to investigate. The rationale is redacted. It's also unclear why it took multiple years to receive the one-page email that says this.
I will credit DODOIG for pushing an investigation request to DHA. In doing so, there was an implied acknowledgment to my point that the biology of SARS-CoV-2 needed to be reassessed in lieu of the DEFUSE research. Despite public demand to do so, there has still been no assessment in this vein and it remains unclear if the FBI and IC investigations will do so, though the possible engineering in the spike protein and its purpose is the heart of the matter for the illness and for the vaccine injuries.
DODOIG's records include the interview summaries that were part of the investigating officer's report (not included in the prior records distribution). The content is bland but there are comments and there are omissions that are the purpose of this essay. These reveal further moral failure tied to withholding the DEFUSE information that contributed to the underinformed and fouled SARS-CoV-2 response, a debacle instigated by the cover-up of SARS-CoV-2's origin. Fundamentally, the question remains as to why the DEFUSE proposal ...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/covid-cover-up-excuses-when-following-policy-is-wrong/ The reader who follows the unraveling of the Covid-19 origins coverup may be aware that I observed the DEFUSE proposal while a military fellow at DARPA and reported it to investigating authorities. Time and FOIA records have publicly revealed why the DEFUSE documents were placed where I observed them. Time and FOIA records, however, have not revealed why DEFUSE went unreported to investigators before I did so in 2021.
DEFUSE, Defusing the Threat of Bat-borne Coronaviruses, was an EcoHealth Alliance submission to DARPA's Preventing Emerging Pathogenic Threats (PREEMPT) program call for proposals. DEFUSE involved American, foreign, and Wuhan Institute of Virology scientists proposing to modify the spike proteins of SARS-related coronaviruses in order to model the probability of disease jump to and spread amongst US Pacific forces. In between was high-risk, arguably gain-of-function dual-use research of concern related to vaccine vector and dispersal development. The exactness of the proposed research to SARS-CoV-2's features makes DEFUSE a leading hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2's origin.
DEFUSE was pitched to DARPA in March 2018. Fifteen government agencies saw the proposal in the winter 2018 timeframe. DARPA did not select, though features of the proposal mirror features of future NIH grants. Most importantly, no one who knew of DEFUSE mentioned DEFUSE to authorities or to the public once the pandemic began. DEFUSE was ultimately publicized by DRASTIC, whom I shared it with, in September 2021. With publication, the question emerged as to why the DEFUSE files remained unreported since SARS-CoV-2 emerged, which was one of my questions in my memo to the DOD Office of the Inspector General (DODOIG) (a memo later leaked to Project Veritas).
I FOIA'd the DODOIG for records associated with my case (after being told by Senate staff that the investigation was complete). Senator Roger Marshall (R-KS) publicized previous records in November 2024 in his demand that the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) investigate the origins coverup within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the Intelligence Community (IC). These records reveal that DARPA staff uploaded DEFUSE to the top-secret network in response to an IC call for information. They also reveal that 1) no one who knew of DEFUSE reported its existence since the time SARS-CoV-2 emerged – about 1.5 years and 2) the DODOIG investigating officer did not investigate why no one who knew of DEFUSE reported its existence for 1.5 years.
I recently received the last of the records FOIA'd from DOD. [The latest FOIA records publicly confirm the July 2021 call for information was specific to DEFUSE.]. DODOIG pushed part of the investigation to Defense Health Agency (DHA), but DHA declined to investigate. The rationale is redacted. It's also unclear why it took multiple years to receive the one-page email that says this.
I will credit DODOIG for pushing an investigation request to DHA. In doing so, there was an implied acknowledgment to my point that the biology of SARS-CoV-2 needed to be reassessed in lieu of the DEFUSE research. Despite public demand to do so, there has still been no assessment in this vein and it remains unclear if the FBI and IC investigations will do so, though the possible engineering in the spike protein and its purpose is the heart of the matter for the illness and for the vaccine injuries.
DODOIG's records include the interview summaries that were part of the investigating officer's report (not included in the prior records distribution). The content is bland but there are comments and there are omissions that are the purpose of this essay. These reveal further moral failure tied to withholding the DEFUSE information that contributed to the underinformed and fouled SARS-CoV-2 response, a debacle instigated by the cover-up of SARS-CoV-2's origin. Fundamentally, the question remains as to why the DEFUSE proposal ...]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0400 Covid Cover-Up Excuses: When Following Policy Is Wrong The reader who follows the unraveling of the Covid-19 origins coverup may be aware that I observed the DEFUSE proposal while a military fellow at DARPA and reported it to investigating authorities. Time and FOIA rec...]]> The reader who follows the unraveling of the Covid-19 origins coverup may be aware that I observed the DEFUSE proposal while a military fellow at DARPA and reported it to investigating authorities. Time and FOIA records have publicly revealed why the DEFUSE documents were placed where I observed them. Time and FOIA records, however, have not revealed why DEFUSE went unreported to investigators before I did so in 2021.
DEFUSE, Defusing the Threat of Bat-borne Coronaviruses, was an EcoHealth Alliance submission to DARPA's Preventing Emerging Pathogenic Threats (PREEMPT) program call for proposals. DEFUSE involved American, foreign, and Wuhan Institute of Virology scientists proposing to modify the spike proteins of SARS-related coronaviruses in order to model the probability of disease jump to and spread amongst US Pacific forces. In between was high-risk, arguably gain-of-function dual-use research of concern related to vaccine vector and dispersal development. The exactness of the proposed research to SARS-CoV-2's features makes DEFUSE a leading hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2's origin.
DEFUSE was pitched to DARPA in March 2018. Fifteen government agencies saw the proposal in the winter 2018 timeframe. DARPA did not select, though features of the proposal mirror features of future NIH grants. Most importantly, no one who knew of DEFUSE mentioned DEFUSE to authorities or to the public once the pandemic began. DEFUSE was ultimately publicized by DRASTIC, whom I shared it with, in September 2021. With publication, the question emerged as to why the DEFUSE files remained unreported since SARS-CoV-2 emerged, which was one of my questions in my memo to the DOD Office of the Inspector General (DODOIG) (a memo later leaked to Project Veritas).
I FOIA'd the DODOIG for records associated with my case (after being told by Senate staff that the investigation was complete). Senator Roger Marshall (R-KS) publicized previous records in November 2024 in his demand that the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) investigate the origins coverup within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the Intelligence Community (IC). These records reveal that DARPA staff uploaded DEFUSE to the top-secret network in response to an IC call for information. They also reveal that 1) no one who knew of DEFUSE reported its existence since the time SARS-CoV-2 emerged – about 1.5 years and 2) the DODOIG investigating officer did not investigate why no one who knew of DEFUSE reported its existence for 1.5 years.
I recently received the last of the records FOIA'd from DOD. [The latest FOIA records publicly confirm the July 2021 call for information was specific to DEFUSE.]. DODOIG pushed part of the investigation to Defense Health Agency (DHA), but DHA declined to investigate. The rationale is redacted. It's also unclear why it took multiple years to receive the one-page email that says this.
I will credit DODOIG for pushing an investigation request to DHA. In doing so, there was an implied acknowledgment to my point that the biology of SARS-CoV-2 needed to be reassessed in lieu of the DEFUSE research. Despite public demand to do so, there has still been no assessment in this vein and it remains unclear if the FBI and IC investigations will do so, though the possible engineering in the spike protein and its purpose is the heart of the matter for the illness and for the vaccine injuries.
DODOIG's records include the interview summaries that were part of the investigating officer's report (not included in the prior records distribution). The content is bland but there are comments and there are omissions that are the purpose of this essay. These reveal further moral failure tied to withholding the DEFUSE information that contributed to the underinformed and fouled SARS-CoV-2 response, a debacle instigated by the cover-up of SARS-CoV-2's origin. Fundamentally, the question remains as to why the DEFUSE proposal ...]]> Joe Murphy 16:27 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 79 70981 You are an otherwise healthy person, and you want to keep it that way.
However, wherever you turn you are being told that your current state of 'health' is tentative; You could be sick and not know it. Maybe you have something lurking inside — possibly an early sign of cancer — so shouldn't you do something? After all, better safe than sorry, right?
Consider this statement from Dr. David Sackett in The Arrogance of Preventive Medicine, CMAJ Aug 20, 2002:
Preventive medicine displays all 3 elements of arrogance. First, it is aggressively assertive, pursuing symptomless individuals and telling them what they must do to remain healthy.
Second, preventive medicine is presumptuous, confident that the interventions it espouses will, on average, do more good than harm to those who accept and adhere to them.
Finally, preventive medicine is overbearing, attacking those who question the value of its recommendations.
We have whole industries set up to discover potentially deadly cancers inside our breasts, prostates, lungs, cervixes or colons and your doctor, ever helpful and concerned about your future, suggests that you submit to screening. Guidelines recommend it, influencers push it and "survivors" preach of the benefits of screening.
"Better Safe than Sorry" is not just an axiom that rules our lives, it is frequently unchallengeable. After all, only an idiot would avoid early cancer screening, especially if such screening could save their lives, right?
Let me be the bearer of blunt news: Cancer screening in otherwise healthy people doesn't save lives. We've been sold a bill of goods by screening industries consistently overselling the benefits and underselling the harms. Those promoting screening boldly declare that the war on a specific cancer is being won, even though the data doesn't show that screened patients live any longer than unscreened. Looking closely at the evidence of established screening programs drawn from randomized trials and meta-analyses of thousands of healthy people, you find that screening breasts, lungs, colons, cervixes, or prostates are good at finding early signs of cancer, but that detection doesn't lead to lower overall death rates. (see table below)
Let me be clear to whom I'm speaking: healthy people. If you are a person with any symptoms, or perhaps even a family history that might suggest you would be at higher risk of certain types of illness, asking for screening might make sense. But I am talking about otherwise healthy people who are living their lives perfectly well, but told that by submitting to a screening test (of whatever organ) they are going to live longer.
Mammography is proven to save lives, right?
Let's take the one cancer screening program that has the best, and most robust evidence from dozens of high-quality randomized trials: mammography. The most basic assumption with mammography is that it will find small, treatable cancers in the breasts of otherwise healthy, symptom-free women, and save their lives by stopping those tumors from growing into larger malignant cancers that could kill them. This is a very appealing assumption that drives the whole machinery of mammography.
However, the largest screening trials repeatedly show that any reductions in breast cancer deaths are not matched by fewer deaths overall.
One large trial analysis showed that the cumulative risk of breast cancer death to age 60 was 0.53% with mammography vs 0.48% without, an absolute difference of 0.05 percentage points. This means that for every 2,000 women invited for screening over 10 years, one will not die from breast cancer. There is however, no difference in death rates between screened groups and unscreened groups. Oh, and before we forget to mention, along the way, it also means that at least 10 healthy women out of those 2,000 will be treated unnecessarily.
What is going on? Commentators have suggested two possibilities: the trials were too small to detect an o...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-trouble-with-cancer-screening-in-healthy-adults/ You are an otherwise healthy person, and you want to keep it that way.
However, wherever you turn you are being told that your current state of 'health' is tentative; You could be sick and not know it. Maybe you have something lurking inside — possibly an early sign of cancer — so shouldn't you do something? After all, better safe than sorry, right?
Consider this statement from Dr. David Sackett in The Arrogance of Preventive Medicine, CMAJ Aug 20, 2002:
Preventive medicine displays all 3 elements of arrogance. First, it is aggressively assertive, pursuing symptomless individuals and telling them what they must do to remain healthy.
Second, preventive medicine is presumptuous, confident that the interventions it espouses will, on average, do more good than harm to those who accept and adhere to them.
Finally, preventive medicine is overbearing, attacking those who question the value of its recommendations.
We have whole industries set up to discover potentially deadly cancers inside our breasts, prostates, lungs, cervixes or colons and your doctor, ever helpful and concerned about your future, suggests that you submit to screening. Guidelines recommend it, influencers push it and "survivors" preach of the benefits of screening.
"Better Safe than Sorry" is not just an axiom that rules our lives, it is frequently unchallengeable. After all, only an idiot would avoid early cancer screening, especially if such screening could save their lives, right?
Let me be the bearer of blunt news: Cancer screening in otherwise healthy people doesn't save lives. We've been sold a bill of goods by screening industries consistently overselling the benefits and underselling the harms. Those promoting screening boldly declare that the war on a specific cancer is being won, even though the data doesn't show that screened patients live any longer than unscreened. Looking closely at the evidence of established screening programs drawn from randomized trials and meta-analyses of thousands of healthy people, you find that screening breasts, lungs, colons, cervixes, or prostates are good at finding early signs of cancer, but that detection doesn't lead to lower overall death rates. (see table below)
Let me be clear to whom I'm speaking: healthy people. If you are a person with any symptoms, or perhaps even a family history that might suggest you would be at higher risk of certain types of illness, asking for screening might make sense. But I am talking about otherwise healthy people who are living their lives perfectly well, but told that by submitting to a screening test (of whatever organ) they are going to live longer.
Mammography is proven to save lives, right?
Let's take the one cancer screening program that has the best, and most robust evidence from dozens of high-quality randomized trials: mammography. The most basic assumption with mammography is that it will find small, treatable cancers in the breasts of otherwise healthy, symptom-free women, and save their lives by stopping those tumors from growing into larger malignant cancers that could kill them. This is a very appealing assumption that drives the whole machinery of mammography.
However, the largest screening trials repeatedly show that any reductions in breast cancer deaths are not matched by fewer deaths overall.
One large trial analysis showed that the cumulative risk of breast cancer death to age 60 was 0.53% with mammography vs 0.48% without, an absolute difference of 0.05 percentage points. This means that for every 2,000 women invited for screening over 10 years, one will not die from breast cancer. There is however, no difference in death rates between screened groups and unscreened groups. Oh, and before we forget to mention, along the way, it also means that at least 10 healthy women out of those 2,000 will be treated unnecessarily.
What is going on? Commentators have suggested two possibilities: the trials were too small to detect an o...]]> Sat, 20 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0400 The Trouble with Cancer Screening in Healthy Adults References You are an otherwise healthy person, and you want to keep it that way.
However, wherever you turn you are being told that your current state of 'health' is tentative; You could be sick and not know it. Maybe you h...]]> You are an otherwise healthy person, and you want to keep it that way.
However, wherever you turn you are being told that your current state of 'health' is tentative; You could be sick and not know it. Maybe you have something lurking inside — possibly an early sign of cancer — so shouldn't you do something? After all, better safe than sorry, right?
Consider this statement from Dr. David Sackett in The Arrogance of Preventive Medicine, CMAJ Aug 20, 2002:
Preventive medicine displays all 3 elements of arrogance. First, it is aggressively assertive, pursuing symptomless individuals and telling them what they must do to remain healthy.
Second, preventive medicine is presumptuous, confident that the interventions it espouses will, on average, do more good than harm to those who accept and adhere to them.
Finally, preventive medicine is overbearing, attacking those who question the value of its recommendations.
We have whole industries set up to discover potentially deadly cancers inside our breasts, prostates, lungs, cervixes or colons and your doctor, ever helpful and concerned about your future, suggests that you submit to screening. Guidelines recommend it, influencers push it and "survivors" preach of the benefits of screening.
"Better Safe than Sorry" is not just an axiom that rules our lives, it is frequently unchallengeable. After all, only an idiot would avoid early cancer screening, especially if such screening could save their lives, right?
Let me be the bearer of blunt news: Cancer screening in otherwise healthy people doesn't save lives. We've been sold a bill of goods by screening industries consistently overselling the benefits and underselling the harms. Those promoting screening boldly declare that the war on a specific cancer is being won, even though the data doesn't show that screened patients live any longer than unscreened. Looking closely at the evidence of established screening programs drawn from randomized trials and meta-analyses of thousands of healthy people, you find that screening breasts, lungs, colons, cervixes, or prostates are good at finding early signs of cancer, but that detection doesn't lead to lower overall death rates. (see table below)
Let me be clear to whom I'm speaking: healthy people. If you are a person with any symptoms, or perhaps even a family history that might suggest you would be at higher risk of certain types of illness, asking for screening might make sense. But I am talking about otherwise healthy people who are living their lives perfectly well, but told that by submitting to a screening test (of whatever organ) they are going to live longer.
Mammography is proven to save lives, right?
Let's take the one cancer screening program that has the best, and most robust evidence from dozens of high-quality randomized trials: mammography. The most basic assumption with mammography is that it will find small, treatable cancers in the breasts of otherwise healthy, symptom-free women, and save their lives by stopping those tumors from growing into larger malignant cancers that could kill them. This is a very appealing assumption that drives the whole machinery of mammography.
However, the largest screening trials repeatedly show that any reductions in breast cancer deaths are not matched by fewer deaths overall.
One large trial analysis showed that the cumulative risk of breast cancer death to age 60 was 0.53% with mammography vs 0.48% without, an absolute difference of 0.05 percentage points. This means that for every 2,000 women invited for screening over 10 years, one will not die from breast cancer. There is however, no difference in death rates between screened groups and unscreened groups. Oh, and before we forget to mention, along the way, it also means that at least 10 healthy women out of those 2,000 will be treated unnecessarily.
What is going on? Commentators have suggested two possibilities: the trials were too small to detect an o...]]> Alan Cassels 09:17 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 78 71179 AI is everywhere. It's getting incorporated into everything. That's simply progress, we're told. And therefore we need to embrace it, lest we look like a Luddite and let China win (whatever that means). Yet, simultaneously, a lot of people also are afraid because of AI. Very afraid. And sometimes, we're told that we should be afraid too. However, in public discourse surrounding AI, there often can be a lack of detail regarding what specifically we're supposed to be afraid of. Sometimes it is not even clear what is meant by the term "AI."
Technically speaking, as I have touched on previously, one could argue (as some older computer scientists do) that AI is an umbrella term for a family of algorithms based in math that sometimes dates back more than a half-century.
Practically speaking, numerous programs we've been living with for years like Google Maps and Amazon's recommender system can be thought of as AI despite their lack of novelty. Yet, in public discourse, the term AI tends to refer to generative AI (e.g, ChatGPT), as well as any number of hypothetical future programs that will do everything humans can do but better, will therefore both solve all our problems while also putting most of us out of work, and also eventually just might decide to go full Skynet on us unless they decide that we're not worth the trouble.
(Sounds pretty sexy. Perhaps someone should make a series of movies about it. Perhaps people will even like two out of five of them.)
Unfortunately, though, these more hyperbolic, sci-fi depictions of the threat(s) posed by AI tend to get more attention than, and consequently distract from, more realistic and more imminent threats pertaining to privacy, freedom, autonomy, and even just a way of life many of us have come to enjoy. Automatic license plate readers, facial recognition, digital grandmothers, mandatory drunk and distracted driving detection programs, any of the technologies "grandson" was shouting about in "Autonomous Delivery Robot," and wearable recording devices that transcribe and process in-person conversations for the anti-social and easily distracted are just of a few of the more realistic threats that come to mind. (And this by no means is a complete list).
Therefore, I tend to appreciate when members of our ruling class can take a morning to have a measured conversation about fairly well-defined threats posed by this technology (or suite of technologies), as was done at the US House of Representatives' Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection Subcommittee's June 4 meeting on the "AI Security Landscape."
Superficially, the meeting's discussion could probably be framed in terms of "Is the greatest threat posed by AI an external one in the form of foreign hackers looking to exploit vulnerabilities in the software controlling the United States' critical infrastructure or an internal one born from the lack of regulation and accountability for AI's use at home?"
From watching the discussion, however, it seemed less like a matter of "either or" and more like an uncontested response of "Yes and…"
Sandra Joyce of Google, Frontier Model Forum executive director Chris Meserole, and Corridor Security Inc. CEO and co-founder Jack Cable provided testimony regarding how AI is transforming the cybersecurity landscape as digital weapons fall into the hands of the cyber-barbarians at the gates who will use those weapons to find vulnerabilities in our critical infrastructure and/or deploy ransomware attacks.
"This technology has impacted cybersecurity in profound ways for both the defender and the attacker," stated Joyce.
"[H]ackers have more powerful tools than ever," Cable noted, naming Mythos and GPT-5.5 specifically.
"These models aren't just hype," he warned. "They are truly starting to rival or exceed humans on security tasks and do so at an unprecedented scale."
Joyce suggested "threat actors" don't even need something like Mythos and can be quite capable o...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/ai-doomsday-warnings-distract-from-more-imminent-ai-concerns/ AI is everywhere. It's getting incorporated into everything. That's simply progress, we're told. And therefore we need to embrace it, lest we look like a Luddite and let China win (whatever that means). Yet, simultaneously, a lot of people also are afraid because of AI. Very afraid. And sometimes, we're told that we should be afraid too. However, in public discourse surrounding AI, there often can be a lack of detail regarding what specifically we're supposed to be afraid of. Sometimes it is not even clear what is meant by the term "AI."
Technically speaking, as I have touched on previously, one could argue (as some older computer scientists do) that AI is an umbrella term for a family of algorithms based in math that sometimes dates back more than a half-century.
Practically speaking, numerous programs we've been living with for years like Google Maps and Amazon's recommender system can be thought of as AI despite their lack of novelty. Yet, in public discourse, the term AI tends to refer to generative AI (e.g, ChatGPT), as well as any number of hypothetical future programs that will do everything humans can do but better, will therefore both solve all our problems while also putting most of us out of work, and also eventually just might decide to go full Skynet on us unless they decide that we're not worth the trouble.
(Sounds pretty sexy. Perhaps someone should make a series of movies about it. Perhaps people will even like two out of five of them.)
Unfortunately, though, these more hyperbolic, sci-fi depictions of the threat(s) posed by AI tend to get more attention than, and consequently distract from, more realistic and more imminent threats pertaining to privacy, freedom, autonomy, and even just a way of life many of us have come to enjoy. Automatic license plate readers, facial recognition, digital grandmothers, mandatory drunk and distracted driving detection programs, any of the technologies "grandson" was shouting about in "Autonomous Delivery Robot," and wearable recording devices that transcribe and process in-person conversations for the anti-social and easily distracted are just of a few of the more realistic threats that come to mind. (And this by no means is a complete list).
Therefore, I tend to appreciate when members of our ruling class can take a morning to have a measured conversation about fairly well-defined threats posed by this technology (or suite of technologies), as was done at the US House of Representatives' Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection Subcommittee's June 4 meeting on the "AI Security Landscape."
Superficially, the meeting's discussion could probably be framed in terms of "Is the greatest threat posed by AI an external one in the form of foreign hackers looking to exploit vulnerabilities in the software controlling the United States' critical infrastructure or an internal one born from the lack of regulation and accountability for AI's use at home?"
From watching the discussion, however, it seemed less like a matter of "either or" and more like an uncontested response of "Yes and…"
Sandra Joyce of Google, Frontier Model Forum executive director Chris Meserole, and Corridor Security Inc. CEO and co-founder Jack Cable provided testimony regarding how AI is transforming the cybersecurity landscape as digital weapons fall into the hands of the cyber-barbarians at the gates who will use those weapons to find vulnerabilities in our critical infrastructure and/or deploy ransomware attacks.
"This technology has impacted cybersecurity in profound ways for both the defender and the attacker," stated Joyce.
"[H]ackers have more powerful tools than ever," Cable noted, naming Mythos and GPT-5.5 specifically.
"These models aren't just hype," he warned. "They are truly starting to rival or exceed humans on security tasks and do so at an unprecedented scale."
Joyce suggested "threat actors" don't even need something like Mythos and can be quite capable o...]]> Fri, 19 Jun 2026 07:10:00 -0400 AI Doomsday Warnings Distract from More Imminent AI Concerns AI is everywhere. It's getting incorporated into everything. That's simply progress, we're told. And therefore we need to embrace it, lest we look like a Luddite and let China win (whatever that means). Yet, simu...]]> AI is everywhere. It's getting incorporated into everything. That's simply progress, we're told. And therefore we need to embrace it, lest we look like a Luddite and let China win (whatever that means). Yet, simultaneously, a lot of people also are afraid because of AI. Very afraid. And sometimes, we're told that we should be afraid too. However, in public discourse surrounding AI, there often can be a lack of detail regarding what specifically we're supposed to be afraid of. Sometimes it is not even clear what is meant by the term "AI."
Technically speaking, as I have touched on previously, one could argue (as some older computer scientists do) that AI is an umbrella term for a family of algorithms based in math that sometimes dates back more than a half-century.
Practically speaking, numerous programs we've been living with for years like Google Maps and Amazon's recommender system can be thought of as AI despite their lack of novelty. Yet, in public discourse, the term AI tends to refer to generative AI (e.g, ChatGPT), as well as any number of hypothetical future programs that will do everything humans can do but better, will therefore both solve all our problems while also putting most of us out of work, and also eventually just might decide to go full Skynet on us unless they decide that we're not worth the trouble.
(Sounds pretty sexy. Perhaps someone should make a series of movies about it. Perhaps people will even like two out of five of them.)
Unfortunately, though, these more hyperbolic, sci-fi depictions of the threat(s) posed by AI tend to get more attention than, and consequently distract from, more realistic and more imminent threats pertaining to privacy, freedom, autonomy, and even just a way of life many of us have come to enjoy. Automatic license plate readers, facial recognition, digital grandmothers, mandatory drunk and distracted driving detection programs, any of the technologies "grandson" was shouting about in "Autonomous Delivery Robot," and wearable recording devices that transcribe and process in-person conversations for the anti-social and easily distracted are just of a few of the more realistic threats that come to mind. (And this by no means is a complete list).
Therefore, I tend to appreciate when members of our ruling class can take a morning to have a measured conversation about fairly well-defined threats posed by this technology (or suite of technologies), as was done at the US House of Representatives' Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection Subcommittee's June 4 meeting on the "AI Security Landscape."
Superficially, the meeting's discussion could probably be framed in terms of "Is the greatest threat posed by AI an external one in the form of foreign hackers looking to exploit vulnerabilities in the software controlling the United States' critical infrastructure or an internal one born from the lack of regulation and accountability for AI's use at home?"
From watching the discussion, however, it seemed less like a matter of "either or" and more like an uncontested response of "Yes and…"
Sandra Joyce of Google, Frontier Model Forum executive director Chris Meserole, and Corridor Security Inc. CEO and co-founder Jack Cable provided testimony regarding how AI is transforming the cybersecurity landscape as digital weapons fall into the hands of the cyber-barbarians at the gates who will use those weapons to find vulnerabilities in our critical infrastructure and/or deploy ransomware attacks.
"This technology has impacted cybersecurity in profound ways for both the defender and the attacker," stated Joyce.
"[H]ackers have more powerful tools than ever," Cable noted, naming Mythos and GPT-5.5 specifically.
"These models aren't just hype," he warned. "They are truly starting to rival or exceed humans on security tasks and do so at an unprecedented scale."
Joyce suggested "threat actors" don't even need something like Mythos and can be quite capable o...]]> Daniel Nuccio 05:44 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 77 71166 Life seemed to be going along pretty normally when the third month of 2020 hit and all our lives, and the lives of billions around the world, were thrown into upheaval. We've spent the last six years trying to figure it out and so have many others.
The revelations are flying fast and furious, so much that we can hardly keep up. We have meetings, groups, publications, phone calls, and share as many links and data points as we can. No matter what we do, the big story continues to be elusive.
There are two reasons for this. First, the national media does not care. It happened. It's over. We survived. Who cares? Second, the reality is literally incomprehensible. Too many data points. Too many institutions. Too many motivations. They all flew into motion at once. Separating prime from second movers is impossible.
Those who try to make sense of it all come across like conspiracy theorists at best and babbling lunatics at worst. I don't like to sound this way. But every time I try to present what I know in a calm, rational, wholly reasonable way, I sense that I'm not capturing the fullness of it all.
What I've attempted below is my best undertaking at reconstruction. It has no links so I invite you to use the AI tool on this website that has been trained by 4,000-plus site records and countless numbers of outside links.
If it sounds implausible, I can only assure you that it is not. You might know more than I do and could write something better. If so, drop me an email and we might publish a compendium. The goal is short (no longer than 500 words), evocative, comprehensive, no exaggerations, and verifiably accurate.
Here is my own attempt.
In 2019 or before, a US-funded biolab in Wuhan, China, one of some 120 in 30 countries, made a virus and inoculation based on an American recipe that leaked and spread, causing worry that US/UK officials would be blamed. They formulated a well-rehearsed fallback: lie about the lab origins and prepare the population for the antidote based on a new gene-editing technology that otherwise would never have been approved on grounds that it was too dangerous and not effective. That scheme could turn would-be villains into saviors.
That required buying time while preserving pre-leak immunity profiles of the population via lockdowns for nine months until the injection was put through perfunctory trials and available; hence the travel restrictions, stay-at-home orders, masks, distancing, and canceled events.
During this time there had to be mass censorship of people who caught on, a manufactured panic, widespread trauma, school closures, a removal of other therapeutic options, millions of business failures, a shutdown of the arts and religious practice, plus various technical manipulations along the way like redefining exposures as cases, running PCR tests at high cycle rates, and paying for death misclassifications. This was essentially cosplaying a level of severity that did not exist – despite inevitably rising seroprevalence and natural immunity – in order to ramp up demand for the incoming pharmaceutical product.
There was also a political coattail rider: infectious disease panic enabled a new experiment in mail-in ballots, encouraged by the CDC even before the lockdowns began, thus unleashing mass ballot fraud designed to defeat the rise of populism in all countries and creating conditions for closer citizen surveillance and digital identification systems necessitating mass data centers.
The scheme also required a printing/spending binge to paper over vast economic damage, policies that would hack off a third of the value of the dollar, leaving vast carnage, but permitting an indemnified pharmaceutical experiment on the whole population, meaning that mass injury and death would have no recourse in law. When the shot finally appeared, uptake was too low to create the expected profit windfall, plus government had a surplus it needed to dump before expiration...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-big-picture-of-extraordinary-evil-in-428-words/ Life seemed to be going along pretty normally when the third month of 2020 hit and all our lives, and the lives of billions around the world, were thrown into upheaval. We've spent the last six years trying to figure it out and so have many others.
The revelations are flying fast and furious, so much that we can hardly keep up. We have meetings, groups, publications, phone calls, and share as many links and data points as we can. No matter what we do, the big story continues to be elusive.
There are two reasons for this. First, the national media does not care. It happened. It's over. We survived. Who cares? Second, the reality is literally incomprehensible. Too many data points. Too many institutions. Too many motivations. They all flew into motion at once. Separating prime from second movers is impossible.
Those who try to make sense of it all come across like conspiracy theorists at best and babbling lunatics at worst. I don't like to sound this way. But every time I try to present what I know in a calm, rational, wholly reasonable way, I sense that I'm not capturing the fullness of it all.
What I've attempted below is my best undertaking at reconstruction. It has no links so I invite you to use the AI tool on this website that has been trained by 4,000-plus site records and countless numbers of outside links.
If it sounds implausible, I can only assure you that it is not. You might know more than I do and could write something better. If so, drop me an email and we might publish a compendium. The goal is short (no longer than 500 words), evocative, comprehensive, no exaggerations, and verifiably accurate.
Here is my own attempt.
In 2019 or before, a US-funded biolab in Wuhan, China, one of some 120 in 30 countries, made a virus and inoculation based on an American recipe that leaked and spread, causing worry that US/UK officials would be blamed. They formulated a well-rehearsed fallback: lie about the lab origins and prepare the population for the antidote based on a new gene-editing technology that otherwise would never have been approved on grounds that it was too dangerous and not effective. That scheme could turn would-be villains into saviors.
That required buying time while preserving pre-leak immunity profiles of the population via lockdowns for nine months until the injection was put through perfunctory trials and available; hence the travel restrictions, stay-at-home orders, masks, distancing, and canceled events.
During this time there had to be mass censorship of people who caught on, a manufactured panic, widespread trauma, school closures, a removal of other therapeutic options, millions of business failures, a shutdown of the arts and religious practice, plus various technical manipulations along the way like redefining exposures as cases, running PCR tests at high cycle rates, and paying for death misclassifications. This was essentially cosplaying a level of severity that did not exist – despite inevitably rising seroprevalence and natural immunity – in order to ramp up demand for the incoming pharmaceutical product.
There was also a political coattail rider: infectious disease panic enabled a new experiment in mail-in ballots, encouraged by the CDC even before the lockdowns began, thus unleashing mass ballot fraud designed to defeat the rise of populism in all countries and creating conditions for closer citizen surveillance and digital identification systems necessitating mass data centers.
The scheme also required a printing/spending binge to paper over vast economic damage, policies that would hack off a third of the value of the dollar, leaving vast carnage, but permitting an indemnified pharmaceutical experiment on the whole population, meaning that mass injury and death would have no recourse in law. When the shot finally appeared, uptake was too low to create the expected profit windfall, plus government had a surplus it needed to dump before expiration...]]> Thu, 18 Jun 2026 15:40:50 -0400 The Big Picture of Extraordinary Evil in 428 Words Life seemed to be going along pretty normally when the third month of 2020 hit and all our lives, and the lives of billions around the world, were thrown into upheaval. We've spent the last six years trying t...]]> Life seemed to be going along pretty normally when the third month of 2020 hit and all our lives, and the lives of billions around the world, were thrown into upheaval. We've spent the last six years trying to figure it out and so have many others.
The revelations are flying fast and furious, so much that we can hardly keep up. We have meetings, groups, publications, phone calls, and share as many links and data points as we can. No matter what we do, the big story continues to be elusive.
There are two reasons for this. First, the national media does not care. It happened. It's over. We survived. Who cares? Second, the reality is literally incomprehensible. Too many data points. Too many institutions. Too many motivations. They all flew into motion at once. Separating prime from second movers is impossible.
Those who try to make sense of it all come across like conspiracy theorists at best and babbling lunatics at worst. I don't like to sound this way. But every time I try to present what I know in a calm, rational, wholly reasonable way, I sense that I'm not capturing the fullness of it all.
What I've attempted below is my best undertaking at reconstruction. It has no links so I invite you to use the AI tool on this website that has been trained by 4,000-plus site records and countless numbers of outside links.
If it sounds implausible, I can only assure you that it is not. You might know more than I do and could write something better. If so, drop me an email and we might publish a compendium. The goal is short (no longer than 500 words), evocative, comprehensive, no exaggerations, and verifiably accurate.
Here is my own attempt.
In 2019 or before, a US-funded biolab in Wuhan, China, one of some 120 in 30 countries, made a virus and inoculation based on an American recipe that leaked and spread, causing worry that US/UK officials would be blamed. They formulated a well-rehearsed fallback: lie about the lab origins and prepare the population for the antidote based on a new gene-editing technology that otherwise would never have been approved on grounds that it was too dangerous and not effective. That scheme could turn would-be villains into saviors.
That required buying time while preserving pre-leak immunity profiles of the population via lockdowns for nine months until the injection was put through perfunctory trials and available; hence the travel restrictions, stay-at-home orders, masks, distancing, and canceled events.
During this time there had to be mass censorship of people who caught on, a manufactured panic, widespread trauma, school closures, a removal of other therapeutic options, millions of business failures, a shutdown of the arts and religious practice, plus various technical manipulations along the way like redefining exposures as cases, running PCR tests at high cycle rates, and paying for death misclassifications. This was essentially cosplaying a level of severity that did not exist – despite inevitably rising seroprevalence and natural immunity – in order to ramp up demand for the incoming pharmaceutical product.
There was also a political coattail rider: infectious disease panic enabled a new experiment in mail-in ballots, encouraged by the CDC even before the lockdowns began, thus unleashing mass ballot fraud designed to defeat the rise of populism in all countries and creating conditions for closer citizen surveillance and digital identification systems necessitating mass data centers.
The scheme also required a printing/spending binge to paper over vast economic damage, policies that would hack off a third of the value of the dollar, leaving vast carnage, but permitting an indemnified pharmaceutical experiment on the whole population, meaning that mass injury and death would have no recourse in law. When the shot finally appeared, uptake was too low to create the expected profit windfall, plus government had a surplus it needed to dump before expiration...]]> Jeffrey A. Tucker 04:17 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 76 70978 A few days ago, I spent time with a remarkable group of people from many professions and backgrounds, the Brownstone Fellows and Scholars. Some were physicians, others were scientists, economists, historians, attorneys, writers, and scholars. They often disagreed, sometimes strongly. But as I listened, I noticed something rare these days: people felt comfortable asking questions without needing immediate answers.
That moment stayed with me after the gathering. On my flight home, I thought about why the atmosphere felt so refreshing. It was not because everyone was brilliant, though many were, or because they all agreed. In fact, it was the opposite. What stood out was their willingness to explore uncertainty without feeling threatened. No one rushed to settle debates, simplify complex topics, or force every discussion to a final answer.
This experience reminded me of a lesson I have learned many times in medicine. The most important questions often do not have easy answers. As I get older, I am less impressed by certainty and more by curiosity. Certainty can feel safe, but curiosity is what helps us grow. It keeps us learning, questioning, and most of all, humble.
Today, people often confuse certainty with wisdom. Confidence is rewarded in public discussions, on television, and on social media. The person who sounds most sure is often seen as the expert. But in my experience, confidence and wisdom do not always go together. Some of the wisest people I know are quick to admit what they do not know.
I have spent much of my adult life working in intensive care units. Critical care teaches lessons that no textbook can fully explain. At first, every physician thinks knowledge is the key to success. We study, memorize facts, and learn protocols. Knowledge is important, but medicine eventually teaches us something else: knowledge alone is not enough.
The ICU is a tough teacher. It shows us that people are more complex than any model or algorithm. Some patients arrive very sick and recover when we least expect it. Others seem stable but get worse. Every experienced ICU doctor has stories that stay with them for years, cases that seemed simple but were not, diagnoses that changed with new information, treatments that failed, and recoveries that seemed impossible.
When I started my career, I thought experience would eventually remove uncertainty. I believed that with enough years, I could predict outcomes more accurately. In some ways, this is true. Experience does improve judgment and helps us spot warning signs. But it also brings something else: humility.
The more years I spent in medicine, the more I saw how much we still do not know. Experience did not erase uncertainty; it showed me how often it remains. Good doctors learn to make decisions even when they do not have all the facts. They act with confidence but admit they might not see the whole picture. This balance is one of the most important and least recognized parts of medicine.
I often tell medical students that medicine is not about certainty, but about probability. We look at evidence, weigh risks, and make the best choices we can with what we know. Patients sometimes think doctors are more certain than we really are. In truth, much of medicine is about working in the gray areas. The real challenge is not getting rid of uncertainty but learning to work with it.
Over time, I have grown wary of people who seem completely certain about complex topics. This does not mean they are always wrong, but life has taught me to be careful when someone acts as if a complicated issue is fully settled. Reality is rarely that simple, and people are not either.
One of the most valuable lessons medicine teaches is something that sounds counterintuitive. I am specifically talking about learning that being wrong can be a privilege, even if it sounds surprising. Otherwise, a clinician is either fooling himself/herself or attempting to fool everyone else...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-courage-to-remain-uncertain/ A few days ago, I spent time with a remarkable group of people from many professions and backgrounds, the Brownstone Fellows and Scholars. Some were physicians, others were scientists, economists, historians, attorneys, writers, and scholars. They often disagreed, sometimes strongly. But as I listened, I noticed something rare these days: people felt comfortable asking questions without needing immediate answers.
That moment stayed with me after the gathering. On my flight home, I thought about why the atmosphere felt so refreshing. It was not because everyone was brilliant, though many were, or because they all agreed. In fact, it was the opposite. What stood out was their willingness to explore uncertainty without feeling threatened. No one rushed to settle debates, simplify complex topics, or force every discussion to a final answer.
This experience reminded me of a lesson I have learned many times in medicine. The most important questions often do not have easy answers. As I get older, I am less impressed by certainty and more by curiosity. Certainty can feel safe, but curiosity is what helps us grow. It keeps us learning, questioning, and most of all, humble.
Today, people often confuse certainty with wisdom. Confidence is rewarded in public discussions, on television, and on social media. The person who sounds most sure is often seen as the expert. But in my experience, confidence and wisdom do not always go together. Some of the wisest people I know are quick to admit what they do not know.
I have spent much of my adult life working in intensive care units. Critical care teaches lessons that no textbook can fully explain. At first, every physician thinks knowledge is the key to success. We study, memorize facts, and learn protocols. Knowledge is important, but medicine eventually teaches us something else: knowledge alone is not enough.
The ICU is a tough teacher. It shows us that people are more complex than any model or algorithm. Some patients arrive very sick and recover when we least expect it. Others seem stable but get worse. Every experienced ICU doctor has stories that stay with them for years, cases that seemed simple but were not, diagnoses that changed with new information, treatments that failed, and recoveries that seemed impossible.
When I started my career, I thought experience would eventually remove uncertainty. I believed that with enough years, I could predict outcomes more accurately. In some ways, this is true. Experience does improve judgment and helps us spot warning signs. But it also brings something else: humility.
The more years I spent in medicine, the more I saw how much we still do not know. Experience did not erase uncertainty; it showed me how often it remains. Good doctors learn to make decisions even when they do not have all the facts. They act with confidence but admit they might not see the whole picture. This balance is one of the most important and least recognized parts of medicine.
I often tell medical students that medicine is not about certainty, but about probability. We look at evidence, weigh risks, and make the best choices we can with what we know. Patients sometimes think doctors are more certain than we really are. In truth, much of medicine is about working in the gray areas. The real challenge is not getting rid of uncertainty but learning to work with it.
Over time, I have grown wary of people who seem completely certain about complex topics. This does not mean they are always wrong, but life has taught me to be careful when someone acts as if a complicated issue is fully settled. Reality is rarely that simple, and people are not either.
One of the most valuable lessons medicine teaches is something that sounds counterintuitive. I am specifically talking about learning that being wrong can be a privilege, even if it sounds surprising. Otherwise, a clinician is either fooling himself/herself or attempting to fool everyone else...]]> Thu, 18 Jun 2026 07:07:42 -0400 The Courage to Remain Uncertain A Room Full of Questions Medicine's Long Lesson in Humility The Privilege of Being Wrong The Modern Obsession with Certainty Curiosity as a Virtue Why Uncertainty Matters The Questions That Remain A few days ago, I spent time with a remarkable group of people from many professions and backgrounds, the Brownstone Fellows and Scholars. Some were physicians, others were scientists, economists, historians, atto...]]> A few days ago, I spent time with a remarkable group of people from many professions and backgrounds, the Brownstone Fellows and Scholars. Some were physicians, others were scientists, economists, historians, attorneys, writers, and scholars. They often disagreed, sometimes strongly. But as I listened, I noticed something rare these days: people felt comfortable asking questions without needing immediate answers.
That moment stayed with me after the gathering. On my flight home, I thought about why the atmosphere felt so refreshing. It was not because everyone was brilliant, though many were, or because they all agreed. In fact, it was the opposite. What stood out was their willingness to explore uncertainty without feeling threatened. No one rushed to settle debates, simplify complex topics, or force every discussion to a final answer.
This experience reminded me of a lesson I have learned many times in medicine. The most important questions often do not have easy answers. As I get older, I am less impressed by certainty and more by curiosity. Certainty can feel safe, but curiosity is what helps us grow. It keeps us learning, questioning, and most of all, humble.
Today, people often confuse certainty with wisdom. Confidence is rewarded in public discussions, on television, and on social media. The person who sounds most sure is often seen as the expert. But in my experience, confidence and wisdom do not always go together. Some of the wisest people I know are quick to admit what they do not know.
I have spent much of my adult life working in intensive care units. Critical care teaches lessons that no textbook can fully explain. At first, every physician thinks knowledge is the key to success. We study, memorize facts, and learn protocols. Knowledge is important, but medicine eventually teaches us something else: knowledge alone is not enough.
The ICU is a tough teacher. It shows us that people are more complex than any model or algorithm. Some patients arrive very sick and recover when we least expect it. Others seem stable but get worse. Every experienced ICU doctor has stories that stay with them for years, cases that seemed simple but were not, diagnoses that changed with new information, treatments that failed, and recoveries that seemed impossible.
When I started my career, I thought experience would eventually remove uncertainty. I believed that with enough years, I could predict outcomes more accurately. In some ways, this is true. Experience does improve judgment and helps us spot warning signs. But it also brings something else: humility.
The more years I spent in medicine, the more I saw how much we still do not know. Experience did not erase uncertainty; it showed me how often it remains. Good doctors learn to make decisions even when they do not have all the facts. They act with confidence but admit they might not see the whole picture. This balance is one of the most important and least recognized parts of medicine.
I often tell medical students that medicine is not about certainty, but about probability. We look at evidence, weigh risks, and make the best choices we can with what we know. Patients sometimes think doctors are more certain than we really are. In truth, much of medicine is about working in the gray areas. The real challenge is not getting rid of uncertainty but learning to work with it.
Over time, I have grown wary of people who seem completely certain about complex topics. This does not mean they are always wrong, but life has taught me to be careful when someone acts as if a complicated issue is fully settled. Reality is rarely that simple, and people are not either.
One of the most valuable lessons medicine teaches is something that sounds counterintuitive. I am specifically talking about learning that being wrong can be a privilege, even if it sounds surprising. Otherwise, a clinician is either fooling himself/herself or attempting to fool everyone else...]]> Joseph Varon 09:13 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 75 70943 Last week, Dr. Steven Quay published recommendations to improve the integrity of the nation's biosecurity research following the Covid-19 crisis. Dr. Quay is a prominent figure in the resistance to the Covid-19 origins coverup in addition to his medical and academic pedigrees.
His recommendations complement those of James Erdman, an Office of the Director of National Intelligence and CIA professional, who articulated before Congress in April that the government's biosecurity apparatus is convoluted, clumsy, and unaccountable. I echoed similar comments in a prior piece from my perspective as a military officer also involved in countering the coverup. In the vein of Dr. Quay and Mr. Erdman's recommendations, I offer further comments towards America's Covid-19 post-mortem.
Dr. Quay makes five recommendations, two of which I'll expand upon.
1. Review high-risk research through a federal "Life Sciences Research Security Board." Any such board should include military officers (non-doctors) who are familiar with the overarching threat picture to the United States (to the highest classification), especially if the researchers propose to do this research for national security reasons, which is commonly the pitch. Uniformed officers can provide a degree of measure to the rationale for the research as compared to the entire threat picture. In the case of Covid, they would have assessed whether it was worth applying resources to risky research like that of the DEFUSE proposal in lieu of resourcing capabilities to counter China's anti-access/area denial capability so the military can actually operate inside the first island chain in the Pacific. We do not need a SARS-related-CoV vaccine for troops in the western Pacific if we cannot even get our troops inside the threat ring to fight China.
In hindsight, placing biodefense beneath NIAID in the early 2000s isolated it from uniformed military rigor, realism, and accountability. This board representation is probably the Joint Staff J3 himself or the J3 staff.
Before a new board is considered, perhaps placing biodefense back inside the military with military officer corps (not civilian DOW employee) oversight will be a more effective instrument. A comparable matter is that of autonomous weapons, which must be approved through the chain of command and ultimately by the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff before operational use is authorized. This process ensures that uniformed officers are the decision-makers and also that there is ultimately a single decision-maker who owns the decision, owns the risk, is responsible for execution, and is accountable if there are screwups.
Like the Covid-19 response, where there is no single individual decision-maker responsible for the response (in violation of the nation's principle of Unity of Command and every other intelligence and military operation that the United States conducts), a board cannot be held accountable if there are mistakes made with the approved research. This especially applies if the intelligence community intends to leverage foreign research for collections, which again raises the appropriate resourcing questions, as well as induces operational risk to assess (in the case of Covid, the risk being that the IC contributes to the coverup possibly because it is so intertwined with the research it leveraged but failed to supervise).
2. Build targeted surveillance where risk concentrates: airports, seaports, city wastewater systems, live-animal markets, and communities near high-containment laboratories. I do not disagree with this point. I do disagree with the biosecurity community's near-obsession with doing surveillance everywhere. We do not need to know everywhere the pathogen is. We need to know how to treat it. The problem is not that it exists and spreads. The problem is that it can potentially make some people sick. Spread is not a tangible thing and therefore cannot be a tangible threat...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/finding-american-integrity/ Last week, Dr. Steven Quay published recommendations to improve the integrity of the nation's biosecurity research following the Covid-19 crisis. Dr. Quay is a prominent figure in the resistance to the Covid-19 origins coverup in addition to his medical and academic pedigrees.
His recommendations complement those of James Erdman, an Office of the Director of National Intelligence and CIA professional, who articulated before Congress in April that the government's biosecurity apparatus is convoluted, clumsy, and unaccountable. I echoed similar comments in a prior piece from my perspective as a military officer also involved in countering the coverup. In the vein of Dr. Quay and Mr. Erdman's recommendations, I offer further comments towards America's Covid-19 post-mortem.
Dr. Quay makes five recommendations, two of which I'll expand upon.
1. Review high-risk research through a federal "Life Sciences Research Security Board." Any such board should include military officers (non-doctors) who are familiar with the overarching threat picture to the United States (to the highest classification), especially if the researchers propose to do this research for national security reasons, which is commonly the pitch. Uniformed officers can provide a degree of measure to the rationale for the research as compared to the entire threat picture. In the case of Covid, they would have assessed whether it was worth applying resources to risky research like that of the DEFUSE proposal in lieu of resourcing capabilities to counter China's anti-access/area denial capability so the military can actually operate inside the first island chain in the Pacific. We do not need a SARS-related-CoV vaccine for troops in the western Pacific if we cannot even get our troops inside the threat ring to fight China.
In hindsight, placing biodefense beneath NIAID in the early 2000s isolated it from uniformed military rigor, realism, and accountability. This board representation is probably the Joint Staff J3 himself or the J3 staff.
Before a new board is considered, perhaps placing biodefense back inside the military with military officer corps (not civilian DOW employee) oversight will be a more effective instrument. A comparable matter is that of autonomous weapons, which must be approved through the chain of command and ultimately by the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff before operational use is authorized. This process ensures that uniformed officers are the decision-makers and also that there is ultimately a single decision-maker who owns the decision, owns the risk, is responsible for execution, and is accountable if there are screwups.
Like the Covid-19 response, where there is no single individual decision-maker responsible for the response (in violation of the nation's principle of Unity of Command and every other intelligence and military operation that the United States conducts), a board cannot be held accountable if there are mistakes made with the approved research. This especially applies if the intelligence community intends to leverage foreign research for collections, which again raises the appropriate resourcing questions, as well as induces operational risk to assess (in the case of Covid, the risk being that the IC contributes to the coverup possibly because it is so intertwined with the research it leveraged but failed to supervise).
2. Build targeted surveillance where risk concentrates: airports, seaports, city wastewater systems, live-animal markets, and communities near high-containment laboratories. I do not disagree with this point. I do disagree with the biosecurity community's near-obsession with doing surveillance everywhere. We do not need to know everywhere the pathogen is. We need to know how to treat it. The problem is not that it exists and spreads. The problem is that it can potentially make some people sick. Spread is not a tangible thing and therefore cannot be a tangible threat...]]> Wed, 17 Jun 2026 07:00:00 -0400 Finding American Integrity Last week, Dr. Steven Quay published recommendations to improve the integrity of the nation's biosecurity research following the Covid-19 crisis. Dr. Quay is a prominent figure in the resistance to the Covid-19 orig...]]> Last week, Dr. Steven Quay published recommendations to improve the integrity of the nation's biosecurity research following the Covid-19 crisis. Dr. Quay is a prominent figure in the resistance to the Covid-19 origins coverup in addition to his medical and academic pedigrees.
His recommendations complement those of James Erdman, an Office of the Director of National Intelligence and CIA professional, who articulated before Congress in April that the government's biosecurity apparatus is convoluted, clumsy, and unaccountable. I echoed similar comments in a prior piece from my perspective as a military officer also involved in countering the coverup. In the vein of Dr. Quay and Mr. Erdman's recommendations, I offer further comments towards America's Covid-19 post-mortem.
Dr. Quay makes five recommendations, two of which I'll expand upon.
1. Review high-risk research through a federal "Life Sciences Research Security Board." Any such board should include military officers (non-doctors) who are familiar with the overarching threat picture to the United States (to the highest classification), especially if the researchers propose to do this research for national security reasons, which is commonly the pitch. Uniformed officers can provide a degree of measure to the rationale for the research as compared to the entire threat picture. In the case of Covid, they would have assessed whether it was worth applying resources to risky research like that of the DEFUSE proposal in lieu of resourcing capabilities to counter China's anti-access/area denial capability so the military can actually operate inside the first island chain in the Pacific. We do not need a SARS-related-CoV vaccine for troops in the western Pacific if we cannot even get our troops inside the threat ring to fight China.
In hindsight, placing biodefense beneath NIAID in the early 2000s isolated it from uniformed military rigor, realism, and accountability. This board representation is probably the Joint Staff J3 himself or the J3 staff.
Before a new board is considered, perhaps placing biodefense back inside the military with military officer corps (not civilian DOW employee) oversight will be a more effective instrument. A comparable matter is that of autonomous weapons, which must be approved through the chain of command and ultimately by the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff before operational use is authorized. This process ensures that uniformed officers are the decision-makers and also that there is ultimately a single decision-maker who owns the decision, owns the risk, is responsible for execution, and is accountable if there are screwups.
Like the Covid-19 response, where there is no single individual decision-maker responsible for the response (in violation of the nation's principle of Unity of Command and every other intelligence and military operation that the United States conducts), a board cannot be held accountable if there are mistakes made with the approved research. This especially applies if the intelligence community intends to leverage foreign research for collections, which again raises the appropriate resourcing questions, as well as induces operational risk to assess (in the case of Covid, the risk being that the IC contributes to the coverup possibly because it is so intertwined with the research it leveraged but failed to supervise).
2. Build targeted surveillance where risk concentrates: airports, seaports, city wastewater systems, live-animal markets, and communities near high-containment laboratories. I do not disagree with this point. I do disagree with the biosecurity community's near-obsession with doing surveillance everywhere. We do not need to know everywhere the pathogen is. We need to know how to treat it. The problem is not that it exists and spreads. The problem is that it can potentially make some people sick. Spread is not a tangible thing and therefore cannot be a tangible threat...]]> Joe Murphy 11:31 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 74 70939 In our enlightened age the public seems tirelessly bombarded with warnings of existential threat from infectious disease. Another distant outbreak is spreading, this time it could be Disease X! "…and there is no vaccine …!" How, one might ask, is our species still extant?
A few decades ago, life was less torn by impending doom. Public health officials were investigating diarrhoea outbreaks linked to the local café. The Woodstock festival happened during the last large influenza pandemic, and no one really noticed, let alone wore a mask. They just listened to the music, lived as their ancestors had, and somehow managed to expand the species.
Medical technology and biotech innovation have blossomed since Woodstock. If you had a heart attack in the 1960s, you got some morphine for pain and a firm mattress, a bit of nitroglycerin under the tongue or some basic drugs to steady an erratic heartbeat. Now you will be rushed into a maze of tubes and monitors, clot-dissolving drugs and pacing wires, multiple modes of imaging followed perhaps by rapid surgery to remove a persisting blockage. Far fewer people die; it's all good and considered worth the money.
The world of infectious diseases is very different. It faces an intrinsic market failure. While an increasingly old and fat population ensures a growing cardiac disease market, infectious diseases are on an inexorable decline. Biotech innovation has churned out all manner of new tests to allow us to distinguish pathogens, strains of pathogens, and variants of strains, but from a declining background of illness. Germs develop resistance but we keep developing new antibiotics to replace those failing, imperfectly but sufficient to maintain the decline.
Vaccine development in this context is a bright spot amidst a dismal outlook – the golden egg that can be sold to the healthy rather than a declining market of the sick. Modified-RNA genetic therapeutics, reclassified as vaccines, now allow companies to virtually print new vaccines in months. But it's still necessary to convince people who are under no imminent threat to become consumers.
Additionally, while some vaccines such as those for measles can effectively reduce circulation of pathogens, most mortality decline even from measles occurred before the availability of vaccines for these "vaccine-preventable diseases." Nutrition, sanitation, and better living conditions removed up to 98% of measles deaths in wealthy countries. The marketing term 'vaccine preventable diseases' has helped, as has sponsorship of medical colleges, but the public is less readily bought than doctors and are increasingly aware that former scourges such as plague, typhus, and scarlet fever, for which no vaccines exist, have declined at much the same rate.
Vaccines for the classic vaccine-preventable diseases are also mostly beyond the 15-year window at which intellectual property commonly expires and potential for return on investment declines accordingly. This creates a challenge. Companies must replace existing vaccines with new technologies such as modRNA and claim they are somehow better, or find new diseases.
History has shown that very little is beyond the ability of humans to adapt. As Covid-19 further demonstrated, it is fear of infectious disease that matters – you don't need bodies in the street. So, you don't need bad new diseases, which would be difficult, but just stuff the public has never paid attention to before.
Locking down young and middle-aged people and wrecking their businesses, then coercing vaccination as a way back to 'freedom,' would have been impossible at the time of Woodstock in 1969, or even in 1999. It is too obviously egregiously fascist, and people then still retained memories of mid-20 century Europe.
The SARS outbreak in 2003 changed things, kindling possibilities for investment, and a lot of legwork went into behavioural science techniques afterward. Prepping of media and the public im...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-infectious-disease-frenzy/ In our enlightened age the public seems tirelessly bombarded with warnings of existential threat from infectious disease. Another distant outbreak is spreading, this time it could be Disease X! "…and there is no vaccine …!" How, one might ask, is our species still extant?
A few decades ago, life was less torn by impending doom. Public health officials were investigating diarrhoea outbreaks linked to the local café. The Woodstock festival happened during the last large influenza pandemic, and no one really noticed, let alone wore a mask. They just listened to the music, lived as their ancestors had, and somehow managed to expand the species.
Medical technology and biotech innovation have blossomed since Woodstock. If you had a heart attack in the 1960s, you got some morphine for pain and a firm mattress, a bit of nitroglycerin under the tongue or some basic drugs to steady an erratic heartbeat. Now you will be rushed into a maze of tubes and monitors, clot-dissolving drugs and pacing wires, multiple modes of imaging followed perhaps by rapid surgery to remove a persisting blockage. Far fewer people die; it's all good and considered worth the money.
The world of infectious diseases is very different. It faces an intrinsic market failure. While an increasingly old and fat population ensures a growing cardiac disease market, infectious diseases are on an inexorable decline. Biotech innovation has churned out all manner of new tests to allow us to distinguish pathogens, strains of pathogens, and variants of strains, but from a declining background of illness. Germs develop resistance but we keep developing new antibiotics to replace those failing, imperfectly but sufficient to maintain the decline.
Vaccine development in this context is a bright spot amidst a dismal outlook – the golden egg that can be sold to the healthy rather than a declining market of the sick. Modified-RNA genetic therapeutics, reclassified as vaccines, now allow companies to virtually print new vaccines in months. But it's still necessary to convince people who are under no imminent threat to become consumers.
Additionally, while some vaccines such as those for measles can effectively reduce circulation of pathogens, most mortality decline even from measles occurred before the availability of vaccines for these "vaccine-preventable diseases." Nutrition, sanitation, and better living conditions removed up to 98% of measles deaths in wealthy countries. The marketing term 'vaccine preventable diseases' has helped, as has sponsorship of medical colleges, but the public is less readily bought than doctors and are increasingly aware that former scourges such as plague, typhus, and scarlet fever, for which no vaccines exist, have declined at much the same rate.
Vaccines for the classic vaccine-preventable diseases are also mostly beyond the 15-year window at which intellectual property commonly expires and potential for return on investment declines accordingly. This creates a challenge. Companies must replace existing vaccines with new technologies such as modRNA and claim they are somehow better, or find new diseases.
History has shown that very little is beyond the ability of humans to adapt. As Covid-19 further demonstrated, it is fear of infectious disease that matters – you don't need bodies in the street. So, you don't need bad new diseases, which would be difficult, but just stuff the public has never paid attention to before.
Locking down young and middle-aged people and wrecking their businesses, then coercing vaccination as a way back to 'freedom,' would have been impossible at the time of Woodstock in 1969, or even in 1999. It is too obviously egregiously fascist, and people then still retained memories of mid-20 century Europe.
The SARS outbreak in 2003 changed things, kindling possibilities for investment, and a lot of legwork went into behavioural science techniques afterward. Prepping of media and the public im...]]> Tue, 16 Jun 2026 07:28:52 -0400 The Infectious Disease Frenzy In our enlightened age the public seems tirelessly bombarded with warnings of existential threat from infectious disease. Another distant outbreak is spreading, this time it could be Disease X! "…and there is no vac...]]> In our enlightened age the public seems tirelessly bombarded with warnings of existential threat from infectious disease. Another distant outbreak is spreading, this time it could be Disease X! "…and there is no vaccine …!" How, one might ask, is our species still extant?
A few decades ago, life was less torn by impending doom. Public health officials were investigating diarrhoea outbreaks linked to the local café. The Woodstock festival happened during the last large influenza pandemic, and no one really noticed, let alone wore a mask. They just listened to the music, lived as their ancestors had, and somehow managed to expand the species.
Medical technology and biotech innovation have blossomed since Woodstock. If you had a heart attack in the 1960s, you got some morphine for pain and a firm mattress, a bit of nitroglycerin under the tongue or some basic drugs to steady an erratic heartbeat. Now you will be rushed into a maze of tubes and monitors, clot-dissolving drugs and pacing wires, multiple modes of imaging followed perhaps by rapid surgery to remove a persisting blockage. Far fewer people die; it's all good and considered worth the money.
The world of infectious diseases is very different. It faces an intrinsic market failure. While an increasingly old and fat population ensures a growing cardiac disease market, infectious diseases are on an inexorable decline. Biotech innovation has churned out all manner of new tests to allow us to distinguish pathogens, strains of pathogens, and variants of strains, but from a declining background of illness. Germs develop resistance but we keep developing new antibiotics to replace those failing, imperfectly but sufficient to maintain the decline.
Vaccine development in this context is a bright spot amidst a dismal outlook – the golden egg that can be sold to the healthy rather than a declining market of the sick. Modified-RNA genetic therapeutics, reclassified as vaccines, now allow companies to virtually print new vaccines in months. But it's still necessary to convince people who are under no imminent threat to become consumers.
Additionally, while some vaccines such as those for measles can effectively reduce circulation of pathogens, most mortality decline even from measles occurred before the availability of vaccines for these "vaccine-preventable diseases." Nutrition, sanitation, and better living conditions removed up to 98% of measles deaths in wealthy countries. The marketing term 'vaccine preventable diseases' has helped, as has sponsorship of medical colleges, but the public is less readily bought than doctors and are increasingly aware that former scourges such as plague, typhus, and scarlet fever, for which no vaccines exist, have declined at much the same rate.
Vaccines for the classic vaccine-preventable diseases are also mostly beyond the 15-year window at which intellectual property commonly expires and potential for return on investment declines accordingly. This creates a challenge. Companies must replace existing vaccines with new technologies such as modRNA and claim they are somehow better, or find new diseases.
History has shown that very little is beyond the ability of humans to adapt. As Covid-19 further demonstrated, it is fear of infectious disease that matters – you don't need bodies in the street. So, you don't need bad new diseases, which would be difficult, but just stuff the public has never paid attention to before.
Locking down young and middle-aged people and wrecking their businesses, then coercing vaccination as a way back to 'freedom,' would have been impossible at the time of Woodstock in 1969, or even in 1999. It is too obviously egregiously fascist, and people then still retained memories of mid-20 century Europe.
The SARS outbreak in 2003 changed things, kindling possibilities for investment, and a lot of legwork went into behavioural science techniques afterward. Prepping of media and the public im...]]> David Bell 07:46 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 73 61958
For decades, vaccines have been treated as the sacred cow of modern medicine. I was taught that they were the holy grail. To question them was heresy. To raise concerns about safety was to risk professional exile.
Aaron Siri makes it clear in Vaccines, Amen: The Religion of Vaccines that the story we've been told about vaccine science rests far more on belief than proof.
"No child should be sacrificed on the altar of the religion of vaccines," Siri writes, as he turns his focus to America's overcrowded childhood immunisation schedule.
I assumed little in this book would surprise me. I've spent years reporting on drug safety, regulatory capture, and the corruption of science. But Siri showed me how wrong I was.
Siri is not a doctor or a scientist. He is an attorney, and this, he says, is his advantage. In court, rhetoric won't save you. Evidence does. As he puts it, he doesn't get to say "trust me" the way many doctors do. "I need to prove claims with real data."
And he does.
He has lived this work for years — representing vaccine-injured families, fighting Freedom of Information battles, and suing government agencies. The book reads like a cross-examination — precise, uncompromising, and hard to dismiss.
One of Siri's sharpest points is also the simplest. He asks, who bears the burden of proof?
"The onus is not on you to show that a product someone wants to inject into you or your baby is unsafe," he writes. "The onus is on that person to prove to you it is safe. It is their burden."
That principle should be uncontroversial, yet vaccine policy often flips it. Parents who ask questions are treated as obstacles, even threats. Siri's argument is basic: the burden rests with the party making the claim.
He traces that inversion to 1986, when Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, insulating vaccine manufacturers from liability.
I've reported on how this shifted incentives away from proving safety and towards expanding the schedule without fear of legal consequence. Once accountability was removed, the obligation to rigorously demonstrate safety eroded alongside it.
Siri dismantles the myth of placebo-controlled vaccine trials in painstaking detail. A placebo, he writes, should be inert — saline, or something biologically inactive.
And yet, as he argues, "when it comes to children, every vaccine on the schedule was tested against a placebo control group, right? Sadly, that virtually never occurs."
Instead, many vaccines were tested against other vaccines, or against aluminium adjuvants — substances specifically designed to provoke an immune response.
Siri calls this what it is: a corruption of science. Without a true placebo, you cannot reliably determine whether adverse events are caused by the vaccine itself.
I've reported on this same sleight of hand in the Gardasil trials, where young women were told they received a saline placebo when, in fact, they were given aluminium adjuvant — an active comparator with known biological effects.
There's another claim that comes up constantly in medicine — and in the interest of full disclosure, I've said versions of it myself.
People don't value vaccines because they don't see the diseases anymore. Measles, diphtheria, whooping cough — gone. "The evidence is clear," I used to say, "and we can thank vaccines for that."
Reading Siri's chapters on this, I felt a growing discomfort.
He takes the belief apart slowly, drawing on historical mortality data I hadn't previously sat with in any depth. What struck me wasn't a single chart, but the consistency of the pattern.
For measles, deaths had already fallen dramatically before a vaccine was introduced. The same was true for diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis. In each case, mortality had declined by more than 90% prior to vaccination.
What changed during that period was sanitation, clean water, nutrition, housing, and advances in acute medical care. Deaths from infectious disease fel...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/aaron-siris-book-vaccines-amen/
For decades, vaccines have been treated as the sacred cow of modern medicine. I was taught that they were the holy grail. To question them was heresy. To raise concerns about safety was to risk professional exile.
Aaron Siri makes it clear in Vaccines, Amen: The Religion of Vaccines that the story we've been told about vaccine science rests far more on belief than proof.
"No child should be sacrificed on the altar of the religion of vaccines," Siri writes, as he turns his focus to America's overcrowded childhood immunisation schedule.
I assumed little in this book would surprise me. I've spent years reporting on drug safety, regulatory capture, and the corruption of science. But Siri showed me how wrong I was.
Siri is not a doctor or a scientist. He is an attorney, and this, he says, is his advantage. In court, rhetoric won't save you. Evidence does. As he puts it, he doesn't get to say "trust me" the way many doctors do. "I need to prove claims with real data."
And he does.
He has lived this work for years — representing vaccine-injured families, fighting Freedom of Information battles, and suing government agencies. The book reads like a cross-examination — precise, uncompromising, and hard to dismiss.
One of Siri's sharpest points is also the simplest. He asks, who bears the burden of proof?
"The onus is not on you to show that a product someone wants to inject into you or your baby is unsafe," he writes. "The onus is on that person to prove to you it is safe. It is their burden."
That principle should be uncontroversial, yet vaccine policy often flips it. Parents who ask questions are treated as obstacles, even threats. Siri's argument is basic: the burden rests with the party making the claim.
He traces that inversion to 1986, when Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, insulating vaccine manufacturers from liability.
I've reported on how this shifted incentives away from proving safety and towards expanding the schedule without fear of legal consequence. Once accountability was removed, the obligation to rigorously demonstrate safety eroded alongside it.
Siri dismantles the myth of placebo-controlled vaccine trials in painstaking detail. A placebo, he writes, should be inert — saline, or something biologically inactive.
And yet, as he argues, "when it comes to children, every vaccine on the schedule was tested against a placebo control group, right? Sadly, that virtually never occurs."
Instead, many vaccines were tested against other vaccines, or against aluminium adjuvants — substances specifically designed to provoke an immune response.
Siri calls this what it is: a corruption of science. Without a true placebo, you cannot reliably determine whether adverse events are caused by the vaccine itself.
I've reported on this same sleight of hand in the Gardasil trials, where young women were told they received a saline placebo when, in fact, they were given aluminium adjuvant — an active comparator with known biological effects.
There's another claim that comes up constantly in medicine — and in the interest of full disclosure, I've said versions of it myself.
People don't value vaccines because they don't see the diseases anymore. Measles, diphtheria, whooping cough — gone. "The evidence is clear," I used to say, "and we can thank vaccines for that."
Reading Siri's chapters on this, I felt a growing discomfort.
He takes the belief apart slowly, drawing on historical mortality data I hadn't previously sat with in any depth. What struck me wasn't a single chart, but the consistency of the pattern.
For measles, deaths had already fallen dramatically before a vaccine was introduced. The same was true for diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis. In each case, mortality had declined by more than 90% prior to vaccination.
What changed during that period was sanitation, clean water, nutrition, housing, and advances in acute medical care. Deaths from infectious disease fel...]]> Mon, 15 Jun 2026 07:19:17 -0400 Aaron Siri's Book: Vaccines, Amen The Burden of Proof The Placebo Problem Crediting Vaccines for Miracles What about Polio? The Altruism Claim Baptised Science and Buried Evidence When Evidence Becomes Inconvenient Sure, There Were Also Moments of Anger "Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism" The Bigger Picture
For decades, vaccines have been treated as the sacred cow of modern medicine. I was taught that they were the holy grail. To question them was heresy. To raise concerns about safety was to risk professional ex...]]>
For decades, vaccines have been treated as the sacred cow of modern medicine. I was taught that they were the holy grail. To question them was heresy. To raise concerns about safety was to risk professional exile.
Aaron Siri makes it clear in Vaccines, Amen: The Religion of Vaccines that the story we've been told about vaccine science rests far more on belief than proof.
"No child should be sacrificed on the altar of the religion of vaccines," Siri writes, as he turns his focus to America's overcrowded childhood immunisation schedule.
I assumed little in this book would surprise me. I've spent years reporting on drug safety, regulatory capture, and the corruption of science. But Siri showed me how wrong I was.
Siri is not a doctor or a scientist. He is an attorney, and this, he says, is his advantage. In court, rhetoric won't save you. Evidence does. As he puts it, he doesn't get to say "trust me" the way many doctors do. "I need to prove claims with real data."
And he does.
He has lived this work for years — representing vaccine-injured families, fighting Freedom of Information battles, and suing government agencies. The book reads like a cross-examination — precise, uncompromising, and hard to dismiss.
One of Siri's sharpest points is also the simplest. He asks, who bears the burden of proof?
"The onus is not on you to show that a product someone wants to inject into you or your baby is unsafe," he writes. "The onus is on that person to prove to you it is safe. It is their burden."
That principle should be uncontroversial, yet vaccine policy often flips it. Parents who ask questions are treated as obstacles, even threats. Siri's argument is basic: the burden rests with the party making the claim.
He traces that inversion to 1986, when Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, insulating vaccine manufacturers from liability.
I've reported on how this shifted incentives away from proving safety and towards expanding the schedule without fear of legal consequence. Once accountability was removed, the obligation to rigorously demonstrate safety eroded alongside it.
Siri dismantles the myth of placebo-controlled vaccine trials in painstaking detail. A placebo, he writes, should be inert — saline, or something biologically inactive.
And yet, as he argues, "when it comes to children, every vaccine on the schedule was tested against a placebo control group, right? Sadly, that virtually never occurs."
Instead, many vaccines were tested against other vaccines, or against aluminium adjuvants — substances specifically designed to provoke an immune response.
Siri calls this what it is: a corruption of science. Without a true placebo, you cannot reliably determine whether adverse events are caused by the vaccine itself.
I've reported on this same sleight of hand in the Gardasil trials, where young women were told they received a saline placebo when, in fact, they were given aluminium adjuvant — an active comparator with known biological effects.
There's another claim that comes up constantly in medicine — and in the interest of full disclosure, I've said versions of it myself.
People don't value vaccines because they don't see the diseases anymore. Measles, diphtheria, whooping cough — gone. "The evidence is clear," I used to say, "and we can thank vaccines for that."
Reading Siri's chapters on this, I felt a growing discomfort.
He takes the belief apart slowly, drawing on historical mortality data I hadn't previously sat with in any depth. What struck me wasn't a single chart, but the consistency of the pattern.
For measles, deaths had already fallen dramatically before a vaccine was introduced. The same was true for diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis. In each case, mortality had declined by more than 90% prior to vaccination.
What changed during that period was sanitation, clean water, nutrition, housing, and advances in acute medical care. Deaths from infectious disease fel...]]> Maryanne Demasi 12:47 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 72 70749 There are people who enter your life not by chance, but by purpose — who arrive precisely when the world feels most confusing and frightening, and who hand you the courage to build something you know will help other families who feel as you do during tumultuous and uncertain times. Warner Mendenhall was that person for me, and for so many others who had the privilege of knowing him. He passed away on June 8, 2026 from complications related to his advanced colon cancer.
I came to know Warner in 2021 through fellow advocates in the health freedom movement at a time when college students across the country were being stripped of their right to informed consent. Covid-19 vaccine mandates were descending on campuses with little scientific justification, and families were left uncertain about whether their students could return to in-person learning without being coerced to take these experimental medical treatments.
From the earliest days of the pandemic, Warner could see the writing on the wall before many others could. He had already built a successful law firm defending individual freedom and protecting constitutional rights for clients who had nowhere else to turn. He took great pride in helping those who felt hopeless, and he built a legacy on it which will carry on in his name.
At the time that I met Warner, he was one of the only attorneys in the country who had filed lawsuits against four Ohio colleges for their sweeping and unjustified pandemic policies — policies that were discriminatory, disruptive, and wrong on every level. In our heads and in our hearts, many of us knew these policies were wrong, but when we found one of the only lawyers fighting them, it gave us back the hope we had lost.
To meet Warner was to be immediately disarmed. Outwardly, he was jovial, kind, and gentle — extraordinarily well-spoken on individual freedoms and the law, yet always warm and approachable. He had the rare gift of making you feel that your fight mattered as much to him as it did to you. But beneath that warmth lived a fierce and unyielding advocate, a man with the strongest moral compass I have ever encountered. He had an acute sense of right and wrong, and once he decided something was unjust, nothing could stop him from working towards making it right.
What made Warner truly extraordinary, beyond his legal brilliance, was his boundless generosity of spirit. He spent countless hours on Clubhouse and X Spaces, speaking with me as co-founder of No College Mandates, with frightened parents, confused students, and overwhelmed professors — all of us trying to make sense of policies that simply made no sense. He never accepted a dollar for that time. He wouldn't have. He was there because he believed it was right to be there, and that was enough for him.
I remember so clearly how many of us — myself especially — feared stepping forward to challenge academic institutions. We were neither scientists nor public health experts, but it didn't matter. It was Warner who told us, plainly and with absolute conviction, to rise to the challenge. He reminded us that if the policies were not backed by reliable safety and efficacy data — and no college has ever provided such data, then or now — we had not only the right but the responsibility to push back. His words gave so many of us wings. He gave me the confidence to continue building No College Mandates, especially our resources, which helped thousands of families navigate institutional pressure during the pandemic. Every step of that work, Warner was there — encouraging us, sharing our data, introducing us to other advocates, and elevating our efforts so we could reach more families.
Warner invited me to speak at every Freedom Counsel conference he organized because he understood the importance of the work. On the hard days — and there were many — he never let me give up. He lifted my spirits with a quiet certainty that what we were doing mattered and wou...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/rip-warner-mendenhall/ There are people who enter your life not by chance, but by purpose — who arrive precisely when the world feels most confusing and frightening, and who hand you the courage to build something you know will help other families who feel as you do during tumultuous and uncertain times. Warner Mendenhall was that person for me, and for so many others who had the privilege of knowing him. He passed away on June 8, 2026 from complications related to his advanced colon cancer.
I came to know Warner in 2021 through fellow advocates in the health freedom movement at a time when college students across the country were being stripped of their right to informed consent. Covid-19 vaccine mandates were descending on campuses with little scientific justification, and families were left uncertain about whether their students could return to in-person learning without being coerced to take these experimental medical treatments.
From the earliest days of the pandemic, Warner could see the writing on the wall before many others could. He had already built a successful law firm defending individual freedom and protecting constitutional rights for clients who had nowhere else to turn. He took great pride in helping those who felt hopeless, and he built a legacy on it which will carry on in his name.
At the time that I met Warner, he was one of the only attorneys in the country who had filed lawsuits against four Ohio colleges for their sweeping and unjustified pandemic policies — policies that were discriminatory, disruptive, and wrong on every level. In our heads and in our hearts, many of us knew these policies were wrong, but when we found one of the only lawyers fighting them, it gave us back the hope we had lost.
To meet Warner was to be immediately disarmed. Outwardly, he was jovial, kind, and gentle — extraordinarily well-spoken on individual freedoms and the law, yet always warm and approachable. He had the rare gift of making you feel that your fight mattered as much to him as it did to you. But beneath that warmth lived a fierce and unyielding advocate, a man with the strongest moral compass I have ever encountered. He had an acute sense of right and wrong, and once he decided something was unjust, nothing could stop him from working towards making it right.
What made Warner truly extraordinary, beyond his legal brilliance, was his boundless generosity of spirit. He spent countless hours on Clubhouse and X Spaces, speaking with me as co-founder of No College Mandates, with frightened parents, confused students, and overwhelmed professors — all of us trying to make sense of policies that simply made no sense. He never accepted a dollar for that time. He wouldn't have. He was there because he believed it was right to be there, and that was enough for him.
I remember so clearly how many of us — myself especially — feared stepping forward to challenge academic institutions. We were neither scientists nor public health experts, but it didn't matter. It was Warner who told us, plainly and with absolute conviction, to rise to the challenge. He reminded us that if the policies were not backed by reliable safety and efficacy data — and no college has ever provided such data, then or now — we had not only the right but the responsibility to push back. His words gave so many of us wings. He gave me the confidence to continue building No College Mandates, especially our resources, which helped thousands of families navigate institutional pressure during the pandemic. Every step of that work, Warner was there — encouraging us, sharing our data, introducing us to other advocates, and elevating our efforts so we could reach more families.
Warner invited me to speak at every Freedom Counsel conference he organized because he understood the importance of the work. On the hard days — and there were many — he never let me give up. He lifted my spirits with a quiet certainty that what we were doing mattered and wou...]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 07:30:00 -0400 RIP Warner Mendenhall There are people who enter your life not by chance, but by purpose — who arrive precisely when the world feels most confusing and frightening, and who hand you the courage to build something you know will help ot...]]> There are people who enter your life not by chance, but by purpose — who arrive precisely when the world feels most confusing and frightening, and who hand you the courage to build something you know will help other families who feel as you do during tumultuous and uncertain times. Warner Mendenhall was that person for me, and for so many others who had the privilege of knowing him. He passed away on June 8, 2026 from complications related to his advanced colon cancer.
I came to know Warner in 2021 through fellow advocates in the health freedom movement at a time when college students across the country were being stripped of their right to informed consent. Covid-19 vaccine mandates were descending on campuses with little scientific justification, and families were left uncertain about whether their students could return to in-person learning without being coerced to take these experimental medical treatments.
From the earliest days of the pandemic, Warner could see the writing on the wall before many others could. He had already built a successful law firm defending individual freedom and protecting constitutional rights for clients who had nowhere else to turn. He took great pride in helping those who felt hopeless, and he built a legacy on it which will carry on in his name.
At the time that I met Warner, he was one of the only attorneys in the country who had filed lawsuits against four Ohio colleges for their sweeping and unjustified pandemic policies — policies that were discriminatory, disruptive, and wrong on every level. In our heads and in our hearts, many of us knew these policies were wrong, but when we found one of the only lawyers fighting them, it gave us back the hope we had lost.
To meet Warner was to be immediately disarmed. Outwardly, he was jovial, kind, and gentle — extraordinarily well-spoken on individual freedoms and the law, yet always warm and approachable. He had the rare gift of making you feel that your fight mattered as much to him as it did to you. But beneath that warmth lived a fierce and unyielding advocate, a man with the strongest moral compass I have ever encountered. He had an acute sense of right and wrong, and once he decided something was unjust, nothing could stop him from working towards making it right.
What made Warner truly extraordinary, beyond his legal brilliance, was his boundless generosity of spirit. He spent countless hours on Clubhouse and X Spaces, speaking with me as co-founder of No College Mandates, with frightened parents, confused students, and overwhelmed professors — all of us trying to make sense of policies that simply made no sense. He never accepted a dollar for that time. He wouldn't have. He was there because he believed it was right to be there, and that was enough for him.
I remember so clearly how many of us — myself especially — feared stepping forward to challenge academic institutions. We were neither scientists nor public health experts, but it didn't matter. It was Warner who told us, plainly and with absolute conviction, to rise to the challenge. He reminded us that if the policies were not backed by reliable safety and efficacy data — and no college has ever provided such data, then or now — we had not only the right but the responsibility to push back. His words gave so many of us wings. He gave me the confidence to continue building No College Mandates, especially our resources, which helped thousands of families navigate institutional pressure during the pandemic. Every step of that work, Warner was there — encouraging us, sharing our data, introducing us to other advocates, and elevating our efforts so we could reach more families.
Warner invited me to speak at every Freedom Counsel conference he organized because he understood the importance of the work. On the hard days — and there were many — he never let me give up. He lifted my spirits with a quiet certainty that what we were doing mattered and wou...]]> Lucia Sinatra 05:41 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 71 70744 Across the world, the response to Covid looked strangely alike: the same lockdowns, the same shuttered schools and businesses, the same insistence that there was only one responsible course and that to question it was to put lives at risk. Country after country moved in near lockstep.
To me, that uniformity remains one of the most troubling features of those years. Measures so similar, so sweeping, and adopted so quickly are difficult to explain as dozens of governments independently reach the same conclusion. Whatever the truth behind that coordination, the Covid era cannot be understood one nation at a time. What was done to people's freedoms — and how each country now chooses to examine it, or to look away — concerns us all. What follows is one country's reckoning.
From a distance, the Netherlands can look like an open society settling its accounts with the pandemic.
A civil case is moving through the court in Leeuwarden. Seven citizens — one of whom has died since the case began — are suing seventeen defendants for harm they attribute to the mRNA Covid shots. The defendants are not minor figures: the former prime minister, Mark Rutte; the former health minister, Hugo de Jonge; Marion Koopmans, the virologist who sat on the team of experts advising the cabinet; Jaap van Dissel, who as head of infectious-disease control at the national health institute chaired that team — the Outbreak Management Team (OMT), which steered the country's Covid response from January 2020 until 2022 — and was the public face of the lockdown advice; the chief executive of Pfizer, Albert Bourla; and Bill Gates. Gates argued that a Dutch court had no business judging him. The court disagreed and kept the case. It continues, slowly.
To a foreign reader, that reads as a country with room to ask hard questions.
It is worth pausing on what became of the man who brought the case. Arno van Kessel, one of the two lawyers behind it, spent 260 days in pre-trial detention. He was arrested in June 2025 — the day after he filed papers in the case — in an investigation into a network of self-described "sovereigns," people who reject the authority of the state. To my mind the label sits oddly on him: his whole method was the courtroom. He is a lawyer who took the government to court, not a man who denies that courts have power over anyone. No criminal court has convicted him of anything; he remains a suspect, and a suspect only. In late February 2026 the judges suspended his detention, in part because the prosecution's case was moving so slowly. By then he had been struck from the bar and could no longer stand beside his own clients. And so the lawyer who had brought that suit against Rutte, De Jonge, Koopmans, and Gates had himself been shut out of the courtroom.
Then, on 29 May 2026, the inquiry into the Corona policy opened its public hearings. And a similar picture appears.
A committee with the critics removed
For readers outside the Netherlands: a parlementaire enquête is the strongest investigative tool available to the Dutch parliament. It has the power to summon any witness, compel testimony under oath, and place the full truth on the public record. It sits closer to a US Congressional investigation or a British statutory inquiry than to an ordinary parliamentary hearing. It is the instrument a democracy turns to when normal scrutiny has failed.
This Covid inquiry has a long history, and that history is, in a sense, the whole story.
Parliament approved it almost unanimously on 4 November 2021, on a motion from Aukje de Vries — a member of parliament for the VVD, the country's main traditional centre-right party. The committee's mandate was broad and, on paper, exactly right: to establish the truth about what happened during the crisis and to draw lessons for the next one. It would examine the cabinet's decisions and the reasoning behind them, the independence of the advisory bodies, how the government weighed...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-dutch-covid-inquiry-is-not-looking-for-the-truth/ Across the world, the response to Covid looked strangely alike: the same lockdowns, the same shuttered schools and businesses, the same insistence that there was only one responsible course and that to question it was to put lives at risk. Country after country moved in near lockstep.
To me, that uniformity remains one of the most troubling features of those years. Measures so similar, so sweeping, and adopted so quickly are difficult to explain as dozens of governments independently reach the same conclusion. Whatever the truth behind that coordination, the Covid era cannot be understood one nation at a time. What was done to people's freedoms — and how each country now chooses to examine it, or to look away — concerns us all. What follows is one country's reckoning.
From a distance, the Netherlands can look like an open society settling its accounts with the pandemic.
A civil case is moving through the court in Leeuwarden. Seven citizens — one of whom has died since the case began — are suing seventeen defendants for harm they attribute to the mRNA Covid shots. The defendants are not minor figures: the former prime minister, Mark Rutte; the former health minister, Hugo de Jonge; Marion Koopmans, the virologist who sat on the team of experts advising the cabinet; Jaap van Dissel, who as head of infectious-disease control at the national health institute chaired that team — the Outbreak Management Team (OMT), which steered the country's Covid response from January 2020 until 2022 — and was the public face of the lockdown advice; the chief executive of Pfizer, Albert Bourla; and Bill Gates. Gates argued that a Dutch court had no business judging him. The court disagreed and kept the case. It continues, slowly.
To a foreign reader, that reads as a country with room to ask hard questions.
It is worth pausing on what became of the man who brought the case. Arno van Kessel, one of the two lawyers behind it, spent 260 days in pre-trial detention. He was arrested in June 2025 — the day after he filed papers in the case — in an investigation into a network of self-described "sovereigns," people who reject the authority of the state. To my mind the label sits oddly on him: his whole method was the courtroom. He is a lawyer who took the government to court, not a man who denies that courts have power over anyone. No criminal court has convicted him of anything; he remains a suspect, and a suspect only. In late February 2026 the judges suspended his detention, in part because the prosecution's case was moving so slowly. By then he had been struck from the bar and could no longer stand beside his own clients. And so the lawyer who had brought that suit against Rutte, De Jonge, Koopmans, and Gates had himself been shut out of the courtroom.
Then, on 29 May 2026, the inquiry into the Corona policy opened its public hearings. And a similar picture appears.
A committee with the critics removed
For readers outside the Netherlands: a parlementaire enquête is the strongest investigative tool available to the Dutch parliament. It has the power to summon any witness, compel testimony under oath, and place the full truth on the public record. It sits closer to a US Congressional investigation or a British statutory inquiry than to an ordinary parliamentary hearing. It is the instrument a democracy turns to when normal scrutiny has failed.
This Covid inquiry has a long history, and that history is, in a sense, the whole story.
Parliament approved it almost unanimously on 4 November 2021, on a motion from Aukje de Vries — a member of parliament for the VVD, the country's main traditional centre-right party. The committee's mandate was broad and, on paper, exactly right: to establish the truth about what happened during the crisis and to draw lessons for the next one. It would examine the cabinet's decisions and the reasoning behind them, the independence of the advisory bodies, how the government weighed...]]> Sat, 13 Jun 2026 07:54:31 -0400 The Dutch Covid Inquiry Is Not Looking for the Truth The Wrong Question The Man in the Middle A Country That Does Not Feel Heard The Pollster and the Newspaper What an Inquiry Is for Notes Across the world, the response to Covid looked strangely alike: the same lockdowns, the same shuttered schools and businesses, the same insistence that there was only one responsible course and that to questi...]]> Across the world, the response to Covid looked strangely alike: the same lockdowns, the same shuttered schools and businesses, the same insistence that there was only one responsible course and that to question it was to put lives at risk. Country after country moved in near lockstep.
To me, that uniformity remains one of the most troubling features of those years. Measures so similar, so sweeping, and adopted so quickly are difficult to explain as dozens of governments independently reach the same conclusion. Whatever the truth behind that coordination, the Covid era cannot be understood one nation at a time. What was done to people's freedoms — and how each country now chooses to examine it, or to look away — concerns us all. What follows is one country's reckoning.
From a distance, the Netherlands can look like an open society settling its accounts with the pandemic.
A civil case is moving through the court in Leeuwarden. Seven citizens — one of whom has died since the case began — are suing seventeen defendants for harm they attribute to the mRNA Covid shots. The defendants are not minor figures: the former prime minister, Mark Rutte; the former health minister, Hugo de Jonge; Marion Koopmans, the virologist who sat on the team of experts advising the cabinet; Jaap van Dissel, who as head of infectious-disease control at the national health institute chaired that team — the Outbreak Management Team (OMT), which steered the country's Covid response from January 2020 until 2022 — and was the public face of the lockdown advice; the chief executive of Pfizer, Albert Bourla; and Bill Gates. Gates argued that a Dutch court had no business judging him. The court disagreed and kept the case. It continues, slowly.
To a foreign reader, that reads as a country with room to ask hard questions.
It is worth pausing on what became of the man who brought the case. Arno van Kessel, one of the two lawyers behind it, spent 260 days in pre-trial detention. He was arrested in June 2025 — the day after he filed papers in the case — in an investigation into a network of self-described "sovereigns," people who reject the authority of the state. To my mind the label sits oddly on him: his whole method was the courtroom. He is a lawyer who took the government to court, not a man who denies that courts have power over anyone. No criminal court has convicted him of anything; he remains a suspect, and a suspect only. In late February 2026 the judges suspended his detention, in part because the prosecution's case was moving so slowly. By then he had been struck from the bar and could no longer stand beside his own clients. And so the lawyer who had brought that suit against Rutte, De Jonge, Koopmans, and Gates had himself been shut out of the courtroom.
Then, on 29 May 2026, the inquiry into the Corona policy opened its public hearings. And a similar picture appears.
A committee with the critics removed
For readers outside the Netherlands: a parlementaire enquête is the strongest investigative tool available to the Dutch parliament. It has the power to summon any witness, compel testimony under oath, and place the full truth on the public record. It sits closer to a US Congressional investigation or a British statutory inquiry than to an ordinary parliamentary hearing. It is the instrument a democracy turns to when normal scrutiny has failed.
This Covid inquiry has a long history, and that history is, in a sense, the whole story.
Parliament approved it almost unanimously on 4 November 2021, on a motion from Aukje de Vries — a member of parliament for the VVD, the country's main traditional centre-right party. The committee's mandate was broad and, on paper, exactly right: to establish the truth about what happened during the crisis and to draw lessons for the next one. It would examine the cabinet's decisions and the reasoning behind them, the independence of the advisory bodies, how the government weighed...]]> Elisabeth Bennink 24:18 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 70 70554 It has been reported that 'healthy life expectancy' in the UK has fallen during the past decade.
Disparity between the 'healthy life expectancy' of those in different regions of the UK has been described. A 20-year gap between the 'healthy life expectancy' of those in Richmond and the 'healthy life expectancy' of those in Blackpool has been alleged.
The concept of 'healthy life expectancy' has been bandied about as if we have used it always. Its precursor, 'healthy lifestyle,' is already ubiquitous. Its successor, surely to be 'healthy lifespan.'
But the concept of 'healthy life-anything' should be unusable. It should say nothing. Like 'unmarried bachelor.' Or 'free gift.' Or 'organic food.'
What is health but life? The uninterrupted progression of life. Immersion in the projects of life. Involvement with life. Obliviousness to anything but life.
There is no 'healthy life.' There is only life.
We say that we fall ill. But if illness is a fall it is only because health is getting-on-with-life, folded into our purposeful expenditures of energy and attention, taken for granted.
Only illness is salient. Only illness is a thing.
Now that health is a thing – the biggest thing of all – it is like illness.
We submit samples to 'Our NHS' or download lists of 'Keto' foods or exchange cigarettes for 'vapes' or sign up to a marathon training programme – the details do not matter at all. What matters is that the obliviousness to health that is essential to health is gone.
There is now no real difference between health and illness. There is only the spectacle of difference between them and the veneer of sentiment with which it plays out.
The 'healthy' hordes at Park Run are all but indistinguishable from the 'ill' pileup in nearby cancer wards: misshapen bodies strapped to measurement devices of one kind or another, ailing from one punishing regime or another, according to one strand of expertise or another. Those 'battling illness' jostle alongside those in 'full health,' raising awareness or raising funds. Even the meds are shared; Park Run is sponsored by a pain-relief gel.
Health and illness comprise now the same interactions, the same losses, the same wins, the same monitorings by the same devices and the same institutions.
Through these same routines are refracted the mechanisms of our control: the rations and rewards, the data collections, the consumer opportunities, the recalibrations of diet, exercise, sleep. Ever-refreshed solutions to problems manufactured by discourse and by drugs.
Health and illness are no longer alternatives. They are not even two ends of a spectrum. They are only flavours of the same submission: to unmitigated surveillance, to inhuman engineering, to corporate concepts and products, to displaced experiences that we record and replay so as to have them and that pass for us as life.
Foucault detailed the execution in 1757 of Damiens the regicide. Public, bloody in the sublime, it exemplifies a brand of rule over people that was essentially spectacular, inscribed with excess on the few so as to produce subjection in the many.
Death was the currency of this brand of rule – imposed with artistry and eclat, or suspended theatrically at the final hour. As for life, it could go on as it would beneath the shock and awe.
Now there is a different arrangement of spectacle and power.
The might of the king inhered in the great show of his might; to rule, he must appear more than human, with infinite reach and absolute will. Our subjection relies on a great show of everything but might.
Nothing that is shown to us is what is done to us. Nothing that is done to us is what is shown to us. Display is, for us, without gesture. Gesture, for us, without display.
The spectacle of our times – the tremendous spectacle of 'health' – does not amplify the power that operates on us but distracts us from it. It does not make us see more force than is humanly possible but blocks us from seeing an...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/forget-about-healthy-life/ It has been reported that 'healthy life expectancy' in the UK has fallen during the past decade.
Disparity between the 'healthy life expectancy' of those in different regions of the UK has been described. A 20-year gap between the 'healthy life expectancy' of those in Richmond and the 'healthy life expectancy' of those in Blackpool has been alleged.
The concept of 'healthy life expectancy' has been bandied about as if we have used it always. Its precursor, 'healthy lifestyle,' is already ubiquitous. Its successor, surely to be 'healthy lifespan.'
But the concept of 'healthy life-anything' should be unusable. It should say nothing. Like 'unmarried bachelor.' Or 'free gift.' Or 'organic food.'
What is health but life? The uninterrupted progression of life. Immersion in the projects of life. Involvement with life. Obliviousness to anything but life.
There is no 'healthy life.' There is only life.
We say that we fall ill. But if illness is a fall it is only because health is getting-on-with-life, folded into our purposeful expenditures of energy and attention, taken for granted.
Only illness is salient. Only illness is a thing.
Now that health is a thing – the biggest thing of all – it is like illness.
We submit samples to 'Our NHS' or download lists of 'Keto' foods or exchange cigarettes for 'vapes' or sign up to a marathon training programme – the details do not matter at all. What matters is that the obliviousness to health that is essential to health is gone.
There is now no real difference between health and illness. There is only the spectacle of difference between them and the veneer of sentiment with which it plays out.
The 'healthy' hordes at Park Run are all but indistinguishable from the 'ill' pileup in nearby cancer wards: misshapen bodies strapped to measurement devices of one kind or another, ailing from one punishing regime or another, according to one strand of expertise or another. Those 'battling illness' jostle alongside those in 'full health,' raising awareness or raising funds. Even the meds are shared; Park Run is sponsored by a pain-relief gel.
Health and illness comprise now the same interactions, the same losses, the same wins, the same monitorings by the same devices and the same institutions.
Through these same routines are refracted the mechanisms of our control: the rations and rewards, the data collections, the consumer opportunities, the recalibrations of diet, exercise, sleep. Ever-refreshed solutions to problems manufactured by discourse and by drugs.
Health and illness are no longer alternatives. They are not even two ends of a spectrum. They are only flavours of the same submission: to unmitigated surveillance, to inhuman engineering, to corporate concepts and products, to displaced experiences that we record and replay so as to have them and that pass for us as life.
Foucault detailed the execution in 1757 of Damiens the regicide. Public, bloody in the sublime, it exemplifies a brand of rule over people that was essentially spectacular, inscribed with excess on the few so as to produce subjection in the many.
Death was the currency of this brand of rule – imposed with artistry and eclat, or suspended theatrically at the final hour. As for life, it could go on as it would beneath the shock and awe.
Now there is a different arrangement of spectacle and power.
The might of the king inhered in the great show of his might; to rule, he must appear more than human, with infinite reach and absolute will. Our subjection relies on a great show of everything but might.
Nothing that is shown to us is what is done to us. Nothing that is done to us is what is shown to us. Display is, for us, without gesture. Gesture, for us, without display.
The spectacle of our times – the tremendous spectacle of 'health' – does not amplify the power that operates on us but distracts us from it. It does not make us see more force than is humanly possible but blocks us from seeing an...]]> Fri, 12 Jun 2026 07:00:32 -0400 Forget About 'Healthy Life' It has been reported that 'healthy life expectancy' in the UK has fallen during the past decade.
Disparity between the 'healthy life expectancy' of those in different regions of the UK has been described. A 20-ye...]]> It has been reported that 'healthy life expectancy' in the UK has fallen during the past decade.
Disparity between the 'healthy life expectancy' of those in different regions of the UK has been described. A 20-year gap between the 'healthy life expectancy' of those in Richmond and the 'healthy life expectancy' of those in Blackpool has been alleged.
The concept of 'healthy life expectancy' has been bandied about as if we have used it always. Its precursor, 'healthy lifestyle,' is already ubiquitous. Its successor, surely to be 'healthy lifespan.'
But the concept of 'healthy life-anything' should be unusable. It should say nothing. Like 'unmarried bachelor.' Or 'free gift.' Or 'organic food.'
What is health but life? The uninterrupted progression of life. Immersion in the projects of life. Involvement with life. Obliviousness to anything but life.
There is no 'healthy life.' There is only life.
We say that we fall ill. But if illness is a fall it is only because health is getting-on-with-life, folded into our purposeful expenditures of energy and attention, taken for granted.
Only illness is salient. Only illness is a thing.
Now that health is a thing – the biggest thing of all – it is like illness.
We submit samples to 'Our NHS' or download lists of 'Keto' foods or exchange cigarettes for 'vapes' or sign up to a marathon training programme – the details do not matter at all. What matters is that the obliviousness to health that is essential to health is gone.
There is now no real difference between health and illness. There is only the spectacle of difference between them and the veneer of sentiment with which it plays out.
The 'healthy' hordes at Park Run are all but indistinguishable from the 'ill' pileup in nearby cancer wards: misshapen bodies strapped to measurement devices of one kind or another, ailing from one punishing regime or another, according to one strand of expertise or another. Those 'battling illness' jostle alongside those in 'full health,' raising awareness or raising funds. Even the meds are shared; Park Run is sponsored by a pain-relief gel.
Health and illness comprise now the same interactions, the same losses, the same wins, the same monitorings by the same devices and the same institutions.
Through these same routines are refracted the mechanisms of our control: the rations and rewards, the data collections, the consumer opportunities, the recalibrations of diet, exercise, sleep. Ever-refreshed solutions to problems manufactured by discourse and by drugs.
Health and illness are no longer alternatives. They are not even two ends of a spectrum. They are only flavours of the same submission: to unmitigated surveillance, to inhuman engineering, to corporate concepts and products, to displaced experiences that we record and replay so as to have them and that pass for us as life.
Foucault detailed the execution in 1757 of Damiens the regicide. Public, bloody in the sublime, it exemplifies a brand of rule over people that was essentially spectacular, inscribed with excess on the few so as to produce subjection in the many.
Death was the currency of this brand of rule – imposed with artistry and eclat, or suspended theatrically at the final hour. As for life, it could go on as it would beneath the shock and awe.
Now there is a different arrangement of spectacle and power.
The might of the king inhered in the great show of his might; to rule, he must appear more than human, with infinite reach and absolute will. Our subjection relies on a great show of everything but might.
Nothing that is shown to us is what is done to us. Nothing that is done to us is what is shown to us. Display is, for us, without gesture. Gesture, for us, without display.
The spectacle of our times – the tremendous spectacle of 'health' – does not amplify the power that operates on us but distracts us from it. It does not make us see more force than is humanly possible but blocks us from seeing an...]]> Sinead Murphy 09:00 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 69 70498 I always knew that corruption existed in every field. I assumed that when it came to Big Pharma, the same was true, but I thought of it as something abstract: an inflated contract here, an outrageously profitable deal there, an abusive markup somewhere else.
I assumed that yes, some products might have low-quality batches, like any product on a profit-driven production line. I understood that when discovered, everything was reported in newspaper headlines, properly investigated, with all wrongdoers prosecuted or jailed. I figured these things might cause some harm to public health, but that it was all under intense surveillance and control.
Before the pandemic, following news from the field through the papers, we knew that every now and then, some scientist or group of scientists, for various reasons, would commit fraud in a study. Whenever that happened, it would go straight to the headlines. The way I saw it, "science" always had mechanisms to protect itself, with serious scientists quickly moving to expose and expel fraudsters. After all, it's an absolutely noble branch of science: the one dealing with everyone's health, including my own.
In other situations, still before the pandemic, I found myself in conversations where someone would suggest that treatments for various diseases already existed but were being hidden from the public. Out of respect for the friends who raised these topics, I didn't quite laugh, but in my head, I understood all of it as hypothetically plausible, but given the lack of concrete evidence, nothing more than a "conspiracy theory."
Then the pandemic came, and instead of spending lockdown watching movies or playing video games, I decided to follow every detail of the studies coming out. Before all this, I had no deep interest in the subject. I used to read the headlines alongside sports scores and weather forecasts. But during the pandemic I had a good reason to pay close attention: I wanted to come out of Covid-19 alive. And to be able to guide the people I care about toward the best options.
So I followed the various treatment possibilities closely, as well as the data from each vaccine rollout. I wanted to understand the details, straight from the sources, before everything was filtered through "science communicators" and experts in newspaper headlines.
I'll give you a simple summary. And I know this summary will make a lot of people stop reading right here. If that's you, I'll say it upfront: I can explain why you feel that way.
The pandemic in a nutshell: Covid-19 always had very effective and inexpensive treatments, right from the start. Millions were left to die because it was, of all things, profitable.
The lockdowns, when the world stopped as it never had before in history, was never necessary beyond two weeks, because with the disease properly treated, fewer people would have died than in a common flu season.
Yes, that's exactly what I said: millions dead for profit. For money. Does that shock you?
I know it's a hard story to believe. I understand. Because to believe it, given that it involves an enormous number of people, institutions, medical societies, scientific bodies, regulatory agencies, all in sync to cover up and steer people away from valid treatments, you have to believe something else: that humanity, at its core, doesn't care. It's a blow to your faith in human goodness. That's not easy to let go of.
Six years after the pandemic, some striking contrasts remain. Let's look at the most remarkable one: the hydroxychloroquine saga.
Today, the words "chloroquine" and its slightly younger but still septuagenarian sister, "hydroxychloroquine," have become synonymous with lunacy. "That person is chloroquine-brained," someone might say, invoking the drug as a punchline. The word "chloroquine" became a setup for jokes. People made comedy sketches, genuinely funny ones, and songs mocking anyone who kept insisting on talking about the medication...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/buried-before-ivermectin-meet-chlorine-dioxide/ I always knew that corruption existed in every field. I assumed that when it came to Big Pharma, the same was true, but I thought of it as something abstract: an inflated contract here, an outrageously profitable deal there, an abusive markup somewhere else.
I assumed that yes, some products might have low-quality batches, like any product on a profit-driven production line. I understood that when discovered, everything was reported in newspaper headlines, properly investigated, with all wrongdoers prosecuted or jailed. I figured these things might cause some harm to public health, but that it was all under intense surveillance and control.
Before the pandemic, following news from the field through the papers, we knew that every now and then, some scientist or group of scientists, for various reasons, would commit fraud in a study. Whenever that happened, it would go straight to the headlines. The way I saw it, "science" always had mechanisms to protect itself, with serious scientists quickly moving to expose and expel fraudsters. After all, it's an absolutely noble branch of science: the one dealing with everyone's health, including my own.
In other situations, still before the pandemic, I found myself in conversations where someone would suggest that treatments for various diseases already existed but were being hidden from the public. Out of respect for the friends who raised these topics, I didn't quite laugh, but in my head, I understood all of it as hypothetically plausible, but given the lack of concrete evidence, nothing more than a "conspiracy theory."
Then the pandemic came, and instead of spending lockdown watching movies or playing video games, I decided to follow every detail of the studies coming out. Before all this, I had no deep interest in the subject. I used to read the headlines alongside sports scores and weather forecasts. But during the pandemic I had a good reason to pay close attention: I wanted to come out of Covid-19 alive. And to be able to guide the people I care about toward the best options.
So I followed the various treatment possibilities closely, as well as the data from each vaccine rollout. I wanted to understand the details, straight from the sources, before everything was filtered through "science communicators" and experts in newspaper headlines.
I'll give you a simple summary. And I know this summary will make a lot of people stop reading right here. If that's you, I'll say it upfront: I can explain why you feel that way.
The pandemic in a nutshell: Covid-19 always had very effective and inexpensive treatments, right from the start. Millions were left to die because it was, of all things, profitable.
The lockdowns, when the world stopped as it never had before in history, was never necessary beyond two weeks, because with the disease properly treated, fewer people would have died than in a common flu season.
Yes, that's exactly what I said: millions dead for profit. For money. Does that shock you?
I know it's a hard story to believe. I understand. Because to believe it, given that it involves an enormous number of people, institutions, medical societies, scientific bodies, regulatory agencies, all in sync to cover up and steer people away from valid treatments, you have to believe something else: that humanity, at its core, doesn't care. It's a blow to your faith in human goodness. That's not easy to let go of.
Six years after the pandemic, some striking contrasts remain. Let's look at the most remarkable one: the hydroxychloroquine saga.
Today, the words "chloroquine" and its slightly younger but still septuagenarian sister, "hydroxychloroquine," have become synonymous with lunacy. "That person is chloroquine-brained," someone might say, invoking the drug as a punchline. The word "chloroquine" became a setup for jokes. People made comedy sketches, genuinely funny ones, and songs mocking anyone who kept insisting on talking about the medication...]]> Thu, 11 Jun 2026 07:01:45 -0400 Buried Before Ivermectin: Meet Chlorine Dioxide What Was Covid-19? Let's Get Straight to the Biggest Contrast of Covid-19 Things Worth Noticing About the Oxford Study Necessary Questions About Oxford Who This Book Is Not for I always knew that corruption existed in every field. I assumed that when it came to Big Pharma, the same was true, but I thought of it as something abstract: an inflated contract here, an outrageously profitabl...]]> I always knew that corruption existed in every field. I assumed that when it came to Big Pharma, the same was true, but I thought of it as something abstract: an inflated contract here, an outrageously profitable deal there, an abusive markup somewhere else.
I assumed that yes, some products might have low-quality batches, like any product on a profit-driven production line. I understood that when discovered, everything was reported in newspaper headlines, properly investigated, with all wrongdoers prosecuted or jailed. I figured these things might cause some harm to public health, but that it was all under intense surveillance and control.
Before the pandemic, following news from the field through the papers, we knew that every now and then, some scientist or group of scientists, for various reasons, would commit fraud in a study. Whenever that happened, it would go straight to the headlines. The way I saw it, "science" always had mechanisms to protect itself, with serious scientists quickly moving to expose and expel fraudsters. After all, it's an absolutely noble branch of science: the one dealing with everyone's health, including my own.
In other situations, still before the pandemic, I found myself in conversations where someone would suggest that treatments for various diseases already existed but were being hidden from the public. Out of respect for the friends who raised these topics, I didn't quite laugh, but in my head, I understood all of it as hypothetically plausible, but given the lack of concrete evidence, nothing more than a "conspiracy theory."
Then the pandemic came, and instead of spending lockdown watching movies or playing video games, I decided to follow every detail of the studies coming out. Before all this, I had no deep interest in the subject. I used to read the headlines alongside sports scores and weather forecasts. But during the pandemic I had a good reason to pay close attention: I wanted to come out of Covid-19 alive. And to be able to guide the people I care about toward the best options.
So I followed the various treatment possibilities closely, as well as the data from each vaccine rollout. I wanted to understand the details, straight from the sources, before everything was filtered through "science communicators" and experts in newspaper headlines.
I'll give you a simple summary. And I know this summary will make a lot of people stop reading right here. If that's you, I'll say it upfront: I can explain why you feel that way.
The pandemic in a nutshell: Covid-19 always had very effective and inexpensive treatments, right from the start. Millions were left to die because it was, of all things, profitable.
The lockdowns, when the world stopped as it never had before in history, was never necessary beyond two weeks, because with the disease properly treated, fewer people would have died than in a common flu season.
Yes, that's exactly what I said: millions dead for profit. For money. Does that shock you?
I know it's a hard story to believe. I understand. Because to believe it, given that it involves an enormous number of people, institutions, medical societies, scientific bodies, regulatory agencies, all in sync to cover up and steer people away from valid treatments, you have to believe something else: that humanity, at its core, doesn't care. It's a blow to your faith in human goodness. That's not easy to let go of.
Six years after the pandemic, some striking contrasts remain. Let's look at the most remarkable one: the hydroxychloroquine saga.
Today, the words "chloroquine" and its slightly younger but still septuagenarian sister, "hydroxychloroquine," have become synonymous with lunacy. "That person is chloroquine-brained," someone might say, invoking the drug as a punchline. The word "chloroquine" became a setup for jokes. People made comedy sketches, genuinely funny ones, and songs mocking anyone who kept insisting on talking about the medication...]]> Filipe Rafaeli 17:17 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 68 70426 By now, everyone knows the basics of the California fires that burned down the Palisades and Altadena. And most people are aware of the shady "Make it make sense" particulars around our elected officials and the quasi- and government agencies like the LA DWP.
Some people understand the corruption, fraud, and coordination of criminal activity that has led us here. Far fewer understand how deeply that dysfunction persists, and the degree to which it has been amplified.
The Santa Ynez Reservoir, which held 117,000,000 gallons of water, was emptied in February of 2024. It could have been repaired by employees, but it sat empty for 11 months.
Everyone knows California has a desert climate. Everyone knows about the Santa Ana winds. Everyone has an understanding of the intersection between electricity, fire and fire prevention, trees, and wind in California. The reservoir holding over 100 million gallons was emptied because there was a tear in the cover, the repair was not expedited, and the decision was made to drain it for maintenance before the Santa Anas in the middle of a drought.
At that time, the LADWP was focused entirely on 3 things:
1. Obtaining approval for a recycling sewer water plant, at a cost of over $750 million.
2. Research (using ratepayer funds) converting an existing gas-fired power plant in Utah to hydrogen.
3. Reorganizing the DWP around, and prioritizing, DEI. (To quote the head of the DWP: "Equity is my number 1 priority.").
First, why is the DWP spending ratepayer money to develop technologies and research, to the detriment of public safety measures? Spending ratepayer dollars to figure out how to use a new technology, while our own utility infrastructure lies decaying, untended, and unsupported, is at best outside the scope of the contract.
Next, why are we prioritizing DEI at the expense of the readiness of resources that a 9-year-old could predict we will need in California? Five percent of the LA city fire personnel are women. The 3 most senior people holding leadership positions all came out of that 5%. Not impossible…but neither is rolling a 12 six times in a row.
Researchers said urban water systems like DWP's were not designed to fight wildfires that overtake whole neighborhoods…Is there a reason we are not making that a priority over, say, hydrogen research in Utah? There was zero attempt at mitigation, alternative, or course correction for a known liability in a known risk corridor during a known risk to prevent the state's most predictable disaster.
I submit that ANY conversation but the 117,000,000-gallon reservoir being empty is a shiny object…to avoid talking about that subject. But they've had over a year to course correct so surely they've assigned the minimal resources required to rectify this massive liability…
But it gets worse.
Sexy priorities like DEI and new technologies superseded public safety priorities, and now we see what those priorities got us. Keeping our infrastructure in repair and ready was and is not the executive decision, and our elected officials own those executive decisions because they appoint these positions and have oversight. They failed to adequately prepare a known fire corridor for the world's most predictable emergency. But they've had over a year to course correct so surely they've assigned the resources required to rectify these liabilities also…
But it gets worse.
We have a budget problem. Over $1 billion was spent last year on homeless nonsense that didn't help the homeless. Meanwhile, there was a $17 million cut to the fire department – about which Chief Crowley sent a letter in December saying, essentially, we aren't going to be prepared for a major disaster. She explicitly said that there is equipment we can't repair because we don't have the money for maintenance. Now, $17 million is not insignificant. If you are already cut to the bone with the budget, any more cuts will invariably affect levels of service. A ...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/city-of-angels/ By now, everyone knows the basics of the California fires that burned down the Palisades and Altadena. And most people are aware of the shady "Make it make sense" particulars around our elected officials and the quasi- and government agencies like the LA DWP.
Some people understand the corruption, fraud, and coordination of criminal activity that has led us here. Far fewer understand how deeply that dysfunction persists, and the degree to which it has been amplified.
The Santa Ynez Reservoir, which held 117,000,000 gallons of water, was emptied in February of 2024. It could have been repaired by employees, but it sat empty for 11 months.
Everyone knows California has a desert climate. Everyone knows about the Santa Ana winds. Everyone has an understanding of the intersection between electricity, fire and fire prevention, trees, and wind in California. The reservoir holding over 100 million gallons was emptied because there was a tear in the cover, the repair was not expedited, and the decision was made to drain it for maintenance before the Santa Anas in the middle of a drought.
At that time, the LADWP was focused entirely on 3 things:
1. Obtaining approval for a recycling sewer water plant, at a cost of over $750 million.
2. Research (using ratepayer funds) converting an existing gas-fired power plant in Utah to hydrogen.
3. Reorganizing the DWP around, and prioritizing, DEI. (To quote the head of the DWP: "Equity is my number 1 priority.").
First, why is the DWP spending ratepayer money to develop technologies and research, to the detriment of public safety measures? Spending ratepayer dollars to figure out how to use a new technology, while our own utility infrastructure lies decaying, untended, and unsupported, is at best outside the scope of the contract.
Next, why are we prioritizing DEI at the expense of the readiness of resources that a 9-year-old could predict we will need in California? Five percent of the LA city fire personnel are women. The 3 most senior people holding leadership positions all came out of that 5%. Not impossible…but neither is rolling a 12 six times in a row.
Researchers said urban water systems like DWP's were not designed to fight wildfires that overtake whole neighborhoods…Is there a reason we are not making that a priority over, say, hydrogen research in Utah? There was zero attempt at mitigation, alternative, or course correction for a known liability in a known risk corridor during a known risk to prevent the state's most predictable disaster.
I submit that ANY conversation but the 117,000,000-gallon reservoir being empty is a shiny object…to avoid talking about that subject. But they've had over a year to course correct so surely they've assigned the minimal resources required to rectify this massive liability…
But it gets worse.
Sexy priorities like DEI and new technologies superseded public safety priorities, and now we see what those priorities got us. Keeping our infrastructure in repair and ready was and is not the executive decision, and our elected officials own those executive decisions because they appoint these positions and have oversight. They failed to adequately prepare a known fire corridor for the world's most predictable emergency. But they've had over a year to course correct so surely they've assigned the resources required to rectify these liabilities also…
But it gets worse.
We have a budget problem. Over $1 billion was spent last year on homeless nonsense that didn't help the homeless. Meanwhile, there was a $17 million cut to the fire department – about which Chief Crowley sent a letter in December saying, essentially, we aren't going to be prepared for a major disaster. She explicitly said that there is equipment we can't repair because we don't have the money for maintenance. Now, $17 million is not insignificant. If you are already cut to the bone with the budget, any more cuts will invariably affect levels of service. A ...]]> Wed, 10 Jun 2026 07:28:37 -0400 City of Angels By now, everyone knows the basics of the California fires that burned down the Palisades and Altadena. And most people are aware of the shady "Make it make sense" particulars around our elected officials and the...]]> By now, everyone knows the basics of the California fires that burned down the Palisades and Altadena. And most people are aware of the shady "Make it make sense" particulars around our elected officials and the quasi- and government agencies like the LA DWP.
Some people understand the corruption, fraud, and coordination of criminal activity that has led us here. Far fewer understand how deeply that dysfunction persists, and the degree to which it has been amplified.
The Santa Ynez Reservoir, which held 117,000,000 gallons of water, was emptied in February of 2024. It could have been repaired by employees, but it sat empty for 11 months.
Everyone knows California has a desert climate. Everyone knows about the Santa Ana winds. Everyone has an understanding of the intersection between electricity, fire and fire prevention, trees, and wind in California. The reservoir holding over 100 million gallons was emptied because there was a tear in the cover, the repair was not expedited, and the decision was made to drain it for maintenance before the Santa Anas in the middle of a drought.
At that time, the LADWP was focused entirely on 3 things:
1. Obtaining approval for a recycling sewer water plant, at a cost of over $750 million.
2. Research (using ratepayer funds) converting an existing gas-fired power plant in Utah to hydrogen.
3. Reorganizing the DWP around, and prioritizing, DEI. (To quote the head of the DWP: "Equity is my number 1 priority.").
First, why is the DWP spending ratepayer money to develop technologies and research, to the detriment of public safety measures? Spending ratepayer dollars to figure out how to use a new technology, while our own utility infrastructure lies decaying, untended, and unsupported, is at best outside the scope of the contract.
Next, why are we prioritizing DEI at the expense of the readiness of resources that a 9-year-old could predict we will need in California? Five percent of the LA city fire personnel are women. The 3 most senior people holding leadership positions all came out of that 5%. Not impossible…but neither is rolling a 12 six times in a row.
Researchers said urban water systems like DWP's were not designed to fight wildfires that overtake whole neighborhoods…Is there a reason we are not making that a priority over, say, hydrogen research in Utah? There was zero attempt at mitigation, alternative, or course correction for a known liability in a known risk corridor during a known risk to prevent the state's most predictable disaster.
I submit that ANY conversation but the 117,000,000-gallon reservoir being empty is a shiny object…to avoid talking about that subject. But they've had over a year to course correct so surely they've assigned the minimal resources required to rectify this massive liability…
But it gets worse.
Sexy priorities like DEI and new technologies superseded public safety priorities, and now we see what those priorities got us. Keeping our infrastructure in repair and ready was and is not the executive decision, and our elected officials own those executive decisions because they appoint these positions and have oversight. They failed to adequately prepare a known fire corridor for the world's most predictable emergency. But they've had over a year to course correct so surely they've assigned the resources required to rectify these liabilities also…
But it gets worse.
We have a budget problem. Over $1 billion was spent last year on homeless nonsense that didn't help the homeless. Meanwhile, there was a $17 million cut to the fire department – about which Chief Crowley sent a letter in December saying, essentially, we aren't going to be prepared for a major disaster. She explicitly said that there is equipment we can't repair because we don't have the money for maintenance. Now, $17 million is not insignificant. If you are already cut to the bone with the budget, any more cuts will invariably affect levels of service. A ...]]> Sofia Karstens 15:34 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 67 70418 The case of a young child at Texas Children's Hospital following a near-drowning incident has reignited a debate that medicine has struggled with for more than half a century. According to multiple media reports, the family sought judicial intervention to obtain additional time, explore transfer options, and investigate alternative therapeutic approaches before any final determination regarding brain death would foreclose those possibilities.[1,2] As so often happens in the modern United States of America, the story quickly moved beyond the walls of the hospital. Lawyers became involved. Politicians entered the discussion. Journalists amplified the controversy. Social media transformed a family's private tragedy into a national debate. Yet, beneath the headlines lies a much deeper question.
As a matter of transparency, this is not an argument against brain death. Nor is it an attempt to overturn decades of neurological science. The neurological criteria for death emerged from legitimate clinical challenges and remain accepted by most physicians, hospitals, and courts. Rather, this is a reflection on what happens when medicine becomes so confident in its conclusions that it stops listening to those most affected by them.
After more than four decades practicing medicine in emergency departments, intensive care units, and hospital wards, I have become increasingly convinced that many of the most difficult conflicts in healthcare are not caused by a lack of knowledge. More often, they arise when certainty begins to replace humility and when technical expertise is mistaken for complete understanding.
Sir William Osler frequently reminded physicians that medicine operates within a realm of uncertainty and probability.[3] Scientific knowledge continues to advance at a breathtaking pace. We can image the human brain in amazing detail, manipulate physiology in ways previous that generations could scarcely imagine, and sustain life through technologies that would have seemed miraculous only decades ago. Yet despite these advances, medicine remains an imperfect science. Every diagnosis carries assumptions. Every prognosis carries probabilities. Every prediction carries limitations.
More than 2,000 years before the advent of modern intensive care, Socrates recognized a truth that remains relevant today: wisdom begins with an awareness of the limits of one's own knowledge. Scientific progress should increase our humility, not diminish it. Yet modern medicine occasionally behaves as though every important question has already been answered. Nowhere is this tendency more apparent than in discussions surrounding life, death, and the limits of medical intervention.
For most of human history, death was relatively straightforward. A person stopped breathing. The heart stopped beating. The body became cold. Families gathered, prayers were offered, and communities mourned. Death was painful, but it was rarely ambiguous. The development of modern intensive care medicine changed that reality forever. Mechanical ventilation made it possible to sustain respiration despite catastrophic neurological injury. Physicians suddenly encountered situations that previous generations could never have imagined. Hearts continued beating, blood continued circulating, and organs continued functioning despite devastating and apparently irreversible brain injury. Technology had created circumstances that nature had never previously allowed.
In 1968, the Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School to Examine the Definition of Brain Death published its landmark report introducing neurological criteria for determining death.[4] The committee was not attempting to create controversy. It was attempting to solve a genuine medical dilemma created by advances in resuscitation, mechanical ventilation, and organ transplantation. Hospitals needed standards and physicians needed guidance. Courts needed definitions. The committee's reco...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/reflections-on-brain-death-hope-and-the-limits-of-certainty/ The case of a young child at Texas Children's Hospital following a near-drowning incident has reignited a debate that medicine has struggled with for more than half a century. According to multiple media reports, the family sought judicial intervention to obtain additional time, explore transfer options, and investigate alternative therapeutic approaches before any final determination regarding brain death would foreclose those possibilities.[1,2] As so often happens in the modern United States of America, the story quickly moved beyond the walls of the hospital. Lawyers became involved. Politicians entered the discussion. Journalists amplified the controversy. Social media transformed a family's private tragedy into a national debate. Yet, beneath the headlines lies a much deeper question.
As a matter of transparency, this is not an argument against brain death. Nor is it an attempt to overturn decades of neurological science. The neurological criteria for death emerged from legitimate clinical challenges and remain accepted by most physicians, hospitals, and courts. Rather, this is a reflection on what happens when medicine becomes so confident in its conclusions that it stops listening to those most affected by them.
After more than four decades practicing medicine in emergency departments, intensive care units, and hospital wards, I have become increasingly convinced that many of the most difficult conflicts in healthcare are not caused by a lack of knowledge. More often, they arise when certainty begins to replace humility and when technical expertise is mistaken for complete understanding.
Sir William Osler frequently reminded physicians that medicine operates within a realm of uncertainty and probability.[3] Scientific knowledge continues to advance at a breathtaking pace. We can image the human brain in amazing detail, manipulate physiology in ways previous that generations could scarcely imagine, and sustain life through technologies that would have seemed miraculous only decades ago. Yet despite these advances, medicine remains an imperfect science. Every diagnosis carries assumptions. Every prognosis carries probabilities. Every prediction carries limitations.
More than 2,000 years before the advent of modern intensive care, Socrates recognized a truth that remains relevant today: wisdom begins with an awareness of the limits of one's own knowledge. Scientific progress should increase our humility, not diminish it. Yet modern medicine occasionally behaves as though every important question has already been answered. Nowhere is this tendency more apparent than in discussions surrounding life, death, and the limits of medical intervention.
For most of human history, death was relatively straightforward. A person stopped breathing. The heart stopped beating. The body became cold. Families gathered, prayers were offered, and communities mourned. Death was painful, but it was rarely ambiguous. The development of modern intensive care medicine changed that reality forever. Mechanical ventilation made it possible to sustain respiration despite catastrophic neurological injury. Physicians suddenly encountered situations that previous generations could never have imagined. Hearts continued beating, blood continued circulating, and organs continued functioning despite devastating and apparently irreversible brain injury. Technology had created circumstances that nature had never previously allowed.
In 1968, the Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School to Examine the Definition of Brain Death published its landmark report introducing neurological criteria for determining death.[4] The committee was not attempting to create controversy. It was attempting to solve a genuine medical dilemma created by advances in resuscitation, mechanical ventilation, and organ transplantation. Hospitals needed standards and physicians needed guidance. Courts needed definitions. The committee's reco...]]> Tue, 09 Jun 2026 07:35:00 -0400 Reflections on Brain Death, Hope, and the Limits of Certainty When Death Became Complicated Prognostication Is Not Prophecy What Families Fear Most Hope Is Not the Enemy of Science The Physician We Are Slowly Losing Organ Donation and Public Trust Wisdom Leaves Room to Listen References The case of a young child at Texas Children's Hospital following a near-drowning incident has reignited a debate that medicine has struggled with for more than half a century. According to multiple media reports, ...]]> The case of a young child at Texas Children's Hospital following a near-drowning incident has reignited a debate that medicine has struggled with for more than half a century. According to multiple media reports, the family sought judicial intervention to obtain additional time, explore transfer options, and investigate alternative therapeutic approaches before any final determination regarding brain death would foreclose those possibilities.[1,2] As so often happens in the modern United States of America, the story quickly moved beyond the walls of the hospital. Lawyers became involved. Politicians entered the discussion. Journalists amplified the controversy. Social media transformed a family's private tragedy into a national debate. Yet, beneath the headlines lies a much deeper question.
As a matter of transparency, this is not an argument against brain death. Nor is it an attempt to overturn decades of neurological science. The neurological criteria for death emerged from legitimate clinical challenges and remain accepted by most physicians, hospitals, and courts. Rather, this is a reflection on what happens when medicine becomes so confident in its conclusions that it stops listening to those most affected by them.
After more than four decades practicing medicine in emergency departments, intensive care units, and hospital wards, I have become increasingly convinced that many of the most difficult conflicts in healthcare are not caused by a lack of knowledge. More often, they arise when certainty begins to replace humility and when technical expertise is mistaken for complete understanding.
Sir William Osler frequently reminded physicians that medicine operates within a realm of uncertainty and probability.[3] Scientific knowledge continues to advance at a breathtaking pace. We can image the human brain in amazing detail, manipulate physiology in ways previous that generations could scarcely imagine, and sustain life through technologies that would have seemed miraculous only decades ago. Yet despite these advances, medicine remains an imperfect science. Every diagnosis carries assumptions. Every prognosis carries probabilities. Every prediction carries limitations.
More than 2,000 years before the advent of modern intensive care, Socrates recognized a truth that remains relevant today: wisdom begins with an awareness of the limits of one's own knowledge. Scientific progress should increase our humility, not diminish it. Yet modern medicine occasionally behaves as though every important question has already been answered. Nowhere is this tendency more apparent than in discussions surrounding life, death, and the limits of medical intervention.
For most of human history, death was relatively straightforward. A person stopped breathing. The heart stopped beating. The body became cold. Families gathered, prayers were offered, and communities mourned. Death was painful, but it was rarely ambiguous. The development of modern intensive care medicine changed that reality forever. Mechanical ventilation made it possible to sustain respiration despite catastrophic neurological injury. Physicians suddenly encountered situations that previous generations could never have imagined. Hearts continued beating, blood continued circulating, and organs continued functioning despite devastating and apparently irreversible brain injury. Technology had created circumstances that nature had never previously allowed.
In 1968, the Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School to Examine the Definition of Brain Death published its landmark report introducing neurological criteria for determining death.[4] The committee was not attempting to create controversy. It was attempting to solve a genuine medical dilemma created by advances in resuscitation, mechanical ventilation, and organ transplantation. Hospitals needed standards and physicians needed guidance. Courts needed definitions. The committee's reco...]]> Joseph Varon 17:16 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 66 70379 Last week, we hosted our monthly Brownstone Institute Supper Club at Sovereignty Ranch. Our guest speaker was Mikki Willis, producer of Plandemic, The Great Awakening (Plandemic 3), and several other films that became touchstones for millions of people trying to make sense of the Covid-19 era.
I expected the conversation to focus on public health, censorship, and the lingering questions many people still have about those years. It did. But what stayed with me most had very little to do with science, politics, or policy. It was a conversation about forgiveness.
Mikki spoke candidly about friendships lost during Covid-19, the pain of being misunderstood, and the reality that many of the apologies people hoped for never came. There were moments when emotion caught in his throat as he reflected on people he once loved and trusted. The hurt was still visible, but so was the peace that had come from refusing to carry that hurt forever.
One of the most powerful ideas he shared was that what gives a two-dimensional image depth is shadow. Without shadow there is no contrast, and without contrast there is no depth. The same is true of life. The difficult moments, the betrayals, the losses, and the disappointments create the depth that allows us to appreciate the full picture. But we cannot allow the shadows to become the whole picture. If we focus only on darkness, we lose sight of the beauty, growth, wisdom, and purpose that exist alongside it.
That idea hit me harder than I expected.
Partly because I have watched my own brother and Mikki experience a fracture in their friendship during Covid-19 that was eventually healed. Seeing two people find their way back to one another after time and distance had come between them is powerful. It is a reminder that relationships can survive even serious disagreements if both people remain willing to do the work.
But the conversation touched something even deeper in me.
During Covid-19, I watched businesses I had spent years building disappear. I watched equity vanish. I watched plans I had worked toward for decades collapse in a matter of months. Like many entrepreneurs, I wasn't just losing income. I was watching pieces of my life's work slip away.
I can forgive that. In fact, I believe I have to. Carrying anger forever is a prison. At some point, it weighs more on the person carrying it than on the person who caused it.
At the same time, forgiveness and accountability are not the same thing, and I think we do ourselves a disservice when we pretend they are.
I do not want to move on as if nothing happened. I do not want to pretend businesses were not destroyed, children were not harmed, families were not divided, and fundamental rights were not restricted. I do not want us to collectively decide that because enough time has passed, the questions no longer matter.
That is what forgiveness is not.
It is not forgetting. It is not pretending the wound never existed. It is not agreeing that what happened was acceptable. Forgiveness is the decision not to allow the wound to define the rest of your life. Accountability, on the other hand, is the willingness to honestly examine what happened so that we do not repeat the same mistakes.
We need both. Without forgiveness, we remain trapped in bitterness. Without accountability, we guarantee that history repeats itself.
I am deeply grateful for what Mikki Willis brought to the world during Covid-19. His films gave many people the courage to ask questions when asking questions carried real social and professional consequences. Whether someone agreed with every conclusion he reached or not, he helped create space for conversations that powerful institutions often seemed unwilling to have.
What inspired me most last week, however, was not what he did during Covid-19. It was who he has become since. His willingness to forgive, his willingness to continue searching for truth without becoming consumed by anger, and hi...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/what-forgiveness-is-not/ Last week, we hosted our monthly Brownstone Institute Supper Club at Sovereignty Ranch. Our guest speaker was Mikki Willis, producer of Plandemic, The Great Awakening (Plandemic 3), and several other films that became touchstones for millions of people trying to make sense of the Covid-19 era.
I expected the conversation to focus on public health, censorship, and the lingering questions many people still have about those years. It did. But what stayed with me most had very little to do with science, politics, or policy. It was a conversation about forgiveness.
Mikki spoke candidly about friendships lost during Covid-19, the pain of being misunderstood, and the reality that many of the apologies people hoped for never came. There were moments when emotion caught in his throat as he reflected on people he once loved and trusted. The hurt was still visible, but so was the peace that had come from refusing to carry that hurt forever.
One of the most powerful ideas he shared was that what gives a two-dimensional image depth is shadow. Without shadow there is no contrast, and without contrast there is no depth. The same is true of life. The difficult moments, the betrayals, the losses, and the disappointments create the depth that allows us to appreciate the full picture. But we cannot allow the shadows to become the whole picture. If we focus only on darkness, we lose sight of the beauty, growth, wisdom, and purpose that exist alongside it.
That idea hit me harder than I expected.
Partly because I have watched my own brother and Mikki experience a fracture in their friendship during Covid-19 that was eventually healed. Seeing two people find their way back to one another after time and distance had come between them is powerful. It is a reminder that relationships can survive even serious disagreements if both people remain willing to do the work.
But the conversation touched something even deeper in me.
During Covid-19, I watched businesses I had spent years building disappear. I watched equity vanish. I watched plans I had worked toward for decades collapse in a matter of months. Like many entrepreneurs, I wasn't just losing income. I was watching pieces of my life's work slip away.
I can forgive that. In fact, I believe I have to. Carrying anger forever is a prison. At some point, it weighs more on the person carrying it than on the person who caused it.
At the same time, forgiveness and accountability are not the same thing, and I think we do ourselves a disservice when we pretend they are.
I do not want to move on as if nothing happened. I do not want to pretend businesses were not destroyed, children were not harmed, families were not divided, and fundamental rights were not restricted. I do not want us to collectively decide that because enough time has passed, the questions no longer matter.
That is what forgiveness is not.
It is not forgetting. It is not pretending the wound never existed. It is not agreeing that what happened was acceptable. Forgiveness is the decision not to allow the wound to define the rest of your life. Accountability, on the other hand, is the willingness to honestly examine what happened so that we do not repeat the same mistakes.
We need both. Without forgiveness, we remain trapped in bitterness. Without accountability, we guarantee that history repeats itself.
I am deeply grateful for what Mikki Willis brought to the world during Covid-19. His films gave many people the courage to ask questions when asking questions carried real social and professional consequences. Whether someone agreed with every conclusion he reached or not, he helped create space for conversations that powerful institutions often seemed unwilling to have.
What inspired me most last week, however, was not what he did during Covid-19. It was who he has become since. His willingness to forgive, his willingness to continue searching for truth without becoming consumed by anger, and hi...]]> Mon, 08 Jun 2026 07:00:25 -0400 What Forgiveness Is Not Last week, we hosted our monthly Brownstone Institute Supper Club at Sovereignty Ranch. Our guest speaker was Mikki Willis, producer of Plandemic, The Great Awakening (Plandemic 3), and several other films tha...]]> Last week, we hosted our monthly Brownstone Institute Supper Club at Sovereignty Ranch. Our guest speaker was Mikki Willis, producer of Plandemic, The Great Awakening (Plandemic 3), and several other films that became touchstones for millions of people trying to make sense of the Covid-19 era.
I expected the conversation to focus on public health, censorship, and the lingering questions many people still have about those years. It did. But what stayed with me most had very little to do with science, politics, or policy. It was a conversation about forgiveness.
Mikki spoke candidly about friendships lost during Covid-19, the pain of being misunderstood, and the reality that many of the apologies people hoped for never came. There were moments when emotion caught in his throat as he reflected on people he once loved and trusted. The hurt was still visible, but so was the peace that had come from refusing to carry that hurt forever.
One of the most powerful ideas he shared was that what gives a two-dimensional image depth is shadow. Without shadow there is no contrast, and without contrast there is no depth. The same is true of life. The difficult moments, the betrayals, the losses, and the disappointments create the depth that allows us to appreciate the full picture. But we cannot allow the shadows to become the whole picture. If we focus only on darkness, we lose sight of the beauty, growth, wisdom, and purpose that exist alongside it.
That idea hit me harder than I expected.
Partly because I have watched my own brother and Mikki experience a fracture in their friendship during Covid-19 that was eventually healed. Seeing two people find their way back to one another after time and distance had come between them is powerful. It is a reminder that relationships can survive even serious disagreements if both people remain willing to do the work.
But the conversation touched something even deeper in me.
During Covid-19, I watched businesses I had spent years building disappear. I watched equity vanish. I watched plans I had worked toward for decades collapse in a matter of months. Like many entrepreneurs, I wasn't just losing income. I was watching pieces of my life's work slip away.
I can forgive that. In fact, I believe I have to. Carrying anger forever is a prison. At some point, it weighs more on the person carrying it than on the person who caused it.
At the same time, forgiveness and accountability are not the same thing, and I think we do ourselves a disservice when we pretend they are.
I do not want to move on as if nothing happened. I do not want to pretend businesses were not destroyed, children were not harmed, families were not divided, and fundamental rights were not restricted. I do not want us to collectively decide that because enough time has passed, the questions no longer matter.
That is what forgiveness is not.
It is not forgetting. It is not pretending the wound never existed. It is not agreeing that what happened was acceptable. Forgiveness is the decision not to allow the wound to define the rest of your life. Accountability, on the other hand, is the willingness to honestly examine what happened so that we do not repeat the same mistakes.
We need both. Without forgiveness, we remain trapped in bitterness. Without accountability, we guarantee that history repeats itself.
I am deeply grateful for what Mikki Willis brought to the world during Covid-19. His films gave many people the courage to ask questions when asking questions carried real social and professional consequences. Whether someone agreed with every conclusion he reached or not, he helped create space for conversations that powerful institutions often seemed unwilling to have.
What inspired me most last week, however, was not what he did during Covid-19. It was who he has become since. His willingness to forgive, his willingness to continue searching for truth without becoming consumed by anger, and hi...]]> Mollie Engelhart 05:55 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 65 70315 The cacophony for and against vaccines – even what is a vaccine is in broad dispute – has reached new level of deafening absurdity. There isn't just one rabbit hole but hundreds.
Compliance is tanking, which is what one would expect after brutal mandates and ubiquitous injury and death. Meanwhile, pharma bots are dominating social media to shame dissidents, while legacy media turns news pages into nonstop shot-and-pill advertising.
Everyone is left with questions about whom to trust and what is true. Several states have already seceded from the CDC's own attempt to change the childhood schedule even slightly. That's how contentious this issue has become.
My thesis: this epistemic nihilism is born of the deliberate subversion of economic signaling systems that would otherwise reveal inconvenient truths.
Let's begin with theory.
In 1920, Ludwig von Mises set aside all moral, aesthetic, and philosophical issues concerning socialism and examined how it would work as a purely economic experiment. This was a point rarely considered at all in the centuries before, even by the new leaders of the Soviet Union who had no idea what they were doing beyond nationalizing industry, blathering on about the dictatorship of the proletariat, and demonizing land owners.
Mises calmly explained that double-entry bookkeeping is the mathematical means by which society has come to evaluate the benefits and costs of resource use. This requires prices, which are indicators of relative scarcities and consumer demand. These prices form the essential building blocks of economic knowledge. They provide pointers regarding the essential questions of what to produce and in what quantity.
In order for these prices to be accurate, they must be formed in the context of real-world market trading up and down the full structure of production, from raw materials through capital goods to consumer goods. Only that process generates reliable signals from which accounting is built.
Socialism purports to replace the price system with central commands. In that case, not even the planners will have access to information about the real world around them. They will be flying blind and inevitably screw it up. They did indeed.
The implications of the argument go far beyond the debate over socialism. They reach into every sector mired in government intervention that distorts pricing signals. With every price distortion, we get further away from having accurate information about economic value and market viability in real-world settings.
It was Toby Rogers who first pointed out that this accounts for much if not all of the confusion surrounding the vaccine industry and practice. For two and a quarter centuries, this product, practice, and industry has relied fundamentally on statist means of boosting its viability at every stage: investment, production, distribution, consumption, and even liability. There is no stage of this sector that is untouched by government meddling on behalf of the industry in question.
Rogers writes:
The vaccine era — the years since the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act — exposes a failure neither [Mises or F.A. Hayek] foresaw. Let's call it the calculation problem under regulatory and epistemic capture. Socialism abolished the price outright. Capture in a mixed market economy is subtler: it leaves a price standing and corrupts it from within until it is worse than meaningless.
Mandates, government purchasing, and insurance rules guarantee sales no matter what the product actually does. School-entry laws force sales upon captive customers (e.g. children who want to go to school). Liability protection removes the price that disciplines a defective product — the damages a court would otherwise make the manufacturer pay. The buyer is compelled and the producer is protected so no meaningful price can form.
Making matters worse, price aggregates what buyers believe about the thing they buy, however regul...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/economic-calculation-and-the-vaccine-industry/ The cacophony for and against vaccines – even what is a vaccine is in broad dispute – has reached new level of deafening absurdity. There isn't just one rabbit hole but hundreds.
Compliance is tanking, which is what one would expect after brutal mandates and ubiquitous injury and death. Meanwhile, pharma bots are dominating social media to shame dissidents, while legacy media turns news pages into nonstop shot-and-pill advertising.
Everyone is left with questions about whom to trust and what is true. Several states have already seceded from the CDC's own attempt to change the childhood schedule even slightly. That's how contentious this issue has become.
My thesis: this epistemic nihilism is born of the deliberate subversion of economic signaling systems that would otherwise reveal inconvenient truths.
Let's begin with theory.
In 1920, Ludwig von Mises set aside all moral, aesthetic, and philosophical issues concerning socialism and examined how it would work as a purely economic experiment. This was a point rarely considered at all in the centuries before, even by the new leaders of the Soviet Union who had no idea what they were doing beyond nationalizing industry, blathering on about the dictatorship of the proletariat, and demonizing land owners.
Mises calmly explained that double-entry bookkeeping is the mathematical means by which society has come to evaluate the benefits and costs of resource use. This requires prices, which are indicators of relative scarcities and consumer demand. These prices form the essential building blocks of economic knowledge. They provide pointers regarding the essential questions of what to produce and in what quantity.
In order for these prices to be accurate, they must be formed in the context of real-world market trading up and down the full structure of production, from raw materials through capital goods to consumer goods. Only that process generates reliable signals from which accounting is built.
Socialism purports to replace the price system with central commands. In that case, not even the planners will have access to information about the real world around them. They will be flying blind and inevitably screw it up. They did indeed.
The implications of the argument go far beyond the debate over socialism. They reach into every sector mired in government intervention that distorts pricing signals. With every price distortion, we get further away from having accurate information about economic value and market viability in real-world settings.
It was Toby Rogers who first pointed out that this accounts for much if not all of the confusion surrounding the vaccine industry and practice. For two and a quarter centuries, this product, practice, and industry has relied fundamentally on statist means of boosting its viability at every stage: investment, production, distribution, consumption, and even liability. There is no stage of this sector that is untouched by government meddling on behalf of the industry in question.
Rogers writes:
The vaccine era — the years since the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act — exposes a failure neither [Mises or F.A. Hayek] foresaw. Let's call it the calculation problem under regulatory and epistemic capture. Socialism abolished the price outright. Capture in a mixed market economy is subtler: it leaves a price standing and corrupts it from within until it is worse than meaningless.
Mandates, government purchasing, and insurance rules guarantee sales no matter what the product actually does. School-entry laws force sales upon captive customers (e.g. children who want to go to school). Liability protection removes the price that disciplines a defective product — the damages a court would otherwise make the manufacturer pay. The buyer is compelled and the producer is protected so no meaningful price can form.
Making matters worse, price aggregates what buyers believe about the thing they buy, however regul...]]> Sun, 07 Jun 2026 08:22:00 -0400 Economic Calculation in the Vaccinated Commonwealth The cacophony for and against vaccines – even what is a vaccine is in broad dispute – has reached new level of deafening absurdity. There isn't just one rabbit hole but hundreds.
Compliance is tanking, which ...]]> The cacophony for and against vaccines – even what is a vaccine is in broad dispute – has reached new level of deafening absurdity. There isn't just one rabbit hole but hundreds.
Compliance is tanking, which is what one would expect after brutal mandates and ubiquitous injury and death. Meanwhile, pharma bots are dominating social media to shame dissidents, while legacy media turns news pages into nonstop shot-and-pill advertising.
Everyone is left with questions about whom to trust and what is true. Several states have already seceded from the CDC's own attempt to change the childhood schedule even slightly. That's how contentious this issue has become.
My thesis: this epistemic nihilism is born of the deliberate subversion of economic signaling systems that would otherwise reveal inconvenient truths.
Let's begin with theory.
In 1920, Ludwig von Mises set aside all moral, aesthetic, and philosophical issues concerning socialism and examined how it would work as a purely economic experiment. This was a point rarely considered at all in the centuries before, even by the new leaders of the Soviet Union who had no idea what they were doing beyond nationalizing industry, blathering on about the dictatorship of the proletariat, and demonizing land owners.
Mises calmly explained that double-entry bookkeeping is the mathematical means by which society has come to evaluate the benefits and costs of resource use. This requires prices, which are indicators of relative scarcities and consumer demand. These prices form the essential building blocks of economic knowledge. They provide pointers regarding the essential questions of what to produce and in what quantity.
In order for these prices to be accurate, they must be formed in the context of real-world market trading up and down the full structure of production, from raw materials through capital goods to consumer goods. Only that process generates reliable signals from which accounting is built.
Socialism purports to replace the price system with central commands. In that case, not even the planners will have access to information about the real world around them. They will be flying blind and inevitably screw it up. They did indeed.
The implications of the argument go far beyond the debate over socialism. They reach into every sector mired in government intervention that distorts pricing signals. With every price distortion, we get further away from having accurate information about economic value and market viability in real-world settings.
It was Toby Rogers who first pointed out that this accounts for much if not all of the confusion surrounding the vaccine industry and practice. For two and a quarter centuries, this product, practice, and industry has relied fundamentally on statist means of boosting its viability at every stage: investment, production, distribution, consumption, and even liability. There is no stage of this sector that is untouched by government meddling on behalf of the industry in question.
Rogers writes:
The vaccine era — the years since the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act — exposes a failure neither [Mises or F.A. Hayek] foresaw. Let's call it the calculation problem under regulatory and epistemic capture. Socialism abolished the price outright. Capture in a mixed market economy is subtler: it leaves a price standing and corrupts it from within until it is worse than meaningless.
Mandates, government purchasing, and insurance rules guarantee sales no matter what the product actually does. School-entry laws force sales upon captive customers (e.g. children who want to go to school). Liability protection removes the price that disciplines a defective product — the damages a court would otherwise make the manufacturer pay. The buyer is compelled and the producer is protected so no meaningful price can form.
Making matters worse, price aggregates what buyers believe about the thing they buy, however regul...]]> Jeffrey A. Tucker 10:42 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 64 62863 Tomorrow will make four long years since that bitterly cold day in Washington, D.C., when the medical freedom movement shocked the officious and unctuous Biden administration with the first major DC political rally since the infamous post-election events of January 06, 2021. And yet, what I find most stunning was not that we pulled it off with essentially no lawlessness — despite rumors of attendance by a variety of disruptive forces and the concerted efforts of various chaos agents — but that the core issues remain unresolved four years later.
The American Academy of Pediatrics and the West Coast Health Alliance continue to advocate for mandated Covid mRNA vaccines for children as young as 6 months old. In Hawaii, Governor Dr. Josh Green and his cronies have just introduced a bill in the legislature to repeal the current Hawaiian Childhood Vaccinations Exemption process, making compliance with state-imposed vaccine mandates for children a statewide policy without any opt-out clause.
Shortly after the DC "Defeat the Mandates" rally, the Washington Post labeled me a liar (in print, repeatedly) for claiming that the mRNA products were not working as intended, in that they did not prevent infection or disease caused by SARS-CoV-2. And yet that has now become a universally acknowledged truth. I guess that intentional, repeated defamation did not withstand the test of time.
Suffice to say, I am not holding my breath for an apology. So much for the reliability of the "experts'" wisdom and insight. One might imagine a bit of introspection would be in order, perhaps a modicum of shame, and a pinch of humility. But that does not deter the same highly credentialed medical "experts" from insisting on mandating the most aggressive vaccine schedule in the entire world for our children. In jab they trust, and so we must.
But what do the medical Guilds have to say about mandates and informed consent?
In its Code of Medical Ethics, the American Medical Association states:
"Informed consent in medical treatment is fundamental in both ethics and law. Patients have the right to receive information and ask questions about recommended treatments so that they can make well-considered decisions about care. Successful communication in the patient-physician relationship fosters trust and supports shared decision making."
American Medical Association. Code of Medical Ethics: Informed Consent. 2025.
Fundamental in both ethics and law. But apparently there is an unwritten and unspoken vaccines mandate exemption.
In its Public Health Code of Ethics, the American Public Health Association asserts:
"the effective and ethical practice of public health depends upon social and cultural conditions of respect for personal autonomy, self-determination, privacy, and the absence of domination in its many interpersonal and institutional forms."
American Public Health Association. Public Health Code of Ethics. 2019.
"Absence of domination in its many interpersonal and institutional forms" is an interesting and relevant turn of phrase. If state-imposed vaccine mandates are not a form of institutional domination, I do not know what is.
Bioethics is the study and application of moral principles in medicine and the life sciences, built around four central pillars: autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice. Among these, informed consent stands as the cornerstone of ethical practice because it operationalizes respect for autonomy — the individual's right to self-determination. Informed consent requires that patients receive complete and transparent information about the purpose, benefits, risks, and alternatives of any proposed intervention, including the option to refuse treatment.
True consent must be voluntary and free from coercion, deception, or informational manipulation. Without full disclosure and comprehension, consent becomes mere compliance, negating the principle of autonomy and transforming medicine into a f...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/bioethics-and-freedom-to-choose/ Tomorrow will make four long years since that bitterly cold day in Washington, D.C., when the medical freedom movement shocked the officious and unctuous Biden administration with the first major DC political rally since the infamous post-election events of January 06, 2021. And yet, what I find most stunning was not that we pulled it off with essentially no lawlessness — despite rumors of attendance by a variety of disruptive forces and the concerted efforts of various chaos agents — but that the core issues remain unresolved four years later.
The American Academy of Pediatrics and the West Coast Health Alliance continue to advocate for mandated Covid mRNA vaccines for children as young as 6 months old. In Hawaii, Governor Dr. Josh Green and his cronies have just introduced a bill in the legislature to repeal the current Hawaiian Childhood Vaccinations Exemption process, making compliance with state-imposed vaccine mandates for children a statewide policy without any opt-out clause.
Shortly after the DC "Defeat the Mandates" rally, the Washington Post labeled me a liar (in print, repeatedly) for claiming that the mRNA products were not working as intended, in that they did not prevent infection or disease caused by SARS-CoV-2. And yet that has now become a universally acknowledged truth. I guess that intentional, repeated defamation did not withstand the test of time.
Suffice to say, I am not holding my breath for an apology. So much for the reliability of the "experts'" wisdom and insight. One might imagine a bit of introspection would be in order, perhaps a modicum of shame, and a pinch of humility. But that does not deter the same highly credentialed medical "experts" from insisting on mandating the most aggressive vaccine schedule in the entire world for our children. In jab they trust, and so we must.
But what do the medical Guilds have to say about mandates and informed consent?
In its Code of Medical Ethics, the American Medical Association states:
"Informed consent in medical treatment is fundamental in both ethics and law. Patients have the right to receive information and ask questions about recommended treatments so that they can make well-considered decisions about care. Successful communication in the patient-physician relationship fosters trust and supports shared decision making."
American Medical Association. Code of Medical Ethics: Informed Consent. 2025.
Fundamental in both ethics and law. But apparently there is an unwritten and unspoken vaccines mandate exemption.
In its Public Health Code of Ethics, the American Public Health Association asserts:
"the effective and ethical practice of public health depends upon social and cultural conditions of respect for personal autonomy, self-determination, privacy, and the absence of domination in its many interpersonal and institutional forms."
American Public Health Association. Public Health Code of Ethics. 2019.
"Absence of domination in its many interpersonal and institutional forms" is an interesting and relevant turn of phrase. If state-imposed vaccine mandates are not a form of institutional domination, I do not know what is.
Bioethics is the study and application of moral principles in medicine and the life sciences, built around four central pillars: autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice. Among these, informed consent stands as the cornerstone of ethical practice because it operationalizes respect for autonomy — the individual's right to self-determination. Informed consent requires that patients receive complete and transparent information about the purpose, benefits, risks, and alternatives of any proposed intervention, including the option to refuse treatment.
True consent must be voluntary and free from coercion, deception, or informational manipulation. Without full disclosure and comprehension, consent becomes mere compliance, negating the principle of autonomy and transforming medicine into a f...]]> Sat, 06 Jun 2026 08:20:00 -0400 Bioethics and Freedom to Choose Tomorrow will make four long years since that bitterly cold day in Washington, D.C., when the medical freedom movement shocked the officious and unctuous Biden administration with the first major DC political ral...]]> Tomorrow will make four long years since that bitterly cold day in Washington, D.C., when the medical freedom movement shocked the officious and unctuous Biden administration with the first major DC political rally since the infamous post-election events of January 06, 2021. And yet, what I find most stunning was not that we pulled it off with essentially no lawlessness — despite rumors of attendance by a variety of disruptive forces and the concerted efforts of various chaos agents — but that the core issues remain unresolved four years later.
The American Academy of Pediatrics and the West Coast Health Alliance continue to advocate for mandated Covid mRNA vaccines for children as young as 6 months old. In Hawaii, Governor Dr. Josh Green and his cronies have just introduced a bill in the legislature to repeal the current Hawaiian Childhood Vaccinations Exemption process, making compliance with state-imposed vaccine mandates for children a statewide policy without any opt-out clause.
Shortly after the DC "Defeat the Mandates" rally, the Washington Post labeled me a liar (in print, repeatedly) for claiming that the mRNA products were not working as intended, in that they did not prevent infection or disease caused by SARS-CoV-2. And yet that has now become a universally acknowledged truth. I guess that intentional, repeated defamation did not withstand the test of time.
Suffice to say, I am not holding my breath for an apology. So much for the reliability of the "experts'" wisdom and insight. One might imagine a bit of introspection would be in order, perhaps a modicum of shame, and a pinch of humility. But that does not deter the same highly credentialed medical "experts" from insisting on mandating the most aggressive vaccine schedule in the entire world for our children. In jab they trust, and so we must.
But what do the medical Guilds have to say about mandates and informed consent?
In its Code of Medical Ethics, the American Medical Association states:
"Informed consent in medical treatment is fundamental in both ethics and law. Patients have the right to receive information and ask questions about recommended treatments so that they can make well-considered decisions about care. Successful communication in the patient-physician relationship fosters trust and supports shared decision making."
American Medical Association. Code of Medical Ethics: Informed Consent. 2025.
Fundamental in both ethics and law. But apparently there is an unwritten and unspoken vaccines mandate exemption.
In its Public Health Code of Ethics, the American Public Health Association asserts:
"the effective and ethical practice of public health depends upon social and cultural conditions of respect for personal autonomy, self-determination, privacy, and the absence of domination in its many interpersonal and institutional forms."
American Public Health Association. Public Health Code of Ethics. 2019.
"Absence of domination in its many interpersonal and institutional forms" is an interesting and relevant turn of phrase. If state-imposed vaccine mandates are not a form of institutional domination, I do not know what is.
Bioethics is the study and application of moral principles in medicine and the life sciences, built around four central pillars: autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice. Among these, informed consent stands as the cornerstone of ethical practice because it operationalizes respect for autonomy — the individual's right to self-determination. Informed consent requires that patients receive complete and transparent information about the purpose, benefits, risks, and alternatives of any proposed intervention, including the option to refuse treatment.
True consent must be voluntary and free from coercion, deception, or informational manipulation. Without full disclosure and comprehension, consent becomes mere compliance, negating the principle of autonomy and transforming medicine into a f...]]> Robert Malone 08:32 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 63 62504 The Covid lockdowns may not have been remotely effective, but at least they harmed millions of people and created long-lasting negative impacts that we're still dealing with today.
That's the conclusion of a massive new body of research into the nonsensical policies promoted by the public health "expert" class, promoted by their media partners, and enacted by incompetent, cowardly politicians.
Mask mandates had been thoroughly discouraged by decades of pre-Covid pandemic planning. There was no body of research supporting the closing of certain businesses at different hours of the day, as many jurisdictions demanded.
No studies were conducted on the reduction of infection rates resulting from placing directional arrows on the floors of grocery stores to direct people through aisles in predetermined patterns.
There were no randomized controlled trials on closing skate parks and beaches, arresting people surfing alone in the ocean, restricting capacity to random percentages based on inaccurate assumptions of community spread.
We had no idea whether closing schools would be effective or "save lives," but we did it anyway. We didn't know if vaccine passports would actually have a meaningful impact on community spread, yet we were encouraged to push that too.
All these "interventions" started with little-to-no evidence. That's bad enough. What makes it much worse? That we implemented them all with zero consideration of possible side effects resulting from those policies.
Lockdowns were an unprecedented incursion on freedom and liberty. What would that do to society, the economy, mental health, and so on? It appeared that no one involved gave those considerations a second thought, and now we're paying the price.
A massive new systematic review of over 130 studies of Covid policies was published recently in Health Affairs Scholar by writers from the Department of Health Policy, Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health in Indianapolis, synthesizing the research into ancillary outcomes from lockdowns, school closures, and other mandates. The goal of this systematic review was to find the "unintended health effects" resulting from those policies. Essentially, putting Covid aside, what were the results when it came to various important measures of health?
They write that while policymakers and public health authorities have produced years of reports and lectures on the importance of mandates and lockdowns in reducing viral transmission, there's a large "gap in the literature" regarding what other impacts may have resulted from "shelter-in-place/stay-at-home orders, workplace closures, and school closures."
While peer-review isn't a guarantee of accuracy, all 132 studies included in the analysis were peer-reviewed. Those 132 studies resulted in finding over 450 unique outcomes. And spoiler alert, the overwhelming majority of those outcomes were negative.
What makes their results even more infuriating is that there was, as they explain, "very low quality" evidence that lockdowns would be effective, as well as a "lack of information on potential unintended downstream consequences." Yet decision-makers plowed forward anyway, despite the "serious ethical, economic, health equity, and human rights concerns" resulting from such policies.
Not to mention that the researchers found that lockdowns had "little to no effect on COVID-19 mortality," the most important stated goal of lockdowns. Stay home, save lives, the mantra went. Turns out, like so many other government messages, that this was completely and utterly incorrect.
So we've established that there was no reduction in Covid mortality from lockdowns, very low quality evidence supporting lockdowns in the first place, and an overwhelming majority of studies found negative side effects from those policies. All great news so far. But it gets even better when examining what those negative side effects actually were, and how widespread those results were...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-shocking-damage-caused-by-covid-policies/ The Covid lockdowns may not have been remotely effective, but at least they harmed millions of people and created long-lasting negative impacts that we're still dealing with today.
That's the conclusion of a massive new body of research into the nonsensical policies promoted by the public health "expert" class, promoted by their media partners, and enacted by incompetent, cowardly politicians.
Mask mandates had been thoroughly discouraged by decades of pre-Covid pandemic planning. There was no body of research supporting the closing of certain businesses at different hours of the day, as many jurisdictions demanded.
No studies were conducted on the reduction of infection rates resulting from placing directional arrows on the floors of grocery stores to direct people through aisles in predetermined patterns.
There were no randomized controlled trials on closing skate parks and beaches, arresting people surfing alone in the ocean, restricting capacity to random percentages based on inaccurate assumptions of community spread.
We had no idea whether closing schools would be effective or "save lives," but we did it anyway. We didn't know if vaccine passports would actually have a meaningful impact on community spread, yet we were encouraged to push that too.
All these "interventions" started with little-to-no evidence. That's bad enough. What makes it much worse? That we implemented them all with zero consideration of possible side effects resulting from those policies.
Lockdowns were an unprecedented incursion on freedom and liberty. What would that do to society, the economy, mental health, and so on? It appeared that no one involved gave those considerations a second thought, and now we're paying the price.
A massive new systematic review of over 130 studies of Covid policies was published recently in Health Affairs Scholar by writers from the Department of Health Policy, Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health in Indianapolis, synthesizing the research into ancillary outcomes from lockdowns, school closures, and other mandates. The goal of this systematic review was to find the "unintended health effects" resulting from those policies. Essentially, putting Covid aside, what were the results when it came to various important measures of health?
They write that while policymakers and public health authorities have produced years of reports and lectures on the importance of mandates and lockdowns in reducing viral transmission, there's a large "gap in the literature" regarding what other impacts may have resulted from "shelter-in-place/stay-at-home orders, workplace closures, and school closures."
While peer-review isn't a guarantee of accuracy, all 132 studies included in the analysis were peer-reviewed. Those 132 studies resulted in finding over 450 unique outcomes. And spoiler alert, the overwhelming majority of those outcomes were negative.
What makes their results even more infuriating is that there was, as they explain, "very low quality" evidence that lockdowns would be effective, as well as a "lack of information on potential unintended downstream consequences." Yet decision-makers plowed forward anyway, despite the "serious ethical, economic, health equity, and human rights concerns" resulting from such policies.
Not to mention that the researchers found that lockdowns had "little to no effect on COVID-19 mortality," the most important stated goal of lockdowns. Stay home, save lives, the mantra went. Turns out, like so many other government messages, that this was completely and utterly incorrect.
So we've established that there was no reduction in Covid mortality from lockdowns, very low quality evidence supporting lockdowns in the first place, and an overwhelming majority of studies found negative side effects from those policies. All great news so far. But it gets even better when examining what those negative side effects actually were, and how widespread those results were...]]> Fri, 05 Jun 2026 07:32:00 -0400 The Shocking Damage Caused by Covid Policies Horrifying New Research into Damage from Covid Lockdowns Every Possible Outcome Got Worse Under Lockdowns The Covid lockdowns may not have been remotely effective, but at least they harmed millions of people and created long-lasting negative impacts that we're still dealing with today.
That's the conclusion of a massive...]]> The Covid lockdowns may not have been remotely effective, but at least they harmed millions of people and created long-lasting negative impacts that we're still dealing with today.
That's the conclusion of a massive new body of research into the nonsensical policies promoted by the public health "expert" class, promoted by their media partners, and enacted by incompetent, cowardly politicians.
Mask mandates had been thoroughly discouraged by decades of pre-Covid pandemic planning. There was no body of research supporting the closing of certain businesses at different hours of the day, as many jurisdictions demanded.
No studies were conducted on the reduction of infection rates resulting from placing directional arrows on the floors of grocery stores to direct people through aisles in predetermined patterns.
There were no randomized controlled trials on closing skate parks and beaches, arresting people surfing alone in the ocean, restricting capacity to random percentages based on inaccurate assumptions of community spread.
We had no idea whether closing schools would be effective or "save lives," but we did it anyway. We didn't know if vaccine passports would actually have a meaningful impact on community spread, yet we were encouraged to push that too.
All these "interventions" started with little-to-no evidence. That's bad enough. What makes it much worse? That we implemented them all with zero consideration of possible side effects resulting from those policies.
Lockdowns were an unprecedented incursion on freedom and liberty. What would that do to society, the economy, mental health, and so on? It appeared that no one involved gave those considerations a second thought, and now we're paying the price.
A massive new systematic review of over 130 studies of Covid policies was published recently in Health Affairs Scholar by writers from the Department of Health Policy, Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health in Indianapolis, synthesizing the research into ancillary outcomes from lockdowns, school closures, and other mandates. The goal of this systematic review was to find the "unintended health effects" resulting from those policies. Essentially, putting Covid aside, what were the results when it came to various important measures of health?
They write that while policymakers and public health authorities have produced years of reports and lectures on the importance of mandates and lockdowns in reducing viral transmission, there's a large "gap in the literature" regarding what other impacts may have resulted from "shelter-in-place/stay-at-home orders, workplace closures, and school closures."
While peer-review isn't a guarantee of accuracy, all 132 studies included in the analysis were peer-reviewed. Those 132 studies resulted in finding over 450 unique outcomes. And spoiler alert, the overwhelming majority of those outcomes were negative.
What makes their results even more infuriating is that there was, as they explain, "very low quality" evidence that lockdowns would be effective, as well as a "lack of information on potential unintended downstream consequences." Yet decision-makers plowed forward anyway, despite the "serious ethical, economic, health equity, and human rights concerns" resulting from such policies.
Not to mention that the researchers found that lockdowns had "little to no effect on COVID-19 mortality," the most important stated goal of lockdowns. Stay home, save lives, the mantra went. Turns out, like so many other government messages, that this was completely and utterly incorrect.
So we've established that there was no reduction in Covid mortality from lockdowns, very low quality evidence supporting lockdowns in the first place, and an overwhelming majority of studies found negative side effects from those policies. All great news so far. But it gets even better when examining what those negative side effects actually were, and how widespread those results were...]]> Ian Miller 07:55 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 62 61570 This week, I reported that Pfizer's mRNA flu shot offered almost no clinical benefit in adults aged 18–64 — and that the harms were more significant than the headlines suggested.
But that was not the full story.
The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) did not publish any data from the older adults in the same trial — the very population most at risk from influenza and the main reason these vaccines exist.
Instead, the over-65 results were quietly uploaded to ClinicalTrials.gov, where they sat buried on a government website, out of sight and far from the scrutiny that comes with publication in a leading medical journal.
When MIT professor Retsef Levi discovered the missing cohort while reviewing the trial documents, he was stunned — not only by what the data showed, but by what it means when a flagship journal selectively reports findings that may directly shape public health decisions.
What he told me calls into question not just this study, but the integrity of the system that allowed it to happen.
Levi said the missing data in the NEJM article was "puzzling," adding that "it seems like the reason for omitting the older participants was because the results were not favourable for the studied mRNA vaccine."
The trial enrolled about 27,000 participants aged 65 and older. Their data make it clear: Pfizer's mRNA flu shot did not outperform the traditional flu shot in the elderly.
On top of that, Pfizer's shot caused slightly higher rates of mild-to-moderate local and systemic reactions — injection-site pain, fatigue — consistent with the well-known reactogenicity profile of mRNA products.
Levi said omitting data from this group was "unacceptable, especially since the over-65s are among the high-risk populations that influenza vaccines aim to protect."
He did not soften his criticism of NEJM's role.
"It's either gross negligence in the review process, or worse, scientific misconduct," said Levi, questioning how the public can trust a journal "if its review process either misses or hides major results in the trial."
Rather than presenting the full dataset in the journal, Pfizer uploaded the unfavourable results on ClinicalTrials.gov, where they remained effectively invisible to clinicians and the public.
Levi said there was no question this was an egregious oversight.
"I do not see how NEJM can argue that the published article is transparent, when results are selectively reported, and moreover, negative results are not reported."
The failure to publish the older cohort's results has now placed NEJM — and its Editor-in-Chief, Dr Eric Rubin — under intense scrutiny.
Levi said, "I think that what we see here is a clear failure of the NEJM's review process and integrity, and the ultimate responsibility rests with the Editor in Chief…Dr Rubin should be expected to provide a clear explanation as to how this has happened."
Dr Eric Rubin presided over the decision to publish a Pfizer trial stripped of its most important age group, allowing a reputed journal to become complicit in the same selective reporting practices that have long undermined scientific publishing.
Rubin also sits on the FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) — the same committee that may one day review Pfizer's biological licence application for this very product.
His track record during the pandemic has been fraught.
In a 2021 VRBPAC meeting on Covid-19 vaccines for children, Rubin dismissed concerns about unknown safety gaps, saying, "We're never going to learn about how safe the vaccine is unless we start giving it. And that's just the way it goes."
NEJM under his leadership also published the pivotal AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine trial — a paper that omitted adverse event data.
One of those missing cases involved participant Brianne Dressen, whose severe neurological complications were removed from the trial records. Dressen personally contacted Rubin asking him to correct the record a...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/major-journal-under-fire-for-omitting-pfizers-failed-flu-data-in-seniors/ This week, I reported that Pfizer's mRNA flu shot offered almost no clinical benefit in adults aged 18–64 — and that the harms were more significant than the headlines suggested.
But that was not the full story.
The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) did not publish any data from the older adults in the same trial — the very population most at risk from influenza and the main reason these vaccines exist.
Instead, the over-65 results were quietly uploaded to ClinicalTrials.gov, where they sat buried on a government website, out of sight and far from the scrutiny that comes with publication in a leading medical journal.
When MIT professor Retsef Levi discovered the missing cohort while reviewing the trial documents, he was stunned — not only by what the data showed, but by what it means when a flagship journal selectively reports findings that may directly shape public health decisions.
What he told me calls into question not just this study, but the integrity of the system that allowed it to happen.
Levi said the missing data in the NEJM article was "puzzling," adding that "it seems like the reason for omitting the older participants was because the results were not favourable for the studied mRNA vaccine."
The trial enrolled about 27,000 participants aged 65 and older. Their data make it clear: Pfizer's mRNA flu shot did not outperform the traditional flu shot in the elderly.
On top of that, Pfizer's shot caused slightly higher rates of mild-to-moderate local and systemic reactions — injection-site pain, fatigue — consistent with the well-known reactogenicity profile of mRNA products.
Levi said omitting data from this group was "unacceptable, especially since the over-65s are among the high-risk populations that influenza vaccines aim to protect."
He did not soften his criticism of NEJM's role.
"It's either gross negligence in the review process, or worse, scientific misconduct," said Levi, questioning how the public can trust a journal "if its review process either misses or hides major results in the trial."
Rather than presenting the full dataset in the journal, Pfizer uploaded the unfavourable results on ClinicalTrials.gov, where they remained effectively invisible to clinicians and the public.
Levi said there was no question this was an egregious oversight.
"I do not see how NEJM can argue that the published article is transparent, when results are selectively reported, and moreover, negative results are not reported."
The failure to publish the older cohort's results has now placed NEJM — and its Editor-in-Chief, Dr Eric Rubin — under intense scrutiny.
Levi said, "I think that what we see here is a clear failure of the NEJM's review process and integrity, and the ultimate responsibility rests with the Editor in Chief…Dr Rubin should be expected to provide a clear explanation as to how this has happened."
Dr Eric Rubin presided over the decision to publish a Pfizer trial stripped of its most important age group, allowing a reputed journal to become complicit in the same selective reporting practices that have long undermined scientific publishing.
Rubin also sits on the FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) — the same committee that may one day review Pfizer's biological licence application for this very product.
His track record during the pandemic has been fraught.
In a 2021 VRBPAC meeting on Covid-19 vaccines for children, Rubin dismissed concerns about unknown safety gaps, saying, "We're never going to learn about how safe the vaccine is unless we start giving it. And that's just the way it goes."
NEJM under his leadership also published the pivotal AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine trial — a paper that omitted adverse event data.
One of those missing cases involved participant Brianne Dressen, whose severe neurological complications were removed from the trial records. Dressen personally contacted Rubin asking him to correct the record a...]]> Thu, 04 Jun 2026 07:03:40 -0400 Major Journal under Fire for Omitting Pfizer's Failed Flu Data in Seniors Burying Data The Eric Rubin Problem What Should Happen Next? The Real Issue Now This week, I reported that Pfizer's mRNA flu shot offered almost no clinical benefit in adults aged 18–64 — and that the harms were more significant than the headlines suggested.
But that was not the full story...]]> This week, I reported that Pfizer's mRNA flu shot offered almost no clinical benefit in adults aged 18–64 — and that the harms were more significant than the headlines suggested.
But that was not the full story.
The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) did not publish any data from the older adults in the same trial — the very population most at risk from influenza and the main reason these vaccines exist.
Instead, the over-65 results were quietly uploaded to ClinicalTrials.gov, where they sat buried on a government website, out of sight and far from the scrutiny that comes with publication in a leading medical journal.
When MIT professor Retsef Levi discovered the missing cohort while reviewing the trial documents, he was stunned — not only by what the data showed, but by what it means when a flagship journal selectively reports findings that may directly shape public health decisions.
What he told me calls into question not just this study, but the integrity of the system that allowed it to happen.
Levi said the missing data in the NEJM article was "puzzling," adding that "it seems like the reason for omitting the older participants was because the results were not favourable for the studied mRNA vaccine."
The trial enrolled about 27,000 participants aged 65 and older. Their data make it clear: Pfizer's mRNA flu shot did not outperform the traditional flu shot in the elderly.
On top of that, Pfizer's shot caused slightly higher rates of mild-to-moderate local and systemic reactions — injection-site pain, fatigue — consistent with the well-known reactogenicity profile of mRNA products.
Levi said omitting data from this group was "unacceptable, especially since the over-65s are among the high-risk populations that influenza vaccines aim to protect."
He did not soften his criticism of NEJM's role.
"It's either gross negligence in the review process, or worse, scientific misconduct," said Levi, questioning how the public can trust a journal "if its review process either misses or hides major results in the trial."
Rather than presenting the full dataset in the journal, Pfizer uploaded the unfavourable results on ClinicalTrials.gov, where they remained effectively invisible to clinicians and the public.
Levi said there was no question this was an egregious oversight.
"I do not see how NEJM can argue that the published article is transparent, when results are selectively reported, and moreover, negative results are not reported."
The failure to publish the older cohort's results has now placed NEJM — and its Editor-in-Chief, Dr Eric Rubin — under intense scrutiny.
Levi said, "I think that what we see here is a clear failure of the NEJM's review process and integrity, and the ultimate responsibility rests with the Editor in Chief…Dr Rubin should be expected to provide a clear explanation as to how this has happened."
Dr Eric Rubin presided over the decision to publish a Pfizer trial stripped of its most important age group, allowing a reputed journal to become complicit in the same selective reporting practices that have long undermined scientific publishing.
Rubin also sits on the FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) — the same committee that may one day review Pfizer's biological licence application for this very product.
His track record during the pandemic has been fraught.
In a 2021 VRBPAC meeting on Covid-19 vaccines for children, Rubin dismissed concerns about unknown safety gaps, saying, "We're never going to learn about how safe the vaccine is unless we start giving it. And that's just the way it goes."
NEJM under his leadership also published the pivotal AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine trial — a paper that omitted adverse event data.
One of those missing cases involved participant Brianne Dressen, whose severe neurological complications were removed from the trial records. Dressen personally contacted Rubin asking him to correct the record a...]]> Maryanne Demasi 06:28 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 61 70063 When Abraham Lincoln was shot, America saw more than just the loss of a President. Something quieter happened that night, but it was just as important. People saw the kind of doctor that society once truly respected.
Doctor Charles Augustus Leale was just 23 years of age when he walked into Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865. He had finished medical school only weeks before and was assigned to the theater because the President would be there. By the end of that night, his name was forever linked to one of America's most tragic events.
As soon as the gunshots rang out, panic took over the theater. People screamed, soldiers rushed in, and confusion filled the room. In the middle of it all, Leale climbed into Lincoln's box and faced a scene that most doctors would remember forever.
Years later, he described the moment with remarkable simplicity: "As I looked at the President, he appeared to be dead." He then added, "As the President did not respond, I thought about the other form of death, apnoea, and I assumed my preferred position to revive by artificial respiration."
Those initial sentences stand out. Simple, honest, and very human. They do not sound planned or practiced. They sound like a young doctor facing a disaster, trying to make sense of what he saw as it happened. Leale did not freeze. He immediately acted. He quickly checked Lincoln's head wound, cleared a blood clot to ease the pressure, opened the airway with his fingers, and tried artificial respiration with the methods he knew. Historians still debate whether he performed an early form of cardiac massage, but that seems less important now. What matters most is that he acted right away to help. He acted as a real doctor.
There was a time when doctors, like Charles Augustus Leale, held a special place in society. People didn't just see them as skilled professionals. They saw them as moral leaders. Communities trusted doctors not because they were always right, but because patients felt doctors truly cared about them, not just the system. Leale had no protocol to follow that evening. No committee advised him. No administrator stood nearby explaining liability concerns. No electronic medical record demanded documentation. There was no legal department, no compliance office, no billing specialist, and no corporate structure surrounding him. There was simply a physician, a dying patient, and a sense of duty. Medicine today feels very different.
Today's healthcare is full of amazing technology. We can use machines to support organs, read genomes, use artificial intelligence for diagnosis, and keep people alive in ways we couldn't imagine years ago. Intensive care units now look like engineering labs. But even with all this progress, many patients say healthcare feels impersonal and cold.
People often leave medical encounters feeling processed rather than cared for. We shouldn't pretend that medicine in the 1800s was perfect. Doctors in Leale's time didn't have antibiotics, ventilators, modern anesthesia, or many of the treatments we take for granted now. Death rates were very high. Still, medicine back then often felt much more personal, and that quality now seems at risk. Yet, the doctor belonged to the patient. Now, many doctors feel like they belong to large systems instead of their own practices.
This change didn't happen all at once. Over many years, medicine slowly turned from a calling into an industry. Hospitals became big businesses. Doctors became employees. Patients became consumers. Even the way we talk about healing started to sound like business talk.
Doctors now hear words like throughput, optimization, efficiency, productivity targets, and market share more often than words like presence, reflection, or bedside intuition. Even the words we use for doctors have changed. More and more, doctors are called "providers," a term so bland that it could just as easily describe a cable or internet company. When that happened,...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/charles-augustus-leale-abraham-lincoln-and-the-physician-we-are-slowly-losing/ When Abraham Lincoln was shot, America saw more than just the loss of a President. Something quieter happened that night, but it was just as important. People saw the kind of doctor that society once truly respected.
Doctor Charles Augustus Leale was just 23 years of age when he walked into Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865. He had finished medical school only weeks before and was assigned to the theater because the President would be there. By the end of that night, his name was forever linked to one of America's most tragic events.
As soon as the gunshots rang out, panic took over the theater. People screamed, soldiers rushed in, and confusion filled the room. In the middle of it all, Leale climbed into Lincoln's box and faced a scene that most doctors would remember forever.
Years later, he described the moment with remarkable simplicity: "As I looked at the President, he appeared to be dead." He then added, "As the President did not respond, I thought about the other form of death, apnoea, and I assumed my preferred position to revive by artificial respiration."
Those initial sentences stand out. Simple, honest, and very human. They do not sound planned or practiced. They sound like a young doctor facing a disaster, trying to make sense of what he saw as it happened. Leale did not freeze. He immediately acted. He quickly checked Lincoln's head wound, cleared a blood clot to ease the pressure, opened the airway with his fingers, and tried artificial respiration with the methods he knew. Historians still debate whether he performed an early form of cardiac massage, but that seems less important now. What matters most is that he acted right away to help. He acted as a real doctor.
There was a time when doctors, like Charles Augustus Leale, held a special place in society. People didn't just see them as skilled professionals. They saw them as moral leaders. Communities trusted doctors not because they were always right, but because patients felt doctors truly cared about them, not just the system. Leale had no protocol to follow that evening. No committee advised him. No administrator stood nearby explaining liability concerns. No electronic medical record demanded documentation. There was no legal department, no compliance office, no billing specialist, and no corporate structure surrounding him. There was simply a physician, a dying patient, and a sense of duty. Medicine today feels very different.
Today's healthcare is full of amazing technology. We can use machines to support organs, read genomes, use artificial intelligence for diagnosis, and keep people alive in ways we couldn't imagine years ago. Intensive care units now look like engineering labs. But even with all this progress, many patients say healthcare feels impersonal and cold.
People often leave medical encounters feeling processed rather than cared for. We shouldn't pretend that medicine in the 1800s was perfect. Doctors in Leale's time didn't have antibiotics, ventilators, modern anesthesia, or many of the treatments we take for granted now. Death rates were very high. Still, medicine back then often felt much more personal, and that quality now seems at risk. Yet, the doctor belonged to the patient. Now, many doctors feel like they belong to large systems instead of their own practices.
This change didn't happen all at once. Over many years, medicine slowly turned from a calling into an industry. Hospitals became big businesses. Doctors became employees. Patients became consumers. Even the way we talk about healing started to sound like business talk.
Doctors now hear words like throughput, optimization, efficiency, productivity targets, and market share more often than words like presence, reflection, or bedside intuition. Even the words we use for doctors have changed. More and more, doctors are called "providers," a term so bland that it could just as easily describe a cable or internet company. When that happened,...]]> Wed, 03 Jun 2026 07:20:14 -0400 Charles Augustus Leale, Abraham Lincoln, and the Physician We Are Slowly Losing The Doctor as a Moral Figure When Medicine Became an Industry Covid-19 and the Fracture of Trust What Still Remains The Lesson of Charles Augustus Leale References When Abraham Lincoln was shot, America saw more than just the loss of a President. Something quieter happened that night, but it was just as important. People saw the kind of doctor that society once truly respect...]]> When Abraham Lincoln was shot, America saw more than just the loss of a President. Something quieter happened that night, but it was just as important. People saw the kind of doctor that society once truly respected.
Doctor Charles Augustus Leale was just 23 years of age when he walked into Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865. He had finished medical school only weeks before and was assigned to the theater because the President would be there. By the end of that night, his name was forever linked to one of America's most tragic events.
As soon as the gunshots rang out, panic took over the theater. People screamed, soldiers rushed in, and confusion filled the room. In the middle of it all, Leale climbed into Lincoln's box and faced a scene that most doctors would remember forever.
Years later, he described the moment with remarkable simplicity: "As I looked at the President, he appeared to be dead." He then added, "As the President did not respond, I thought about the other form of death, apnoea, and I assumed my preferred position to revive by artificial respiration."
Those initial sentences stand out. Simple, honest, and very human. They do not sound planned or practiced. They sound like a young doctor facing a disaster, trying to make sense of what he saw as it happened. Leale did not freeze. He immediately acted. He quickly checked Lincoln's head wound, cleared a blood clot to ease the pressure, opened the airway with his fingers, and tried artificial respiration with the methods he knew. Historians still debate whether he performed an early form of cardiac massage, but that seems less important now. What matters most is that he acted right away to help. He acted as a real doctor.
There was a time when doctors, like Charles Augustus Leale, held a special place in society. People didn't just see them as skilled professionals. They saw them as moral leaders. Communities trusted doctors not because they were always right, but because patients felt doctors truly cared about them, not just the system. Leale had no protocol to follow that evening. No committee advised him. No administrator stood nearby explaining liability concerns. No electronic medical record demanded documentation. There was no legal department, no compliance office, no billing specialist, and no corporate structure surrounding him. There was simply a physician, a dying patient, and a sense of duty. Medicine today feels very different.
Today's healthcare is full of amazing technology. We can use machines to support organs, read genomes, use artificial intelligence for diagnosis, and keep people alive in ways we couldn't imagine years ago. Intensive care units now look like engineering labs. But even with all this progress, many patients say healthcare feels impersonal and cold.
People often leave medical encounters feeling processed rather than cared for. We shouldn't pretend that medicine in the 1800s was perfect. Doctors in Leale's time didn't have antibiotics, ventilators, modern anesthesia, or many of the treatments we take for granted now. Death rates were very high. Still, medicine back then often felt much more personal, and that quality now seems at risk. Yet, the doctor belonged to the patient. Now, many doctors feel like they belong to large systems instead of their own practices.
This change didn't happen all at once. Over many years, medicine slowly turned from a calling into an industry. Hospitals became big businesses. Doctors became employees. Patients became consumers. Even the way we talk about healing started to sound like business talk.
Doctors now hear words like throughput, optimization, efficiency, productivity targets, and market share more often than words like presence, reflection, or bedside intuition. Even the words we use for doctors have changed. More and more, doctors are called "providers," a term so bland that it could just as easily describe a cable or internet company. When that happened,...]]> Joseph Varon 11:42 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 60 69965 A flurry of excitement has gripped news services in the last week or so as several groups of 'ISIS Brides' arrived back in Australia, from parts of the Middle East. The actions of these women have caused consternation, to say the least, among Australians who consider that giving support and comfort to terrorists is at best an error of judgment. Some were arrested, others were not.
Some had scuffling supporters to welcome them, others arrived more or less unnoticed. Various opinions were voiced, or whispered, about what ought to have happened. Politicians did what politicians do. Talking heads talked.
At least two things became clear – they are real people, with friends and critics, and they are newsworthy. Nothing like a jostling crowd bumping into cameramen and reporters as the main characters barge their way through the arrivals hall blinking into the sunlight of the concourse, trying to spot an Uber to whisk them away, for a TV news item.
Newsworthiness is a difficult thing to define. I suppose newspaper editors and TV producers routinely make what to the naïve public look like heartless calls on what to leave out of the day's edition. (And moronic calls on what to include.)
Indeed, the content of a paper or a nightly news bulletin is as instructive for what is not mentioned as it is for the items that do get a run. One gets a picture of what kind of overall story or stories the editor or proprietor feels most comfortable portraying. It is tempting to draw further conclusions from this kind of analysis about the motives behind the stance – but without further facts any conclusion would be just speculation.
Not that there's anything wrong with speculation – sometimes it's all we have to go on. When the story is NOT run, what are we to make of that?
Imagine a set of circumstances whereby a real family or group of friends was taken from a cruise ship mid-holiday and forcibly dressed in plastic overalls, masked, paraded across tarmacs, flown back to Australia, and detained indefinitely in a purpose-built stalag in Western Australia. It's the Hantavirus, don't you know. Not infection, just contact-traced.
Surely newsrooms would be frantic with activity, already looking beyond the smug claim from the federal Health Minister Mark Butler that these people would be subject to quarantine measures he boasted to be the toughest in the world. "I do make no apology for the fact this is one of the stronger approaches you'd see around the world," he said, adding some countries are only quarantining passengers for a few days.
That kind of sound bite is good for a 20-second item on the telly. But the whole thing is a goldmine. Stories for months; even a cadet reporter could knock up a list of angles as long as Victoria's lockdowns (262 days, lest we forget):
Who are they? What are their names? Are they related to each other? What was the rest of their holiday going to be? How long had they been planning it? Was it the trip of a lifetime? Are they missing their dog? Did they have other things they needed to be doing? Is their internet access working? How often are they Facetiming the grandkids? Are they getting exercise? Do they like the food they are being served?
Do they have a GoFundMe to pay for the rent they can't afford because they can't work? Has their small business gone bankrupt yet? Will they be able to claim compensation or sue the Department of Foreign Affairs or the Health Department for locking them up? Have their pre-existing medical conditions remained in check, or have they deteriorated? Have they missed an important event like a wedding or the birth of a granddaughter?
Newsrooms ought to be covering their plight. That they are not is proof that they are not regarded as newsworthy. Having reached that conclusion, we are back to wondering why.
According to my calculations, these Australians are about 2 weeks into their 'at least 3 weeks' nightmare. No questions have been put to the P...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/jailed-for-hantavirus-exposure/ A flurry of excitement has gripped news services in the last week or so as several groups of 'ISIS Brides' arrived back in Australia, from parts of the Middle East. The actions of these women have caused consternation, to say the least, among Australians who consider that giving support and comfort to terrorists is at best an error of judgment. Some were arrested, others were not.
Some had scuffling supporters to welcome them, others arrived more or less unnoticed. Various opinions were voiced, or whispered, about what ought to have happened. Politicians did what politicians do. Talking heads talked.
At least two things became clear – they are real people, with friends and critics, and they are newsworthy. Nothing like a jostling crowd bumping into cameramen and reporters as the main characters barge their way through the arrivals hall blinking into the sunlight of the concourse, trying to spot an Uber to whisk them away, for a TV news item.
Newsworthiness is a difficult thing to define. I suppose newspaper editors and TV producers routinely make what to the naïve public look like heartless calls on what to leave out of the day's edition. (And moronic calls on what to include.)
Indeed, the content of a paper or a nightly news bulletin is as instructive for what is not mentioned as it is for the items that do get a run. One gets a picture of what kind of overall story or stories the editor or proprietor feels most comfortable portraying. It is tempting to draw further conclusions from this kind of analysis about the motives behind the stance – but without further facts any conclusion would be just speculation.
Not that there's anything wrong with speculation – sometimes it's all we have to go on. When the story is NOT run, what are we to make of that?
Imagine a set of circumstances whereby a real family or group of friends was taken from a cruise ship mid-holiday and forcibly dressed in plastic overalls, masked, paraded across tarmacs, flown back to Australia, and detained indefinitely in a purpose-built stalag in Western Australia. It's the Hantavirus, don't you know. Not infection, just contact-traced.
Surely newsrooms would be frantic with activity, already looking beyond the smug claim from the federal Health Minister Mark Butler that these people would be subject to quarantine measures he boasted to be the toughest in the world. "I do make no apology for the fact this is one of the stronger approaches you'd see around the world," he said, adding some countries are only quarantining passengers for a few days.
That kind of sound bite is good for a 20-second item on the telly. But the whole thing is a goldmine. Stories for months; even a cadet reporter could knock up a list of angles as long as Victoria's lockdowns (262 days, lest we forget):
Who are they? What are their names? Are they related to each other? What was the rest of their holiday going to be? How long had they been planning it? Was it the trip of a lifetime? Are they missing their dog? Did they have other things they needed to be doing? Is their internet access working? How often are they Facetiming the grandkids? Are they getting exercise? Do they like the food they are being served?
Do they have a GoFundMe to pay for the rent they can't afford because they can't work? Has their small business gone bankrupt yet? Will they be able to claim compensation or sue the Department of Foreign Affairs or the Health Department for locking them up? Have their pre-existing medical conditions remained in check, or have they deteriorated? Have they missed an important event like a wedding or the birth of a granddaughter?
Newsrooms ought to be covering their plight. That they are not is proof that they are not regarded as newsworthy. Having reached that conclusion, we are back to wondering why.
According to my calculations, these Australians are about 2 weeks into their 'at least 3 weeks' nightmare. No questions have been put to the P...]]> Tue, 02 Jun 2026 14:00:26 -0400 Jailed for Hantavirus Exposure A flurry of excitement has gripped news services in the last week or so as several groups of 'ISIS Brides' arrived back in Australia, from parts of the Middle East. The actions of these women have caused constern...]]> A flurry of excitement has gripped news services in the last week or so as several groups of 'ISIS Brides' arrived back in Australia, from parts of the Middle East. The actions of these women have caused consternation, to say the least, among Australians who consider that giving support and comfort to terrorists is at best an error of judgment. Some were arrested, others were not.
Some had scuffling supporters to welcome them, others arrived more or less unnoticed. Various opinions were voiced, or whispered, about what ought to have happened. Politicians did what politicians do. Talking heads talked.
At least two things became clear – they are real people, with friends and critics, and they are newsworthy. Nothing like a jostling crowd bumping into cameramen and reporters as the main characters barge their way through the arrivals hall blinking into the sunlight of the concourse, trying to spot an Uber to whisk them away, for a TV news item.
Newsworthiness is a difficult thing to define. I suppose newspaper editors and TV producers routinely make what to the naïve public look like heartless calls on what to leave out of the day's edition. (And moronic calls on what to include.)
Indeed, the content of a paper or a nightly news bulletin is as instructive for what is not mentioned as it is for the items that do get a run. One gets a picture of what kind of overall story or stories the editor or proprietor feels most comfortable portraying. It is tempting to draw further conclusions from this kind of analysis about the motives behind the stance – but without further facts any conclusion would be just speculation.
Not that there's anything wrong with speculation – sometimes it's all we have to go on. When the story is NOT run, what are we to make of that?
Imagine a set of circumstances whereby a real family or group of friends was taken from a cruise ship mid-holiday and forcibly dressed in plastic overalls, masked, paraded across tarmacs, flown back to Australia, and detained indefinitely in a purpose-built stalag in Western Australia. It's the Hantavirus, don't you know. Not infection, just contact-traced.
Surely newsrooms would be frantic with activity, already looking beyond the smug claim from the federal Health Minister Mark Butler that these people would be subject to quarantine measures he boasted to be the toughest in the world. "I do make no apology for the fact this is one of the stronger approaches you'd see around the world," he said, adding some countries are only quarantining passengers for a few days.
That kind of sound bite is good for a 20-second item on the telly. But the whole thing is a goldmine. Stories for months; even a cadet reporter could knock up a list of angles as long as Victoria's lockdowns (262 days, lest we forget):
Who are they? What are their names? Are they related to each other? What was the rest of their holiday going to be? How long had they been planning it? Was it the trip of a lifetime? Are they missing their dog? Did they have other things they needed to be doing? Is their internet access working? How often are they Facetiming the grandkids? Are they getting exercise? Do they like the food they are being served?
Do they have a GoFundMe to pay for the rent they can't afford because they can't work? Has their small business gone bankrupt yet? Will they be able to claim compensation or sue the Department of Foreign Affairs or the Health Department for locking them up? Have their pre-existing medical conditions remained in check, or have they deteriorated? Have they missed an important event like a wedding or the birth of a granddaughter?
Newsrooms ought to be covering their plight. That they are not is proof that they are not regarded as newsworthy. Having reached that conclusion, we are back to wondering why.
According to my calculations, these Australians are about 2 weeks into their 'at least 3 weeks' nightmare. No questions have been put to the P...]]> Richard Kelly 04:35 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 59 70047 Author note: In response to reader collaboration, and more precise renderings, the conclusion is revised: the purchasing power loss since 2019 results from a 65% overall price increase (the doubling of prices hit many but not all categories) and a real GDP loss of 11%, as revealed by the Reality Index. This is not as terrible as the initial claims in this article but still far from official data and extremely devastating.
Many of us have had the intuition that the economic damage from 2020 – including industrial stoppages, monetary printing, supply-chain disruptions, extended school closures, and general population demoralization – was in fact far greater than official statistics indicate.
What follows will shore up this intuition, using new techniques and numbers from an innovative project called RealityIndex.co.
It's true that official data is bad enough, showing a 26% loss in purchasing power, slow growth in output, and only marginal improvements in real income. The labor participation rate and worker/population ratio never fully recovered and continue to fall.

Output has been lackluster. It's supposedly running 2.3% which is about half the postwar norm for US economic performance. It feels like a general downshift. Official data shows a brief recession in 2020 followed by gradual economic recovery overall.
But is this even true? In 2024, Brownstone Institute commissioned a study (by E.J. Antoni and Peter St. Onge) that concluded that we have never really entered recovery after 2022. We've been in a technical recession since that time. They got this with some limited adjustments of price data bumped up against output data. That study was met with brutal attacks, with every critic falling back on official data and doubting the supposed extremism of the conclusion.
That's where matters have stood even as reports pour in concerning broken labor markets, no raises for 1 in 4 professional-class workers, and sketchy Gross Domestic Product (GDP) data that seems barely above zero thanks mainly to medical-sector subsidies, government spending, and social services. Then there are the learning losses showing dramatic declines in test scores among affected students.
We are left with real questions. How can consumer sentiment be at historic lows given that the overall data seems to raise no loud alarms?

In the meantime, Artificial Intelligence has come along to make these complicated calculations possible, ones that seek to discern and delineate the huge gaps between official data and reality. The goal is to come up with real data concerning real prices, sans the many different methods that the Department of Labor uses to adjust price changes.
For example, housing prices are not measured directly but rather converted to owners' equivalent rent (OER). Medical service prices are adjusted for consumption, not premiums or final bills. When consumers substitute one good for another, that is also factored in. When the quality of a good or service improves, the statisticians apply what they called hedonic adjustments, which are invariably designed to minimize price increases and never run the other direction.
Where does this leave those of us who are looking for a plain index of prices? A veil has been put over that basic question and answer, such that we don't know for sure. This matters tremendously for issues like raises, examining cost of living increases, taxes, and pension payments. Everything is adjusted for inflation to convert it to real valuations but if we don't have a clear number, what are we to do?
This is why we should be thrilled about a new study/service called the Reality Index. You are free to browse the site yourself and examine every aspect of the method. Essentially, the site owner, an independent intellectual in Madrid, Tom Elliott, has deployed tools of AI to wholly reconstruct price indices in a way that is consistent with actual prices. His results are absolutely eye-po...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/since-lockdowns-a-12-gdp-loss-half-of-us-dollar-purchasing-power-stolen/ Author note: In response to reader collaboration, and more precise renderings, the conclusion is revised: the purchasing power loss since 2019 results from a 65% overall price increase (the doubling of prices hit many but not all categories) and a real GDP loss of 11%, as revealed by the Reality Index. This is not as terrible as the initial claims in this article but still far from official data and extremely devastating.
Many of us have had the intuition that the economic damage from 2020 – including industrial stoppages, monetary printing, supply-chain disruptions, extended school closures, and general population demoralization – was in fact far greater than official statistics indicate.
What follows will shore up this intuition, using new techniques and numbers from an innovative project called RealityIndex.co.
It's true that official data is bad enough, showing a 26% loss in purchasing power, slow growth in output, and only marginal improvements in real income. The labor participation rate and worker/population ratio never fully recovered and continue to fall.

Output has been lackluster. It's supposedly running 2.3% which is about half the postwar norm for US economic performance. It feels like a general downshift. Official data shows a brief recession in 2020 followed by gradual economic recovery overall.
But is this even true? In 2024, Brownstone Institute commissioned a study (by E.J. Antoni and Peter St. Onge) that concluded that we have never really entered recovery after 2022. We've been in a technical recession since that time. They got this with some limited adjustments of price data bumped up against output data. That study was met with brutal attacks, with every critic falling back on official data and doubting the supposed extremism of the conclusion.
That's where matters have stood even as reports pour in concerning broken labor markets, no raises for 1 in 4 professional-class workers, and sketchy Gross Domestic Product (GDP) data that seems barely above zero thanks mainly to medical-sector subsidies, government spending, and social services. Then there are the learning losses showing dramatic declines in test scores among affected students.
We are left with real questions. How can consumer sentiment be at historic lows given that the overall data seems to raise no loud alarms?

In the meantime, Artificial Intelligence has come along to make these complicated calculations possible, ones that seek to discern and delineate the huge gaps between official data and reality. The goal is to come up with real data concerning real prices, sans the many different methods that the Department of Labor uses to adjust price changes.
For example, housing prices are not measured directly but rather converted to owners' equivalent rent (OER). Medical service prices are adjusted for consumption, not premiums or final bills. When consumers substitute one good for another, that is also factored in. When the quality of a good or service improves, the statisticians apply what they called hedonic adjustments, which are invariably designed to minimize price increases and never run the other direction.
Where does this leave those of us who are looking for a plain index of prices? A veil has been put over that basic question and answer, such that we don't know for sure. This matters tremendously for issues like raises, examining cost of living increases, taxes, and pension payments. Everything is adjusted for inflation to convert it to real valuations but if we don't have a clear number, what are we to do?
This is why we should be thrilled about a new study/service called the Reality Index. You are free to browse the site yourself and examine every aspect of the method. Essentially, the site owner, an independent intellectual in Madrid, Tom Elliott, has deployed tools of AI to wholly reconstruct price indices in a way that is consistent with actual prices. His results are absolutely eye-po...]]> Tue, 02 Jun 2026 07:22:14 -0400 Since Lockdowns, a 12% GDP Loss; Half of US Dollar Purchasing Power Stolen Author note: In response to reader collaboration, and more precise renderings, the conclusion is revised: the purchasing power loss since 2019 results from a 65% overall price increase (the doubling of prices...]]> Author note: In response to reader collaboration, and more precise renderings, the conclusion is revised: the purchasing power loss since 2019 results from a 65% overall price increase (the doubling of prices hit many but not all categories) and a real GDP loss of 11%, as revealed by the Reality Index. This is not as terrible as the initial claims in this article but still far from official data and extremely devastating.
Many of us have had the intuition that the economic damage from 2020 – including industrial stoppages, monetary printing, supply-chain disruptions, extended school closures, and general population demoralization – was in fact far greater than official statistics indicate.
What follows will shore up this intuition, using new techniques and numbers from an innovative project called RealityIndex.co.
It's true that official data is bad enough, showing a 26% loss in purchasing power, slow growth in output, and only marginal improvements in real income. The labor participation rate and worker/population ratio never fully recovered and continue to fall.

Output has been lackluster. It's supposedly running 2.3% which is about half the postwar norm for US economic performance. It feels like a general downshift. Official data shows a brief recession in 2020 followed by gradual economic recovery overall.
But is this even true? In 2024, Brownstone Institute commissioned a study (by E.J. Antoni and Peter St. Onge) that concluded that we have never really entered recovery after 2022. We've been in a technical recession since that time. They got this with some limited adjustments of price data bumped up against output data. That study was met with brutal attacks, with every critic falling back on official data and doubting the supposed extremism of the conclusion.
That's where matters have stood even as reports pour in concerning broken labor markets, no raises for 1 in 4 professional-class workers, and sketchy Gross Domestic Product (GDP) data that seems barely above zero thanks mainly to medical-sector subsidies, government spending, and social services. Then there are the learning losses showing dramatic declines in test scores among affected students.
We are left with real questions. How can consumer sentiment be at historic lows given that the overall data seems to raise no loud alarms?

In the meantime, Artificial Intelligence has come along to make these complicated calculations possible, ones that seek to discern and delineate the huge gaps between official data and reality. The goal is to come up with real data concerning real prices, sans the many different methods that the Department of Labor uses to adjust price changes.
For example, housing prices are not measured directly but rather converted to owners' equivalent rent (OER). Medical service prices are adjusted for consumption, not premiums or final bills. When consumers substitute one good for another, that is also factored in. When the quality of a good or service improves, the statisticians apply what they called hedonic adjustments, which are invariably designed to minimize price increases and never run the other direction.
Where does this leave those of us who are looking for a plain index of prices? A veil has been put over that basic question and answer, such that we don't know for sure. This matters tremendously for issues like raises, examining cost of living increases, taxes, and pension payments. Everything is adjusted for inflation to convert it to real valuations but if we don't have a clear number, what are we to do?
This is why we should be thrilled about a new study/service called the Reality Index. You are free to browse the site yourself and examine every aspect of the method. Essentially, the site owner, an independent intellectual in Madrid, Tom Elliott, has deployed tools of AI to wholly reconstruct price indices in a way that is consistent with actual prices. His results are absolutely eye-po...]]> Jeffrey A. Tucker 14:40 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 58 69987 Predictably, Moderna has secured up to $60 million from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) to accelerate development of an Ebola "vaccine" amid an ongoing outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where there have been 282 confirmed cases, 42 deaths, and around 1,100 suspected cases, plus nine confirmed cases (one fatal) in Uganda.
In case you didn't know, CEPI is the brainchild of the WEF (conceived in 2015; launched in 2017) and co-founded (and co-funded with US$460 million) from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Wellcome Trust.
This seems a little odd to me considering that Ebola is highly containable and Bundibugyo has a lower CFR than Zaire.
CEPI plans to advance their modified mRNA candidate to trials within months, while also funding other candidates (Oxford/Serum Institute and IAVI), though development remains unpredictable amid a challenging "security environment," including local resistance such as the recent burning of an Ebola treatment center over burial protocols.
Yeah. Let's not consider that these are people whose lives are being destroyed because we need our precious "vaccine." According to the latest, apparently there are some locals who simply want to bury their loved ones – to send them off to the afterlife in a non-space kinda suit way. Now, don't get me wrong! Ebola peeps must indeed be handled with appropriate care, but there is always a happy medium and "authorities" must consider that these aren't simply "dead patients" – they are people. Brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, etc. – all victims of God-knows-what shenanigans are going on in the world of ebola biowarfare. I am sorry to put it this way but after everything I've seen, read, and been put through, I cannot believe that government-sanctioned dual-use technology is not the reason for most of the "outbreaks" going on in the world. Especially in Africa.
Sigh. I can only imagine what they're being put through over there. It almost makes me want to space suit up and go over to find out.
Let's look closer at the Moderna product.
By the way, Moderna has been playing with the development of a modified mRNA ebola "vaccine" since 2018. In guinea pigs.
This new "vaccine" indeed is going to be a plug-and-play product whereby Bundibugyo ebola genes are going to be swapped in as the coding template (as opposed to spike genes in the case of the Covid-19 shots), all snug as bugs in those nasty LNPs. This was always going to the next play, and if I might say so, the forever forward play.
Save money, save time, do inevitably crappy rushed trials. Which makes it kind of weird that $50 million is going to "preclinical testing and Phase I trials." Boy, I would love to see the details of that clinical trial budget – both direct and indirect costs.
Financial support. This work was supported by a research grant from Moderna Therapeutics (A. B.) and National Institutes of Health (grant number 1R01AI102887-01A1) (A. B.).
CEPI dude (see: Dr Richard Hatchett, CEO of CEPI) said that injectable products against Bundibugyo could be ready for trials within a couple of months, "leveraging" Moderna's established mRNA platform.
You don't say.
CEPI has committed up to US$50 million for preclinical testing and Phase 1 clinical trials. CEPI will support simultaneous manufacturing of doses to enable large-scale Phase 2/3 trials to begin immediately if Phase 1 data supports progression. This candidate uses the same fast, flexible, scalable mRNA technology validated during COVID-19 and builds upon Moderna's existing R&D on related Ebola viruses. The collaboration leverages CEPI's existing strategic partnership with Moderna. [4]
Strategic partnership, eh? I wonder what the controls will be?
You can sign up today! You have until June 12! I'm kidding.

Just look at this reassuring statement with those all-too-familiar words that send a shudder through my body now!
The safety data accumulated with the pl...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/moderna-is-building-a-modified-mrna-vaccine-for-ebola-bundibugyo/ Predictably, Moderna has secured up to $60 million from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) to accelerate development of an Ebola "vaccine" amid an ongoing outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where there have been 282 confirmed cases, 42 deaths, and around 1,100 suspected cases, plus nine confirmed cases (one fatal) in Uganda.
In case you didn't know, CEPI is the brainchild of the WEF (conceived in 2015; launched in 2017) and co-founded (and co-funded with US$460 million) from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Wellcome Trust.
This seems a little odd to me considering that Ebola is highly containable and Bundibugyo has a lower CFR than Zaire.
CEPI plans to advance their modified mRNA candidate to trials within months, while also funding other candidates (Oxford/Serum Institute and IAVI), though development remains unpredictable amid a challenging "security environment," including local resistance such as the recent burning of an Ebola treatment center over burial protocols.
Yeah. Let's not consider that these are people whose lives are being destroyed because we need our precious "vaccine." According to the latest, apparently there are some locals who simply want to bury their loved ones – to send them off to the afterlife in a non-space kinda suit way. Now, don't get me wrong! Ebola peeps must indeed be handled with appropriate care, but there is always a happy medium and "authorities" must consider that these aren't simply "dead patients" – they are people. Brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, etc. – all victims of God-knows-what shenanigans are going on in the world of ebola biowarfare. I am sorry to put it this way but after everything I've seen, read, and been put through, I cannot believe that government-sanctioned dual-use technology is not the reason for most of the "outbreaks" going on in the world. Especially in Africa.
Sigh. I can only imagine what they're being put through over there. It almost makes me want to space suit up and go over to find out.
Let's look closer at the Moderna product.
By the way, Moderna has been playing with the development of a modified mRNA ebola "vaccine" since 2018. In guinea pigs.
This new "vaccine" indeed is going to be a plug-and-play product whereby Bundibugyo ebola genes are going to be swapped in as the coding template (as opposed to spike genes in the case of the Covid-19 shots), all snug as bugs in those nasty LNPs. This was always going to the next play, and if I might say so, the forever forward play.
Save money, save time, do inevitably crappy rushed trials. Which makes it kind of weird that $50 million is going to "preclinical testing and Phase I trials." Boy, I would love to see the details of that clinical trial budget – both direct and indirect costs.
Financial support. This work was supported by a research grant from Moderna Therapeutics (A. B.) and National Institutes of Health (grant number 1R01AI102887-01A1) (A. B.).
CEPI dude (see: Dr Richard Hatchett, CEO of CEPI) said that injectable products against Bundibugyo could be ready for trials within a couple of months, "leveraging" Moderna's established mRNA platform.
You don't say.
CEPI has committed up to US$50 million for preclinical testing and Phase 1 clinical trials. CEPI will support simultaneous manufacturing of doses to enable large-scale Phase 2/3 trials to begin immediately if Phase 1 data supports progression. This candidate uses the same fast, flexible, scalable mRNA technology validated during COVID-19 and builds upon Moderna's existing R&D on related Ebola viruses. The collaboration leverages CEPI's existing strategic partnership with Moderna. [4]
Strategic partnership, eh? I wonder what the controls will be?
You can sign up today! You have until June 12! I'm kidding.

Just look at this reassuring statement with those all-too-familiar words that send a shudder through my body now!
The safety data accumulated with the pl...]]> Mon, 01 Jun 2026 14:09:12 -0400 Moderna Is Building a Modified mRNA "Vaccine" for Ebola Bundibugyo References Predictably, Moderna has secured up to $60 million from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) to accelerate development of an Ebola "vaccine" amid an ongoing outbreak in eastern Democratic Rep...]]> Predictably, Moderna has secured up to $60 million from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) to accelerate development of an Ebola "vaccine" amid an ongoing outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where there have been 282 confirmed cases, 42 deaths, and around 1,100 suspected cases, plus nine confirmed cases (one fatal) in Uganda.
In case you didn't know, CEPI is the brainchild of the WEF (conceived in 2015; launched in 2017) and co-founded (and co-funded with US$460 million) from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Wellcome Trust.
This seems a little odd to me considering that Ebola is highly containable and Bundibugyo has a lower CFR than Zaire.
CEPI plans to advance their modified mRNA candidate to trials within months, while also funding other candidates (Oxford/Serum Institute and IAVI), though development remains unpredictable amid a challenging "security environment," including local resistance such as the recent burning of an Ebola treatment center over burial protocols.
Yeah. Let's not consider that these are people whose lives are being destroyed because we need our precious "vaccine." According to the latest, apparently there are some locals who simply want to bury their loved ones – to send them off to the afterlife in a non-space kinda suit way. Now, don't get me wrong! Ebola peeps must indeed be handled with appropriate care, but there is always a happy medium and "authorities" must consider that these aren't simply "dead patients" – they are people. Brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, etc. – all victims of God-knows-what shenanigans are going on in the world of ebola biowarfare. I am sorry to put it this way but after everything I've seen, read, and been put through, I cannot believe that government-sanctioned dual-use technology is not the reason for most of the "outbreaks" going on in the world. Especially in Africa.
Sigh. I can only imagine what they're being put through over there. It almost makes me want to space suit up and go over to find out.
Let's look closer at the Moderna product.
By the way, Moderna has been playing with the development of a modified mRNA ebola "vaccine" since 2018. In guinea pigs.
This new "vaccine" indeed is going to be a plug-and-play product whereby Bundibugyo ebola genes are going to be swapped in as the coding template (as opposed to spike genes in the case of the Covid-19 shots), all snug as bugs in those nasty LNPs. This was always going to the next play, and if I might say so, the forever forward play.
Save money, save time, do inevitably crappy rushed trials. Which makes it kind of weird that $50 million is going to "preclinical testing and Phase I trials." Boy, I would love to see the details of that clinical trial budget – both direct and indirect costs.
Financial support. This work was supported by a research grant from Moderna Therapeutics (A. B.) and National Institutes of Health (grant number 1R01AI102887-01A1) (A. B.).
CEPI dude (see: Dr Richard Hatchett, CEO of CEPI) said that injectable products against Bundibugyo could be ready for trials within a couple of months, "leveraging" Moderna's established mRNA platform.
You don't say.
CEPI has committed up to US$50 million for preclinical testing and Phase 1 clinical trials. CEPI will support simultaneous manufacturing of doses to enable large-scale Phase 2/3 trials to begin immediately if Phase 1 data supports progression. This candidate uses the same fast, flexible, scalable mRNA technology validated during COVID-19 and builds upon Moderna's existing R&D on related Ebola viruses. The collaboration leverages CEPI's existing strategic partnership with Moderna. [4]
Strategic partnership, eh? I wonder what the controls will be?
You can sign up today! You have until June 12! I'm kidding.

Just look at this reassuring statement with those all-too-familiar words that send a shudder through my body now!
The safety data accumulated with the pl...]]> Jessica Rose 07:18 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 57 61168 We live in a time of transition. The old paradigms are failing and new paradigms with greater explanatory power are struggling to be born.
Standing in the breach are mainstream health science reporters. They tend to be progressive, just out of college, with little to no graduate education. A quick look at their LinkedIn pages suggests that they were elated to get what appear to be prestigious jobs for Stat News, KFF, Politico, the New York Times, or any of the hundreds of Pharma-funded narrative enforcement (aka "fact-check") organizations that sprang up during Covid. They're just smart enough to be arrogant but not wise enough to know what they don't know.
Then they get assigned a story about some facet of the vaccine debate where they encounter a group of people who think very differently than they do — and they suddenly lose all sense of decency.
Proper reporting, back when that was still taught, would require sufficient research to accurately describe the viewpoint of this different social tribe.
"Position switching" (putting oneself in the shoes of another) is the basis of empathy and a slightly more experienced reporter would do everything possible to view the world through the eyes of his/her interviewee.
A skilled reporter might even try to "steel man" this alternative perspective to find the strengths of the opposing argument rather than exaggerating weaknesses that do not accurately represent the views of the people being studied.
Proper editors, back when that was still a thing, would not sign off on an article until the reporter had gotten to the heart of the matter and captured the essence of the other worldview.
But none of that happens in health science reporting today. Instead, these wet-behind-the-ears reporters all follow the same script — 'anyone who disagrees with the mainstream narrative must be a nutter who could not possibly be understood by anyone in polite society.'
Mainstream health science reporters almost never interview the parents of vaccine-injured children or vaccine-injured people themselves about their injuries. Any reporter who does so quickly resorts to gaslighting as a way of managing their internal distress.
These reporters often seek the opinions of doctors, lawyers, scientists, and others with advanced degrees. Yet if any scholar contradicts the mainstream narrative, he or she will be portrayed like a homeless schizophrenic person spinning in circles and talking nonsense (actually, schizophrenics are treated infinitely better than vaccine skeptics by mainstream health science reporters because schizophrenics don't threaten the narrative).
In the movement for medical freedom, we have thousands of peer-reviewed sources, nearly everything we do is public, and our work is meticulous because we get torn to shreds for decades by the Big Pharma media machine if we ever make any mistakes. But mainstream health science reporters almost never actually read our work.
It's not that they disagree with us — they never read enough of our work to even understand our position (at most, they do a quick search to find a "gotcha quote" that they can pull out of context and wield like a bludgeon). So their bias leads to bad methods that they try to cover up by portraying us as shadowy conspirators whose beliefs are indecipherable. This extreme "othering" has become a requirement of the mainstream health science reporting profession.
Nearly all of these reporters are progressives who should know better. If their undergraduate education was anything like mine, it likely included extensive lectures, readings, and research papers on the importance of not "othering" people, the grave injustice of bigotry, the evils of colonialism, and America's long history of exploitation and violence.
But the progressive worldview today makes an exception for vaccine skeptics who are treated with systematic contempt as a requirement of the faith. Furthermore, to the progressive mind, it ...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-trouble-with-health-science-reporters/ We live in a time of transition. The old paradigms are failing and new paradigms with greater explanatory power are struggling to be born.
Standing in the breach are mainstream health science reporters. They tend to be progressive, just out of college, with little to no graduate education. A quick look at their LinkedIn pages suggests that they were elated to get what appear to be prestigious jobs for Stat News, KFF, Politico, the New York Times, or any of the hundreds of Pharma-funded narrative enforcement (aka "fact-check") organizations that sprang up during Covid. They're just smart enough to be arrogant but not wise enough to know what they don't know.
Then they get assigned a story about some facet of the vaccine debate where they encounter a group of people who think very differently than they do — and they suddenly lose all sense of decency.
Proper reporting, back when that was still taught, would require sufficient research to accurately describe the viewpoint of this different social tribe.
"Position switching" (putting oneself in the shoes of another) is the basis of empathy and a slightly more experienced reporter would do everything possible to view the world through the eyes of his/her interviewee.
A skilled reporter might even try to "steel man" this alternative perspective to find the strengths of the opposing argument rather than exaggerating weaknesses that do not accurately represent the views of the people being studied.
Proper editors, back when that was still a thing, would not sign off on an article until the reporter had gotten to the heart of the matter and captured the essence of the other worldview.
But none of that happens in health science reporting today. Instead, these wet-behind-the-ears reporters all follow the same script — 'anyone who disagrees with the mainstream narrative must be a nutter who could not possibly be understood by anyone in polite society.'
Mainstream health science reporters almost never interview the parents of vaccine-injured children or vaccine-injured people themselves about their injuries. Any reporter who does so quickly resorts to gaslighting as a way of managing their internal distress.
These reporters often seek the opinions of doctors, lawyers, scientists, and others with advanced degrees. Yet if any scholar contradicts the mainstream narrative, he or she will be portrayed like a homeless schizophrenic person spinning in circles and talking nonsense (actually, schizophrenics are treated infinitely better than vaccine skeptics by mainstream health science reporters because schizophrenics don't threaten the narrative).
In the movement for medical freedom, we have thousands of peer-reviewed sources, nearly everything we do is public, and our work is meticulous because we get torn to shreds for decades by the Big Pharma media machine if we ever make any mistakes. But mainstream health science reporters almost never actually read our work.
It's not that they disagree with us — they never read enough of our work to even understand our position (at most, they do a quick search to find a "gotcha quote" that they can pull out of context and wield like a bludgeon). So their bias leads to bad methods that they try to cover up by portraying us as shadowy conspirators whose beliefs are indecipherable. This extreme "othering" has become a requirement of the mainstream health science reporting profession.
Nearly all of these reporters are progressives who should know better. If their undergraduate education was anything like mine, it likely included extensive lectures, readings, and research papers on the importance of not "othering" people, the grave injustice of bigotry, the evils of colonialism, and America's long history of exploitation and violence.
But the progressive worldview today makes an exception for vaccine skeptics who are treated with systematic contempt as a requirement of the faith. Furthermore, to the progressive mind, it ...]]> Mon, 01 Jun 2026 07:40:00 -0400 The Trouble with Health Science Reporters I. How Mainstream Health Science Reporters Systematically Mistreat Members of the Medical Freedom Community II. They Should Know Better III. Sane People Should Be Able to Have a Rational Conversation about These Matters We live in a time of transition. The old paradigms are failing and new paradigms with greater explanatory power are struggling to be born.
Standing in the breach are mainstream health science reporters. They tend t...]]> We live in a time of transition. The old paradigms are failing and new paradigms with greater explanatory power are struggling to be born.
Standing in the breach are mainstream health science reporters. They tend to be progressive, just out of college, with little to no graduate education. A quick look at their LinkedIn pages suggests that they were elated to get what appear to be prestigious jobs for Stat News, KFF, Politico, the New York Times, or any of the hundreds of Pharma-funded narrative enforcement (aka "fact-check") organizations that sprang up during Covid. They're just smart enough to be arrogant but not wise enough to know what they don't know.
Then they get assigned a story about some facet of the vaccine debate where they encounter a group of people who think very differently than they do — and they suddenly lose all sense of decency.
Proper reporting, back when that was still taught, would require sufficient research to accurately describe the viewpoint of this different social tribe.
"Position switching" (putting oneself in the shoes of another) is the basis of empathy and a slightly more experienced reporter would do everything possible to view the world through the eyes of his/her interviewee.
A skilled reporter might even try to "steel man" this alternative perspective to find the strengths of the opposing argument rather than exaggerating weaknesses that do not accurately represent the views of the people being studied.
Proper editors, back when that was still a thing, would not sign off on an article until the reporter had gotten to the heart of the matter and captured the essence of the other worldview.
But none of that happens in health science reporting today. Instead, these wet-behind-the-ears reporters all follow the same script — 'anyone who disagrees with the mainstream narrative must be a nutter who could not possibly be understood by anyone in polite society.'
Mainstream health science reporters almost never interview the parents of vaccine-injured children or vaccine-injured people themselves about their injuries. Any reporter who does so quickly resorts to gaslighting as a way of managing their internal distress.
These reporters often seek the opinions of doctors, lawyers, scientists, and others with advanced degrees. Yet if any scholar contradicts the mainstream narrative, he or she will be portrayed like a homeless schizophrenic person spinning in circles and talking nonsense (actually, schizophrenics are treated infinitely better than vaccine skeptics by mainstream health science reporters because schizophrenics don't threaten the narrative).
In the movement for medical freedom, we have thousands of peer-reviewed sources, nearly everything we do is public, and our work is meticulous because we get torn to shreds for decades by the Big Pharma media machine if we ever make any mistakes. But mainstream health science reporters almost never actually read our work.
It's not that they disagree with us — they never read enough of our work to even understand our position (at most, they do a quick search to find a "gotcha quote" that they can pull out of context and wield like a bludgeon). So their bias leads to bad methods that they try to cover up by portraying us as shadowy conspirators whose beliefs are indecipherable. This extreme "othering" has become a requirement of the mainstream health science reporting profession.
Nearly all of these reporters are progressives who should know better. If their undergraduate education was anything like mine, it likely included extensive lectures, readings, and research papers on the importance of not "othering" people, the grave injustice of bigotry, the evils of colonialism, and America's long history of exploitation and violence.
But the progressive worldview today makes an exception for vaccine skeptics who are treated with systematic contempt as a requirement of the faith. Furthermore, to the progressive mind, it ...]]> Toby Rogers 08:44 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 56 69848 In my last Brownstone article: The Rise of the Meme Disease, I cast the healthcare profession that I have devoted my life to in a very unfavorable light. However, before everyone writes off the healthcare industry as a total fraud, let me assure you that there are instances where medical advancements have been of great value. In fact, the reason I have outlived close members of my family by 20-30+ years is almost certainly due to treatments available to me that were not available to them.
During the 1970s, when I attended medical school and did my residency training, engineering as a profession was absolutely dead. As a consequence, a large number of pre-engineering students switched to pre-med. For decades, I have believed that the era from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s saw the greatest technological advances in medicine ever seen before or since, largely due to the number of engineering students who went into medicine.
Examples of advances that occurred during this era included the addition to our diagnostic armamentaria of CT, MRI, and radioisotope scanning, sonography, angiography, flexible scopes, and advanced blood testing. In addition, pharmaceutical product development took off, with one of the most important additions, in my opinion, being better treatments for hypertension.
While my last Brownstone article focused on how some of these advances caused harm, I will now focus on some of the advances in the treatment of heart disease that improved patients' lives significantly. I will also include some of the important missteps and detours that occurred along the way. In addition, I will discuss the challenges that must be overcome, some of which risk jeopardizing the gains that have been made. I will do this from my perspective as both a healthcare professional and patient.
Going into the 1970s, there were basically two classes of oral medications used to treat hypertension: diuretics and a chemical active in the central nervous system (brand name, Aldomet). They were somewhat effective in lowering blood pressure. However, there was no evidence that their use delayed the onset or reduced the severity of heart disease or other vascular conditions.
Another class of oral antihypertensive medication, beta-blockers, first developed during the 1960s, saw increasing use during the 1970s. Beta-blockers were quickly followed by alpha-blockers, calcium channel blockers, ACE (angiotensin converting enzyme) inhibitors, ARBs (angiotensin receptor blockers), and other less frequently used medications.
Concurrently, our ability to study the anatomy of coronary arteries using angiography, and the ability to actually intervene via coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) and, beginning in the 1980s, angioplasty, provided us with the ability to delay the onset of heart disease (using antihypertensive medications), and mitigate the damage when it did occur (using CABG and angioplasty).
While the availability of these additional classes of antihypertensive medications made it possible to reduce blood pressure in just about all patients, it took a number of years to obtain good data demonstrating which combination of classes yielded the best outcomes in terms of delayed or reduced incidence of heart disease or other vascular events, such as stroke. Overall, I believe that by the 1980s, we reached the point where the benefits of treatment had been optimized.
Here's where my own personal story comes into play. I've had severe hypertension for more than 30 years, to the point where it requires 3 medications with 4 active ingredients for good control (diuretic, beta-blocker, alpha-blocker, and ARB). It took more than a year to come up with a regimen that controlled my blood pressure with minimal side effects, and I've remained on that regimen, unchanged, ever since. On the few occasions where I had to minimally reduce my medication dose for a specific procedure (such as a stress test), my blood pressure ...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/detours-and-missteps-on-the-road-to-medical-advances/ In my last Brownstone article: The Rise of the Meme Disease, I cast the healthcare profession that I have devoted my life to in a very unfavorable light. However, before everyone writes off the healthcare industry as a total fraud, let me assure you that there are instances where medical advancements have been of great value. In fact, the reason I have outlived close members of my family by 20-30+ years is almost certainly due to treatments available to me that were not available to them.
During the 1970s, when I attended medical school and did my residency training, engineering as a profession was absolutely dead. As a consequence, a large number of pre-engineering students switched to pre-med. For decades, I have believed that the era from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s saw the greatest technological advances in medicine ever seen before or since, largely due to the number of engineering students who went into medicine.
Examples of advances that occurred during this era included the addition to our diagnostic armamentaria of CT, MRI, and radioisotope scanning, sonography, angiography, flexible scopes, and advanced blood testing. In addition, pharmaceutical product development took off, with one of the most important additions, in my opinion, being better treatments for hypertension.
While my last Brownstone article focused on how some of these advances caused harm, I will now focus on some of the advances in the treatment of heart disease that improved patients' lives significantly. I will also include some of the important missteps and detours that occurred along the way. In addition, I will discuss the challenges that must be overcome, some of which risk jeopardizing the gains that have been made. I will do this from my perspective as both a healthcare professional and patient.
Going into the 1970s, there were basically two classes of oral medications used to treat hypertension: diuretics and a chemical active in the central nervous system (brand name, Aldomet). They were somewhat effective in lowering blood pressure. However, there was no evidence that their use delayed the onset or reduced the severity of heart disease or other vascular conditions.
Another class of oral antihypertensive medication, beta-blockers, first developed during the 1960s, saw increasing use during the 1970s. Beta-blockers were quickly followed by alpha-blockers, calcium channel blockers, ACE (angiotensin converting enzyme) inhibitors, ARBs (angiotensin receptor blockers), and other less frequently used medications.
Concurrently, our ability to study the anatomy of coronary arteries using angiography, and the ability to actually intervene via coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) and, beginning in the 1980s, angioplasty, provided us with the ability to delay the onset of heart disease (using antihypertensive medications), and mitigate the damage when it did occur (using CABG and angioplasty).
While the availability of these additional classes of antihypertensive medications made it possible to reduce blood pressure in just about all patients, it took a number of years to obtain good data demonstrating which combination of classes yielded the best outcomes in terms of delayed or reduced incidence of heart disease or other vascular events, such as stroke. Overall, I believe that by the 1980s, we reached the point where the benefits of treatment had been optimized.
Here's where my own personal story comes into play. I've had severe hypertension for more than 30 years, to the point where it requires 3 medications with 4 active ingredients for good control (diuretic, beta-blocker, alpha-blocker, and ARB). It took more than a year to come up with a regimen that controlled my blood pressure with minimal side effects, and I've remained on that regimen, unchanged, ever since. On the few occasions where I had to minimally reduce my medication dose for a specific procedure (such as a stress test), my blood pressure ...]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 08:30:00 -0400 Detours and Missteps on the Road to Medical Advances In my last Brownstone article: The Rise of the Meme Disease, I cast the healthcare profession that I have devoted my life to in a very unfavorable light. However, before everyone writes off the healthcare industry...]]> In my last Brownstone article: The Rise of the Meme Disease, I cast the healthcare profession that I have devoted my life to in a very unfavorable light. However, before everyone writes off the healthcare industry as a total fraud, let me assure you that there are instances where medical advancements have been of great value. In fact, the reason I have outlived close members of my family by 20-30+ years is almost certainly due to treatments available to me that were not available to them.
During the 1970s, when I attended medical school and did my residency training, engineering as a profession was absolutely dead. As a consequence, a large number of pre-engineering students switched to pre-med. For decades, I have believed that the era from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s saw the greatest technological advances in medicine ever seen before or since, largely due to the number of engineering students who went into medicine.
Examples of advances that occurred during this era included the addition to our diagnostic armamentaria of CT, MRI, and radioisotope scanning, sonography, angiography, flexible scopes, and advanced blood testing. In addition, pharmaceutical product development took off, with one of the most important additions, in my opinion, being better treatments for hypertension.
While my last Brownstone article focused on how some of these advances caused harm, I will now focus on some of the advances in the treatment of heart disease that improved patients' lives significantly. I will also include some of the important missteps and detours that occurred along the way. In addition, I will discuss the challenges that must be overcome, some of which risk jeopardizing the gains that have been made. I will do this from my perspective as both a healthcare professional and patient.
Going into the 1970s, there were basically two classes of oral medications used to treat hypertension: diuretics and a chemical active in the central nervous system (brand name, Aldomet). They were somewhat effective in lowering blood pressure. However, there was no evidence that their use delayed the onset or reduced the severity of heart disease or other vascular conditions.
Another class of oral antihypertensive medication, beta-blockers, first developed during the 1960s, saw increasing use during the 1970s. Beta-blockers were quickly followed by alpha-blockers, calcium channel blockers, ACE (angiotensin converting enzyme) inhibitors, ARBs (angiotensin receptor blockers), and other less frequently used medications.
Concurrently, our ability to study the anatomy of coronary arteries using angiography, and the ability to actually intervene via coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) and, beginning in the 1980s, angioplasty, provided us with the ability to delay the onset of heart disease (using antihypertensive medications), and mitigate the damage when it did occur (using CABG and angioplasty).
While the availability of these additional classes of antihypertensive medications made it possible to reduce blood pressure in just about all patients, it took a number of years to obtain good data demonstrating which combination of classes yielded the best outcomes in terms of delayed or reduced incidence of heart disease or other vascular events, such as stroke. Overall, I believe that by the 1980s, we reached the point where the benefits of treatment had been optimized.
Here's where my own personal story comes into play. I've had severe hypertension for more than 30 years, to the point where it requires 3 medications with 4 active ingredients for good control (diuretic, beta-blocker, alpha-blocker, and ARB). It took more than a year to come up with a regimen that controlled my blood pressure with minimal side effects, and I've remained on that regimen, unchanged, ever since. On the few occasions where I had to minimally reduce my medication dose for a specific procedure (such as a stress test), my blood pressure ...]]> Steven Kritz 09:14 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 55 69840 The Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO) was commissioned by the World Health Organization (WHO) to discover the origin of SARS-CoV-2. Unsurprisingly, a recent paper from members of SAGO concluded: "We did not find evidence to suggest that SARS CoV2 (sic) resulting from experimental manipulation was a more likely scenario than it emerging from naturally occurring mutations or recombination events."
This conclusion is unsurprising because the WHO was clearly taking marching orders from China; right from the beginning of the pandemic, they were parroting bizarre talking points from China, such as SARS-CoV-2 was not airborne. Furthermore, a WHO team sent to investigate the pandemic origin included Peter Daszak, the head of EcoHealth Alliance and a prime suspect in the lab-leak scenario.
In fact, SARS-CoV-2, with its human-adapted furin cleavage site (FCS), is so evolutionarily out of place that when Dr. Fauci's crack team of evolutionary virologists studied its genome, they "privately" concluded, "It's so friggin' likely" the virus came from a lab.
With some basic virology knowledge (and an awareness of the overwhelming non-science circumstantial evidence), it becomes crystal clear that SARS-CoV-2 is not a natural virus. Arguments from people with everything to lose from a "lab-leak" scenario are little more than stratified layers of improbabilities, teetering on a foundation of desperation. The desperation stemmed from a desire by obedient researchers to avoid angering people in charge of awarding grants. Unfortunately, now they are "locked in the punch" and unable to get out.
It's possible that this chimeric coronavirus exploded out of the one market out of tens of thousands in China that happens to be near the lab that makes chimeric coronaviruses. It's possible that SARS-CoV-2 RNA found at the market where raccoon dogs were sold (a few weeks after the start of the pandemic and thousands of shoppers had trudged through) suggests that these animals were the source of the virus. It's also possible that the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is either "aquatic animals" or vegetables, because virus RNA was also found where those items were sold. Similarly, it's possible the scientist that somehow managed to develop a patentable SARS-CoV-2 vaccine in February 2020 (less than 2 months after the first reported cases) accidentally fell off the roof of the coronavirus lab.
For that matter, it's possible that I could become a billionaire by playing Powerball; there are examples of people that have become billionaires this way, so why not?
Conversely, the lab-origin hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 is Occamesque and easily wins the argument in a trial by jury.
SARS-CoV-2 stands out as a unicorn among coronaviruses, even among its supposed closest relatives in its sub-genus (Sarbecovirus). Frankly, there is nothing even close to a proximal ancestor of this virus.The FCS in the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 allows the spike to be efficiently processed by human furin protease. This significantly enhances cell invasion, spread to adjacent cells, and eventually to other hosts. Furin processing promotes virus RNA passaging directly between cells by syncytium formation (Fig 1). This "stealth" mechanism enhances virus spread while minimizing alerting the immune response. If I wanted to enhance a coronavirus with increased infectivity for humans, I would add a human adapted furin cleavage site to its spike protein.

Loss of the "PRRA" FCS amino acid sequence in the SARS-CoV-2 spike significantly reduces virulence in laboratory tests. Thus, anyone that argues the SARS-CoV-2 FCS was not deliberately inserted because it is not optimally designed is being disingenuous. Comparing pandemics caused by SARS-CoV (lacking an FCS; Fig. 2) and SARS-CoV-2, which was "factory equipped" with a human adapted FCS, provides a glaring example of just how well-designed its FCS is.

Both SARS pandemics began in Chi...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-who-denies-the-lab-leak/ The Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO) was commissioned by the World Health Organization (WHO) to discover the origin of SARS-CoV-2. Unsurprisingly, a recent paper from members of SAGO concluded: "We did not find evidence to suggest that SARS CoV2 (sic) resulting from experimental manipulation was a more likely scenario than it emerging from naturally occurring mutations or recombination events."
This conclusion is unsurprising because the WHO was clearly taking marching orders from China; right from the beginning of the pandemic, they were parroting bizarre talking points from China, such as SARS-CoV-2 was not airborne. Furthermore, a WHO team sent to investigate the pandemic origin included Peter Daszak, the head of EcoHealth Alliance and a prime suspect in the lab-leak scenario.
In fact, SARS-CoV-2, with its human-adapted furin cleavage site (FCS), is so evolutionarily out of place that when Dr. Fauci's crack team of evolutionary virologists studied its genome, they "privately" concluded, "It's so friggin' likely" the virus came from a lab.
With some basic virology knowledge (and an awareness of the overwhelming non-science circumstantial evidence), it becomes crystal clear that SARS-CoV-2 is not a natural virus. Arguments from people with everything to lose from a "lab-leak" scenario are little more than stratified layers of improbabilities, teetering on a foundation of desperation. The desperation stemmed from a desire by obedient researchers to avoid angering people in charge of awarding grants. Unfortunately, now they are "locked in the punch" and unable to get out.
It's possible that this chimeric coronavirus exploded out of the one market out of tens of thousands in China that happens to be near the lab that makes chimeric coronaviruses. It's possible that SARS-CoV-2 RNA found at the market where raccoon dogs were sold (a few weeks after the start of the pandemic and thousands of shoppers had trudged through) suggests that these animals were the source of the virus. It's also possible that the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is either "aquatic animals" or vegetables, because virus RNA was also found where those items were sold. Similarly, it's possible the scientist that somehow managed to develop a patentable SARS-CoV-2 vaccine in February 2020 (less than 2 months after the first reported cases) accidentally fell off the roof of the coronavirus lab.
For that matter, it's possible that I could become a billionaire by playing Powerball; there are examples of people that have become billionaires this way, so why not?
Conversely, the lab-origin hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 is Occamesque and easily wins the argument in a trial by jury.
SARS-CoV-2 stands out as a unicorn among coronaviruses, even among its supposed closest relatives in its sub-genus (Sarbecovirus). Frankly, there is nothing even close to a proximal ancestor of this virus.The FCS in the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 allows the spike to be efficiently processed by human furin protease. This significantly enhances cell invasion, spread to adjacent cells, and eventually to other hosts. Furin processing promotes virus RNA passaging directly between cells by syncytium formation (Fig 1). This "stealth" mechanism enhances virus spread while minimizing alerting the immune response. If I wanted to enhance a coronavirus with increased infectivity for humans, I would add a human adapted furin cleavage site to its spike protein.

Loss of the "PRRA" FCS amino acid sequence in the SARS-CoV-2 spike significantly reduces virulence in laboratory tests. Thus, anyone that argues the SARS-CoV-2 FCS was not deliberately inserted because it is not optimally designed is being disingenuous. Comparing pandemics caused by SARS-CoV (lacking an FCS; Fig. 2) and SARS-CoV-2, which was "factory equipped" with a human adapted FCS, provides a glaring example of just how well-designed its FCS is.

Both SARS pandemics began in Chi...]]> Sat, 30 May 2026 08:21:00 -0400 The WHO Denies the Lab Leak Natural Mechanisms of Coronavirus Evolution Unnatural Mechanisms of Coronavirus Evolution The Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO) was commissioned by the World Health Organization (WHO) to discover the origin of SARS-CoV-2. Unsurprisingly, a recent paper from members ...]]> The Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO) was commissioned by the World Health Organization (WHO) to discover the origin of SARS-CoV-2. Unsurprisingly, a recent paper from members of SAGO concluded: "We did not find evidence to suggest that SARS CoV2 (sic) resulting from experimental manipulation was a more likely scenario than it emerging from naturally occurring mutations or recombination events."
This conclusion is unsurprising because the WHO was clearly taking marching orders from China; right from the beginning of the pandemic, they were parroting bizarre talking points from China, such as SARS-CoV-2 was not airborne. Furthermore, a WHO team sent to investigate the pandemic origin included Peter Daszak, the head of EcoHealth Alliance and a prime suspect in the lab-leak scenario.
In fact, SARS-CoV-2, with its human-adapted furin cleavage site (FCS), is so evolutionarily out of place that when Dr. Fauci's crack team of evolutionary virologists studied its genome, they "privately" concluded, "It's so friggin' likely" the virus came from a lab.
With some basic virology knowledge (and an awareness of the overwhelming non-science circumstantial evidence), it becomes crystal clear that SARS-CoV-2 is not a natural virus. Arguments from people with everything to lose from a "lab-leak" scenario are little more than stratified layers of improbabilities, teetering on a foundation of desperation. The desperation stemmed from a desire by obedient researchers to avoid angering people in charge of awarding grants. Unfortunately, now they are "locked in the punch" and unable to get out.
It's possible that this chimeric coronavirus exploded out of the one market out of tens of thousands in China that happens to be near the lab that makes chimeric coronaviruses. It's possible that SARS-CoV-2 RNA found at the market where raccoon dogs were sold (a few weeks after the start of the pandemic and thousands of shoppers had trudged through) suggests that these animals were the source of the virus. It's also possible that the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is either "aquatic animals" or vegetables, because virus RNA was also found where those items were sold. Similarly, it's possible the scientist that somehow managed to develop a patentable SARS-CoV-2 vaccine in February 2020 (less than 2 months after the first reported cases) accidentally fell off the roof of the coronavirus lab.
For that matter, it's possible that I could become a billionaire by playing Powerball; there are examples of people that have become billionaires this way, so why not?
Conversely, the lab-origin hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 is Occamesque and easily wins the argument in a trial by jury.
SARS-CoV-2 stands out as a unicorn among coronaviruses, even among its supposed closest relatives in its sub-genus (Sarbecovirus). Frankly, there is nothing even close to a proximal ancestor of this virus.The FCS in the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 allows the spike to be efficiently processed by human furin protease. This significantly enhances cell invasion, spread to adjacent cells, and eventually to other hosts. Furin processing promotes virus RNA passaging directly between cells by syncytium formation (Fig 1). This "stealth" mechanism enhances virus spread while minimizing alerting the immune response. If I wanted to enhance a coronavirus with increased infectivity for humans, I would add a human adapted furin cleavage site to its spike protein.

Loss of the "PRRA" FCS amino acid sequence in the SARS-CoV-2 spike significantly reduces virulence in laboratory tests. Thus, anyone that argues the SARS-CoV-2 FCS was not deliberately inserted because it is not optimally designed is being disingenuous. Comparing pandemics caused by SARS-CoV (lacking an FCS; Fig. 2) and SARS-CoV-2, which was "factory equipped" with a human adapted FCS, provides a glaring example of just how well-designed its FCS is.

Both SARS pandemics began in Chi...]]> Pat Fidopiastis 14:35 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 54 69835 There is an alarming but little-known provision in Congress' 2026 Farm Bill that is likely to find its way into law within the next few weeks.
It attempts to remove the right of Americans to maintain local control over our food and farms.
It could also nullify over 1,000 state laws that are already on the books.
The Farm Bill, also known as the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026, which includes the Save Our Bacon Act as Section 12006, was passed by the House on April 30, 2026 and now heads to the Senate, where the Agriculture Committee is expected to draft its own version of the bill.
Embedded in the legislation is the so-called "Save our Bacon" (SOB) Act, which would strip state and local governments of their ability to make agricultural policies for meat consumed in the state—preventing state and local governments from establishing food production and distribution safeguards.
As often happens, the language is designed to confuse. No doubt written by industry wordsmiths, the language sounds very reasonable, as long as you don't know what it really means. Let me explain the bill language by quoting the first four sections and then decoding them:
(1) [The purpose of this bill is to] protect the free movement in interstate
commerce of products derived from covered livestock;
(2) encourage a national market of such products;
(3) ensure that producers of covered livestock
are not subject to a patchwork of State laws restricting access to a national market; and
(4) ensure that the United States continues to uphold its international trade obligations.
(1) "free movement" in fact means that states will not be able to restrict the entry and sale of meat produced under conditions that states deem improper.
(2) "national market" means no state will be allowed to refuse the entry and sale of meat, despite existing state laws that would prohibit sales of meat from certain locations, or meat produced under inhumane conditions.
(3) "patchwork of State laws" means that this single federal law will supersede and nullify all state laws, ignoring constitutional limits on federal power, to impose this single law on the whole country.
(4) "uphold its international trade obligations" means the states cannot restrict the sale of meat from any country, even when that country is inflicted with a pest like the New World screwworm.
Where did this bill come from?
This law is the meat industry's response to a California ballot initiative that passed in 2018, titled Proposition 12. The industrial production of pork and veal is frequently accomplished by growing breeding pigs and veal calves in crates or boxes where they have no room to move or even turn around. Proposition 12 required that livestock be given a minimum amount of square feet per animal—and the amount is only 24 square feet for breeding pigs and 43 square feet for veal calves.
Because California's 38 million people are a major market, and the bill applied to all veal and pork sold in California, 19,000 hog farmers in the US converted their farms to be compliant with California's law—or were already compliant. This cost them up to $1 million each.
On the other hand, the National Pork Producers Council claimed that complying with the law would increase production costs by 9%, leading to more expensive and less available protein, and harming small farmers. The organization also claimed that allowing the animals room to walk would not improve animal welfare, based on "scientific research."
In fact, after the law came into effect in 2024, there was no shortage of meat, and prices did not rise appreciably. What did happen was that small hog farmers became able to compete with the large, confined animal operations, providing them with critical market opportunities that kept them farming.
The battle over the Save Our Bacon Act is not merely a dispute about pork production or animal welfare standards. It is a constitutional and political struggle ove...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/should-an-industry-friendly-rider-in-the-farm-bill-override-over-1000-state-laws/ There is an alarming but little-known provision in Congress' 2026 Farm Bill that is likely to find its way into law within the next few weeks.
It attempts to remove the right of Americans to maintain local control over our food and farms.
It could also nullify over 1,000 state laws that are already on the books.
The Farm Bill, also known as the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026, which includes the Save Our Bacon Act as Section 12006, was passed by the House on April 30, 2026 and now heads to the Senate, where the Agriculture Committee is expected to draft its own version of the bill.
Embedded in the legislation is the so-called "Save our Bacon" (SOB) Act, which would strip state and local governments of their ability to make agricultural policies for meat consumed in the state—preventing state and local governments from establishing food production and distribution safeguards.
As often happens, the language is designed to confuse. No doubt written by industry wordsmiths, the language sounds very reasonable, as long as you don't know what it really means. Let me explain the bill language by quoting the first four sections and then decoding them:
(1) [The purpose of this bill is to] protect the free movement in interstate
commerce of products derived from covered livestock;
(2) encourage a national market of such products;
(3) ensure that producers of covered livestock
are not subject to a patchwork of State laws restricting access to a national market; and
(4) ensure that the United States continues to uphold its international trade obligations.
(1) "free movement" in fact means that states will not be able to restrict the entry and sale of meat produced under conditions that states deem improper.
(2) "national market" means no state will be allowed to refuse the entry and sale of meat, despite existing state laws that would prohibit sales of meat from certain locations, or meat produced under inhumane conditions.
(3) "patchwork of State laws" means that this single federal law will supersede and nullify all state laws, ignoring constitutional limits on federal power, to impose this single law on the whole country.
(4) "uphold its international trade obligations" means the states cannot restrict the sale of meat from any country, even when that country is inflicted with a pest like the New World screwworm.
Where did this bill come from?
This law is the meat industry's response to a California ballot initiative that passed in 2018, titled Proposition 12. The industrial production of pork and veal is frequently accomplished by growing breeding pigs and veal calves in crates or boxes where they have no room to move or even turn around. Proposition 12 required that livestock be given a minimum amount of square feet per animal—and the amount is only 24 square feet for breeding pigs and 43 square feet for veal calves.
Because California's 38 million people are a major market, and the bill applied to all veal and pork sold in California, 19,000 hog farmers in the US converted their farms to be compliant with California's law—or were already compliant. This cost them up to $1 million each.
On the other hand, the National Pork Producers Council claimed that complying with the law would increase production costs by 9%, leading to more expensive and less available protein, and harming small farmers. The organization also claimed that allowing the animals room to walk would not improve animal welfare, based on "scientific research."
In fact, after the law came into effect in 2024, there was no shortage of meat, and prices did not rise appreciably. What did happen was that small hog farmers became able to compete with the large, confined animal operations, providing them with critical market opportunities that kept them farming.
The battle over the Save Our Bacon Act is not merely a dispute about pork production or animal welfare standards. It is a constitutional and political struggle ove...]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 07:18:00 -0400 Should an Industry-Friendly Rider in the Farm Bill Override Over 1,000 State Laws? The Larger Ramifications of This Bill There is an alarming but little-known provision in Congress' 2026 Farm Bill that is likely to find its way into law within the next few weeks.
It attempts to remove the right of Americans to maintain local control o...]]> There is an alarming but little-known provision in Congress' 2026 Farm Bill that is likely to find its way into law within the next few weeks.
It attempts to remove the right of Americans to maintain local control over our food and farms.
It could also nullify over 1,000 state laws that are already on the books.
The Farm Bill, also known as the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026, which includes the Save Our Bacon Act as Section 12006, was passed by the House on April 30, 2026 and now heads to the Senate, where the Agriculture Committee is expected to draft its own version of the bill.
Embedded in the legislation is the so-called "Save our Bacon" (SOB) Act, which would strip state and local governments of their ability to make agricultural policies for meat consumed in the state—preventing state and local governments from establishing food production and distribution safeguards.
As often happens, the language is designed to confuse. No doubt written by industry wordsmiths, the language sounds very reasonable, as long as you don't know what it really means. Let me explain the bill language by quoting the first four sections and then decoding them:
(1) [The purpose of this bill is to] protect the free movement in interstate
commerce of products derived from covered livestock;
(2) encourage a national market of such products;
(3) ensure that producers of covered livestock
are not subject to a patchwork of State laws restricting access to a national market; and
(4) ensure that the United States continues to uphold its international trade obligations.
(1) "free movement" in fact means that states will not be able to restrict the entry and sale of meat produced under conditions that states deem improper.
(2) "national market" means no state will be allowed to refuse the entry and sale of meat, despite existing state laws that would prohibit sales of meat from certain locations, or meat produced under inhumane conditions.
(3) "patchwork of State laws" means that this single federal law will supersede and nullify all state laws, ignoring constitutional limits on federal power, to impose this single law on the whole country.
(4) "uphold its international trade obligations" means the states cannot restrict the sale of meat from any country, even when that country is inflicted with a pest like the New World screwworm.
Where did this bill come from?
This law is the meat industry's response to a California ballot initiative that passed in 2018, titled Proposition 12. The industrial production of pork and veal is frequently accomplished by growing breeding pigs and veal calves in crates or boxes where they have no room to move or even turn around. Proposition 12 required that livestock be given a minimum amount of square feet per animal—and the amount is only 24 square feet for breeding pigs and 43 square feet for veal calves.
Because California's 38 million people are a major market, and the bill applied to all veal and pork sold in California, 19,000 hog farmers in the US converted their farms to be compliant with California's law—or were already compliant. This cost them up to $1 million each.
On the other hand, the National Pork Producers Council claimed that complying with the law would increase production costs by 9%, leading to more expensive and less available protein, and harming small farmers. The organization also claimed that allowing the animals room to walk would not improve animal welfare, based on "scientific research."
In fact, after the law came into effect in 2024, there was no shortage of meat, and prices did not rise appreciably. What did happen was that small hog farmers became able to compete with the large, confined animal operations, providing them with critical market opportunities that kept them farming.
The battle over the Save Our Bacon Act is not merely a dispute about pork production or animal welfare standards. It is a constitutional and political struggle ove...]]> Meryl Nass 13:19 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 53 69832 In modern medicine, the zeitgeist today seems to be captured in one word: "more." We need more MRI machines, more screenings, more surgical interventions, more drugs, more doctors. More. More. More. Like the internal logic of capitalism that is built on eternal growth, so too is our health care system.
Given this ever-expanding demand, we need to be asking some hard questions about whether sending even more of our collective wealth towards our healthcare system is producing good returns. We might expect that anything spent on healthcare provides good returns, but what if, frequently, those investments end in losses?
There have been some significant strides against diseases over the last 30 years, but for many of the common sicknesses we all face, we're seeing very little progress. This, despite the climbing price tag. Americans spent about $3.2 trillion in 2015 on healthcare, and that ballooned to about $4.8 trillion in 2023, representing a roughly 50% growth. By contrast GDP grew by only 25% over that period of time.
What's all the additional money buying us?
In the things that matter, such as life expectancies, we are going backwards. The average life expectancy of Americans has dropped 2-3 years since the pandemic and we currently have among the lowest life expectancy among the world's developed countries. The mental health of children and many adults is cratering, despite the mountains of expensive drugs we throw at these problems. Any advances on reducing mortality due to cardiovascular disease or cancer–the two biggest killers of Americans– are mostly disappointing, small, and incremental. And above all, in some key areas of healthcare, the more money we spend the worse outcomes we seem to get, a practice that culturally and financially threatens to bankrupt us.
Despite the juggernaut of more, more, more, there has been a small but growing voice of those who say it's time to apply the brakes, and fast. Regardless of what area you look at: hospitals, medical screening, drug treatments, orthopaedic surgeries, cancer treatments, you name it, a case can be made almost everywhere that we need to slow healthcare activity, especially in areas where it's clear that it's delivering us negative returns.
I would argue that we are increasingly allowing the normal ups and downs of aging to be medicalized, where typical signs of lives well-lived are redefined as sickness and in need of medical intervention. An aging population, therefore, becomes an increasingly lucrative market to go after.
Let's take one example, orthopaedic surgery—to examine what I mean by the medicalization of normality. Orthopaedic surgeons typically operate on hips, knees, elbows, shoulders, spines, and hands, often providing an important and essential service.
No one would argue against the value of hip replacement surgery in those suffering intolerable pain from worn out hip joints. But not all surgery or medical imaging relating to our joints is necessary. And some of it is harmful. Looking closely at the evidence behind MRI or CT scans, X-rays, and knee, shoulder, or elbow surgeries, you will find that many of the scans or surgeries we submit to do almost nothing to improve the length and quality of our lives.
The use of MRI machines provides a stellar example. Everyone seems to believe that there are not enough MRI machines to go around even though the overall volume of MRI machines has grown immensely. Over the last decade, the number of MRI machines has grown by 35% in some states, and total MRI-related revenue has increased by up to 40%.
MRIs are clearly a big moneymaker for hospitals but what do those machines really do? Spoiler alert: they often do little more than detect the natural physiological signs of aging.
Earlier this year the Finnish Centre for Evidence-Based Orthopaedics (FICEBO), did something so amazing, it's hard to believe that no one else had thought of this. They took about 600 healthy middle-a...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/less-is-more-in-medicine/ In modern medicine, the zeitgeist today seems to be captured in one word: "more." We need more MRI machines, more screenings, more surgical interventions, more drugs, more doctors. More. More. More. Like the internal logic of capitalism that is built on eternal growth, so too is our health care system.
Given this ever-expanding demand, we need to be asking some hard questions about whether sending even more of our collective wealth towards our healthcare system is producing good returns. We might expect that anything spent on healthcare provides good returns, but what if, frequently, those investments end in losses?
There have been some significant strides against diseases over the last 30 years, but for many of the common sicknesses we all face, we're seeing very little progress. This, despite the climbing price tag. Americans spent about $3.2 trillion in 2015 on healthcare, and that ballooned to about $4.8 trillion in 2023, representing a roughly 50% growth. By contrast GDP grew by only 25% over that period of time.
What's all the additional money buying us?
In the things that matter, such as life expectancies, we are going backwards. The average life expectancy of Americans has dropped 2-3 years since the pandemic and we currently have among the lowest life expectancy among the world's developed countries. The mental health of children and many adults is cratering, despite the mountains of expensive drugs we throw at these problems. Any advances on reducing mortality due to cardiovascular disease or cancer–the two biggest killers of Americans– are mostly disappointing, small, and incremental. And above all, in some key areas of healthcare, the more money we spend the worse outcomes we seem to get, a practice that culturally and financially threatens to bankrupt us.
Despite the juggernaut of more, more, more, there has been a small but growing voice of those who say it's time to apply the brakes, and fast. Regardless of what area you look at: hospitals, medical screening, drug treatments, orthopaedic surgeries, cancer treatments, you name it, a case can be made almost everywhere that we need to slow healthcare activity, especially in areas where it's clear that it's delivering us negative returns.
I would argue that we are increasingly allowing the normal ups and downs of aging to be medicalized, where typical signs of lives well-lived are redefined as sickness and in need of medical intervention. An aging population, therefore, becomes an increasingly lucrative market to go after.
Let's take one example, orthopaedic surgery—to examine what I mean by the medicalization of normality. Orthopaedic surgeons typically operate on hips, knees, elbows, shoulders, spines, and hands, often providing an important and essential service.
No one would argue against the value of hip replacement surgery in those suffering intolerable pain from worn out hip joints. But not all surgery or medical imaging relating to our joints is necessary. And some of it is harmful. Looking closely at the evidence behind MRI or CT scans, X-rays, and knee, shoulder, or elbow surgeries, you will find that many of the scans or surgeries we submit to do almost nothing to improve the length and quality of our lives.
The use of MRI machines provides a stellar example. Everyone seems to believe that there are not enough MRI machines to go around even though the overall volume of MRI machines has grown immensely. Over the last decade, the number of MRI machines has grown by 35% in some states, and total MRI-related revenue has increased by up to 40%.
MRIs are clearly a big moneymaker for hospitals but what do those machines really do? Spoiler alert: they often do little more than detect the natural physiological signs of aging.
Earlier this year the Finnish Centre for Evidence-Based Orthopaedics (FICEBO), did something so amazing, it's hard to believe that no one else had thought of this. They took about 600 healthy middle-a...]]> Thu, 28 May 2026 07:20:00 -0400 Less Is More in Medicine Medicalizing Normal: The "Grey Hair" of Joints Making the case for "De-implementation:" Why Some Surgeries Must Stop The Economic Toll: The North American "Cash Cow" A Systemic and Ethical Imperative: We Need to Wage War on Healthcare Waste In modern medicine, the zeitgeist today seems to be captured in one word: "more." We need more MRI machines, more screenings, more surgical interventions, more drugs, more doctors. More. More. More. Like the inter...]]> In modern medicine, the zeitgeist today seems to be captured in one word: "more." We need more MRI machines, more screenings, more surgical interventions, more drugs, more doctors. More. More. More. Like the internal logic of capitalism that is built on eternal growth, so too is our health care system.
Given this ever-expanding demand, we need to be asking some hard questions about whether sending even more of our collective wealth towards our healthcare system is producing good returns. We might expect that anything spent on healthcare provides good returns, but what if, frequently, those investments end in losses?
There have been some significant strides against diseases over the last 30 years, but for many of the common sicknesses we all face, we're seeing very little progress. This, despite the climbing price tag. Americans spent about $3.2 trillion in 2015 on healthcare, and that ballooned to about $4.8 trillion in 2023, representing a roughly 50% growth. By contrast GDP grew by only 25% over that period of time.
What's all the additional money buying us?
In the things that matter, such as life expectancies, we are going backwards. The average life expectancy of Americans has dropped 2-3 years since the pandemic and we currently have among the lowest life expectancy among the world's developed countries. The mental health of children and many adults is cratering, despite the mountains of expensive drugs we throw at these problems. Any advances on reducing mortality due to cardiovascular disease or cancer–the two biggest killers of Americans– are mostly disappointing, small, and incremental. And above all, in some key areas of healthcare, the more money we spend the worse outcomes we seem to get, a practice that culturally and financially threatens to bankrupt us.
Despite the juggernaut of more, more, more, there has been a small but growing voice of those who say it's time to apply the brakes, and fast. Regardless of what area you look at: hospitals, medical screening, drug treatments, orthopaedic surgeries, cancer treatments, you name it, a case can be made almost everywhere that we need to slow healthcare activity, especially in areas where it's clear that it's delivering us negative returns.
I would argue that we are increasingly allowing the normal ups and downs of aging to be medicalized, where typical signs of lives well-lived are redefined as sickness and in need of medical intervention. An aging population, therefore, becomes an increasingly lucrative market to go after.
Let's take one example, orthopaedic surgery—to examine what I mean by the medicalization of normality. Orthopaedic surgeons typically operate on hips, knees, elbows, shoulders, spines, and hands, often providing an important and essential service.
No one would argue against the value of hip replacement surgery in those suffering intolerable pain from worn out hip joints. But not all surgery or medical imaging relating to our joints is necessary. And some of it is harmful. Looking closely at the evidence behind MRI or CT scans, X-rays, and knee, shoulder, or elbow surgeries, you will find that many of the scans or surgeries we submit to do almost nothing to improve the length and quality of our lives.
The use of MRI machines provides a stellar example. Everyone seems to believe that there are not enough MRI machines to go around even though the overall volume of MRI machines has grown immensely. Over the last decade, the number of MRI machines has grown by 35% in some states, and total MRI-related revenue has increased by up to 40%.
MRIs are clearly a big moneymaker for hospitals but what do those machines really do? Spoiler alert: they often do little more than detect the natural physiological signs of aging.
Earlier this year the Finnish Centre for Evidence-Based Orthopaedics (FICEBO), did something so amazing, it's hard to believe that no one else had thought of this. They took about 600 healthy middle-a...]]> Alan Cassels 10:42 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 52 69669 In September 2025, then-US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Dr Marty Makary publicly acknowledged that the agency was investigating reports of child deaths following Covid-19 vaccination.
"We do know at the FDA…that there had been children who have died from the COVID vaccine," Makary said during a CNN interview.
By that stage, however, a fierce internal dispute had already emerged inside the FDA over what investigators believed the evidence showed — and whether the public should ever see the full findings.
"It really did feel like there was some sort of cover-up going on about the Covid-19 vaccines," said one individual familiar with the discussions.
MD Reports spoke with several current/former agency officials, advisers, and individuals briefed on the discussions, all of whom requested anonymity because they were not authorised to publicly discuss internal FDA deliberations.
At the centre of the controversy was an internal FDA review led by Dr Tracy Beth Høeg, a physician-scientist who was working as a senior scientist inside the FDA's vaccine division at the time.
FDA officials examined roughly 96 paediatric death reports submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), the government database used to detect potential vaccine-related adverse events.
The review included medical records, autopsy reports, pathology findings, and follow-up investigations conducted by agency staff.
About 25 deaths following Covid vaccination were ultimately considered serious enough for high-level internal discussion inside the agency.
The findings were expected to be presented at a September 2025 meeting of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices (ACIP), the federal panel that shapes US vaccine recommendations.
But before that could happen, details of the review leaked to the New York Times and theWashington Post.
Høeg quickly became the focus of intense media scrutiny and criticism from vaccine advocates and unnamed FDA officials who argued she was relying too heavily on VAERS reports and overstating preliminary findings.
People familiar with the fallout said some FDA staff strongly objected to Høeg's methods and conclusions and allegedly sought to undermine her credibility by leaking details of the review.
The leak effectively ended plans for a public ACIP discussion and deepened divisions within the FDA over how the findings should be handled.
Some officials believed the findings warranted stronger warnings and greater transparency. Others feared public acknowledgement of vaccine-linked child deaths would damage confidence in the Covid vaccines.
"We know that there are these deaths that are due to the vaccine," said one source, referring to myocarditis cases and published reports from countries including Korea and Israel.
The controversy intensified after then-FDA vaccine chief Dr Vinay Prasad ordered additional investigation into the deaths identified in Høeg's review.
Months later, another leak brought the issue back into public view.
In November 2025, an internal memo circulated by Prasad became public. In it, Prasad acknowledged that "at least 10" children had died "after and because of receiving Covid-19 vaccination."
He described the findings as "a profound revelation."
"COVID-19 vaccines did result in the death of children," Prasad wrote. "Dr. Hoeg was correct in her assessment."
The memo triggered another round of backlash from media outlets and vaccine advocates, many of whom accused Prasad of overstating the evidence before the agency's analysis had been finalised.
Inside Medicine reported on a Dec 5 memo about a subsequent FDA analysis using a World Health Organization causality framework, which classified zero deaths as "certain," two as "probable/likely," and five as "possible."
But individuals involved in the discussions said pressure steadily mounted inside the agency to "downgrade" the findings with each successive review.
"It seemed li...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/inside-the-fdas-cover-up-of-child-deaths-linked-to-covid-vaccines/ In September 2025, then-US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Dr Marty Makary publicly acknowledged that the agency was investigating reports of child deaths following Covid-19 vaccination.
"We do know at the FDA…that there had been children who have died from the COVID vaccine," Makary said during a CNN interview.
By that stage, however, a fierce internal dispute had already emerged inside the FDA over what investigators believed the evidence showed — and whether the public should ever see the full findings.
"It really did feel like there was some sort of cover-up going on about the Covid-19 vaccines," said one individual familiar with the discussions.
MD Reports spoke with several current/former agency officials, advisers, and individuals briefed on the discussions, all of whom requested anonymity because they were not authorised to publicly discuss internal FDA deliberations.
At the centre of the controversy was an internal FDA review led by Dr Tracy Beth Høeg, a physician-scientist who was working as a senior scientist inside the FDA's vaccine division at the time.
FDA officials examined roughly 96 paediatric death reports submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), the government database used to detect potential vaccine-related adverse events.
The review included medical records, autopsy reports, pathology findings, and follow-up investigations conducted by agency staff.
About 25 deaths following Covid vaccination were ultimately considered serious enough for high-level internal discussion inside the agency.
The findings were expected to be presented at a September 2025 meeting of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices (ACIP), the federal panel that shapes US vaccine recommendations.
But before that could happen, details of the review leaked to the New York Times and theWashington Post.
Høeg quickly became the focus of intense media scrutiny and criticism from vaccine advocates and unnamed FDA officials who argued she was relying too heavily on VAERS reports and overstating preliminary findings.
People familiar with the fallout said some FDA staff strongly objected to Høeg's methods and conclusions and allegedly sought to undermine her credibility by leaking details of the review.
The leak effectively ended plans for a public ACIP discussion and deepened divisions within the FDA over how the findings should be handled.
Some officials believed the findings warranted stronger warnings and greater transparency. Others feared public acknowledgement of vaccine-linked child deaths would damage confidence in the Covid vaccines.
"We know that there are these deaths that are due to the vaccine," said one source, referring to myocarditis cases and published reports from countries including Korea and Israel.
The controversy intensified after then-FDA vaccine chief Dr Vinay Prasad ordered additional investigation into the deaths identified in Høeg's review.
Months later, another leak brought the issue back into public view.
In November 2025, an internal memo circulated by Prasad became public. In it, Prasad acknowledged that "at least 10" children had died "after and because of receiving Covid-19 vaccination."
He described the findings as "a profound revelation."
"COVID-19 vaccines did result in the death of children," Prasad wrote. "Dr. Hoeg was correct in her assessment."
The memo triggered another round of backlash from media outlets and vaccine advocates, many of whom accused Prasad of overstating the evidence before the agency's analysis had been finalised.
Inside Medicine reported on a Dec 5 memo about a subsequent FDA analysis using a World Health Organization causality framework, which classified zero deaths as "certain," two as "probable/likely," and five as "possible."
But individuals involved in the discussions said pressure steadily mounted inside the agency to "downgrade" the findings with each successive review.
"It seemed li...]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 07:40:00 -0400 Inside the FDA's 'Cover-Up' of Child Deaths Linked to Covid Vaccines In September 2025, then-US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Dr Marty Makary publicly acknowledged that the agency was investigating reports of child deaths following Covid-19 vaccination.
"We do ...]]> In September 2025, then-US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Dr Marty Makary publicly acknowledged that the agency was investigating reports of child deaths following Covid-19 vaccination.
"We do know at the FDA…that there had been children who have died from the COVID vaccine," Makary said during a CNN interview.
By that stage, however, a fierce internal dispute had already emerged inside the FDA over what investigators believed the evidence showed — and whether the public should ever see the full findings.
"It really did feel like there was some sort of cover-up going on about the Covid-19 vaccines," said one individual familiar with the discussions.
MD Reports spoke with several current/former agency officials, advisers, and individuals briefed on the discussions, all of whom requested anonymity because they were not authorised to publicly discuss internal FDA deliberations.
At the centre of the controversy was an internal FDA review led by Dr Tracy Beth Høeg, a physician-scientist who was working as a senior scientist inside the FDA's vaccine division at the time.
FDA officials examined roughly 96 paediatric death reports submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), the government database used to detect potential vaccine-related adverse events.
The review included medical records, autopsy reports, pathology findings, and follow-up investigations conducted by agency staff.
About 25 deaths following Covid vaccination were ultimately considered serious enough for high-level internal discussion inside the agency.
The findings were expected to be presented at a September 2025 meeting of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices (ACIP), the federal panel that shapes US vaccine recommendations.
But before that could happen, details of the review leaked to the New York Times and theWashington Post.
Høeg quickly became the focus of intense media scrutiny and criticism from vaccine advocates and unnamed FDA officials who argued she was relying too heavily on VAERS reports and overstating preliminary findings.
People familiar with the fallout said some FDA staff strongly objected to Høeg's methods and conclusions and allegedly sought to undermine her credibility by leaking details of the review.
The leak effectively ended plans for a public ACIP discussion and deepened divisions within the FDA over how the findings should be handled.
Some officials believed the findings warranted stronger warnings and greater transparency. Others feared public acknowledgement of vaccine-linked child deaths would damage confidence in the Covid vaccines.
"We know that there are these deaths that are due to the vaccine," said one source, referring to myocarditis cases and published reports from countries including Korea and Israel.
The controversy intensified after then-FDA vaccine chief Dr Vinay Prasad ordered additional investigation into the deaths identified in Høeg's review.
Months later, another leak brought the issue back into public view.
In November 2025, an internal memo circulated by Prasad became public. In it, Prasad acknowledged that "at least 10" children had died "after and because of receiving Covid-19 vaccination."
He described the findings as "a profound revelation."
"COVID-19 vaccines did result in the death of children," Prasad wrote. "Dr. Hoeg was correct in her assessment."
The memo triggered another round of backlash from media outlets and vaccine advocates, many of whom accused Prasad of overstating the evidence before the agency's analysis had been finalised.
Inside Medicine reported on a Dec 5 memo about a subsequent FDA analysis using a World Health Organization causality framework, which classified zero deaths as "certain," two as "probable/likely," and five as "possible."
But individuals involved in the discussions said pressure steadily mounted inside the agency to "downgrade" the findings with each successive review.
"It seemed li...]]> Maryanne Demasi 07:59 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 51 61501 On December 4 and 5 2025, the country had the opportunity to observe two vastly different worldviews on display as the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice (ACIP) of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention debated changing the over 30-year recommendation for universal administration of the hepatitis B vaccine for every newborn. On an 8-3 vote, the ACIP voted:
to recommend individual-based decision-making for parents deciding whether to give the hepatitis B vaccine, including the birth dose, to infants born to women who test negative for the virus. For those infants not receiving the birth dose, ACIP suggested in its recommendation that the initial dose be administered no earlier than two months of age.
Individual-based decision-making, known on the CDC immunization schedules as shared clinical decision-making, means that parents and health care providers should consider vaccine benefits, vaccine risks, and infection risks, and that parents consult with their health care provider and decide when or if their child will begin the hepatitis B vaccine series. The committee said parents and health care providers should consider whether there are infection risks such as a household member who has hepatitis B or frequent contact with persons who have emigrated from areas where hepatitis B is common.
ACIP also voted to recommend that when evaluating the need for a subsequent hepatitis B vaccine dose in children, parents should consult with health care providers to decide whether to test antibody levels to hepatitis surface antigen to evaluate adequacy of protection through serology results.
It should be noted that individual-based decision-making used to be known as Informed Consent. As a physician and surgeon, I was ethically and legally bound to explain the risks, benefits, and alternatives of any proposed treatment plan and allow the patient or a competent legal guardian to decide whether or not to accept my recommendation. That all went out the window with Covid, where an attempt to obtain true Informed Consent was penalized if any treatment other than that recommended by numerous (and sometimes conflicting and ever-changing) "official" organizations was discussed.
The ACIP decision was widely criticized by medical organizations and sympathetic news organizations. They emphasized that the hepatitis B vaccine was "universally recognized as safe and effective." On the surface, that sounded like the voice of authority, and it is what is known as an Argument From Authority. The problem is that such an argument is also often false. The article in the hyperlink quotes no less of a scientist as Carl Sagan in discussing an Argument From Authority:
One of the great commandments of science is, 'Mistrust arguments from authority.'…Too many such arguments have proved too painfully wrong. Authorities must prove their contentions like everybody else."
To my observation, those insisting that this injection MUST be given to every newborn have failed in that proof. Some of the dissenters on the committee and virtually all the speakers representing organized healthcare were seemingly completely oblivious to the questions of safety. The inclusion of Aaron Siri as a speaker prior to the vote was ridiculed by some that he was "only a lawyer" and not an expert on health care. Yet I found this lawyer to be significantly more credible than my colleagues or other so-called experts on vaccine safety. They really should read his book before making statements that are so easily refuted.
Randomized Placebo Controlled Clinical Trials were touted as the Gold Standard of care in shooting down any talk of treatment of Covid with such agents as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin but seem, by the same people, to now be an insult when they are suggested for any "vaccine." Siri reviewed the "clinical trial" upon which the HB vaccine was based. The verbiage is from the package insert which can be downloaded he...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-danger-of-an-unexamined-status-quo/ On December 4 and 5 2025, the country had the opportunity to observe two vastly different worldviews on display as the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice (ACIP) of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention debated changing the over 30-year recommendation for universal administration of the hepatitis B vaccine for every newborn. On an 8-3 vote, the ACIP voted:
to recommend individual-based decision-making for parents deciding whether to give the hepatitis B vaccine, including the birth dose, to infants born to women who test negative for the virus. For those infants not receiving the birth dose, ACIP suggested in its recommendation that the initial dose be administered no earlier than two months of age.
Individual-based decision-making, known on the CDC immunization schedules as shared clinical decision-making, means that parents and health care providers should consider vaccine benefits, vaccine risks, and infection risks, and that parents consult with their health care provider and decide when or if their child will begin the hepatitis B vaccine series. The committee said parents and health care providers should consider whether there are infection risks such as a household member who has hepatitis B or frequent contact with persons who have emigrated from areas where hepatitis B is common.
ACIP also voted to recommend that when evaluating the need for a subsequent hepatitis B vaccine dose in children, parents should consult with health care providers to decide whether to test antibody levels to hepatitis surface antigen to evaluate adequacy of protection through serology results.
It should be noted that individual-based decision-making used to be known as Informed Consent. As a physician and surgeon, I was ethically and legally bound to explain the risks, benefits, and alternatives of any proposed treatment plan and allow the patient or a competent legal guardian to decide whether or not to accept my recommendation. That all went out the window with Covid, where an attempt to obtain true Informed Consent was penalized if any treatment other than that recommended by numerous (and sometimes conflicting and ever-changing) "official" organizations was discussed.
The ACIP decision was widely criticized by medical organizations and sympathetic news organizations. They emphasized that the hepatitis B vaccine was "universally recognized as safe and effective." On the surface, that sounded like the voice of authority, and it is what is known as an Argument From Authority. The problem is that such an argument is also often false. The article in the hyperlink quotes no less of a scientist as Carl Sagan in discussing an Argument From Authority:
One of the great commandments of science is, 'Mistrust arguments from authority.'…Too many such arguments have proved too painfully wrong. Authorities must prove their contentions like everybody else."
To my observation, those insisting that this injection MUST be given to every newborn have failed in that proof. Some of the dissenters on the committee and virtually all the speakers representing organized healthcare were seemingly completely oblivious to the questions of safety. The inclusion of Aaron Siri as a speaker prior to the vote was ridiculed by some that he was "only a lawyer" and not an expert on health care. Yet I found this lawyer to be significantly more credible than my colleagues or other so-called experts on vaccine safety. They really should read his book before making statements that are so easily refuted.
Randomized Placebo Controlled Clinical Trials were touted as the Gold Standard of care in shooting down any talk of treatment of Covid with such agents as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin but seem, by the same people, to now be an insult when they are suggested for any "vaccine." Siri reviewed the "clinical trial" upon which the HB vaccine was based. The verbiage is from the package insert which can be downloaded he...]]> Tue, 26 May 2026 07:30:17 -0400 The Danger of an Unexamined Status Quo On December 4 and 5 2025, the country had the opportunity to observe two vastly different worldviews on display as the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice (ACIP) of the US Centers for Disease Control and...]]> On December 4 and 5 2025, the country had the opportunity to observe two vastly different worldviews on display as the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice (ACIP) of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention debated changing the over 30-year recommendation for universal administration of the hepatitis B vaccine for every newborn. On an 8-3 vote, the ACIP voted:
to recommend individual-based decision-making for parents deciding whether to give the hepatitis B vaccine, including the birth dose, to infants born to women who test negative for the virus. For those infants not receiving the birth dose, ACIP suggested in its recommendation that the initial dose be administered no earlier than two months of age.
Individual-based decision-making, known on the CDC immunization schedules as shared clinical decision-making, means that parents and health care providers should consider vaccine benefits, vaccine risks, and infection risks, and that parents consult with their health care provider and decide when or if their child will begin the hepatitis B vaccine series. The committee said parents and health care providers should consider whether there are infection risks such as a household member who has hepatitis B or frequent contact with persons who have emigrated from areas where hepatitis B is common.
ACIP also voted to recommend that when evaluating the need for a subsequent hepatitis B vaccine dose in children, parents should consult with health care providers to decide whether to test antibody levels to hepatitis surface antigen to evaluate adequacy of protection through serology results.
It should be noted that individual-based decision-making used to be known as Informed Consent. As a physician and surgeon, I was ethically and legally bound to explain the risks, benefits, and alternatives of any proposed treatment plan and allow the patient or a competent legal guardian to decide whether or not to accept my recommendation. That all went out the window with Covid, where an attempt to obtain true Informed Consent was penalized if any treatment other than that recommended by numerous (and sometimes conflicting and ever-changing) "official" organizations was discussed.
The ACIP decision was widely criticized by medical organizations and sympathetic news organizations. They emphasized that the hepatitis B vaccine was "universally recognized as safe and effective." On the surface, that sounded like the voice of authority, and it is what is known as an Argument From Authority. The problem is that such an argument is also often false. The article in the hyperlink quotes no less of a scientist as Carl Sagan in discussing an Argument From Authority:
One of the great commandments of science is, 'Mistrust arguments from authority.'…Too many such arguments have proved too painfully wrong. Authorities must prove their contentions like everybody else."
To my observation, those insisting that this injection MUST be given to every newborn have failed in that proof. Some of the dissenters on the committee and virtually all the speakers representing organized healthcare were seemingly completely oblivious to the questions of safety. The inclusion of Aaron Siri as a speaker prior to the vote was ridiculed by some that he was "only a lawyer" and not an expert on health care. Yet I found this lawyer to be significantly more credible than my colleagues or other so-called experts on vaccine safety. They really should read his book before making statements that are so easily refuted.
Randomized Placebo Controlled Clinical Trials were touted as the Gold Standard of care in shooting down any talk of treatment of Covid with such agents as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin but seem, by the same people, to now be an insult when they are suggested for any "vaccine." Siri reviewed the "clinical trial" upon which the HB vaccine was based. The verbiage is from the package insert which can be downloaded he...]]> Russ Gonnering 16:24 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 50 61547 Here's the article in question. It was written and published on Dec. 5, 2025, 6:00 AM EST by Brandy Zadrozny in MS NOW and is entitled: "RFK Jr.'s CDC panel: No more hepatitis B vaccine for some newborns. The CDC's vaccine advisory panel, stocked with anti-vaccine activists and loyalists to RFK Jr., voted on Friday to stop recommending a birth dose of vaccine."
I am posting my X remarks and defense of some of the false and defamatory comments made therein.

The first statement in this article is false, and what follows are many defamatory remarks including multiple references to "anti-vaccine activists" and descriptions of the ACIP meeting and members as "chaotic and ultimately unproductive" and "illegitimate".
Read on… I would consider suing for libel here.
Without data?

Close up of "without data"…
147 children under 10 (including infants) got dosed and were monitored for 5 whole days. This is the Recombivax HepB clinical trial.

There's been very little change in infant morbidity since the onslaught of at-birth HepB regimen. The age ranges with biggest declines indicate other sources as the reason for HepB acute cases decline.

Such as these…

Why does the US have HepB as a birth dose when other countries do not while these other countries do not suffer from hordes of endemic HepB in babies?

Looks like all the cases of HepB after 2003 were from chronic infections.

And that these chronic infections were in older adults.

Pebsworth simply offered the reasons for acute HepB becoming a more prominent issue in the US over the past decades. She was not misinforming or stigmatizing. At all.
"Pebsworth attributed risk from hepatitis B to gay men, drug users and immigrants — a claim that both misinforms and stigmatizes disease."
HepB is an STD and is not transmitted through respiratory droplets, coughing, sneezing, or airborne routes, so blood or semen transmission is impossible in HBsAg- mothers. She states that a rapid rise of acute HepB were due to 1. increases in transmission blood-borne infections (STD transmission rates including HepB) [1960s – blood infusions + 1980s – STD problems + IV drug use], and 2. immigration from high endemicity areas with established chronic HepB carriers which preceded the 1991 universal infant vaccination strategy.

More data…
During the ACIP meeting, Dr. Meissner kept insisting that data showing harms to infants in HepB context does not exist. It does. I didn't get this data to the ACIP table or to Dr. Meissner's eyes, but it does in fact, exist.

Close up…
When comparing the estimated number of perinatal HepB deaths from HBsAg+ mothers in the US (2,268) to the estimated number of infant deaths reported to the VAERS pharmacovigilance database using an under reporting factor of only 5, the number of deaths is far greater in the latter estimation. This is based on AAP data, peer-reviewed literature and VAERS data.

Not only are there many deaths reported to VAERS for infants 1 year of age and under, temporal clustering indicates a causative effect.

The number of deaths in days in infants is clustered at 6 days old. This is the age at vaccination.

Temporal clustering represented as the number of days post vaccination in infants two years old and less clearly shows that most reports of death were made on day 1.

*Volitionally…

Republished from the author's Substack]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/article-written-and-published-by-libelists/ Here's the article in question. It was written and published on Dec. 5, 2025, 6:00 AM EST by Brandy Zadrozny in MS NOW and is entitled: "RFK Jr.'s CDC panel: No more hepatitis B vaccine for some newborns. The CDC's vaccine advisory panel, stocked with anti-vaccine activists and loyalists to RFK Jr., voted on Friday to stop recommending a birth dose of vaccine."
I am posting my X remarks and defense of some of the false and defamatory comments made therein.

The first statement in this article is false, and what follows are many defamatory remarks including multiple references to "anti-vaccine activists" and descriptions of the ACIP meeting and members as "chaotic and ultimately unproductive" and "illegitimate".
Read on… I would consider suing for libel here.
Without data?

Close up of "without data"…
147 children under 10 (including infants) got dosed and were monitored for 5 whole days. This is the Recombivax HepB clinical trial.

There's been very little change in infant morbidity since the onslaught of at-birth HepB regimen. The age ranges with biggest declines indicate other sources as the reason for HepB acute cases decline.

Such as these…

Why does the US have HepB as a birth dose when other countries do not while these other countries do not suffer from hordes of endemic HepB in babies?

Looks like all the cases of HepB after 2003 were from chronic infections.

And that these chronic infections were in older adults.

Pebsworth simply offered the reasons for acute HepB becoming a more prominent issue in the US over the past decades. She was not misinforming or stigmatizing. At all.
"Pebsworth attributed risk from hepatitis B to gay men, drug users and immigrants — a claim that both misinforms and stigmatizes disease."
HepB is an STD and is not transmitted through respiratory droplets, coughing, sneezing, or airborne routes, so blood or semen transmission is impossible in HBsAg- mothers. She states that a rapid rise of acute HepB were due to 1. increases in transmission blood-borne infections (STD transmission rates including HepB) [1960s – blood infusions + 1980s – STD problems + IV drug use], and 2. immigration from high endemicity areas with established chronic HepB carriers which preceded the 1991 universal infant vaccination strategy.

More data…
During the ACIP meeting, Dr. Meissner kept insisting that data showing harms to infants in HepB context does not exist. It does. I didn't get this data to the ACIP table or to Dr. Meissner's eyes, but it does in fact, exist.

Close up…
When comparing the estimated number of perinatal HepB deaths from HBsAg+ mothers in the US (2,268) to the estimated number of infant deaths reported to the VAERS pharmacovigilance database using an under reporting factor of only 5, the number of deaths is far greater in the latter estimation. This is based on AAP data, peer-reviewed literature and VAERS data.

Not only are there many deaths reported to VAERS for infants 1 year of age and under, temporal clustering indicates a causative effect.

The number of deaths in days in infants is clustered at 6 days old. This is the age at vaccination.

Temporal clustering represented as the number of days post vaccination in infants two years old and less clearly shows that most reports of death were made on day 1.

*Volitionally…

Republished from the author's Substack]]> Mon, 25 May 2026 07:03:49 -0400 Article Written and Published by Libelists? Here's the article in question. It was written and published on Dec. 5, 2025, 6:00 AM EST by Brandy Zadrozny in MS NOW and is entitled: "RFK Jr.'s CDC panel: No more hepatitis B vaccine for some newborns. The CDC'...]]> Here's the article in question. It was written and published on Dec. 5, 2025, 6:00 AM EST by Brandy Zadrozny in MS NOW and is entitled: "RFK Jr.'s CDC panel: No more hepatitis B vaccine for some newborns. The CDC's vaccine advisory panel, stocked with anti-vaccine activists and loyalists to RFK Jr., voted on Friday to stop recommending a birth dose of vaccine."
I am posting my X remarks and defense of some of the false and defamatory comments made therein.

The first statement in this article is false, and what follows are many defamatory remarks including multiple references to "anti-vaccine activists" and descriptions of the ACIP meeting and members as "chaotic and ultimately unproductive" and "illegitimate".
Read on… I would consider suing for libel here.
Without data?

Close up of "without data"…
147 children under 10 (including infants) got dosed and were monitored for 5 whole days. This is the Recombivax HepB clinical trial.

There's been very little change in infant morbidity since the onslaught of at-birth HepB regimen. The age ranges with biggest declines indicate other sources as the reason for HepB acute cases decline.

Such as these…

Why does the US have HepB as a birth dose when other countries do not while these other countries do not suffer from hordes of endemic HepB in babies?

Looks like all the cases of HepB after 2003 were from chronic infections.

And that these chronic infections were in older adults.

Pebsworth simply offered the reasons for acute HepB becoming a more prominent issue in the US over the past decades. She was not misinforming or stigmatizing. At all.
"Pebsworth attributed risk from hepatitis B to gay men, drug users and immigrants — a claim that both misinforms and stigmatizes disease."
HepB is an STD and is not transmitted through respiratory droplets, coughing, sneezing, or airborne routes, so blood or semen transmission is impossible in HBsAg- mothers. She states that a rapid rise of acute HepB were due to 1. increases in transmission blood-borne infections (STD transmission rates including HepB) [1960s – blood infusions + 1980s – STD problems + IV drug use], and 2. immigration from high endemicity areas with established chronic HepB carriers which preceded the 1991 universal infant vaccination strategy.

More data…
During the ACIP meeting, Dr. Meissner kept insisting that data showing harms to infants in HepB context does not exist. It does. I didn't get this data to the ACIP table or to Dr. Meissner's eyes, but it does in fact, exist.

Close up…
When comparing the estimated number of perinatal HepB deaths from HBsAg+ mothers in the US (2,268) to the estimated number of infant deaths reported to the VAERS pharmacovigilance database using an under reporting factor of only 5, the number of deaths is far greater in the latter estimation. This is based on AAP data, peer-reviewed literature and VAERS data.

Not only are there many deaths reported to VAERS for infants 1 year of age and under, temporal clustering indicates a causative effect.

The number of deaths in days in infants is clustered at 6 days old. This is the age at vaccination.

Temporal clustering represented as the number of days post vaccination in infants two years old and less clearly shows that most reports of death were made on day 1.

*Volitionally…

Republished from the author's Substack]]> Jessica Rose 04:00 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 49 61381 Every year for the last four years, around the second Saturday in November, my daughter (now ten) has her first gymnastics meet of the season in Bloomington, Indiana, about an hour-and-a-half drive from our house.
In 2022, we left early, while it was still dark, to make it on time for an early start for her level 2 competition. Surprisingly, it had started snowing an hour or so earlier, and there was already a dusting of snow on the lawns, houses, cars, and streets of our neighborhood. It doesn't regularly snow in mid-November in central/southern Indiana, so even a light snow was unusual that time of year.
However, as we drove south towards Bloomington, the snow intensified. In some places, visibility was difficult and traffic slow along the two-lane route. Ice built up on the wipers, and as a result they didn't clear the snow off the windshield as effectively, making visibility worse.
Nonetheless, we persisted, and made it to the gym in Bloomington on time, with around four inches of snow on the ground locally. I didn't think the accomplishment remarkable, as I've driven in snow before, and although it requires more concentration and patience, it wasn't impossible in those conditions. But I was very curious to see how many other families with gymnasts were willing to take the risk to drive an hour and a half in moderate/heavy snow for the event, and how many decided it wasn't worth it, or even turned back.
As we entered the gym, and my daughter began her warmups with her team, I soon had my answer—not one other gymnast on her team was absent, or even late. All were present.
In the normal, sane world of my childhood, this wouldn't have been extraordinary. But this was November, 2022, and the world was just beginning to recover from the insanity of the Covid-19 response. People in the US had endured harmful lockdowns, restrictions, and mandates, and healthy children were targeted despite the almost non-existent risks SARS-CoV-2 posed to their health. Were people done with all the safetyism and harmful, non-science based, virtue-signaling theatrics of the past two years? I was at once hopeful.
Fast forward to another morning later that winter. It had snowed overnight, maybe an inch and a half. At 5 am, we got numerous automated emails, calls, and texts (just to be sure) from the school district administration—school was cancelled. The excuse for the district wide snow day was "some outlying roads are slick and dangerous."
We live near the center of town. Our daughters' school was less than ten minutes from our house. In fact, almost any school in our district wasn't more than twenty minutes from our house. Going to work that day, even at 8am, it was obvious the local roads were fine. Two hours later, they were dry. Not even remotely as difficult as the 1 1/2 hour drive to Bloomington we had done in November.
Upon perusing local social media posts, my wife and I observed much posturing in parents and teachers defending the district's decision. Any complaint about the lack of concern for working parents schedules and disruptions to learning was met with the tried and true paeans to safety that had been leveled at any rational person for the last two years. "We just want everyone to be safe!" "What happens if a child is hurt on the way to school?" "The school could get sued." "Just because you aren't concerned doesn't mean other parents shouldn't be." Etc, etc. A few more reasonable people made the point that not all the roads were clear, and some places outside of town were worse.
Fair enough. It's fine to give accommodations for people that live out of town on farm roads that never get plowed, and sometimes the city does a lousy job of plowing roads. I'm fine with that. That's no different than what happened when I was kid. My house was located at the bottom of a very steep hill. Some snowy mornings, there was no getting up that hill in our rear-wheel drive, gas-guzzling 80s sedan. So ...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/education-shrinkflation/ Every year for the last four years, around the second Saturday in November, my daughter (now ten) has her first gymnastics meet of the season in Bloomington, Indiana, about an hour-and-a-half drive from our house.
In 2022, we left early, while it was still dark, to make it on time for an early start for her level 2 competition. Surprisingly, it had started snowing an hour or so earlier, and there was already a dusting of snow on the lawns, houses, cars, and streets of our neighborhood. It doesn't regularly snow in mid-November in central/southern Indiana, so even a light snow was unusual that time of year.
However, as we drove south towards Bloomington, the snow intensified. In some places, visibility was difficult and traffic slow along the two-lane route. Ice built up on the wipers, and as a result they didn't clear the snow off the windshield as effectively, making visibility worse.
Nonetheless, we persisted, and made it to the gym in Bloomington on time, with around four inches of snow on the ground locally. I didn't think the accomplishment remarkable, as I've driven in snow before, and although it requires more concentration and patience, it wasn't impossible in those conditions. But I was very curious to see how many other families with gymnasts were willing to take the risk to drive an hour and a half in moderate/heavy snow for the event, and how many decided it wasn't worth it, or even turned back.
As we entered the gym, and my daughter began her warmups with her team, I soon had my answer—not one other gymnast on her team was absent, or even late. All were present.
In the normal, sane world of my childhood, this wouldn't have been extraordinary. But this was November, 2022, and the world was just beginning to recover from the insanity of the Covid-19 response. People in the US had endured harmful lockdowns, restrictions, and mandates, and healthy children were targeted despite the almost non-existent risks SARS-CoV-2 posed to their health. Were people done with all the safetyism and harmful, non-science based, virtue-signaling theatrics of the past two years? I was at once hopeful.
Fast forward to another morning later that winter. It had snowed overnight, maybe an inch and a half. At 5 am, we got numerous automated emails, calls, and texts (just to be sure) from the school district administration—school was cancelled. The excuse for the district wide snow day was "some outlying roads are slick and dangerous."
We live near the center of town. Our daughters' school was less than ten minutes from our house. In fact, almost any school in our district wasn't more than twenty minutes from our house. Going to work that day, even at 8am, it was obvious the local roads were fine. Two hours later, they were dry. Not even remotely as difficult as the 1 1/2 hour drive to Bloomington we had done in November.
Upon perusing local social media posts, my wife and I observed much posturing in parents and teachers defending the district's decision. Any complaint about the lack of concern for working parents schedules and disruptions to learning was met with the tried and true paeans to safety that had been leveled at any rational person for the last two years. "We just want everyone to be safe!" "What happens if a child is hurt on the way to school?" "The school could get sued." "Just because you aren't concerned doesn't mean other parents shouldn't be." Etc, etc. A few more reasonable people made the point that not all the roads were clear, and some places outside of town were worse.
Fair enough. It's fine to give accommodations for people that live out of town on farm roads that never get plowed, and sometimes the city does a lousy job of plowing roads. I'm fine with that. That's no different than what happened when I was kid. My house was located at the bottom of a very steep hill. Some snowy mornings, there was no getting up that hill in our rear-wheel drive, gas-guzzling 80s sedan. So ...]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 07:01:24 -0400 Education Shrinkflation Every year for the last four years, around the second Saturday in November, my daughter (now ten) has her first gymnastics meet of the season in Bloomington, Indiana, about an hour-and-a-half drive from our hou...]]> Every year for the last four years, around the second Saturday in November, my daughter (now ten) has her first gymnastics meet of the season in Bloomington, Indiana, about an hour-and-a-half drive from our house.
In 2022, we left early, while it was still dark, to make it on time for an early start for her level 2 competition. Surprisingly, it had started snowing an hour or so earlier, and there was already a dusting of snow on the lawns, houses, cars, and streets of our neighborhood. It doesn't regularly snow in mid-November in central/southern Indiana, so even a light snow was unusual that time of year.
However, as we drove south towards Bloomington, the snow intensified. In some places, visibility was difficult and traffic slow along the two-lane route. Ice built up on the wipers, and as a result they didn't clear the snow off the windshield as effectively, making visibility worse.
Nonetheless, we persisted, and made it to the gym in Bloomington on time, with around four inches of snow on the ground locally. I didn't think the accomplishment remarkable, as I've driven in snow before, and although it requires more concentration and patience, it wasn't impossible in those conditions. But I was very curious to see how many other families with gymnasts were willing to take the risk to drive an hour and a half in moderate/heavy snow for the event, and how many decided it wasn't worth it, or even turned back.
As we entered the gym, and my daughter began her warmups with her team, I soon had my answer—not one other gymnast on her team was absent, or even late. All were present.
In the normal, sane world of my childhood, this wouldn't have been extraordinary. But this was November, 2022, and the world was just beginning to recover from the insanity of the Covid-19 response. People in the US had endured harmful lockdowns, restrictions, and mandates, and healthy children were targeted despite the almost non-existent risks SARS-CoV-2 posed to their health. Were people done with all the safetyism and harmful, non-science based, virtue-signaling theatrics of the past two years? I was at once hopeful.
Fast forward to another morning later that winter. It had snowed overnight, maybe an inch and a half. At 5 am, we got numerous automated emails, calls, and texts (just to be sure) from the school district administration—school was cancelled. The excuse for the district wide snow day was "some outlying roads are slick and dangerous."
We live near the center of town. Our daughters' school was less than ten minutes from our house. In fact, almost any school in our district wasn't more than twenty minutes from our house. Going to work that day, even at 8am, it was obvious the local roads were fine. Two hours later, they were dry. Not even remotely as difficult as the 1 1/2 hour drive to Bloomington we had done in November.
Upon perusing local social media posts, my wife and I observed much posturing in parents and teachers defending the district's decision. Any complaint about the lack of concern for working parents schedules and disruptions to learning was met with the tried and true paeans to safety that had been leveled at any rational person for the last two years. "We just want everyone to be safe!" "What happens if a child is hurt on the way to school?" "The school could get sued." "Just because you aren't concerned doesn't mean other parents shouldn't be." Etc, etc. A few more reasonable people made the point that not all the roads were clear, and some places outside of town were worse.
Fair enough. It's fine to give accommodations for people that live out of town on farm roads that never get plowed, and sometimes the city does a lousy job of plowing roads. I'm fine with that. That's no different than what happened when I was kid. My house was located at the bottom of a very steep hill. Some snowy mornings, there was no getting up that hill in our rear-wheel drive, gas-guzzling 80s sedan. So ...]]> Steve Templeton 08:05 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 48 69586 Imagine the following message in a public space: Caution: Area of Frequent Attempts at Reputational Destruction by Females
I have never seen a sign bearing the above message in any public space, nor do I want to. Similarly, I have never seen a sign near a heavily African American neighborhood that says, "Caution, entering an area in which your chances of being the victim of a violent crime are statistically proven to be much higher than in other places."
And again, I do not want to.
My reasons for not wanting to ever read these things are, or should be, self-evident to any reasonably thoughtful person: it is never permissible in a society that purports to be democratic to have the state apparatus cast moral aspersions upon an entire subset of the culture on the basis of that subset's immutable characteristics.
And yet, in many municipalities in the US and Europe there is a trend toward posting signs in public transport that, in various levels of explicitness, point toward all men as being gropers and harassers in potencia.
For example, on a recent ride on the transport system of the Catalan Government I was informed, via messages on the wall of the rail car, that public entity will have "Zero tolerance with male violence" in the public areas it administers.
As I write I can already hear the objections of some readers. "Are you saying groping and male harassment does not exist on public transportation?" "Or that you have no interest in stopping it?"
I am saying nothing of the sort.
Of course, it exists and it should not be tolerated.
The question is whether in the attempts to eradicate the problem it is morally and legally responsible to use public monies to single out 49% of the population as constituting a lurking threat to each and every member of the other 51% of the population, with all that such signaling produces in the realm of generating widespread social distrust within the population.
"But Tom, are you suggesting that sexual violence, however defined is not predominantly male-on-female in nature?"
Of course, not.
No more than I am denying—as I suggested with the deliberately provocative passages of this essay—that in today's universities, with their ever more female-dominated administrations and HR departments, reputational destruction aimed at sidelining or destroying the professional trajectories of rivals for power and privilege within the system is an overwhelmingly female-on-male form of violence, or that one's chances of being an object of violence are clearly statistically greater in predominantly black areas of the US than in predominantly white ones.
But as I suggested earlier no one, quite rightly, would ever think of using public monies to alert others to the dangers they might face from these two genetically determined sub-categories of human beings in these circumstances.
However, given the tomb-like silence on the matter in our public discussions, it seems most are just fine with having the government signal citizens with the genetic trait of being male as constituting a special threat to public comity.
As I have often said, it is never a waste of time to try and intuit the goals and methods of the small class of fabulously rich people who seem obsessed with constantly increasing the enormous level of control they already exert over the lives of the great mass of the population.
I also know that the fact that men have greater testosterone levels, and hence much greater tendency and ability to physically challenge the forces of order deployed to protect the elite-favoring status quo and their disposition toward muscular forms of rebellion is a constant matter of concern among the ultra-powerful.
And because these ultra-powerful people also understand that the course an open social conflict can take is always unpredictable, they will, whenever possible, seek to head off such clashes by preemptive means. As the saying goes, the best battle is the one you win w...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-demonization-of-men-and-everyone-else-too/ Imagine the following message in a public space: Caution: Area of Frequent Attempts at Reputational Destruction by Females
I have never seen a sign bearing the above message in any public space, nor do I want to. Similarly, I have never seen a sign near a heavily African American neighborhood that says, "Caution, entering an area in which your chances of being the victim of a violent crime are statistically proven to be much higher than in other places."
And again, I do not want to.
My reasons for not wanting to ever read these things are, or should be, self-evident to any reasonably thoughtful person: it is never permissible in a society that purports to be democratic to have the state apparatus cast moral aspersions upon an entire subset of the culture on the basis of that subset's immutable characteristics.
And yet, in many municipalities in the US and Europe there is a trend toward posting signs in public transport that, in various levels of explicitness, point toward all men as being gropers and harassers in potencia.
For example, on a recent ride on the transport system of the Catalan Government I was informed, via messages on the wall of the rail car, that public entity will have "Zero tolerance with male violence" in the public areas it administers.
As I write I can already hear the objections of some readers. "Are you saying groping and male harassment does not exist on public transportation?" "Or that you have no interest in stopping it?"
I am saying nothing of the sort.
Of course, it exists and it should not be tolerated.
The question is whether in the attempts to eradicate the problem it is morally and legally responsible to use public monies to single out 49% of the population as constituting a lurking threat to each and every member of the other 51% of the population, with all that such signaling produces in the realm of generating widespread social distrust within the population.
"But Tom, are you suggesting that sexual violence, however defined is not predominantly male-on-female in nature?"
Of course, not.
No more than I am denying—as I suggested with the deliberately provocative passages of this essay—that in today's universities, with their ever more female-dominated administrations and HR departments, reputational destruction aimed at sidelining or destroying the professional trajectories of rivals for power and privilege within the system is an overwhelmingly female-on-male form of violence, or that one's chances of being an object of violence are clearly statistically greater in predominantly black areas of the US than in predominantly white ones.
But as I suggested earlier no one, quite rightly, would ever think of using public monies to alert others to the dangers they might face from these two genetically determined sub-categories of human beings in these circumstances.
However, given the tomb-like silence on the matter in our public discussions, it seems most are just fine with having the government signal citizens with the genetic trait of being male as constituting a special threat to public comity.
As I have often said, it is never a waste of time to try and intuit the goals and methods of the small class of fabulously rich people who seem obsessed with constantly increasing the enormous level of control they already exert over the lives of the great mass of the population.
I also know that the fact that men have greater testosterone levels, and hence much greater tendency and ability to physically challenge the forces of order deployed to protect the elite-favoring status quo and their disposition toward muscular forms of rebellion is a constant matter of concern among the ultra-powerful.
And because these ultra-powerful people also understand that the course an open social conflict can take is always unpredictable, they will, whenever possible, seek to head off such clashes by preemptive means. As the saying goes, the best battle is the one you win w...]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 08:20:00 -0400 The Demonization of Men (and Everyone Else Too) Imagine the following message in a public space: Caution: Area of Frequent Attempts at Reputational Destruction by Females
I have never seen a sign bearing the above message in any public space, nor do I want...]]> Imagine the following message in a public space: Caution: Area of Frequent Attempts at Reputational Destruction by Females
I have never seen a sign bearing the above message in any public space, nor do I want to. Similarly, I have never seen a sign near a heavily African American neighborhood that says, "Caution, entering an area in which your chances of being the victim of a violent crime are statistically proven to be much higher than in other places."
And again, I do not want to.
My reasons for not wanting to ever read these things are, or should be, self-evident to any reasonably thoughtful person: it is never permissible in a society that purports to be democratic to have the state apparatus cast moral aspersions upon an entire subset of the culture on the basis of that subset's immutable characteristics.
And yet, in many municipalities in the US and Europe there is a trend toward posting signs in public transport that, in various levels of explicitness, point toward all men as being gropers and harassers in potencia.
For example, on a recent ride on the transport system of the Catalan Government I was informed, via messages on the wall of the rail car, that public entity will have "Zero tolerance with male violence" in the public areas it administers.
As I write I can already hear the objections of some readers. "Are you saying groping and male harassment does not exist on public transportation?" "Or that you have no interest in stopping it?"
I am saying nothing of the sort.
Of course, it exists and it should not be tolerated.
The question is whether in the attempts to eradicate the problem it is morally and legally responsible to use public monies to single out 49% of the population as constituting a lurking threat to each and every member of the other 51% of the population, with all that such signaling produces in the realm of generating widespread social distrust within the population.
"But Tom, are you suggesting that sexual violence, however defined is not predominantly male-on-female in nature?"
Of course, not.
No more than I am denying—as I suggested with the deliberately provocative passages of this essay—that in today's universities, with their ever more female-dominated administrations and HR departments, reputational destruction aimed at sidelining or destroying the professional trajectories of rivals for power and privilege within the system is an overwhelmingly female-on-male form of violence, or that one's chances of being an object of violence are clearly statistically greater in predominantly black areas of the US than in predominantly white ones.
But as I suggested earlier no one, quite rightly, would ever think of using public monies to alert others to the dangers they might face from these two genetically determined sub-categories of human beings in these circumstances.
However, given the tomb-like silence on the matter in our public discussions, it seems most are just fine with having the government signal citizens with the genetic trait of being male as constituting a special threat to public comity.
As I have often said, it is never a waste of time to try and intuit the goals and methods of the small class of fabulously rich people who seem obsessed with constantly increasing the enormous level of control they already exert over the lives of the great mass of the population.
I also know that the fact that men have greater testosterone levels, and hence much greater tendency and ability to physically challenge the forces of order deployed to protect the elite-favoring status quo and their disposition toward muscular forms of rebellion is a constant matter of concern among the ultra-powerful.
And because these ultra-powerful people also understand that the course an open social conflict can take is always unpredictable, they will, whenever possible, seek to head off such clashes by preemptive means. As the saying goes, the best battle is the one you win w...]]> Thomas Harrington 09:33 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 47 69496 For many months now a historic debate about vaccine safety and effectiveness has been unfolding in America's regulatory agencies and recently the debate has escalated into open partisan warfare.
It started on June 9, 2025 when Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. dismissed all 17 sitting members of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and replaced them with his own picks. As one might have expected such a sweeping step was very controversial.
Critics asserted that Kennedy's move was completely partisan, that he was replacing a group of reputable scientists with a bunch of unprofessional political hacks who would follow his agenda. Kennedy retorted that the dismissed committee were conflicted, that they were too close to the major drug companies that manufacture the vaccines. He pointed out that they had never recommended against introducing a new vaccine—including even those that were later withdrawn for safety reasons—and maintained that they had become "little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine." He also stressed that a clean sweep was necessary to restore public trust in vaccine science and policy as it had been seriously shaken by the controversy surrounding the Covid-19 vaccine mandates.
The first upshot from Kennedy's revamp of the vaccine regulators occurred on September 4, 2025 when Food and Drug (FDA) Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary appeared on CNN's The Lead and announced "We've been looking into the VAERS database self-reports, there have been children that have died from the Covid vaccine." VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) is the US government's organization for reporting vaccine harms. It is a passive reporting system and, until Kennedy's shakeup, was known for its lack of followup investigations. Makary's words were momentous. They were a sharp break with past government messaging because—despite numerous reports in the media that had already put the idea of child deaths due to Covid vaccination in the air—up until then the official administration line had been that no child deaths were linked to the Covid-19 vaccine.
Makary's announcement was a prelude to the reconstituted ACIP's first undertaking which, not surprisingly, was to review the Covid vaccine. The committee held two meetings in September 2025 to review and debate government policy around the novel mRNA vaccine and they issued their advice at the second one on September 19.
As chair of ACIP's Covid-19 vaccine work group MIT Professor Retsef Levi presided over these meetings, the terms of reference of any analysis are of utmost importance to its results because they set the scope of what may or may not be examined. Right from the get-go Levi set them as broadly as possible saying, "We don't believe that terms like 'safe and effective' are scientific or appropriate. ACIP should be able to ask any questions relevant to vaccine policy." It should be noted that Levi's all-encompassing terms of reference were challenged by agency lawyers but in the end were finally accepted.
During its discussions about the Covid vaccine the committee heard testimony from two members of Levi's work group who were experts in cancer research, Dr. Wafik El-Deiry, Director of the Legorreta Cancer Center at Brown University and Dr. Charlotte Kuperwasser, Prof. in the Department of Developmental, Molecular, and Chemical Biology at Tufts University School of Medicine. Along with her specialty in molecular biology Kuperwasser is also an internationally recognized expert in mammary gland biology and breast cancer prevention. El-Deiry's knowledge of molecular oncology was important for probing potential integration into the body's genetic system of the stray DNA particles which are known to be a byproduct of the novel mRNA Covid vaccine, while Kuperwasser's expertise was also valuable for evaluating reproductive and pregnancy saf...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/inside-the-great-vaccine-debate/ For many months now a historic debate about vaccine safety and effectiveness has been unfolding in America's regulatory agencies and recently the debate has escalated into open partisan warfare.
It started on June 9, 2025 when Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. dismissed all 17 sitting members of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and replaced them with his own picks. As one might have expected such a sweeping step was very controversial.
Critics asserted that Kennedy's move was completely partisan, that he was replacing a group of reputable scientists with a bunch of unprofessional political hacks who would follow his agenda. Kennedy retorted that the dismissed committee were conflicted, that they were too close to the major drug companies that manufacture the vaccines. He pointed out that they had never recommended against introducing a new vaccine—including even those that were later withdrawn for safety reasons—and maintained that they had become "little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine." He also stressed that a clean sweep was necessary to restore public trust in vaccine science and policy as it had been seriously shaken by the controversy surrounding the Covid-19 vaccine mandates.
The first upshot from Kennedy's revamp of the vaccine regulators occurred on September 4, 2025 when Food and Drug (FDA) Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary appeared on CNN's The Lead and announced "We've been looking into the VAERS database self-reports, there have been children that have died from the Covid vaccine." VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) is the US government's organization for reporting vaccine harms. It is a passive reporting system and, until Kennedy's shakeup, was known for its lack of followup investigations. Makary's words were momentous. They were a sharp break with past government messaging because—despite numerous reports in the media that had already put the idea of child deaths due to Covid vaccination in the air—up until then the official administration line had been that no child deaths were linked to the Covid-19 vaccine.
Makary's announcement was a prelude to the reconstituted ACIP's first undertaking which, not surprisingly, was to review the Covid vaccine. The committee held two meetings in September 2025 to review and debate government policy around the novel mRNA vaccine and they issued their advice at the second one on September 19.
As chair of ACIP's Covid-19 vaccine work group MIT Professor Retsef Levi presided over these meetings, the terms of reference of any analysis are of utmost importance to its results because they set the scope of what may or may not be examined. Right from the get-go Levi set them as broadly as possible saying, "We don't believe that terms like 'safe and effective' are scientific or appropriate. ACIP should be able to ask any questions relevant to vaccine policy." It should be noted that Levi's all-encompassing terms of reference were challenged by agency lawyers but in the end were finally accepted.
During its discussions about the Covid vaccine the committee heard testimony from two members of Levi's work group who were experts in cancer research, Dr. Wafik El-Deiry, Director of the Legorreta Cancer Center at Brown University and Dr. Charlotte Kuperwasser, Prof. in the Department of Developmental, Molecular, and Chemical Biology at Tufts University School of Medicine. Along with her specialty in molecular biology Kuperwasser is also an internationally recognized expert in mammary gland biology and breast cancer prevention. El-Deiry's knowledge of molecular oncology was important for probing potential integration into the body's genetic system of the stray DNA particles which are known to be a byproduct of the novel mRNA Covid vaccine, while Kuperwasser's expertise was also valuable for evaluating reproductive and pregnancy saf...]]> Fri, 22 May 2026 07:40:00 -0400 Inside the Great Vaccine Debate For many months now a historic debate about vaccine safety and effectiveness has been unfolding in America's regulatory agencies and recently the debate has escalated into open partisan warfare.
It started on June 9...]]> For many months now a historic debate about vaccine safety and effectiveness has been unfolding in America's regulatory agencies and recently the debate has escalated into open partisan warfare.
It started on June 9, 2025 when Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. dismissed all 17 sitting members of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and replaced them with his own picks. As one might have expected such a sweeping step was very controversial.
Critics asserted that Kennedy's move was completely partisan, that he was replacing a group of reputable scientists with a bunch of unprofessional political hacks who would follow his agenda. Kennedy retorted that the dismissed committee were conflicted, that they were too close to the major drug companies that manufacture the vaccines. He pointed out that they had never recommended against introducing a new vaccine—including even those that were later withdrawn for safety reasons—and maintained that they had become "little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine." He also stressed that a clean sweep was necessary to restore public trust in vaccine science and policy as it had been seriously shaken by the controversy surrounding the Covid-19 vaccine mandates.
The first upshot from Kennedy's revamp of the vaccine regulators occurred on September 4, 2025 when Food and Drug (FDA) Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary appeared on CNN's The Lead and announced "We've been looking into the VAERS database self-reports, there have been children that have died from the Covid vaccine." VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) is the US government's organization for reporting vaccine harms. It is a passive reporting system and, until Kennedy's shakeup, was known for its lack of followup investigations. Makary's words were momentous. They were a sharp break with past government messaging because—despite numerous reports in the media that had already put the idea of child deaths due to Covid vaccination in the air—up until then the official administration line had been that no child deaths were linked to the Covid-19 vaccine.
Makary's announcement was a prelude to the reconstituted ACIP's first undertaking which, not surprisingly, was to review the Covid vaccine. The committee held two meetings in September 2025 to review and debate government policy around the novel mRNA vaccine and they issued their advice at the second one on September 19.
As chair of ACIP's Covid-19 vaccine work group MIT Professor Retsef Levi presided over these meetings, the terms of reference of any analysis are of utmost importance to its results because they set the scope of what may or may not be examined. Right from the get-go Levi set them as broadly as possible saying, "We don't believe that terms like 'safe and effective' are scientific or appropriate. ACIP should be able to ask any questions relevant to vaccine policy." It should be noted that Levi's all-encompassing terms of reference were challenged by agency lawyers but in the end were finally accepted.
During its discussions about the Covid vaccine the committee heard testimony from two members of Levi's work group who were experts in cancer research, Dr. Wafik El-Deiry, Director of the Legorreta Cancer Center at Brown University and Dr. Charlotte Kuperwasser, Prof. in the Department of Developmental, Molecular, and Chemical Biology at Tufts University School of Medicine. Along with her specialty in molecular biology Kuperwasser is also an internationally recognized expert in mammary gland biology and breast cancer prevention. El-Deiry's knowledge of molecular oncology was important for probing potential integration into the body's genetic system of the stray DNA particles which are known to be a byproduct of the novel mRNA Covid vaccine, while Kuperwasser's expertise was also valuable for evaluating reproductive and pregnancy saf...]]> Max Dublin 25:01 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 46 69413 Two recent articles posted in Brownstone Journal caught my attention. The first: "Political Psychiatry and the Genesis of the Trans Epidemic" by Max Dublin provided an exposé of the ways in which psychiatry combined with a fringe political group in ways that have had profoundly devastating patient consequences. Leave it to the pharmaceutical industry to then throw gasoline on the fire!
The other article: "George Washington, Father of the Country, Killed by Doctors" by Jeffrey A. Tucker provided a historical perspective of another medical modality, bloodletting, which helped no one, but killed many, except for the rare instance when the practitioner happened to be serendipitously dealing with a case of polycythemia vera. In fact, one could speculate that the reason bloodletting came into common practice was due to improvement of a patient that happened to be an early case of this disease!
The reason these two articles piqued my interest is that they reminded me that treatments for what I'll call spurious illnesses are not confined to 21 century psychiatry or routine 18 century medical practice. I also thought it would be of interest to bring a perspective directly from the trenches; something that neither of the authors cited above can provide, since they were not trained as physicians.
Beginning about 25 years ago, shortly after ending my rural primary care practice as a Board Certified Internist, I began to recognize that from the 1960s through the end of the 20 century, there were a series of illnesses that I initially referred to as 'fad' diseases. Given that each of these diseases were in vogue for at least a decade (a bit too long to be a fad), and in an attempt to be more 'woke,' I now refer to these conditions as 'meme' diseases.
Back in the 1960s (when I was in junior high and high school), I recall underactive thyroid being a frequent explanation for fatigue and weight gain, generally in women. Of note, crude and very inaccurate measures of thyroid function first became available in 1960, and it took almost 20 years for reliable tests to come on the market. This did not stop physicians from prescribing thyroid replacement medications to millions of patients on the flimsiest of indications. My clinical experience tells me that very few people were helped, and a larger number were harmed.
An 'echo boom' of overdiagnosis of underactive thyroid occurred once thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) testing became available in the 1970s. Many patients with normal thyroid hormone levels, but elevated TSH levels were found, and they were frequently placed on thyroid hormone replacement for what has been termed sub-clinical hypothyroidism.
In September 2021, I happened to see a Commentary in the American Journal of Medicine (AJM) addressing a study showing that treatment of patients with normal thyroid hormone levels, but elevated TSH levels was unwarranted, even in patients who had mild symptoms suggestive of hypothyroidism: "Don't React to Symptoms in Patients with Subclinical Hypothyroid Disease" by Stuart R. Chipkin, MD and Joseph S. Alpert, MD.
It turns out that Dr Alpert, who has been the Editor-in-Chief of the AJM for a number of years, and with whom I have corresponded by email several times, is 10 years older than me, so he did his medical training during the 1960s, when the hypothyroidism meme was in full flower. When I presented my meme disease theory to him, which included hypothyroidism and the conditions to follow, I found his response to be simpatico with my framing, giving me confidence that my characterization of hypothyroidism treatment during the 1960s is accurate, despite the fact that my interest in medicine did not occur until a few years later.
When I attended medical school and trained in Internal Medicine during the 1970s, the confluence of the development of beta-blockers (specifically propranolol – Inderal), and the use of sonography as a modality for examining hea...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-rise-of-the-meme-disease/ Two recent articles posted in Brownstone Journal caught my attention. The first: "Political Psychiatry and the Genesis of the Trans Epidemic" by Max Dublin provided an exposé of the ways in which psychiatry combined with a fringe political group in ways that have had profoundly devastating patient consequences. Leave it to the pharmaceutical industry to then throw gasoline on the fire!
The other article: "George Washington, Father of the Country, Killed by Doctors" by Jeffrey A. Tucker provided a historical perspective of another medical modality, bloodletting, which helped no one, but killed many, except for the rare instance when the practitioner happened to be serendipitously dealing with a case of polycythemia vera. In fact, one could speculate that the reason bloodletting came into common practice was due to improvement of a patient that happened to be an early case of this disease!
The reason these two articles piqued my interest is that they reminded me that treatments for what I'll call spurious illnesses are not confined to 21 century psychiatry or routine 18 century medical practice. I also thought it would be of interest to bring a perspective directly from the trenches; something that neither of the authors cited above can provide, since they were not trained as physicians.
Beginning about 25 years ago, shortly after ending my rural primary care practice as a Board Certified Internist, I began to recognize that from the 1960s through the end of the 20 century, there were a series of illnesses that I initially referred to as 'fad' diseases. Given that each of these diseases were in vogue for at least a decade (a bit too long to be a fad), and in an attempt to be more 'woke,' I now refer to these conditions as 'meme' diseases.
Back in the 1960s (when I was in junior high and high school), I recall underactive thyroid being a frequent explanation for fatigue and weight gain, generally in women. Of note, crude and very inaccurate measures of thyroid function first became available in 1960, and it took almost 20 years for reliable tests to come on the market. This did not stop physicians from prescribing thyroid replacement medications to millions of patients on the flimsiest of indications. My clinical experience tells me that very few people were helped, and a larger number were harmed.
An 'echo boom' of overdiagnosis of underactive thyroid occurred once thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) testing became available in the 1970s. Many patients with normal thyroid hormone levels, but elevated TSH levels were found, and they were frequently placed on thyroid hormone replacement for what has been termed sub-clinical hypothyroidism.
In September 2021, I happened to see a Commentary in the American Journal of Medicine (AJM) addressing a study showing that treatment of patients with normal thyroid hormone levels, but elevated TSH levels was unwarranted, even in patients who had mild symptoms suggestive of hypothyroidism: "Don't React to Symptoms in Patients with Subclinical Hypothyroid Disease" by Stuart R. Chipkin, MD and Joseph S. Alpert, MD.
It turns out that Dr Alpert, who has been the Editor-in-Chief of the AJM for a number of years, and with whom I have corresponded by email several times, is 10 years older than me, so he did his medical training during the 1960s, when the hypothyroidism meme was in full flower. When I presented my meme disease theory to him, which included hypothyroidism and the conditions to follow, I found his response to be simpatico with my framing, giving me confidence that my characterization of hypothyroidism treatment during the 1960s is accurate, despite the fact that my interest in medicine did not occur until a few years later.
When I attended medical school and trained in Internal Medicine during the 1970s, the confluence of the development of beta-blockers (specifically propranolol – Inderal), and the use of sonography as a modality for examining hea...]]> Thu, 21 May 2026 07:40:00 -0400 The Rise of the Meme Disease Two recent articles posted in Brownstone Journal caught my attention. The first: "Political Psychiatry and the Genesis of the Trans Epidemic" by Max Dublin provided an exposé of the ways in which psychiatry combin...]]> Two recent articles posted in Brownstone Journal caught my attention. The first: "Political Psychiatry and the Genesis of the Trans Epidemic" by Max Dublin provided an exposé of the ways in which psychiatry combined with a fringe political group in ways that have had profoundly devastating patient consequences. Leave it to the pharmaceutical industry to then throw gasoline on the fire!
The other article: "George Washington, Father of the Country, Killed by Doctors" by Jeffrey A. Tucker provided a historical perspective of another medical modality, bloodletting, which helped no one, but killed many, except for the rare instance when the practitioner happened to be serendipitously dealing with a case of polycythemia vera. In fact, one could speculate that the reason bloodletting came into common practice was due to improvement of a patient that happened to be an early case of this disease!
The reason these two articles piqued my interest is that they reminded me that treatments for what I'll call spurious illnesses are not confined to 21 century psychiatry or routine 18 century medical practice. I also thought it would be of interest to bring a perspective directly from the trenches; something that neither of the authors cited above can provide, since they were not trained as physicians.
Beginning about 25 years ago, shortly after ending my rural primary care practice as a Board Certified Internist, I began to recognize that from the 1960s through the end of the 20 century, there were a series of illnesses that I initially referred to as 'fad' diseases. Given that each of these diseases were in vogue for at least a decade (a bit too long to be a fad), and in an attempt to be more 'woke,' I now refer to these conditions as 'meme' diseases.
Back in the 1960s (when I was in junior high and high school), I recall underactive thyroid being a frequent explanation for fatigue and weight gain, generally in women. Of note, crude and very inaccurate measures of thyroid function first became available in 1960, and it took almost 20 years for reliable tests to come on the market. This did not stop physicians from prescribing thyroid replacement medications to millions of patients on the flimsiest of indications. My clinical experience tells me that very few people were helped, and a larger number were harmed.
An 'echo boom' of overdiagnosis of underactive thyroid occurred once thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) testing became available in the 1970s. Many patients with normal thyroid hormone levels, but elevated TSH levels were found, and they were frequently placed on thyroid hormone replacement for what has been termed sub-clinical hypothyroidism.
In September 2021, I happened to see a Commentary in the American Journal of Medicine (AJM) addressing a study showing that treatment of patients with normal thyroid hormone levels, but elevated TSH levels was unwarranted, even in patients who had mild symptoms suggestive of hypothyroidism: "Don't React to Symptoms in Patients with Subclinical Hypothyroid Disease" by Stuart R. Chipkin, MD and Joseph S. Alpert, MD.
It turns out that Dr Alpert, who has been the Editor-in-Chief of the AJM for a number of years, and with whom I have corresponded by email several times, is 10 years older than me, so he did his medical training during the 1960s, when the hypothyroidism meme was in full flower. When I presented my meme disease theory to him, which included hypothyroidism and the conditions to follow, I found his response to be simpatico with my framing, giving me confidence that my characterization of hypothyroidism treatment during the 1960s is accurate, despite the fact that my interest in medicine did not occur until a few years later.
When I attended medical school and trained in Internal Medicine during the 1970s, the confluence of the development of beta-blockers (specifically propranolol – Inderal), and the use of sonography as a modality for examining hea...]]> Steven Kritz 08:06 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 45 68580 There is a peculiar arithmetic that governs modern health reporting, one that has very little to do with actual risk. Hans Rosling captured it neatly during the 2009 swine flu episode, when he calculated a "news-to-death ratio" of 8,176-to-1. In other words, for every death attributed to swine flu, there were over eight thousand news stories. Tuberculosis, by contrast, received less than 0.1 news stories per death over the same period.
If that sounds absurd, it is, and yet very little has changed.
Take the current hantavirus scare. A cruise ship, the MV Hondius, sits off Cape Verde. There are 7 cases in total (2 confirmed, 5 suspected) and 3 deaths, including a Dutch couple and a German national. Passengers have been confined to their cabins while evacuations and disinfection efforts are organised. It is, undeniably, a dramatic story: a floating Petri dish, a whiff of quarantine, and a hint of the exotic.
In the past week alone, there have been at least 10 to 15 unique news stories, generating hundreds of articles. For a disease that, in normal times, struggles to attract even a single weekly mention, this represents a surge bordering on the hysterical.
And yet it is worth stepping back for a moment and asking, what are we actually looking at?
Hantavirus is a rare disease. In the United States, which diligently tracks such cases, there have been 890 laboratory-confirmed instances since 1993. In the UK, the situation is even less clear: from 2012 to early 2025, only 11 domestically acquired symptomatic cases have been recorded. Surprisingly, nine of these cases were not linked to cruise ships or exotic travel, but rather to a more mundane source—exposure to "pet fancy rats" or rodents bred as reptile feed.
This is not a pathogen ready to spread through the Home Counties. However, the rarity is not the issue; visibility is.
Diseases that afflict the poor, quietly and persistently, rarely command attention. Tuberculosis killed 1.23 million people globally in 2024. Over a million deaths every year, largely concentrated in less affluent parts of the world. It is one of the most lethal infectious diseases known to medicine, and yet it barely registers in the Western news cycle.
Why? Because TB is familiar, it is slow; It lacks narrative flair, and it does not trap well-heeled passengers in their cabins while helicopters circle overhead.
If you want coverage, you need something else entirely. You need novelty, uncertainty, and above all, proximity to affluence. A cruise ship outbreak ticks every box: a disease with a balcony suite.
This is the uncomfortable truth behind Rosling's ratio: the media does not report risk, it reports drama. And drama requires context that audiences can imagine themselves in.
A rodent-borne virus in some remote rural setting barely registers. Put that very same virus aboard a cruise ship with buffet queues, balcony cabins, and a passenger list that looks uncomfortably like the readership, and suddenly it becomes headline news.
The result is a profound distortion of public perception. We are invited to worry about the improbable while ignoring the inevitable and reality. A handful of hantavirus cases generates dozens of headlines; a million tuberculosis deaths pass with barely a murmur.
If we were to apply Rosling's lens to the present moment, the imbalance would be obvious. Three deaths linked to a suspected hantavirus cluster have produced hundreds of reports in a matter of days. Meanwhile, tuberculosis continues its relentless toll with scarcely a fraction of that attention. The modern "news-to-death ratio" may not be precisely 8,176-to-1, but the underlying pattern remains intact.
The lesson here isn't truly about hantavirus; instead, it's about how we collectively determine what is significant.
Diseases associated with poverty—those that are endemic, predictable, and devastating—often fail to attract media attention because they don't instill fear in the right...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-news-to-death-ratio-strikes-again/ There is a peculiar arithmetic that governs modern health reporting, one that has very little to do with actual risk. Hans Rosling captured it neatly during the 2009 swine flu episode, when he calculated a "news-to-death ratio" of 8,176-to-1. In other words, for every death attributed to swine flu, there were over eight thousand news stories. Tuberculosis, by contrast, received less than 0.1 news stories per death over the same period.
If that sounds absurd, it is, and yet very little has changed.
Take the current hantavirus scare. A cruise ship, the MV Hondius, sits off Cape Verde. There are 7 cases in total (2 confirmed, 5 suspected) and 3 deaths, including a Dutch couple and a German national. Passengers have been confined to their cabins while evacuations and disinfection efforts are organised. It is, undeniably, a dramatic story: a floating Petri dish, a whiff of quarantine, and a hint of the exotic.
In the past week alone, there have been at least 10 to 15 unique news stories, generating hundreds of articles. For a disease that, in normal times, struggles to attract even a single weekly mention, this represents a surge bordering on the hysterical.
And yet it is worth stepping back for a moment and asking, what are we actually looking at?
Hantavirus is a rare disease. In the United States, which diligently tracks such cases, there have been 890 laboratory-confirmed instances since 1993. In the UK, the situation is even less clear: from 2012 to early 2025, only 11 domestically acquired symptomatic cases have been recorded. Surprisingly, nine of these cases were not linked to cruise ships or exotic travel, but rather to a more mundane source—exposure to "pet fancy rats" or rodents bred as reptile feed.
This is not a pathogen ready to spread through the Home Counties. However, the rarity is not the issue; visibility is.
Diseases that afflict the poor, quietly and persistently, rarely command attention. Tuberculosis killed 1.23 million people globally in 2024. Over a million deaths every year, largely concentrated in less affluent parts of the world. It is one of the most lethal infectious diseases known to medicine, and yet it barely registers in the Western news cycle.
Why? Because TB is familiar, it is slow; It lacks narrative flair, and it does not trap well-heeled passengers in their cabins while helicopters circle overhead.
If you want coverage, you need something else entirely. You need novelty, uncertainty, and above all, proximity to affluence. A cruise ship outbreak ticks every box: a disease with a balcony suite.
This is the uncomfortable truth behind Rosling's ratio: the media does not report risk, it reports drama. And drama requires context that audiences can imagine themselves in.
A rodent-borne virus in some remote rural setting barely registers. Put that very same virus aboard a cruise ship with buffet queues, balcony cabins, and a passenger list that looks uncomfortably like the readership, and suddenly it becomes headline news.
The result is a profound distortion of public perception. We are invited to worry about the improbable while ignoring the inevitable and reality. A handful of hantavirus cases generates dozens of headlines; a million tuberculosis deaths pass with barely a murmur.
If we were to apply Rosling's lens to the present moment, the imbalance would be obvious. Three deaths linked to a suspected hantavirus cluster have produced hundreds of reports in a matter of days. Meanwhile, tuberculosis continues its relentless toll with scarcely a fraction of that attention. The modern "news-to-death ratio" may not be precisely 8,176-to-1, but the underlying pattern remains intact.
The lesson here isn't truly about hantavirus; instead, it's about how we collectively determine what is significant.
Diseases associated with poverty—those that are endemic, predictable, and devastating—often fail to attract media attention because they don't instill fear in the right...]]> Wed, 20 May 2026 07:51:51 -0400 The News-to-Death Ratio Strikes Again There is a peculiar arithmetic that governs modern health reporting, one that has very little to do with actual risk. Hans Rosling captured it neatly during the 2009 swine flu episode, when he calculated a "news-...]]> There is a peculiar arithmetic that governs modern health reporting, one that has very little to do with actual risk. Hans Rosling captured it neatly during the 2009 swine flu episode, when he calculated a "news-to-death ratio" of 8,176-to-1. In other words, for every death attributed to swine flu, there were over eight thousand news stories. Tuberculosis, by contrast, received less than 0.1 news stories per death over the same period.
If that sounds absurd, it is, and yet very little has changed.
Take the current hantavirus scare. A cruise ship, the MV Hondius, sits off Cape Verde. There are 7 cases in total (2 confirmed, 5 suspected) and 3 deaths, including a Dutch couple and a German national. Passengers have been confined to their cabins while evacuations and disinfection efforts are organised. It is, undeniably, a dramatic story: a floating Petri dish, a whiff of quarantine, and a hint of the exotic.
In the past week alone, there have been at least 10 to 15 unique news stories, generating hundreds of articles. For a disease that, in normal times, struggles to attract even a single weekly mention, this represents a surge bordering on the hysterical.
And yet it is worth stepping back for a moment and asking, what are we actually looking at?
Hantavirus is a rare disease. In the United States, which diligently tracks such cases, there have been 890 laboratory-confirmed instances since 1993. In the UK, the situation is even less clear: from 2012 to early 2025, only 11 domestically acquired symptomatic cases have been recorded. Surprisingly, nine of these cases were not linked to cruise ships or exotic travel, but rather to a more mundane source—exposure to "pet fancy rats" or rodents bred as reptile feed.
This is not a pathogen ready to spread through the Home Counties. However, the rarity is not the issue; visibility is.
Diseases that afflict the poor, quietly and persistently, rarely command attention. Tuberculosis killed 1.23 million people globally in 2024. Over a million deaths every year, largely concentrated in less affluent parts of the world. It is one of the most lethal infectious diseases known to medicine, and yet it barely registers in the Western news cycle.
Why? Because TB is familiar, it is slow; It lacks narrative flair, and it does not trap well-heeled passengers in their cabins while helicopters circle overhead.
If you want coverage, you need something else entirely. You need novelty, uncertainty, and above all, proximity to affluence. A cruise ship outbreak ticks every box: a disease with a balcony suite.
This is the uncomfortable truth behind Rosling's ratio: the media does not report risk, it reports drama. And drama requires context that audiences can imagine themselves in.
A rodent-borne virus in some remote rural setting barely registers. Put that very same virus aboard a cruise ship with buffet queues, balcony cabins, and a passenger list that looks uncomfortably like the readership, and suddenly it becomes headline news.
The result is a profound distortion of public perception. We are invited to worry about the improbable while ignoring the inevitable and reality. A handful of hantavirus cases generates dozens of headlines; a million tuberculosis deaths pass with barely a murmur.
If we were to apply Rosling's lens to the present moment, the imbalance would be obvious. Three deaths linked to a suspected hantavirus cluster have produced hundreds of reports in a matter of days. Meanwhile, tuberculosis continues its relentless toll with scarcely a fraction of that attention. The modern "news-to-death ratio" may not be precisely 8,176-to-1, but the underlying pattern remains intact.
The lesson here isn't truly about hantavirus; instead, it's about how we collectively determine what is significant.
Diseases associated with poverty—those that are endemic, predictable, and devastating—often fail to attract media attention because they don't instill fear in the right...]]> Carl Heneghan 04:24 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 44 68868 The right-wing populist wave that broke over much of the democratic world with Brexit and the first Trump presidency in 2016 barely lapped at Australia's shores. The island nation's compulsory, preferential voting system and homogeneous, middle-management style politics formed a bulwark against the global tide. Now, that bulwark is starting to crack.
Over the weekend, the populist-right One Nation Party won its first seat in the federal House of Representatives in the Farrer by-election, ending nearly 80 years of unbroken Liberal–National rule in the southern New South Wales electorate.
One Nation's David Farley took 39.45 percent of the primary vote, and 57.4 percent on a two-party preferred basis. Climate 200-backed independent Michelle Milthorpe took 28.4 percent, while the conservative Coalition parties, Liberals and Nationals, finished third and fourth with 12.4 percent and 9.7 percent, respectively. Labor did not contest the seat.
The federal win follows victory for One Nation in South Australia, with the minor party going from zero to seven seats; four in the lower house and three in the upper house.
It's a stunning double act from a party that previously only held a small presence in the federal senate and a smattering of state seats, signalling that One Nation now poses a genuine electoral threat to the collapsing Coalition.
The Coalition has already taken notes from the Farrer beating, with shadow treasurer Tim Wilson talking tough on One Nation's pet issue of immigration in the past few days.
For nearly 30 years, One Nation has been a 'cult of personality' party, its wins and woes mostly driven by surges and dips in the fortunes of its abrasive but 'fair dinkum' founder and current leader Pauline Hanson, whose previous life as a fish and chip shop owner and tendency to stumble over her words provides salt-of-the-earth credentials.1
During the 2016 populist wave, the 'common sense' party secured four federal senate seats, its most impressive sweep to that point in time, but it was not able to break past that ceiling.
A few things changed that. After the Liberals suffered a humiliating election defeat in 2025, wealthy Australians started shifting their support from the Coalition to One Nation.
Supporters include Australia's richest woman, billionaire mining magnate Gina Rinehart, and Sydney stockbroker Angus Aitken, who told Radio New Zealand last week,
"The biggest change I reckon you'll see in the next 12 to 18 months is the groundswell of business and wealthy people supporting One Nation who have been frustrated with the Coalition.
"People are just sick of all the red tape and shit across their individual segments of business. They think this is the person and the party that's going to cut through some of that."
In December last year, former leader of the Nationals and deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce defected to One Nation, gifting the party its first federal lower house seat and lending it the gravitas of a seasoned politician who has been in government.
Joyce cited concerns over the pursuit of renewable energy and Australia's immigration policies as reasons for joining the party, giving voice to conservative voters who were no longer seeing their politics represented by the 'Labor-lite' Coalition.
One Nation wants to significantly reduce immigration and scrap net zero, which the party says is "destroying Australia" and is "pseudo-speak for global wealth transfer."2Comparatively, the Coalition proposes moderate immigration reform and only formally abandoned net zero late last year, too little too late for many conservative voters.
Critics have also derided the Coalition for partnering with Labor in enacting some of the most draconian pandemic measures in the Western world, and for supporting rushed hate speech legislation in the wake of the Bondi massacre of 15 people at a Jewish holiday celebration in December.
Then in January of this year, polling revealed that On...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/australias-bulwark-against-populism-is-cracking/ The right-wing populist wave that broke over much of the democratic world with Brexit and the first Trump presidency in 2016 barely lapped at Australia's shores. The island nation's compulsory, preferential voting system and homogeneous, middle-management style politics formed a bulwark against the global tide. Now, that bulwark is starting to crack.
Over the weekend, the populist-right One Nation Party won its first seat in the federal House of Representatives in the Farrer by-election, ending nearly 80 years of unbroken Liberal–National rule in the southern New South Wales electorate.
One Nation's David Farley took 39.45 percent of the primary vote, and 57.4 percent on a two-party preferred basis. Climate 200-backed independent Michelle Milthorpe took 28.4 percent, while the conservative Coalition parties, Liberals and Nationals, finished third and fourth with 12.4 percent and 9.7 percent, respectively. Labor did not contest the seat.
The federal win follows victory for One Nation in South Australia, with the minor party going from zero to seven seats; four in the lower house and three in the upper house.
It's a stunning double act from a party that previously only held a small presence in the federal senate and a smattering of state seats, signalling that One Nation now poses a genuine electoral threat to the collapsing Coalition.
The Coalition has already taken notes from the Farrer beating, with shadow treasurer Tim Wilson talking tough on One Nation's pet issue of immigration in the past few days.
For nearly 30 years, One Nation has been a 'cult of personality' party, its wins and woes mostly driven by surges and dips in the fortunes of its abrasive but 'fair dinkum' founder and current leader Pauline Hanson, whose previous life as a fish and chip shop owner and tendency to stumble over her words provides salt-of-the-earth credentials.1
During the 2016 populist wave, the 'common sense' party secured four federal senate seats, its most impressive sweep to that point in time, but it was not able to break past that ceiling.
A few things changed that. After the Liberals suffered a humiliating election defeat in 2025, wealthy Australians started shifting their support from the Coalition to One Nation.
Supporters include Australia's richest woman, billionaire mining magnate Gina Rinehart, and Sydney stockbroker Angus Aitken, who told Radio New Zealand last week,
"The biggest change I reckon you'll see in the next 12 to 18 months is the groundswell of business and wealthy people supporting One Nation who have been frustrated with the Coalition.
"People are just sick of all the red tape and shit across their individual segments of business. They think this is the person and the party that's going to cut through some of that."
In December last year, former leader of the Nationals and deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce defected to One Nation, gifting the party its first federal lower house seat and lending it the gravitas of a seasoned politician who has been in government.
Joyce cited concerns over the pursuit of renewable energy and Australia's immigration policies as reasons for joining the party, giving voice to conservative voters who were no longer seeing their politics represented by the 'Labor-lite' Coalition.
One Nation wants to significantly reduce immigration and scrap net zero, which the party says is "destroying Australia" and is "pseudo-speak for global wealth transfer."2Comparatively, the Coalition proposes moderate immigration reform and only formally abandoned net zero late last year, too little too late for many conservative voters.
Critics have also derided the Coalition for partnering with Labor in enacting some of the most draconian pandemic measures in the Western world, and for supporting rushed hate speech legislation in the wake of the Bondi massacre of 15 people at a Jewish holiday celebration in December.
Then in January of this year, polling revealed that On...]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 14:04:49 -0400 Australia's Bulwark against Populism Is Cracking One Nation's Changing Fortunes Anti-majors sentiment has bubbled for several election cycles now, but had failed to convert at the ballot box for three main reasons. Despite the obstacles, the timing and conditions for One Nation's rise are just right. Looking Ahead References The right-wing populist wave that broke over much of the democratic world with Brexit and the first Trump presidency in 2016 barely lapped at Australia's shores. The island nation's compulsory, preferential vot...]]> The right-wing populist wave that broke over much of the democratic world with Brexit and the first Trump presidency in 2016 barely lapped at Australia's shores. The island nation's compulsory, preferential voting system and homogeneous, middle-management style politics formed a bulwark against the global tide. Now, that bulwark is starting to crack.
Over the weekend, the populist-right One Nation Party won its first seat in the federal House of Representatives in the Farrer by-election, ending nearly 80 years of unbroken Liberal–National rule in the southern New South Wales electorate.
One Nation's David Farley took 39.45 percent of the primary vote, and 57.4 percent on a two-party preferred basis. Climate 200-backed independent Michelle Milthorpe took 28.4 percent, while the conservative Coalition parties, Liberals and Nationals, finished third and fourth with 12.4 percent and 9.7 percent, respectively. Labor did not contest the seat.
The federal win follows victory for One Nation in South Australia, with the minor party going from zero to seven seats; four in the lower house and three in the upper house.
It's a stunning double act from a party that previously only held a small presence in the federal senate and a smattering of state seats, signalling that One Nation now poses a genuine electoral threat to the collapsing Coalition.
The Coalition has already taken notes from the Farrer beating, with shadow treasurer Tim Wilson talking tough on One Nation's pet issue of immigration in the past few days.
For nearly 30 years, One Nation has been a 'cult of personality' party, its wins and woes mostly driven by surges and dips in the fortunes of its abrasive but 'fair dinkum' founder and current leader Pauline Hanson, whose previous life as a fish and chip shop owner and tendency to stumble over her words provides salt-of-the-earth credentials.1
During the 2016 populist wave, the 'common sense' party secured four federal senate seats, its most impressive sweep to that point in time, but it was not able to break past that ceiling.
A few things changed that. After the Liberals suffered a humiliating election defeat in 2025, wealthy Australians started shifting their support from the Coalition to One Nation.
Supporters include Australia's richest woman, billionaire mining magnate Gina Rinehart, and Sydney stockbroker Angus Aitken, who told Radio New Zealand last week,
"The biggest change I reckon you'll see in the next 12 to 18 months is the groundswell of business and wealthy people supporting One Nation who have been frustrated with the Coalition.
"People are just sick of all the red tape and shit across their individual segments of business. They think this is the person and the party that's going to cut through some of that."
In December last year, former leader of the Nationals and deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce defected to One Nation, gifting the party its first federal lower house seat and lending it the gravitas of a seasoned politician who has been in government.
Joyce cited concerns over the pursuit of renewable energy and Australia's immigration policies as reasons for joining the party, giving voice to conservative voters who were no longer seeing their politics represented by the 'Labor-lite' Coalition.
One Nation wants to significantly reduce immigration and scrap net zero, which the party says is "destroying Australia" and is "pseudo-speak for global wealth transfer."2Comparatively, the Coalition proposes moderate immigration reform and only formally abandoned net zero late last year, too little too late for many conservative voters.
Critics have also derided the Coalition for partnering with Labor in enacting some of the most draconian pandemic measures in the Western world, and for supporting rushed hate speech legislation in the wake of the Bondi massacre of 15 people at a Jewish holiday celebration in December.
Then in January of this year, polling revealed that On...]]> Rebekah Barnett 12:52 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 43 69317 Eisenhower warned us: "Beware the military-industrial complex." Those words are widely remembered. Less so the companion warning: "Holding scientific discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite."
That second warning may prove the more prophetic. The convergence of those two forces – the industrial machinery of power and the technological elite capable of shaping reality itself – is where we now find ourselves.
The AI singularity is typically described as the point at which artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence, triggering an uncontrollable "intelligence explosion." At this tipping point, AI becomes capable of recursive self-improvement…designing smarter versions of itself…leading to rapid, unpredictable, and profound and irreversible change in human civilization. We are told this is imminent.
But the more uncomfortable question is: what if it isn't a future event at all? What if it's a process – and we are already inside it?
The speed, scale, and coordination of change we are witnessing are historically anomalous. Entire systems – economic, informational, political – are shifting faster than human action alone can plausibly explain. We are living through transformations that are, by any historical standard, too fast, too coordinated, and too opaque to be purely organic. The pace alone suggests something more than human-scale decision-making. Whether acknowledged or not, the system in which we are embedded is already behaving as though intelligence has outpaced us.
Consider that, even militarily, civilians are approximately 20-30 years behind (that we are aware of). We became aware of the F-117 decades after it was already built. How far behind do you suppose we are from other more advanced forms of technology already in play? I do not think it's unreasonable to assume that the AI we are using is not the same AI "they" are using; I think I can say with a fair amount of confidence that they're not using Claude and ChatGPT…
The military industrial complex (or anything that ends in -industrial complex) is the corporatocracy, is the CIA, is the globalists, is the transhumanists, is the mob…and we appear to be already on the train of "rapid, unpredictable, and profound changes in human civilization." I don't think even Eisenhower could have understood how prescient he was all those years ago.
Two hundred fifty years ago, a small group of people faced a fundamental problem:
How do you build a system strong enough to prevent tyranny…without becoming tyrants yourselves?
How do you hold the fledgling bird tightly enough to keep it from falling, but loosely enough not to crush it? How do you build scaffolding that supports without becoming a cage?
Their answer was a decentralized constitutional republic; an experiment in constrained power. They risked everything for the idea that it is better to die on your feet than live on your knees.
We are now confronting the same question again – but on a vastly more complex battlefield. Today, the terrain is not just physical. It is informational. Psychological. Digital. Meta. And the call is coming from inside the house.
There is the illusion of opposition because we are taught to think in binaries. Democrat vs. Republican. One side vs. the other. But these are often false choices within a closed system. Certainly we have Democrats and Republicans – a red car and a blue car – but the real question is: who is driving the car?
There is a system behind the curtain. The military-industrial complex, the corporatocracy, intelligence agencies, global capital, technological elites…These are not separate entities. They are interlocking components of a single machine.
That's not to say there aren't distinct and even warring factions within…but Mom and Dad are still the parents. Not everyone on the cubical floors gets ...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-noble-savage/ Eisenhower warned us: "Beware the military-industrial complex." Those words are widely remembered. Less so the companion warning: "Holding scientific discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite."
That second warning may prove the more prophetic. The convergence of those two forces – the industrial machinery of power and the technological elite capable of shaping reality itself – is where we now find ourselves.
The AI singularity is typically described as the point at which artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence, triggering an uncontrollable "intelligence explosion." At this tipping point, AI becomes capable of recursive self-improvement…designing smarter versions of itself…leading to rapid, unpredictable, and profound and irreversible change in human civilization. We are told this is imminent.
But the more uncomfortable question is: what if it isn't a future event at all? What if it's a process – and we are already inside it?
The speed, scale, and coordination of change we are witnessing are historically anomalous. Entire systems – economic, informational, political – are shifting faster than human action alone can plausibly explain. We are living through transformations that are, by any historical standard, too fast, too coordinated, and too opaque to be purely organic. The pace alone suggests something more than human-scale decision-making. Whether acknowledged or not, the system in which we are embedded is already behaving as though intelligence has outpaced us.
Consider that, even militarily, civilians are approximately 20-30 years behind (that we are aware of). We became aware of the F-117 decades after it was already built. How far behind do you suppose we are from other more advanced forms of technology already in play? I do not think it's unreasonable to assume that the AI we are using is not the same AI "they" are using; I think I can say with a fair amount of confidence that they're not using Claude and ChatGPT…
The military industrial complex (or anything that ends in -industrial complex) is the corporatocracy, is the CIA, is the globalists, is the transhumanists, is the mob…and we appear to be already on the train of "rapid, unpredictable, and profound changes in human civilization." I don't think even Eisenhower could have understood how prescient he was all those years ago.
Two hundred fifty years ago, a small group of people faced a fundamental problem:
How do you build a system strong enough to prevent tyranny…without becoming tyrants yourselves?
How do you hold the fledgling bird tightly enough to keep it from falling, but loosely enough not to crush it? How do you build scaffolding that supports without becoming a cage?
Their answer was a decentralized constitutional republic; an experiment in constrained power. They risked everything for the idea that it is better to die on your feet than live on your knees.
We are now confronting the same question again – but on a vastly more complex battlefield. Today, the terrain is not just physical. It is informational. Psychological. Digital. Meta. And the call is coming from inside the house.
There is the illusion of opposition because we are taught to think in binaries. Democrat vs. Republican. One side vs. the other. But these are often false choices within a closed system. Certainly we have Democrats and Republicans – a red car and a blue car – but the real question is: who is driving the car?
There is a system behind the curtain. The military-industrial complex, the corporatocracy, intelligence agencies, global capital, technological elites…These are not separate entities. They are interlocking components of a single machine.
That's not to say there aren't distinct and even warring factions within…but Mom and Dad are still the parents. Not everyone on the cubical floors gets ...]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 08:00:00 -0400 The Noble Savage Eisenhower warned us: "Beware the military-industrial complex." Those words are widely remembered. Less so the companion warning: "Holding scientific discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to ...]]> Eisenhower warned us: "Beware the military-industrial complex." Those words are widely remembered. Less so the companion warning: "Holding scientific discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite."
That second warning may prove the more prophetic. The convergence of those two forces – the industrial machinery of power and the technological elite capable of shaping reality itself – is where we now find ourselves.
The AI singularity is typically described as the point at which artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence, triggering an uncontrollable "intelligence explosion." At this tipping point, AI becomes capable of recursive self-improvement…designing smarter versions of itself…leading to rapid, unpredictable, and profound and irreversible change in human civilization. We are told this is imminent.
But the more uncomfortable question is: what if it isn't a future event at all? What if it's a process – and we are already inside it?
The speed, scale, and coordination of change we are witnessing are historically anomalous. Entire systems – economic, informational, political – are shifting faster than human action alone can plausibly explain. We are living through transformations that are, by any historical standard, too fast, too coordinated, and too opaque to be purely organic. The pace alone suggests something more than human-scale decision-making. Whether acknowledged or not, the system in which we are embedded is already behaving as though intelligence has outpaced us.
Consider that, even militarily, civilians are approximately 20-30 years behind (that we are aware of). We became aware of the F-117 decades after it was already built. How far behind do you suppose we are from other more advanced forms of technology already in play? I do not think it's unreasonable to assume that the AI we are using is not the same AI "they" are using; I think I can say with a fair amount of confidence that they're not using Claude and ChatGPT…
The military industrial complex (or anything that ends in -industrial complex) is the corporatocracy, is the CIA, is the globalists, is the transhumanists, is the mob…and we appear to be already on the train of "rapid, unpredictable, and profound changes in human civilization." I don't think even Eisenhower could have understood how prescient he was all those years ago.
Two hundred fifty years ago, a small group of people faced a fundamental problem:
How do you build a system strong enough to prevent tyranny…without becoming tyrants yourselves?
How do you hold the fledgling bird tightly enough to keep it from falling, but loosely enough not to crush it? How do you build scaffolding that supports without becoming a cage?
Their answer was a decentralized constitutional republic; an experiment in constrained power. They risked everything for the idea that it is better to die on your feet than live on your knees.
We are now confronting the same question again – but on a vastly more complex battlefield. Today, the terrain is not just physical. It is informational. Psychological. Digital. Meta. And the call is coming from inside the house.
There is the illusion of opposition because we are taught to think in binaries. Democrat vs. Republican. One side vs. the other. But these are often false choices within a closed system. Certainly we have Democrats and Republicans – a red car and a blue car – but the real question is: who is driving the car?
There is a system behind the curtain. The military-industrial complex, the corporatocracy, intelligence agencies, global capital, technological elites…These are not separate entities. They are interlocking components of a single machine.
That's not to say there aren't distinct and even warring factions within…but Mom and Dad are still the parents. Not everyone on the cubical floors gets ...]]> Sofia Karstens 16:24 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 42 69129 The ICU Before Sunrise
The intensive care unit (ICU) was crowded before sunrise, again. After 40 years in medicine, I am not sure what "full" even means anymore. Every ICU now feels just one patient away from disaster. Patients wait in emergency departments for beds that do not exist. Another transfer is already on the way because someone thinks our ICU still has space. Nurses are exhausted. Residents are exhausted. Families are scared. Doctors try to think clearly while phones ring, alarms sound, charts pile up, and somewhere, someone checks dashboards and occupancy numbers while real people struggle to breathe just a few feet away.
I remember one morning clearly because it still bothers me years later. An administrator came into the ICU and asked about the "game plan" for one of my patients since his insurance would run out at the end of the week. I remember feeling angry, not because I cared about getting paid, but because I realized how much institutional pressure had taken over medical decisions. The focus was no longer on whether the patient needed ICU care or if the family understood what was happening. Instead, the conversation was about the "insurance clock." I stood there wondering when this became normal. When did hospitals stop feeling like hospitals and start feeling like big systems moving people through pathways, numbers, and coverage limits?
Nobody in the room seemed shocked because everybody already understood the environment we were functioning inside. That may actually be the part that bothers me the most and made me write this article. We adapted to it. We normalized it. Human beings can normalize almost anything if they live inside it long enough. Physicians are especially vulnerable to this because medicine trains doctors to absorb enormous pressure quietly. We keep going because patients still need us. We keep functioning because sick people keep arriving. We convince ourselves this is simply modern healthcare. But there are nights, usually very late at night after rounds are over and the ICU becomes quiet for a few minutes, where I sit there wondering when medicine started losing part of itself.
I remember another conversation from years ago that also made me feel sick. Someone explained, almost casually, that if we transferred a patient to a long-term acute care facility (LTAC) and they stayed the required 21 days, they could come back to the hospital, because "the insurance clock resets." Hearing that phrase for the first time sounded less like medicine and more like someone describing a loophole in a business contract. Meanwhile, a real person was lying in that bed, connected to ventilators and feeding tubes. A family was somewhere, terrified about whether their loved one would survive. But the discussion was about clocks, timelines, insurance days, and logistics.
I still think about those conversations. Not because they shocked me completely. After enough years in modern healthcare, very little surprises doctors anymore. Maybe that is part of the problem. We get used to things that should still bother us.
When Hospitals Became Factories
I have now spent four decades practicing medicine. Four decades inside ICUs, emergency departments, trauma bays, hospital corridors, family meetings, codes, and nights where sleep never happened because too many people were too sick. I entered medicine because I genuinely cared about patients. Most physicians did. That is the part many people outside medicine still do not fully understand. Doctors do not sacrifice years of their lives, miss holidays, destroy their sleep schedules, and carry this kind of emotional burden because they dream about maximizing throughput metrics or documentation compliance. We entered medicine because we wanted to help people. It sounds simple saying that now, maybe even naïve, but it is true.
Somewhere along the line medicine changed. Hospitals changed. The language changed first because that is ...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/medicine-by-captivity-the-rise-of-the-hostage-physician/ The ICU Before Sunrise
The intensive care unit (ICU) was crowded before sunrise, again. After 40 years in medicine, I am not sure what "full" even means anymore. Every ICU now feels just one patient away from disaster. Patients wait in emergency departments for beds that do not exist. Another transfer is already on the way because someone thinks our ICU still has space. Nurses are exhausted. Residents are exhausted. Families are scared. Doctors try to think clearly while phones ring, alarms sound, charts pile up, and somewhere, someone checks dashboards and occupancy numbers while real people struggle to breathe just a few feet away.
I remember one morning clearly because it still bothers me years later. An administrator came into the ICU and asked about the "game plan" for one of my patients since his insurance would run out at the end of the week. I remember feeling angry, not because I cared about getting paid, but because I realized how much institutional pressure had taken over medical decisions. The focus was no longer on whether the patient needed ICU care or if the family understood what was happening. Instead, the conversation was about the "insurance clock." I stood there wondering when this became normal. When did hospitals stop feeling like hospitals and start feeling like big systems moving people through pathways, numbers, and coverage limits?
Nobody in the room seemed shocked because everybody already understood the environment we were functioning inside. That may actually be the part that bothers me the most and made me write this article. We adapted to it. We normalized it. Human beings can normalize almost anything if they live inside it long enough. Physicians are especially vulnerable to this because medicine trains doctors to absorb enormous pressure quietly. We keep going because patients still need us. We keep functioning because sick people keep arriving. We convince ourselves this is simply modern healthcare. But there are nights, usually very late at night after rounds are over and the ICU becomes quiet for a few minutes, where I sit there wondering when medicine started losing part of itself.
I remember another conversation from years ago that also made me feel sick. Someone explained, almost casually, that if we transferred a patient to a long-term acute care facility (LTAC) and they stayed the required 21 days, they could come back to the hospital, because "the insurance clock resets." Hearing that phrase for the first time sounded less like medicine and more like someone describing a loophole in a business contract. Meanwhile, a real person was lying in that bed, connected to ventilators and feeding tubes. A family was somewhere, terrified about whether their loved one would survive. But the discussion was about clocks, timelines, insurance days, and logistics.
I still think about those conversations. Not because they shocked me completely. After enough years in modern healthcare, very little surprises doctors anymore. Maybe that is part of the problem. We get used to things that should still bother us.
When Hospitals Became Factories
I have now spent four decades practicing medicine. Four decades inside ICUs, emergency departments, trauma bays, hospital corridors, family meetings, codes, and nights where sleep never happened because too many people were too sick. I entered medicine because I genuinely cared about patients. Most physicians did. That is the part many people outside medicine still do not fully understand. Doctors do not sacrifice years of their lives, miss holidays, destroy their sleep schedules, and carry this kind of emotional burden because they dream about maximizing throughput metrics or documentation compliance. We entered medicine because we wanted to help people. It sounds simple saying that now, maybe even naïve, but it is true.
Somewhere along the line medicine changed. Hospitals changed. The language changed first because that is ...]]> Mon, 18 May 2026 08:02:54 -0400 Medicine by Captivity: The Rise of the Hostage Physician The ICU Before Sunrise
The intensive care unit (ICU) was crowded before sunrise, again. After 40 years in medicine, I am not sure what "full" even means anymore. Every ICU now feels just one patient away from disa...]]> The ICU Before Sunrise
The intensive care unit (ICU) was crowded before sunrise, again. After 40 years in medicine, I am not sure what "full" even means anymore. Every ICU now feels just one patient away from disaster. Patients wait in emergency departments for beds that do not exist. Another transfer is already on the way because someone thinks our ICU still has space. Nurses are exhausted. Residents are exhausted. Families are scared. Doctors try to think clearly while phones ring, alarms sound, charts pile up, and somewhere, someone checks dashboards and occupancy numbers while real people struggle to breathe just a few feet away.
I remember one morning clearly because it still bothers me years later. An administrator came into the ICU and asked about the "game plan" for one of my patients since his insurance would run out at the end of the week. I remember feeling angry, not because I cared about getting paid, but because I realized how much institutional pressure had taken over medical decisions. The focus was no longer on whether the patient needed ICU care or if the family understood what was happening. Instead, the conversation was about the "insurance clock." I stood there wondering when this became normal. When did hospitals stop feeling like hospitals and start feeling like big systems moving people through pathways, numbers, and coverage limits?
Nobody in the room seemed shocked because everybody already understood the environment we were functioning inside. That may actually be the part that bothers me the most and made me write this article. We adapted to it. We normalized it. Human beings can normalize almost anything if they live inside it long enough. Physicians are especially vulnerable to this because medicine trains doctors to absorb enormous pressure quietly. We keep going because patients still need us. We keep functioning because sick people keep arriving. We convince ourselves this is simply modern healthcare. But there are nights, usually very late at night after rounds are over and the ICU becomes quiet for a few minutes, where I sit there wondering when medicine started losing part of itself.
I remember another conversation from years ago that also made me feel sick. Someone explained, almost casually, that if we transferred a patient to a long-term acute care facility (LTAC) and they stayed the required 21 days, they could come back to the hospital, because "the insurance clock resets." Hearing that phrase for the first time sounded less like medicine and more like someone describing a loophole in a business contract. Meanwhile, a real person was lying in that bed, connected to ventilators and feeding tubes. A family was somewhere, terrified about whether their loved one would survive. But the discussion was about clocks, timelines, insurance days, and logistics.
I still think about those conversations. Not because they shocked me completely. After enough years in modern healthcare, very little surprises doctors anymore. Maybe that is part of the problem. We get used to things that should still bother us.
When Hospitals Became Factories
I have now spent four decades practicing medicine. Four decades inside ICUs, emergency departments, trauma bays, hospital corridors, family meetings, codes, and nights where sleep never happened because too many people were too sick. I entered medicine because I genuinely cared about patients. Most physicians did. That is the part many people outside medicine still do not fully understand. Doctors do not sacrifice years of their lives, miss holidays, destroy their sleep schedules, and carry this kind of emotional burden because they dream about maximizing throughput metrics or documentation compliance. We entered medicine because we wanted to help people. It sounds simple saying that now, maybe even naïve, but it is true.
Somewhere along the line medicine changed. Hospitals changed. The language changed first because that is ...]]> Joseph Varon 13:03 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 41 68941 In medicine, we love a good heroic story. A patient suffers a serious disease. A drug company produces a brilliant new drug which proves to be beneficial. Lives are saved. Everyone is happy. Another battle won in the war on disease. Science marches triumphantly forward.
But sometimes the real story is less heroic and far more awkward. And the major "advance" comes not from a new drug, but from the opposite: because patients stopped swallowing a drug that never should have been so widely used in the first place.
That is almost certainly the case of breast cancer in North America in the early 2000s.
The pivotal moment came in the summer of 2002 when a major randomized trial, called the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) was published, aiming to answer a question which physicians had long pondered: was long-term use of hormone replacement therapy, typically prescribed for women going through menopause, good for the heart?
Up to that point, hormone therapy had been marketed as a kind of fountain-of-youth elixir for menopausal women. Promising to protect the heart, keep bones strong, preserve youthfulness, and generally smooth out biological inconveniences of aging, women were prescribed these drugs and stayed on them for years, sometimes for decades. At that time, there was considerable debate about long-term effects, with some experts claiming the heart protective-effects of hormones were so pronounced that even studying the issue was a waste of time.
Launched in 1997, the WHI enrolled more than 16,000 post-menopausal women to test the effects of combined estrogen-progestin. Another arm tested the effects of estrogen alone in 10,000 women who had undergone a hysterectomy. The larger trial was terminated three years earlier than originally planned, once the findings showed an increased risk of breast cancer, heart disease, stroke, and blood clots among participants. The smaller trial was also halted a year earlier than planned due to increased risk of stroke.
That was the day that the music died for hormone therapy.
Or at least we thought.
Within months women stopped taking and physicians stopped prescribing hormone therapy. The everyday use of this class of drugs fell dramatically, by roughly half within a year.
And then something remarkable happened.
Breast cancer incidence in the United States dropped. Some say that the rates had been in decline for several years, but the drop was significant, falling by roughly six to seven percent in 2003. It was one of the sharpest year-to-year declines ever observed. The drop was especially pronounced among women over 50 and in estrogen-receptor positive tumors, precisely the cancers most likely to be stimulated by hormones.
This wasn't a subtle statistical wiggle. For epidemiologists, this was the sort of signal that almost never happens so cleanly in real life. Usually population health trends are messy, tangled up in dozens of possible explanations. There are long latency periods with cancer yet here a cause and effect appeared almost choreographed.
Drug exposure goes down. Disease incidence goes down, Just like that. Overnight, by stopping a drug we probably saw the most important advance in the fight against breast cancer in the last half century. But….
HRT Revisited
But today? Memories are short, and for many obstetricians, women's health advocates, and even health reporters, it seems like the lessons from the WHI are being rewritten. The known and proven harmful effects of hormones on women's health are undergoing a massive rewrite which is stimulating a resurgence in HRT.
This new Hormone Replacement Therapy conversation lately is captured in such articles as this piece from PBS; "How a Decades Old Study Gave Hormone Therapy a Bad Reputation," which calls the WHI a "flawed" study. Other major media outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post and TIME Magazine are eagerly celebrating the renewed interest in menopause, emphasizing that w...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-biggest-breast-cancer-advance-in-the-last-twenty-years/ In medicine, we love a good heroic story. A patient suffers a serious disease. A drug company produces a brilliant new drug which proves to be beneficial. Lives are saved. Everyone is happy. Another battle won in the war on disease. Science marches triumphantly forward.
But sometimes the real story is less heroic and far more awkward. And the major "advance" comes not from a new drug, but from the opposite: because patients stopped swallowing a drug that never should have been so widely used in the first place.
That is almost certainly the case of breast cancer in North America in the early 2000s.
The pivotal moment came in the summer of 2002 when a major randomized trial, called the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) was published, aiming to answer a question which physicians had long pondered: was long-term use of hormone replacement therapy, typically prescribed for women going through menopause, good for the heart?
Up to that point, hormone therapy had been marketed as a kind of fountain-of-youth elixir for menopausal women. Promising to protect the heart, keep bones strong, preserve youthfulness, and generally smooth out biological inconveniences of aging, women were prescribed these drugs and stayed on them for years, sometimes for decades. At that time, there was considerable debate about long-term effects, with some experts claiming the heart protective-effects of hormones were so pronounced that even studying the issue was a waste of time.
Launched in 1997, the WHI enrolled more than 16,000 post-menopausal women to test the effects of combined estrogen-progestin. Another arm tested the effects of estrogen alone in 10,000 women who had undergone a hysterectomy. The larger trial was terminated three years earlier than originally planned, once the findings showed an increased risk of breast cancer, heart disease, stroke, and blood clots among participants. The smaller trial was also halted a year earlier than planned due to increased risk of stroke.
That was the day that the music died for hormone therapy.
Or at least we thought.
Within months women stopped taking and physicians stopped prescribing hormone therapy. The everyday use of this class of drugs fell dramatically, by roughly half within a year.
And then something remarkable happened.
Breast cancer incidence in the United States dropped. Some say that the rates had been in decline for several years, but the drop was significant, falling by roughly six to seven percent in 2003. It was one of the sharpest year-to-year declines ever observed. The drop was especially pronounced among women over 50 and in estrogen-receptor positive tumors, precisely the cancers most likely to be stimulated by hormones.
This wasn't a subtle statistical wiggle. For epidemiologists, this was the sort of signal that almost never happens so cleanly in real life. Usually population health trends are messy, tangled up in dozens of possible explanations. There are long latency periods with cancer yet here a cause and effect appeared almost choreographed.
Drug exposure goes down. Disease incidence goes down, Just like that. Overnight, by stopping a drug we probably saw the most important advance in the fight against breast cancer in the last half century. But….
HRT Revisited
But today? Memories are short, and for many obstetricians, women's health advocates, and even health reporters, it seems like the lessons from the WHI are being rewritten. The known and proven harmful effects of hormones on women's health are undergoing a massive rewrite which is stimulating a resurgence in HRT.
This new Hormone Replacement Therapy conversation lately is captured in such articles as this piece from PBS; "How a Decades Old Study Gave Hormone Therapy a Bad Reputation," which calls the WHI a "flawed" study. Other major media outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post and TIME Magazine are eagerly celebrating the renewed interest in menopause, emphasizing that w...]]> Sun, 17 May 2026 07:00:12 -0400 The Biggest Breast Cancer Advance in the Last Twenty Years In medicine, we love a good heroic story. A patient suffers a serious disease. A drug company produces a brilliant new drug which proves to be beneficial. Lives are saved. Everyone is happy. Another battle won in ...]]> In medicine, we love a good heroic story. A patient suffers a serious disease. A drug company produces a brilliant new drug which proves to be beneficial. Lives are saved. Everyone is happy. Another battle won in the war on disease. Science marches triumphantly forward.
But sometimes the real story is less heroic and far more awkward. And the major "advance" comes not from a new drug, but from the opposite: because patients stopped swallowing a drug that never should have been so widely used in the first place.
That is almost certainly the case of breast cancer in North America in the early 2000s.
The pivotal moment came in the summer of 2002 when a major randomized trial, called the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) was published, aiming to answer a question which physicians had long pondered: was long-term use of hormone replacement therapy, typically prescribed for women going through menopause, good for the heart?
Up to that point, hormone therapy had been marketed as a kind of fountain-of-youth elixir for menopausal women. Promising to protect the heart, keep bones strong, preserve youthfulness, and generally smooth out biological inconveniences of aging, women were prescribed these drugs and stayed on them for years, sometimes for decades. At that time, there was considerable debate about long-term effects, with some experts claiming the heart protective-effects of hormones were so pronounced that even studying the issue was a waste of time.
Launched in 1997, the WHI enrolled more than 16,000 post-menopausal women to test the effects of combined estrogen-progestin. Another arm tested the effects of estrogen alone in 10,000 women who had undergone a hysterectomy. The larger trial was terminated three years earlier than originally planned, once the findings showed an increased risk of breast cancer, heart disease, stroke, and blood clots among participants. The smaller trial was also halted a year earlier than planned due to increased risk of stroke.
That was the day that the music died for hormone therapy.
Or at least we thought.
Within months women stopped taking and physicians stopped prescribing hormone therapy. The everyday use of this class of drugs fell dramatically, by roughly half within a year.
And then something remarkable happened.
Breast cancer incidence in the United States dropped. Some say that the rates had been in decline for several years, but the drop was significant, falling by roughly six to seven percent in 2003. It was one of the sharpest year-to-year declines ever observed. The drop was especially pronounced among women over 50 and in estrogen-receptor positive tumors, precisely the cancers most likely to be stimulated by hormones.
This wasn't a subtle statistical wiggle. For epidemiologists, this was the sort of signal that almost never happens so cleanly in real life. Usually population health trends are messy, tangled up in dozens of possible explanations. There are long latency periods with cancer yet here a cause and effect appeared almost choreographed.
Drug exposure goes down. Disease incidence goes down, Just like that. Overnight, by stopping a drug we probably saw the most important advance in the fight against breast cancer in the last half century. But….
HRT Revisited
But today? Memories are short, and for many obstetricians, women's health advocates, and even health reporters, it seems like the lessons from the WHI are being rewritten. The known and proven harmful effects of hormones on women's health are undergoing a massive rewrite which is stimulating a resurgence in HRT.
This new Hormone Replacement Therapy conversation lately is captured in such articles as this piece from PBS; "How a Decades Old Study Gave Hormone Therapy a Bad Reputation," which calls the WHI a "flawed" study. Other major media outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post and TIME Magazine are eagerly celebrating the renewed interest in menopause, emphasizing that w...]]> Alan Cassels 11:31 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 40 69165 The grim circumstances behind the death of George Washington (1732-1799), America's first president and popularly known as the Father of the Country, are not wholly unknown. The details have been reported by historians for more than two centuries.
What's strange about this dry biographical knowledge is that it is not reported with shock and alarm and hence never conveyed to popular culture with lessons for our lives. This is because Washington's physicians were following standard protocols when they bled him to death.
The facts: Washington came down with a throat infection. Three doctors, all convinced of the settled wisdom of the healing arts deployed since the Middle Ages, participated in draining blood from his body, to the point that they took 5 pints or fully half his blood, while giving him an enema on top of it all.
They literally drained the life out of him, not from malice but simply by following the established protocols as recommended by the best physicians at the time.
To invoke a popular phrase, where is the outrage? Nineteenth-century biographies reported the details but celebrated Washington for his bravery in enduring the treatment, then called phlebotomy, which was considered the best science.
John Marshall's (later Justice) famous early biography, published in five volumes from 1804 to 1807, simply says:
"Believing bloodletting to be necessary, he procured a bleeder who took from his arm twelve or fourteen ounces of blood, but he would not permit a messenger to be despatched for his family physician until the appearance of day. About eleven in the morning Doctor Craik arrived; and perceiving the extreme danger of the case, requested that two consulting physicians should be immediately sent for. The utmost exertions of medical skill were applied in vain. The powers of life were manifestly yielding to the force of the disorder; speaking, which was painful from the beginning, became almost impracticable: respiration became more and more contracted and imperfect, until half past eleven on Saturday night; when, retaining the full possession of his intellect, he expired without a struggle."
Necessary. Medical skill. Protocols. Best Practices. Standards of Care. Death. No one knows why: just a yielding to the forces of disorder.
That account set the tone. No one dared say that the doctors killed him – a very clear example of iatrogenic death – because no one believed that. So long as it is credentialed experts doing the killing, we are led to believe that nothing really went wrong. The system works, just that sometimes the system cannot stop the inevitable.
That consensus surrounding Phlebotomy began to change in the coming decades, even if some experts were still on board as late as 1842. By the end of the 19th century, bleeding had been thoroughly discredited. Still, the overall judgment that the doctors did the best they could with the tools and knowledge they had remained. It's as if the literary culture simply could not grasp the fullness of the implications that it was the physicians themselves who turned a common flu into a death event by draining the former president's blood from his body.
Another biography written for kids in 1917 by Calista McCabe Courtenay comes closer to the truth.
"Before morning of the third day, he was very ill and when the doctors came, they bled him. It was the stupid practice of those days and in a few hours Washington was so weakened as to be past hope of recovery. He died on December 14, 1799, as bravely as he had lived."
Even on the 250th anniversary of the nation's founding, the full lesson of this horrible death has not sunk in.
The most recent and most celebrated biography is by Ron Chernow. Even here, while we get more detail, the account is lacking in severe judgment against the medical professionals, much less what that implies.
Although he experienced hoarseness and chest congestion that evening [November 12, 1799], Washingto...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/george-washington-father-of-the-country-killed-by-doctors/ The grim circumstances behind the death of George Washington (1732-1799), America's first president and popularly known as the Father of the Country, are not wholly unknown. The details have been reported by historians for more than two centuries.
What's strange about this dry biographical knowledge is that it is not reported with shock and alarm and hence never conveyed to popular culture with lessons for our lives. This is because Washington's physicians were following standard protocols when they bled him to death.
The facts: Washington came down with a throat infection. Three doctors, all convinced of the settled wisdom of the healing arts deployed since the Middle Ages, participated in draining blood from his body, to the point that they took 5 pints or fully half his blood, while giving him an enema on top of it all.
They literally drained the life out of him, not from malice but simply by following the established protocols as recommended by the best physicians at the time.
To invoke a popular phrase, where is the outrage? Nineteenth-century biographies reported the details but celebrated Washington for his bravery in enduring the treatment, then called phlebotomy, which was considered the best science.
John Marshall's (later Justice) famous early biography, published in five volumes from 1804 to 1807, simply says:
"Believing bloodletting to be necessary, he procured a bleeder who took from his arm twelve or fourteen ounces of blood, but he would not permit a messenger to be despatched for his family physician until the appearance of day. About eleven in the morning Doctor Craik arrived; and perceiving the extreme danger of the case, requested that two consulting physicians should be immediately sent for. The utmost exertions of medical skill were applied in vain. The powers of life were manifestly yielding to the force of the disorder; speaking, which was painful from the beginning, became almost impracticable: respiration became more and more contracted and imperfect, until half past eleven on Saturday night; when, retaining the full possession of his intellect, he expired without a struggle."
Necessary. Medical skill. Protocols. Best Practices. Standards of Care. Death. No one knows why: just a yielding to the forces of disorder.
That account set the tone. No one dared say that the doctors killed him – a very clear example of iatrogenic death – because no one believed that. So long as it is credentialed experts doing the killing, we are led to believe that nothing really went wrong. The system works, just that sometimes the system cannot stop the inevitable.
That consensus surrounding Phlebotomy began to change in the coming decades, even if some experts were still on board as late as 1842. By the end of the 19th century, bleeding had been thoroughly discredited. Still, the overall judgment that the doctors did the best they could with the tools and knowledge they had remained. It's as if the literary culture simply could not grasp the fullness of the implications that it was the physicians themselves who turned a common flu into a death event by draining the former president's blood from his body.
Another biography written for kids in 1917 by Calista McCabe Courtenay comes closer to the truth.
"Before morning of the third day, he was very ill and when the doctors came, they bled him. It was the stupid practice of those days and in a few hours Washington was so weakened as to be past hope of recovery. He died on December 14, 1799, as bravely as he had lived."
Even on the 250th anniversary of the nation's founding, the full lesson of this horrible death has not sunk in.
The most recent and most celebrated biography is by Ron Chernow. Even here, while we get more detail, the account is lacking in severe judgment against the medical professionals, much less what that implies.
Although he experienced hoarseness and chest congestion that evening [November 12, 1799], Washingto...]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 07:00:00 -0400 George Washington, Father of the Country, Killed by Doctors The grim circumstances behind the death of George Washington (1732-1799), America's first president and popularly known as the Father of the Country, are not wholly unknown. The details have been reported by ...]]> The grim circumstances behind the death of George Washington (1732-1799), America's first president and popularly known as the Father of the Country, are not wholly unknown. The details have been reported by historians for more than two centuries.
What's strange about this dry biographical knowledge is that it is not reported with shock and alarm and hence never conveyed to popular culture with lessons for our lives. This is because Washington's physicians were following standard protocols when they bled him to death.
The facts: Washington came down with a throat infection. Three doctors, all convinced of the settled wisdom of the healing arts deployed since the Middle Ages, participated in draining blood from his body, to the point that they took 5 pints or fully half his blood, while giving him an enema on top of it all.
They literally drained the life out of him, not from malice but simply by following the established protocols as recommended by the best physicians at the time.
To invoke a popular phrase, where is the outrage? Nineteenth-century biographies reported the details but celebrated Washington for his bravery in enduring the treatment, then called phlebotomy, which was considered the best science.
John Marshall's (later Justice) famous early biography, published in five volumes from 1804 to 1807, simply says:
"Believing bloodletting to be necessary, he procured a bleeder who took from his arm twelve or fourteen ounces of blood, but he would not permit a messenger to be despatched for his family physician until the appearance of day. About eleven in the morning Doctor Craik arrived; and perceiving the extreme danger of the case, requested that two consulting physicians should be immediately sent for. The utmost exertions of medical skill were applied in vain. The powers of life were manifestly yielding to the force of the disorder; speaking, which was painful from the beginning, became almost impracticable: respiration became more and more contracted and imperfect, until half past eleven on Saturday night; when, retaining the full possession of his intellect, he expired without a struggle."
Necessary. Medical skill. Protocols. Best Practices. Standards of Care. Death. No one knows why: just a yielding to the forces of disorder.
That account set the tone. No one dared say that the doctors killed him – a very clear example of iatrogenic death – because no one believed that. So long as it is credentialed experts doing the killing, we are led to believe that nothing really went wrong. The system works, just that sometimes the system cannot stop the inevitable.
That consensus surrounding Phlebotomy began to change in the coming decades, even if some experts were still on board as late as 1842. By the end of the 19th century, bleeding had been thoroughly discredited. Still, the overall judgment that the doctors did the best they could with the tools and knowledge they had remained. It's as if the literary culture simply could not grasp the fullness of the implications that it was the physicians themselves who turned a common flu into a death event by draining the former president's blood from his body.
Another biography written for kids in 1917 by Calista McCabe Courtenay comes closer to the truth.
"Before morning of the third day, he was very ill and when the doctors came, they bled him. It was the stupid practice of those days and in a few hours Washington was so weakened as to be past hope of recovery. He died on December 14, 1799, as bravely as he had lived."
Even on the 250th anniversary of the nation's founding, the full lesson of this horrible death has not sunk in.
The most recent and most celebrated biography is by Ron Chernow. Even here, while we get more detail, the account is lacking in severe judgment against the medical professionals, much less what that implies.
Although he experienced hoarseness and chest congestion that evening [November 12, 1799], Washingto...]]> Jeffrey A. Tucker 10:10 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 39 68980 Origin stories are immensely important. When a dangerous and destructive force is let loose upon the earth people want to know where it came from and, most particularly, whether it was unleashed by nature or by man. During the Covid-19 pandemic it was therefore a matter of great interest and concern whether the virus that causes the Covid flu had sprung spontaneously from nature or had been leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China where scientists were doing gain-of-function research.
By now for all intents and purposes that question has been settled—given the unique features of the virus and the complete lack of evidence to the contrary, it was the latter. That being said, no one has ever denied that the Covid-19 pathogen is a biological entity and is therefore part of the organic world. Scientists have consequently been able to examine its physical characteristics in order to understand why it is so infectious, how it spreads, and how it acts on the body to make one sick.
The same cannot be said about another famous illness, the mental disorder now known as Gender Dysphoria. Unlike the scientists who fabricated the Covid-19 virus, those who introduced Gender Dysphoria to the world did not do so by altering an existing biological organism, nor did they discover anything that until that time had remained hidden in nature. On the contrary, this "professionally-certified illness" was dreamt up by a committee of psychiatrists sitting around a table without reference to any biological pathogen whatsoever.
Gender Dysphoria, which was originally called Gender Identity Disorder, first appeared in the 1980 edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III) along with 80 other new mental illnesses, all of which were conceived in much the same way, by a committee of psychiatrists sitting around a table and conjuring up new mental illnesses based on scant or nonexistent physical evidence. Nevertheless, though their methods of introducing these illnesses to the world were basically unscientific, psychiatrists are medical doctors and as such, rightly or wrongly, are also considered to be bona fide scientists.
It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the fact that psychiatry, as a medical specialty, introduced Gender Dysphoria into the world. Though by now it is commonplace that radical elements in the feminist and gay rights movements have been strong proponents of the crusade to chemically and surgically alter the gender-identity of both adults and children, the ideology and advocacy of these political movements alone could never have given birth to the medical interventions involved in the treatment of Gender Dysphoria. Political movements, for all that they can accomplish using conventional methods of persuasion, simply do not have that power. For that authority and the power to do medical interventions one has to look to doctors, or, to be more precise, at least to those who have doctors' credentials. They alone have the license to order all manner of medical interventions.
Though several other medical specialties eventually became deeply involved in the transgender movement, psychiatry alone has the distinction of being the linchpin that provided the impetus to medicalize it. Before psychiatry introduced Gender Dysphoria to the medical world, this illness was never even a glimmer in the imaginations of any other medical specialty. Without psychiatry the idea of fluid sex would have remained no more salient than any other crackpot psychological fad such as the Primal Scream and like them would have ended up on the trash heap of psychobabble. Only because it is a member of the medical fraternity was psychiatry able to bring to Gender Dysphoria the authority and vast resources of the medical-industrial-complex.
The year 1980 when DSM-III was published was a watershed moment for organized psychiatry. It was the year that a dying profession managed to turn itself around a...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/political-psychiatry-and-the-genesis-of-the-trans-epidemic/ Origin stories are immensely important. When a dangerous and destructive force is let loose upon the earth people want to know where it came from and, most particularly, whether it was unleashed by nature or by man. During the Covid-19 pandemic it was therefore a matter of great interest and concern whether the virus that causes the Covid flu had sprung spontaneously from nature or had been leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China where scientists were doing gain-of-function research.
By now for all intents and purposes that question has been settled—given the unique features of the virus and the complete lack of evidence to the contrary, it was the latter. That being said, no one has ever denied that the Covid-19 pathogen is a biological entity and is therefore part of the organic world. Scientists have consequently been able to examine its physical characteristics in order to understand why it is so infectious, how it spreads, and how it acts on the body to make one sick.
The same cannot be said about another famous illness, the mental disorder now known as Gender Dysphoria. Unlike the scientists who fabricated the Covid-19 virus, those who introduced Gender Dysphoria to the world did not do so by altering an existing biological organism, nor did they discover anything that until that time had remained hidden in nature. On the contrary, this "professionally-certified illness" was dreamt up by a committee of psychiatrists sitting around a table without reference to any biological pathogen whatsoever.
Gender Dysphoria, which was originally called Gender Identity Disorder, first appeared in the 1980 edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III) along with 80 other new mental illnesses, all of which were conceived in much the same way, by a committee of psychiatrists sitting around a table and conjuring up new mental illnesses based on scant or nonexistent physical evidence. Nevertheless, though their methods of introducing these illnesses to the world were basically unscientific, psychiatrists are medical doctors and as such, rightly or wrongly, are also considered to be bona fide scientists.
It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the fact that psychiatry, as a medical specialty, introduced Gender Dysphoria into the world. Though by now it is commonplace that radical elements in the feminist and gay rights movements have been strong proponents of the crusade to chemically and surgically alter the gender-identity of both adults and children, the ideology and advocacy of these political movements alone could never have given birth to the medical interventions involved in the treatment of Gender Dysphoria. Political movements, for all that they can accomplish using conventional methods of persuasion, simply do not have that power. For that authority and the power to do medical interventions one has to look to doctors, or, to be more precise, at least to those who have doctors' credentials. They alone have the license to order all manner of medical interventions.
Though several other medical specialties eventually became deeply involved in the transgender movement, psychiatry alone has the distinction of being the linchpin that provided the impetus to medicalize it. Before psychiatry introduced Gender Dysphoria to the medical world, this illness was never even a glimmer in the imaginations of any other medical specialty. Without psychiatry the idea of fluid sex would have remained no more salient than any other crackpot psychological fad such as the Primal Scream and like them would have ended up on the trash heap of psychobabble. Only because it is a member of the medical fraternity was psychiatry able to bring to Gender Dysphoria the authority and vast resources of the medical-industrial-complex.
The year 1980 when DSM-III was published was a watershed moment for organized psychiatry. It was the year that a dying profession managed to turn itself around a...]]> Fri, 15 May 2026 15:21:33 -0400 Political Psychiatry and the Genesis of the Trans Epidemic Origin stories are immensely important. When a dangerous and destructive force is let loose upon the earth people want to know where it came from and, most particularly, whether it was unleashed by nature or by man....]]> Origin stories are immensely important. When a dangerous and destructive force is let loose upon the earth people want to know where it came from and, most particularly, whether it was unleashed by nature or by man. During the Covid-19 pandemic it was therefore a matter of great interest and concern whether the virus that causes the Covid flu had sprung spontaneously from nature or had been leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China where scientists were doing gain-of-function research.
By now for all intents and purposes that question has been settled—given the unique features of the virus and the complete lack of evidence to the contrary, it was the latter. That being said, no one has ever denied that the Covid-19 pathogen is a biological entity and is therefore part of the organic world. Scientists have consequently been able to examine its physical characteristics in order to understand why it is so infectious, how it spreads, and how it acts on the body to make one sick.
The same cannot be said about another famous illness, the mental disorder now known as Gender Dysphoria. Unlike the scientists who fabricated the Covid-19 virus, those who introduced Gender Dysphoria to the world did not do so by altering an existing biological organism, nor did they discover anything that until that time had remained hidden in nature. On the contrary, this "professionally-certified illness" was dreamt up by a committee of psychiatrists sitting around a table without reference to any biological pathogen whatsoever.
Gender Dysphoria, which was originally called Gender Identity Disorder, first appeared in the 1980 edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III) along with 80 other new mental illnesses, all of which were conceived in much the same way, by a committee of psychiatrists sitting around a table and conjuring up new mental illnesses based on scant or nonexistent physical evidence. Nevertheless, though their methods of introducing these illnesses to the world were basically unscientific, psychiatrists are medical doctors and as such, rightly or wrongly, are also considered to be bona fide scientists.
It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the fact that psychiatry, as a medical specialty, introduced Gender Dysphoria into the world. Though by now it is commonplace that radical elements in the feminist and gay rights movements have been strong proponents of the crusade to chemically and surgically alter the gender-identity of both adults and children, the ideology and advocacy of these political movements alone could never have given birth to the medical interventions involved in the treatment of Gender Dysphoria. Political movements, for all that they can accomplish using conventional methods of persuasion, simply do not have that power. For that authority and the power to do medical interventions one has to look to doctors, or, to be more precise, at least to those who have doctors' credentials. They alone have the license to order all manner of medical interventions.
Though several other medical specialties eventually became deeply involved in the transgender movement, psychiatry alone has the distinction of being the linchpin that provided the impetus to medicalize it. Before psychiatry introduced Gender Dysphoria to the medical world, this illness was never even a glimmer in the imaginations of any other medical specialty. Without psychiatry the idea of fluid sex would have remained no more salient than any other crackpot psychological fad such as the Primal Scream and like them would have ended up on the trash heap of psychobabble. Only because it is a member of the medical fraternity was psychiatry able to bring to Gender Dysphoria the authority and vast resources of the medical-industrial-complex.
The year 1980 when DSM-III was published was a watershed moment for organized psychiatry. It was the year that a dying profession managed to turn itself around a...]]> Max Dublin 21:11 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 38 69071 A second imposition of lockdowns is closer than we might think. Very powerful people want that even under the slightest pretext. Brownstone Institute is asking for your support to stop them.
When two passengers on a luxury cruise ship died from Hantavirus (a high-mortality infection from rat feces), and another tested positive, mainstream media created a global frenzy. Out came the images of hazmat suits and masks, along with demands for universal contact tracing.
The entire show was designed to elicit memories of fear from six years ago.
A Washington Post columnist said she would gladly lock down again and urge everyone to do the same, except of course for those forced to deliver food to her house.
Moderna's stock started rising again and why? Because the company is working on a so-called vaccine.
The supposed experts were out in full force, including familiar names and faces such as "scarf lady" Deborah Birx, who appeared in countless interviews as an expert.
DONATE NOW
The consultants were, too, and so were the bureaucrats. They dusted off their lockdown plans. Seventeen Americans were pushed into a 42-day quarantine merely for having contact even though they tested negative and had no symptoms. They complied but what if a few had not? Interesting to consider.
All the forces have lined up. To be sure, we have some Brownstonians in high places who are leaning against the pressure, hoping to dial back the panic. There is nothing good that locking down accomplishes, they correctly say. It only wrecks commerce and social functioning.
Incredibly, this lesson still hasn't stuck. The prevailing verdict on the Covid years: we should lock down sooner and harder for the next viral outbreak. An entire class of elites is just waiting for the opportunity.
A second lockdown is an intolerable threat, a Sword of Damocles that floats above the freedoms we do have. It was only six years ago that they did it with calamitous results. They have every intention of doing it again.
No civilized society can work this way. Freedom cannot work this way.
We are being prepared. The difference this time is that we have some saner people in charge but can they overcome the pressures? That's not obvious. We also have a larger population of people who will not go along. That is clear from social media.
But will we have the choice? The lockdowners have new weapons in their arsenal like debanking and planned shortages. There will also be the usual humiliation rituals in place for anyone daring to dissent.
Above all else, this time we have Brownstone Institute. We were founded in 2021 to be a voice for clarity, rationality, science, and freedom in the darkest times. Our many thousands of articles and global voice have been mighty. It's built a serious intellectual and social resistance.
DONATE NOW
People have yelled at us for years to stop talking about Covid. No. That experience was the template. There have been no apologies for a reason: they are not sorry. They have every intention of deploying that model for the future, complete with forced injections.
This is not speculation. The World Health Organization says this. The powers of the public health bureaucracies permit it. The banks will cooperate. The Digital ID is spreading globally and will be used for enforcement. Surveillance is everywhere. A CCP-style social credit system? All the pieces are in place.
The cultural and economic calamity of the last lockdown should be obvious. Our money's purchasing power is down by a third or more. Student testing on reading and math entered a free fall. Labor force participation never fully recovered. A third of US working-age men are missing from the workforce. The national debt in all countries ballooned out of control.
That said, the bureaucrats enjoyed the power, tech companies like the new attention for housebound professionals, and the pharmaceutical companies earned hundreds of billions. Never mind that the sh...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/dont-be-locked-down/ A second imposition of lockdowns is closer than we might think. Very powerful people want that even under the slightest pretext. Brownstone Institute is asking for your support to stop them.
When two passengers on a luxury cruise ship died from Hantavirus (a high-mortality infection from rat feces), and another tested positive, mainstream media created a global frenzy. Out came the images of hazmat suits and masks, along with demands for universal contact tracing.
The entire show was designed to elicit memories of fear from six years ago.
A Washington Post columnist said she would gladly lock down again and urge everyone to do the same, except of course for those forced to deliver food to her house.
Moderna's stock started rising again and why? Because the company is working on a so-called vaccine.
The supposed experts were out in full force, including familiar names and faces such as "scarf lady" Deborah Birx, who appeared in countless interviews as an expert.
DONATE NOW
The consultants were, too, and so were the bureaucrats. They dusted off their lockdown plans. Seventeen Americans were pushed into a 42-day quarantine merely for having contact even though they tested negative and had no symptoms. They complied but what if a few had not? Interesting to consider.
All the forces have lined up. To be sure, we have some Brownstonians in high places who are leaning against the pressure, hoping to dial back the panic. There is nothing good that locking down accomplishes, they correctly say. It only wrecks commerce and social functioning.
Incredibly, this lesson still hasn't stuck. The prevailing verdict on the Covid years: we should lock down sooner and harder for the next viral outbreak. An entire class of elites is just waiting for the opportunity.
A second lockdown is an intolerable threat, a Sword of Damocles that floats above the freedoms we do have. It was only six years ago that they did it with calamitous results. They have every intention of doing it again.
No civilized society can work this way. Freedom cannot work this way.
We are being prepared. The difference this time is that we have some saner people in charge but can they overcome the pressures? That's not obvious. We also have a larger population of people who will not go along. That is clear from social media.
But will we have the choice? The lockdowners have new weapons in their arsenal like debanking and planned shortages. There will also be the usual humiliation rituals in place for anyone daring to dissent.
Above all else, this time we have Brownstone Institute. We were founded in 2021 to be a voice for clarity, rationality, science, and freedom in the darkest times. Our many thousands of articles and global voice have been mighty. It's built a serious intellectual and social resistance.
DONATE NOW
People have yelled at us for years to stop talking about Covid. No. That experience was the template. There have been no apologies for a reason: they are not sorry. They have every intention of deploying that model for the future, complete with forced injections.
This is not speculation. The World Health Organization says this. The powers of the public health bureaucracies permit it. The banks will cooperate. The Digital ID is spreading globally and will be used for enforcement. Surveillance is everywhere. A CCP-style social credit system? All the pieces are in place.
The cultural and economic calamity of the last lockdown should be obvious. Our money's purchasing power is down by a third or more. Student testing on reading and math entered a free fall. Labor force participation never fully recovered. A third of US working-age men are missing from the workforce. The national debt in all countries ballooned out of control.
That said, the bureaucrats enjoyed the power, tech companies like the new attention for housebound professionals, and the pharmaceutical companies earned hundreds of billions. Never mind that the sh...]]> Fri, 15 May 2026 07:00:47 -0400 Don't Be Locked Down A second imposition of lockdowns is closer than we might think. Very powerful people want that even under the slightest pretext. Brownstone Institute is asking for your support to stop them.
When two passe...]]> A second imposition of lockdowns is closer than we might think. Very powerful people want that even under the slightest pretext. Brownstone Institute is asking for your support to stop them.
When two passengers on a luxury cruise ship died from Hantavirus (a high-mortality infection from rat feces), and another tested positive, mainstream media created a global frenzy. Out came the images of hazmat suits and masks, along with demands for universal contact tracing.
The entire show was designed to elicit memories of fear from six years ago.
A Washington Post columnist said she would gladly lock down again and urge everyone to do the same, except of course for those forced to deliver food to her house.
Moderna's stock started rising again and why? Because the company is working on a so-called vaccine.
The supposed experts were out in full force, including familiar names and faces such as "scarf lady" Deborah Birx, who appeared in countless interviews as an expert.
DONATE NOW
The consultants were, too, and so were the bureaucrats. They dusted off their lockdown plans. Seventeen Americans were pushed into a 42-day quarantine merely for having contact even though they tested negative and had no symptoms. They complied but what if a few had not? Interesting to consider.
All the forces have lined up. To be sure, we have some Brownstonians in high places who are leaning against the pressure, hoping to dial back the panic. There is nothing good that locking down accomplishes, they correctly say. It only wrecks commerce and social functioning.
Incredibly, this lesson still hasn't stuck. The prevailing verdict on the Covid years: we should lock down sooner and harder for the next viral outbreak. An entire class of elites is just waiting for the opportunity.
A second lockdown is an intolerable threat, a Sword of Damocles that floats above the freedoms we do have. It was only six years ago that they did it with calamitous results. They have every intention of doing it again.
No civilized society can work this way. Freedom cannot work this way.
We are being prepared. The difference this time is that we have some saner people in charge but can they overcome the pressures? That's not obvious. We also have a larger population of people who will not go along. That is clear from social media.
But will we have the choice? The lockdowners have new weapons in their arsenal like debanking and planned shortages. There will also be the usual humiliation rituals in place for anyone daring to dissent.
Above all else, this time we have Brownstone Institute. We were founded in 2021 to be a voice for clarity, rationality, science, and freedom in the darkest times. Our many thousands of articles and global voice have been mighty. It's built a serious intellectual and social resistance.
DONATE NOW
People have yelled at us for years to stop talking about Covid. No. That experience was the template. There have been no apologies for a reason: they are not sorry. They have every intention of deploying that model for the future, complete with forced injections.
This is not speculation. The World Health Organization says this. The powers of the public health bureaucracies permit it. The banks will cooperate. The Digital ID is spreading globally and will be used for enforcement. Surveillance is everywhere. A CCP-style social credit system? All the pieces are in place.
The cultural and economic calamity of the last lockdown should be obvious. Our money's purchasing power is down by a third or more. Student testing on reading and math entered a free fall. Labor force participation never fully recovered. A third of US working-age men are missing from the workforce. The national debt in all countries ballooned out of control.
That said, the bureaucrats enjoyed the power, tech companies like the new attention for housebound professionals, and the pharmaceutical companies earned hundreds of billions. Never mind that the sh...]]> Brownstone Institute 06:38 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 37 68937 Artificial Intelligence (AI) seems to be on everyone's lips these days, and not surprisingly, given the widely divergent opinions about it. Some say it's a welcome helpmeet for humans, while others – including the late Stephen Hawking and tech entrepreneur Elon Musk – have warned against its potential to destroy the human race. Such warnings have also come from science fiction, arguably going back to the young Mary Shelley's 'Gothic' (proto-) medical science fiction novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, of 1818, in which she relates a tale of scientific and technological hubris, concerning the artificial creation of an intelligent living being by a scientist (the eponymous Dr Frankenstein), that gives rise to a monster which eventually turns on its creator.
Since then, many such cautionary tales have appeared in the realm of literary and cinematic science fiction. Relatively recent ones include James Cameron's Terminator films (see Chapter 9 of book linked here) and Ronald D. Moore's long-running television series, Battlestar Galactica, in both of which the AI robots created by humans set out to destroy their progenitors. In fact, Musk recently reiterated his earlier warning about AI when he invoked the Terminator scenario during a court case, when he stated that 'humanity may be heading toward a "Terminator situation"' where AI could eventually 'kill us all.'
It should not be surprising that creative speculation concerning AI's 'relations' with people often focus on its possible hostility towards human beings. Why? Simply because AI's behaviour or 'actions' towards people cannot be predicted with any degree of certainty, or even probability, because it is not human. One way of putting this is to say that AI is radically other compared to humans.
Such radical alterity can assume many guises, some of which have been imagined in the works of fiction mentioned earlier – which are ways of anticipating (and influencing) what AI in the real world might look like, and how it might 'behave.' The question that arises from this is whether the 'otherness' of AI can be imagined exhaustively – that is, whether in fiction, or in the design manuals of AI-engineering companies, it is possible to reach a point where one could say conclusively that the ways in which AI could possibly differ from human beings have reached their imaginative or conceptual limit.
Personally, I doubt whether this is possible, and I would like to demonstrate why this is the case with recourse to three science-fictional instances of the inscrutability of AI, as marked by its alterity. Paradoxically, while they are creatively imagined, the very terms of their (respective) projected otherness, or AI 'being,' indicate that it could well surpass the manner in which they are imagined.
One might say that they are depicted in such a way that, how they come across, clearly does not exhaust their supposed character. Furthermore, I would like to show that the aesthetic category of the sublime, as opposed to the beautiful, enables one to come to grips with such ineffable otherness, while serving, at the same time, as a salutary reminder that human beings cannot grasp the distinctive being of AI once and for all.
The three science fiction embodiments of AI inscrutability or otherness are encountered in Spike Jonze's film, Her, William Gibson's novel, Agency, and Dan Brown's novel, Origin. The eponymous AI character in Her, named Samantha (by 'herself' – already a clue to her otherness; 'she' could have named 'herself' anything, without detracting from who, or what, she is), is a newly installed OS or Operating System on a computer used by Theodore, a lonely man who writes letters online on behalf of people who cannot really write. In Gibson's novel, the AI is called Eunice (which, etymologically, means 'good victory'), and the novel addresses the question, whether, and how, a disembodied AI can have agency; that is, act, in the ...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/ai-and-the-sublime/ Artificial Intelligence (AI) seems to be on everyone's lips these days, and not surprisingly, given the widely divergent opinions about it. Some say it's a welcome helpmeet for humans, while others – including the late Stephen Hawking and tech entrepreneur Elon Musk – have warned against its potential to destroy the human race. Such warnings have also come from science fiction, arguably going back to the young Mary Shelley's 'Gothic' (proto-) medical science fiction novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, of 1818, in which she relates a tale of scientific and technological hubris, concerning the artificial creation of an intelligent living being by a scientist (the eponymous Dr Frankenstein), that gives rise to a monster which eventually turns on its creator.
Since then, many such cautionary tales have appeared in the realm of literary and cinematic science fiction. Relatively recent ones include James Cameron's Terminator films (see Chapter 9 of book linked here) and Ronald D. Moore's long-running television series, Battlestar Galactica, in both of which the AI robots created by humans set out to destroy their progenitors. In fact, Musk recently reiterated his earlier warning about AI when he invoked the Terminator scenario during a court case, when he stated that 'humanity may be heading toward a "Terminator situation"' where AI could eventually 'kill us all.'
It should not be surprising that creative speculation concerning AI's 'relations' with people often focus on its possible hostility towards human beings. Why? Simply because AI's behaviour or 'actions' towards people cannot be predicted with any degree of certainty, or even probability, because it is not human. One way of putting this is to say that AI is radically other compared to humans.
Such radical alterity can assume many guises, some of which have been imagined in the works of fiction mentioned earlier – which are ways of anticipating (and influencing) what AI in the real world might look like, and how it might 'behave.' The question that arises from this is whether the 'otherness' of AI can be imagined exhaustively – that is, whether in fiction, or in the design manuals of AI-engineering companies, it is possible to reach a point where one could say conclusively that the ways in which AI could possibly differ from human beings have reached their imaginative or conceptual limit.
Personally, I doubt whether this is possible, and I would like to demonstrate why this is the case with recourse to three science-fictional instances of the inscrutability of AI, as marked by its alterity. Paradoxically, while they are creatively imagined, the very terms of their (respective) projected otherness, or AI 'being,' indicate that it could well surpass the manner in which they are imagined.
One might say that they are depicted in such a way that, how they come across, clearly does not exhaust their supposed character. Furthermore, I would like to show that the aesthetic category of the sublime, as opposed to the beautiful, enables one to come to grips with such ineffable otherness, while serving, at the same time, as a salutary reminder that human beings cannot grasp the distinctive being of AI once and for all.
The three science fiction embodiments of AI inscrutability or otherness are encountered in Spike Jonze's film, Her, William Gibson's novel, Agency, and Dan Brown's novel, Origin. The eponymous AI character in Her, named Samantha (by 'herself' – already a clue to her otherness; 'she' could have named 'herself' anything, without detracting from who, or what, she is), is a newly installed OS or Operating System on a computer used by Theodore, a lonely man who writes letters online on behalf of people who cannot really write. In Gibson's novel, the AI is called Eunice (which, etymologically, means 'good victory'), and the novel addresses the question, whether, and how, a disembodied AI can have agency; that is, act, in the ...]]> Thu, 14 May 2026 13:59:34 -0400 AI and the Sublime Artificial Intelligence (AI) seems to be on everyone's lips these days, and not surprisingly, given the widely divergent opinions about it. Some say it's a welcome helpmeet for humans, while others – including the...]]> Artificial Intelligence (AI) seems to be on everyone's lips these days, and not surprisingly, given the widely divergent opinions about it. Some say it's a welcome helpmeet for humans, while others – including the late Stephen Hawking and tech entrepreneur Elon Musk – have warned against its potential to destroy the human race. Such warnings have also come from science fiction, arguably going back to the young Mary Shelley's 'Gothic' (proto-) medical science fiction novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, of 1818, in which she relates a tale of scientific and technological hubris, concerning the artificial creation of an intelligent living being by a scientist (the eponymous Dr Frankenstein), that gives rise to a monster which eventually turns on its creator.
Since then, many such cautionary tales have appeared in the realm of literary and cinematic science fiction. Relatively recent ones include James Cameron's Terminator films (see Chapter 9 of book linked here) and Ronald D. Moore's long-running television series, Battlestar Galactica, in both of which the AI robots created by humans set out to destroy their progenitors. In fact, Musk recently reiterated his earlier warning about AI when he invoked the Terminator scenario during a court case, when he stated that 'humanity may be heading toward a "Terminator situation"' where AI could eventually 'kill us all.'
It should not be surprising that creative speculation concerning AI's 'relations' with people often focus on its possible hostility towards human beings. Why? Simply because AI's behaviour or 'actions' towards people cannot be predicted with any degree of certainty, or even probability, because it is not human. One way of putting this is to say that AI is radically other compared to humans.
Such radical alterity can assume many guises, some of which have been imagined in the works of fiction mentioned earlier – which are ways of anticipating (and influencing) what AI in the real world might look like, and how it might 'behave.' The question that arises from this is whether the 'otherness' of AI can be imagined exhaustively – that is, whether in fiction, or in the design manuals of AI-engineering companies, it is possible to reach a point where one could say conclusively that the ways in which AI could possibly differ from human beings have reached their imaginative or conceptual limit.
Personally, I doubt whether this is possible, and I would like to demonstrate why this is the case with recourse to three science-fictional instances of the inscrutability of AI, as marked by its alterity. Paradoxically, while they are creatively imagined, the very terms of their (respective) projected otherness, or AI 'being,' indicate that it could well surpass the manner in which they are imagined.
One might say that they are depicted in such a way that, how they come across, clearly does not exhaust their supposed character. Furthermore, I would like to show that the aesthetic category of the sublime, as opposed to the beautiful, enables one to come to grips with such ineffable otherness, while serving, at the same time, as a salutary reminder that human beings cannot grasp the distinctive being of AI once and for all.
The three science fiction embodiments of AI inscrutability or otherness are encountered in Spike Jonze's film, Her, William Gibson's novel, Agency, and Dan Brown's novel, Origin. The eponymous AI character in Her, named Samantha (by 'herself' – already a clue to her otherness; 'she' could have named 'herself' anything, without detracting from who, or what, she is), is a newly installed OS or Operating System on a computer used by Theodore, a lonely man who writes letters online on behalf of people who cannot really write. In Gibson's novel, the AI is called Eunice (which, etymologically, means 'good victory'), and the novel addresses the question, whether, and how, a disembodied AI can have agency; that is, act, in the ...]]> Bert Olivier 13:04 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 36 68721 "Essentially, 2–3 people may have unfortunately died from a virus that has probably existed at least as long as humans," wrote David Bell two days ago, a former WHO physician and public health scientist. "The news story is that it was made into an international news story. Yesterday, about 4,000 people died of TB, and 2,000 children died of malaria. The same news services missed it."
Bell is right. The real story is not the outbreak aboard the cruise ship MV Hondius. The real story is that within days, it became international news. But perhaps even more interesting is the precise timing of this story.
The first cases aboard the vessel, which some media outlets quickly labeled the "virus ship" or even the "plague ship" – appeared in early April, shortly after the ship departed from Ushuaia, Argentina, on a voyage that was expected to include Antarctica and the Atlantic Ocean.
According to an official World Health Organization report, one passenger began developing symptoms on April 6 and died on April 11. In the days and weeks that followed, additional illnesses, deaths, and medical evacuations were reported.
On the surface, an international cruise ship experiencing serious illnesses and deaths during a voyage would seem destined to become an immediate global news story. But that did not happen.
Only weeks later, on May 1, the story suddenly received intense international coverage. Within a short time, headlines around the world warned of a "plague ship" at sea, passengers from 23 countries under monitoring, quarantine measures, and fears of human-to-human transmission.
After the Covid years, and the way the crisis unfolded in early 2020, the sense of déjà vu was almost unavoidable. An isolated cruise ship, passengers effectively trapped at sea, international monitoring, uncertainty about transmission, and the possibility that a localized event could evolve into a cross-border crisis.
That imagery remains deeply embedded in public memory because of the story of the Diamond Princess at the beginning of the Covid pandemic. The world followed the ship almost in real time as it became a kind of microcosm of global anxiety.
The Diamond Princess was one of the defining moments in which Covid shifted from a distant and ambiguous event into a global drama unfolding live before the world.
This time, the timing is particularly striking. On May 1, three days before the MV Hondius story received widespread international media attention, the World Health Organization announced yet another one-year delay in negotiations over the PABS annex of the Pandemic Agreement.
On the surface, this may appear to be just another technical delay within a cumbersome diplomatic process. In reality, however, it reflects one of the most significant crises the WHO has faced in the post-Covid era.
The dispute over PABS is far more than a bureaucratic disagreement. It is a symptom of a much broader and deepening crisis of trust surrounding the very idea of centralized global pandemic governance.
The WHO's Deeper Crisis
To understand why the timing of the MV Hondius story is so striking, one first has to understand the position in which the World Health Organization now finds itself.
The WHO's May 1 announcement of yet another one-year delay in negotiations over the PABS annex was far more than a routine diplomatic setback. It amounted to an acknowledgment that one of the organization's central post-Covid projects – a project with enormous international implications, has become stalled in a deep political and institutional deadlock.
At first glance, PABS – short for Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing – sounds like a technical mechanism. In reality, it lies at the heart of the broader conflict surrounding the Pandemic Agreement itself: who controls access to pathogens, genetic sequence data, and the technologies developed from them. This is a domain in which science, geopolitics, finance, and public health governance be...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/return-of-the-next-pandemic-script/ "Essentially, 2–3 people may have unfortunately died from a virus that has probably existed at least as long as humans," wrote David Bell two days ago, a former WHO physician and public health scientist. "The news story is that it was made into an international news story. Yesterday, about 4,000 people died of TB, and 2,000 children died of malaria. The same news services missed it."
Bell is right. The real story is not the outbreak aboard the cruise ship MV Hondius. The real story is that within days, it became international news. But perhaps even more interesting is the precise timing of this story.
The first cases aboard the vessel, which some media outlets quickly labeled the "virus ship" or even the "plague ship" – appeared in early April, shortly after the ship departed from Ushuaia, Argentina, on a voyage that was expected to include Antarctica and the Atlantic Ocean.
According to an official World Health Organization report, one passenger began developing symptoms on April 6 and died on April 11. In the days and weeks that followed, additional illnesses, deaths, and medical evacuations were reported.
On the surface, an international cruise ship experiencing serious illnesses and deaths during a voyage would seem destined to become an immediate global news story. But that did not happen.
Only weeks later, on May 1, the story suddenly received intense international coverage. Within a short time, headlines around the world warned of a "plague ship" at sea, passengers from 23 countries under monitoring, quarantine measures, and fears of human-to-human transmission.
After the Covid years, and the way the crisis unfolded in early 2020, the sense of déjà vu was almost unavoidable. An isolated cruise ship, passengers effectively trapped at sea, international monitoring, uncertainty about transmission, and the possibility that a localized event could evolve into a cross-border crisis.
That imagery remains deeply embedded in public memory because of the story of the Diamond Princess at the beginning of the Covid pandemic. The world followed the ship almost in real time as it became a kind of microcosm of global anxiety.
The Diamond Princess was one of the defining moments in which Covid shifted from a distant and ambiguous event into a global drama unfolding live before the world.
This time, the timing is particularly striking. On May 1, three days before the MV Hondius story received widespread international media attention, the World Health Organization announced yet another one-year delay in negotiations over the PABS annex of the Pandemic Agreement.
On the surface, this may appear to be just another technical delay within a cumbersome diplomatic process. In reality, however, it reflects one of the most significant crises the WHO has faced in the post-Covid era.
The dispute over PABS is far more than a bureaucratic disagreement. It is a symptom of a much broader and deepening crisis of trust surrounding the very idea of centralized global pandemic governance.
The WHO's Deeper Crisis
To understand why the timing of the MV Hondius story is so striking, one first has to understand the position in which the World Health Organization now finds itself.
The WHO's May 1 announcement of yet another one-year delay in negotiations over the PABS annex was far more than a routine diplomatic setback. It amounted to an acknowledgment that one of the organization's central post-Covid projects – a project with enormous international implications, has become stalled in a deep political and institutional deadlock.
At first glance, PABS – short for Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing – sounds like a technical mechanism. In reality, it lies at the heart of the broader conflict surrounding the Pandemic Agreement itself: who controls access to pathogens, genetic sequence data, and the technologies developed from them. This is a domain in which science, geopolitics, finance, and public health governance be...]]> Thu, 14 May 2026 07:40:00 -0400 Return of the Next Pandemic Script "Essentially, 2–3 people may have unfortunately died from a virus that has probably existed at least as long as humans," wrote David Bell two days ago, a former WHO physician and public health scientist. "The ne...]]> "Essentially, 2–3 people may have unfortunately died from a virus that has probably existed at least as long as humans," wrote David Bell two days ago, a former WHO physician and public health scientist. "The news story is that it was made into an international news story. Yesterday, about 4,000 people died of TB, and 2,000 children died of malaria. The same news services missed it."
Bell is right. The real story is not the outbreak aboard the cruise ship MV Hondius. The real story is that within days, it became international news. But perhaps even more interesting is the precise timing of this story.
The first cases aboard the vessel, which some media outlets quickly labeled the "virus ship" or even the "plague ship" – appeared in early April, shortly after the ship departed from Ushuaia, Argentina, on a voyage that was expected to include Antarctica and the Atlantic Ocean.
According to an official World Health Organization report, one passenger began developing symptoms on April 6 and died on April 11. In the days and weeks that followed, additional illnesses, deaths, and medical evacuations were reported.
On the surface, an international cruise ship experiencing serious illnesses and deaths during a voyage would seem destined to become an immediate global news story. But that did not happen.
Only weeks later, on May 1, the story suddenly received intense international coverage. Within a short time, headlines around the world warned of a "plague ship" at sea, passengers from 23 countries under monitoring, quarantine measures, and fears of human-to-human transmission.
After the Covid years, and the way the crisis unfolded in early 2020, the sense of déjà vu was almost unavoidable. An isolated cruise ship, passengers effectively trapped at sea, international monitoring, uncertainty about transmission, and the possibility that a localized event could evolve into a cross-border crisis.
That imagery remains deeply embedded in public memory because of the story of the Diamond Princess at the beginning of the Covid pandemic. The world followed the ship almost in real time as it became a kind of microcosm of global anxiety.
The Diamond Princess was one of the defining moments in which Covid shifted from a distant and ambiguous event into a global drama unfolding live before the world.
This time, the timing is particularly striking. On May 1, three days before the MV Hondius story received widespread international media attention, the World Health Organization announced yet another one-year delay in negotiations over the PABS annex of the Pandemic Agreement.
On the surface, this may appear to be just another technical delay within a cumbersome diplomatic process. In reality, however, it reflects one of the most significant crises the WHO has faced in the post-Covid era.
The dispute over PABS is far more than a bureaucratic disagreement. It is a symptom of a much broader and deepening crisis of trust surrounding the very idea of centralized global pandemic governance.
The WHO's Deeper Crisis
To understand why the timing of the MV Hondius story is so striking, one first has to understand the position in which the World Health Organization now finds itself.
The WHO's May 1 announcement of yet another one-year delay in negotiations over the PABS annex was far more than a routine diplomatic setback. It amounted to an acknowledgment that one of the organization's central post-Covid projects – a project with enormous international implications, has become stalled in a deep political and institutional deadlock.
At first glance, PABS – short for Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing – sounds like a technical mechanism. In reality, it lies at the heart of the broader conflict surrounding the Pandemic Agreement itself: who controls access to pathogens, genetic sequence data, and the technologies developed from them. This is a domain in which science, geopolitics, finance, and public health governance be...]]> Yaffa Shir-Raz 23:24 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 35 68718 Yesterday, almost 2,000 people, mostly young children, died of malaria because they could not access effective and relatively cheap treatment quickly enough. About 4,000 people died of tuberculosis (TB), including many young adults leaving orphans. This happens every day. Progress in reducing these numbers is stalling, as partly due to the continuing economic damage from the Covid-19 response.
In the past two weeks three tourists unfortunately died among about 150 passengers and crew on a cruise ship MV Hondius off the west coast of the African continent where most of those malaria and TB deaths occurred. The Hondius had a hantavirus outbreak, known to have infected less than 10 people but including at least two of those that died.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 10,000 to 100,000 hantavirus cases occur every year, spread across the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia. The current media coverage and WHO news conferences therefore concern about one-thousandth of the cases expected this year. The United States averages about 30 – they simply have not been newsworthy.
Hantavirus is transmitted from mice and rats through their feces, urine, saliva, or their bite. The Andean variety, which occurred on the cruise ship, can also sometimes transmit from a sick infected person. However, as the low number of cases on the ship demonstrates, the risk of human-human transmission is not great. It is, however, a nasty virus, with reported mortality around 15% of cases and sometimes significantly higher.
So, among the 170,000 average deaths in the world each day, and thousands from the WHO's traditional focus diseases, why the excitement over Hantavirus? Why the pictures of hazmat-suited emergency response crews and desperate contact tracing, when we don't usually notice? Why is the Director-General of the entire WHO spending so much time on this, when diseases of poverty are rising and basics such as nutrition funding are falling? A fascinating question.
The WHO wants the United States and Argentina to rejoin, and WHO DG Tedros Ghebreyesus has raised this in his hantavirus briefings. Multilateral cooperation in global health has demonstrably helped in addressing malaria and TB in the past, but reliance on detached and homogenous WHO recommendations for Covid worked out really badly. The WHO is wisely claiming the MV Hondius is not heralding a pandemic, but nonetheless are making all the mileage they can from the fear created around this epidemiologically irrelevant event.
Just two weeks ago, African nations also rejected (again) a pathogen-sharing requirement for the WHO's new Pandemic Agreement (treaty). This would require them to implement surveillance at their expense and provide data on pathogens to the WHO, which will then provide it to large Pharma companies to produce vaccines that the WHO will recommend and market.
Malaria and TB deaths should increase further through this process because the WHO wants over $10 billion from donor countries diverted to its pandemic agenda, and $20 billion spent by low- and middle-income countries to support it (the world spends about $3.5 billion on malaria each year). While malaria, TB, HIV, nutrition, and improving access to primary care clinics may be a greater priority for such countries, false charges of putting the world at risk by failing to sign the WHO's Pandemic Agreement may eventually prove too much to withstand.
A further potential influence is conflict of interest, though its impact on the current situation is unclear. The WHO's largest donor is now the Gates Foundation, a private operation directed by Bill Gates with a strong history of investment in the mRNA vaccine company Moderna. Moderna is working on a hantavirus mRNA vaccine, which is surprising from an investment perspective as the market seems small. How would a viable commercial market be ensured for a vaccine for such an obscure disease? This viable market requires larg...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/hantavirus-the-who-and-the-conflicts-in-weighing-mortality/ Yesterday, almost 2,000 people, mostly young children, died of malaria because they could not access effective and relatively cheap treatment quickly enough. About 4,000 people died of tuberculosis (TB), including many young adults leaving orphans. This happens every day. Progress in reducing these numbers is stalling, as partly due to the continuing economic damage from the Covid-19 response.
In the past two weeks three tourists unfortunately died among about 150 passengers and crew on a cruise ship MV Hondius off the west coast of the African continent where most of those malaria and TB deaths occurred. The Hondius had a hantavirus outbreak, known to have infected less than 10 people but including at least two of those that died.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 10,000 to 100,000 hantavirus cases occur every year, spread across the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia. The current media coverage and WHO news conferences therefore concern about one-thousandth of the cases expected this year. The United States averages about 30 – they simply have not been newsworthy.
Hantavirus is transmitted from mice and rats through their feces, urine, saliva, or their bite. The Andean variety, which occurred on the cruise ship, can also sometimes transmit from a sick infected person. However, as the low number of cases on the ship demonstrates, the risk of human-human transmission is not great. It is, however, a nasty virus, with reported mortality around 15% of cases and sometimes significantly higher.
So, among the 170,000 average deaths in the world each day, and thousands from the WHO's traditional focus diseases, why the excitement over Hantavirus? Why the pictures of hazmat-suited emergency response crews and desperate contact tracing, when we don't usually notice? Why is the Director-General of the entire WHO spending so much time on this, when diseases of poverty are rising and basics such as nutrition funding are falling? A fascinating question.
The WHO wants the United States and Argentina to rejoin, and WHO DG Tedros Ghebreyesus has raised this in his hantavirus briefings. Multilateral cooperation in global health has demonstrably helped in addressing malaria and TB in the past, but reliance on detached and homogenous WHO recommendations for Covid worked out really badly. The WHO is wisely claiming the MV Hondius is not heralding a pandemic, but nonetheless are making all the mileage they can from the fear created around this epidemiologically irrelevant event.
Just two weeks ago, African nations also rejected (again) a pathogen-sharing requirement for the WHO's new Pandemic Agreement (treaty). This would require them to implement surveillance at their expense and provide data on pathogens to the WHO, which will then provide it to large Pharma companies to produce vaccines that the WHO will recommend and market.
Malaria and TB deaths should increase further through this process because the WHO wants over $10 billion from donor countries diverted to its pandemic agenda, and $20 billion spent by low- and middle-income countries to support it (the world spends about $3.5 billion on malaria each year). While malaria, TB, HIV, nutrition, and improving access to primary care clinics may be a greater priority for such countries, false charges of putting the world at risk by failing to sign the WHO's Pandemic Agreement may eventually prove too much to withstand.
A further potential influence is conflict of interest, though its impact on the current situation is unclear. The WHO's largest donor is now the Gates Foundation, a private operation directed by Bill Gates with a strong history of investment in the mRNA vaccine company Moderna. Moderna is working on a hantavirus mRNA vaccine, which is surprising from an investment perspective as the market seems small. How would a viable commercial market be ensured for a vaccine for such an obscure disease? This viable market requires larg...]]> Wed, 13 May 2026 07:20:15 -0400 Hantavirus, the WHO, and the Conflicts in Weighing Mortality Yesterday, almost 2,000 people, mostly young children, died of malaria because they could not access effective and relatively cheap treatment quickly enough. About 4,000 people died of tuberculosis (TB), including m...]]> Yesterday, almost 2,000 people, mostly young children, died of malaria because they could not access effective and relatively cheap treatment quickly enough. About 4,000 people died of tuberculosis (TB), including many young adults leaving orphans. This happens every day. Progress in reducing these numbers is stalling, as partly due to the continuing economic damage from the Covid-19 response.
In the past two weeks three tourists unfortunately died among about 150 passengers and crew on a cruise ship MV Hondius off the west coast of the African continent where most of those malaria and TB deaths occurred. The Hondius had a hantavirus outbreak, known to have infected less than 10 people but including at least two of those that died.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 10,000 to 100,000 hantavirus cases occur every year, spread across the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia. The current media coverage and WHO news conferences therefore concern about one-thousandth of the cases expected this year. The United States averages about 30 – they simply have not been newsworthy.
Hantavirus is transmitted from mice and rats through their feces, urine, saliva, or their bite. The Andean variety, which occurred on the cruise ship, can also sometimes transmit from a sick infected person. However, as the low number of cases on the ship demonstrates, the risk of human-human transmission is not great. It is, however, a nasty virus, with reported mortality around 15% of cases and sometimes significantly higher.
So, among the 170,000 average deaths in the world each day, and thousands from the WHO's traditional focus diseases, why the excitement over Hantavirus? Why the pictures of hazmat-suited emergency response crews and desperate contact tracing, when we don't usually notice? Why is the Director-General of the entire WHO spending so much time on this, when diseases of poverty are rising and basics such as nutrition funding are falling? A fascinating question.
The WHO wants the United States and Argentina to rejoin, and WHO DG Tedros Ghebreyesus has raised this in his hantavirus briefings. Multilateral cooperation in global health has demonstrably helped in addressing malaria and TB in the past, but reliance on detached and homogenous WHO recommendations for Covid worked out really badly. The WHO is wisely claiming the MV Hondius is not heralding a pandemic, but nonetheless are making all the mileage they can from the fear created around this epidemiologically irrelevant event.
Just two weeks ago, African nations also rejected (again) a pathogen-sharing requirement for the WHO's new Pandemic Agreement (treaty). This would require them to implement surveillance at their expense and provide data on pathogens to the WHO, which will then provide it to large Pharma companies to produce vaccines that the WHO will recommend and market.
Malaria and TB deaths should increase further through this process because the WHO wants over $10 billion from donor countries diverted to its pandemic agenda, and $20 billion spent by low- and middle-income countries to support it (the world spends about $3.5 billion on malaria each year). While malaria, TB, HIV, nutrition, and improving access to primary care clinics may be a greater priority for such countries, false charges of putting the world at risk by failing to sign the WHO's Pandemic Agreement may eventually prove too much to withstand.
A further potential influence is conflict of interest, though its impact on the current situation is unclear. The WHO's largest donor is now the Gates Foundation, a private operation directed by Bill Gates with a strong history of investment in the mRNA vaccine company Moderna. Moderna is working on a hantavirus mRNA vaccine, which is surprising from an investment perspective as the market seems small. How would a viable commercial market be ensured for a vaccine for such an obscure disease? This viable market requires larg...]]> David Bell 06:01 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 34 68775 A leading columnist for the Washington Post just wrote: "Hantavirus has an incubation period of up to 8 weeks and kills 30-40% of people who show symptoms….It's not pandemic yet and probably won't be, but if it were, the rational action would be—lockdown." She added: "If this thing goes pandemic, I personally will be hiding in my house."
Yes, and let the workers and peasants deliver food and drink to you while you safely type and tell the rest of us what to do. We know how this works.
Keep in mind that no one thought this way a quarter century ago. No one was pushing for society-wide lockdowns in the event of a pandemic.
That changed in 2005. I wrote an article about it at the time. It was my first foray into commentary on pandemic planning. I can recall my shock that George W. Bush gave a presser in which he pushed for lockdowns. I was even more shocked that more people were not alarmed.
I wrote the following article reprinted below. So far as I know, I was alone in raising protest against this insanity. Here we are 20-plus years later and "lockdown until vaccinate" is the presumed protocol.
"Bush's Fowl Play," November 9, 2005 (reprinted from Bourbon for Breakfast).
In a classic case of News of the Weird, President Bush gave a press conference the other day to announce yet another central plan to deal with yet another disaster—this time an impending disaster, or so he claimed. It seems that some birds are catching a flu called Avian Influenza or, more commonly, the bird flu. It causes ruffled feathers and a drop in egg production. It can kill a chicken in two days flat. Scary.
The Chicken Littles at the White House got wind of this and decided to hatch a plan for dealing with the eventuality that it will wipe out whole cities inhabited by people. That's people, not birds. Bush wants $7.1 billion from you and me, in emergency funding no less, to protect us from the wrath of this disease, which, he says, could sweep the country and kill 1.9 million people and hospitalize another 9.9 million. Part of the money will go for "pandemic preparedness," and part will go to individual states so they can cobble together their own plans for our health and well-being.
As part of this plan, there is a website, pandemicflu.gov, which is also a helpful link if you haven't so far believed a word you have read. Here you can click around and find the Mother of All Flu Reports: The National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza. Be assured that "the federal government will use all instruments of national power to address the pandemic threat."
That includes FEMA, the Department of Homeland Security, and a hundred other concrete palaces in DC.
In this report you will find what you must do: be "prepared to follow public health guidance that may include limitation of attendance at public gatherings and non-essential travel for several days or weeks." The government, meanwhile, will establish "contingency systems to maintain delivery of essential goods and services during times of significant and sustained worker absenteeism."
Yes, we are really supposed to believe that the government will "maintain delivery" of "essential goods and services." Your job is to sit in your house and wait. Let's just say that government has a credibility problem here.
Also, the Bush administration has a role for the military to do for the flu what it did for terrorism in Iraq: "Determine the spectrum of public health, medical and veterinary surge capacity activities that the U.S. military and other government entities may be able to support during a pandemic." Remarkable what the military can do, from spreading democracy to liberating the oppressed to curing the sick—that is, when it is not making people sick or killing them for their own good.
Just to show that this isn't merely a perfunctory line, Bush went out of his way in his press conference to defend the role of the military. "One option is the use of a military that's able...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/george-bushs-2005-fowl-play/ A leading columnist for the Washington Post just wrote: "Hantavirus has an incubation period of up to 8 weeks and kills 30-40% of people who show symptoms….It's not pandemic yet and probably won't be, but if it were, the rational action would be—lockdown." She added: "If this thing goes pandemic, I personally will be hiding in my house."
Yes, and let the workers and peasants deliver food and drink to you while you safely type and tell the rest of us what to do. We know how this works.
Keep in mind that no one thought this way a quarter century ago. No one was pushing for society-wide lockdowns in the event of a pandemic.
That changed in 2005. I wrote an article about it at the time. It was my first foray into commentary on pandemic planning. I can recall my shock that George W. Bush gave a presser in which he pushed for lockdowns. I was even more shocked that more people were not alarmed.
I wrote the following article reprinted below. So far as I know, I was alone in raising protest against this insanity. Here we are 20-plus years later and "lockdown until vaccinate" is the presumed protocol.
"Bush's Fowl Play," November 9, 2005 (reprinted from Bourbon for Breakfast).
In a classic case of News of the Weird, President Bush gave a press conference the other day to announce yet another central plan to deal with yet another disaster—this time an impending disaster, or so he claimed. It seems that some birds are catching a flu called Avian Influenza or, more commonly, the bird flu. It causes ruffled feathers and a drop in egg production. It can kill a chicken in two days flat. Scary.
The Chicken Littles at the White House got wind of this and decided to hatch a plan for dealing with the eventuality that it will wipe out whole cities inhabited by people. That's people, not birds. Bush wants $7.1 billion from you and me, in emergency funding no less, to protect us from the wrath of this disease, which, he says, could sweep the country and kill 1.9 million people and hospitalize another 9.9 million. Part of the money will go for "pandemic preparedness," and part will go to individual states so they can cobble together their own plans for our health and well-being.
As part of this plan, there is a website, pandemicflu.gov, which is also a helpful link if you haven't so far believed a word you have read. Here you can click around and find the Mother of All Flu Reports: The National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza. Be assured that "the federal government will use all instruments of national power to address the pandemic threat."
That includes FEMA, the Department of Homeland Security, and a hundred other concrete palaces in DC.
In this report you will find what you must do: be "prepared to follow public health guidance that may include limitation of attendance at public gatherings and non-essential travel for several days or weeks." The government, meanwhile, will establish "contingency systems to maintain delivery of essential goods and services during times of significant and sustained worker absenteeism."
Yes, we are really supposed to believe that the government will "maintain delivery" of "essential goods and services." Your job is to sit in your house and wait. Let's just say that government has a credibility problem here.
Also, the Bush administration has a role for the military to do for the flu what it did for terrorism in Iraq: "Determine the spectrum of public health, medical and veterinary surge capacity activities that the U.S. military and other government entities may be able to support during a pandemic." Remarkable what the military can do, from spreading democracy to liberating the oppressed to curing the sick—that is, when it is not making people sick or killing them for their own good.
Just to show that this isn't merely a perfunctory line, Bush went out of his way in his press conference to defend the role of the military. "One option is the use of a military that's able...]]> Tue, 12 May 2026 07:35:00 -0400 George Bush's 2005 Fowl Play A leading columnist for the Washington Post just wrote: "Hantavirus has an incubation period of up to 8 weeks and kills 30-40% of people who show symptoms….It's not pandemic yet and probably won't be, but if ...]]> A leading columnist for the Washington Post just wrote: "Hantavirus has an incubation period of up to 8 weeks and kills 30-40% of people who show symptoms….It's not pandemic yet and probably won't be, but if it were, the rational action would be—lockdown." She added: "If this thing goes pandemic, I personally will be hiding in my house."
Yes, and let the workers and peasants deliver food and drink to you while you safely type and tell the rest of us what to do. We know how this works.
Keep in mind that no one thought this way a quarter century ago. No one was pushing for society-wide lockdowns in the event of a pandemic.
That changed in 2005. I wrote an article about it at the time. It was my first foray into commentary on pandemic planning. I can recall my shock that George W. Bush gave a presser in which he pushed for lockdowns. I was even more shocked that more people were not alarmed.
I wrote the following article reprinted below. So far as I know, I was alone in raising protest against this insanity. Here we are 20-plus years later and "lockdown until vaccinate" is the presumed protocol.
"Bush's Fowl Play," November 9, 2005 (reprinted from Bourbon for Breakfast).
In a classic case of News of the Weird, President Bush gave a press conference the other day to announce yet another central plan to deal with yet another disaster—this time an impending disaster, or so he claimed. It seems that some birds are catching a flu called Avian Influenza or, more commonly, the bird flu. It causes ruffled feathers and a drop in egg production. It can kill a chicken in two days flat. Scary.
The Chicken Littles at the White House got wind of this and decided to hatch a plan for dealing with the eventuality that it will wipe out whole cities inhabited by people. That's people, not birds. Bush wants $7.1 billion from you and me, in emergency funding no less, to protect us from the wrath of this disease, which, he says, could sweep the country and kill 1.9 million people and hospitalize another 9.9 million. Part of the money will go for "pandemic preparedness," and part will go to individual states so they can cobble together their own plans for our health and well-being.
As part of this plan, there is a website, pandemicflu.gov, which is also a helpful link if you haven't so far believed a word you have read. Here you can click around and find the Mother of All Flu Reports: The National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza. Be assured that "the federal government will use all instruments of national power to address the pandemic threat."
That includes FEMA, the Department of Homeland Security, and a hundred other concrete palaces in DC.
In this report you will find what you must do: be "prepared to follow public health guidance that may include limitation of attendance at public gatherings and non-essential travel for several days or weeks." The government, meanwhile, will establish "contingency systems to maintain delivery of essential goods and services during times of significant and sustained worker absenteeism."
Yes, we are really supposed to believe that the government will "maintain delivery" of "essential goods and services." Your job is to sit in your house and wait. Let's just say that government has a credibility problem here.
Also, the Bush administration has a role for the military to do for the flu what it did for terrorism in Iraq: "Determine the spectrum of public health, medical and veterinary surge capacity activities that the U.S. military and other government entities may be able to support during a pandemic." Remarkable what the military can do, from spreading democracy to liberating the oppressed to curing the sick—that is, when it is not making people sick or killing them for their own good.
Just to show that this isn't merely a perfunctory line, Bush went out of his way in his press conference to defend the role of the military. "One option is the use of a military that's able...]]> Jeffrey A. Tucker 09:19 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 33 68634 Periodically, the public faces a new microbial threat. The pattern is consistent: a tragic death or cluster of illnesses emerges, prompting newsrooms to employ dramatic language such as "deadly virus," "mysterious outbreak," and "health officials concerned." Social media further amplifies public fear. Public health agencies issue cautious statements, which journalists often reframe in alarmist terms. Within days, individuals previously unfamiliar with the terminology may become convinced that a civilization-ending epidemic is imminent. This month, it is hantavirus. Just turn on your TV sets and watch the number of newscasts depicting this "new illness."
For most Americans, hantavirus is not a new disease. It has existed for decades, particularly in rural areas where rodent exposure is common. Physicians, especially those in pulmonary and critical care medicine, have known about hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS) since the 1990s, when a cluster of severe respiratory illnesses in the American Southwest led investigators to identify the Sin Nombre virus carried by deer mice. Since that time, the total number of confirmed cases in the United States has remained extraordinarily small. According to CDC data, the cumulative number of cases over more than three decades nationwide barely exceeds 1,000.¹ This fact alone should prompt a reassessment of the emotional tone characterizing the current media coverage.
A disease responsible for approximately one thousand confirmed cases over three decades in a population exceeding 330 million does not constitute an existential societal threat. It is neither comparable to Covid-19 nor does it justify widespread public alarm. However, contemporary media systems are structurally ill-equipped to present rare infectious diseases in proportionate terms. Fear increases engagement, which in turn drives revenue, and dramatic narratives consistently overshadow measured epidemiological analysis.
As a clinician, I do not mean to suggest that hantavirus should be ignored. Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome can indeed be severe. Mortality rates in hospitalized patients may approach 30–40% in some series, particularly when diagnosis is delayed.² Patients may present with fever, myalgias, cough, and rapidly progressive respiratory failure. Intensive care physicians who have treated true HPS cases understand how devastating the illness can become. But severity is not the same thing as prevalence. A disease can be both dangerous and exceedingly uncommon.
Contemporary public discourse frequently fails to differentiate between these two concepts. This distinction matters because exaggerated risk perception carries consequences of its own. Constant fear messaging changes human behavior, distorts policy priorities, and damages public trust. After Covid-19, one might assume society would have learned the importance of measured communication. Instead, many institutions appear trapped in a perpetual cycle of alarmism. Every unusual pathogen is immediately framed through the lens of catastrophe. Every isolated event becomes a potential "emerging crisis." The result is a population psychologically conditioned to interpret uncertainty as imminent disaster.
The irony is that the actual preventive measures for hantavirus are remarkably mundane and have been known for decades. Avoid rodent infestations. Use gloves and a mask when cleaning heavily contaminated enclosed spaces, such as sheds or cabins. Ventilate areas before sweeping droppings. Seal food containers. Maintain sanitation. These are practical environmental hygiene recommendations, not civilization-altering mandates. There is no evidence-based justification for widespread public panic.
One of the more troubling aspects of the current cycle is how headlines often omit the denominator context. A report may announce a "confirmed hantavirus death" without mentioning that such events remain extraordinarily rare. Human psychology t...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-hantavirus-panic-machine-when-rare-diseases-become-media-theater/ Periodically, the public faces a new microbial threat. The pattern is consistent: a tragic death or cluster of illnesses emerges, prompting newsrooms to employ dramatic language such as "deadly virus," "mysterious outbreak," and "health officials concerned." Social media further amplifies public fear. Public health agencies issue cautious statements, which journalists often reframe in alarmist terms. Within days, individuals previously unfamiliar with the terminology may become convinced that a civilization-ending epidemic is imminent. This month, it is hantavirus. Just turn on your TV sets and watch the number of newscasts depicting this "new illness."
For most Americans, hantavirus is not a new disease. It has existed for decades, particularly in rural areas where rodent exposure is common. Physicians, especially those in pulmonary and critical care medicine, have known about hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS) since the 1990s, when a cluster of severe respiratory illnesses in the American Southwest led investigators to identify the Sin Nombre virus carried by deer mice. Since that time, the total number of confirmed cases in the United States has remained extraordinarily small. According to CDC data, the cumulative number of cases over more than three decades nationwide barely exceeds 1,000.¹ This fact alone should prompt a reassessment of the emotional tone characterizing the current media coverage.
A disease responsible for approximately one thousand confirmed cases over three decades in a population exceeding 330 million does not constitute an existential societal threat. It is neither comparable to Covid-19 nor does it justify widespread public alarm. However, contemporary media systems are structurally ill-equipped to present rare infectious diseases in proportionate terms. Fear increases engagement, which in turn drives revenue, and dramatic narratives consistently overshadow measured epidemiological analysis.
As a clinician, I do not mean to suggest that hantavirus should be ignored. Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome can indeed be severe. Mortality rates in hospitalized patients may approach 30–40% in some series, particularly when diagnosis is delayed.² Patients may present with fever, myalgias, cough, and rapidly progressive respiratory failure. Intensive care physicians who have treated true HPS cases understand how devastating the illness can become. But severity is not the same thing as prevalence. A disease can be both dangerous and exceedingly uncommon.
Contemporary public discourse frequently fails to differentiate between these two concepts. This distinction matters because exaggerated risk perception carries consequences of its own. Constant fear messaging changes human behavior, distorts policy priorities, and damages public trust. After Covid-19, one might assume society would have learned the importance of measured communication. Instead, many institutions appear trapped in a perpetual cycle of alarmism. Every unusual pathogen is immediately framed through the lens of catastrophe. Every isolated event becomes a potential "emerging crisis." The result is a population psychologically conditioned to interpret uncertainty as imminent disaster.
The irony is that the actual preventive measures for hantavirus are remarkably mundane and have been known for decades. Avoid rodent infestations. Use gloves and a mask when cleaning heavily contaminated enclosed spaces, such as sheds or cabins. Ventilate areas before sweeping droppings. Seal food containers. Maintain sanitation. These are practical environmental hygiene recommendations, not civilization-altering mandates. There is no evidence-based justification for widespread public panic.
One of the more troubling aspects of the current cycle is how headlines often omit the denominator context. A report may announce a "confirmed hantavirus death" without mentioning that such events remain extraordinarily rare. Human psychology t...]]> Mon, 11 May 2026 07:40:00 -0400 The Hantavirus Panic Machine: When Rare Diseases Become Media Theater Periodically, the public faces a new microbial threat. The pattern is consistent: a tragic death or cluster of illnesses emerges, prompting newsrooms to employ dramatic language such as "deadly virus," "mysterious...]]> Periodically, the public faces a new microbial threat. The pattern is consistent: a tragic death or cluster of illnesses emerges, prompting newsrooms to employ dramatic language such as "deadly virus," "mysterious outbreak," and "health officials concerned." Social media further amplifies public fear. Public health agencies issue cautious statements, which journalists often reframe in alarmist terms. Within days, individuals previously unfamiliar with the terminology may become convinced that a civilization-ending epidemic is imminent. This month, it is hantavirus. Just turn on your TV sets and watch the number of newscasts depicting this "new illness."
For most Americans, hantavirus is not a new disease. It has existed for decades, particularly in rural areas where rodent exposure is common. Physicians, especially those in pulmonary and critical care medicine, have known about hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS) since the 1990s, when a cluster of severe respiratory illnesses in the American Southwest led investigators to identify the Sin Nombre virus carried by deer mice. Since that time, the total number of confirmed cases in the United States has remained extraordinarily small. According to CDC data, the cumulative number of cases over more than three decades nationwide barely exceeds 1,000.¹ This fact alone should prompt a reassessment of the emotional tone characterizing the current media coverage.
A disease responsible for approximately one thousand confirmed cases over three decades in a population exceeding 330 million does not constitute an existential societal threat. It is neither comparable to Covid-19 nor does it justify widespread public alarm. However, contemporary media systems are structurally ill-equipped to present rare infectious diseases in proportionate terms. Fear increases engagement, which in turn drives revenue, and dramatic narratives consistently overshadow measured epidemiological analysis.
As a clinician, I do not mean to suggest that hantavirus should be ignored. Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome can indeed be severe. Mortality rates in hospitalized patients may approach 30–40% in some series, particularly when diagnosis is delayed.² Patients may present with fever, myalgias, cough, and rapidly progressive respiratory failure. Intensive care physicians who have treated true HPS cases understand how devastating the illness can become. But severity is not the same thing as prevalence. A disease can be both dangerous and exceedingly uncommon.
Contemporary public discourse frequently fails to differentiate between these two concepts. This distinction matters because exaggerated risk perception carries consequences of its own. Constant fear messaging changes human behavior, distorts policy priorities, and damages public trust. After Covid-19, one might assume society would have learned the importance of measured communication. Instead, many institutions appear trapped in a perpetual cycle of alarmism. Every unusual pathogen is immediately framed through the lens of catastrophe. Every isolated event becomes a potential "emerging crisis." The result is a population psychologically conditioned to interpret uncertainty as imminent disaster.
The irony is that the actual preventive measures for hantavirus are remarkably mundane and have been known for decades. Avoid rodent infestations. Use gloves and a mask when cleaning heavily contaminated enclosed spaces, such as sheds or cabins. Ventilate areas before sweeping droppings. Seal food containers. Maintain sanitation. These are practical environmental hygiene recommendations, not civilization-altering mandates. There is no evidence-based justification for widespread public panic.
One of the more troubling aspects of the current cycle is how headlines often omit the denominator context. A report may announce a "confirmed hantavirus death" without mentioning that such events remain extraordinarily rare. Human psychology t...]]> Joseph Varon 16:11 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 32 68622 The WHO, Big Pharma, and the other bad actors behind the Covid catastrophe are at it again.
At this writing, they're churning out industrial-strength fear porn regarding an alleged outbreak of Hantavirus infections aboard a small cruise ship, the MV Hondius. If all this gives you flashbacks to the Diamond Princess cruise ship incident from the early days of Covid, you're not alone.
But before we all hide in our closets (again) until Moderna and friends save us (again) with another toxic gene-therapy pseudo-vaccine (which of course, they and about a dozen other Big Pharma profiteers have been working on for years), let's take a moment to consider the pathogen in question – Hantavirus.
I have seen one case of Hantavirus in my 30-year career in internal medicine. It happened around the year 2000, when I was a young physician with the Indian Health Service on the Navajo Reservation. A Navajo man presented to clinic, initially having been feverish with severe muscle aches for several days. Later he developed progressively worsening shortness of breath, which prompted him to seek our attention.
His chest X-ray showed a pattern consistent with diffuse bilateral pulmonary edema – fluid throughout both lungs. It was springtime, and he had been cleaning out a mouse-infested shed several days before, sweeping and vacuuming mouse droppings in the process. I cannot claim that I made the diagnosis. An older, more experienced physician, who had seen one or two similar cases of Hantavirus in the past, recognized the cause.
The patient was treated with "supportive care," maintaining his blood pressure with IV fluids and his breathing with supplemental oxygen. He was very sick, but I recall he did not require endotracheal intubation and mechanical ventilation. (Back in the good old days, we never intubated and ventilated anyone unless it was absolutely necessary.) Eventually the patient made a full recovery.
Even today, this case is instructive for several reasons.
First, the case reveals the natural reservoir of Hantaviruses. As my trusty old copy of Mandell's Principles and Practices of Infectious Diseases states, "These agents are fundamentally parasites of wild rodents and insectivores." Mandell goes on to state that "each presently recognized [hantavirus] viral species has a single major rodent host species." (Italics my own.)
In other words, certain species of rodents and insect-eating mammals (e.g. voles) harbor specific species of Hantavirus. It doesn't just float around in the ether, nor are human beings a reservoir of the virus. They simply aren't.
Second, Hantavirus disease is rare in humans. It is rarely spread to humans from its natural rodent hosts. When that does happen, it is usually due to the inhalation by humans of virus-infected droppings or dried urine.
Third, before this episode on the cruise ship, human-to-human hantavirus transmission was essentially unheard of. Well, apparently not exactly. According to a report in NPR:
"There are like 20 to 30 different species of hantavirus worldwide that can cause human disease, and there is only one [of those] species — the Andes Virus, which is found in Argentina and Chile — that has been implicated in human-to-human transmission," explains Dr. Emily Abdoler, a clinical associate professor of medicine at the University of Michigan. "One of the first clues that emerged is that this ship disembarked from Argentina."
Color me skeptical. It's hardly enough that these passengers happened to have visited Argentina, which happens to harbor the one species of hantavirus that happens to have been "implicated in human-to-human transmission" to suddenly determine that a naturally-occurring, contagious Hantavirus strain is circumnavigating the globe aboard cruise ships.
As I mentioned previously, Hantavirus is the subject of intense "vaccine" research by over a dozen research groups, including such established bad actors in the field as the US ...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/is-this-hantavirus-a-bioweapon/ The WHO, Big Pharma, and the other bad actors behind the Covid catastrophe are at it again.
At this writing, they're churning out industrial-strength fear porn regarding an alleged outbreak of Hantavirus infections aboard a small cruise ship, the MV Hondius. If all this gives you flashbacks to the Diamond Princess cruise ship incident from the early days of Covid, you're not alone.
But before we all hide in our closets (again) until Moderna and friends save us (again) with another toxic gene-therapy pseudo-vaccine (which of course, they and about a dozen other Big Pharma profiteers have been working on for years), let's take a moment to consider the pathogen in question – Hantavirus.
I have seen one case of Hantavirus in my 30-year career in internal medicine. It happened around the year 2000, when I was a young physician with the Indian Health Service on the Navajo Reservation. A Navajo man presented to clinic, initially having been feverish with severe muscle aches for several days. Later he developed progressively worsening shortness of breath, which prompted him to seek our attention.
His chest X-ray showed a pattern consistent with diffuse bilateral pulmonary edema – fluid throughout both lungs. It was springtime, and he had been cleaning out a mouse-infested shed several days before, sweeping and vacuuming mouse droppings in the process. I cannot claim that I made the diagnosis. An older, more experienced physician, who had seen one or two similar cases of Hantavirus in the past, recognized the cause.
The patient was treated with "supportive care," maintaining his blood pressure with IV fluids and his breathing with supplemental oxygen. He was very sick, but I recall he did not require endotracheal intubation and mechanical ventilation. (Back in the good old days, we never intubated and ventilated anyone unless it was absolutely necessary.) Eventually the patient made a full recovery.
Even today, this case is instructive for several reasons.
First, the case reveals the natural reservoir of Hantaviruses. As my trusty old copy of Mandell's Principles and Practices of Infectious Diseases states, "These agents are fundamentally parasites of wild rodents and insectivores." Mandell goes on to state that "each presently recognized [hantavirus] viral species has a single major rodent host species." (Italics my own.)
In other words, certain species of rodents and insect-eating mammals (e.g. voles) harbor specific species of Hantavirus. It doesn't just float around in the ether, nor are human beings a reservoir of the virus. They simply aren't.
Second, Hantavirus disease is rare in humans. It is rarely spread to humans from its natural rodent hosts. When that does happen, it is usually due to the inhalation by humans of virus-infected droppings or dried urine.
Third, before this episode on the cruise ship, human-to-human hantavirus transmission was essentially unheard of. Well, apparently not exactly. According to a report in NPR:
"There are like 20 to 30 different species of hantavirus worldwide that can cause human disease, and there is only one [of those] species — the Andes Virus, which is found in Argentina and Chile — that has been implicated in human-to-human transmission," explains Dr. Emily Abdoler, a clinical associate professor of medicine at the University of Michigan. "One of the first clues that emerged is that this ship disembarked from Argentina."
Color me skeptical. It's hardly enough that these passengers happened to have visited Argentina, which happens to harbor the one species of hantavirus that happens to have been "implicated in human-to-human transmission" to suddenly determine that a naturally-occurring, contagious Hantavirus strain is circumnavigating the globe aboard cruise ships.
As I mentioned previously, Hantavirus is the subject of intense "vaccine" research by over a dozen research groups, including such established bad actors in the field as the US ...]]> Sun, 10 May 2026 09:35:00 -0400 Is This Hantavirus a Bioweapon? The WHO, Big Pharma, and the other bad actors behind the Covid catastrophe are at it again.
At this writing, they're churning out industrial-strength fear porn regarding an alleged outbreak of Hantavirus i...]]> The WHO, Big Pharma, and the other bad actors behind the Covid catastrophe are at it again.
At this writing, they're churning out industrial-strength fear porn regarding an alleged outbreak of Hantavirus infections aboard a small cruise ship, the MV Hondius. If all this gives you flashbacks to the Diamond Princess cruise ship incident from the early days of Covid, you're not alone.
But before we all hide in our closets (again) until Moderna and friends save us (again) with another toxic gene-therapy pseudo-vaccine (which of course, they and about a dozen other Big Pharma profiteers have been working on for years), let's take a moment to consider the pathogen in question – Hantavirus.
I have seen one case of Hantavirus in my 30-year career in internal medicine. It happened around the year 2000, when I was a young physician with the Indian Health Service on the Navajo Reservation. A Navajo man presented to clinic, initially having been feverish with severe muscle aches for several days. Later he developed progressively worsening shortness of breath, which prompted him to seek our attention.
His chest X-ray showed a pattern consistent with diffuse bilateral pulmonary edema – fluid throughout both lungs. It was springtime, and he had been cleaning out a mouse-infested shed several days before, sweeping and vacuuming mouse droppings in the process. I cannot claim that I made the diagnosis. An older, more experienced physician, who had seen one or two similar cases of Hantavirus in the past, recognized the cause.
The patient was treated with "supportive care," maintaining his blood pressure with IV fluids and his breathing with supplemental oxygen. He was very sick, but I recall he did not require endotracheal intubation and mechanical ventilation. (Back in the good old days, we never intubated and ventilated anyone unless it was absolutely necessary.) Eventually the patient made a full recovery.
Even today, this case is instructive for several reasons.
First, the case reveals the natural reservoir of Hantaviruses. As my trusty old copy of Mandell's Principles and Practices of Infectious Diseases states, "These agents are fundamentally parasites of wild rodents and insectivores." Mandell goes on to state that "each presently recognized [hantavirus] viral species has a single major rodent host species." (Italics my own.)
In other words, certain species of rodents and insect-eating mammals (e.g. voles) harbor specific species of Hantavirus. It doesn't just float around in the ether, nor are human beings a reservoir of the virus. They simply aren't.
Second, Hantavirus disease is rare in humans. It is rarely spread to humans from its natural rodent hosts. When that does happen, it is usually due to the inhalation by humans of virus-infected droppings or dried urine.
Third, before this episode on the cruise ship, human-to-human hantavirus transmission was essentially unheard of. Well, apparently not exactly. According to a report in NPR:
"There are like 20 to 30 different species of hantavirus worldwide that can cause human disease, and there is only one [of those] species — the Andes Virus, which is found in Argentina and Chile — that has been implicated in human-to-human transmission," explains Dr. Emily Abdoler, a clinical associate professor of medicine at the University of Michigan. "One of the first clues that emerged is that this ship disembarked from Argentina."
Color me skeptical. It's hardly enough that these passengers happened to have visited Argentina, which happens to harbor the one species of hantavirus that happens to have been "implicated in human-to-human transmission" to suddenly determine that a naturally-occurring, contagious Hantavirus strain is circumnavigating the globe aboard cruise ships.
As I mentioned previously, Hantavirus is the subject of intense "vaccine" research by over a dozen research groups, including such established bad actors in the field as the US ...]]> Clayton J. Baker, MD 04:48 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 31 68618 On 25 May 2025, after three years of negotiation under the auspices of the World Health Organization (WHO), the Pandemic Agreement was adopted. In reality, the vote was a provisional outcome of an incomplete treaty which postponed decisions on a number of contentious articles, including the required financing, sharing of intellectual property and biological samples, and transfer of manufacturing know-how and pharmaceutical products on concessional terms, to follow-up negotiations.
The objective of the treaty 'is to prevent, prepare for and respond to pandemics' and, to this end, its provisions will 'apply both during and between pandemics.'
Parties also committed to developing a Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing System (PABS), in the form of an annex to the pandemic treaty, through negotiations in order to promote rapid and timely sharing of materials and sequence information on pathogens with pandemic potential. In return, as part of benefit sharing, participating manufacturers would commit to donating a percentage of their real-time production of safe, high-quality, and effective vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics for the pathogen causing the pandemic emergency. An additional share of the products would also be made available to the WHO 'at affordable prices.'
The treaty cannot be opened for signature until after the PABS has been negotiated and adopted. It will enter into force 30 days after 60 countries have ratified the treaty. A party may withdraw from the treaty at any time after two years from membership by giving a one-year notice.
The beleaguered WHO hosted a total of six rounds of oftentimes acrimonious negotiations on the plan to run the global infrastructure for future pandemics. The original timeline had set a negotiated PABS to be adopted by the World Health Assembly, the governing body of the WHO, at its annual session in May this year. Instead, on 1 May the WHO conceded that even the resumed sixth session of the Intergovernmental Working Group (IGWG) on the WHO Pandemic Agreement had failed to bridge the differences. Accordingly, the Health Assembly will be asked to extend the mandate of the IGWG so it can present an agreed PABS system for adoption in May 2027. The next IGWG negotiating session is scheduled for 6–17 July.
The Risk of Institutionalising WHO Governance Deficits
The text currently under negotiation risks institutionalising the governance failures that defined the Covid-19 response rather than correcting them. It concentrates authority in the WHO without adequate accountability to member states, locks in emergency-mode assumptions about future health, and risks overriding the sovereign responsibility of national governments to determine health policy for their own populations. It would entrench existing inequities while burdening developing countries with unrealistic financial and compliance demands. It is therefore a bad deal for low- and middle-income countries, which make up the majority of the world's population.
To be clear, the talks are not failing because countries disagree—that is to be expected in any serious negotiation. They are failing because dissent on the parameters of a contested framework is being managed and deflected, rather than engaged and accommodated. The process appears designed to produce agreement using the language of creative ambiguity. When an agreement becomes a proxy for institutional success that masks substantive disagreement over purpose and pathways, the goal has shifted from 'getting it right' to simply 'getting it done.'
Rather than prompting a fundamental rethink, these concerns are being absorbed into incremental adjustments—tweaks to language, minor concessions on access or vague commitments to future flexibility. The concerns raised by Global South delegations reflect real structural tensions in the global health system between public and private goods, donors and recipients, and centralised control and nat...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/divided-by-contagion-health-as-sovereign-responsibility/ On 25 May 2025, after three years of negotiation under the auspices of the World Health Organization (WHO), the Pandemic Agreement was adopted. In reality, the vote was a provisional outcome of an incomplete treaty which postponed decisions on a number of contentious articles, including the required financing, sharing of intellectual property and biological samples, and transfer of manufacturing know-how and pharmaceutical products on concessional terms, to follow-up negotiations.
The objective of the treaty 'is to prevent, prepare for and respond to pandemics' and, to this end, its provisions will 'apply both during and between pandemics.'
Parties also committed to developing a Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing System (PABS), in the form of an annex to the pandemic treaty, through negotiations in order to promote rapid and timely sharing of materials and sequence information on pathogens with pandemic potential. In return, as part of benefit sharing, participating manufacturers would commit to donating a percentage of their real-time production of safe, high-quality, and effective vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics for the pathogen causing the pandemic emergency. An additional share of the products would also be made available to the WHO 'at affordable prices.'
The treaty cannot be opened for signature until after the PABS has been negotiated and adopted. It will enter into force 30 days after 60 countries have ratified the treaty. A party may withdraw from the treaty at any time after two years from membership by giving a one-year notice.
The beleaguered WHO hosted a total of six rounds of oftentimes acrimonious negotiations on the plan to run the global infrastructure for future pandemics. The original timeline had set a negotiated PABS to be adopted by the World Health Assembly, the governing body of the WHO, at its annual session in May this year. Instead, on 1 May the WHO conceded that even the resumed sixth session of the Intergovernmental Working Group (IGWG) on the WHO Pandemic Agreement had failed to bridge the differences. Accordingly, the Health Assembly will be asked to extend the mandate of the IGWG so it can present an agreed PABS system for adoption in May 2027. The next IGWG negotiating session is scheduled for 6–17 July.
The Risk of Institutionalising WHO Governance Deficits
The text currently under negotiation risks institutionalising the governance failures that defined the Covid-19 response rather than correcting them. It concentrates authority in the WHO without adequate accountability to member states, locks in emergency-mode assumptions about future health, and risks overriding the sovereign responsibility of national governments to determine health policy for their own populations. It would entrench existing inequities while burdening developing countries with unrealistic financial and compliance demands. It is therefore a bad deal for low- and middle-income countries, which make up the majority of the world's population.
To be clear, the talks are not failing because countries disagree—that is to be expected in any serious negotiation. They are failing because dissent on the parameters of a contested framework is being managed and deflected, rather than engaged and accommodated. The process appears designed to produce agreement using the language of creative ambiguity. When an agreement becomes a proxy for institutional success that masks substantive disagreement over purpose and pathways, the goal has shifted from 'getting it right' to simply 'getting it done.'
Rather than prompting a fundamental rethink, these concerns are being absorbed into incremental adjustments—tweaks to language, minor concessions on access or vague commitments to future flexibility. The concerns raised by Global South delegations reflect real structural tensions in the global health system between public and private goods, donors and recipients, and centralised control and nat...]]> Sat, 09 May 2026 08:48:54 -0400 Divided by Contagion: Health as Sovereign Responsibility On 25 May 2025, after three years of negotiation under the auspices of the World Health Organization (WHO), the Pandemic Agreement was adopted. In reality, the vote was a provisional outcome of an incomplete trea...]]> On 25 May 2025, after three years of negotiation under the auspices of the World Health Organization (WHO), the Pandemic Agreement was adopted. In reality, the vote was a provisional outcome of an incomplete treaty which postponed decisions on a number of contentious articles, including the required financing, sharing of intellectual property and biological samples, and transfer of manufacturing know-how and pharmaceutical products on concessional terms, to follow-up negotiations.
The objective of the treaty 'is to prevent, prepare for and respond to pandemics' and, to this end, its provisions will 'apply both during and between pandemics.'
Parties also committed to developing a Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing System (PABS), in the form of an annex to the pandemic treaty, through negotiations in order to promote rapid and timely sharing of materials and sequence information on pathogens with pandemic potential. In return, as part of benefit sharing, participating manufacturers would commit to donating a percentage of their real-time production of safe, high-quality, and effective vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics for the pathogen causing the pandemic emergency. An additional share of the products would also be made available to the WHO 'at affordable prices.'
The treaty cannot be opened for signature until after the PABS has been negotiated and adopted. It will enter into force 30 days after 60 countries have ratified the treaty. A party may withdraw from the treaty at any time after two years from membership by giving a one-year notice.
The beleaguered WHO hosted a total of six rounds of oftentimes acrimonious negotiations on the plan to run the global infrastructure for future pandemics. The original timeline had set a negotiated PABS to be adopted by the World Health Assembly, the governing body of the WHO, at its annual session in May this year. Instead, on 1 May the WHO conceded that even the resumed sixth session of the Intergovernmental Working Group (IGWG) on the WHO Pandemic Agreement had failed to bridge the differences. Accordingly, the Health Assembly will be asked to extend the mandate of the IGWG so it can present an agreed PABS system for adoption in May 2027. The next IGWG negotiating session is scheduled for 6–17 July.
The Risk of Institutionalising WHO Governance Deficits
The text currently under negotiation risks institutionalising the governance failures that defined the Covid-19 response rather than correcting them. It concentrates authority in the WHO without adequate accountability to member states, locks in emergency-mode assumptions about future health, and risks overriding the sovereign responsibility of national governments to determine health policy for their own populations. It would entrench existing inequities while burdening developing countries with unrealistic financial and compliance demands. It is therefore a bad deal for low- and middle-income countries, which make up the majority of the world's population.
To be clear, the talks are not failing because countries disagree—that is to be expected in any serious negotiation. They are failing because dissent on the parameters of a contested framework is being managed and deflected, rather than engaged and accommodated. The process appears designed to produce agreement using the language of creative ambiguity. When an agreement becomes a proxy for institutional success that masks substantive disagreement over purpose and pathways, the goal has shifted from 'getting it right' to simply 'getting it done.'
Rather than prompting a fundamental rethink, these concerns are being absorbed into incremental adjustments—tweaks to language, minor concessions on access or vague commitments to future flexibility. The concerns raised by Global South delegations reflect real structural tensions in the global health system between public and private goods, donors and recipients, and centralised control and nat...]]> Ramesh Thakur 18:13 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 30 68575 Here's a good current example of medical irony: the same week that our drug regulator, Health Canada, approved the first generic version of semaglutide—the active ingredient in weight-loss drug Ozempic—a major medical journal published findings highlighting the medication's troubling connection to eating disorders.
The timing couldn't be more paradoxical: just as this powerful appetite suppressant becomes more accessible and affordable to millions of Canadians, we're learning more about its potential to trigger dangerous psychological relationships with food. What we do know, as the New England Journal of Medicine reminded us, is that these drugs come with a range of troubling side effects, which you can discover if you have the fortitude to unwrap the numbing medicalese they use to describe them. The NEJM article describes the link to eating disorders as well as a range of other troubling effects including "nutrient deficiencies, electrolyte abnormalities, orthostatic hypotension, osteopenia, sarcopenia, thinning hair, and other signs of malnutrition." Then the last spike, unlikely to deliver any discomfort is that "the effects of long-term use are still largely unknown." Amen to that.
This same week, two different generic drug companies, one from India and one from Canada, were given licenses to sell generic semaglutide. This has been called a "long-awaited moment for diabetes and weight management treatment," yet let's not break out the champagne yet. We Canadians are going to be the canaries in the coal mine on this, as we're the first G-7 country to approve the generic version of Ozempic. Up until now it has mostly been sticker shock preventing a lot of people from jumping on the Ozempic bandwagon, but when that barrier is gone? Open the floodgates.
The Canadian media was all over this exciting new development, delivering fulsome praise for the arrival of the cheap stuff which will massively increase the size of the GLP-1 market in Canada. The generic version (which is currently only approved for type-2 diabetes) will probably enter the market at 75% the price of the brand name, but as more and more companies start producing generics, the price could fall as far as a quarter of its current price.
I imagine citizens of the United States have no sympathy for Canadians as the price of our Ozempic is already about one-fifth what it currently is in the US. When the generics hit the market we might be paying about one-tenth of what Americans are paying. Expanding the use of this class of drugs to countless patients previously priced out of treatment might be cheered as a major public health victory, but the triumph is shadowed by emerging evidence about semaglutide's darker psychological effects.
As the New England Journal of Medicine reported, recent studies and clinical reports have documented concerning patterns: Some patients develop restrictive eating behaviors, obsessively monitor their food, and in some cases, develop full-blown eating disorders. The very mechanism that makes these drugs effective—dramatically suppressing appetite and slowing gastric emptying—can apparently trigger psychological responses that mirror anorexia nervosa and other eating disorders.
With one in eight US adults — or approximately 33 million people — reportedly having taken GLP-1 drugs, this proportion translates to more than 420,000 people who could develop a related eating disorder with long-term use. About 3% of Canadians are currently prescribed GLP-1 medications (including semaglutide/Ozempic, liraglutide, tirzepatide, etc.) equating to potentially tens of thousands of cases of eating disorders.
The irony runs deeper than mere timing. Semaglutide medications like Ozempic were originally developed for type 2 diabetes but weight loss soon emerged as the most beneficial (and profitable) side effect. As these drugs gained popularity for cosmetic weight loss—often prescribed off-label to people without ...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-ozempic-paradox/ Here's a good current example of medical irony: the same week that our drug regulator, Health Canada, approved the first generic version of semaglutide—the active ingredient in weight-loss drug Ozempic—a major medical journal published findings highlighting the medication's troubling connection to eating disorders.
The timing couldn't be more paradoxical: just as this powerful appetite suppressant becomes more accessible and affordable to millions of Canadians, we're learning more about its potential to trigger dangerous psychological relationships with food. What we do know, as the New England Journal of Medicine reminded us, is that these drugs come with a range of troubling side effects, which you can discover if you have the fortitude to unwrap the numbing medicalese they use to describe them. The NEJM article describes the link to eating disorders as well as a range of other troubling effects including "nutrient deficiencies, electrolyte abnormalities, orthostatic hypotension, osteopenia, sarcopenia, thinning hair, and other signs of malnutrition." Then the last spike, unlikely to deliver any discomfort is that "the effects of long-term use are still largely unknown." Amen to that.
This same week, two different generic drug companies, one from India and one from Canada, were given licenses to sell generic semaglutide. This has been called a "long-awaited moment for diabetes and weight management treatment," yet let's not break out the champagne yet. We Canadians are going to be the canaries in the coal mine on this, as we're the first G-7 country to approve the generic version of Ozempic. Up until now it has mostly been sticker shock preventing a lot of people from jumping on the Ozempic bandwagon, but when that barrier is gone? Open the floodgates.
The Canadian media was all over this exciting new development, delivering fulsome praise for the arrival of the cheap stuff which will massively increase the size of the GLP-1 market in Canada. The generic version (which is currently only approved for type-2 diabetes) will probably enter the market at 75% the price of the brand name, but as more and more companies start producing generics, the price could fall as far as a quarter of its current price.
I imagine citizens of the United States have no sympathy for Canadians as the price of our Ozempic is already about one-fifth what it currently is in the US. When the generics hit the market we might be paying about one-tenth of what Americans are paying. Expanding the use of this class of drugs to countless patients previously priced out of treatment might be cheered as a major public health victory, but the triumph is shadowed by emerging evidence about semaglutide's darker psychological effects.
As the New England Journal of Medicine reported, recent studies and clinical reports have documented concerning patterns: Some patients develop restrictive eating behaviors, obsessively monitor their food, and in some cases, develop full-blown eating disorders. The very mechanism that makes these drugs effective—dramatically suppressing appetite and slowing gastric emptying—can apparently trigger psychological responses that mirror anorexia nervosa and other eating disorders.
With one in eight US adults — or approximately 33 million people — reportedly having taken GLP-1 drugs, this proportion translates to more than 420,000 people who could develop a related eating disorder with long-term use. About 3% of Canadians are currently prescribed GLP-1 medications (including semaglutide/Ozempic, liraglutide, tirzepatide, etc.) equating to potentially tens of thousands of cases of eating disorders.
The irony runs deeper than mere timing. Semaglutide medications like Ozempic were originally developed for type 2 diabetes but weight loss soon emerged as the most beneficial (and profitable) side effect. As these drugs gained popularity for cosmetic weight loss—often prescribed off-label to people without ...]]> Fri, 08 May 2026 07:00:00 -0400 The Ozempic Paradox Here's a good current example of medical irony: the same week that our drug regulator, Health Canada, approved the first generic version of semaglutide—the active ingredient in weight-loss drug Ozempic—a major med...]]> Here's a good current example of medical irony: the same week that our drug regulator, Health Canada, approved the first generic version of semaglutide—the active ingredient in weight-loss drug Ozempic—a major medical journal published findings highlighting the medication's troubling connection to eating disorders.
The timing couldn't be more paradoxical: just as this powerful appetite suppressant becomes more accessible and affordable to millions of Canadians, we're learning more about its potential to trigger dangerous psychological relationships with food. What we do know, as the New England Journal of Medicine reminded us, is that these drugs come with a range of troubling side effects, which you can discover if you have the fortitude to unwrap the numbing medicalese they use to describe them. The NEJM article describes the link to eating disorders as well as a range of other troubling effects including "nutrient deficiencies, electrolyte abnormalities, orthostatic hypotension, osteopenia, sarcopenia, thinning hair, and other signs of malnutrition." Then the last spike, unlikely to deliver any discomfort is that "the effects of long-term use are still largely unknown." Amen to that.
This same week, two different generic drug companies, one from India and one from Canada, were given licenses to sell generic semaglutide. This has been called a "long-awaited moment for diabetes and weight management treatment," yet let's not break out the champagne yet. We Canadians are going to be the canaries in the coal mine on this, as we're the first G-7 country to approve the generic version of Ozempic. Up until now it has mostly been sticker shock preventing a lot of people from jumping on the Ozempic bandwagon, but when that barrier is gone? Open the floodgates.
The Canadian media was all over this exciting new development, delivering fulsome praise for the arrival of the cheap stuff which will massively increase the size of the GLP-1 market in Canada. The generic version (which is currently only approved for type-2 diabetes) will probably enter the market at 75% the price of the brand name, but as more and more companies start producing generics, the price could fall as far as a quarter of its current price.
I imagine citizens of the United States have no sympathy for Canadians as the price of our Ozempic is already about one-fifth what it currently is in the US. When the generics hit the market we might be paying about one-tenth of what Americans are paying. Expanding the use of this class of drugs to countless patients previously priced out of treatment might be cheered as a major public health victory, but the triumph is shadowed by emerging evidence about semaglutide's darker psychological effects.
As the New England Journal of Medicine reported, recent studies and clinical reports have documented concerning patterns: Some patients develop restrictive eating behaviors, obsessively monitor their food, and in some cases, develop full-blown eating disorders. The very mechanism that makes these drugs effective—dramatically suppressing appetite and slowing gastric emptying—can apparently trigger psychological responses that mirror anorexia nervosa and other eating disorders.
With one in eight US adults — or approximately 33 million people — reportedly having taken GLP-1 drugs, this proportion translates to more than 420,000 people who could develop a related eating disorder with long-term use. About 3% of Canadians are currently prescribed GLP-1 medications (including semaglutide/Ozempic, liraglutide, tirzepatide, etc.) equating to potentially tens of thousands of cases of eating disorders.
The irony runs deeper than mere timing. Semaglutide medications like Ozempic were originally developed for type 2 diabetes but weight loss soon emerged as the most beneficial (and profitable) side effect. As these drugs gained popularity for cosmetic weight loss—often prescribed off-label to people without ...]]> Alan Cassels 06:24 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 29 68553 Hollywood loves a good sequel and so does politics and pharmaceutical development.
Since Covid, there have been several attempted disease scares – Mpox, Swine flu, Bird flu, Chikungunya, Measles – but nothing has really caught the attention of audiences like the new Hantavirus frenzy.
Today's evidence comes from DRUDGE REPORT: global effort to stop the spread. Is "flatten the curve" next?

Let's remember how this began last year, with of course, a hantavirus death in the family of one of America's most beloved Hollywood actors. It was Betsy Arakawa, Gene Hackman's wife, who died February 12, 2025, from apparent hantavirus infection from rodents in the home. Terrifying image.
At that point, no regular person had ever heard of such a disease. There is a reason. It's rare and human-to-human spread is nearly unknown. Strange that it would hit the wife of the appropriately named Gene Hackman (get it?), leading man of the prescient 1998 movie Enemy of the State.
Next up we have a reprise of the Plague Ship motif. Like the Diamond Princess, it is a cruise ship, the MV Hondius operated by Oceanwide Expeditions with 147 passengers, departing from Argentina and now anchored off Cape Verde, West Africa.
It was headed to the Canary Islands when three people died, two with lab-confirmed hantavirus. No port would allow the ship to dock. With the assistance of rescue boats, the dead have been carefully removed by workers in hazmats and masks.

A flight attendant who came in contact with a dead body is now hospitalized and in rough condition, suggesting that even coming close to a person with hantavirus is risky stuff. No one can figure out how this is even possible. So mysterious, so unusual, so terrifying, just like the movie Contagion.
This fits with the theory of Drs. Fauci and Morens that we need not worry about lab-created pathogens when animal-to-human spillover is becoming more common. This is why, they wrote in August 2020, that we must commence to "rebuilding the infrastructures of human existence, from cities to homes to workplaces, to water and sewer systems, to recreational and gatherings venues."
Ready to opine for the press is the World Health Organization's Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, she of Stanford University pedigree, now widely quoted as the go-to authority.
You might remember Dr. Kerkhove from the original cast of the Covid production. It was she who wrote the WHO's report to the world following the February 2020 junket to Wuhan. (We know this from the metadata of the report, which she failed to cleanse in the rush to publication.)
"Achieving China's exceptional coverage with and adherence to these containment measures," she wrote of the CCP's extreme lockdowns, "has only been possible due to the deep commitment of the Chinese people to collective action in the face of this common threat. At a community level this is reflected in the remarkable solidarity of provinces and cities in support of the most vulnerable populations and communities."
Many close observers credit Kerkhove's report with inspiring the worldwide lockdown of all nations but four in the following weeks. She still works at the WHO. Hardly anyone remembers any of this. There is no mechanism in place for her to be held to account for her role.
There is no known cure but a vaccine is in development by Moderna based on the mRNA platform.

As a result, Moderna's stock, down dramatically from its highs, is now starting to recover. It is now up 100 percent year over year. The buy signal is strong with this one.

Looking back at the Covid prequel, there was always a flaw in the coronavirus caper, namely its short period of latency, roughly that of a cold or flu. You are infectious for a few days without symptoms while you pass it on. A genuine disease panic needs a longer period of latency. You need to be infected for weeks while spreading it far and wide.
Why is this? Because every infectious disease confronts the lo...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/hantavirus-stop-the-spread-is-back/ Hollywood loves a good sequel and so does politics and pharmaceutical development.
Since Covid, there have been several attempted disease scares – Mpox, Swine flu, Bird flu, Chikungunya, Measles – but nothing has really caught the attention of audiences like the new Hantavirus frenzy.
Today's evidence comes from DRUDGE REPORT: global effort to stop the spread. Is "flatten the curve" next?

Let's remember how this began last year, with of course, a hantavirus death in the family of one of America's most beloved Hollywood actors. It was Betsy Arakawa, Gene Hackman's wife, who died February 12, 2025, from apparent hantavirus infection from rodents in the home. Terrifying image.
At that point, no regular person had ever heard of such a disease. There is a reason. It's rare and human-to-human spread is nearly unknown. Strange that it would hit the wife of the appropriately named Gene Hackman (get it?), leading man of the prescient 1998 movie Enemy of the State.
Next up we have a reprise of the Plague Ship motif. Like the Diamond Princess, it is a cruise ship, the MV Hondius operated by Oceanwide Expeditions with 147 passengers, departing from Argentina and now anchored off Cape Verde, West Africa.
It was headed to the Canary Islands when three people died, two with lab-confirmed hantavirus. No port would allow the ship to dock. With the assistance of rescue boats, the dead have been carefully removed by workers in hazmats and masks.

A flight attendant who came in contact with a dead body is now hospitalized and in rough condition, suggesting that even coming close to a person with hantavirus is risky stuff. No one can figure out how this is even possible. So mysterious, so unusual, so terrifying, just like the movie Contagion.
This fits with the theory of Drs. Fauci and Morens that we need not worry about lab-created pathogens when animal-to-human spillover is becoming more common. This is why, they wrote in August 2020, that we must commence to "rebuilding the infrastructures of human existence, from cities to homes to workplaces, to water and sewer systems, to recreational and gatherings venues."
Ready to opine for the press is the World Health Organization's Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, she of Stanford University pedigree, now widely quoted as the go-to authority.
You might remember Dr. Kerkhove from the original cast of the Covid production. It was she who wrote the WHO's report to the world following the February 2020 junket to Wuhan. (We know this from the metadata of the report, which she failed to cleanse in the rush to publication.)
"Achieving China's exceptional coverage with and adherence to these containment measures," she wrote of the CCP's extreme lockdowns, "has only been possible due to the deep commitment of the Chinese people to collective action in the face of this common threat. At a community level this is reflected in the remarkable solidarity of provinces and cities in support of the most vulnerable populations and communities."
Many close observers credit Kerkhove's report with inspiring the worldwide lockdown of all nations but four in the following weeks. She still works at the WHO. Hardly anyone remembers any of this. There is no mechanism in place for her to be held to account for her role.
There is no known cure but a vaccine is in development by Moderna based on the mRNA platform.

As a result, Moderna's stock, down dramatically from its highs, is now starting to recover. It is now up 100 percent year over year. The buy signal is strong with this one.

Looking back at the Covid prequel, there was always a flaw in the coronavirus caper, namely its short period of latency, roughly that of a cold or flu. You are infectious for a few days without symptoms while you pass it on. A genuine disease panic needs a longer period of latency. You need to be infected for weeks while spreading it far and wide.
Why is this? Because every infectious disease confronts the lo...]]> Thu, 07 May 2026 11:35:43 -0400 Hantavirus: Stop the Spread Is Back Hollywood loves a good sequel and so does politics and pharmaceutical development.
Since Covid, there have been several attempted disease scares – Mpox, Swine flu, Bird flu, Chikungunya, Measles – but noth...]]> Hollywood loves a good sequel and so does politics and pharmaceutical development.
Since Covid, there have been several attempted disease scares – Mpox, Swine flu, Bird flu, Chikungunya, Measles – but nothing has really caught the attention of audiences like the new Hantavirus frenzy.
Today's evidence comes from DRUDGE REPORT: global effort to stop the spread. Is "flatten the curve" next?

Let's remember how this began last year, with of course, a hantavirus death in the family of one of America's most beloved Hollywood actors. It was Betsy Arakawa, Gene Hackman's wife, who died February 12, 2025, from apparent hantavirus infection from rodents in the home. Terrifying image.
At that point, no regular person had ever heard of such a disease. There is a reason. It's rare and human-to-human spread is nearly unknown. Strange that it would hit the wife of the appropriately named Gene Hackman (get it?), leading man of the prescient 1998 movie Enemy of the State.
Next up we have a reprise of the Plague Ship motif. Like the Diamond Princess, it is a cruise ship, the MV Hondius operated by Oceanwide Expeditions with 147 passengers, departing from Argentina and now anchored off Cape Verde, West Africa.
It was headed to the Canary Islands when three people died, two with lab-confirmed hantavirus. No port would allow the ship to dock. With the assistance of rescue boats, the dead have been carefully removed by workers in hazmats and masks.

A flight attendant who came in contact with a dead body is now hospitalized and in rough condition, suggesting that even coming close to a person with hantavirus is risky stuff. No one can figure out how this is even possible. So mysterious, so unusual, so terrifying, just like the movie Contagion.
This fits with the theory of Drs. Fauci and Morens that we need not worry about lab-created pathogens when animal-to-human spillover is becoming more common. This is why, they wrote in August 2020, that we must commence to "rebuilding the infrastructures of human existence, from cities to homes to workplaces, to water and sewer systems, to recreational and gatherings venues."
Ready to opine for the press is the World Health Organization's Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, she of Stanford University pedigree, now widely quoted as the go-to authority.
You might remember Dr. Kerkhove from the original cast of the Covid production. It was she who wrote the WHO's report to the world following the February 2020 junket to Wuhan. (We know this from the metadata of the report, which she failed to cleanse in the rush to publication.)
"Achieving China's exceptional coverage with and adherence to these containment measures," she wrote of the CCP's extreme lockdowns, "has only been possible due to the deep commitment of the Chinese people to collective action in the face of this common threat. At a community level this is reflected in the remarkable solidarity of provinces and cities in support of the most vulnerable populations and communities."
Many close observers credit Kerkhove's report with inspiring the worldwide lockdown of all nations but four in the following weeks. She still works at the WHO. Hardly anyone remembers any of this. There is no mechanism in place for her to be held to account for her role.
There is no known cure but a vaccine is in development by Moderna based on the mRNA platform.

As a result, Moderna's stock, down dramatically from its highs, is now starting to recover. It is now up 100 percent year over year. The buy signal is strong with this one.

Looking back at the Covid prequel, there was always a flaw in the coronavirus caper, namely its short period of latency, roughly that of a cold or flu. You are infectious for a few days without symptoms while you pass it on. A genuine disease panic needs a longer period of latency. You need to be infected for weeks while spreading it far and wide.
Why is this? Because every infectious disease confronts the lo...]]> Brownstone Institute 06:12 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 28 68464 Recently, I rented a 2026 Toyota RAV4 hybrid. A more spacious car than I needed but perfect for those who fantasize helming a yacht from a captain's chair along intercostal waterways; and for those who require the instrumentation of their dashboards to be only slightly more complex than consoles in 747 cockpits.
As for me, I prefer my 2004 Toyota Corolla, termed by its regular mechanic as "the tank" because of its durability and seeming indestructibility. Besides a burned-out clutch it has never needed major repairs. (In their design of that model, Toyota forgot the memo about planned obsolescence.) I require from my Corolla only that it goes where I point it and stops on command. The rest I can figure out.
So imagine my alarm after I slid into the rental and started the engine. The large dashboard screen above the radio lit up and announced Toyota Audio Multimedia Services with functions for Roadside Assistance, Destination Assist, Cloud Navigation, Intelligent Assist, Driver Support, Proactive Driving Assist, Lane Change Assist, Traffic Jam Assist, and Dynamic Radar Cruise Control.
As I shifted into Reverse to back out of my spot, a pinging startled me. The screen flashed to an aerial view of my car's position in a space bounded by colored lines (a "Driver Assist" feature that I appreciated as otherwise I wouldn't have known where my car was or that I was actually in it). "CHECK SURROUNDINGS FOR SAFETY" the screen commanded.
Pondering that novel idea I exited the lot onto a country road. I drove maybe two hundred feet before a fresh set of images on the screen drew my glance. With my touch of ADHD I couldn't resist. Instantly, a message flashed on the dashboard directly in front of me: "DRIVER INATTENTION DETECTED. LOOK FORWARD." I spewed a few bad words at my omniscient nanny. (Fortunately, my cell phone was off so Siri couldn't hear me. Or maybe she could and was too embarrassed to comment. Who knows these days?)
To compound the insult, when I approached an intersection the electronic nursemaid finger-wagged, "CAUTION: CROSSING TRAFFIC DETECTED." And I don't know how I could have arrived at my destination in one piece if it hadn't continued to flash for the duration of my journey the official speed limit for my route even though road signs were perfectly visible. Not to mention, thank God, that it alerted me throughout with a luminescent "D" that the gearshift was in Drive as opposed to Reverse, Neutral, or Park, the only four gears available. Once, when I parked briefly to study a street map, "VEHICLE WILL TURN OFF IF PARKED FOR 1 HOUR. PERFORM AUTO OFF?" followed with a YES and a NO button in case I couldn't recognize a question when I saw one or was unaware of the binary choices for my reply.
You may laugh at this idiocy. I did at first. Then I reflected upon its implications. Starting in 2027, by federal law all new cars in the US must contain such functions plus a kill switch that stops the car if the driver shows signs of impairment like sudden swerving or the appearance of fatigue, intoxication, or inattention. Accordingly, my RAV4 rental represented a vanguard of the new smart cars designed to do one thing, and one thing only. It is not to make us safer. How does a chip that stops your car in the middle of a highway do that? A dashboard screen that distracts the driver with enough bling to make a neon-lit Times Square billboard blush—how does that make us safer? Safety is not the agenda; it rarely is anymore. No, the purpose is to seduce us into surrendering our agency, our autonomy.
This anecdote coalesces with other contemporary phenomena that prompt us to jettison self-governance because of convenience, time savings, submission to authority, laziness, and/or fear: reliance on electronics to tell us where to go (GPS), what to think (AI, Siri, Alexa), how to count (calculators), how we function (wearables). We need only to lift a finger—literally—to have our smartphone...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/cruising-toward-enslavement/ Recently, I rented a 2026 Toyota RAV4 hybrid. A more spacious car than I needed but perfect for those who fantasize helming a yacht from a captain's chair along intercostal waterways; and for those who require the instrumentation of their dashboards to be only slightly more complex than consoles in 747 cockpits.
As for me, I prefer my 2004 Toyota Corolla, termed by its regular mechanic as "the tank" because of its durability and seeming indestructibility. Besides a burned-out clutch it has never needed major repairs. (In their design of that model, Toyota forgot the memo about planned obsolescence.) I require from my Corolla only that it goes where I point it and stops on command. The rest I can figure out.
So imagine my alarm after I slid into the rental and started the engine. The large dashboard screen above the radio lit up and announced Toyota Audio Multimedia Services with functions for Roadside Assistance, Destination Assist, Cloud Navigation, Intelligent Assist, Driver Support, Proactive Driving Assist, Lane Change Assist, Traffic Jam Assist, and Dynamic Radar Cruise Control.
As I shifted into Reverse to back out of my spot, a pinging startled me. The screen flashed to an aerial view of my car's position in a space bounded by colored lines (a "Driver Assist" feature that I appreciated as otherwise I wouldn't have known where my car was or that I was actually in it). "CHECK SURROUNDINGS FOR SAFETY" the screen commanded.
Pondering that novel idea I exited the lot onto a country road. I drove maybe two hundred feet before a fresh set of images on the screen drew my glance. With my touch of ADHD I couldn't resist. Instantly, a message flashed on the dashboard directly in front of me: "DRIVER INATTENTION DETECTED. LOOK FORWARD." I spewed a few bad words at my omniscient nanny. (Fortunately, my cell phone was off so Siri couldn't hear me. Or maybe she could and was too embarrassed to comment. Who knows these days?)
To compound the insult, when I approached an intersection the electronic nursemaid finger-wagged, "CAUTION: CROSSING TRAFFIC DETECTED." And I don't know how I could have arrived at my destination in one piece if it hadn't continued to flash for the duration of my journey the official speed limit for my route even though road signs were perfectly visible. Not to mention, thank God, that it alerted me throughout with a luminescent "D" that the gearshift was in Drive as opposed to Reverse, Neutral, or Park, the only four gears available. Once, when I parked briefly to study a street map, "VEHICLE WILL TURN OFF IF PARKED FOR 1 HOUR. PERFORM AUTO OFF?" followed with a YES and a NO button in case I couldn't recognize a question when I saw one or was unaware of the binary choices for my reply.
You may laugh at this idiocy. I did at first. Then I reflected upon its implications. Starting in 2027, by federal law all new cars in the US must contain such functions plus a kill switch that stops the car if the driver shows signs of impairment like sudden swerving or the appearance of fatigue, intoxication, or inattention. Accordingly, my RAV4 rental represented a vanguard of the new smart cars designed to do one thing, and one thing only. It is not to make us safer. How does a chip that stops your car in the middle of a highway do that? A dashboard screen that distracts the driver with enough bling to make a neon-lit Times Square billboard blush—how does that make us safer? Safety is not the agenda; it rarely is anymore. No, the purpose is to seduce us into surrendering our agency, our autonomy.
This anecdote coalesces with other contemporary phenomena that prompt us to jettison self-governance because of convenience, time savings, submission to authority, laziness, and/or fear: reliance on electronics to tell us where to go (GPS), what to think (AI, Siri, Alexa), how to count (calculators), how we function (wearables). We need only to lift a finger—literally—to have our smartphone...]]> Thu, 07 May 2026 07:07:01 -0400 Cruising Toward Enslavement Recently, I rented a 2026 Toyota RAV4 hybrid. A more spacious car than I needed but perfect for those who fantasize helming a yacht from a captain's chair along intercostal waterways; and for those who require...]]> Recently, I rented a 2026 Toyota RAV4 hybrid. A more spacious car than I needed but perfect for those who fantasize helming a yacht from a captain's chair along intercostal waterways; and for those who require the instrumentation of their dashboards to be only slightly more complex than consoles in 747 cockpits.
As for me, I prefer my 2004 Toyota Corolla, termed by its regular mechanic as "the tank" because of its durability and seeming indestructibility. Besides a burned-out clutch it has never needed major repairs. (In their design of that model, Toyota forgot the memo about planned obsolescence.) I require from my Corolla only that it goes where I point it and stops on command. The rest I can figure out.
So imagine my alarm after I slid into the rental and started the engine. The large dashboard screen above the radio lit up and announced Toyota Audio Multimedia Services with functions for Roadside Assistance, Destination Assist, Cloud Navigation, Intelligent Assist, Driver Support, Proactive Driving Assist, Lane Change Assist, Traffic Jam Assist, and Dynamic Radar Cruise Control.
As I shifted into Reverse to back out of my spot, a pinging startled me. The screen flashed to an aerial view of my car's position in a space bounded by colored lines (a "Driver Assist" feature that I appreciated as otherwise I wouldn't have known where my car was or that I was actually in it). "CHECK SURROUNDINGS FOR SAFETY" the screen commanded.
Pondering that novel idea I exited the lot onto a country road. I drove maybe two hundred feet before a fresh set of images on the screen drew my glance. With my touch of ADHD I couldn't resist. Instantly, a message flashed on the dashboard directly in front of me: "DRIVER INATTENTION DETECTED. LOOK FORWARD." I spewed a few bad words at my omniscient nanny. (Fortunately, my cell phone was off so Siri couldn't hear me. Or maybe she could and was too embarrassed to comment. Who knows these days?)
To compound the insult, when I approached an intersection the electronic nursemaid finger-wagged, "CAUTION: CROSSING TRAFFIC DETECTED." And I don't know how I could have arrived at my destination in one piece if it hadn't continued to flash for the duration of my journey the official speed limit for my route even though road signs were perfectly visible. Not to mention, thank God, that it alerted me throughout with a luminescent "D" that the gearshift was in Drive as opposed to Reverse, Neutral, or Park, the only four gears available. Once, when I parked briefly to study a street map, "VEHICLE WILL TURN OFF IF PARKED FOR 1 HOUR. PERFORM AUTO OFF?" followed with a YES and a NO button in case I couldn't recognize a question when I saw one or was unaware of the binary choices for my reply.
You may laugh at this idiocy. I did at first. Then I reflected upon its implications. Starting in 2027, by federal law all new cars in the US must contain such functions plus a kill switch that stops the car if the driver shows signs of impairment like sudden swerving or the appearance of fatigue, intoxication, or inattention. Accordingly, my RAV4 rental represented a vanguard of the new smart cars designed to do one thing, and one thing only. It is not to make us safer. How does a chip that stops your car in the middle of a highway do that? A dashboard screen that distracts the driver with enough bling to make a neon-lit Times Square billboard blush—how does that make us safer? Safety is not the agenda; it rarely is anymore. No, the purpose is to seduce us into surrendering our agency, our autonomy.
This anecdote coalesces with other contemporary phenomena that prompt us to jettison self-governance because of convenience, time savings, submission to authority, laziness, and/or fear: reliance on electronics to tell us where to go (GPS), what to think (AI, Siri, Alexa), how to count (calculators), how we function (wearables). We need only to lift a finger—literally—to have our smartphone...]]> Steven Goldsmith 06:19 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 27 68388 Finalization of the much-heralded Pandemic Agreement, the flagship of the World Health Organization's pandemic agenda, has just been postponed again after another failure to resolve disagreements. Despite heavy pressure from the WHO and European Union in yet another meeting, in Geneva, Switzerland, a large bloc of African states are refusing to sign on to what they consider a clear colonialist agenda. Which of course it is, aimed at putting Covid-era wealth transfers on a more permanent footing.
The WHO, for reasons explained below, is doing what it is paid to do. Major financial sponsors of the WHO have much to gain from getting this Agreement through. It has fallen on African leaders, attuned to the model of rich countries and their corporations imposing rules designed for wealth extraction, to protect the rest of us from the farce that the current public health approach to pandemics has become.
The fact that the agency tasked with building capacity and promoting sustainability of low-income health systems is instead doing the opposite now needs to become the center issue of this whole shabby episode. It is time for the international public health community to face itself and decide on which side, people or profit, it should stand.
The Modern Basis of Multilateral Health Cooperation
There are obvious reasons for countries to cooperate in matters of health, as there are for neighbors on a suburban street. Mutual interest in facing common threats where action by neighboring States, or access to their resources, helps protect your own. Moral reasons based on the generally accepted 'good' of helping neighbors when they are in difficulty or lack resources through no fault of their own. Or because a stable and more prosperous neighborhood (world) is good for business, and a sick one may not be.
Cooperation is not submission, and few self-respecting people would opt for that. Mutual interests and morality all dissolve fairly quickly when cooperation becomes coercion, and the interests of the most powerful player then become the goal. Health is well-defined in the WHO's constitution as physical, mental, and social well-being. Accordingly, it rests on economics and social capital and is degraded by poverty and inequality. Neither aspect of well-being – mental, social, or physical – is supported by forced compliance or slavery.
The basis of modern medical ethics hinges on Hippocrates' assertions on physician conduct from around 400BC, commonly summarized as to do good rather than harm and respect a patient's privacy (confidentiality). As a counter to fascism since the Second World War, we added voluntary informed consent (i.e. absence of coercion). This means the final decision in any aspect of medical care or intervention must rest with the individual concerned.
These basic medical ethics rest on the concept that all people are equal and their individual sovereignty (i.e. bodily autonomy) is inviolable. Accordingly, it is obviously unethical to force a person to be injected or undergo some other procedure just because someone else wants them to, or for a third person's benefit. Unethical, that is, outside a medico-fascist or similarly authoritarian approach that post-World War Two human rights law was supposed to suppress. There were very good reasons why we stopped all that, even if it makes the streets look cleaner and we are assured it is for a "greater good."
As the Hippocratic Oath and voluntary informed consent govern clinical medical practice, public health is consequently subject to the same requirements at a community, national, and global level. Populations are the sum of individuals, each as noted being imbued with equal rights and intrinsic sovereignty.
Therefore, decisions made at a regional or global level can only be made by agencies over which those individuals, as a collective, exert control. This is the basis of the UN charter – sovereign States – the best means we have of exp...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-pandemic-agreement-fails-again/ Finalization of the much-heralded Pandemic Agreement, the flagship of the World Health Organization's pandemic agenda, has just been postponed again after another failure to resolve disagreements. Despite heavy pressure from the WHO and European Union in yet another meeting, in Geneva, Switzerland, a large bloc of African states are refusing to sign on to what they consider a clear colonialist agenda. Which of course it is, aimed at putting Covid-era wealth transfers on a more permanent footing.
The WHO, for reasons explained below, is doing what it is paid to do. Major financial sponsors of the WHO have much to gain from getting this Agreement through. It has fallen on African leaders, attuned to the model of rich countries and their corporations imposing rules designed for wealth extraction, to protect the rest of us from the farce that the current public health approach to pandemics has become.
The fact that the agency tasked with building capacity and promoting sustainability of low-income health systems is instead doing the opposite now needs to become the center issue of this whole shabby episode. It is time for the international public health community to face itself and decide on which side, people or profit, it should stand.
The Modern Basis of Multilateral Health Cooperation
There are obvious reasons for countries to cooperate in matters of health, as there are for neighbors on a suburban street. Mutual interest in facing common threats where action by neighboring States, or access to their resources, helps protect your own. Moral reasons based on the generally accepted 'good' of helping neighbors when they are in difficulty or lack resources through no fault of their own. Or because a stable and more prosperous neighborhood (world) is good for business, and a sick one may not be.
Cooperation is not submission, and few self-respecting people would opt for that. Mutual interests and morality all dissolve fairly quickly when cooperation becomes coercion, and the interests of the most powerful player then become the goal. Health is well-defined in the WHO's constitution as physical, mental, and social well-being. Accordingly, it rests on economics and social capital and is degraded by poverty and inequality. Neither aspect of well-being – mental, social, or physical – is supported by forced compliance or slavery.
The basis of modern medical ethics hinges on Hippocrates' assertions on physician conduct from around 400BC, commonly summarized as to do good rather than harm and respect a patient's privacy (confidentiality). As a counter to fascism since the Second World War, we added voluntary informed consent (i.e. absence of coercion). This means the final decision in any aspect of medical care or intervention must rest with the individual concerned.
These basic medical ethics rest on the concept that all people are equal and their individual sovereignty (i.e. bodily autonomy) is inviolable. Accordingly, it is obviously unethical to force a person to be injected or undergo some other procedure just because someone else wants them to, or for a third person's benefit. Unethical, that is, outside a medico-fascist or similarly authoritarian approach that post-World War Two human rights law was supposed to suppress. There were very good reasons why we stopped all that, even if it makes the streets look cleaner and we are assured it is for a "greater good."
As the Hippocratic Oath and voluntary informed consent govern clinical medical practice, public health is consequently subject to the same requirements at a community, national, and global level. Populations are the sum of individuals, each as noted being imbued with equal rights and intrinsic sovereignty.
Therefore, decisions made at a regional or global level can only be made by agencies over which those individuals, as a collective, exert control. This is the basis of the UN charter – sovereign States – the best means we have of exp...]]> Wed, 06 May 2026 07:40:00 -0400 The Pandemic Agreement Fails Again Finalization of the much-heralded Pandemic Agreement, the flagship of the World Health Organization's pandemic agenda, has just been postponed again after another failure to resolve disagreements. Despite heavy pres...]]> Finalization of the much-heralded Pandemic Agreement, the flagship of the World Health Organization's pandemic agenda, has just been postponed again after another failure to resolve disagreements. Despite heavy pressure from the WHO and European Union in yet another meeting, in Geneva, Switzerland, a large bloc of African states are refusing to sign on to what they consider a clear colonialist agenda. Which of course it is, aimed at putting Covid-era wealth transfers on a more permanent footing.
The WHO, for reasons explained below, is doing what it is paid to do. Major financial sponsors of the WHO have much to gain from getting this Agreement through. It has fallen on African leaders, attuned to the model of rich countries and their corporations imposing rules designed for wealth extraction, to protect the rest of us from the farce that the current public health approach to pandemics has become.
The fact that the agency tasked with building capacity and promoting sustainability of low-income health systems is instead doing the opposite now needs to become the center issue of this whole shabby episode. It is time for the international public health community to face itself and decide on which side, people or profit, it should stand.
The Modern Basis of Multilateral Health Cooperation
There are obvious reasons for countries to cooperate in matters of health, as there are for neighbors on a suburban street. Mutual interest in facing common threats where action by neighboring States, or access to their resources, helps protect your own. Moral reasons based on the generally accepted 'good' of helping neighbors when they are in difficulty or lack resources through no fault of their own. Or because a stable and more prosperous neighborhood (world) is good for business, and a sick one may not be.
Cooperation is not submission, and few self-respecting people would opt for that. Mutual interests and morality all dissolve fairly quickly when cooperation becomes coercion, and the interests of the most powerful player then become the goal. Health is well-defined in the WHO's constitution as physical, mental, and social well-being. Accordingly, it rests on economics and social capital and is degraded by poverty and inequality. Neither aspect of well-being – mental, social, or physical – is supported by forced compliance or slavery.
The basis of modern medical ethics hinges on Hippocrates' assertions on physician conduct from around 400BC, commonly summarized as to do good rather than harm and respect a patient's privacy (confidentiality). As a counter to fascism since the Second World War, we added voluntary informed consent (i.e. absence of coercion). This means the final decision in any aspect of medical care or intervention must rest with the individual concerned.
These basic medical ethics rest on the concept that all people are equal and their individual sovereignty (i.e. bodily autonomy) is inviolable. Accordingly, it is obviously unethical to force a person to be injected or undergo some other procedure just because someone else wants them to, or for a third person's benefit. Unethical, that is, outside a medico-fascist or similarly authoritarian approach that post-World War Two human rights law was supposed to suppress. There were very good reasons why we stopped all that, even if it makes the streets look cleaner and we are assured it is for a "greater good."
As the Hippocratic Oath and voluntary informed consent govern clinical medical practice, public health is consequently subject to the same requirements at a community, national, and global level. Populations are the sum of individuals, each as noted being imbued with equal rights and intrinsic sovereignty.
Therefore, decisions made at a regional or global level can only be made by agencies over which those individuals, as a collective, exert control. This is the basis of the UN charter – sovereign States – the best means we have of exp...]]> David Bell 11:08 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 26 60820 Definitions (Because the Meaning of Words Matters)
Misinformation = information (deemed false at the time of distribution) that differs from the official State-approved narrative, but not intentionally deployed for political purposes.
Disinformation = information (deemed false at the time of distribution) differing from the official State-approved narrative, distributed to advance a political agenda.
Malinformation = information which may be true or false, but which causes those persons receiving the information to distrust the State.
Synformation = Synthetic information and realities fabricated by creating false knowledge and associated synthetic "truth" matrices using large language model-based "artificial intelligence" computational tools.
Epistemology = Epistemology is the philosophical study of knowledge, encompassing its nature, origin, and limits. It investigates what it means to know something, how knowledge is acquired through sources like perception, reason, memory, and testimony, and what distinguishes justified belief from mere opinion. Central concepts in epistemology include belief, truth, justification, and evidence, with the traditional definition of knowledge often being understood as justified true belief.
Epistemic Capture = As articulated by Dr. Toby Rogers in his Senate testimony and writings: "In the social sciences, there's this term called epistemic capture, which is when the entire knowledge production process becomes captured by one industry (Big Pharma). And that's what's happened with science and medicine." He elaborated that this capture means "the pharmaceutical industry has captured every step in the knowledge production process in science and medicine. Big Pharma controls what is studied, how it is researched, and what qualifies as evidence."
Truthiness = Something has truthiness when it feels true, sounds true, or ought to be true based on emotion, intuition, belief, or ideological preference — regardless of evidence, logic, or objective verification. It prioritizes subjective conviction ("I feel it in my gut") over empirical reality ("the evidence shows…").
"Truthiness is the quality of seeming or being felt to be true, even if not necessarily true. It's what you want the facts to be, as opposed to what the facts are. It's truth that comes from the gut, not from books."
Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report (October 17, 2005)
Introduction and Context
In my role as Co-chairperson and member of the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, I have been participating in a training course regarding the GRADE methodology for public health decision-making. The acronym stands for Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation, and this methodology is intended to provide a structured, transparent framework to evaluate the quality (certainty) of evidence and the strength of recommendations derived from that evidence.
The intent of this method is to create an unbiased tool for evidence-based policy decision-making in public health and clinical medicine. The development of this complicated system was managed by an international working group starting in 2000, and their work product has now been adopted by the WHO, CDC/ACIP, Cochrane Collaboration, National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the UK, the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care (CTFPHC) and many others including various medical specialty guilds here in the US.
It may come as a surprise to many insiders that, although historically endorsed by the CDC ACIP, the GRADE system is not universally accepted (internationally). The European Medicines Agency (EMA) does not use the GRADE system for its decision-making processes, such as evaluating medicines for marketing authorization or developing scientific guidelines. The EMA primarily assesses the quality, safety, and efficacy of medicines through its scientific committees (e.g., Committee for Medicinal Products ...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/synformation-epistemic-capture-meets-ai/ Definitions (Because the Meaning of Words Matters)
Misinformation = information (deemed false at the time of distribution) that differs from the official State-approved narrative, but not intentionally deployed for political purposes.
Disinformation = information (deemed false at the time of distribution) differing from the official State-approved narrative, distributed to advance a political agenda.
Malinformation = information which may be true or false, but which causes those persons receiving the information to distrust the State.
Synformation = Synthetic information and realities fabricated by creating false knowledge and associated synthetic "truth" matrices using large language model-based "artificial intelligence" computational tools.
Epistemology = Epistemology is the philosophical study of knowledge, encompassing its nature, origin, and limits. It investigates what it means to know something, how knowledge is acquired through sources like perception, reason, memory, and testimony, and what distinguishes justified belief from mere opinion. Central concepts in epistemology include belief, truth, justification, and evidence, with the traditional definition of knowledge often being understood as justified true belief.
Epistemic Capture = As articulated by Dr. Toby Rogers in his Senate testimony and writings: "In the social sciences, there's this term called epistemic capture, which is when the entire knowledge production process becomes captured by one industry (Big Pharma). And that's what's happened with science and medicine." He elaborated that this capture means "the pharmaceutical industry has captured every step in the knowledge production process in science and medicine. Big Pharma controls what is studied, how it is researched, and what qualifies as evidence."
Truthiness = Something has truthiness when it feels true, sounds true, or ought to be true based on emotion, intuition, belief, or ideological preference — regardless of evidence, logic, or objective verification. It prioritizes subjective conviction ("I feel it in my gut") over empirical reality ("the evidence shows…").
"Truthiness is the quality of seeming or being felt to be true, even if not necessarily true. It's what you want the facts to be, as opposed to what the facts are. It's truth that comes from the gut, not from books."
Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report (October 17, 2005)
Introduction and Context
In my role as Co-chairperson and member of the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, I have been participating in a training course regarding the GRADE methodology for public health decision-making. The acronym stands for Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation, and this methodology is intended to provide a structured, transparent framework to evaluate the quality (certainty) of evidence and the strength of recommendations derived from that evidence.
The intent of this method is to create an unbiased tool for evidence-based policy decision-making in public health and clinical medicine. The development of this complicated system was managed by an international working group starting in 2000, and their work product has now been adopted by the WHO, CDC/ACIP, Cochrane Collaboration, National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the UK, the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care (CTFPHC) and many others including various medical specialty guilds here in the US.
It may come as a surprise to many insiders that, although historically endorsed by the CDC ACIP, the GRADE system is not universally accepted (internationally). The European Medicines Agency (EMA) does not use the GRADE system for its decision-making processes, such as evaluating medicines for marketing authorization or developing scientific guidelines. The EMA primarily assesses the quality, safety, and efficacy of medicines through its scientific committees (e.g., Committee for Medicinal Products ...]]> Tue, 05 May 2026 07:55:18 -0400 Synformation: Epistemic Capture Meets AI Definitions (Because the Meaning of Words Matters)
Misinformation = information (deemed false at the time of distribution) that differs from the official State-approved narrative, but not intentionally deployed f...]]> Definitions (Because the Meaning of Words Matters)
Misinformation = information (deemed false at the time of distribution) that differs from the official State-approved narrative, but not intentionally deployed for political purposes.
Disinformation = information (deemed false at the time of distribution) differing from the official State-approved narrative, distributed to advance a political agenda.
Malinformation = information which may be true or false, but which causes those persons receiving the information to distrust the State.
Synformation = Synthetic information and realities fabricated by creating false knowledge and associated synthetic "truth" matrices using large language model-based "artificial intelligence" computational tools.
Epistemology = Epistemology is the philosophical study of knowledge, encompassing its nature, origin, and limits. It investigates what it means to know something, how knowledge is acquired through sources like perception, reason, memory, and testimony, and what distinguishes justified belief from mere opinion. Central concepts in epistemology include belief, truth, justification, and evidence, with the traditional definition of knowledge often being understood as justified true belief.
Epistemic Capture = As articulated by Dr. Toby Rogers in his Senate testimony and writings: "In the social sciences, there's this term called epistemic capture, which is when the entire knowledge production process becomes captured by one industry (Big Pharma). And that's what's happened with science and medicine." He elaborated that this capture means "the pharmaceutical industry has captured every step in the knowledge production process in science and medicine. Big Pharma controls what is studied, how it is researched, and what qualifies as evidence."
Truthiness = Something has truthiness when it feels true, sounds true, or ought to be true based on emotion, intuition, belief, or ideological preference — regardless of evidence, logic, or objective verification. It prioritizes subjective conviction ("I feel it in my gut") over empirical reality ("the evidence shows…").
"Truthiness is the quality of seeming or being felt to be true, even if not necessarily true. It's what you want the facts to be, as opposed to what the facts are. It's truth that comes from the gut, not from books."
Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report (October 17, 2005)
Introduction and Context
In my role as Co-chairperson and member of the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, I have been participating in a training course regarding the GRADE methodology for public health decision-making. The acronym stands for Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation, and this methodology is intended to provide a structured, transparent framework to evaluate the quality (certainty) of evidence and the strength of recommendations derived from that evidence.
The intent of this method is to create an unbiased tool for evidence-based policy decision-making in public health and clinical medicine. The development of this complicated system was managed by an international working group starting in 2000, and their work product has now been adopted by the WHO, CDC/ACIP, Cochrane Collaboration, National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the UK, the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care (CTFPHC) and many others including various medical specialty guilds here in the US.
It may come as a surprise to many insiders that, although historically endorsed by the CDC ACIP, the GRADE system is not universally accepted (internationally). The European Medicines Agency (EMA) does not use the GRADE system for its decision-making processes, such as evaluating medicines for marketing authorization or developing scientific guidelines. The EMA primarily assesses the quality, safety, and efficacy of medicines through its scientific committees (e.g., Committee for Medicinal Products ...]]> Robert Malone 25:40 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 25 61209 SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL
Former CDC director Tom Frieden and colleagues recently published a JAMA opinion piece condemning the CDC vaccine advisory committee's endorsement of "shared decision-making" for future Covid-19 boosters.
They argued the shift was an ethical lapse — even an "abdication of responsibility" — particularly for older adults.

But what the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) proposed was nothing radical. It was the same patient-centred model that should be used across modern medicine.
Which is why the establishment's reaction is so revealing: the moment the subject is "vaccination," even the most basic principles of transparency and informed consent are treated as optional — or worse, as threats.
What ACIP Is Actually Proposing
In September, ACIP recommended that Covid-19 shots should no longer be a blanket policy but instead be decided through shared decision-making.
For older adults and those with underlying conditions, this meant discussing risks, benefits, and uncertainties with their doctors — and making a personalised choice.

This should be standard practice in nearly every other clinical scenario — prostate cancer screening, hormone therapy, antidepressant use in pregnancy, or cardiac surgery.
But vaccines have been placed on a pedestal. Questioning, hesitating, or individualising the decision has been treated as heresy.
The unspoken rule is that both doctors and patients must "trust the science," even when the science is evolving, and individual circumstances differ.
In that climate, ACIP's recommendation wasn't received as a return to ethical practice. It was seen as a direct challenge to a decades-old orthodoxy built on the idea that vaccine decisions are too sacred to be personalised.
The Claim That "Ambiguity Does Not Exist"
Frieden and colleagues insist that for older adults, the benefit–risk calculus is so clear that "ambiguity does not exist," making individualised conversations not just unnecessary but potentially harmful.
They also warn that leaving such decisions to clinicians and patients creates a "vacuum" that other professional groups will rush to fill.
To defend the claim that there is no ambiguity in the benefit of Covid boosters for older adults, they rely heavily on observational data, including a 2025 Veterans study of 160,000 people reporting modest reductions in hospitalisation and death among boosted recipients.
But like all observational research, the data have serious limitations.
The cohort was anything but uniform: different infection histories, different numbers of prior doses, and a high burden of chronic illness that elevates baseline risk regardless of vaccination.
"Real-world" data can offer insights, but it also carries real-world flaws — and it is not a sound basis for shutting down clinical dialogue.
A Shaky Analogy
The authors go further, suggesting that the benefits of Covid boosters for older adults are as absolute as vitamin K prophylaxis for newborns.
But equating a one-off, decades-validated intervention with repeated dosing of a novel mRNA platform in a highly variable adult population is scientifically and ethically indefensible.
Vitamin K is predictable, durable, and biologically straightforward.
Covid boosters operate in a shifting landscape: an evolved virus, continually updated formulations, divergent exposure histories, and dramatically reduced baseline risk.
The analogy works only if vaccines are treated as uniquely simple interventions — when in reality they involve far more complexity, uncertainty, and individual variation.
Why Conversation Is Not "Abdication"
At the heart of the authors' critique is the claim that ACIP "abdicates responsibility" by letting doctors and patients decide.
But that is the very purpose of medicine: to move away from paternalism and toward transparent presentation of evidence — a process that strengthens, not weakens, the relationship between doctor and patien...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/acip-attacked-for-urging-shared-decision-making/ SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL
Former CDC director Tom Frieden and colleagues recently published a JAMA opinion piece condemning the CDC vaccine advisory committee's endorsement of "shared decision-making" for future Covid-19 boosters.
They argued the shift was an ethical lapse — even an "abdication of responsibility" — particularly for older adults.

But what the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) proposed was nothing radical. It was the same patient-centred model that should be used across modern medicine.
Which is why the establishment's reaction is so revealing: the moment the subject is "vaccination," even the most basic principles of transparency and informed consent are treated as optional — or worse, as threats.
What ACIP Is Actually Proposing
In September, ACIP recommended that Covid-19 shots should no longer be a blanket policy but instead be decided through shared decision-making.
For older adults and those with underlying conditions, this meant discussing risks, benefits, and uncertainties with their doctors — and making a personalised choice.

This should be standard practice in nearly every other clinical scenario — prostate cancer screening, hormone therapy, antidepressant use in pregnancy, or cardiac surgery.
But vaccines have been placed on a pedestal. Questioning, hesitating, or individualising the decision has been treated as heresy.
The unspoken rule is that both doctors and patients must "trust the science," even when the science is evolving, and individual circumstances differ.
In that climate, ACIP's recommendation wasn't received as a return to ethical practice. It was seen as a direct challenge to a decades-old orthodoxy built on the idea that vaccine decisions are too sacred to be personalised.
The Claim That "Ambiguity Does Not Exist"
Frieden and colleagues insist that for older adults, the benefit–risk calculus is so clear that "ambiguity does not exist," making individualised conversations not just unnecessary but potentially harmful.
They also warn that leaving such decisions to clinicians and patients creates a "vacuum" that other professional groups will rush to fill.
To defend the claim that there is no ambiguity in the benefit of Covid boosters for older adults, they rely heavily on observational data, including a 2025 Veterans study of 160,000 people reporting modest reductions in hospitalisation and death among boosted recipients.
But like all observational research, the data have serious limitations.
The cohort was anything but uniform: different infection histories, different numbers of prior doses, and a high burden of chronic illness that elevates baseline risk regardless of vaccination.
"Real-world" data can offer insights, but it also carries real-world flaws — and it is not a sound basis for shutting down clinical dialogue.
A Shaky Analogy
The authors go further, suggesting that the benefits of Covid boosters for older adults are as absolute as vitamin K prophylaxis for newborns.
But equating a one-off, decades-validated intervention with repeated dosing of a novel mRNA platform in a highly variable adult population is scientifically and ethically indefensible.
Vitamin K is predictable, durable, and biologically straightforward.
Covid boosters operate in a shifting landscape: an evolved virus, continually updated formulations, divergent exposure histories, and dramatically reduced baseline risk.
The analogy works only if vaccines are treated as uniquely simple interventions — when in reality they involve far more complexity, uncertainty, and individual variation.
Why Conversation Is Not "Abdication"
At the heart of the authors' critique is the claim that ACIP "abdicates responsibility" by letting doctors and patients decide.
But that is the very purpose of medicine: to move away from paternalism and toward transparent presentation of evidence — a process that strengthens, not weakens, the relationship between doctor and patien...]]> Mon, 04 May 2026 07:45:00 -0400 ACIP Attacked for Urging 'Shared Decision-Making' SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL
Former CDC director Tom Frieden and colleagues recently published a JAMA opinion piece condemning the CDC vaccine advisory committee's endorsement of "shared decision-making" for future Co...]]> SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL
Former CDC director Tom Frieden and colleagues recently published a JAMA opinion piece condemning the CDC vaccine advisory committee's endorsement of "shared decision-making" for future Covid-19 boosters.
They argued the shift was an ethical lapse — even an "abdication of responsibility" — particularly for older adults.

But what the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) proposed was nothing radical. It was the same patient-centred model that should be used across modern medicine.
Which is why the establishment's reaction is so revealing: the moment the subject is "vaccination," even the most basic principles of transparency and informed consent are treated as optional — or worse, as threats.
What ACIP Is Actually Proposing
In September, ACIP recommended that Covid-19 shots should no longer be a blanket policy but instead be decided through shared decision-making.
For older adults and those with underlying conditions, this meant discussing risks, benefits, and uncertainties with their doctors — and making a personalised choice.

This should be standard practice in nearly every other clinical scenario — prostate cancer screening, hormone therapy, antidepressant use in pregnancy, or cardiac surgery.
But vaccines have been placed on a pedestal. Questioning, hesitating, or individualising the decision has been treated as heresy.
The unspoken rule is that both doctors and patients must "trust the science," even when the science is evolving, and individual circumstances differ.
In that climate, ACIP's recommendation wasn't received as a return to ethical practice. It was seen as a direct challenge to a decades-old orthodoxy built on the idea that vaccine decisions are too sacred to be personalised.
The Claim That "Ambiguity Does Not Exist"
Frieden and colleagues insist that for older adults, the benefit–risk calculus is so clear that "ambiguity does not exist," making individualised conversations not just unnecessary but potentially harmful.
They also warn that leaving such decisions to clinicians and patients creates a "vacuum" that other professional groups will rush to fill.
To defend the claim that there is no ambiguity in the benefit of Covid boosters for older adults, they rely heavily on observational data, including a 2025 Veterans study of 160,000 people reporting modest reductions in hospitalisation and death among boosted recipients.
But like all observational research, the data have serious limitations.
The cohort was anything but uniform: different infection histories, different numbers of prior doses, and a high burden of chronic illness that elevates baseline risk regardless of vaccination.
"Real-world" data can offer insights, but it also carries real-world flaws — and it is not a sound basis for shutting down clinical dialogue.
A Shaky Analogy
The authors go further, suggesting that the benefits of Covid boosters for older adults are as absolute as vitamin K prophylaxis for newborns.
But equating a one-off, decades-validated intervention with repeated dosing of a novel mRNA platform in a highly variable adult population is scientifically and ethically indefensible.
Vitamin K is predictable, durable, and biologically straightforward.
Covid boosters operate in a shifting landscape: an evolved virus, continually updated formulations, divergent exposure histories, and dramatically reduced baseline risk.
The analogy works only if vaccines are treated as uniquely simple interventions — when in reality they involve far more complexity, uncertainty, and individual variation.
Why Conversation Is Not "Abdication"
At the heart of the authors' critique is the claim that ACIP "abdicates responsibility" by letting doctors and patients decide.
But that is the very purpose of medicine: to move away from paternalism and toward transparent presentation of evidence — a process that strengthens, not weakens, the relationship between doctor and patien...]]> Maryanne Demasi 08:37 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 24 68135 When things turned dystopian in March 2020, I was in the middle of a big life change which ultimately led me to create a business coaching families to grow their own chemical-free food. After a decade of international development consulting scouring the African continent to make Africans' lives more connected to the global economy, and incidentally also more precarious, I had already been slowly seeking an escape route from the abstract world inhabited by the professional managerial class. Covid didn't create my rupture with this world. It confirmed it.
At the origin of my class betrayal was an intellectual epiphany. In the years leading to 2020, I had spent considerable time immersed in Christopher Lasch's critique of progressivism. He explained that Narcissus, obsessed by his psychic comfort, is an individual who rejects any genuine notion of limits, of rootedness, of responsibility to particular places and people, in favor of a utopian frictionless world. Alternating between a Promethean impulse to replace all natural processes with technological ones and a feminine desire for fusion with the natural world, Narcissus lives in a world filled with images designed to produce phantasies. He constantly oscillates between a grandiose sentiment of omnipotence and powerlessness. He is rapacious and destitute at the same time.
One of the central influences in Lasch's work was American farmer, poet, novelist, and essayist Wendell Berry. In his 1977 manifesto The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, Berry wrote perhaps the most clinical description of what is Narcissus' daily interior life and the most ruthless indictment of industrialism:
"The fact is…that this is probably the most unhappy average citizen in the history of the world. He has not the power to provide himself with anything but money, and his money is inflating like a balloon and drifting away, subject to historical circumstances and the power of other people. From morning to night, he does not touch anything that he has produced himself, in which he can take pride. For all his leisure and recreation, he feels bad, he looks bad, he is overweight, his health is poor. His air, water, and food are all known to contain poisons. There is a fair chance that he will die of suffocation. He suspects that his love life is not as fulfilling as other people's. He wishes that he had been born sooner, or later. He does not know why his children are the way they are. He does not understand what they say. He does not care much and does not know why he does not care. He does not know what his wife wants or what he wants.
Certain advertisements and pictures in magazines make him suspect that he is basically unattractive. He feels that all his possessions are under threat or pillage. He does not know what he would do if he lost his job, if the economy failed, if the utility company failed, if the police went on strike, if the truckers went on strike, if his wife left him, if his children went away, if he should be found to be incurably ill. And for those anxieties, of course, he consults certified experts, who in turn consult certified experts about their anxieties."
And Berry had one simple explanation for that: this is what happens to groups of people who have abdicated their duty to nurture the land for a desire to exploit it. In other words, through Lasch, I found Berry. And through Berry I found the earth.
This intellectual revelation was also accompanied by another, drawn from the work of Matthew Crawford and Simone Weil. Crawford's eulogy to manual work gave me a framework for understanding what I was losing in my white-collar life. And it was a framework he had built, in large part, on Weil's focus on attention, which she called the "only faculty of the soul that grants access to God."
What Crawford took from her is that attention is the central faculty that modern work systematically destroys, explaining why we live in an ec...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/how-covid-transformed-me-into-a-gardener-and-business-owner/ When things turned dystopian in March 2020, I was in the middle of a big life change which ultimately led me to create a business coaching families to grow their own chemical-free food. After a decade of international development consulting scouring the African continent to make Africans' lives more connected to the global economy, and incidentally also more precarious, I had already been slowly seeking an escape route from the abstract world inhabited by the professional managerial class. Covid didn't create my rupture with this world. It confirmed it.
At the origin of my class betrayal was an intellectual epiphany. In the years leading to 2020, I had spent considerable time immersed in Christopher Lasch's critique of progressivism. He explained that Narcissus, obsessed by his psychic comfort, is an individual who rejects any genuine notion of limits, of rootedness, of responsibility to particular places and people, in favor of a utopian frictionless world. Alternating between a Promethean impulse to replace all natural processes with technological ones and a feminine desire for fusion with the natural world, Narcissus lives in a world filled with images designed to produce phantasies. He constantly oscillates between a grandiose sentiment of omnipotence and powerlessness. He is rapacious and destitute at the same time.
One of the central influences in Lasch's work was American farmer, poet, novelist, and essayist Wendell Berry. In his 1977 manifesto The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, Berry wrote perhaps the most clinical description of what is Narcissus' daily interior life and the most ruthless indictment of industrialism:
"The fact is…that this is probably the most unhappy average citizen in the history of the world. He has not the power to provide himself with anything but money, and his money is inflating like a balloon and drifting away, subject to historical circumstances and the power of other people. From morning to night, he does not touch anything that he has produced himself, in which he can take pride. For all his leisure and recreation, he feels bad, he looks bad, he is overweight, his health is poor. His air, water, and food are all known to contain poisons. There is a fair chance that he will die of suffocation. He suspects that his love life is not as fulfilling as other people's. He wishes that he had been born sooner, or later. He does not know why his children are the way they are. He does not understand what they say. He does not care much and does not know why he does not care. He does not know what his wife wants or what he wants.
Certain advertisements and pictures in magazines make him suspect that he is basically unattractive. He feels that all his possessions are under threat or pillage. He does not know what he would do if he lost his job, if the economy failed, if the utility company failed, if the police went on strike, if the truckers went on strike, if his wife left him, if his children went away, if he should be found to be incurably ill. And for those anxieties, of course, he consults certified experts, who in turn consult certified experts about their anxieties."
And Berry had one simple explanation for that: this is what happens to groups of people who have abdicated their duty to nurture the land for a desire to exploit it. In other words, through Lasch, I found Berry. And through Berry I found the earth.
This intellectual revelation was also accompanied by another, drawn from the work of Matthew Crawford and Simone Weil. Crawford's eulogy to manual work gave me a framework for understanding what I was losing in my white-collar life. And it was a framework he had built, in large part, on Weil's focus on attention, which she called the "only faculty of the soul that grants access to God."
What Crawford took from her is that attention is the central faculty that modern work systematically destroys, explaining why we live in an ec...]]> Sun, 03 May 2026 08:40:00 -0400 How Covid Transformed Me into a Gardener and Business Owner When things turned dystopian in March 2020, I was in the middle of a big life change which ultimately led me to create a business coaching families to grow their own chemical-free food. After a decade of inter...]]> When things turned dystopian in March 2020, I was in the middle of a big life change which ultimately led me to create a business coaching families to grow their own chemical-free food. After a decade of international development consulting scouring the African continent to make Africans' lives more connected to the global economy, and incidentally also more precarious, I had already been slowly seeking an escape route from the abstract world inhabited by the professional managerial class. Covid didn't create my rupture with this world. It confirmed it.
At the origin of my class betrayal was an intellectual epiphany. In the years leading to 2020, I had spent considerable time immersed in Christopher Lasch's critique of progressivism. He explained that Narcissus, obsessed by his psychic comfort, is an individual who rejects any genuine notion of limits, of rootedness, of responsibility to particular places and people, in favor of a utopian frictionless world. Alternating between a Promethean impulse to replace all natural processes with technological ones and a feminine desire for fusion with the natural world, Narcissus lives in a world filled with images designed to produce phantasies. He constantly oscillates between a grandiose sentiment of omnipotence and powerlessness. He is rapacious and destitute at the same time.
One of the central influences in Lasch's work was American farmer, poet, novelist, and essayist Wendell Berry. In his 1977 manifesto The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, Berry wrote perhaps the most clinical description of what is Narcissus' daily interior life and the most ruthless indictment of industrialism:
"The fact is…that this is probably the most unhappy average citizen in the history of the world. He has not the power to provide himself with anything but money, and his money is inflating like a balloon and drifting away, subject to historical circumstances and the power of other people. From morning to night, he does not touch anything that he has produced himself, in which he can take pride. For all his leisure and recreation, he feels bad, he looks bad, he is overweight, his health is poor. His air, water, and food are all known to contain poisons. There is a fair chance that he will die of suffocation. He suspects that his love life is not as fulfilling as other people's. He wishes that he had been born sooner, or later. He does not know why his children are the way they are. He does not understand what they say. He does not care much and does not know why he does not care. He does not know what his wife wants or what he wants.
Certain advertisements and pictures in magazines make him suspect that he is basically unattractive. He feels that all his possessions are under threat or pillage. He does not know what he would do if he lost his job, if the economy failed, if the utility company failed, if the police went on strike, if the truckers went on strike, if his wife left him, if his children went away, if he should be found to be incurably ill. And for those anxieties, of course, he consults certified experts, who in turn consult certified experts about their anxieties."
And Berry had one simple explanation for that: this is what happens to groups of people who have abdicated their duty to nurture the land for a desire to exploit it. In other words, through Lasch, I found Berry. And through Berry I found the earth.
This intellectual revelation was also accompanied by another, drawn from the work of Matthew Crawford and Simone Weil. Crawford's eulogy to manual work gave me a framework for understanding what I was losing in my white-collar life. And it was a framework he had built, in large part, on Weil's focus on attention, which she called the "only faculty of the soul that grants access to God."
What Crawford took from her is that attention is the central faculty that modern work systematically destroys, explaining why we live in an ec...]]> Renaud Beauchard 15:08 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 23 68100 David Morens, a former top advisor to Covid Czar Tony Fauci, was indicted on Monday and "charged with conspiracy against the United States; destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations; concealment, removal, or mutilation of records; and aiding and abetting," according to the Justice Department press release.
Morens allegedly helped top federal health officials cover up the potential role of federal grants in spurring the Covid pandemic. The Freedom of Information Act – FOIA – requires federal agencies to preserve and disclose federal records with some narrow exceptions. In early 2021, Morens emailed a colleague: "I learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear after i am foia'd but before the search starts, so i think we are all safe."
Morens added: "Plus i deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to gmail." In a previous email, he assured his collaborators: "I have spoken to our FOIA folks" and "I should be safe from future FOIAs. Don't ask how…."
Fauci doesn't need to worry about getting indicted since President Joe Biden, on his last morning in office, pardoned any crimes that Fauci might have committed in the previous decade. Fauci justified Covid mandates because average citizens "don't have the ability" to determine what is best for them. Congressional investigations revealed that Fauci was at the center of string-pulling to shirk responsibility on Covid.
Top federal officials scrambled to erase the federal role in bankrolling reckless gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, the most likely source of the Covid virus that killed more than seven million people around the world. That type of research seeks to genetically alter organisms to enable the spread of viruses into new species. As MIT professor Kevin Esvelt asked in 2021, "Why is anyone trying to teach the world how to make viruses that could kill millions of people?" The risks were compounded because the Wuhan Institute had a very poor safety rating. Two years earlier, the State Department confidentially "warned other federal agencies about safety issues at Wuhan labs studying bat COVID," but the public disclosure of that alert was delayed until 2022 – long after President Biden illegally mandated Covid vaccines for a hundred million American adults.
If Covid-19 had been initially recognized as the result of one of the biggest government boondoggles in history, it would have been far more difficult for American politicians and government scientists to pirouette as saviors as they seized sway over daily life. Instead, politicians, bureaucrats, and the media stampeded most of the American public with the notion that total submission to boneheaded decrees was their only hope to survive.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche issued a statement on the indictment of Morens: "These allegations represent a profound abuse of trust at a time when the American people needed it most—during the height of a global pandemic." Luckily, there haven't been any "profound abuses of trust" since Trump took office again – at least according to his Justice Department. Blanche added: "Government officials have a solemn duty to provide honest, well-grounded facts and advice in service of the public interest — not to advance their own personal or ideological agendas."
Be still my beating heart. Is this a subtle signal that the Trump team will disclose the other 3 million documents on the Epstein scandal?
FBI chief Kash Patel announced at the indictment press conference: "Circumventing records protocols with the intention of avoiding transparency is something that will not be tolerated by this FBI."
Has the FBI turned over a new leaf or what? The FBI is one of the most notorious FOIA violators in Washington. When FOIA was first passed in 1966, FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover ordered the FBI to totally refuse to comply with the law. A federal judge slammed the FBI...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/will-federal-covid-indictment-turn-the-tide-on-washington-secrecy/ David Morens, a former top advisor to Covid Czar Tony Fauci, was indicted on Monday and "charged with conspiracy against the United States; destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations; concealment, removal, or mutilation of records; and aiding and abetting," according to the Justice Department press release.
Morens allegedly helped top federal health officials cover up the potential role of federal grants in spurring the Covid pandemic. The Freedom of Information Act – FOIA – requires federal agencies to preserve and disclose federal records with some narrow exceptions. In early 2021, Morens emailed a colleague: "I learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear after i am foia'd but before the search starts, so i think we are all safe."
Morens added: "Plus i deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to gmail." In a previous email, he assured his collaborators: "I have spoken to our FOIA folks" and "I should be safe from future FOIAs. Don't ask how…."
Fauci doesn't need to worry about getting indicted since President Joe Biden, on his last morning in office, pardoned any crimes that Fauci might have committed in the previous decade. Fauci justified Covid mandates because average citizens "don't have the ability" to determine what is best for them. Congressional investigations revealed that Fauci was at the center of string-pulling to shirk responsibility on Covid.
Top federal officials scrambled to erase the federal role in bankrolling reckless gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, the most likely source of the Covid virus that killed more than seven million people around the world. That type of research seeks to genetically alter organisms to enable the spread of viruses into new species. As MIT professor Kevin Esvelt asked in 2021, "Why is anyone trying to teach the world how to make viruses that could kill millions of people?" The risks were compounded because the Wuhan Institute had a very poor safety rating. Two years earlier, the State Department confidentially "warned other federal agencies about safety issues at Wuhan labs studying bat COVID," but the public disclosure of that alert was delayed until 2022 – long after President Biden illegally mandated Covid vaccines for a hundred million American adults.
If Covid-19 had been initially recognized as the result of one of the biggest government boondoggles in history, it would have been far more difficult for American politicians and government scientists to pirouette as saviors as they seized sway over daily life. Instead, politicians, bureaucrats, and the media stampeded most of the American public with the notion that total submission to boneheaded decrees was their only hope to survive.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche issued a statement on the indictment of Morens: "These allegations represent a profound abuse of trust at a time when the American people needed it most—during the height of a global pandemic." Luckily, there haven't been any "profound abuses of trust" since Trump took office again – at least according to his Justice Department. Blanche added: "Government officials have a solemn duty to provide honest, well-grounded facts and advice in service of the public interest — not to advance their own personal or ideological agendas."
Be still my beating heart. Is this a subtle signal that the Trump team will disclose the other 3 million documents on the Epstein scandal?
FBI chief Kash Patel announced at the indictment press conference: "Circumventing records protocols with the intention of avoiding transparency is something that will not be tolerated by this FBI."
Has the FBI turned over a new leaf or what? The FBI is one of the most notorious FOIA violators in Washington. When FOIA was first passed in 1966, FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover ordered the FBI to totally refuse to comply with the law. A federal judge slammed the FBI...]]> Sat, 02 May 2026 08:48:40 -0400 Will Federal Covid Indictment Turn the Tide on Washington Secrecy? David Morens, a former top advisor to Covid Czar Tony Fauci, was indicted on Monday and "charged with conspiracy against the United States; destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investiga...]]> David Morens, a former top advisor to Covid Czar Tony Fauci, was indicted on Monday and "charged with conspiracy against the United States; destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations; concealment, removal, or mutilation of records; and aiding and abetting," according to the Justice Department press release.
Morens allegedly helped top federal health officials cover up the potential role of federal grants in spurring the Covid pandemic. The Freedom of Information Act – FOIA – requires federal agencies to preserve and disclose federal records with some narrow exceptions. In early 2021, Morens emailed a colleague: "I learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear after i am foia'd but before the search starts, so i think we are all safe."
Morens added: "Plus i deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to gmail." In a previous email, he assured his collaborators: "I have spoken to our FOIA folks" and "I should be safe from future FOIAs. Don't ask how…."
Fauci doesn't need to worry about getting indicted since President Joe Biden, on his last morning in office, pardoned any crimes that Fauci might have committed in the previous decade. Fauci justified Covid mandates because average citizens "don't have the ability" to determine what is best for them. Congressional investigations revealed that Fauci was at the center of string-pulling to shirk responsibility on Covid.
Top federal officials scrambled to erase the federal role in bankrolling reckless gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, the most likely source of the Covid virus that killed more than seven million people around the world. That type of research seeks to genetically alter organisms to enable the spread of viruses into new species. As MIT professor Kevin Esvelt asked in 2021, "Why is anyone trying to teach the world how to make viruses that could kill millions of people?" The risks were compounded because the Wuhan Institute had a very poor safety rating. Two years earlier, the State Department confidentially "warned other federal agencies about safety issues at Wuhan labs studying bat COVID," but the public disclosure of that alert was delayed until 2022 – long after President Biden illegally mandated Covid vaccines for a hundred million American adults.
If Covid-19 had been initially recognized as the result of one of the biggest government boondoggles in history, it would have been far more difficult for American politicians and government scientists to pirouette as saviors as they seized sway over daily life. Instead, politicians, bureaucrats, and the media stampeded most of the American public with the notion that total submission to boneheaded decrees was their only hope to survive.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche issued a statement on the indictment of Morens: "These allegations represent a profound abuse of trust at a time when the American people needed it most—during the height of a global pandemic." Luckily, there haven't been any "profound abuses of trust" since Trump took office again – at least according to his Justice Department. Blanche added: "Government officials have a solemn duty to provide honest, well-grounded facts and advice in service of the public interest — not to advance their own personal or ideological agendas."
Be still my beating heart. Is this a subtle signal that the Trump team will disclose the other 3 million documents on the Epstein scandal?
FBI chief Kash Patel announced at the indictment press conference: "Circumventing records protocols with the intention of avoiding transparency is something that will not be tolerated by this FBI."
Has the FBI turned over a new leaf or what? The FBI is one of the most notorious FOIA violators in Washington. When FOIA was first passed in 1966, FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover ordered the FBI to totally refuse to comply with the law. A federal judge slammed the FBI...]]> James Bovard 05:53 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 22 68060 SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL
Regular readers of Brownstone Journal have been graced with insight provided by many authors of diverse backgrounds and experiences. As a physician, I have found those authored by Dr. Joseph Varon to be exceptionally helpful in their insight into the state of medicine today. In particular, his essay, "When Physicians are Replaced With a Protocol," struck a chord with me.
Perhaps it was my conscience, as I probably bear some responsibility for furthering this viewpoint, at least on a local level. You see, I once was a True Believer. It was plausible. It seemed so believable, so "scientific," so simple. But it was a vicious hoax that, I am ashamed to say, took me in. Let me tell the story:
In the early 1990's, medicine was under siege. The cost was rising at a steep rate, and some people saw an opportunity. Rather than looking at the rapid corporatization of healthcare and the proliferation of administrative costs, it was easy to shift the blame to the "providers. We were no longer "physicians," but providers of a service. In truth, that is what we had become. The Health Equation had been shifted, whether intentionally or by accident. Just a few years before, physicians had directed patients to hospitals. Now, some bright businessperson, probably from The Wharton School or other such academic Ivory Tower, had seen the profit if the hospitals (or other corporate entities like insurance companies or A COMBINATION OF THE TWO) directed the patients to the physicians. It was like some financial martial arts reversal move…A perfect Sumi Gaeshi:
Physicians had spent so much time thinking about their profession that they ignored the broader picture. Their own combination of fear and greed and the lack of critical thinking about the larger arena were fatal, and they and their patients were to pay a dear price.
I remember very plainly a meeting of our "physicians independent practice association (IPA) that was a poor attempt at nascent collective bargaining meeting with the directors of a startup HMO in the area. The leaders were themselves physicians who only a few months before had been our colleagues but were now filling the role of Kapo in the new order of things. They had a financial stake in things, and they knew it. The tagline of their HMO was "No out-of-pocket expenses!" They were the collaborators with the insurance companies and hospital executives. They sold the area employers (at that time health insurance was still a reality) that they could save them money at our expense. Of course, the hospitals were only too glad to take their cut. They told us how things would be from now on: Do as we say or starve.
There was blustering on the part of some of the physicians: We will never sign with you! said the officers of the IPA. As it turned out, they were the first to stampede to sign, hoping to avoid the cutoff and be left in the cold.
What followed was the complete and total gutting of the physician-patient and physician-physician relationship. The marvelous inventions of capitation and gatekeeper were introduced to the equation: The primary care physicians were given a lump sum payment each month for the number of patients who were assigned to them. They were then expected to pay for the care. Any referral to a specialist (such as myself) had to be approved by them and they realized that would cut into their profits as well.
Any semblance of ethical care swiftly went out the window. Basically, only the minimal amount of care was approved, and specialty referrals were sharply curtailed.
I had been given the job of Chief Quality Officer at my main hospital, and a group of us were sent to Intermountain Healthcare in Salt Lake City to a week-long seminar (Advance Training Program in Clinical Quality Improvement) given by Brent James. James is a visionary surgeon who thought that by cutting out the "quality waste" (perhaps 25%) in healthcare by doing "the right thing th...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-ascent-of-mediocrity/ SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL
Regular readers of Brownstone Journal have been graced with insight provided by many authors of diverse backgrounds and experiences. As a physician, I have found those authored by Dr. Joseph Varon to be exceptionally helpful in their insight into the state of medicine today. In particular, his essay, "When Physicians are Replaced With a Protocol," struck a chord with me.
Perhaps it was my conscience, as I probably bear some responsibility for furthering this viewpoint, at least on a local level. You see, I once was a True Believer. It was plausible. It seemed so believable, so "scientific," so simple. But it was a vicious hoax that, I am ashamed to say, took me in. Let me tell the story:
In the early 1990's, medicine was under siege. The cost was rising at a steep rate, and some people saw an opportunity. Rather than looking at the rapid corporatization of healthcare and the proliferation of administrative costs, it was easy to shift the blame to the "providers. We were no longer "physicians," but providers of a service. In truth, that is what we had become. The Health Equation had been shifted, whether intentionally or by accident. Just a few years before, physicians had directed patients to hospitals. Now, some bright businessperson, probably from The Wharton School or other such academic Ivory Tower, had seen the profit if the hospitals (or other corporate entities like insurance companies or A COMBINATION OF THE TWO) directed the patients to the physicians. It was like some financial martial arts reversal move…A perfect Sumi Gaeshi:
Physicians had spent so much time thinking about their profession that they ignored the broader picture. Their own combination of fear and greed and the lack of critical thinking about the larger arena were fatal, and they and their patients were to pay a dear price.
I remember very plainly a meeting of our "physicians independent practice association (IPA) that was a poor attempt at nascent collective bargaining meeting with the directors of a startup HMO in the area. The leaders were themselves physicians who only a few months before had been our colleagues but were now filling the role of Kapo in the new order of things. They had a financial stake in things, and they knew it. The tagline of their HMO was "No out-of-pocket expenses!" They were the collaborators with the insurance companies and hospital executives. They sold the area employers (at that time health insurance was still a reality) that they could save them money at our expense. Of course, the hospitals were only too glad to take their cut. They told us how things would be from now on: Do as we say or starve.
There was blustering on the part of some of the physicians: We will never sign with you! said the officers of the IPA. As it turned out, they were the first to stampede to sign, hoping to avoid the cutoff and be left in the cold.
What followed was the complete and total gutting of the physician-patient and physician-physician relationship. The marvelous inventions of capitation and gatekeeper were introduced to the equation: The primary care physicians were given a lump sum payment each month for the number of patients who were assigned to them. They were then expected to pay for the care. Any referral to a specialist (such as myself) had to be approved by them and they realized that would cut into their profits as well.
Any semblance of ethical care swiftly went out the window. Basically, only the minimal amount of care was approved, and specialty referrals were sharply curtailed.
I had been given the job of Chief Quality Officer at my main hospital, and a group of us were sent to Intermountain Healthcare in Salt Lake City to a week-long seminar (Advance Training Program in Clinical Quality Improvement) given by Brent James. James is a visionary surgeon who thought that by cutting out the "quality waste" (perhaps 25%) in healthcare by doing "the right thing th...]]> Fri, 01 May 2026 07:40:00 -0400 The Ascent of Mediocrity SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL
Regular readers of Brownstone Journal have been graced with insight provided by many authors of diverse backgrounds and experiences. As a physician, I have found those authored by Dr. Josep...]]> SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL
Regular readers of Brownstone Journal have been graced with insight provided by many authors of diverse backgrounds and experiences. As a physician, I have found those authored by Dr. Joseph Varon to be exceptionally helpful in their insight into the state of medicine today. In particular, his essay, "When Physicians are Replaced With a Protocol," struck a chord with me.
Perhaps it was my conscience, as I probably bear some responsibility for furthering this viewpoint, at least on a local level. You see, I once was a True Believer. It was plausible. It seemed so believable, so "scientific," so simple. But it was a vicious hoax that, I am ashamed to say, took me in. Let me tell the story:
In the early 1990's, medicine was under siege. The cost was rising at a steep rate, and some people saw an opportunity. Rather than looking at the rapid corporatization of healthcare and the proliferation of administrative costs, it was easy to shift the blame to the "providers. We were no longer "physicians," but providers of a service. In truth, that is what we had become. The Health Equation had been shifted, whether intentionally or by accident. Just a few years before, physicians had directed patients to hospitals. Now, some bright businessperson, probably from The Wharton School or other such academic Ivory Tower, had seen the profit if the hospitals (or other corporate entities like insurance companies or A COMBINATION OF THE TWO) directed the patients to the physicians. It was like some financial martial arts reversal move…A perfect Sumi Gaeshi:
Physicians had spent so much time thinking about their profession that they ignored the broader picture. Their own combination of fear and greed and the lack of critical thinking about the larger arena were fatal, and they and their patients were to pay a dear price.
I remember very plainly a meeting of our "physicians independent practice association (IPA) that was a poor attempt at nascent collective bargaining meeting with the directors of a startup HMO in the area. The leaders were themselves physicians who only a few months before had been our colleagues but were now filling the role of Kapo in the new order of things. They had a financial stake in things, and they knew it. The tagline of their HMO was "No out-of-pocket expenses!" They were the collaborators with the insurance companies and hospital executives. They sold the area employers (at that time health insurance was still a reality) that they could save them money at our expense. Of course, the hospitals were only too glad to take their cut. They told us how things would be from now on: Do as we say or starve.
There was blustering on the part of some of the physicians: We will never sign with you! said the officers of the IPA. As it turned out, they were the first to stampede to sign, hoping to avoid the cutoff and be left in the cold.
What followed was the complete and total gutting of the physician-patient and physician-physician relationship. The marvelous inventions of capitation and gatekeeper were introduced to the equation: The primary care physicians were given a lump sum payment each month for the number of patients who were assigned to them. They were then expected to pay for the care. Any referral to a specialist (such as myself) had to be approved by them and they realized that would cut into their profits as well.
Any semblance of ethical care swiftly went out the window. Basically, only the minimal amount of care was approved, and specialty referrals were sharply curtailed.
I had been given the job of Chief Quality Officer at my main hospital, and a group of us were sent to Intermountain Healthcare in Salt Lake City to a week-long seminar (Advance Training Program in Clinical Quality Improvement) given by Brent James. James is a visionary surgeon who thought that by cutting out the "quality waste" (perhaps 25%) in healthcare by doing "the right thing th...]]> Russ Gonnering 08:47 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 21 67977 The Department of Justice does not need to wait for Dr. David Morens to turn on his colleagues; the evidence to charge the next key advisor to Dr. Anthony Fauci is already in the public record.
Greg Folkers was critical to the censorship operation at the heart of the Covid response. As Chief of Staff at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Folkers oversaw operations for the agency's $6 billion budget and later sought to evade FOIA requests by conspiring with Dr. Morens and intentionally misspelling key phrases such as "g#in-of-function."
In January 2020, he sent the first email to Anthony Fauci warning that the NIAID had funded gain-of-function research on coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through grants it made to EcoHealth Alliance, Peter Daszak's organization. That research, Folkers cautioned, could be the source of Covid-19.
But instead of warning the public of the "lab leak" as it would come to be known, Folkers, Fauci, and Morens initiated the coverup.
Hours after Folkers' initial warning, Fauci recruited virologists Kristian Andersen and Eddie Holmes to plant a cover story. This conspiracy prompted "Proximal Origin," the infamous Nature article that stated that it was "implausible" that the virus was "laboratory-based," even though Andersen and his colleagues made over 50 direct statements that expressed their belief that a lab leak was the likely origin of the virus.
While that article became the basis to censor any dissidents who questioned the origins of the virus, Folkers, Morens, and Fauci conspired to keep their role in the affair secret. "Tony doesn't want his fingerprints on origin stories…Don't worry…I will delete anything I don't want to see in the New York Times," Morens wrote to Peter Daszak.
Morens then coached his colleagues on how to avoid Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests (in defiance of federal law) by misspelling key phrases, using code words, deleting emails, and sending sensitive information to non-government accounts. "I learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear after i am foia'd but before the search starts, so i think we are all safe," he wrote in February 2021.
This is the crime that led to Tuesday's charges against Dr. Morens, which include "conspiracy against the United States; destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations; concealment, removal, or mutilation of records; and aiding and abetting." FBI Director Kash Patel spoke out against the "illegal obfuscation of…communications" and vowed that "if you have engaged in activity conspiring against the United States, we will not stop until you face justice."
The US Government already has concrete proof that Folkers conspired to evade FOIA requests on at least three occasions in June 2021 alone.
On June 4, 2021, in an email exchange discussing Peter Daszak's gain-of-function research, he intentionally misspelled "EcoHealth" as "Ec~Health." Three days later, in an email to Dr. Morens, Folkers attempted to hide his reference to Kristian Andersen by typing his last name as "anders$n." Dr. Morens forwarded the message to his personal email account.
Three weeks later, Folkers intentionally misspelled "gain-of-function" to be "g#in-of-function" in another email to Dr. Morens.
While President Joe Biden (or his autopen) granted a startlingly broad pardon to Anthony Fauci in the final days of his administration, there is still ample opportunity to bring his co-conspirators to justice. Greg Folkers was a central figure in the Covid operation. He knew of NIAID's culpability, he served as Dr. Fauci's liaison, and he helped orchestrate a massive coverup. In the process, he partook in the same crimes that now support the indictment against Dr. Morens.
There are many more besides, among whom the heads of the Cybersecurity Inflation Security Agency, which divided the population between essential and nonessenti...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-next-indictment-should-be-against-greg-folkers/ The Department of Justice does not need to wait for Dr. David Morens to turn on his colleagues; the evidence to charge the next key advisor to Dr. Anthony Fauci is already in the public record.
Greg Folkers was critical to the censorship operation at the heart of the Covid response. As Chief of Staff at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Folkers oversaw operations for the agency's $6 billion budget and later sought to evade FOIA requests by conspiring with Dr. Morens and intentionally misspelling key phrases such as "g#in-of-function."
In January 2020, he sent the first email to Anthony Fauci warning that the NIAID had funded gain-of-function research on coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through grants it made to EcoHealth Alliance, Peter Daszak's organization. That research, Folkers cautioned, could be the source of Covid-19.
But instead of warning the public of the "lab leak" as it would come to be known, Folkers, Fauci, and Morens initiated the coverup.
Hours after Folkers' initial warning, Fauci recruited virologists Kristian Andersen and Eddie Holmes to plant a cover story. This conspiracy prompted "Proximal Origin," the infamous Nature article that stated that it was "implausible" that the virus was "laboratory-based," even though Andersen and his colleagues made over 50 direct statements that expressed their belief that a lab leak was the likely origin of the virus.
While that article became the basis to censor any dissidents who questioned the origins of the virus, Folkers, Morens, and Fauci conspired to keep their role in the affair secret. "Tony doesn't want his fingerprints on origin stories…Don't worry…I will delete anything I don't want to see in the New York Times," Morens wrote to Peter Daszak.
Morens then coached his colleagues on how to avoid Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests (in defiance of federal law) by misspelling key phrases, using code words, deleting emails, and sending sensitive information to non-government accounts. "I learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear after i am foia'd but before the search starts, so i think we are all safe," he wrote in February 2021.
This is the crime that led to Tuesday's charges against Dr. Morens, which include "conspiracy against the United States; destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations; concealment, removal, or mutilation of records; and aiding and abetting." FBI Director Kash Patel spoke out against the "illegal obfuscation of…communications" and vowed that "if you have engaged in activity conspiring against the United States, we will not stop until you face justice."
The US Government already has concrete proof that Folkers conspired to evade FOIA requests on at least three occasions in June 2021 alone.
On June 4, 2021, in an email exchange discussing Peter Daszak's gain-of-function research, he intentionally misspelled "EcoHealth" as "Ec~Health." Three days later, in an email to Dr. Morens, Folkers attempted to hide his reference to Kristian Andersen by typing his last name as "anders$n." Dr. Morens forwarded the message to his personal email account.
Three weeks later, Folkers intentionally misspelled "gain-of-function" to be "g#in-of-function" in another email to Dr. Morens.
While President Joe Biden (or his autopen) granted a startlingly broad pardon to Anthony Fauci in the final days of his administration, there is still ample opportunity to bring his co-conspirators to justice. Greg Folkers was a central figure in the Covid operation. He knew of NIAID's culpability, he served as Dr. Fauci's liaison, and he helped orchestrate a massive coverup. In the process, he partook in the same crimes that now support the indictment against Dr. Morens.
There are many more besides, among whom the heads of the Cybersecurity Inflation Security Agency, which divided the population between essential and nonessenti...]]> Thu, 30 Apr 2026 07:40:00 -0400 The Next Indictment Should Be Against Greg Folkers The Department of Justice does not need to wait for Dr. David Morens to turn on his colleagues; the evidence to charge the next key advisor to Dr. Anthony Fauci is already in the public record.
Greg Folker...]]> The Department of Justice does not need to wait for Dr. David Morens to turn on his colleagues; the evidence to charge the next key advisor to Dr. Anthony Fauci is already in the public record.
Greg Folkers was critical to the censorship operation at the heart of the Covid response. As Chief of Staff at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Folkers oversaw operations for the agency's $6 billion budget and later sought to evade FOIA requests by conspiring with Dr. Morens and intentionally misspelling key phrases such as "g#in-of-function."
In January 2020, he sent the first email to Anthony Fauci warning that the NIAID had funded gain-of-function research on coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through grants it made to EcoHealth Alliance, Peter Daszak's organization. That research, Folkers cautioned, could be the source of Covid-19.
But instead of warning the public of the "lab leak" as it would come to be known, Folkers, Fauci, and Morens initiated the coverup.
Hours after Folkers' initial warning, Fauci recruited virologists Kristian Andersen and Eddie Holmes to plant a cover story. This conspiracy prompted "Proximal Origin," the infamous Nature article that stated that it was "implausible" that the virus was "laboratory-based," even though Andersen and his colleagues made over 50 direct statements that expressed their belief that a lab leak was the likely origin of the virus.
While that article became the basis to censor any dissidents who questioned the origins of the virus, Folkers, Morens, and Fauci conspired to keep their role in the affair secret. "Tony doesn't want his fingerprints on origin stories…Don't worry…I will delete anything I don't want to see in the New York Times," Morens wrote to Peter Daszak.
Morens then coached his colleagues on how to avoid Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests (in defiance of federal law) by misspelling key phrases, using code words, deleting emails, and sending sensitive information to non-government accounts. "I learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear after i am foia'd but before the search starts, so i think we are all safe," he wrote in February 2021.
This is the crime that led to Tuesday's charges against Dr. Morens, which include "conspiracy against the United States; destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations; concealment, removal, or mutilation of records; and aiding and abetting." FBI Director Kash Patel spoke out against the "illegal obfuscation of…communications" and vowed that "if you have engaged in activity conspiring against the United States, we will not stop until you face justice."
The US Government already has concrete proof that Folkers conspired to evade FOIA requests on at least three occasions in June 2021 alone.
On June 4, 2021, in an email exchange discussing Peter Daszak's gain-of-function research, he intentionally misspelled "EcoHealth" as "Ec~Health." Three days later, in an email to Dr. Morens, Folkers attempted to hide his reference to Kristian Andersen by typing his last name as "anders$n." Dr. Morens forwarded the message to his personal email account.
Three weeks later, Folkers intentionally misspelled "gain-of-function" to be "g#in-of-function" in another email to Dr. Morens.
While President Joe Biden (or his autopen) granted a startlingly broad pardon to Anthony Fauci in the final days of his administration, there is still ample opportunity to bring his co-conspirators to justice. Greg Folkers was a central figure in the Covid operation. He knew of NIAID's culpability, he served as Dr. Fauci's liaison, and he helped orchestrate a massive coverup. In the process, he partook in the same crimes that now support the indictment against Dr. Morens.
There are many more besides, among whom the heads of the Cybersecurity Inflation Security Agency, which divided the population between essential and nonessenti...]]> Brownstone Institute 04:06 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 20 61489 [This article was coauthored by Michael R. Jenkins, an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Mississippi State University.]
Within academia, there seems to be a growing consensus that the peer-review system—once the backbone of academic scholarship—is broken. But is it irreparably so? Perhaps. At the very least, the breakdown of its current form is worth exploring. However, rather than abandoning the entire endeavor, we believe we have a novel solution. First, though, let us examine where the system went wrong.
In the Middle Ages, most scientific research was self-published, as scholars shared their findings among themselves. But, as the profession grew, that became impractical, and the scientific journal was born as a way of disseminating information. A scholar would have an idea, investigate, summarize his conclusions, and submit the resulting manuscript to a journal. There, the editor or editors would consider it and decide whether to publish the work as-is, request revisions, or reject it altogether. Over time, as the number of scholars continued to proliferate, all of them under increasing pressure to publish, publish, publish—in order to be hired, earn tenure, and qualify for grants—the task of journal editors became overwhelming. There were just too many submissions to give them all fair consideration.
And so they came up with the idea of farming out their evaluation of submissions to teams of unpaid reviewers, other scholars in the same field or a related field who were (theoretically, at least) qualified to judge the quality of the research under consideration. This would relieve some of the burden on the editors while also bestowing an additional stamp of legitimacy on the finished product. Whether a given piece of scholarship was worthy of publication was to be determined not just by one or two people but rather by a group of "blind" experts. Thus, the label "peer-reviewed" became the gold standard for scholarly research. A publication in a "peer-reviewed journal" has long been considered essentially unassailable, to the point that politicians and media types seem convinced they can win any argument simply by referencing a piece of "peer-reviewed research."
It was initially a pretty good system, and it worked reasonably well for a long time. But it seems to have now run its course. Tenure requirements have become more quantitative. The internet has decreased barriers to submission, encouraging more scholars to submit more articles to more journals. The number of submissions from Asian, African, and Middle Eastern universities has exploded. Even with more journals and more reviewers, the system has broken down, as all large, complex systems eventually do. We know this to be the case because of a problem first identified 20 years ago by Stanford scientist John Ioannidis, which has since come to be known as the "replication crisis."
One of the hallmarks of good science is that an experiment can be replicated—that is, another researcher using the same methodology will achieve the same result, meaning the findings are both valid and consistent. But what Ioannidis argued in his seminal 2005 article "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False" (updated in 2022) was that, well, most published research findings are flawed. The experiments can't be replicated, casting their validity into question.
Other scholars have since taken issue with Ioannidis's thesis, especially his use of the word "most." Social scientists, in particular, argue that experiments involving human subjects often can't be replicated precisely because people are themselves inconsistent. Nevertheless, scholars generally agree that the replication crisis is real, if not quite as widespread as Ioannidis suggests.
What does this have to do with peer review? Obviously, if the system were functioning as intended, with teams of bona fide experts checking and double-checking each other's work, we might expect that very fe...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/peer-review-is-broken-heres-how-to-fix-it/ [This article was coauthored by Michael R. Jenkins, an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Mississippi State University.]
Within academia, there seems to be a growing consensus that the peer-review system—once the backbone of academic scholarship—is broken. But is it irreparably so? Perhaps. At the very least, the breakdown of its current form is worth exploring. However, rather than abandoning the entire endeavor, we believe we have a novel solution. First, though, let us examine where the system went wrong.
In the Middle Ages, most scientific research was self-published, as scholars shared their findings among themselves. But, as the profession grew, that became impractical, and the scientific journal was born as a way of disseminating information. A scholar would have an idea, investigate, summarize his conclusions, and submit the resulting manuscript to a journal. There, the editor or editors would consider it and decide whether to publish the work as-is, request revisions, or reject it altogether. Over time, as the number of scholars continued to proliferate, all of them under increasing pressure to publish, publish, publish—in order to be hired, earn tenure, and qualify for grants—the task of journal editors became overwhelming. There were just too many submissions to give them all fair consideration.
And so they came up with the idea of farming out their evaluation of submissions to teams of unpaid reviewers, other scholars in the same field or a related field who were (theoretically, at least) qualified to judge the quality of the research under consideration. This would relieve some of the burden on the editors while also bestowing an additional stamp of legitimacy on the finished product. Whether a given piece of scholarship was worthy of publication was to be determined not just by one or two people but rather by a group of "blind" experts. Thus, the label "peer-reviewed" became the gold standard for scholarly research. A publication in a "peer-reviewed journal" has long been considered essentially unassailable, to the point that politicians and media types seem convinced they can win any argument simply by referencing a piece of "peer-reviewed research."
It was initially a pretty good system, and it worked reasonably well for a long time. But it seems to have now run its course. Tenure requirements have become more quantitative. The internet has decreased barriers to submission, encouraging more scholars to submit more articles to more journals. The number of submissions from Asian, African, and Middle Eastern universities has exploded. Even with more journals and more reviewers, the system has broken down, as all large, complex systems eventually do. We know this to be the case because of a problem first identified 20 years ago by Stanford scientist John Ioannidis, which has since come to be known as the "replication crisis."
One of the hallmarks of good science is that an experiment can be replicated—that is, another researcher using the same methodology will achieve the same result, meaning the findings are both valid and consistent. But what Ioannidis argued in his seminal 2005 article "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False" (updated in 2022) was that, well, most published research findings are flawed. The experiments can't be replicated, casting their validity into question.
Other scholars have since taken issue with Ioannidis's thesis, especially his use of the word "most." Social scientists, in particular, argue that experiments involving human subjects often can't be replicated precisely because people are themselves inconsistent. Nevertheless, scholars generally agree that the replication crisis is real, if not quite as widespread as Ioannidis suggests.
What does this have to do with peer review? Obviously, if the system were functioning as intended, with teams of bona fide experts checking and double-checking each other's work, we might expect that very fe...]]> Wed, 29 Apr 2026 07:11:56 -0400 Peer Review Is Broken—Here's How to Fix It [This article was coauthored by Michael R. Jenkins, an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Mississippi State University.]
Within academia, there seems to be a growing consensus that the peer-review system—once the ...]]> [This article was coauthored by Michael R. Jenkins, an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Mississippi State University.]
Within academia, there seems to be a growing consensus that the peer-review system—once the backbone of academic scholarship—is broken. But is it irreparably so? Perhaps. At the very least, the breakdown of its current form is worth exploring. However, rather than abandoning the entire endeavor, we believe we have a novel solution. First, though, let us examine where the system went wrong.
In the Middle Ages, most scientific research was self-published, as scholars shared their findings among themselves. But, as the profession grew, that became impractical, and the scientific journal was born as a way of disseminating information. A scholar would have an idea, investigate, summarize his conclusions, and submit the resulting manuscript to a journal. There, the editor or editors would consider it and decide whether to publish the work as-is, request revisions, or reject it altogether. Over time, as the number of scholars continued to proliferate, all of them under increasing pressure to publish, publish, publish—in order to be hired, earn tenure, and qualify for grants—the task of journal editors became overwhelming. There were just too many submissions to give them all fair consideration.
And so they came up with the idea of farming out their evaluation of submissions to teams of unpaid reviewers, other scholars in the same field or a related field who were (theoretically, at least) qualified to judge the quality of the research under consideration. This would relieve some of the burden on the editors while also bestowing an additional stamp of legitimacy on the finished product. Whether a given piece of scholarship was worthy of publication was to be determined not just by one or two people but rather by a group of "blind" experts. Thus, the label "peer-reviewed" became the gold standard for scholarly research. A publication in a "peer-reviewed journal" has long been considered essentially unassailable, to the point that politicians and media types seem convinced they can win any argument simply by referencing a piece of "peer-reviewed research."
It was initially a pretty good system, and it worked reasonably well for a long time. But it seems to have now run its course. Tenure requirements have become more quantitative. The internet has decreased barriers to submission, encouraging more scholars to submit more articles to more journals. The number of submissions from Asian, African, and Middle Eastern universities has exploded. Even with more journals and more reviewers, the system has broken down, as all large, complex systems eventually do. We know this to be the case because of a problem first identified 20 years ago by Stanford scientist John Ioannidis, which has since come to be known as the "replication crisis."
One of the hallmarks of good science is that an experiment can be replicated—that is, another researcher using the same methodology will achieve the same result, meaning the findings are both valid and consistent. But what Ioannidis argued in his seminal 2005 article "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False" (updated in 2022) was that, well, most published research findings are flawed. The experiments can't be replicated, casting their validity into question.
Other scholars have since taken issue with Ioannidis's thesis, especially his use of the word "most." Social scientists, in particular, argue that experiments involving human subjects often can't be replicated precisely because people are themselves inconsistent. Nevertheless, scholars generally agree that the replication crisis is real, if not quite as widespread as Ioannidis suggests.
What does this have to do with peer review? Obviously, if the system were functioning as intended, with teams of bona fide experts checking and double-checking each other's work, we might expect that very fe...]]> Rob Jenkins 09:09 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 19 67909 Dr. David Morens was Anthony Fauci's long-trusted assistant at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, one of many subdivisions of the National Institutes of Health. He worked there for nearly a quarter of a century, a job he snagged out of his training as a virologist and his tenure at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He was loyal to his boss, clearly to a fault.
Now he is the first lamb sacrificed in what is likely to be a long series of prosecutions.
Morens, now 78 years old, has been indicted by the Department of Justice "with conspiracy against the United States; destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations; concealment, removal, or mutilation of records; and aiding and abetting."
All of this is clearly documented in emails obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests and Senate investigations, in which Morens is promised wine for his "behind-the-scenes shenanigans," and arranged for its delivery to his home. He was also promised – very likely by Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance, the recipient of Fauci's largesse – "additional things of value, including meals at Michelin-starred restaurants in Paris, New York, and Washington, D.C."
Clearly something had gone very wrong in the normal affairs of state. What was the point of all this cloak-and-dagger? To cover up what everyone suspected, that the virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China, that benefited from funding from the US government channeled through a favored contractor, the EcoHealth Alliance. Daszak himself was involved in the coverup in those early months, even authoring a very early (Feb 28, 2020) op-ed in the pages of the New York Times.
"As the world struggles to respond to Covid-19," Daszak wrote, "we risk missing the really big picture: Pandemics are on the rise, and we need to contain the process that drives them, not just the individual diseases." In other words: this is just Disease Xl; blame nature, not scientists in government.
In an April 21, 2021 email to Daszak, Morens wrote: "PS, I forgot to say there is no worry about FOIAs. I can either send stuff to Tony on his private gmail, or hand it to him at work or at his [Fauci's] house. He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble."
In preparation for his grilling by the Senate on May 22, 2024, Morens wrote Daszak: "I should be prepared to be hit with criminal charges and firing and possible jail time for using my Gmail for supposed government business.…Please come visit me in prison and help me find a job when I get out. At least if that happens I will finally have the ability to speak out and write about what has been going on. I won't mince words."
The best we can hope for, then, is precisely what Morens promises: that once in prison, he will sing like a bird. He certainly knows vastly more than he has thus far said, as he admits. Or perhaps he avoids prison by turning on his past associates and ratting them out not only for the lab funding and leak but for what followed: the complete destruction of the country (and much of the world) with a lockdown awaiting an inoculation with a terrible efficacy and safety profile.
This is the real nub of the issue. For six years, people have wondered why it was so crucial for Fauci and his cohorts – among whom there were many, including actors in national security agencies – to work so hard to cover up the possibility of a lab leak, even to the point of commissioning a scientific paper to make the implausible case for a zoonotic origin. The best possible explanation is that they wanted to avoid culpability.
Another conspirator on the other side of the pond, Dr. Jeremy Farrar of Wellcome in the UK, jumped the gun with his 2021 book Spiked. He was a bit too forthcoming.
"In the last week of January 2020," he writes, "I saw email chatter from scientists in the US suggesting the virus looked almost engineered to infect...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-first-covid-indictment-finally/ Dr. David Morens was Anthony Fauci's long-trusted assistant at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, one of many subdivisions of the National Institutes of Health. He worked there for nearly a quarter of a century, a job he snagged out of his training as a virologist and his tenure at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He was loyal to his boss, clearly to a fault.
Now he is the first lamb sacrificed in what is likely to be a long series of prosecutions.
Morens, now 78 years old, has been indicted by the Department of Justice "with conspiracy against the United States; destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations; concealment, removal, or mutilation of records; and aiding and abetting."
All of this is clearly documented in emails obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests and Senate investigations, in which Morens is promised wine for his "behind-the-scenes shenanigans," and arranged for its delivery to his home. He was also promised – very likely by Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance, the recipient of Fauci's largesse – "additional things of value, including meals at Michelin-starred restaurants in Paris, New York, and Washington, D.C."
Clearly something had gone very wrong in the normal affairs of state. What was the point of all this cloak-and-dagger? To cover up what everyone suspected, that the virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China, that benefited from funding from the US government channeled through a favored contractor, the EcoHealth Alliance. Daszak himself was involved in the coverup in those early months, even authoring a very early (Feb 28, 2020) op-ed in the pages of the New York Times.
"As the world struggles to respond to Covid-19," Daszak wrote, "we risk missing the really big picture: Pandemics are on the rise, and we need to contain the process that drives them, not just the individual diseases." In other words: this is just Disease Xl; blame nature, not scientists in government.
In an April 21, 2021 email to Daszak, Morens wrote: "PS, I forgot to say there is no worry about FOIAs. I can either send stuff to Tony on his private gmail, or hand it to him at work or at his [Fauci's] house. He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble."
In preparation for his grilling by the Senate on May 22, 2024, Morens wrote Daszak: "I should be prepared to be hit with criminal charges and firing and possible jail time for using my Gmail for supposed government business.…Please come visit me in prison and help me find a job when I get out. At least if that happens I will finally have the ability to speak out and write about what has been going on. I won't mince words."
The best we can hope for, then, is precisely what Morens promises: that once in prison, he will sing like a bird. He certainly knows vastly more than he has thus far said, as he admits. Or perhaps he avoids prison by turning on his past associates and ratting them out not only for the lab funding and leak but for what followed: the complete destruction of the country (and much of the world) with a lockdown awaiting an inoculation with a terrible efficacy and safety profile.
This is the real nub of the issue. For six years, people have wondered why it was so crucial for Fauci and his cohorts – among whom there were many, including actors in national security agencies – to work so hard to cover up the possibility of a lab leak, even to the point of commissioning a scientific paper to make the implausible case for a zoonotic origin. The best possible explanation is that they wanted to avoid culpability.
Another conspirator on the other side of the pond, Dr. Jeremy Farrar of Wellcome in the UK, jumped the gun with his 2021 book Spiked. He was a bit too forthcoming.
"In the last week of January 2020," he writes, "I saw email chatter from scientists in the US suggesting the virus looked almost engineered to infect...]]> Tue, 28 Apr 2026 14:36:56 -0400 The First Covid Indictment, Finally Dr. David Morens was Anthony Fauci's long-trusted assistant at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, one of many subdivisions of the National Institutes of Health. He worked there for ...]]> Dr. David Morens was Anthony Fauci's long-trusted assistant at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, one of many subdivisions of the National Institutes of Health. He worked there for nearly a quarter of a century, a job he snagged out of his training as a virologist and his tenure at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He was loyal to his boss, clearly to a fault.
Now he is the first lamb sacrificed in what is likely to be a long series of prosecutions.
Morens, now 78 years old, has been indicted by the Department of Justice "with conspiracy against the United States; destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations; concealment, removal, or mutilation of records; and aiding and abetting."
All of this is clearly documented in emails obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests and Senate investigations, in which Morens is promised wine for his "behind-the-scenes shenanigans," and arranged for its delivery to his home. He was also promised – very likely by Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance, the recipient of Fauci's largesse – "additional things of value, including meals at Michelin-starred restaurants in Paris, New York, and Washington, D.C."
Clearly something had gone very wrong in the normal affairs of state. What was the point of all this cloak-and-dagger? To cover up what everyone suspected, that the virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China, that benefited from funding from the US government channeled through a favored contractor, the EcoHealth Alliance. Daszak himself was involved in the coverup in those early months, even authoring a very early (Feb 28, 2020) op-ed in the pages of the New York Times.
"As the world struggles to respond to Covid-19," Daszak wrote, "we risk missing the really big picture: Pandemics are on the rise, and we need to contain the process that drives them, not just the individual diseases." In other words: this is just Disease Xl; blame nature, not scientists in government.
In an April 21, 2021 email to Daszak, Morens wrote: "PS, I forgot to say there is no worry about FOIAs. I can either send stuff to Tony on his private gmail, or hand it to him at work or at his [Fauci's] house. He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble."
In preparation for his grilling by the Senate on May 22, 2024, Morens wrote Daszak: "I should be prepared to be hit with criminal charges and firing and possible jail time for using my Gmail for supposed government business.…Please come visit me in prison and help me find a job when I get out. At least if that happens I will finally have the ability to speak out and write about what has been going on. I won't mince words."
The best we can hope for, then, is precisely what Morens promises: that once in prison, he will sing like a bird. He certainly knows vastly more than he has thus far said, as he admits. Or perhaps he avoids prison by turning on his past associates and ratting them out not only for the lab funding and leak but for what followed: the complete destruction of the country (and much of the world) with a lockdown awaiting an inoculation with a terrible efficacy and safety profile.
This is the real nub of the issue. For six years, people have wondered why it was so crucial for Fauci and his cohorts – among whom there were many, including actors in national security agencies – to work so hard to cover up the possibility of a lab leak, even to the point of commissioning a scientific paper to make the implausible case for a zoonotic origin. The best possible explanation is that they wanted to avoid culpability.
Another conspirator on the other side of the pond, Dr. Jeremy Farrar of Wellcome in the UK, jumped the gun with his 2021 book Spiked. He was a bit too forthcoming.
"In the last week of January 2020," he writes, "I saw email chatter from scientists in the US suggesting the virus looked almost engineered to infect...]]> Brownstone Institute 08:04 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 18 67824 Last week, I was unexpectedly hit with a post-lockdown trauma response. While driving to a baseball game days before the NFL Draft came to Pittsburgh, I passed a digital highway sign instructing me to avoid nonessential travel.
Suddenly, memories of empty highways with signs instructing drivers to "Stay Safe and Stay Home" came flooding back to me.
As the week developed, it began to occur to me that the parallels were deeper than my subjective emotional response. Road closures intensified, rendering my beloved city of Pittsburgh less and less functional. Even sidewalks were closed.
Entire parking garages were emptied and abandoned. Pittsburgh's "most visited museum," the Kamin Science Center, has been closed to the public for weeks because it was within the footprint of the upcoming event. For the actual days of the draft, Pittsburgh Public Schools were shuttered as if a blizzard had rendered travel impossible.

The attempt by local officials to trigger hysteria in the populace worked, maybe too well. People traveling to Pittsburgh for the event heeded the instructions to use the special free public transit to make their way in. Parking operators, expecting a huge windfall, saw themselves lower their exorbitant prices midday. For example, the Rivers Casino quickly abandoned their plan to charge $250 per day, lowering their rate to $100 for the first day of the draft and then abandoning charging altogether for subsequent days.
Local businesses outside the official footprint of the event were told to prepare for heavy crowds, but instead experienced a weekend worse than anything they had seen since the Covid hysteria. Those who didn't want to go to the draft were terrified to go anywhere near the city.
In summary, children were deprived of education, small business owners were drastically harmed, public spaces which exist for the common good were shuttered, and normal life ceased for those who actually live in the City of Pittsburgh. While all of this was happening, local politicians were patting themselves on the back for how well everything was pulled off, taking pride that this draft broke attendance records for the NFL and that their plans of getting people in and out of the city were effective. It was our own personal Operation Warp Speed.
I think there's a lesson here that applies not merely to Pittsburgh politics but also to the wider dysfunction we see in elected officials throughout what used to be Western Civilization.
Our political leaders view their own constituents with a sort of boredom or indifference. In the leadup to the draft, Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania engaged in a number of public works projects designed to improve the area in preparation for the draft.
Suddenly, our governments remembered that potholes aren't supposed to be allowed to exist and that crime isn't supposed to be allowed to happen. For three days, Pittsburgh had a heavily subsidized and highly functional public transit system, something that hasn't existed the entirety of my lifetime.
Any one of these projects could have been accomplished at any time, but the actual people who live there provided insufficient motivation for our leaders. Rather, what really mattered to them was looking good in front of millionaires, soon-to-be millionaires, and the powerful elites who would gather to party the night away with Nelly, Steve Aoki, and 2 Chainz.
Meanwhile, the elites themselves seem to view the common people with at least implicit contempt. They desire entire blocks to be shut down for their own amusement. The common man, including those who wait upon them, should be relegated to buses or walking so as not to encroach upon their experience. This is their party, and the city is lucky to have them there.

We live in a world where the elites view the common man as a problem to be solved and the leaders elected by the common man anxiously present themselves as lapdog...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/elites-and-their-contempt/ Last week, I was unexpectedly hit with a post-lockdown trauma response. While driving to a baseball game days before the NFL Draft came to Pittsburgh, I passed a digital highway sign instructing me to avoid nonessential travel.
Suddenly, memories of empty highways with signs instructing drivers to "Stay Safe and Stay Home" came flooding back to me.
As the week developed, it began to occur to me that the parallels were deeper than my subjective emotional response. Road closures intensified, rendering my beloved city of Pittsburgh less and less functional. Even sidewalks were closed.
Entire parking garages were emptied and abandoned. Pittsburgh's "most visited museum," the Kamin Science Center, has been closed to the public for weeks because it was within the footprint of the upcoming event. For the actual days of the draft, Pittsburgh Public Schools were shuttered as if a blizzard had rendered travel impossible.

The attempt by local officials to trigger hysteria in the populace worked, maybe too well. People traveling to Pittsburgh for the event heeded the instructions to use the special free public transit to make their way in. Parking operators, expecting a huge windfall, saw themselves lower their exorbitant prices midday. For example, the Rivers Casino quickly abandoned their plan to charge $250 per day, lowering their rate to $100 for the first day of the draft and then abandoning charging altogether for subsequent days.
Local businesses outside the official footprint of the event were told to prepare for heavy crowds, but instead experienced a weekend worse than anything they had seen since the Covid hysteria. Those who didn't want to go to the draft were terrified to go anywhere near the city.
In summary, children were deprived of education, small business owners were drastically harmed, public spaces which exist for the common good were shuttered, and normal life ceased for those who actually live in the City of Pittsburgh. While all of this was happening, local politicians were patting themselves on the back for how well everything was pulled off, taking pride that this draft broke attendance records for the NFL and that their plans of getting people in and out of the city were effective. It was our own personal Operation Warp Speed.
I think there's a lesson here that applies not merely to Pittsburgh politics but also to the wider dysfunction we see in elected officials throughout what used to be Western Civilization.
Our political leaders view their own constituents with a sort of boredom or indifference. In the leadup to the draft, Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania engaged in a number of public works projects designed to improve the area in preparation for the draft.
Suddenly, our governments remembered that potholes aren't supposed to be allowed to exist and that crime isn't supposed to be allowed to happen. For three days, Pittsburgh had a heavily subsidized and highly functional public transit system, something that hasn't existed the entirety of my lifetime.
Any one of these projects could have been accomplished at any time, but the actual people who live there provided insufficient motivation for our leaders. Rather, what really mattered to them was looking good in front of millionaires, soon-to-be millionaires, and the powerful elites who would gather to party the night away with Nelly, Steve Aoki, and 2 Chainz.
Meanwhile, the elites themselves seem to view the common people with at least implicit contempt. They desire entire blocks to be shut down for their own amusement. The common man, including those who wait upon them, should be relegated to buses or walking so as not to encroach upon their experience. This is their party, and the city is lucky to have them there.

We live in a world where the elites view the common man as a problem to be solved and the leaders elected by the common man anxiously present themselves as lapdog...]]> Tue, 28 Apr 2026 07:02:18 -0400 Elites and Their Contempt Last week, I was unexpectedly hit with a post-lockdown trauma response. While driving to a baseball game days before the NFL Draft came to Pittsburgh, I passed a digital highway sign instructing me to avoid...]]> Last week, I was unexpectedly hit with a post-lockdown trauma response. While driving to a baseball game days before the NFL Draft came to Pittsburgh, I passed a digital highway sign instructing me to avoid nonessential travel.
Suddenly, memories of empty highways with signs instructing drivers to "Stay Safe and Stay Home" came flooding back to me.
As the week developed, it began to occur to me that the parallels were deeper than my subjective emotional response. Road closures intensified, rendering my beloved city of Pittsburgh less and less functional. Even sidewalks were closed.
Entire parking garages were emptied and abandoned. Pittsburgh's "most visited museum," the Kamin Science Center, has been closed to the public for weeks because it was within the footprint of the upcoming event. For the actual days of the draft, Pittsburgh Public Schools were shuttered as if a blizzard had rendered travel impossible.

The attempt by local officials to trigger hysteria in the populace worked, maybe too well. People traveling to Pittsburgh for the event heeded the instructions to use the special free public transit to make their way in. Parking operators, expecting a huge windfall, saw themselves lower their exorbitant prices midday. For example, the Rivers Casino quickly abandoned their plan to charge $250 per day, lowering their rate to $100 for the first day of the draft and then abandoning charging altogether for subsequent days.
Local businesses outside the official footprint of the event were told to prepare for heavy crowds, but instead experienced a weekend worse than anything they had seen since the Covid hysteria. Those who didn't want to go to the draft were terrified to go anywhere near the city.
In summary, children were deprived of education, small business owners were drastically harmed, public spaces which exist for the common good were shuttered, and normal life ceased for those who actually live in the City of Pittsburgh. While all of this was happening, local politicians were patting themselves on the back for how well everything was pulled off, taking pride that this draft broke attendance records for the NFL and that their plans of getting people in and out of the city were effective. It was our own personal Operation Warp Speed.
I think there's a lesson here that applies not merely to Pittsburgh politics but also to the wider dysfunction we see in elected officials throughout what used to be Western Civilization.
Our political leaders view their own constituents with a sort of boredom or indifference. In the leadup to the draft, Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania engaged in a number of public works projects designed to improve the area in preparation for the draft.
Suddenly, our governments remembered that potholes aren't supposed to be allowed to exist and that crime isn't supposed to be allowed to happen. For three days, Pittsburgh had a heavily subsidized and highly functional public transit system, something that hasn't existed the entirety of my lifetime.
Any one of these projects could have been accomplished at any time, but the actual people who live there provided insufficient motivation for our leaders. Rather, what really mattered to them was looking good in front of millionaires, soon-to-be millionaires, and the powerful elites who would gather to party the night away with Nelly, Steve Aoki, and 2 Chainz.
Meanwhile, the elites themselves seem to view the common people with at least implicit contempt. They desire entire blocks to be shut down for their own amusement. The common man, including those who wait upon them, should be relegated to buses or walking so as not to encroach upon their experience. This is their party, and the city is lucky to have them there.

We live in a world where the elites view the common man as a problem to be solved and the leaders elected by the common man anxiously present themselves as lapdog...]]> Rev. John F. Naugle 03:51 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 17 67479 The serious-adverse-event signal found in the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA Covid-19 vaccine trials has been in the peer-reviewed literature for nearly four years. Mainstream media outlets, on the rare occasions they address it, have treated it not as evidence to be weighed but as misinformation to be managed — dismissed on the authority of experts without relevant expertise, or simply ignored. A recent BBC Radio 4 broadcast is a near-textbook example.
The broadcast aired on Everything Is Fake and Nobody Cares, a BBC Radio 4 series hosted by Jamie Bartlett, whose stated purpose is to ask why, in so much of modern life, fakery is no longer punished but rewarded. It is a reasonable question. The most direct answer the series has produced to date appears inside one of its own episodes.
In the episode in question, Bartlett devoted his broadcast to Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Covid-19 vaccine safety. As part of that segment, he aired a specific claim about a peer-reviewed paper I led, published in the journal Vaccine in September 2022. To evaluate Dr. Malhotra's on-air statements, Bartlett brought in Dr. Vicky Male, a reproductive immunologist at Imperial College London. Dr. Male told listeners that the authors of the paper had been "specifically told to make it clear this paper should not be used" to support the kinds of claims Dr. Malhotra was making.
That statement is not true. No one told us that. The paper does not contain such an instruction. I am one of its authors; I have the peer review correspondence; I know what the journal asked of us and what it did not. Anyone could have checked this in five minutes by reading the paper, which runs eight pages and is open-access online. Jamie Bartlett did not check.
On the basis of an unchecked false claim about a scientific paper, Bartlett told his audience that Dr. Malhotra was spreading false information — on a podcast whose central premise is that modern life now rewards exactly this kind of thing.
Whether that reflected willful dishonesty or plain incompetence, I cannot say. The case that follows lays out what happened in enough detail for readers to decide for themselves. Both possibilities reflect poorly on a national broadcaster. Only one of them would be excusable.
I. What the Paper Says, and What Dr. Male Said It Says
The most consequential of Dr. Male's on-air claims was the one I opened with: that the authors were "specifically told to make it clear this paper should not be used to make the kinds of claims Dr. Malhotra is making," and that Dr. Malhotra's statement "is not actually correct. The paper doesn't show that that's true."
Told by whom? Dr. Male did not say. Scientific papers pass through three groups of people who could, in principle, issue such an instruction: peer-reviewers, journal editors, and — in some fields — regulators or sponsoring agencies. None of them told us any such thing. The peer review correspondence for our paper is not private. We deposited it publicly alongside our adjudication records and study data at a Zenodo archive, and the paper's data-availability statement directs readers there. Anyone can read the reviewers' comments. They contain substantive methodological questions and no such instruction. The editors communicated no such instruction before, during, or after review. There were no sponsoring agencies, because the paper was carried out with no grant funding at all. There was, in short, no one who told us any such thing, because no such exchange took place.
What does the paper actually say?
The closest sentence to the claim Dr. Male described — and this is the one critics occasionally misread — is a standard scope statement from the introduction: "Our study was not designed to evaluate the overall harm-benefit of vaccination programs so far. To put our safety results in context, we conducted a simple comparison of harms with benefits to illustrate the need for formal harm-benefit analyses of the vaccines...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-vaccine-safety-signal-the-media-still-wont-read/ The serious-adverse-event signal found in the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA Covid-19 vaccine trials has been in the peer-reviewed literature for nearly four years. Mainstream media outlets, on the rare occasions they address it, have treated it not as evidence to be weighed but as misinformation to be managed — dismissed on the authority of experts without relevant expertise, or simply ignored. A recent BBC Radio 4 broadcast is a near-textbook example.
The broadcast aired on Everything Is Fake and Nobody Cares, a BBC Radio 4 series hosted by Jamie Bartlett, whose stated purpose is to ask why, in so much of modern life, fakery is no longer punished but rewarded. It is a reasonable question. The most direct answer the series has produced to date appears inside one of its own episodes.
In the episode in question, Bartlett devoted his broadcast to Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Covid-19 vaccine safety. As part of that segment, he aired a specific claim about a peer-reviewed paper I led, published in the journal Vaccine in September 2022. To evaluate Dr. Malhotra's on-air statements, Bartlett brought in Dr. Vicky Male, a reproductive immunologist at Imperial College London. Dr. Male told listeners that the authors of the paper had been "specifically told to make it clear this paper should not be used" to support the kinds of claims Dr. Malhotra was making.
That statement is not true. No one told us that. The paper does not contain such an instruction. I am one of its authors; I have the peer review correspondence; I know what the journal asked of us and what it did not. Anyone could have checked this in five minutes by reading the paper, which runs eight pages and is open-access online. Jamie Bartlett did not check.
On the basis of an unchecked false claim about a scientific paper, Bartlett told his audience that Dr. Malhotra was spreading false information — on a podcast whose central premise is that modern life now rewards exactly this kind of thing.
Whether that reflected willful dishonesty or plain incompetence, I cannot say. The case that follows lays out what happened in enough detail for readers to decide for themselves. Both possibilities reflect poorly on a national broadcaster. Only one of them would be excusable.
I. What the Paper Says, and What Dr. Male Said It Says
The most consequential of Dr. Male's on-air claims was the one I opened with: that the authors were "specifically told to make it clear this paper should not be used to make the kinds of claims Dr. Malhotra is making," and that Dr. Malhotra's statement "is not actually correct. The paper doesn't show that that's true."
Told by whom? Dr. Male did not say. Scientific papers pass through three groups of people who could, in principle, issue such an instruction: peer-reviewers, journal editors, and — in some fields — regulators or sponsoring agencies. None of them told us any such thing. The peer review correspondence for our paper is not private. We deposited it publicly alongside our adjudication records and study data at a Zenodo archive, and the paper's data-availability statement directs readers there. Anyone can read the reviewers' comments. They contain substantive methodological questions and no such instruction. The editors communicated no such instruction before, during, or after review. There were no sponsoring agencies, because the paper was carried out with no grant funding at all. There was, in short, no one who told us any such thing, because no such exchange took place.
What does the paper actually say?
The closest sentence to the claim Dr. Male described — and this is the one critics occasionally misread — is a standard scope statement from the introduction: "Our study was not designed to evaluate the overall harm-benefit of vaccination programs so far. To put our safety results in context, we conducted a simple comparison of harms with benefits to illustrate the need for formal harm-benefit analyses of the vaccines...]]> Mon, 27 Apr 2026 07:09:05 -0400 The Vaccine Safety Signal the Media Still Won't Read The serious-adverse-event signal found in the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA Covid-19 vaccine trials has been in the peer-reviewed literature for nearly four years. Mainstream media outlets, on the rare occasions they ...]]> The serious-adverse-event signal found in the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA Covid-19 vaccine trials has been in the peer-reviewed literature for nearly four years. Mainstream media outlets, on the rare occasions they address it, have treated it not as evidence to be weighed but as misinformation to be managed — dismissed on the authority of experts without relevant expertise, or simply ignored. A recent BBC Radio 4 broadcast is a near-textbook example.
The broadcast aired on Everything Is Fake and Nobody Cares, a BBC Radio 4 series hosted by Jamie Bartlett, whose stated purpose is to ask why, in so much of modern life, fakery is no longer punished but rewarded. It is a reasonable question. The most direct answer the series has produced to date appears inside one of its own episodes.
In the episode in question, Bartlett devoted his broadcast to Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Covid-19 vaccine safety. As part of that segment, he aired a specific claim about a peer-reviewed paper I led, published in the journal Vaccine in September 2022. To evaluate Dr. Malhotra's on-air statements, Bartlett brought in Dr. Vicky Male, a reproductive immunologist at Imperial College London. Dr. Male told listeners that the authors of the paper had been "specifically told to make it clear this paper should not be used" to support the kinds of claims Dr. Malhotra was making.
That statement is not true. No one told us that. The paper does not contain such an instruction. I am one of its authors; I have the peer review correspondence; I know what the journal asked of us and what it did not. Anyone could have checked this in five minutes by reading the paper, which runs eight pages and is open-access online. Jamie Bartlett did not check.
On the basis of an unchecked false claim about a scientific paper, Bartlett told his audience that Dr. Malhotra was spreading false information — on a podcast whose central premise is that modern life now rewards exactly this kind of thing.
Whether that reflected willful dishonesty or plain incompetence, I cannot say. The case that follows lays out what happened in enough detail for readers to decide for themselves. Both possibilities reflect poorly on a national broadcaster. Only one of them would be excusable.
I. What the Paper Says, and What Dr. Male Said It Says
The most consequential of Dr. Male's on-air claims was the one I opened with: that the authors were "specifically told to make it clear this paper should not be used to make the kinds of claims Dr. Malhotra is making," and that Dr. Malhotra's statement "is not actually correct. The paper doesn't show that that's true."
Told by whom? Dr. Male did not say. Scientific papers pass through three groups of people who could, in principle, issue such an instruction: peer-reviewers, journal editors, and — in some fields — regulators or sponsoring agencies. None of them told us any such thing. The peer review correspondence for our paper is not private. We deposited it publicly alongside our adjudication records and study data at a Zenodo archive, and the paper's data-availability statement directs readers there. Anyone can read the reviewers' comments. They contain substantive methodological questions and no such instruction. The editors communicated no such instruction before, during, or after review. There were no sponsoring agencies, because the paper was carried out with no grant funding at all. There was, in short, no one who told us any such thing, because no such exchange took place.
What does the paper actually say?
The closest sentence to the claim Dr. Male described — and this is the one critics occasionally misread — is a standard scope statement from the introduction: "Our study was not designed to evaluate the overall harm-benefit of vaccination programs so far. To put our safety results in context, we conducted a simple comparison of harms with benefits to illustrate the need for formal harm-benefit analyses of the vaccines...]]> Joseph Fraiman 27:04 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 16 67337 SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL
This analysis originated as a student project in my Data Science course at Palacky University, Czech Republic. Several students contributed, with Michal Malcik doing the most. It might be one of the more consequential pieces of coursework.
Introduction
At the beginning of 2022, the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) in many European countries started to decrease dramatically. A rapid and unexpected decline in TFR has occurred in all the Baltic states, across Northern Europe, Central Europe, and in all major countries of Western Europe. Only Greece, Spain, Italy, Croatia, and Romania did not exhibit such dramatic declines, while Portugal and Bulgaria even experienced TFR growth (see Figure 1).

This dramatic and unexpected change in TFR dynamics that occurred synchronously across most of Europe begs for an explanation. Several mechanisms have been proposed in the mainstream media.
1. The aging of population and changes in the size of the fertile cohort. However, the TFR is a statistical measure which is independent of the size of population and its age structure. Thus, while population size and age structure do affect natality (aka birth rate), they do not affect the Total Fertility Rate. The TFR is the average number of children that are born to a woman over her lifetime (assuming the age-specific fertility rates remain constant through their lifetime, and they survive until the end of their reproductive life).
2. The prize shock brought to Europe by the war in Ukraine. However, inflation in Europe started climbing to exceptional levels as late as summer 2022. This is nearly a year after the factors behind the decline in TFR would have taken place.
3. The epidemic of infections with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. However, a large part of the European population was infected during 2020, yet the TFR in most countries actually went up in 2021 (see Figure 1). It would be difficult to argue that one strain of SARS-CoV-2 does not affect TFR while another does.
4. The effect of Covid lockdowns. However, the most stringent (and most surprising) lockdowns happened in 2020, yet the TFR in many countries actually went up in 2021 (see Figure 1).
5. A broader shift in the values of the population. However, such a shift would have to occur simultaneously across many countries with different history, religion, values, economic cycles, ethnic composition, and population dynamics. Moreover, one would have to show that this dramatic shift occurred exactly between the two most dramatic events of the last generation – the start of the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine. All of that is highly unlikely.
Yet, there is another factor which is almost never discussed in public. In the spring of 2021, millions of women of child-bearing age were subjected to the experimental mRNA vaccine against Covid. Since the beginning of the vaccination campaign, there have been many reports of menstruation disorders after the vaccines. In the largest pharmacovigilance database, the VAERS, the number of stillbirths/miscarriages reported after a vaccine jumped from less than 100 before 2020 to more than 3,000 after a Covid vaccine in 2021 alone. The number of menstrual disorder reports increased from lower hundreds before 2020 to more than 27,000 after a Covid vaccine in 2021 alone. Thus, an adverse effect of the Covid vaccines on fertility is plausible.
Moreover, the rapid and unexpected decline in fertility started about 9 months after the mass vaccination event took place. Thus, it is natural to ask if the vaccines have caused this decline. It is notoriously difficult to answer causal questions from observation data. However, the first step in this quest is to establish association.
Data Description
For American readers, some comments about the Czech healthcare landscape are necessary: Everything is very "homogeneous" here. We have universal, free, and very regulated healthcare, so almost everyone gets the same care...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-mystery-of-falling-fertility/ SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL
This analysis originated as a student project in my Data Science course at Palacky University, Czech Republic. Several students contributed, with Michal Malcik doing the most. It might be one of the more consequential pieces of coursework.
Introduction
At the beginning of 2022, the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) in many European countries started to decrease dramatically. A rapid and unexpected decline in TFR has occurred in all the Baltic states, across Northern Europe, Central Europe, and in all major countries of Western Europe. Only Greece, Spain, Italy, Croatia, and Romania did not exhibit such dramatic declines, while Portugal and Bulgaria even experienced TFR growth (see Figure 1).

This dramatic and unexpected change in TFR dynamics that occurred synchronously across most of Europe begs for an explanation. Several mechanisms have been proposed in the mainstream media.
1. The aging of population and changes in the size of the fertile cohort. However, the TFR is a statistical measure which is independent of the size of population and its age structure. Thus, while population size and age structure do affect natality (aka birth rate), they do not affect the Total Fertility Rate. The TFR is the average number of children that are born to a woman over her lifetime (assuming the age-specific fertility rates remain constant through their lifetime, and they survive until the end of their reproductive life).
2. The prize shock brought to Europe by the war in Ukraine. However, inflation in Europe started climbing to exceptional levels as late as summer 2022. This is nearly a year after the factors behind the decline in TFR would have taken place.
3. The epidemic of infections with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. However, a large part of the European population was infected during 2020, yet the TFR in most countries actually went up in 2021 (see Figure 1). It would be difficult to argue that one strain of SARS-CoV-2 does not affect TFR while another does.
4. The effect of Covid lockdowns. However, the most stringent (and most surprising) lockdowns happened in 2020, yet the TFR in many countries actually went up in 2021 (see Figure 1).
5. A broader shift in the values of the population. However, such a shift would have to occur simultaneously across many countries with different history, religion, values, economic cycles, ethnic composition, and population dynamics. Moreover, one would have to show that this dramatic shift occurred exactly between the two most dramatic events of the last generation – the start of the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine. All of that is highly unlikely.
Yet, there is another factor which is almost never discussed in public. In the spring of 2021, millions of women of child-bearing age were subjected to the experimental mRNA vaccine against Covid. Since the beginning of the vaccination campaign, there have been many reports of menstruation disorders after the vaccines. In the largest pharmacovigilance database, the VAERS, the number of stillbirths/miscarriages reported after a vaccine jumped from less than 100 before 2020 to more than 3,000 after a Covid vaccine in 2021 alone. The number of menstrual disorder reports increased from lower hundreds before 2020 to more than 27,000 after a Covid vaccine in 2021 alone. Thus, an adverse effect of the Covid vaccines on fertility is plausible.
Moreover, the rapid and unexpected decline in fertility started about 9 months after the mass vaccination event took place. Thus, it is natural to ask if the vaccines have caused this decline. It is notoriously difficult to answer causal questions from observation data. However, the first step in this quest is to establish association.
Data Description
For American readers, some comments about the Czech healthcare landscape are necessary: Everything is very "homogeneous" here. We have universal, free, and very regulated healthcare, so almost everyone gets the same care...]]> Sun, 26 Apr 2026 08:40:00 -0400 The Mystery of Falling Fertility SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL
This analysis originated as a student project in my Data Science course at Palacky University, Czech Republic. Several students contributed, with Michal Malcik doing the most. It might be one ...]]> SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL
This analysis originated as a student project in my Data Science course at Palacky University, Czech Republic. Several students contributed, with Michal Malcik doing the most. It might be one of the more consequential pieces of coursework.
Introduction
At the beginning of 2022, the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) in many European countries started to decrease dramatically. A rapid and unexpected decline in TFR has occurred in all the Baltic states, across Northern Europe, Central Europe, and in all major countries of Western Europe. Only Greece, Spain, Italy, Croatia, and Romania did not exhibit such dramatic declines, while Portugal and Bulgaria even experienced TFR growth (see Figure 1).

This dramatic and unexpected change in TFR dynamics that occurred synchronously across most of Europe begs for an explanation. Several mechanisms have been proposed in the mainstream media.
1. The aging of population and changes in the size of the fertile cohort. However, the TFR is a statistical measure which is independent of the size of population and its age structure. Thus, while population size and age structure do affect natality (aka birth rate), they do not affect the Total Fertility Rate. The TFR is the average number of children that are born to a woman over her lifetime (assuming the age-specific fertility rates remain constant through their lifetime, and they survive until the end of their reproductive life).
2. The prize shock brought to Europe by the war in Ukraine. However, inflation in Europe started climbing to exceptional levels as late as summer 2022. This is nearly a year after the factors behind the decline in TFR would have taken place.
3. The epidemic of infections with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. However, a large part of the European population was infected during 2020, yet the TFR in most countries actually went up in 2021 (see Figure 1). It would be difficult to argue that one strain of SARS-CoV-2 does not affect TFR while another does.
4. The effect of Covid lockdowns. However, the most stringent (and most surprising) lockdowns happened in 2020, yet the TFR in many countries actually went up in 2021 (see Figure 1).
5. A broader shift in the values of the population. However, such a shift would have to occur simultaneously across many countries with different history, religion, values, economic cycles, ethnic composition, and population dynamics. Moreover, one would have to show that this dramatic shift occurred exactly between the two most dramatic events of the last generation – the start of the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine. All of that is highly unlikely.
Yet, there is another factor which is almost never discussed in public. In the spring of 2021, millions of women of child-bearing age were subjected to the experimental mRNA vaccine against Covid. Since the beginning of the vaccination campaign, there have been many reports of menstruation disorders after the vaccines. In the largest pharmacovigilance database, the VAERS, the number of stillbirths/miscarriages reported after a vaccine jumped from less than 100 before 2020 to more than 3,000 after a Covid vaccine in 2021 alone. The number of menstrual disorder reports increased from lower hundreds before 2020 to more than 27,000 after a Covid vaccine in 2021 alone. Thus, an adverse effect of the Covid vaccines on fertility is plausible.
Moreover, the rapid and unexpected decline in fertility started about 9 months after the mass vaccination event took place. Thus, it is natural to ask if the vaccines have caused this decline. It is notoriously difficult to answer causal questions from observation data. However, the first step in this quest is to establish association.
Data Description
For American readers, some comments about the Czech healthcare landscape are necessary: Everything is very "homogeneous" here. We have universal, free, and very regulated healthcare, so almost everyone gets the same care...]]> Tomas Fürst 13:33 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 15 67329 A new study predicts that 86% of AI unemployment will be women. And not just any women: rich Democrat women.
Tragically, AI is coming for the notorious Karen who's overpaid for what she produces but still needs to see the manager.
The reason is the Industrial Revolution took jobs from people who work with their hands — routine physical work. But AI is taking routine paperwork — people who forward emails, schedule meetings, and sit on diversity committees.

Last week, think tank Brookings issued a new study estimating 37 million American workers are "highly exposed" to AI replacement.
Brookings thinks that most of those will easily transition into a different role because they have broad skill sets or they're smart.
For example, software or finance are on the firing line for AI replacement. But they'll adapt as automation creates new jobs since it raises incomes and deepens production — products get better.
But Brookings estimates there's about 6 million of those who will not adapt, primarily in clerical and administrative roles.
What's interesting is the distribution: Brookings estimates 86% are women. And they work at big organizations with lots of routine paperwork — colleges, hospitals, big companies, government.
In healthcare, for example, hundreds of thousands of workers never see a patient — they see paperwork.

It's worse with federal workers, who are also mostly women.
Going by the fact nothing got worse when DOGE fired 300,000 of them, many are useless. Just imagine how useless they'll be when AI can do their job for free.
A lot of these women may be low skill, but they're high education — and high income. Which they're about to lose. Which won't make them happy.
In a recent CNBC interview, Palantir CEO Alex Karp laid it out: "If you're going to disrupt the economic and political power of highly-educated female voters who vote Democrat while increasing the power of vocationally trained working class males…and you think that's going to work out politically, you're in an insane asylum."
So who are these soon to be jobless Karens?
A study by AI company Anthropic — of Claude fame — thinks AI could ultimately replace over 90% of tasks in administrative, clerical, and middle management. And over 80% in arts and media and law firms — don't let your kids go to Hollywood. Or become lawyers.

This sounds dire, but remember the adaption. Software, for example, has been automating for 50 years — punch-card feeders are long gone. During dot-com, website developers were supposed to be obsolete any day now, and 50 years later they're still here. Because the work got more complicated even as the basic stuff automated.
So the vast majority of that 80 to 90% will reskill, including software, finance, marketing and managers.
The problems are those clerks and admins, secretaries, sales assistants, customer service, payroll…HR. Heaven help you if you're a diversity consultant who doesn't know how to flip a burger.
I've argued that AI will be the opposite of the Industrial Revolution: Instead of replacing routine physical jobs, it replaces routine white collar jobs. With robots coming decades later since you need one AI for 8 billion people but you need 5 robots per McDonald's.

This creates a generation-long blue collar boom as automation itself makes us rich, which raises demand — and pay — for blue-collar jobs. But it will absolutely redistribute income — and power — from high-income, high-education, largely female white collar workers to the plebs.
This is terrifying for Karen — she already makes less than the plumber, she would make less than the Uber guy.
Republished from the author's Substack]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/ai-deletes-routine-white-collar-jobs/ A new study predicts that 86% of AI unemployment will be women. And not just any women: rich Democrat women.
Tragically, AI is coming for the notorious Karen who's overpaid for what she produces but still needs to see the manager.
The reason is the Industrial Revolution took jobs from people who work with their hands — routine physical work. But AI is taking routine paperwork — people who forward emails, schedule meetings, and sit on diversity committees.

Last week, think tank Brookings issued a new study estimating 37 million American workers are "highly exposed" to AI replacement.
Brookings thinks that most of those will easily transition into a different role because they have broad skill sets or they're smart.
For example, software or finance are on the firing line for AI replacement. But they'll adapt as automation creates new jobs since it raises incomes and deepens production — products get better.
But Brookings estimates there's about 6 million of those who will not adapt, primarily in clerical and administrative roles.
What's interesting is the distribution: Brookings estimates 86% are women. And they work at big organizations with lots of routine paperwork — colleges, hospitals, big companies, government.
In healthcare, for example, hundreds of thousands of workers never see a patient — they see paperwork.

It's worse with federal workers, who are also mostly women.
Going by the fact nothing got worse when DOGE fired 300,000 of them, many are useless. Just imagine how useless they'll be when AI can do their job for free.
A lot of these women may be low skill, but they're high education — and high income. Which they're about to lose. Which won't make them happy.
In a recent CNBC interview, Palantir CEO Alex Karp laid it out: "If you're going to disrupt the economic and political power of highly-educated female voters who vote Democrat while increasing the power of vocationally trained working class males…and you think that's going to work out politically, you're in an insane asylum."
So who are these soon to be jobless Karens?
A study by AI company Anthropic — of Claude fame — thinks AI could ultimately replace over 90% of tasks in administrative, clerical, and middle management. And over 80% in arts and media and law firms — don't let your kids go to Hollywood. Or become lawyers.

This sounds dire, but remember the adaption. Software, for example, has been automating for 50 years — punch-card feeders are long gone. During dot-com, website developers were supposed to be obsolete any day now, and 50 years later they're still here. Because the work got more complicated even as the basic stuff automated.
So the vast majority of that 80 to 90% will reskill, including software, finance, marketing and managers.
The problems are those clerks and admins, secretaries, sales assistants, customer service, payroll…HR. Heaven help you if you're a diversity consultant who doesn't know how to flip a burger.
I've argued that AI will be the opposite of the Industrial Revolution: Instead of replacing routine physical jobs, it replaces routine white collar jobs. With robots coming decades later since you need one AI for 8 billion people but you need 5 robots per McDonald's.

This creates a generation-long blue collar boom as automation itself makes us rich, which raises demand — and pay — for blue-collar jobs. But it will absolutely redistribute income — and power — from high-income, high-education, largely female white collar workers to the plebs.
This is terrifying for Karen — she already makes less than the plumber, she would make less than the Uber guy.
Republished from the author's Substack]]> Sat, 25 Apr 2026 08:40:00 -0400 AI Deletes Routine White Collar Jobs A new study predicts that 86% of AI unemployment will be women. And not just any women: rich Democrat women.
Tragically, AI is coming for the notorious Karen who's overpaid for what she produces but still needs t...]]> A new study predicts that 86% of AI unemployment will be women. And not just any women: rich Democrat women.
Tragically, AI is coming for the notorious Karen who's overpaid for what she produces but still needs to see the manager.
The reason is the Industrial Revolution took jobs from people who work with their hands — routine physical work. But AI is taking routine paperwork — people who forward emails, schedule meetings, and sit on diversity committees.

Last week, think tank Brookings issued a new study estimating 37 million American workers are "highly exposed" to AI replacement.
Brookings thinks that most of those will easily transition into a different role because they have broad skill sets or they're smart.
For example, software or finance are on the firing line for AI replacement. But they'll adapt as automation creates new jobs since it raises incomes and deepens production — products get better.
But Brookings estimates there's about 6 million of those who will not adapt, primarily in clerical and administrative roles.
What's interesting is the distribution: Brookings estimates 86% are women. And they work at big organizations with lots of routine paperwork — colleges, hospitals, big companies, government.
In healthcare, for example, hundreds of thousands of workers never see a patient — they see paperwork.

It's worse with federal workers, who are also mostly women.
Going by the fact nothing got worse when DOGE fired 300,000 of them, many are useless. Just imagine how useless they'll be when AI can do their job for free.
A lot of these women may be low skill, but they're high education — and high income. Which they're about to lose. Which won't make them happy.
In a recent CNBC interview, Palantir CEO Alex Karp laid it out: "If you're going to disrupt the economic and political power of highly-educated female voters who vote Democrat while increasing the power of vocationally trained working class males…and you think that's going to work out politically, you're in an insane asylum."
So who are these soon to be jobless Karens?
A study by AI company Anthropic — of Claude fame — thinks AI could ultimately replace over 90% of tasks in administrative, clerical, and middle management. And over 80% in arts and media and law firms — don't let your kids go to Hollywood. Or become lawyers.

This sounds dire, but remember the adaption. Software, for example, has been automating for 50 years — punch-card feeders are long gone. During dot-com, website developers were supposed to be obsolete any day now, and 50 years later they're still here. Because the work got more complicated even as the basic stuff automated.
So the vast majority of that 80 to 90% will reskill, including software, finance, marketing and managers.
The problems are those clerks and admins, secretaries, sales assistants, customer service, payroll…HR. Heaven help you if you're a diversity consultant who doesn't know how to flip a burger.
I've argued that AI will be the opposite of the Industrial Revolution: Instead of replacing routine physical jobs, it replaces routine white collar jobs. With robots coming decades later since you need one AI for 8 billion people but you need 5 robots per McDonald's.

This creates a generation-long blue collar boom as automation itself makes us rich, which raises demand — and pay — for blue-collar jobs. But it will absolutely redistribute income — and power — from high-income, high-education, largely female white collar workers to the plebs.
This is terrifying for Karen — she already makes less than the plumber, she would make less than the Uber guy.
Republished from the author's Substack]]> Peter St Onge 03:31 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 14 67298 It feels a little uncomfortable to say this out loud, but I think many of us are feeling it.
Those of us who showed up because we believed in making America healthy again are disappointed. Maybe no one is organizing it into talking points, and maybe there isn't a formal coalition putting out statements, but if you spend any time in the real conversations, on farms, around dinner tables, in private messages, you will hear it.
There is a quiet disillusionment settling in. Team D.C. has been stopped from pursuing dramatic change that is desperately needed. Courts have intervened. Pharma-owned politicians have blocked reform. Corporate kingpins have thrown their weight around and put up barriers, despite the voter mandate. Pharma-funded media has stepped up its smears.
Before anyone jumps in to tell me I am wrong, let me acknowledge what is real. There have been wins. You can point to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. stepping into a position of influence. He has good and earnest deputies heading agencies under his control.
You can point to shifts in how we talk about chronic disease, changes in food guidance, and even funding beginning to move toward regenerative agriculture. These things matter. They are not nothing.
But they are not enough to match the scale of what was promised, and they are not enough to meet the moment we are in. The disappointment is not rooted in what has been done. It is rooted in what has not happened in light of the crying need.
Underlying this disappointment is something even more familiar. It feels like business as usual.
Corporate interests continue to shape policy against the interests of the American people. We are used to that. We have lived inside that reality for decades. But for a moment, many of us believed something different might happen. We believed there could be a real shift, that there could be courage, that the system might actually turn toward health instead of profit.
We believed there was just enough of a rebel in our president, paired with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s long-standing commitment and a public that was beginning to wake up, that together it might be enough to bring real change. We were wrong.
What we are seeing looks far more familiar than it does transformative. The chemical agriculture system remains intact, and the same subsidies continue to prop up corn, soy, and the inputs that degrade both our soil and our health. There has been no serious federal move to restrict the chemicals embedded in that system. Instead, we are hearing conversations about protecting them, even framing their use as a matter of national security, while exploring liability shields for the companies behind them. That is not reform. That is reinforcement.
The food system itself has not been structurally challenged. Ultra-processed foods still dominate the shelves, and taxpayer dollars continue to support their consumption. There has been no meaningful restructuring of SNAP to prioritize nutrient-dense food, despite widespread acknowledgment that diet is at the center of the chronic disease crisis. We continue to fund the very problem we claim we want to solve.
We have also not seen a serious push to decentralize food production and processing. Policies like the PRIME Act, which could expand access to local meat and support small producers, have not been treated with urgency. Without structural change, messaging becomes decoration.
Regenerative agriculture is becoming more mainstream, and I will acknowledge that this administration has helped bring it into the broader conversation.
That matters. But at the same time, we are continuing to subsidize a system that we all know is broken. How do we know it is broken? Because it requires more subsidy every year, not less. We are not weaning farmers off dependence on government programs or crop insurance; we are deepening that dependence. The need grows year over year, which is the clearest signal that the system itself is ...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/government-cannot-make-us-healthy/ It feels a little uncomfortable to say this out loud, but I think many of us are feeling it.
Those of us who showed up because we believed in making America healthy again are disappointed. Maybe no one is organizing it into talking points, and maybe there isn't a formal coalition putting out statements, but if you spend any time in the real conversations, on farms, around dinner tables, in private messages, you will hear it.
There is a quiet disillusionment settling in. Team D.C. has been stopped from pursuing dramatic change that is desperately needed. Courts have intervened. Pharma-owned politicians have blocked reform. Corporate kingpins have thrown their weight around and put up barriers, despite the voter mandate. Pharma-funded media has stepped up its smears.
Before anyone jumps in to tell me I am wrong, let me acknowledge what is real. There have been wins. You can point to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. stepping into a position of influence. He has good and earnest deputies heading agencies under his control.
You can point to shifts in how we talk about chronic disease, changes in food guidance, and even funding beginning to move toward regenerative agriculture. These things matter. They are not nothing.
But they are not enough to match the scale of what was promised, and they are not enough to meet the moment we are in. The disappointment is not rooted in what has been done. It is rooted in what has not happened in light of the crying need.
Underlying this disappointment is something even more familiar. It feels like business as usual.
Corporate interests continue to shape policy against the interests of the American people. We are used to that. We have lived inside that reality for decades. But for a moment, many of us believed something different might happen. We believed there could be a real shift, that there could be courage, that the system might actually turn toward health instead of profit.
We believed there was just enough of a rebel in our president, paired with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s long-standing commitment and a public that was beginning to wake up, that together it might be enough to bring real change. We were wrong.
What we are seeing looks far more familiar than it does transformative. The chemical agriculture system remains intact, and the same subsidies continue to prop up corn, soy, and the inputs that degrade both our soil and our health. There has been no serious federal move to restrict the chemicals embedded in that system. Instead, we are hearing conversations about protecting them, even framing their use as a matter of national security, while exploring liability shields for the companies behind them. That is not reform. That is reinforcement.
The food system itself has not been structurally challenged. Ultra-processed foods still dominate the shelves, and taxpayer dollars continue to support their consumption. There has been no meaningful restructuring of SNAP to prioritize nutrient-dense food, despite widespread acknowledgment that diet is at the center of the chronic disease crisis. We continue to fund the very problem we claim we want to solve.
We have also not seen a serious push to decentralize food production and processing. Policies like the PRIME Act, which could expand access to local meat and support small producers, have not been treated with urgency. Without structural change, messaging becomes decoration.
Regenerative agriculture is becoming more mainstream, and I will acknowledge that this administration has helped bring it into the broader conversation.
That matters. But at the same time, we are continuing to subsidize a system that we all know is broken. How do we know it is broken? Because it requires more subsidy every year, not less. We are not weaning farmers off dependence on government programs or crop insurance; we are deepening that dependence. The need grows year over year, which is the clearest signal that the system itself is ...]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 07:40:00 -0400 Government Cannot Make Us Healthy It feels a little uncomfortable to say this out loud, but I think many of us are feeling it.
Those of us who showed up because we believed in making America healthy again are disappointed. Maybe no one is orga...]]> It feels a little uncomfortable to say this out loud, but I think many of us are feeling it.
Those of us who showed up because we believed in making America healthy again are disappointed. Maybe no one is organizing it into talking points, and maybe there isn't a formal coalition putting out statements, but if you spend any time in the real conversations, on farms, around dinner tables, in private messages, you will hear it.
There is a quiet disillusionment settling in. Team D.C. has been stopped from pursuing dramatic change that is desperately needed. Courts have intervened. Pharma-owned politicians have blocked reform. Corporate kingpins have thrown their weight around and put up barriers, despite the voter mandate. Pharma-funded media has stepped up its smears.
Before anyone jumps in to tell me I am wrong, let me acknowledge what is real. There have been wins. You can point to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. stepping into a position of influence. He has good and earnest deputies heading agencies under his control.
You can point to shifts in how we talk about chronic disease, changes in food guidance, and even funding beginning to move toward regenerative agriculture. These things matter. They are not nothing.
But they are not enough to match the scale of what was promised, and they are not enough to meet the moment we are in. The disappointment is not rooted in what has been done. It is rooted in what has not happened in light of the crying need.
Underlying this disappointment is something even more familiar. It feels like business as usual.
Corporate interests continue to shape policy against the interests of the American people. We are used to that. We have lived inside that reality for decades. But for a moment, many of us believed something different might happen. We believed there could be a real shift, that there could be courage, that the system might actually turn toward health instead of profit.
We believed there was just enough of a rebel in our president, paired with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s long-standing commitment and a public that was beginning to wake up, that together it might be enough to bring real change. We were wrong.
What we are seeing looks far more familiar than it does transformative. The chemical agriculture system remains intact, and the same subsidies continue to prop up corn, soy, and the inputs that degrade both our soil and our health. There has been no serious federal move to restrict the chemicals embedded in that system. Instead, we are hearing conversations about protecting them, even framing their use as a matter of national security, while exploring liability shields for the companies behind them. That is not reform. That is reinforcement.
The food system itself has not been structurally challenged. Ultra-processed foods still dominate the shelves, and taxpayer dollars continue to support their consumption. There has been no meaningful restructuring of SNAP to prioritize nutrient-dense food, despite widespread acknowledgment that diet is at the center of the chronic disease crisis. We continue to fund the very problem we claim we want to solve.
We have also not seen a serious push to decentralize food production and processing. Policies like the PRIME Act, which could expand access to local meat and support small producers, have not been treated with urgency. Without structural change, messaging becomes decoration.
Regenerative agriculture is becoming more mainstream, and I will acknowledge that this administration has helped bring it into the broader conversation.
That matters. But at the same time, we are continuing to subsidize a system that we all know is broken. How do we know it is broken? Because it requires more subsidy every year, not less. We are not weaning farmers off dependence on government programs or crop insurance; we are deepening that dependence. The need grows year over year, which is the clearest signal that the system itself is ...]]> Mollie Engelhart 08:46 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 13 67277 "I need to ask someone else to take responsibility for the second part of the approvals process, so that I won't have a conflict of interest. I'm also working with Bill Gates and the World Health Organization on the vaccine itself."
This admission of a conflict of interest was made by Prof. Lester Schulman, secretary of the Ministry of Health's polio committee, in March 2023, during an internal discussion about approving the importation into Israel of a new polio vaccine. The vaccine was developed and promoted by the World Health Organization in collaboration with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and its approval pathway relied on a new emergency authorization mechanism the WHO has developed in recent years: the EUL (Emergency Use Listing).
Although the remark was framed as a technical aside, it was an unusual confession of a conflict of interest by the committee's secretary. Its seriousness is compounded by the fact that it was made only after the committee had already voted by an overwhelming majority to initiate the process of bringing the vaccine to Israel, and after it had already worked vigorously to persuade the Pharmaceutical Division to cooperate.
The quotation does not appear in the official minutes of the meeting that were provided to us. It is heard on an audio recording of the session, one of several recordings passed on to us by a whistleblower. The minutes were provided only following a Freedom of Information request and subsequent litigation.
The episode is serious in its own right. But it goes far beyond a local episode of personal conflict of interest or an administrative failure within Israel's health system. The materials point to something more consequential: the use of an international emergency authorization pathway to shape regulatory decisions inside a sovereign state, advanced through overlapping professional networks, without the organization assuming the legal responsibilities borne by national regulators.
In the United States, recent political debates over withdrawal from the World Health Organization were widely framed as a clash between scientific consensus and institutional criticism. Yet the Israeli case, and the materials in our possession, point to a much larger picture.
This was the first implementation of the EUL mechanism within a country with a functioning Western regulatory system. Israel served here as a regulatory test case: an attempt to determine whether it is possible, in practice, to shape an approval pathway inside a sovereign state without holding formal regulatory authority and without being subject to the judicial and parliamentary oversight that applies to a national regulator. In doing so, it exposes how the organization has been operating in recent years: no longer merely an advisory and coordinating body, but an institution that creates operating frameworks that, in practice, shape approval processes inside sovereign states.
The EUL: An Emergency Mechanism or a De Facto Regulatory Infrastructure?
The World Health Organization was established in 1948 as an intergovernmental body tasked with providing professional assistance and technical guidance, promoting research, collecting knowledge, and developing recommendations for its member states. Article 22 of the WHO Constitution leaves states the right to opt out of its regulations, a clear indication that the organization was not granted regulatory powers such as authorizing drugs and vaccines or supervising their manufacture. These areas remained the exclusive responsibility of states themselves, which also bear legal and public responsibility for the decisions of their national health authorities.
In recent years, the WHO has developed mechanisms that expand its influence beyond recommendations and, in effect, enable it to directly influence regulatory authorization processes within states. The central mechanism is the EUL, an independent WHO emergency procedure that is not par...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-who-is-building-a-supranational-vaccine-authorization-mechanism/ "I need to ask someone else to take responsibility for the second part of the approvals process, so that I won't have a conflict of interest. I'm also working with Bill Gates and the World Health Organization on the vaccine itself."
This admission of a conflict of interest was made by Prof. Lester Schulman, secretary of the Ministry of Health's polio committee, in March 2023, during an internal discussion about approving the importation into Israel of a new polio vaccine. The vaccine was developed and promoted by the World Health Organization in collaboration with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and its approval pathway relied on a new emergency authorization mechanism the WHO has developed in recent years: the EUL (Emergency Use Listing).
Although the remark was framed as a technical aside, it was an unusual confession of a conflict of interest by the committee's secretary. Its seriousness is compounded by the fact that it was made only after the committee had already voted by an overwhelming majority to initiate the process of bringing the vaccine to Israel, and after it had already worked vigorously to persuade the Pharmaceutical Division to cooperate.
The quotation does not appear in the official minutes of the meeting that were provided to us. It is heard on an audio recording of the session, one of several recordings passed on to us by a whistleblower. The minutes were provided only following a Freedom of Information request and subsequent litigation.
The episode is serious in its own right. But it goes far beyond a local episode of personal conflict of interest or an administrative failure within Israel's health system. The materials point to something more consequential: the use of an international emergency authorization pathway to shape regulatory decisions inside a sovereign state, advanced through overlapping professional networks, without the organization assuming the legal responsibilities borne by national regulators.
In the United States, recent political debates over withdrawal from the World Health Organization were widely framed as a clash between scientific consensus and institutional criticism. Yet the Israeli case, and the materials in our possession, point to a much larger picture.
This was the first implementation of the EUL mechanism within a country with a functioning Western regulatory system. Israel served here as a regulatory test case: an attempt to determine whether it is possible, in practice, to shape an approval pathway inside a sovereign state without holding formal regulatory authority and without being subject to the judicial and parliamentary oversight that applies to a national regulator. In doing so, it exposes how the organization has been operating in recent years: no longer merely an advisory and coordinating body, but an institution that creates operating frameworks that, in practice, shape approval processes inside sovereign states.
The EUL: An Emergency Mechanism or a De Facto Regulatory Infrastructure?
The World Health Organization was established in 1948 as an intergovernmental body tasked with providing professional assistance and technical guidance, promoting research, collecting knowledge, and developing recommendations for its member states. Article 22 of the WHO Constitution leaves states the right to opt out of its regulations, a clear indication that the organization was not granted regulatory powers such as authorizing drugs and vaccines or supervising their manufacture. These areas remained the exclusive responsibility of states themselves, which also bear legal and public responsibility for the decisions of their national health authorities.
In recent years, the WHO has developed mechanisms that expand its influence beyond recommendations and, in effect, enable it to directly influence regulatory authorization processes within states. The central mechanism is the EUL, an independent WHO emergency procedure that is not par...]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 07:56:11 -0400 The WHO Is Building a Supranational Vaccine Authorization Mechanism "I need to ask someone else to take responsibility for the second part of the approvals process, so that I won't have a conflict of interest. I'm also working with Bill Gates and the World Health Organization on...]]> "I need to ask someone else to take responsibility for the second part of the approvals process, so that I won't have a conflict of interest. I'm also working with Bill Gates and the World Health Organization on the vaccine itself."
This admission of a conflict of interest was made by Prof. Lester Schulman, secretary of the Ministry of Health's polio committee, in March 2023, during an internal discussion about approving the importation into Israel of a new polio vaccine. The vaccine was developed and promoted by the World Health Organization in collaboration with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and its approval pathway relied on a new emergency authorization mechanism the WHO has developed in recent years: the EUL (Emergency Use Listing).
Although the remark was framed as a technical aside, it was an unusual confession of a conflict of interest by the committee's secretary. Its seriousness is compounded by the fact that it was made only after the committee had already voted by an overwhelming majority to initiate the process of bringing the vaccine to Israel, and after it had already worked vigorously to persuade the Pharmaceutical Division to cooperate.
The quotation does not appear in the official minutes of the meeting that were provided to us. It is heard on an audio recording of the session, one of several recordings passed on to us by a whistleblower. The minutes were provided only following a Freedom of Information request and subsequent litigation.
The episode is serious in its own right. But it goes far beyond a local episode of personal conflict of interest or an administrative failure within Israel's health system. The materials point to something more consequential: the use of an international emergency authorization pathway to shape regulatory decisions inside a sovereign state, advanced through overlapping professional networks, without the organization assuming the legal responsibilities borne by national regulators.
In the United States, recent political debates over withdrawal from the World Health Organization were widely framed as a clash between scientific consensus and institutional criticism. Yet the Israeli case, and the materials in our possession, point to a much larger picture.
This was the first implementation of the EUL mechanism within a country with a functioning Western regulatory system. Israel served here as a regulatory test case: an attempt to determine whether it is possible, in practice, to shape an approval pathway inside a sovereign state without holding formal regulatory authority and without being subject to the judicial and parliamentary oversight that applies to a national regulator. In doing so, it exposes how the organization has been operating in recent years: no longer merely an advisory and coordinating body, but an institution that creates operating frameworks that, in practice, shape approval processes inside sovereign states.
The EUL: An Emergency Mechanism or a De Facto Regulatory Infrastructure?
The World Health Organization was established in 1948 as an intergovernmental body tasked with providing professional assistance and technical guidance, promoting research, collecting knowledge, and developing recommendations for its member states. Article 22 of the WHO Constitution leaves states the right to opt out of its regulations, a clear indication that the organization was not granted regulatory powers such as authorizing drugs and vaccines or supervising their manufacture. These areas remained the exclusive responsibility of states themselves, which also bear legal and public responsibility for the decisions of their national health authorities.
In recent years, the WHO has developed mechanisms that expand its influence beyond recommendations and, in effect, enable it to directly influence regulatory authorization processes within states. The central mechanism is the EUL, an independent WHO emergency procedure that is not par...]]> Yaffa Shir-Raz 30:19 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 12 62033 On December 14, two ISIS-affiliated gunmen massacred 15 unarmed civilians at a Hanukkah festival at Bondi Beach, the icon of Australia's breezy way of life. Just three police officers guarded the festival. One of the shooters, Naveed Akram, had come to the attention of the Australian security services in 2019, and yet in 2020, his father, an Indian-born non-citizen, was able to legally purchase multiple firearms. Just weeks before their murder spree, the father and son duo spent nearly a month in the Southern Philippines, a hot spot for Islamic terrorism.
Over the past two years, the centre-left Labor government downplayed a wave of never-before-seen anti-Semitism in the country that included the firebombing of Jewish businesses and a synagogue. Jews, however, sit outside the woke matrix of concern and so were excluded from the usual progressive hyper-policing of every perceived microaggression.
More recently, the government, whose primary role is security, decided its highest priority was micromanaging the Internet browsing habits of everyday people via its teen social media ban. In reality, these efforts amounted to a mass surveillance program that now forces adult users to ID themselves to access a huge swathe of the internet. If only the government had paid the same level of attention to real safety as it did to eSafety it might have stopped kids being shot and killed while playing at the beach.
We saw the depth of the government's distraction towards micro-management in the Australian Twitter Files, where the "Social Cohesion Division" of the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) tasked itself with policing jokes about the government's Covid response. The DHA is responsible for national security and oversees Australia's intelligence agency, ASIO.
Staff at the "Extremism Insights and Communication" program couldn't even spell, let alone keep their eyes on the ball. Are we surprised DHA's sloppy work has led us to this tragedy?

Rather than focus on the kind of extremism that can get you shot, the "Social Cohesion Division" felt much of its time would be well-spent reporting jokes, like the one below, to Twitter:

As reported by the Australian, between 2017 and 2022, DHA made "13,636 referrals to digital platforms to review content against their own terms of service." 9000 were terrorism-related, and 4,213 were listed as "Covid-19 related." Meaning DHA spent fully one-third of its time monitoring jokes and criticism of the government's Covid policies (including people who didn't even live in or have any relationship to Australia), compared to tracking potential and actual terrorists.
I remarked multiple times in interviews, including on Sky News in May of 2023, that DHA's hyper-monitoring of Covid dissent was off-mission and was in fact putting Australians at risk from real threats.
To cover for their incompetence, the government is now proposing a host of laws to restrict speech, protest, and gun ownership (Australia already has some of the world's strictest gun laws). While there are some loopholes that I support (such as banning non-citizens from owning guns), the vast majority of these proposals are a distraction. The government spoke out of both sides of its mouth on anti-Semitism and refused to deal with the bad actors because they didn't want to alienate their voter base. The kumbaya migration and multiculturalism policies of both parties have also proven a failure, and it seems our intelligence services can't conduct basic police work.
Woke culture also has much to answer for. Journalist Mark Mordue put it well earlier this week: "We have lost sight of its dangers as aspirations for tolerance become a Trojan horse for parasitic and destructive ideologies. The ostensibly good and ideal is being used to advance the cancerous in our culture."
The Albanese government is now in a deep crisis. The Prime Minister is reviled by the Jewish community and by increasingly larger sections...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-government-failed-at-bondi-now-it-punishes-the-people/ On December 14, two ISIS-affiliated gunmen massacred 15 unarmed civilians at a Hanukkah festival at Bondi Beach, the icon of Australia's breezy way of life. Just three police officers guarded the festival. One of the shooters, Naveed Akram, had come to the attention of the Australian security services in 2019, and yet in 2020, his father, an Indian-born non-citizen, was able to legally purchase multiple firearms. Just weeks before their murder spree, the father and son duo spent nearly a month in the Southern Philippines, a hot spot for Islamic terrorism.
Over the past two years, the centre-left Labor government downplayed a wave of never-before-seen anti-Semitism in the country that included the firebombing of Jewish businesses and a synagogue. Jews, however, sit outside the woke matrix of concern and so were excluded from the usual progressive hyper-policing of every perceived microaggression.
More recently, the government, whose primary role is security, decided its highest priority was micromanaging the Internet browsing habits of everyday people via its teen social media ban. In reality, these efforts amounted to a mass surveillance program that now forces adult users to ID themselves to access a huge swathe of the internet. If only the government had paid the same level of attention to real safety as it did to eSafety it might have stopped kids being shot and killed while playing at the beach.
We saw the depth of the government's distraction towards micro-management in the Australian Twitter Files, where the "Social Cohesion Division" of the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) tasked itself with policing jokes about the government's Covid response. The DHA is responsible for national security and oversees Australia's intelligence agency, ASIO.
Staff at the "Extremism Insights and Communication" program couldn't even spell, let alone keep their eyes on the ball. Are we surprised DHA's sloppy work has led us to this tragedy?

Rather than focus on the kind of extremism that can get you shot, the "Social Cohesion Division" felt much of its time would be well-spent reporting jokes, like the one below, to Twitter:

As reported by the Australian, between 2017 and 2022, DHA made "13,636 referrals to digital platforms to review content against their own terms of service." 9000 were terrorism-related, and 4,213 were listed as "Covid-19 related." Meaning DHA spent fully one-third of its time monitoring jokes and criticism of the government's Covid policies (including people who didn't even live in or have any relationship to Australia), compared to tracking potential and actual terrorists.
I remarked multiple times in interviews, including on Sky News in May of 2023, that DHA's hyper-monitoring of Covid dissent was off-mission and was in fact putting Australians at risk from real threats.
To cover for their incompetence, the government is now proposing a host of laws to restrict speech, protest, and gun ownership (Australia already has some of the world's strictest gun laws). While there are some loopholes that I support (such as banning non-citizens from owning guns), the vast majority of these proposals are a distraction. The government spoke out of both sides of its mouth on anti-Semitism and refused to deal with the bad actors because they didn't want to alienate their voter base. The kumbaya migration and multiculturalism policies of both parties have also proven a failure, and it seems our intelligence services can't conduct basic police work.
Woke culture also has much to answer for. Journalist Mark Mordue put it well earlier this week: "We have lost sight of its dangers as aspirations for tolerance become a Trojan horse for parasitic and destructive ideologies. The ostensibly good and ideal is being used to advance the cancerous in our culture."
The Albanese government is now in a deep crisis. The Prime Minister is reviled by the Jewish community and by increasingly larger sections...]]> Wed, 22 Apr 2026 07:52:30 -0400 The Government Failed at Bondi, Now It Punishes the People On December 14, two ISIS-affiliated gunmen massacred 15 unarmed civilians at a Hanukkah festival at Bondi Beach, the icon of Australia's breezy way of life. Just three police officers guarded the festival. One...]]> On December 14, two ISIS-affiliated gunmen massacred 15 unarmed civilians at a Hanukkah festival at Bondi Beach, the icon of Australia's breezy way of life. Just three police officers guarded the festival. One of the shooters, Naveed Akram, had come to the attention of the Australian security services in 2019, and yet in 2020, his father, an Indian-born non-citizen, was able to legally purchase multiple firearms. Just weeks before their murder spree, the father and son duo spent nearly a month in the Southern Philippines, a hot spot for Islamic terrorism.
Over the past two years, the centre-left Labor government downplayed a wave of never-before-seen anti-Semitism in the country that included the firebombing of Jewish businesses and a synagogue. Jews, however, sit outside the woke matrix of concern and so were excluded from the usual progressive hyper-policing of every perceived microaggression.
More recently, the government, whose primary role is security, decided its highest priority was micromanaging the Internet browsing habits of everyday people via its teen social media ban. In reality, these efforts amounted to a mass surveillance program that now forces adult users to ID themselves to access a huge swathe of the internet. If only the government had paid the same level of attention to real safety as it did to eSafety it might have stopped kids being shot and killed while playing at the beach.
We saw the depth of the government's distraction towards micro-management in the Australian Twitter Files, where the "Social Cohesion Division" of the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) tasked itself with policing jokes about the government's Covid response. The DHA is responsible for national security and oversees Australia's intelligence agency, ASIO.
Staff at the "Extremism Insights and Communication" program couldn't even spell, let alone keep their eyes on the ball. Are we surprised DHA's sloppy work has led us to this tragedy?

Rather than focus on the kind of extremism that can get you shot, the "Social Cohesion Division" felt much of its time would be well-spent reporting jokes, like the one below, to Twitter:

As reported by the Australian, between 2017 and 2022, DHA made "13,636 referrals to digital platforms to review content against their own terms of service." 9000 were terrorism-related, and 4,213 were listed as "Covid-19 related." Meaning DHA spent fully one-third of its time monitoring jokes and criticism of the government's Covid policies (including people who didn't even live in or have any relationship to Australia), compared to tracking potential and actual terrorists.
I remarked multiple times in interviews, including on Sky News in May of 2023, that DHA's hyper-monitoring of Covid dissent was off-mission and was in fact putting Australians at risk from real threats.
To cover for their incompetence, the government is now proposing a host of laws to restrict speech, protest, and gun ownership (Australia already has some of the world's strictest gun laws). While there are some loopholes that I support (such as banning non-citizens from owning guns), the vast majority of these proposals are a distraction. The government spoke out of both sides of its mouth on anti-Semitism and refused to deal with the bad actors because they didn't want to alienate their voter base. The kumbaya migration and multiculturalism policies of both parties have also proven a failure, and it seems our intelligence services can't conduct basic police work.
Woke culture also has much to answer for. Journalist Mark Mordue put it well earlier this week: "We have lost sight of its dangers as aspirations for tolerance become a Trojan horse for parasitic and destructive ideologies. The ostensibly good and ideal is being used to advance the cancerous in our culture."
The Albanese government is now in a deep crisis. The Prime Minister is reviled by the Jewish community and by increasingly larger sections...]]> Andrew Lowenthal 06:43 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 11 61598 Contrary to prevailing explanations, biostatistics is not just the technical application of statistics to biomedical data. It is the judicious use of statistics that takes into account background biomedical knowledge. Otherwise, why not call, for example, statistics of demographic data "demostatistics" and statistics of economic data "econostatistics?"
In this post, I connect background knowledge on the mechanism of protection against a respiratory virus with estimates of vaccine effectiveness. I show how that knowledge (biology) can identify incoherent estimates (statistics). In the epilogue, I suggest a scientifically justified (and politically safe) course of action by the FDA.
Mechanisms of Protection
Protection against a respiratory virus can take place at the epithelium of the upper respiratory tract, the initial site of the infection, or in the blood, when the first line of defense has failed. The former is called mucosal immunity, and it takes two forms: innate immunity ("general") and adaptive immunity (against specific antigens). The latter is primarily attributed to neutralizing secretory IgA antibodies in the fluid that covers the nasal epithelium. We can think about those antibodies as frontline soldiers.
If you read articles on the mRNA vaccines, you find peculiar contradicting perspectives on their mechanism of protection. On the one hand, authors try to claim some mucosal immunity following intramuscular injection, which reads like a desperate search for mechanisms. On the other hand, the same authors emphasize the need for mucosal vaccines (nasal sprays) to prevent infection. So, do injected mRNA vaccines offer mucosal immunity or not?
Probably not. The path from vaccine-induced systemic immune response to immunological reaction in respiratory epithelial cells is tentative and weak at best. For sure it is not the primary mode of protection against Covid (or flu). Keep this paragraph in mind when we compare later estimates of vaccine effectiveness against infection (mucosal immunity) vis-à-vis symptoms if infected (systemic immunity).
Natural immunity, acquired through previous infection, works differently from injected vaccines. The first line of defense — mucosal immunity — is ready to fight off the offender after a previous encounter with the same or a similar offender. Protection against infection, rather than symptoms if infected, is the dominant mechanism. That also seems to make sense, teleologically.
Two Helpful Equations
The key endpoint in vaccine effectiveness studies has often been symptomatic infection. What is being estimated, however, is the effect on having symptoms through infection (vaccine infection symptoms). And that effect, if measured by a risk ratio (RR), can be decomposed into two components of the causal path: the effect on getting infected (mucosal immunity) times the effect on having symptoms if infected (systemic immunity).
Similarly, the effect on asymptomatic infection can be decomposed into two components: the effect on getting infected times the effect on not having symptoms if infected.

In previous posts, I developed two equations that allow us to compute the risk ratio of having symptoms, if infected, from the "risk" (probability) ratio of remaining asymptomatic. Both equations rely on the proportion of infections in placebo recipients that are asymptomatic. I call this proportion "p" with a subscript 0.
If the vaccine does not prevent infection, namely RR (infection)=1, it can be shown that we get equation 1.

If the vaccine does prevent infection, namely RR (infection) < 1, we get equation 2. In addition to p, we use the ratio RR (asymptomatic infection)/RR (symptomatic infection), which I call "k."

These simple equations allow us to check the results from vaccine effectiveness studies whenever we have data on the effect on asymptomatic infection. We can decompose the effect on symptomatic infection into its two components — mucosal...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/injected-vaccines-mucosal-immunity-and-incoherent-estimates-of-effectiveness/ Contrary to prevailing explanations, biostatistics is not just the technical application of statistics to biomedical data. It is the judicious use of statistics that takes into account background biomedical knowledge. Otherwise, why not call, for example, statistics of demographic data "demostatistics" and statistics of economic data "econostatistics?"
In this post, I connect background knowledge on the mechanism of protection against a respiratory virus with estimates of vaccine effectiveness. I show how that knowledge (biology) can identify incoherent estimates (statistics). In the epilogue, I suggest a scientifically justified (and politically safe) course of action by the FDA.
Mechanisms of Protection
Protection against a respiratory virus can take place at the epithelium of the upper respiratory tract, the initial site of the infection, or in the blood, when the first line of defense has failed. The former is called mucosal immunity, and it takes two forms: innate immunity ("general") and adaptive immunity (against specific antigens). The latter is primarily attributed to neutralizing secretory IgA antibodies in the fluid that covers the nasal epithelium. We can think about those antibodies as frontline soldiers.
If you read articles on the mRNA vaccines, you find peculiar contradicting perspectives on their mechanism of protection. On the one hand, authors try to claim some mucosal immunity following intramuscular injection, which reads like a desperate search for mechanisms. On the other hand, the same authors emphasize the need for mucosal vaccines (nasal sprays) to prevent infection. So, do injected mRNA vaccines offer mucosal immunity or not?
Probably not. The path from vaccine-induced systemic immune response to immunological reaction in respiratory epithelial cells is tentative and weak at best. For sure it is not the primary mode of protection against Covid (or flu). Keep this paragraph in mind when we compare later estimates of vaccine effectiveness against infection (mucosal immunity) vis-à-vis symptoms if infected (systemic immunity).
Natural immunity, acquired through previous infection, works differently from injected vaccines. The first line of defense — mucosal immunity — is ready to fight off the offender after a previous encounter with the same or a similar offender. Protection against infection, rather than symptoms if infected, is the dominant mechanism. That also seems to make sense, teleologically.
Two Helpful Equations
The key endpoint in vaccine effectiveness studies has often been symptomatic infection. What is being estimated, however, is the effect on having symptoms through infection (vaccine infection symptoms). And that effect, if measured by a risk ratio (RR), can be decomposed into two components of the causal path: the effect on getting infected (mucosal immunity) times the effect on having symptoms if infected (systemic immunity).
Similarly, the effect on asymptomatic infection can be decomposed into two components: the effect on getting infected times the effect on not having symptoms if infected.

In previous posts, I developed two equations that allow us to compute the risk ratio of having symptoms, if infected, from the "risk" (probability) ratio of remaining asymptomatic. Both equations rely on the proportion of infections in placebo recipients that are asymptomatic. I call this proportion "p" with a subscript 0.
If the vaccine does not prevent infection, namely RR (infection)=1, it can be shown that we get equation 1.

If the vaccine does prevent infection, namely RR (infection) < 1, we get equation 2. In addition to p, we use the ratio RR (asymptomatic infection)/RR (symptomatic infection), which I call "k."

These simple equations allow us to check the results from vaccine effectiveness studies whenever we have data on the effect on asymptomatic infection. We can decompose the effect on symptomatic infection into its two components — mucosal...]]> Tue, 21 Apr 2026 07:52:13 -0400 Injected Vaccines, Mucosal Immunity, and Incoherent Estimates of Effectiveness Contrary to prevailing explanations, biostatistics is not just the technical application of statistics to biomedical data. It is the judicious use of statistics that takes into account background biomedical knowled...]]> Contrary to prevailing explanations, biostatistics is not just the technical application of statistics to biomedical data. It is the judicious use of statistics that takes into account background biomedical knowledge. Otherwise, why not call, for example, statistics of demographic data "demostatistics" and statistics of economic data "econostatistics?"
In this post, I connect background knowledge on the mechanism of protection against a respiratory virus with estimates of vaccine effectiveness. I show how that knowledge (biology) can identify incoherent estimates (statistics). In the epilogue, I suggest a scientifically justified (and politically safe) course of action by the FDA.
Mechanisms of Protection
Protection against a respiratory virus can take place at the epithelium of the upper respiratory tract, the initial site of the infection, or in the blood, when the first line of defense has failed. The former is called mucosal immunity, and it takes two forms: innate immunity ("general") and adaptive immunity (against specific antigens). The latter is primarily attributed to neutralizing secretory IgA antibodies in the fluid that covers the nasal epithelium. We can think about those antibodies as frontline soldiers.
If you read articles on the mRNA vaccines, you find peculiar contradicting perspectives on their mechanism of protection. On the one hand, authors try to claim some mucosal immunity following intramuscular injection, which reads like a desperate search for mechanisms. On the other hand, the same authors emphasize the need for mucosal vaccines (nasal sprays) to prevent infection. So, do injected mRNA vaccines offer mucosal immunity or not?
Probably not. The path from vaccine-induced systemic immune response to immunological reaction in respiratory epithelial cells is tentative and weak at best. For sure it is not the primary mode of protection against Covid (or flu). Keep this paragraph in mind when we compare later estimates of vaccine effectiveness against infection (mucosal immunity) vis-à-vis symptoms if infected (systemic immunity).
Natural immunity, acquired through previous infection, works differently from injected vaccines. The first line of defense — mucosal immunity — is ready to fight off the offender after a previous encounter with the same or a similar offender. Protection against infection, rather than symptoms if infected, is the dominant mechanism. That also seems to make sense, teleologically.
Two Helpful Equations
The key endpoint in vaccine effectiveness studies has often been symptomatic infection. What is being estimated, however, is the effect on having symptoms through infection (vaccine infection symptoms). And that effect, if measured by a risk ratio (RR), can be decomposed into two components of the causal path: the effect on getting infected (mucosal immunity) times the effect on having symptoms if infected (systemic immunity).
Similarly, the effect on asymptomatic infection can be decomposed into two components: the effect on getting infected times the effect on not having symptoms if infected.

In previous posts, I developed two equations that allow us to compute the risk ratio of having symptoms, if infected, from the "risk" (probability) ratio of remaining asymptomatic. Both equations rely on the proportion of infections in placebo recipients that are asymptomatic. I call this proportion "p" with a subscript 0.
If the vaccine does not prevent infection, namely RR (infection)=1, it can be shown that we get equation 1.

If the vaccine does prevent infection, namely RR (infection) < 1, we get equation 2. In addition to p, we use the ratio RR (asymptomatic infection)/RR (symptomatic infection), which I call "k."

These simple equations allow us to check the results from vaccine effectiveness studies whenever we have data on the effect on asymptomatic infection. We can decompose the effect on symptomatic infection into its two components — mucosal...]]> Eyal Shahar 09:29 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 10 61644 For months, a quiet battle has been unfolding inside the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
It began with an analysis of child deaths after Covid vaccination, followed by strategic leaks to major media outlets, and has now erupted into the open with a memo from the regulator's own vaccine chief.
In September, it was reported that FDA officials had privately investigated 25 paediatric deaths following Covid vaccination — the first systematic review of such cases since the rollout began.
The findings were meant to be presented to the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). But the presentation never came. The meeting passed without a word. Something had happened behind closed doors.
Now we know what.
On 13 November 2025, STAT published an extraordinary insider account describing a tense internal meeting in which FDA scientist Dr Tracy Beth Høeg presented evidence of young people who had died after Covid vaccination.
According to STAT, her findings triggered pushback from career FDA regulators who feared the implications of acknowledging fatal cases.
Now, comes the explosive memo from FDA vaccine chief Dr Vinay Prasad, confirming — for the first time — that US regulators have formally attributed at least 10 of these children's deaths to Covid vaccination.
Prasad called it "a profound revelation" with far-reaching implications for American vaccine policy, adding that the true number is "certainly an underestimate."
Here, I'll take you through the memo, the leaks, the internal rebellion at FDA, and what this means — not just for Covid vaccines, but for all vaccine approvals going forward.
This story marks a turning point in US vaccine regulation.
The Story That Divided the Regulator
In early September, insiders at the FDA and CDC quietly told the New York Times and the Washington Post that the agency had begun investigating child deaths reported to VAERS.
My reporting confirmed that Dr Tracy Beth Høeg, a senior adviser within the FDA's vaccine division, had led the review — contacting families, gathering medical records, and obtaining autopsy findings.

It was the first case-by-case evaluation of paediatric deaths conducted since the vaccines were authorised.
The review identified twenty-five children whose deaths occurred following vaccination. Those findings were expected to be presented to ACIP on 18–19 September. Instead, without explanation, the discussion disappeared from the agenda.
Even FDA Commissioner Dr Marty Makary had hinted at the findings on CNN, saying, "We've been looking into the VAERS database self-reports, [and] there have been children that have died from the Covid vaccine."
He described an "intense" investigation involving doctors, autopsies, and family interviews. Yet ACIP heard nothing.
Had the FDA reversed course — or had internal forces blocked disclosure?
STAT's reporting offered the first real clues.
Inside the FDA: The Meeting That Changed Everything
STAT described a confidential gathering of FDA vaccine scientists in which Høeg presented slides listing roughly two dozen deaths of young people following vaccination.
One slide reportedly read: "Timing fits. Diagnosis fits. No better explanation found. Sufficient information provided."
According to STAT, some career regulators reacted with "quiet horror" — not at the deaths themselves, but at the policy implications of acknowledging them.
The article portrayed Høeg as pushing to bring the findings to ACIP and to amend vaccine labels for younger males, while longtime staff resisted, describing the evidence as "thin" and worrying about restricting vaccine access.
STAT reported that "no career regulator would stand by the decision," and Høeg backed away from presenting the cases to ACIP.
It was a rare glimpse of a regulator divided against itself: career staff trying to contain the findings, and FDA leadership apparently trying to surface them.
Nothing more was said publicly — until Prasad's...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/a-reckoning-is-underway-at-the-fda/ For months, a quiet battle has been unfolding inside the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
It began with an analysis of child deaths after Covid vaccination, followed by strategic leaks to major media outlets, and has now erupted into the open with a memo from the regulator's own vaccine chief.
In September, it was reported that FDA officials had privately investigated 25 paediatric deaths following Covid vaccination — the first systematic review of such cases since the rollout began.
The findings were meant to be presented to the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). But the presentation never came. The meeting passed without a word. Something had happened behind closed doors.
Now we know what.
On 13 November 2025, STAT published an extraordinary insider account describing a tense internal meeting in which FDA scientist Dr Tracy Beth Høeg presented evidence of young people who had died after Covid vaccination.
According to STAT, her findings triggered pushback from career FDA regulators who feared the implications of acknowledging fatal cases.
Now, comes the explosive memo from FDA vaccine chief Dr Vinay Prasad, confirming — for the first time — that US regulators have formally attributed at least 10 of these children's deaths to Covid vaccination.
Prasad called it "a profound revelation" with far-reaching implications for American vaccine policy, adding that the true number is "certainly an underestimate."
Here, I'll take you through the memo, the leaks, the internal rebellion at FDA, and what this means — not just for Covid vaccines, but for all vaccine approvals going forward.
This story marks a turning point in US vaccine regulation.
The Story That Divided the Regulator
In early September, insiders at the FDA and CDC quietly told the New York Times and the Washington Post that the agency had begun investigating child deaths reported to VAERS.
My reporting confirmed that Dr Tracy Beth Høeg, a senior adviser within the FDA's vaccine division, had led the review — contacting families, gathering medical records, and obtaining autopsy findings.

It was the first case-by-case evaluation of paediatric deaths conducted since the vaccines were authorised.
The review identified twenty-five children whose deaths occurred following vaccination. Those findings were expected to be presented to ACIP on 18–19 September. Instead, without explanation, the discussion disappeared from the agenda.
Even FDA Commissioner Dr Marty Makary had hinted at the findings on CNN, saying, "We've been looking into the VAERS database self-reports, [and] there have been children that have died from the Covid vaccine."
He described an "intense" investigation involving doctors, autopsies, and family interviews. Yet ACIP heard nothing.
Had the FDA reversed course — or had internal forces blocked disclosure?
STAT's reporting offered the first real clues.
Inside the FDA: The Meeting That Changed Everything
STAT described a confidential gathering of FDA vaccine scientists in which Høeg presented slides listing roughly two dozen deaths of young people following vaccination.
One slide reportedly read: "Timing fits. Diagnosis fits. No better explanation found. Sufficient information provided."
According to STAT, some career regulators reacted with "quiet horror" — not at the deaths themselves, but at the policy implications of acknowledging them.
The article portrayed Høeg as pushing to bring the findings to ACIP and to amend vaccine labels for younger males, while longtime staff resisted, describing the evidence as "thin" and worrying about restricting vaccine access.
STAT reported that "no career regulator would stand by the decision," and Høeg backed away from presenting the cases to ACIP.
It was a rare glimpse of a regulator divided against itself: career staff trying to contain the findings, and FDA leadership apparently trying to surface them.
Nothing more was said publicly — until Prasad's...]]> Mon, 20 Apr 2026 07:40:00 -0400 A Reckoning Is Underway at the FDA For months, a quiet battle has been unfolding inside the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
It began with an analysis of child deaths after Covid vaccination, followed by strategic leaks to major media outl...]]> For months, a quiet battle has been unfolding inside the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
It began with an analysis of child deaths after Covid vaccination, followed by strategic leaks to major media outlets, and has now erupted into the open with a memo from the regulator's own vaccine chief.
In September, it was reported that FDA officials had privately investigated 25 paediatric deaths following Covid vaccination — the first systematic review of such cases since the rollout began.
The findings were meant to be presented to the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). But the presentation never came. The meeting passed without a word. Something had happened behind closed doors.
Now we know what.
On 13 November 2025, STAT published an extraordinary insider account describing a tense internal meeting in which FDA scientist Dr Tracy Beth Høeg presented evidence of young people who had died after Covid vaccination.
According to STAT, her findings triggered pushback from career FDA regulators who feared the implications of acknowledging fatal cases.
Now, comes the explosive memo from FDA vaccine chief Dr Vinay Prasad, confirming — for the first time — that US regulators have formally attributed at least 10 of these children's deaths to Covid vaccination.
Prasad called it "a profound revelation" with far-reaching implications for American vaccine policy, adding that the true number is "certainly an underestimate."
Here, I'll take you through the memo, the leaks, the internal rebellion at FDA, and what this means — not just for Covid vaccines, but for all vaccine approvals going forward.
This story marks a turning point in US vaccine regulation.
The Story That Divided the Regulator
In early September, insiders at the FDA and CDC quietly told the New York Times and the Washington Post that the agency had begun investigating child deaths reported to VAERS.
My reporting confirmed that Dr Tracy Beth Høeg, a senior adviser within the FDA's vaccine division, had led the review — contacting families, gathering medical records, and obtaining autopsy findings.

It was the first case-by-case evaluation of paediatric deaths conducted since the vaccines were authorised.
The review identified twenty-five children whose deaths occurred following vaccination. Those findings were expected to be presented to ACIP on 18–19 September. Instead, without explanation, the discussion disappeared from the agenda.
Even FDA Commissioner Dr Marty Makary had hinted at the findings on CNN, saying, "We've been looking into the VAERS database self-reports, [and] there have been children that have died from the Covid vaccine."
He described an "intense" investigation involving doctors, autopsies, and family interviews. Yet ACIP heard nothing.
Had the FDA reversed course — or had internal forces blocked disclosure?
STAT's reporting offered the first real clues.
Inside the FDA: The Meeting That Changed Everything
STAT described a confidential gathering of FDA vaccine scientists in which Høeg presented slides listing roughly two dozen deaths of young people following vaccination.
One slide reportedly read: "Timing fits. Diagnosis fits. No better explanation found. Sufficient information provided."
According to STAT, some career regulators reacted with "quiet horror" — not at the deaths themselves, but at the policy implications of acknowledging them.
The article portrayed Høeg as pushing to bring the findings to ACIP and to amend vaccine labels for younger males, while longtime staff resisted, describing the evidence as "thin" and worrying about restricting vaccine access.
STAT reported that "no career regulator would stand by the decision," and Høeg backed away from presenting the cases to ACIP.
It was a rare glimpse of a regulator divided against itself: career staff trying to contain the findings, and FDA leadership apparently trying to surface them.
Nothing more was said publicly — until Prasad's...]]> Maryanne Demasi 13:43 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 9 67072 General health checks, called annual physicals in the United States, are sold to the public under false pretenses with claims that aren't true.
This also applies to targeted health checks, and mammography screening is a good example. Women have been told for 40 years in invitations to screening that by detecting breast cancers early, screening saves lives and leads to less invasive surgery. The truth is that breast screening detects cancers very late, it doesn't save lives, and more women lose a breast.
Mammography screening is harmful and general health checks are also harmful. Like breast screening, they detect many things that should not have been treated because they are either insignificant or will disappear again. In contrast to cars, our body has a remarkable capacity for self-healing.
Our Review of General Health Checks
Health checks can result in large bills for no gain just like car checks can. I never send my car to the annual car check, which has saved me an enormous amount of money. I only see a mechanic when there is something wrong with my car or for simple issues such as changing oil. I have the same relationship with my doctor.
Once, when I was on holiday on Maui, I passed a booth where people could have their blood pressure checked. Just for the fun of it, I stretched my arm out. "What is your usual blood pressure," a woman asked. "I have no idea," I replied, which made her laugh in disbelief. I was 58 years old and fit, and the few times in my life that someone had taken my blood pressure during a hospital admission, it had been low, so why should I bother about that? I couldn't help provoking her a little and therefore told her I had no idea either of what my cholesterol was. At that point, she asked me which country I came from!
In Denmark, the doctors were sceptical towards general health checks, but in 2007, the Danish Association of the Pharmaceutical Industry convinced the politicians to introduce them, even though an industry spokesperson admitted that their goal was to sell more drugs.
Nothing happened, however. But in 2011, our new government wanted to introduce general health checks. I asked to have a meeting with the Minister of Health, Astrid Krag, because our review of the randomised trials, which we had just completed but not yet published, had found no effect on mortality. I brought a colleague to the meeting who had just finished a large trial in Denmark, which had also failed to find an effect.
We told Krag that health checks are probably harmful, leading to more diagnoses, more drugs, and psychological problems because people are told they are less healthy than they think. She aborted her plans on the spot and said it was the first time the new government had broken a pre-election promise in an evidence-based manner.
We had included 14 trials in adults unselected for diseases or risk factors. We published our review in 2012 and updated it in 2019. There was no reduction in total mortality (risk ratio 1.00), cardiovascular mortality (risk ratio 1.05), or cancer mortality (risk ratio 1.01), and with 21,535 deaths, our results were very convincing.
There were no benefits either for clinical events, hospital admissions, or other measures of morbidity, but there were harms. More people got a disease label and more became treated with antihypertensive drugs. We concluded cautiously that general health checks are unlikely to be beneficial, but in fact they are harmful.
We had also studied 56 Danish websites selling health checks and found that 17 of the 21 most-used tests were unjustified or there was evidence against using them for screening purposes. None of the websites mentioned any harms of health checks and they presented a median of only one of the 15 information items recommended by the WHO and the Danish Board of Health when screening healthy people. Thus, there was no informed consent.
Our review saved billions of crowns for Danish taxpayers...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/general-health-checks-are-harmful/ General health checks, called annual physicals in the United States, are sold to the public under false pretenses with claims that aren't true.
This also applies to targeted health checks, and mammography screening is a good example. Women have been told for 40 years in invitations to screening that by detecting breast cancers early, screening saves lives and leads to less invasive surgery. The truth is that breast screening detects cancers very late, it doesn't save lives, and more women lose a breast.
Mammography screening is harmful and general health checks are also harmful. Like breast screening, they detect many things that should not have been treated because they are either insignificant or will disappear again. In contrast to cars, our body has a remarkable capacity for self-healing.
Our Review of General Health Checks
Health checks can result in large bills for no gain just like car checks can. I never send my car to the annual car check, which has saved me an enormous amount of money. I only see a mechanic when there is something wrong with my car or for simple issues such as changing oil. I have the same relationship with my doctor.
Once, when I was on holiday on Maui, I passed a booth where people could have their blood pressure checked. Just for the fun of it, I stretched my arm out. "What is your usual blood pressure," a woman asked. "I have no idea," I replied, which made her laugh in disbelief. I was 58 years old and fit, and the few times in my life that someone had taken my blood pressure during a hospital admission, it had been low, so why should I bother about that? I couldn't help provoking her a little and therefore told her I had no idea either of what my cholesterol was. At that point, she asked me which country I came from!
In Denmark, the doctors were sceptical towards general health checks, but in 2007, the Danish Association of the Pharmaceutical Industry convinced the politicians to introduce them, even though an industry spokesperson admitted that their goal was to sell more drugs.
Nothing happened, however. But in 2011, our new government wanted to introduce general health checks. I asked to have a meeting with the Minister of Health, Astrid Krag, because our review of the randomised trials, which we had just completed but not yet published, had found no effect on mortality. I brought a colleague to the meeting who had just finished a large trial in Denmark, which had also failed to find an effect.
We told Krag that health checks are probably harmful, leading to more diagnoses, more drugs, and psychological problems because people are told they are less healthy than they think. She aborted her plans on the spot and said it was the first time the new government had broken a pre-election promise in an evidence-based manner.
We had included 14 trials in adults unselected for diseases or risk factors. We published our review in 2012 and updated it in 2019. There was no reduction in total mortality (risk ratio 1.00), cardiovascular mortality (risk ratio 1.05), or cancer mortality (risk ratio 1.01), and with 21,535 deaths, our results were very convincing.
There were no benefits either for clinical events, hospital admissions, or other measures of morbidity, but there were harms. More people got a disease label and more became treated with antihypertensive drugs. We concluded cautiously that general health checks are unlikely to be beneficial, but in fact they are harmful.
We had also studied 56 Danish websites selling health checks and found that 17 of the 21 most-used tests were unjustified or there was evidence against using them for screening purposes. None of the websites mentioned any harms of health checks and they presented a median of only one of the 15 information items recommended by the WHO and the Danish Board of Health when screening healthy people. Thus, there was no informed consent.
Our review saved billions of crowns for Danish taxpayers...]]> Sun, 19 Apr 2026 07:03:24 -0400 General Health Checks Are Harmful General health checks, called annual physicals in the United States, are sold to the public under false pretenses with claims that aren't true.
This also applies to targeted health checks, and mammography scr...]]> General health checks, called annual physicals in the United States, are sold to the public under false pretenses with claims that aren't true.
This also applies to targeted health checks, and mammography screening is a good example. Women have been told for 40 years in invitations to screening that by detecting breast cancers early, screening saves lives and leads to less invasive surgery. The truth is that breast screening detects cancers very late, it doesn't save lives, and more women lose a breast.
Mammography screening is harmful and general health checks are also harmful. Like breast screening, they detect many things that should not have been treated because they are either insignificant or will disappear again. In contrast to cars, our body has a remarkable capacity for self-healing.
Our Review of General Health Checks
Health checks can result in large bills for no gain just like car checks can. I never send my car to the annual car check, which has saved me an enormous amount of money. I only see a mechanic when there is something wrong with my car or for simple issues such as changing oil. I have the same relationship with my doctor.
Once, when I was on holiday on Maui, I passed a booth where people could have their blood pressure checked. Just for the fun of it, I stretched my arm out. "What is your usual blood pressure," a woman asked. "I have no idea," I replied, which made her laugh in disbelief. I was 58 years old and fit, and the few times in my life that someone had taken my blood pressure during a hospital admission, it had been low, so why should I bother about that? I couldn't help provoking her a little and therefore told her I had no idea either of what my cholesterol was. At that point, she asked me which country I came from!
In Denmark, the doctors were sceptical towards general health checks, but in 2007, the Danish Association of the Pharmaceutical Industry convinced the politicians to introduce them, even though an industry spokesperson admitted that their goal was to sell more drugs.
Nothing happened, however. But in 2011, our new government wanted to introduce general health checks. I asked to have a meeting with the Minister of Health, Astrid Krag, because our review of the randomised trials, which we had just completed but not yet published, had found no effect on mortality. I brought a colleague to the meeting who had just finished a large trial in Denmark, which had also failed to find an effect.
We told Krag that health checks are probably harmful, leading to more diagnoses, more drugs, and psychological problems because people are told they are less healthy than they think. She aborted her plans on the spot and said it was the first time the new government had broken a pre-election promise in an evidence-based manner.
We had included 14 trials in adults unselected for diseases or risk factors. We published our review in 2012 and updated it in 2019. There was no reduction in total mortality (risk ratio 1.00), cardiovascular mortality (risk ratio 1.05), or cancer mortality (risk ratio 1.01), and with 21,535 deaths, our results were very convincing.
There were no benefits either for clinical events, hospital admissions, or other measures of morbidity, but there were harms. More people got a disease label and more became treated with antihypertensive drugs. We concluded cautiously that general health checks are unlikely to be beneficial, but in fact they are harmful.
We had also studied 56 Danish websites selling health checks and found that 17 of the 21 most-used tests were unjustified or there was evidence against using them for screening purposes. None of the websites mentioned any harms of health checks and they presented a median of only one of the 15 information items recommended by the WHO and the Danish Board of Health when screening healthy people. Thus, there was no informed consent.
Our review saved billions of crowns for Danish taxpayers...]]> Peter C. Gøtzsche 25:21 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 8 67029 Background
For decades, the fight for full health freedom—as defined by a system in which full informed consent replaces the legislative reality and culture of vaccine mandates—has been an arduous one. However, there are important parallels between the fight for health freedom and the success that advocates of a constitutionalist view of the Second Amendment (2A) have achieved over the last 25 years. By learning from the success of 2A advocates, supporters of health freedom can change the culture, change the law, and change legal precedent, all in favor of health freedom.
Weaponized Emotion
The early 1990s represented the nadir of a constitutional view of 2A in terms of public opinion. This was largely due to the popularity of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (commonly referred to as the Brady Bill). The legislation, signed by President Clinton in 1993, established the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).
The passage of the Brady Bill represented a perfect storm in which public sentiment was shaped by emotion rather than information. The bill was named for former White House Press Secretary James Brady, who was paralyzed during the assassination attempt on President Reagan.
In 1991, Reagan offered his support for the bill in what represented a major blow to many Republican supporters of a constitutional view of the Second Amendment. By the time President Clinton signed the bill, it had major bipartisan support. But then came the data.
Data Changes the Narrative
The popularity of firearm restrictions in the wake of the Brady Bill becoming law was a wake-up call to 2A constitutionalists. It demonstrated that straightforward constitutional arguments were insufficient to move public opinion when people were bombarded with a bipartisan blitz of emotion-driven propaganda about safety. It did not matter that arguments for safety were not backed by data; what mattered was that emotions tied to fear were more compelling than recitations of constitutional norms.
This is when 2A advocates got smart and began a long, data-driven campaign to restore constitutional rights.
The first major study to expose the flawed logic behind gun control laws came in 1997. Conducted by John Lott and David Mustard, the study was eventually turned into the best-selling book, More Guns, Less Crime. Using data from all US counties over 15 years, Lott argued that states with "shall-issue" (easy-to-obtain) concealed carry permits saw significant decreases in violent crimes like murder, rape, and aggravated assault.
In 2003, the CDC analyzed 51 different studies on measures like background checks and weapon bans. Ultimately, the CDC task force concluded there was "insufficient evidence" to prove these laws reduced violent crime.
Further studies indicated that states with relatively unrestricted firearm ownership laws had fewer instances of violent crime than states with highly restrictive laws.
These and other studies began to shift public opinion. This led to louder demands from citizens for a return to strict constitutionalism regarding firearm ownership, and it also helped pro-2A groups fundraise for judicial challenges to gun control laws.
Public Opinion Shifts
The popularity of gun control measures peaked in 1993 and has trended downward ever since. Even small spikes in gun control popularity following major school shootings have not impacted this overall trend. Crucially, recent school shootings have been even less impactful regarding outliers.
While support for a constitutionalist approach to 2A remains far stronger among Republicans and conservatives than among Democrats and liberals, this too is changing in a positive direction for constitutionalists.
A 2022 University of Chicago NORC study found that 29% of Democrats or Democrat-leaning individuals had a gun at home in 2022, up from a record low of 22% in 2010. This was followed by a poll from NBC News in November 2023, which found ...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/health-freedom-the-smoking-gun/ Background
For decades, the fight for full health freedom—as defined by a system in which full informed consent replaces the legislative reality and culture of vaccine mandates—has been an arduous one. However, there are important parallels between the fight for health freedom and the success that advocates of a constitutionalist view of the Second Amendment (2A) have achieved over the last 25 years. By learning from the success of 2A advocates, supporters of health freedom can change the culture, change the law, and change legal precedent, all in favor of health freedom.
Weaponized Emotion
The early 1990s represented the nadir of a constitutional view of 2A in terms of public opinion. This was largely due to the popularity of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (commonly referred to as the Brady Bill). The legislation, signed by President Clinton in 1993, established the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).
The passage of the Brady Bill represented a perfect storm in which public sentiment was shaped by emotion rather than information. The bill was named for former White House Press Secretary James Brady, who was paralyzed during the assassination attempt on President Reagan.
In 1991, Reagan offered his support for the bill in what represented a major blow to many Republican supporters of a constitutional view of the Second Amendment. By the time President Clinton signed the bill, it had major bipartisan support. But then came the data.
Data Changes the Narrative
The popularity of firearm restrictions in the wake of the Brady Bill becoming law was a wake-up call to 2A constitutionalists. It demonstrated that straightforward constitutional arguments were insufficient to move public opinion when people were bombarded with a bipartisan blitz of emotion-driven propaganda about safety. It did not matter that arguments for safety were not backed by data; what mattered was that emotions tied to fear were more compelling than recitations of constitutional norms.
This is when 2A advocates got smart and began a long, data-driven campaign to restore constitutional rights.
The first major study to expose the flawed logic behind gun control laws came in 1997. Conducted by John Lott and David Mustard, the study was eventually turned into the best-selling book, More Guns, Less Crime. Using data from all US counties over 15 years, Lott argued that states with "shall-issue" (easy-to-obtain) concealed carry permits saw significant decreases in violent crimes like murder, rape, and aggravated assault.
In 2003, the CDC analyzed 51 different studies on measures like background checks and weapon bans. Ultimately, the CDC task force concluded there was "insufficient evidence" to prove these laws reduced violent crime.
Further studies indicated that states with relatively unrestricted firearm ownership laws had fewer instances of violent crime than states with highly restrictive laws.
These and other studies began to shift public opinion. This led to louder demands from citizens for a return to strict constitutionalism regarding firearm ownership, and it also helped pro-2A groups fundraise for judicial challenges to gun control laws.
Public Opinion Shifts
The popularity of gun control measures peaked in 1993 and has trended downward ever since. Even small spikes in gun control popularity following major school shootings have not impacted this overall trend. Crucially, recent school shootings have been even less impactful regarding outliers.
While support for a constitutionalist approach to 2A remains far stronger among Republicans and conservatives than among Democrats and liberals, this too is changing in a positive direction for constitutionalists.
A 2022 University of Chicago NORC study found that 29% of Democrats or Democrat-leaning individuals had a gun at home in 2022, up from a record low of 22% in 2010. This was followed by a poll from NBC News in November 2023, which found ...]]> Sat, 18 Apr 2026 08:40:00 -0400 Health Freedom: The Smoking Gun Background
For decades, the fight for full health freedom—as defined by a system in which full informed consent replaces the legislative reality and culture of vaccine mandates—has been an arduous one. However, the...]]> Background
For decades, the fight for full health freedom—as defined by a system in which full informed consent replaces the legislative reality and culture of vaccine mandates—has been an arduous one. However, there are important parallels between the fight for health freedom and the success that advocates of a constitutionalist view of the Second Amendment (2A) have achieved over the last 25 years. By learning from the success of 2A advocates, supporters of health freedom can change the culture, change the law, and change legal precedent, all in favor of health freedom.
Weaponized Emotion
The early 1990s represented the nadir of a constitutional view of 2A in terms of public opinion. This was largely due to the popularity of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (commonly referred to as the Brady Bill). The legislation, signed by President Clinton in 1993, established the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).
The passage of the Brady Bill represented a perfect storm in which public sentiment was shaped by emotion rather than information. The bill was named for former White House Press Secretary James Brady, who was paralyzed during the assassination attempt on President Reagan.
In 1991, Reagan offered his support for the bill in what represented a major blow to many Republican supporters of a constitutional view of the Second Amendment. By the time President Clinton signed the bill, it had major bipartisan support. But then came the data.
Data Changes the Narrative
The popularity of firearm restrictions in the wake of the Brady Bill becoming law was a wake-up call to 2A constitutionalists. It demonstrated that straightforward constitutional arguments were insufficient to move public opinion when people were bombarded with a bipartisan blitz of emotion-driven propaganda about safety. It did not matter that arguments for safety were not backed by data; what mattered was that emotions tied to fear were more compelling than recitations of constitutional norms.
This is when 2A advocates got smart and began a long, data-driven campaign to restore constitutional rights.
The first major study to expose the flawed logic behind gun control laws came in 1997. Conducted by John Lott and David Mustard, the study was eventually turned into the best-selling book, More Guns, Less Crime. Using data from all US counties over 15 years, Lott argued that states with "shall-issue" (easy-to-obtain) concealed carry permits saw significant decreases in violent crimes like murder, rape, and aggravated assault.
In 2003, the CDC analyzed 51 different studies on measures like background checks and weapon bans. Ultimately, the CDC task force concluded there was "insufficient evidence" to prove these laws reduced violent crime.
Further studies indicated that states with relatively unrestricted firearm ownership laws had fewer instances of violent crime than states with highly restrictive laws.
These and other studies began to shift public opinion. This led to louder demands from citizens for a return to strict constitutionalism regarding firearm ownership, and it also helped pro-2A groups fundraise for judicial challenges to gun control laws.
Public Opinion Shifts
The popularity of gun control measures peaked in 1993 and has trended downward ever since. Even small spikes in gun control popularity following major school shootings have not impacted this overall trend. Crucially, recent school shootings have been even less impactful regarding outliers.
While support for a constitutionalist approach to 2A remains far stronger among Republicans and conservatives than among Democrats and liberals, this too is changing in a positive direction for constitutionalists.
A 2022 University of Chicago NORC study found that 29% of Democrats or Democrat-leaning individuals had a gun at home in 2022, up from a record low of 22% in 2010. This was followed by a poll from NBC News in November 2023, which found ...]]> Adam Garrie 25:39 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 7 66985 There are moments in public health when the path forward is unusually clear, when the evidence aligns with behavior, when risks are well understood, and when policy has a genuine opportunity to reduce harm at scale. This should be one of those moments.
Non-combustible nicotine products—vapes, heated tobacco, and especially nicotine pouches—are widely understood to be far less harmful than smoking, a point I and many others have covered repeatedly, and one that no longer sits at the frontier of scientific debate. At the same time, the political panic that once drove restrictive policy has subsided, with youth vaping falling sharply from its peak.
The most recent data show that around 5.2 percent of youth report e-cigarette use in the past 30 days, down dramatically from prior highs, and importantly only a subset of that group are frequent users, those using on 20 or more days in a month, the category most closely associated with dependence.
Nicotine pouch use among youth is lower still, at roughly 1.7 percent. Much of what remains appears to be occasional or experimental rather than habitual. These are not crisis numbers, and they matter because they directly undercut the primary justification for continued regulatory paralysis.
One might expect regulators to respond accordingly, adjusting policy to reflect both the risk gradient and the changed behavioral landscape, but that has not happened. Instead, the system has stalled, quietly but decisively, with approvals for new products slowing to a near standstill.
At the center of that paralysis sits Marty Makary, head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and increasingly the explanation for inaction appears not to lie in scientific uncertainty or bureaucratic complexity, but in his simple unwillingness to move.
According to several informed sources, there is now a clear split within the administration, with parts of the FDA Center for Tobacco Products and broader White House advisers recognizing that harm reduction is both scientifically grounded and politically manageable.
Notably, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is described as supportive of this shift, particularly in relation to nicotine pouches. Kennedy is reported to use nicotine pouches himself and to view them as a practical, low-risk alternative for adults, which in policy terms should make them the least controversial category, given that they involve no combustion, no smoke, and no tobacco leaf. In almost any rational regulatory framework, these products would be the easiest to authorize.
Yet they are not being authorized, and the reason, according to sources, is that Makary has become the effective blockade, with approvals held up despite falling youth use and despite data generated within his own government pointing in a consistent direction. This is less a disagreement over interpretation than a refusal to act on available evidence, and the explanation offered by those familiar with the situation is not primarily scientific, but personal, tied to concerns about legacy.
Makary is said to be focused on avoiding reputational risk, particularly given uncertainty about the length of his tenure, with the concern that authorizing new nicotine products could, if later criticized, define his time at the FDA. Blocking approvals, by contrast, carries no immediate cost, and in that calculation inaction becomes the safer choice for the individual making the decision, even if it is the costlier choice for public health.
The consequences are neither subtle nor hypothetical, because when regulators refuse to authorize products that consumers want, markets do not disappear. They adapt. The United States already has a large illicit vape market, with unauthorized products widely available through informal channels, often without quality control or oversight. By refusing to authorize legal alternatives, policymakers are not preventing access, they are shifting it into less regulated spaces.
This dynam...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/marty-makary-the-fdas-quiet-blockade-on-safer-nicotine/ There are moments in public health when the path forward is unusually clear, when the evidence aligns with behavior, when risks are well understood, and when policy has a genuine opportunity to reduce harm at scale. This should be one of those moments.
Non-combustible nicotine products—vapes, heated tobacco, and especially nicotine pouches—are widely understood to be far less harmful than smoking, a point I and many others have covered repeatedly, and one that no longer sits at the frontier of scientific debate. At the same time, the political panic that once drove restrictive policy has subsided, with youth vaping falling sharply from its peak.
The most recent data show that around 5.2 percent of youth report e-cigarette use in the past 30 days, down dramatically from prior highs, and importantly only a subset of that group are frequent users, those using on 20 or more days in a month, the category most closely associated with dependence.
Nicotine pouch use among youth is lower still, at roughly 1.7 percent. Much of what remains appears to be occasional or experimental rather than habitual. These are not crisis numbers, and they matter because they directly undercut the primary justification for continued regulatory paralysis.
One might expect regulators to respond accordingly, adjusting policy to reflect both the risk gradient and the changed behavioral landscape, but that has not happened. Instead, the system has stalled, quietly but decisively, with approvals for new products slowing to a near standstill.
At the center of that paralysis sits Marty Makary, head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and increasingly the explanation for inaction appears not to lie in scientific uncertainty or bureaucratic complexity, but in his simple unwillingness to move.
According to several informed sources, there is now a clear split within the administration, with parts of the FDA Center for Tobacco Products and broader White House advisers recognizing that harm reduction is both scientifically grounded and politically manageable.
Notably, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is described as supportive of this shift, particularly in relation to nicotine pouches. Kennedy is reported to use nicotine pouches himself and to view them as a practical, low-risk alternative for adults, which in policy terms should make them the least controversial category, given that they involve no combustion, no smoke, and no tobacco leaf. In almost any rational regulatory framework, these products would be the easiest to authorize.
Yet they are not being authorized, and the reason, according to sources, is that Makary has become the effective blockade, with approvals held up despite falling youth use and despite data generated within his own government pointing in a consistent direction. This is less a disagreement over interpretation than a refusal to act on available evidence, and the explanation offered by those familiar with the situation is not primarily scientific, but personal, tied to concerns about legacy.
Makary is said to be focused on avoiding reputational risk, particularly given uncertainty about the length of his tenure, with the concern that authorizing new nicotine products could, if later criticized, define his time at the FDA. Blocking approvals, by contrast, carries no immediate cost, and in that calculation inaction becomes the safer choice for the individual making the decision, even if it is the costlier choice for public health.
The consequences are neither subtle nor hypothetical, because when regulators refuse to authorize products that consumers want, markets do not disappear. They adapt. The United States already has a large illicit vape market, with unauthorized products widely available through informal channels, often without quality control or oversight. By refusing to authorize legal alternatives, policymakers are not preventing access, they are shifting it into less regulated spaces.
This dynam...]]> Fri, 17 Apr 2026 07:27:36 -0400 Marty Makary: The FDA's Quiet Blockade on Safer Nicotine There are moments in public health when the path forward is unusually clear, when the evidence aligns with behavior, when risks are well understood, and when policy has a genuine opportunity to reduce harm at scale....]]> There are moments in public health when the path forward is unusually clear, when the evidence aligns with behavior, when risks are well understood, and when policy has a genuine opportunity to reduce harm at scale. This should be one of those moments.
Non-combustible nicotine products—vapes, heated tobacco, and especially nicotine pouches—are widely understood to be far less harmful than smoking, a point I and many others have covered repeatedly, and one that no longer sits at the frontier of scientific debate. At the same time, the political panic that once drove restrictive policy has subsided, with youth vaping falling sharply from its peak.
The most recent data show that around 5.2 percent of youth report e-cigarette use in the past 30 days, down dramatically from prior highs, and importantly only a subset of that group are frequent users, those using on 20 or more days in a month, the category most closely associated with dependence.
Nicotine pouch use among youth is lower still, at roughly 1.7 percent. Much of what remains appears to be occasional or experimental rather than habitual. These are not crisis numbers, and they matter because they directly undercut the primary justification for continued regulatory paralysis.
One might expect regulators to respond accordingly, adjusting policy to reflect both the risk gradient and the changed behavioral landscape, but that has not happened. Instead, the system has stalled, quietly but decisively, with approvals for new products slowing to a near standstill.
At the center of that paralysis sits Marty Makary, head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and increasingly the explanation for inaction appears not to lie in scientific uncertainty or bureaucratic complexity, but in his simple unwillingness to move.
According to several informed sources, there is now a clear split within the administration, with parts of the FDA Center for Tobacco Products and broader White House advisers recognizing that harm reduction is both scientifically grounded and politically manageable.
Notably, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is described as supportive of this shift, particularly in relation to nicotine pouches. Kennedy is reported to use nicotine pouches himself and to view them as a practical, low-risk alternative for adults, which in policy terms should make them the least controversial category, given that they involve no combustion, no smoke, and no tobacco leaf. In almost any rational regulatory framework, these products would be the easiest to authorize.
Yet they are not being authorized, and the reason, according to sources, is that Makary has become the effective blockade, with approvals held up despite falling youth use and despite data generated within his own government pointing in a consistent direction. This is less a disagreement over interpretation than a refusal to act on available evidence, and the explanation offered by those familiar with the situation is not primarily scientific, but personal, tied to concerns about legacy.
Makary is said to be focused on avoiding reputational risk, particularly given uncertainty about the length of his tenure, with the concern that authorizing new nicotine products could, if later criticized, define his time at the FDA. Blocking approvals, by contrast, carries no immediate cost, and in that calculation inaction becomes the safer choice for the individual making the decision, even if it is the costlier choice for public health.
The consequences are neither subtle nor hypothetical, because when regulators refuse to authorize products that consumers want, markets do not disappear. They adapt. The United States already has a large illicit vape market, with unauthorized products widely available through informal channels, often without quality control or oversight. By refusing to authorize legal alternatives, policymakers are not preventing access, they are shifting it into less regulated spaces.
This dynam...]]> Roger Bate 04:56 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 6 66981 In an age like the present, which is choking on the virtually exclusive valorisation of technology, what (and how) should students be taught, or putting it differently, what should they learn? Just consider the proliferating crises affecting the entire world population – the ongoing war in Ukraine, the fluctuating Iran war and its broadening ripple effect on energy prices (which is already affecting, not only availability of oil and petrol, but food supplies as well), and the social and political strife connected with 'illegal immigrants' in the US, Britain, and Europe, to mention only some – then it seems a daunting task to answer this question.
There are many – too many – intellectual sources, contemporary as well as throughout the history of the world, from which I could draw to answer it in a very provisional manner, so I'll have to be selective, but here goes. My perspective is mainly Western.
From the ancient Greek thinker, Plato – who had assimilated the insights of his predecessors, from Thales through Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and others to Heraclitus and Parmenides, and, of course, his teacher, Socrates, who claimed that he had learned from a woman named Diotima – we learned that Being and Becoming are the two poles constituting the tension field in which things appear in the material world of the senses and of particular things, on the one hand, and the intelligible world of the universal Forms, on the other.
Aristotle, Plato's Macedonian pupil (who taught Alexander, destined to become The Great), argued that the universal Forms are not outside of particular things, but their intelligible part instead. Together, they comprise what he called an entelechy. Moreover, Aristotle gave us an encompassing conceptualisation of causality as a sort of 'fourfold' (a concept that later returns in Martin Heidegger's philosophy, denoting the touchstone for a truly human mode of living), which is far richer and more fecund in explanatory terms than its modern reduction to only one of these. The four Aristotelian causes are the material, formal, working, and final causes, respectively.
A tree, for instance, has a material embodiment, or matter (the trunk, branches, leaves, and so on). It also has an intelligible form – not its shape, but its comprehensible essence, and a working cause, which accounts for its change, or growth. Its final cause, or telos, is perhaps the most important, insofar as it explains why the tree develops in the way that it does.
Obviously, for a human being this schema is more complex, although easily comprehensible. We have bodies (material cause), a formal, intelligible essence which makes us what we are, as distinct from other things, a working cause which explains changes in the course of our growth, and a final cause or human telos, which instantiates that towards which we 'grow' or what we strive for, both as a species and as individuals. For every individual the telos or final cause is different; some work towards the ideal writer they want to become, others strive for excellence in cooking, or singing, and so on. In this sense, our future(s) is a crucial factor for understanding what we do at present.
From the above it is already apparent that learning in what Bernard Stiegler calls a 'transindividual' manner – where knowledge is transferred from one individual to another, or others – always involves an incremental complexification. In this way, Plato, for instance, synthesised the accumulated knowledge of his predecessors, and Aristotle took this process further, giving us a synthesis that was even more comprehensive than Plato's.
Furthermore, while Plato was more mathematically oriented than Aristotle – as shown in his 'creation myth' (recounted in his dialogue, the Timaeus), where numbers, and not only Forms, are posited as essential mediators between God and individual things – Aristotle did justice to the empirical world of experience through observation.
H...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/what-and-how-should-our-students-be-taught-today/ In an age like the present, which is choking on the virtually exclusive valorisation of technology, what (and how) should students be taught, or putting it differently, what should they learn? Just consider the proliferating crises affecting the entire world population – the ongoing war in Ukraine, the fluctuating Iran war and its broadening ripple effect on energy prices (which is already affecting, not only availability of oil and petrol, but food supplies as well), and the social and political strife connected with 'illegal immigrants' in the US, Britain, and Europe, to mention only some – then it seems a daunting task to answer this question.
There are many – too many – intellectual sources, contemporary as well as throughout the history of the world, from which I could draw to answer it in a very provisional manner, so I'll have to be selective, but here goes. My perspective is mainly Western.
From the ancient Greek thinker, Plato – who had assimilated the insights of his predecessors, from Thales through Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and others to Heraclitus and Parmenides, and, of course, his teacher, Socrates, who claimed that he had learned from a woman named Diotima – we learned that Being and Becoming are the two poles constituting the tension field in which things appear in the material world of the senses and of particular things, on the one hand, and the intelligible world of the universal Forms, on the other.
Aristotle, Plato's Macedonian pupil (who taught Alexander, destined to become The Great), argued that the universal Forms are not outside of particular things, but their intelligible part instead. Together, they comprise what he called an entelechy. Moreover, Aristotle gave us an encompassing conceptualisation of causality as a sort of 'fourfold' (a concept that later returns in Martin Heidegger's philosophy, denoting the touchstone for a truly human mode of living), which is far richer and more fecund in explanatory terms than its modern reduction to only one of these. The four Aristotelian causes are the material, formal, working, and final causes, respectively.
A tree, for instance, has a material embodiment, or matter (the trunk, branches, leaves, and so on). It also has an intelligible form – not its shape, but its comprehensible essence, and a working cause, which accounts for its change, or growth. Its final cause, or telos, is perhaps the most important, insofar as it explains why the tree develops in the way that it does.
Obviously, for a human being this schema is more complex, although easily comprehensible. We have bodies (material cause), a formal, intelligible essence which makes us what we are, as distinct from other things, a working cause which explains changes in the course of our growth, and a final cause or human telos, which instantiates that towards which we 'grow' or what we strive for, both as a species and as individuals. For every individual the telos or final cause is different; some work towards the ideal writer they want to become, others strive for excellence in cooking, or singing, and so on. In this sense, our future(s) is a crucial factor for understanding what we do at present.
From the above it is already apparent that learning in what Bernard Stiegler calls a 'transindividual' manner – where knowledge is transferred from one individual to another, or others – always involves an incremental complexification. In this way, Plato, for instance, synthesised the accumulated knowledge of his predecessors, and Aristotle took this process further, giving us a synthesis that was even more comprehensive than Plato's.
Furthermore, while Plato was more mathematically oriented than Aristotle – as shown in his 'creation myth' (recounted in his dialogue, the Timaeus), where numbers, and not only Forms, are posited as essential mediators between God and individual things – Aristotle did justice to the empirical world of experience through observation.
H...]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 07:52:02 -0400 What (and How) Should Our Students Be Taught Today? In an age like the present, which is choking on the virtually exclusive valorisation of technology, what (and how) should students be taught, or putting it differently, what should they learn? Just consider the pr...]]> In an age like the present, which is choking on the virtually exclusive valorisation of technology, what (and how) should students be taught, or putting it differently, what should they learn? Just consider the proliferating crises affecting the entire world population – the ongoing war in Ukraine, the fluctuating Iran war and its broadening ripple effect on energy prices (which is already affecting, not only availability of oil and petrol, but food supplies as well), and the social and political strife connected with 'illegal immigrants' in the US, Britain, and Europe, to mention only some – then it seems a daunting task to answer this question.
There are many – too many – intellectual sources, contemporary as well as throughout the history of the world, from which I could draw to answer it in a very provisional manner, so I'll have to be selective, but here goes. My perspective is mainly Western.
From the ancient Greek thinker, Plato – who had assimilated the insights of his predecessors, from Thales through Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and others to Heraclitus and Parmenides, and, of course, his teacher, Socrates, who claimed that he had learned from a woman named Diotima – we learned that Being and Becoming are the two poles constituting the tension field in which things appear in the material world of the senses and of particular things, on the one hand, and the intelligible world of the universal Forms, on the other.
Aristotle, Plato's Macedonian pupil (who taught Alexander, destined to become The Great), argued that the universal Forms are not outside of particular things, but their intelligible part instead. Together, they comprise what he called an entelechy. Moreover, Aristotle gave us an encompassing conceptualisation of causality as a sort of 'fourfold' (a concept that later returns in Martin Heidegger's philosophy, denoting the touchstone for a truly human mode of living), which is far richer and more fecund in explanatory terms than its modern reduction to only one of these. The four Aristotelian causes are the material, formal, working, and final causes, respectively.
A tree, for instance, has a material embodiment, or matter (the trunk, branches, leaves, and so on). It also has an intelligible form – not its shape, but its comprehensible essence, and a working cause, which accounts for its change, or growth. Its final cause, or telos, is perhaps the most important, insofar as it explains why the tree develops in the way that it does.
Obviously, for a human being this schema is more complex, although easily comprehensible. We have bodies (material cause), a formal, intelligible essence which makes us what we are, as distinct from other things, a working cause which explains changes in the course of our growth, and a final cause or human telos, which instantiates that towards which we 'grow' or what we strive for, both as a species and as individuals. For every individual the telos or final cause is different; some work towards the ideal writer they want to become, others strive for excellence in cooking, or singing, and so on. In this sense, our future(s) is a crucial factor for understanding what we do at present.
From the above it is already apparent that learning in what Bernard Stiegler calls a 'transindividual' manner – where knowledge is transferred from one individual to another, or others – always involves an incremental complexification. In this way, Plato, for instance, synthesised the accumulated knowledge of his predecessors, and Aristotle took this process further, giving us a synthesis that was even more comprehensive than Plato's.
Furthermore, while Plato was more mathematically oriented than Aristotle – as shown in his 'creation myth' (recounted in his dialogue, the Timaeus), where numbers, and not only Forms, are posited as essential mediators between God and individual things – Aristotle did justice to the empirical world of experience through observation.
H...]]> Bert Olivier 27:48 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 5 61704 Leave the cocooning to the caterpillars.
"Cocooning" is a CDC-endorsed public health term used to describe the push to vaccinate grandparents (and other close family/caregivers) before visiting newborns. This promoted practice stems from public health efforts to protect vulnerable infants from serious infections, particularly whooping cough (pertussis), influenza, and, to a lesser extent, Covid-19 and RSV.
Current guidelines (e.g., CDC as of 2025) de-emphasize cocooning as a primary strategy due to implementation challenges (low uptake, incomplete "cocoons") and limited evidence supporting standalone effectiveness. Maternal Tdap vaccination during pregnancy is now prioritized for direct antibody transfer to the infant. Cocooning is still suggested supplementally for close contacts but is "no longer widely recommended" as the main approach.
Many new parents enforce this privately, often requiring proof of vaccination for visits in the first 2-3 months. This has led to a promoted "#NoVaxNoVisit" trend on social media and parenting forums, where families delay or restrict access if relatives refuse. Compliance is high in supportive families, but resistance occurs (e.g., due to vaccine hesitancy or perceived overreach).


Although cocooning was the only strategy available to protect infants at the time it was recommended, there is now general agreement that the method is costly, is plagued with implementation challenges, and has uncertain effectiveness. Vaccination during pregnancy has been shown to be safe and effective at preventing infant disease in the early months of life and is being adopted by an increasing number of countries as the primary pertussis prevention strategy for young infants. Given the ongoing resurgence of pertussis in the United States, efforts should focus on increasing awareness and implementation of Tdap vaccination during pregnancy to prevent disease in infants too young to be vaccinated themselves.
An Assessment of the Cocooning Strategy for Preventing Infant Pertussis—United States, 2011
Clin Infect Dis. 2016 Dec 1;63(Suppl 4):S221–S226.
Core Recommendation regarding the "Cocooning" Strategy: Health authorities like the CDC, American Academy of Pediatrics, and similar organizations promote "cocooning," where adults in regular contact with a newborn are recommended to get vaccinated to create a protective barrier. This began in the mid-2000s amid pertussis outbreaks, as infants under 2-6 months are too young for their own vaccines and face high risks of hospitalization or death from these diseases.
The promoted cocooning recommendations include the following:
Tdap vaccine (tetanus, diphtheria, acellular pertussis): Strongly recommended for grandparents and caregivers if not received in the last 5-10 years (protection wanes over time). Administer at least 2 weeks before contact to build immunity. Pertussis is the primary focus, as it can be fatal in newborns.
Influenza (flu) vaccine: Annual shot recommended for anyone around the baby, especially during flu season, as infants under 6 months can't get it themselves.
Covid-19 vaccine/boosters: Advised to be up-to-date, though less universally mandated than Tdap/flu.
Other vaccines (e.g., MMR for measles, pneumococcal, shingles, RSV if eligible for older adults) are often suggested for broader protection.
Rationale and Evidence (The World According to GROK)
Newborns have underdeveloped immune systems, making them highly susceptible. Studies show parents/siblings are the most common infection sources, but grandparents and other visitors contribute significantly. Cocooning, combined with maternal vaccination during pregnancy, reduces infant pertussis risk substantially (e.g., one study estimated 64-77% effectiveness when both parents are vaccinated postpartum). Health sites (CDC, March of Dimes, Cleveland Clinic) and pediatricians routinely advise this, framing it as equivalent to basic precautions like handwashing.

...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/cocooning-by-way-of-the-tdap-vaccine/ Leave the cocooning to the caterpillars.
"Cocooning" is a CDC-endorsed public health term used to describe the push to vaccinate grandparents (and other close family/caregivers) before visiting newborns. This promoted practice stems from public health efforts to protect vulnerable infants from serious infections, particularly whooping cough (pertussis), influenza, and, to a lesser extent, Covid-19 and RSV.
Current guidelines (e.g., CDC as of 2025) de-emphasize cocooning as a primary strategy due to implementation challenges (low uptake, incomplete "cocoons") and limited evidence supporting standalone effectiveness. Maternal Tdap vaccination during pregnancy is now prioritized for direct antibody transfer to the infant. Cocooning is still suggested supplementally for close contacts but is "no longer widely recommended" as the main approach.
Many new parents enforce this privately, often requiring proof of vaccination for visits in the first 2-3 months. This has led to a promoted "#NoVaxNoVisit" trend on social media and parenting forums, where families delay or restrict access if relatives refuse. Compliance is high in supportive families, but resistance occurs (e.g., due to vaccine hesitancy or perceived overreach).


Although cocooning was the only strategy available to protect infants at the time it was recommended, there is now general agreement that the method is costly, is plagued with implementation challenges, and has uncertain effectiveness. Vaccination during pregnancy has been shown to be safe and effective at preventing infant disease in the early months of life and is being adopted by an increasing number of countries as the primary pertussis prevention strategy for young infants. Given the ongoing resurgence of pertussis in the United States, efforts should focus on increasing awareness and implementation of Tdap vaccination during pregnancy to prevent disease in infants too young to be vaccinated themselves.
An Assessment of the Cocooning Strategy for Preventing Infant Pertussis—United States, 2011
Clin Infect Dis. 2016 Dec 1;63(Suppl 4):S221–S226.
Core Recommendation regarding the "Cocooning" Strategy: Health authorities like the CDC, American Academy of Pediatrics, and similar organizations promote "cocooning," where adults in regular contact with a newborn are recommended to get vaccinated to create a protective barrier. This began in the mid-2000s amid pertussis outbreaks, as infants under 2-6 months are too young for their own vaccines and face high risks of hospitalization or death from these diseases.
The promoted cocooning recommendations include the following:
Tdap vaccine (tetanus, diphtheria, acellular pertussis): Strongly recommended for grandparents and caregivers if not received in the last 5-10 years (protection wanes over time). Administer at least 2 weeks before contact to build immunity. Pertussis is the primary focus, as it can be fatal in newborns.
Influenza (flu) vaccine: Annual shot recommended for anyone around the baby, especially during flu season, as infants under 6 months can't get it themselves.
Covid-19 vaccine/boosters: Advised to be up-to-date, though less universally mandated than Tdap/flu.
Other vaccines (e.g., MMR for measles, pneumococcal, shingles, RSV if eligible for older adults) are often suggested for broader protection.
Rationale and Evidence (The World According to GROK)
Newborns have underdeveloped immune systems, making them highly susceptible. Studies show parents/siblings are the most common infection sources, but grandparents and other visitors contribute significantly. Cocooning, combined with maternal vaccination during pregnancy, reduces infant pertussis risk substantially (e.g., one study estimated 64-77% effectiveness when both parents are vaccinated postpartum). Health sites (CDC, March of Dimes, Cleveland Clinic) and pediatricians routinely advise this, framing it as equivalent to basic precautions like handwashing.

...]]> Wed, 15 Apr 2026 07:40:00 -0400 Cocooning by Way of the Tdap Vaccine Leave the cocooning to the caterpillars.
"Cocooning" is a CDC-endorsed public health term used to describe the push to vaccinate grandparents (and other close family/caregivers) before visiting newborns. This pro...]]> Leave the cocooning to the caterpillars.
"Cocooning" is a CDC-endorsed public health term used to describe the push to vaccinate grandparents (and other close family/caregivers) before visiting newborns. This promoted practice stems from public health efforts to protect vulnerable infants from serious infections, particularly whooping cough (pertussis), influenza, and, to a lesser extent, Covid-19 and RSV.
Current guidelines (e.g., CDC as of 2025) de-emphasize cocooning as a primary strategy due to implementation challenges (low uptake, incomplete "cocoons") and limited evidence supporting standalone effectiveness. Maternal Tdap vaccination during pregnancy is now prioritized for direct antibody transfer to the infant. Cocooning is still suggested supplementally for close contacts but is "no longer widely recommended" as the main approach.
Many new parents enforce this privately, often requiring proof of vaccination for visits in the first 2-3 months. This has led to a promoted "#NoVaxNoVisit" trend on social media and parenting forums, where families delay or restrict access if relatives refuse. Compliance is high in supportive families, but resistance occurs (e.g., due to vaccine hesitancy or perceived overreach).


Although cocooning was the only strategy available to protect infants at the time it was recommended, there is now general agreement that the method is costly, is plagued with implementation challenges, and has uncertain effectiveness. Vaccination during pregnancy has been shown to be safe and effective at preventing infant disease in the early months of life and is being adopted by an increasing number of countries as the primary pertussis prevention strategy for young infants. Given the ongoing resurgence of pertussis in the United States, efforts should focus on increasing awareness and implementation of Tdap vaccination during pregnancy to prevent disease in infants too young to be vaccinated themselves.
An Assessment of the Cocooning Strategy for Preventing Infant Pertussis—United States, 2011
Clin Infect Dis. 2016 Dec 1;63(Suppl 4):S221–S226.
Core Recommendation regarding the "Cocooning" Strategy: Health authorities like the CDC, American Academy of Pediatrics, and similar organizations promote "cocooning," where adults in regular contact with a newborn are recommended to get vaccinated to create a protective barrier. This began in the mid-2000s amid pertussis outbreaks, as infants under 2-6 months are too young for their own vaccines and face high risks of hospitalization or death from these diseases.
The promoted cocooning recommendations include the following:
Tdap vaccine (tetanus, diphtheria, acellular pertussis): Strongly recommended for grandparents and caregivers if not received in the last 5-10 years (protection wanes over time). Administer at least 2 weeks before contact to build immunity. Pertussis is the primary focus, as it can be fatal in newborns.
Influenza (flu) vaccine: Annual shot recommended for anyone around the baby, especially during flu season, as infants under 6 months can't get it themselves.
Covid-19 vaccine/boosters: Advised to be up-to-date, though less universally mandated than Tdap/flu.
Other vaccines (e.g., MMR for measles, pneumococcal, shingles, RSV if eligible for older adults) are often suggested for broader protection.
Rationale and Evidence (The World According to GROK)
Newborns have underdeveloped immune systems, making them highly susceptible. Studies show parents/siblings are the most common infection sources, but grandparents and other visitors contribute significantly. Cocooning, combined with maternal vaccination during pregnancy, reduces infant pertussis risk substantially (e.g., one study estimated 64-77% effectiveness when both parents are vaccinated postpartum). Health sites (CDC, March of Dimes, Cleveland Clinic) and pediatricians routinely advise this, framing it as equivalent to basic precautions like handwashing.

...]]> Robert Malone 15:11 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 4 61743 Bayer bought Monsanto in 2018 for $63 billion —a few months before Monsanto lost its first liability case for causing non-Hodgkins lymphoma. I was not a close observer of the case, but the win seemed to hinge on documents obtained during discovery that revealed Monsanto knew a great deal about the injuries its product caused but deliberately hid those findings.
Once there was a win—and the jury awarded the plaintiff with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma hundreds of millions, later reduced—the bandwagon effect began, with other lawyers seeking plaintiffs to sue Monsanto. Eventually over 100,000 plaintiffs were suing Monsanto/Bayer for cancers related to glyphosate, the so-called active ingredient in Roundup. There are other ingredients that are probably toxic too, but they were not at issue. Most plaintiffs were homeowners. Bayer then removed glyphosate from Roundup, producing a new formulation for homeowners.
Still, there were more and more cases and more and more wins in state courts due to Monsanto/Bayer's failure to warn of a cancer risk. Then Monsanto settled about 50,000 of the cases.
The settlements and the big losses have cost Bayer $10 billion so far.


Not only did Bayer pay out a King's ransom, but its stock price tanked. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Bayer, a German company, hired a Texan, Bill Anderson, as CEO to come to its aid. CEO Anderson's career hinged on stanching Bayer's bleed. He initiated a very expensive series of legal and political strategies in the hopes that one would be successful. He also formed a new agricultural industry lobby group with a huge advertising budget.
CEO Anderson got the Bayer board to agree to setting aside around $17 billion for this problem. With $10 billion already spent (the same figure reported 5 months ago) that left him with about $7.6 billion to deal with the 67,000 pending cases and to end the litigation for good.

I discussed the six different tracks Anderson pursued to make this problem go away in this piece. One of those tracks was getting Congress to pass a bill rider that would provide a liability shield by forbidding the EPA from making label changes unless a tedious, years-long process had been undertaken.
The bill rider got a lot of pushback from my readers and many other constitutents during July-September 2025, when it passed the EPA's Appropriations committee on a voice vote, thereby shielding individual members from having to own up to their vote. Apparently it was not going to go through the whole House easily (lots of political capital would have been expended by every member voting for it) and so far, the bill that included the pesticide rider has not been brought to a House vote. There was no companion bill in the Senate, another clue that Congressmembers did not want their fingerprints on this obvious giveaway to Big Pesticide and Bayer at the expense of citizens.
The five other tracks included:
This request to the Supreme Court to rule on the issue, which failed to gain a Supreme Court hearing in 2022, was filed again early last April.
Bills in about 20 state legislatures that would end state causes of action for pesticide injuries, which passed in GA and ND, failed in TN and many other states, and have not been decided in other states.
Threats by Bayer to take glyphosate off the market, which would allegedly harm the agriculture industry, even though there are generic versions of glyphosate available, and allegedly raise food prices drastically. This track was accompanied by a big publicity campaign.
Assertions by Bayer that it was developing 5 newer pesticides and would simply replace glyphosate with something better (and potentially more dangerous). If it kept swapping out pesticides as their harms became known, it could avoid having label warnings placed on them.
Bayer hinted it could spin off part of the company, leaving all the liability in an underfunded spinoff that would not be able to pay claims.
Reme...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/to-win-at-all-costs/ Bayer bought Monsanto in 2018 for $63 billion —a few months before Monsanto lost its first liability case for causing non-Hodgkins lymphoma. I was not a close observer of the case, but the win seemed to hinge on documents obtained during discovery that revealed Monsanto knew a great deal about the injuries its product caused but deliberately hid those findings.
Once there was a win—and the jury awarded the plaintiff with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma hundreds of millions, later reduced—the bandwagon effect began, with other lawyers seeking plaintiffs to sue Monsanto. Eventually over 100,000 plaintiffs were suing Monsanto/Bayer for cancers related to glyphosate, the so-called active ingredient in Roundup. There are other ingredients that are probably toxic too, but they were not at issue. Most plaintiffs were homeowners. Bayer then removed glyphosate from Roundup, producing a new formulation for homeowners.
Still, there were more and more cases and more and more wins in state courts due to Monsanto/Bayer's failure to warn of a cancer risk. Then Monsanto settled about 50,000 of the cases.
The settlements and the big losses have cost Bayer $10 billion so far.


Not only did Bayer pay out a King's ransom, but its stock price tanked. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Bayer, a German company, hired a Texan, Bill Anderson, as CEO to come to its aid. CEO Anderson's career hinged on stanching Bayer's bleed. He initiated a very expensive series of legal and political strategies in the hopes that one would be successful. He also formed a new agricultural industry lobby group with a huge advertising budget.
CEO Anderson got the Bayer board to agree to setting aside around $17 billion for this problem. With $10 billion already spent (the same figure reported 5 months ago) that left him with about $7.6 billion to deal with the 67,000 pending cases and to end the litigation for good.

I discussed the six different tracks Anderson pursued to make this problem go away in this piece. One of those tracks was getting Congress to pass a bill rider that would provide a liability shield by forbidding the EPA from making label changes unless a tedious, years-long process had been undertaken.
The bill rider got a lot of pushback from my readers and many other constitutents during July-September 2025, when it passed the EPA's Appropriations committee on a voice vote, thereby shielding individual members from having to own up to their vote. Apparently it was not going to go through the whole House easily (lots of political capital would have been expended by every member voting for it) and so far, the bill that included the pesticide rider has not been brought to a House vote. There was no companion bill in the Senate, another clue that Congressmembers did not want their fingerprints on this obvious giveaway to Big Pesticide and Bayer at the expense of citizens.
The five other tracks included:
This request to the Supreme Court to rule on the issue, which failed to gain a Supreme Court hearing in 2022, was filed again early last April.
Bills in about 20 state legislatures that would end state causes of action for pesticide injuries, which passed in GA and ND, failed in TN and many other states, and have not been decided in other states.
Threats by Bayer to take glyphosate off the market, which would allegedly harm the agriculture industry, even though there are generic versions of glyphosate available, and allegedly raise food prices drastically. This track was accompanied by a big publicity campaign.
Assertions by Bayer that it was developing 5 newer pesticides and would simply replace glyphosate with something better (and potentially more dangerous). If it kept swapping out pesticides as their harms became known, it could avoid having label warnings placed on them.
Bayer hinted it could spin off part of the company, leaving all the liability in an underfunded spinoff that would not be able to pay claims.
Reme...]]> Tue, 14 Apr 2026 07:35:00 -0400 To Win at All Costs Bayer bought Monsanto in 2018 for $63 billion —a few months before Monsanto lost its first liability case for causing non-Hodgkins lymphoma. I was not a close observer of the case, but the win seemed to hinge on doc...]]> Bayer bought Monsanto in 2018 for $63 billion —a few months before Monsanto lost its first liability case for causing non-Hodgkins lymphoma. I was not a close observer of the case, but the win seemed to hinge on documents obtained during discovery that revealed Monsanto knew a great deal about the injuries its product caused but deliberately hid those findings.
Once there was a win—and the jury awarded the plaintiff with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma hundreds of millions, later reduced—the bandwagon effect began, with other lawyers seeking plaintiffs to sue Monsanto. Eventually over 100,000 plaintiffs were suing Monsanto/Bayer for cancers related to glyphosate, the so-called active ingredient in Roundup. There are other ingredients that are probably toxic too, but they were not at issue. Most plaintiffs were homeowners. Bayer then removed glyphosate from Roundup, producing a new formulation for homeowners.
Still, there were more and more cases and more and more wins in state courts due to Monsanto/Bayer's failure to warn of a cancer risk. Then Monsanto settled about 50,000 of the cases.
The settlements and the big losses have cost Bayer $10 billion so far.


Not only did Bayer pay out a King's ransom, but its stock price tanked. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Bayer, a German company, hired a Texan, Bill Anderson, as CEO to come to its aid. CEO Anderson's career hinged on stanching Bayer's bleed. He initiated a very expensive series of legal and political strategies in the hopes that one would be successful. He also formed a new agricultural industry lobby group with a huge advertising budget.
CEO Anderson got the Bayer board to agree to setting aside around $17 billion for this problem. With $10 billion already spent (the same figure reported 5 months ago) that left him with about $7.6 billion to deal with the 67,000 pending cases and to end the litigation for good.

I discussed the six different tracks Anderson pursued to make this problem go away in this piece. One of those tracks was getting Congress to pass a bill rider that would provide a liability shield by forbidding the EPA from making label changes unless a tedious, years-long process had been undertaken.
The bill rider got a lot of pushback from my readers and many other constitutents during July-September 2025, when it passed the EPA's Appropriations committee on a voice vote, thereby shielding individual members from having to own up to their vote. Apparently it was not going to go through the whole House easily (lots of political capital would have been expended by every member voting for it) and so far, the bill that included the pesticide rider has not been brought to a House vote. There was no companion bill in the Senate, another clue that Congressmembers did not want their fingerprints on this obvious giveaway to Big Pesticide and Bayer at the expense of citizens.
The five other tracks included:
This request to the Supreme Court to rule on the issue, which failed to gain a Supreme Court hearing in 2022, was filed again early last April.
Bills in about 20 state legislatures that would end state causes of action for pesticide injuries, which passed in GA and ND, failed in TN and many other states, and have not been decided in other states.
Threats by Bayer to take glyphosate off the market, which would allegedly harm the agriculture industry, even though there are generic versions of glyphosate available, and allegedly raise food prices drastically. This track was accompanied by a big publicity campaign.
Assertions by Bayer that it was developing 5 newer pesticides and would simply replace glyphosate with something better (and potentially more dangerous). If it kept swapping out pesticides as their harms became known, it could avoid having label warnings placed on them.
Bayer hinted it could spin off part of the company, leaving all the liability in an underfunded spinoff that would not be able to pay claims.
Reme...]]> Meryl Nass 07:50 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 3 61872 Like so many of you, I've spent the past few days imagining and dreaming about what the Reiners' life was like. It is horrible, unnatural, unimaginable. Only, I have a small window into it. Sixteen years ago, my then-20-year-old son went through a period of darkness and mania and violence. It came on suddenly – as his autism had when he was three – and gripped our entire existence. Mine, my husband's (his devoted stepfather), his brother's and his sister's. There was not a day, not an hour, not an activity or holiday or decision that we weren't governed by this terrible thing.
The worst part was the chaos. There was absolutely no predicting how my beloved child would act or what he might do. You THINK you know what I mean by unpredictable, but you do not. I'm talking about walking 20 miles in bare feet through a -10 Minnesota winter night; drinking a bottle of ketchup; and submerging his laptop in a bathtub of water.
Was it schizophrenia? Possibly. That's what the doctors said. Looking back, I think it was more likely a response to a brand-new medication that his University-affiliated neurologist had insisted he take. When I said the drug was hurting my son, the doctor not only doubled down, he got a state order to enforce it – and threw in some mandated electroconvulsive therapy just to be sure.
All of this is beside the point. It's just context to tell you that it was like a shroud fell in our home and every moment from the day those mandates began was a nightmare. I have written about this – years ago. You can go find the essays if you like (I'm not promoting my work on the back of this tragedy either). My point is, I understand. A little. I know what it feels like to watch your child go insane and have nowhere to turn.
You may tell me there are resources. There are not. There are locked psych wards that your child can occupy for mind-numbing sedated hours and it feels like a march toward death. The police try to help, they really do. But they can't, because they need to STAY in order to step in when things get bad and they can't. It's not their job.
Friends? THEY DISAPPEAR. I assure you, nothing clears your life of interested, concerned people like an oversize young man who's acting crazy. Your neighbors avoid you. Your mother and father and siblings stay away. You're on your own. And it is the most frightening, soul-sucking hell I have ever experienced. There is no order, no solace, no sleep.
I cannot say for certain, but I'm guessing that this is how Rob and Michele Singer Reiner lived for years. All their money? Didn't matter. The fame, the intellect, the effort, and love? Didn't make a dent. I am so paralyzed just thinking about this, it's hard to write these words.
We were lucky, in a way. My husband and I seized our son back from the system and detoxed him best we could and found a way to patch things up. My son apologized for harming me; he bared his soul, which was blameless and good. We had a quiet, somewhat melancholy adult relationship when he died in 2016—maybe (certainly at least in part, I believe) as a result of the medical mistreatment he'd received.
And oh, I mourned him and will forever, without end. It's been nine and a half years and I am only now, barely, able to open myself up to a whole day. I worried about my child the day he hurt me and I was shattered forever, beyond repair, the day he died.
So when I tell you that the last thing those parents thought as they were being murdered was, "What will happen to our son?" I say it with conviction.
You never let go. You never abandon your child, no matter what: even if they turn on you or steal from you or cut you off. You keep trying and loving them and that is what I see in the story we're reading in the news about Nick Reiner's parents. True love.
You have no idea what's happening inside someone's marriage or home or family life. And the hardships people mask are myriad. This is the most sinister I can name, in par...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/the-hardships-that-people-mask/ Like so many of you, I've spent the past few days imagining and dreaming about what the Reiners' life was like. It is horrible, unnatural, unimaginable. Only, I have a small window into it. Sixteen years ago, my then-20-year-old son went through a period of darkness and mania and violence. It came on suddenly – as his autism had when he was three – and gripped our entire existence. Mine, my husband's (his devoted stepfather), his brother's and his sister's. There was not a day, not an hour, not an activity or holiday or decision that we weren't governed by this terrible thing.
The worst part was the chaos. There was absolutely no predicting how my beloved child would act or what he might do. You THINK you know what I mean by unpredictable, but you do not. I'm talking about walking 20 miles in bare feet through a -10 Minnesota winter night; drinking a bottle of ketchup; and submerging his laptop in a bathtub of water.
Was it schizophrenia? Possibly. That's what the doctors said. Looking back, I think it was more likely a response to a brand-new medication that his University-affiliated neurologist had insisted he take. When I said the drug was hurting my son, the doctor not only doubled down, he got a state order to enforce it – and threw in some mandated electroconvulsive therapy just to be sure.
All of this is beside the point. It's just context to tell you that it was like a shroud fell in our home and every moment from the day those mandates began was a nightmare. I have written about this – years ago. You can go find the essays if you like (I'm not promoting my work on the back of this tragedy either). My point is, I understand. A little. I know what it feels like to watch your child go insane and have nowhere to turn.
You may tell me there are resources. There are not. There are locked psych wards that your child can occupy for mind-numbing sedated hours and it feels like a march toward death. The police try to help, they really do. But they can't, because they need to STAY in order to step in when things get bad and they can't. It's not their job.
Friends? THEY DISAPPEAR. I assure you, nothing clears your life of interested, concerned people like an oversize young man who's acting crazy. Your neighbors avoid you. Your mother and father and siblings stay away. You're on your own. And it is the most frightening, soul-sucking hell I have ever experienced. There is no order, no solace, no sleep.
I cannot say for certain, but I'm guessing that this is how Rob and Michele Singer Reiner lived for years. All their money? Didn't matter. The fame, the intellect, the effort, and love? Didn't make a dent. I am so paralyzed just thinking about this, it's hard to write these words.
We were lucky, in a way. My husband and I seized our son back from the system and detoxed him best we could and found a way to patch things up. My son apologized for harming me; he bared his soul, which was blameless and good. We had a quiet, somewhat melancholy adult relationship when he died in 2016—maybe (certainly at least in part, I believe) as a result of the medical mistreatment he'd received.
And oh, I mourned him and will forever, without end. It's been nine and a half years and I am only now, barely, able to open myself up to a whole day. I worried about my child the day he hurt me and I was shattered forever, beyond repair, the day he died.
So when I tell you that the last thing those parents thought as they were being murdered was, "What will happen to our son?" I say it with conviction.
You never let go. You never abandon your child, no matter what: even if they turn on you or steal from you or cut you off. You keep trying and loving them and that is what I see in the story we're reading in the news about Nick Reiner's parents. True love.
You have no idea what's happening inside someone's marriage or home or family life. And the hardships people mask are myriad. This is the most sinister I can name, in par...]]> Mon, 13 Apr 2026 07:40:00 -0400 The Hardships That People Mask Like so many of you, I've spent the past few days imagining and dreaming about what the Reiners' life was like. It is horrible, unnatural, unimaginable. Only, I have a small window into it. Sixteen years ago, my then...]]> Like so many of you, I've spent the past few days imagining and dreaming about what the Reiners' life was like. It is horrible, unnatural, unimaginable. Only, I have a small window into it. Sixteen years ago, my then-20-year-old son went through a period of darkness and mania and violence. It came on suddenly – as his autism had when he was three – and gripped our entire existence. Mine, my husband's (his devoted stepfather), his brother's and his sister's. There was not a day, not an hour, not an activity or holiday or decision that we weren't governed by this terrible thing.
The worst part was the chaos. There was absolutely no predicting how my beloved child would act or what he might do. You THINK you know what I mean by unpredictable, but you do not. I'm talking about walking 20 miles in bare feet through a -10 Minnesota winter night; drinking a bottle of ketchup; and submerging his laptop in a bathtub of water.
Was it schizophrenia? Possibly. That's what the doctors said. Looking back, I think it was more likely a response to a brand-new medication that his University-affiliated neurologist had insisted he take. When I said the drug was hurting my son, the doctor not only doubled down, he got a state order to enforce it – and threw in some mandated electroconvulsive therapy just to be sure.
All of this is beside the point. It's just context to tell you that it was like a shroud fell in our home and every moment from the day those mandates began was a nightmare. I have written about this – years ago. You can go find the essays if you like (I'm not promoting my work on the back of this tragedy either). My point is, I understand. A little. I know what it feels like to watch your child go insane and have nowhere to turn.
You may tell me there are resources. There are not. There are locked psych wards that your child can occupy for mind-numbing sedated hours and it feels like a march toward death. The police try to help, they really do. But they can't, because they need to STAY in order to step in when things get bad and they can't. It's not their job.
Friends? THEY DISAPPEAR. I assure you, nothing clears your life of interested, concerned people like an oversize young man who's acting crazy. Your neighbors avoid you. Your mother and father and siblings stay away. You're on your own. And it is the most frightening, soul-sucking hell I have ever experienced. There is no order, no solace, no sleep.
I cannot say for certain, but I'm guessing that this is how Rob and Michele Singer Reiner lived for years. All their money? Didn't matter. The fame, the intellect, the effort, and love? Didn't make a dent. I am so paralyzed just thinking about this, it's hard to write these words.
We were lucky, in a way. My husband and I seized our son back from the system and detoxed him best we could and found a way to patch things up. My son apologized for harming me; he bared his soul, which was blameless and good. We had a quiet, somewhat melancholy adult relationship when he died in 2016—maybe (certainly at least in part, I believe) as a result of the medical mistreatment he'd received.
And oh, I mourned him and will forever, without end. It's been nine and a half years and I am only now, barely, able to open myself up to a whole day. I worried about my child the day he hurt me and I was shattered forever, beyond repair, the day he died.
So when I tell you that the last thing those parents thought as they were being murdered was, "What will happen to our son?" I say it with conviction.
You never let go. You never abandon your child, no matter what: even if they turn on you or steal from you or cut you off. You keep trying and loving them and that is what I see in the story we're reading in the news about Nick Reiner's parents. True love.
You have no idea what's happening inside someone's marriage or home or family life. And the hardships people mask are myriad. This is the most sinister I can name, in par...]]> Ann Bauer 04:36 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 2 66916 The second Trump administration arrived in the wake of the brutal Covid experience, with the hope of gutting the deep state. A public demand for dramatic reform of oppressive government agencies – and the industries that influence them – was on the docket.
Reform efforts, however, have been met with frustration. The entire machinery is set up to resist the influence of a politically hostile takeover. For example, Moderna, the company tasked with the development of mRNA shots for Covid, has been given the green light to further develop the technology for a flu shot, among other grave disappointments.
The operations of the FDA have been pulled in two different directions. On the one hand, the efforts are directed toward better efficacy and safety testing, obviously in light of the disastrous experiment with mRNA shots rolled out to inoculate the population. The resulting injury and death is a scandal for the ages. On the other hand, pharmaceutical companies hoped for speedier approvals and less red tape, consistent with Republican demands for decades.
It's the same with food. The HHS has prioritized healthier real food instead of decades of subsidies for highly processed, nutrient-barren junk food designed to use up surplus grains that have been subsidized since the early 1970s. Americans meanwhile assume – thanks to the FDA and the Department of Agriculture – that anything for sale for people or animals has surely passed some kind of safety and health standards, which is far from true.
A worthy thought experiment: how would drug approvals and food safety be managed in the absence of such government agencies? The thesis: the free and competitive marketplace would likely be far more strict and exacting than these government agencies. Private solutions would emerge as the standard bearers of approvals, in a way similar to how the private Underwriters Laboratory (founded 1894) codifies the safety of appliances, the Better Business Bureau (founded 1912) polices fraud in business, and actuaries in many sectors assess and price risk.
Anyone in a free market can sell anything. Doing so profitably over the long term and earning consumer trust is an entirely different matter. Markets have their own way of regulating safety, efficacy, and quality, often in ways that are more strict than government agencies have traditionally permissioned.
Let's look at the history.
Vaccines and drugs were the first two consumer products in American history to be regulated by government agencies. The Biologics Control Act of 1902 regulated the production and sale of biological products, specifically vaccines, serums, antitoxins, and similar items. It required annual licensing of manufacturers, facility inspections, supervision by a scientist, and proper labeling (including expiration dates).
This Congressional action came directly in response to the wave of vaccine injuries and death in 1901. A diphtheria antitoxin in St. Louis killed 13 children, while a contaminated smallpox vaccine in Camden, New Jersey, killed 9 more. Crucially, these tragedies gained public attention through media amplification whereas most vaccine injury remains a private and unpublicized matter. The public was outraged in part because it confirmed widespread suspicion of these products born of long experience.
The industry was clearly in deep trouble. It lobbied for the 1902 law to shore up confidence in a manner consistent with its efforts before and since.
As historian Terry S. Coleman points out, "the 1902 Act was an initiative of the large biologics manufacturers," with the help of the American Medical Association and led by Parke-Davis, which was acquired in 1970 by Warner-Lambert and again by Pfizer In 2000. "It is impossible to disentangle the desire for strict regulations to boost public confidence in biologics," he writes, "from the desire for such regulations to eliminate competitors."
Thus did the creation of the agency forme...]]> https://brownstone.org/articles/what-if-the-fda-were-eliminated/ The second Trump administration arrived in the wake of the brutal Covid experience, with the hope of gutting the deep state. A public demand for dramatic reform of oppressive government agencies – and the industries that influence them – was on the docket.
Reform efforts, however, have been met with frustration. The entire machinery is set up to resist the influence of a politically hostile takeover. For example, Moderna, the company tasked with the development of mRNA shots for Covid, has been given the green light to further develop the technology for a flu shot, among other grave disappointments.
The operations of the FDA have been pulled in two different directions. On the one hand, the efforts are directed toward better efficacy and safety testing, obviously in light of the disastrous experiment with mRNA shots rolled out to inoculate the population. The resulting injury and death is a scandal for the ages. On the other hand, pharmaceutical companies hoped for speedier approvals and less red tape, consistent with Republican demands for decades.
It's the same with food. The HHS has prioritized healthier real food instead of decades of subsidies for highly processed, nutrient-barren junk food designed to use up surplus grains that have been subsidized since the early 1970s. Americans meanwhile assume – thanks to the FDA and the Department of Agriculture – that anything for sale for people or animals has surely passed some kind of safety and health standards, which is far from true.
A worthy thought experiment: how would drug approvals and food safety be managed in the absence of such government agencies? The thesis: the free and competitive marketplace would likely be far more strict and exacting than these government agencies. Private solutions would emerge as the standard bearers of approvals, in a way similar to how the private Underwriters Laboratory (founded 1894) codifies the safety of appliances, the Better Business Bureau (founded 1912) polices fraud in business, and actuaries in many sectors assess and price risk.
Anyone in a free market can sell anything. Doing so profitably over the long term and earning consumer trust is an entirely different matter. Markets have their own way of regulating safety, efficacy, and quality, often in ways that are more strict than government agencies have traditionally permissioned.
Let's look at the history.
Vaccines and drugs were the first two consumer products in American history to be regulated by government agencies. The Biologics Control Act of 1902 regulated the production and sale of biological products, specifically vaccines, serums, antitoxins, and similar items. It required annual licensing of manufacturers, facility inspections, supervision by a scientist, and proper labeling (including expiration dates).
This Congressional action came directly in response to the wave of vaccine injuries and death in 1901. A diphtheria antitoxin in St. Louis killed 13 children, while a contaminated smallpox vaccine in Camden, New Jersey, killed 9 more. Crucially, these tragedies gained public attention through media amplification whereas most vaccine injury remains a private and unpublicized matter. The public was outraged in part because it confirmed widespread suspicion of these products born of long experience.
The industry was clearly in deep trouble. It lobbied for the 1902 law to shore up confidence in a manner consistent with its efforts before and since.
As historian Terry S. Coleman points out, "the 1902 Act was an initiative of the large biologics manufacturers," with the help of the American Medical Association and led by Parke-Davis, which was acquired in 1970 by Warner-Lambert and again by Pfizer In 2000. "It is impossible to disentangle the desire for strict regulations to boost public confidence in biologics," he writes, "from the desire for such regulations to eliminate competitors."
Thus did the creation of the agency forme...]]> Sun, 12 Apr 2026 07:03:50 -0400 What If the FDA Were Eliminated? The second Trump administration arrived in the wake of the brutal Covid experience, with the hope of gutting the deep state. A public demand for dramatic reform of oppressive government agencies – and the ind...]]> The second Trump administration arrived in the wake of the brutal Covid experience, with the hope of gutting the deep state. A public demand for dramatic reform of oppressive government agencies – and the industries that influence them – was on the docket.
Reform efforts, however, have been met with frustration. The entire machinery is set up to resist the influence of a politically hostile takeover. For example, Moderna, the company tasked with the development of mRNA shots for Covid, has been given the green light to further develop the technology for a flu shot, among other grave disappointments.
The operations of the FDA have been pulled in two different directions. On the one hand, the efforts are directed toward better efficacy and safety testing, obviously in light of the disastrous experiment with mRNA shots rolled out to inoculate the population. The resulting injury and death is a scandal for the ages. On the other hand, pharmaceutical companies hoped for speedier approvals and less red tape, consistent with Republican demands for decades.
It's the same with food. The HHS has prioritized healthier real food instead of decades of subsidies for highly processed, nutrient-barren junk food designed to use up surplus grains that have been subsidized since the early 1970s. Americans meanwhile assume – thanks to the FDA and the Department of Agriculture – that anything for sale for people or animals has surely passed some kind of safety and health standards, which is far from true.
A worthy thought experiment: how would drug approvals and food safety be managed in the absence of such government agencies? The thesis: the free and competitive marketplace would likely be far more strict and exacting than these government agencies. Private solutions would emerge as the standard bearers of approvals, in a way similar to how the private Underwriters Laboratory (founded 1894) codifies the safety of appliances, the Better Business Bureau (founded 1912) polices fraud in business, and actuaries in many sectors assess and price risk.
Anyone in a free market can sell anything. Doing so profitably over the long term and earning consumer trust is an entirely different matter. Markets have their own way of regulating safety, efficacy, and quality, often in ways that are more strict than government agencies have traditionally permissioned.
Let's look at the history.
Vaccines and drugs were the first two consumer products in American history to be regulated by government agencies. The Biologics Control Act of 1902 regulated the production and sale of biological products, specifically vaccines, serums, antitoxins, and similar items. It required annual licensing of manufacturers, facility inspections, supervision by a scientist, and proper labeling (including expiration dates).
This Congressional action came directly in response to the wave of vaccine injuries and death in 1901. A diphtheria antitoxin in St. Louis killed 13 children, while a contaminated smallpox vaccine in Camden, New Jersey, killed 9 more. Crucially, these tragedies gained public attention through media amplification whereas most vaccine injury remains a private and unpublicized matter. The public was outraged in part because it confirmed widespread suspicion of these products born of long experience.
The industry was clearly in deep trouble. It lobbied for the 1902 law to shore up confidence in a manner consistent with its efforts before and since.
As historian Terry S. Coleman points out, "the 1902 Act was an initiative of the large biologics manufacturers," with the help of the American Medical Association and led by Parke-Davis, which was acquired in 1970 by Warner-Lambert and again by Pfizer In 2000. "It is impossible to disentangle the desire for strict regulations to boost public confidence in biologics," he writes, "from the desire for such regulations to eliminate competitors."
Thus did the creation of the agency forme...]]> Jeffrey A. Tucker 09:56 ["public health, social policy, economics, government, censorship, media, technology, pharma, education"] false full 1