New Book: The Biomedical Security State

 

Janet Levy at American Thinker previews a new book about biomedical surveillance: 

The New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State

The pandemic of 2020 saw the imposition of shocking restrictions. For the first time, healthy people were confined to their homes. Vaccines cleared for emergency use – meaning not rigorously tested – were forced on all citizens. Debate, even by scientists, was censored. Refusal to obey these arbitrary impositions could mean arrest, legal action, or, as Dr. Aaron Kheriaty found out, losing one’s job.

A psychiatry professor in good standing at the University of California at Irvine (UCI), Dr. Kheriaty became persona non grata when he demurred to the mandatory vaccine policy, claiming natural immunity as a Covid-recovered individual. Not caring for scientific debate, the university declared him a “threat to the health and safety of the community,” suspended him without pay, barred him from campus, and eventually fired him.

It did not matter that his psychiatry clerkship was the highest rated clinical course at UCI’s medical school; that he’d been chosen keynote speaker to address incoming medical students; and that when the pandemic broke out, he had risked his life to work long hours at the hospital, often uncompensated, while many colleagues stayed home in safety.

Uncowed, Dr. Kheriaty sued the university. In a more far-reaching action, he authored The New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State, a sober analysis and exposure of the tyranny of pandemic policies and the devastation they wrought. 

. . .

Kheriaty goes so far as to assert that the lockdown was driven by an economic agenda disguised as public health protocol. It helped Big Pharma, multinationals, and the global elite who control them achieve the largest transfer of wealth in history by eliminating competition and spelling doom for small business.

The ultimate plan, devised by the global elite, is for a new world order, shifting government authority from sovereign states to powerful NGOs like the World Economic Forum (WEF) . . .

Read the rest of the column here.

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Mark Steyn: "not a serious country"

 

Mark Steyn is my favorite author and columnist.  I used to enjoy his appearances on Fox News, but since I crossed Fox off my list many months ago, I have to be satisfied with his written commentary.  Yesterday, his commentary was decidedly pessimistic, but I could not see where he was getting it wrong.  Here are some excerpts:

. . .

The biggest-selling book with American conservatives right now argues that the answer to all of the above [litany of government-caused problems] is "constitutionalism". On the other hand, the radio host Jesse Kelly says:

We're not a serious country and we're not a country that will be around much longer.

I incline to the latter view myself.  At this point, conservative complaceniks tend to trot out Adam Smith: "There is a great deal of ruin in a nation." But not this much - not Covid lockdowns and open borders, Afghan "translators" and Haitian "refugees", Big Tech and Big Trans, BLM and CRT, ID for the IHOP but not for the voting booth, China as America's manufacturer and America's loan shark...

. . .

To go back to that Jesse Kelly line, "we're not a serious country": A nation where a pasty privileged pajama boy can demand the ruination of his professor because he traumatized the class by making them watch a Laurence Olivier performance is too unserious to survive, and doesn't deserve to.

If the Constitution is the bulwark against madness, then it has already failed; if "capitalism" is the bulwark against express-elevator descent into full-blown madness, the only thing holding that up is the chimera of the US dollar's status as global currency.

. . .

"Land of the free and the home of the brave"? Both are conspicuous by their absence.

The full column is here.  Grim, but highly recommended.

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Good News about COVID-19

 

Thomas T. Siler, M.D. has a very good column at American Thinker.  He opens with this:

Now that we have had 18 months to “slow the spread” it is time to take stock of the pandemic. We have learned many good things that the media and our pandemic managers rarely report. Most fundamentally, we do not need to be afraid of COVID-19 anymore. The media and some government health authorities are still pushing hysteria and fear, but that should not prevail.

And he closes his column with:

We do not need to be afraid of COVID-19 anymore. Let’s begin to end the hysteria and fear. The worst is over and we are transitioning to endemic status which means a low level of cases and deaths.

We will have many fewer deaths if we start to treat the infection early now with the available outpatient treatments. We should resist further attempts at lockdowns and mask mandates as neither worked. We know exactly whom to protect—the elderly and those with chronic health problems. That’s where we should concentrate our energies.

Thankfully, children have very little risk and do not need masks at school or vaccinations. Variants will come but will not send us back into a situation like last year.

Can our pandemic managers take some of this useful information and transform it into helpful public health policies from this point forward? Or is there another agenda behind unending hysteria, fear, and the constant push for 100% vaccination? That remains to be seen. For now, let's celebrate the good news.

Dr. Siler’s column is here.  As to his closing question: “is there another agenda behind unending hysteria, fear, and the constant push for 100% vaccination?”  Well, here’s the photograph from Australia that we posted the other day: 

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Door-to-door: Are we next?

 

Kevin Downey Jr at PJ Media has another frightening report about what’s happening Down Under.  The headline:

Australia Building Quarantine Camps
as Military Goes Door-to-Door
to Enforce Lockdown Orders

The opener:

Welcome to Australia! Now Get in the Camp

Travelers visiting or returning to Australia will have to quarantine for 14 days at their own expense. Quarantine camps are going up around Australia and to little surprise. Australia has seen massive riots, protesting draconian lockdown measures. The Australian military has been brought in and is going door-to-door to make sure people are obeying lockdown orders.

If you know someone who has plans to protest, the police believe you are obligated to talk them out of it, or rat them out. This sounds like something the SS, KGB, and FBI would do.

The closing:

As mentioned, the army is now going door-to-door to make sure Australians are bending their knees. They did the same thing last year. The big difference is that now there are camps.

Are we next?  Or are we already almost there  -- or see here (there are so many reports of various sorts of governmental or institutional coercion to link to).  Full report by Mr. Downey at PJ Media is here.

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Americans, Choose Freedom and Take Off the Mask

 

Michael Walsh posted his commentary “Americans, Choose Freedom and Take Off the Mask” at The Epoch Times. Here’s the opening:

In the midst of an 8,000-mile car trip around the formerly United—and now fractured—States of America, I arrived in Southern California a couple of weeks ago, just in time to fall victim to an indoor mask mandate jackbooted by Los Angeles County in the interests of leftist conformity, virtue signaling, and general fascist stupidity.

From New England, where my journey started, to central Florida and back again, thence from the Northeast to the Golden State by way of New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, my drive was almost entirely mask-free, except for the occasional “Karen” sightings, sporting their slave muzzles as badges of submissive honor. It wasn’t until I got to Gallup, New Mexico, that masks and their ugly companions, closed restaurants taped up like crime scenes, became evident.

And then I got to Los Angeles—and once again, here in sunny SoCal, I got a glimpse into America’s future, unless we finally put an emphatic stop to this unconstitutional and irrational madness. To put it in terms that even an Antifa progressive can understand, and which conservatives need to adopt, we need to start resisting by any means necessary.

The collapse of personal autonomy and individual agency in the face of an onslaught of punitive, soul-corroding COVID-19 restrictions has been perhaps the most frightening and depressing development in modern American history. Given its minuscule—barely a blip above normal—death toll, COVID-19 is as close to a hoax as can be imagined. Advertised relentlessly as the second coming of the Black Death, it is instead the New Coke of viral diseases.

The damage it has done, however, is still considerable—not to the nation’s health but to its economy and, more important, to its psyche. Our country of yeoman farmers began disappearing into urbanism in the aftermath of the Civil War, but it was not until the twin catastrophes of World Wars I and II that authoritarian collectivism began to supplant personal initiative and liberty.

The postwar injection of Marxist poison by the red-diaper scholars of the Frankfurt School into our educational system is now serving to finish the transformation of our country into a third-rate, 1930s socialist fantasy.

. . .

Mr. Walsh expands on his comments here.  He is particularly critical of Dr. Anthony Fauci.

RELATED:  "Natural Immunity 700% Better Than the Vaccine" by Dr. Joseph Mercola at NOQ: click here.

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Absurdities Of The COVID Pandemic

A.F. Branco cartoons are published at Legal Insurrection.com

The Top 10 Absurdities Of The COVID Pandemic…So Far 

by Zero Hedge,posting at InfoWars

In countdown order:

#10 – One-way traffic rules in supermarket aisles –

#9 – COVID is Trump’s fault –

#8 – Teachers can’t go back to work, but everyone else can –

#7 – It was xenophobic for Trump to halt travel from China  –

#6 – Fifteen days to slow the spread  –

#5 – President Joe Biden: “Help is on the way” –

#4 – The response by The World Health Organization –

#3 – Blue states did it better –

#2 – Get the vaccine, but keep doing all of the other stuff  –

#1 – Wear two masks  –

The beginning of the pandemic was chaotic, and it would have been understandable if Dr. Anthony Fauci had simply made a mistake when he told us we didn’t need masks. But it wasn’t a mistake. He lied to us and admitted doing so. Fauci justified his deceit by claiming concern that masks might not be available for health care professionals. Then Fauci decided to stop lying to us and told us to wear masks, but wouldn’t even follow his own directive. Fauci threw out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals opening game last year, and forget that he threw the ball like a little girl; which, if anything, is insulting to little girls. He was wearing a mask despite the nearest person being sixty feet away. He then proceeded to sit in the stands directly next to a friend, at which point he removed his mask. Then late last year Fauci decided that it would be best if we wore two masks, without any evidence to support his notion. Like lockdowns, there’s still no evidence that mask-wearing had a significant impact on the pandemic. Dr. Fauci has zero credibility at this point, and if you’re following this recommendation by wearing two masks, then you are a moron.

More chapter-and-verse  here.

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The Lie That Was COVID

 

Robert Zimmerman blogs at BehindTheBlack.  Yesterday, he posted “The Lie That Was COVID” (h/t Instapundit), and he highlights the government's perpetually moving goal posts. Since there was a “share” option and it's short, I am posting the entire thing:

The lie that was COVID

This humor story at the Babylon Bee on February 8th is sadly 100% accurate and illustrates the utter lie that is at the foundation of everything we have been told about COVID-19:

Nation Prepares To Celebrate 1st Anniversary Of Two Weeks To Flatten The Curve

“This time of year we like to come together to remember the historic day one year ago when we put on masks and locked ourselves down, trusting that the lockdown would be over in just two weeks,” said local man Paul Christof as he stared out his window longingly, his three masks securely in place. “This year, I’m going all out with a Zoom party with no more than five of my closest friends — I mean, closest, figuratively speaking, of course. We’ll be literally far apart, because I want to stay home and stay safe, and I don’t want grandma to die.”

From day one, nothing we have been told by government health officials has been reliable or trustworthy. First we were only to lock-down for two weeks in order to slow the spread of the virus slightly so that hospitals would not be overwhelmed. We were also told that we shouldn’t wear masks, because a century of research clearly showed them useless and possibly counter-productive if used improperly, and proper use was unlikely if used all the time.

Then we were told we needed to lockdown for months, because we wanted to stop the spread, a goal that was utterly impossible to meet. At that same time, suddenly health officials decided that the previous half century of research about masks was all wrong, and that we must wear them all the time.

These new rules were only going to be necessary until a vaccine was available.

Now, a year later, a vaccine is suddenly not enough to allow us to be free humans again. We must wear masks, with two masks being even better, and normal activities such as attending parties, sports events, shows, and concerts must still be forbidden.

Along the way, a lot of evidence raised legitimate questions about the way coronavirus deaths and cases were tracked, with much of it suggesting the numbers were being manipulated for political purposes.

The result today is that a very very large percentage of the population no longer trusts anything said by these health officials. And for good reason. They have lied, repeatedly, and liars should never be trusted, ever.

Not that it makes much different. These liars are firmly ensconced in power, and can say and do anything, including fines and punishments for not obeying their commands.

America is no longer a nation dedicated to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” It is now a place of lies, edicts, petty dictators, blacklists, and increasing oppression. All largely prompted by an irrational over-reaction to a virus that is really nothing more than a variation of the flu.

Our household is split; one will get the vaccine, the other won’t.  And Mr. Zimmerman’s blog is here.

# # #

Lockdown Meme of the Day

Seen at Patriot Post:

# # #

Meme of the day: cancel culture

 

# # #

Say No to the Lockdowns and the Mask “mandates”

 

Shane Trejo at Big League Politics reports:

Heroic Dr. Scott Atlas Demands That ‘People Rise Up’ Against
Next Round of COVID-19 Lockdowns

Dr. Scott Atlas, the Hoover Institute senior fellow who has emerged as President Trump’s most trusted COVID-19 advisor, is urging for the people to “rise up” against the next round of lockdowns supposedly meant to combat the pandemic.

[Dr. Atlas tweets: The only way this stops is if people rise up. You get what you accept. #FreedomMatters #StepUp]

Atlas has become the bane of medical establishment because he has refused to succumb to the fear mongering pushed by the fake news media and other anti-American shills.

He has squared off against the infamous Dr. Anthony Fauci, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director who once used taxpayer money to fund Chinese mad science at the infamous Wuhan Institute.

Big League Politics has reported on how Atlas’ courage is drawing the ire of globalist agent and CDC director Robert Redfield for refusing the mass hysteria narrative set by Big Pharma and technocratic ghouls like Bill Gates:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director is reportedly angry with White House COVID-19 task force advisor Dr. Scott Atlas for refusing to buy into the mass hysteria regarding the never-ending pandemic.

CDC director Robert Redfield wants to make sure that Americans do not go back to regular life anytime soon, telling Americans that they will be living under mass hysteria for awhile longer.

“We’re nowhere near the end,” Redfield said. About Dr. Atlas, Redfield reportedly said: “Everything he says is false.”

. . .

No, Dr. Scott Atlas is speaking the truth.  Redfield and Fauci are the villains in the piece.  Read the complete article here.  Let's hope that Gov. DeWine does not follow in MI Governor Whitmer's footsteps.  We would look forward to maskless protests.

# # #

Fauci would like to cancel Thanksgiving

 

Rick Moran at PJ Media reported that “Dr. Fauci Tells American To Bite The Bullet and Sacrifice Thanksgiving":

First, CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield warned that sharing Thanksgiving dinner indoors with a group of loved ones was very, very dangerous. Now, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Mendacious Midget™, is joining the chorus. In an interview with Norah O’Donnell on CBS News, the media darling said the following about the holiday:

That is unfortunately a risk, when you have people coming from out of town, gathering together in an indoor setting. It is unfortunate, because that’s such a sacred part of American tradition — the family gathering around Thanksgiving. But that is a risk.

Given the fluid and dynamic nature of what’s going on right now in the spread and the uptick of infections, I think people should be very careful and prudent about social gatherings, particularly when members of the family might be at a risk because of their age or their underlying condition… You may have to bite the bullet and sacrifice that social gathering, unless you’re pretty certain that the people that you’re dealing with are not infected.

"Sacrifice that social gathering"?  To quote General Anthony McAuliffe:  “NUTS!”  (Mr. Moran’s full report is here.)

# # #

The Great Barrington Declaration says to end the lockdown

 

James Arlandson at American Thinker reports:  

Over 18,000 (and growing) medical public health scientists and medical practitioners have signed the Great Barrington Declaration, pleads with the various governments around the world to end the lockdowns and open the economy. As of right now, over 166,000 members of the general public have also signed the petition.

Here are some key points: 

Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. ...

Keeping these measures in place until a vaccine is available will cause irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed. ...

Fortunately, our understanding of the virus is growing. We know that vulnerability to death from COVID-19 is more than a thousand-fold higher in the old and infirm than the young. Indeed, for children, COVID-19 is less dangerous than many other harms, including influenza. ...

Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal ...

Schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching.

Extracurricular activities, such as sports, should be resumed. 

Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home.  

Restaurants and other businesses should open.

Follow the science? Everyone knows why the democrat states continue the lockdown, long past the curve being flattened back in April, which was the original goal.

Read the rest here.

# # #

And the lockdowns continue

 

Dennis Prager’s column at Front Page Magazine has updates on the China virus lockdowns; he  highlights the insanity in his state of California, but New York, New Jersey, and Michigan are just as bad.  And Ohio is still requiring masks, social distancing, etc.  Why?

Why can people eat with no mask in an airplane -- inches, not six feet, from strangers -- but cannot eat in a California restaurant, which is so much bigger than the inside of an airplane, while sitting six feet from others? Because [Gov.] Newsom ordered it, the Los Angeles Times supports it and, like sheep, Californians have accepted it.

. . .

I conclude with the words of a Swedish medical doctor, Sebastian Rushworth:

"Covid is over in Sweden. People have gone back to their normal lives and barely anyone is getting infected any more. I am willing to bet that the countries that have shut down completely will see rates spike when they open up. If that is the case, then there won't have been any point in shutting down in the first place ... Shutting down completely in order to decrease the total number of deaths only makes sense if you are willing to stay shut down until a vaccine is available. That could take years. No country is willing to wait that long."

Except that so far, the US is still mostly shut down.  Read the rest here.

# # #

Gary Varvel cartoon on the lockdown

 A great cartoon by Gary Varvel at Townhall:

# # #

Capricious Governors

According to cleveland.com, "Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said Sunday during an interview on "Meet the Press" that he would not rule out a statewide mandate to wear masks in public."  Cuyahoga County already has a mandate.  Theaters, sports venues, and other large gathering places are still closed.  

# # #

The data is in — stop the panic and end the total isolation

Literally Thousands of Doctors and Scientists 

Have Come Out Against Fauci’s Lockdowns 

Including a Nobel Prize-Winning Biophysicist. 

The Media Just Doesn’t Want You to Know

The headline says it all, but the report by Michael Thau at Red State starts off:

As RedState’s very own Sister Toldjah reported earlier today, the doubts President Trump recently expressed about the wisdom of Dr. Fauci’s advice on COVID-19 have elicited a chorus of smug accusation from the usual suspects that he’s “ignoring the experts.”

Sister Toldjah pointed out that it’s hard to know what their complaint even means given how often Fauci and other media-anointed authorities have done total 180s.

But, even putting aside how their advice seems to change with the political winds, the idea that there’s some scientific consensus in favor of the extreme measures inflicted on us in response to COVID-19 couldn’t be further from the truth.

Though you don’t hear their perspectives on CNN, countless scientists and doctors have tried to warn us not only that COVID-19 isn’t nearly as deadly as we’ve been led to believe; they’re also certain that the real threat to public health we’re facing is from the lockdowns.

Full report is here.

# # #

Resist the lockdown

cartoon credit: leadersedge.com

Heather MacDonald hits the nail on the head, as she always does.  Her column at Spectator USA (“Where are the deaths?: The drum beat to halt the re-openings gets louder by the day. It should be resisted”) begins:

The coronavirus doomsayers could not even wait until the fall for the apocalyptic announcements of the dreaded second wave. Because the red states recklessly loosened their lockdowns, we are now told, the US is seeing a dangerous spike in coronavirus cases. ‘EXPERTS SKETCH GLOOMY PICTURE OF VIRUS SPREAD: FAUCI TELLS OF “DISTURBING” WAVE, WITH A VACCINE MONTHS AWAY,’ read the front-page lead headline in the New York Times on Wednesday. ‘VIRUS SPREAD AKIN TO “FOREST FIRE”’ read another front page headline in the Los Angeles Times on Monday, quoting Michael Osterholm, one of the media’s favorite public health experts. Osterholm had told NBC’s Meet the Press: ‘I’m actually of the mind right now — I think this is more like a forest fire. I don’t think that this is going to slow down.’

The ‘this’ is an uptick in daily new cases from 19,002 on June 9 to 38,386 on June 24. The high to date in new daily cases was on April 24 — 39,072. Since April 24, the daily case count started declining, then began rising again after around June 9. What virtually every fear-mongering story on America’s allegedly precarious situation leaves out, however, is the steadily dropping daily death numbers — from a high of 2,693 on April 21 to 808 on June 24. That April high was driven by New York City and its environs; those New York death numbers have declined, but they have not been replaced by deaths in the rest of the country. This should be good news. Instead, it is no news.

. . .

There are no crises in hospital capacity anywhere in the country. Nursing homes, meat-packing plants, and prisons remain the main sources of new infections. Half the states are seeing cases decline or hold steady. Case counts are affected by more testing; the positive infection rate captured by testing is declining. The current caseload is younger, which is a good thing. The more people who have been infected and who recover, the more herd immunity is created. Meanwhile, daily deaths from heart disease and cancer — about 3,400 a day combined — go ignored in the press.

But the drum beat to halt the still far too tentative reopenings gets louder by the day. It should be resisted. The lockdowns were a mistake the first time around; to reimpose them would be disastrous for any remaining hope of restoring our economy. The damage that has been done to people’s livelihoods and future prosperity will continue to outweigh the damage done by the coronavirus. The only vaccine against poverty and resulting despair is a robust economy. 

Read the full column here.

# # #

We're being played

Are you wearing a mask and practicing social distancing?  Via Instapundit:

# # #

Ending the lockdowns now

Ohio is starting to re-open.  Not soon enough, but Ohio is faring better than New York.  New York Post (and Federalist) contributor David Marcus was on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson program yesterday evening to expand on his NY Post op-ed.  He wants New York to get back to work.  He’s right.  Here’s some of his editorial:

By prolonging the coronavirus shutdown long after its core mission was accomplished, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio have plunged tens of thousands of New Yorkers into poverty.

It needs to end. Now.

In mid-March, we were told we have to endure a lockdown to ensure that hospitals didn’t get overrun. We did. The hospitals were not overwhelmed. We turned the Javits Center into a hospital. We didn’t need it. We brought in a giant Navy ship to treat New Yorkers. We didn’t need it.

We were told we were moments away from running out of ventilators. We weren’t, and now the United States has built so many, we are giving them away to other countries.

Meanwhile, the Big Apple is ­dying. Its streets are empty. The bars and jazz clubs, restaurants and coffeehouses sit barren. Beloved haunts, storied rooms, perfect-slice joints are shuttered, many for good. The sweat equity of countless small-business owners is evaporating. ­Instead of getting people back to work providing for their families, our mayor talks about a fantasyland New Deal for the post-coronavirus era.

Open the city. All of it. Right now. Broadway shows, beaches, Yankees games, the schools, the top of the freakin’ Empire State building. Everything. New Yorkers have already learned to socially distance. Businesses can adjust. The elderly and infirm can continue to be isolated.

. . .

Read the rest here.  

We also know that Dr. Anthony Fauci’s advice has been wrong every time.  For a listing of his continuing mistakes, here’s a column by Mark Simone posted earlier this month at the 710 WOR website.  Not to beat the dead horse, but today we are reading that “Mastermind of LOCKDOWN Dr. Anthony Fauci NOW says staying closed for too long could cause ‘IRREPARABLE DAMAGE’! (headline quote via Pamela Geller here.)  

# # #

Why shutdowns are useless

Over at Power Line, John Hinderaker links to an interview (not quite an hour long) with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford Medical School for Uncommon Knowledge.  Mr. Hinderaker's closing comments, based on the interview:

The conventionally posed choice between fighting the disease and salvaging our economy is entirely wrong. The choice is not disease vs. economy. The disease is here, and there is nothing governments can do to stop it. (They can, of course, close down access to nursing homes, a mixed blessing if you are elderly.) The real choice is between the disease with a flourishing economy, and the disease with a devastated economy. The disease is a constant.

Read the full column here, with interview link at the bottom.

# # #