December 14, 2020 at 2:08 p.m.
Pandemic politics sacrifices transparency for public health power
Pandemic politics sacrifices transparency for public health power
Since the pandemic, however, attacks on open government and crackdowns on civil liberties have accelerated exponentially, as a coalition of billionaires, international corporations, and government health officials has undertaken a monstrous power grab. Simply put, in the new normal, the science of this elite cartel, as it has been called, cannot be questioned. Those who do, or who try to, are censored in social media and either ghosted or ridiculed by the mainstream media.
As we report today, some organizations are trying to fight back, though even officials at U.S. Right To Know (RTK), which is investigating the origins of the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, admit their efforts may ultimately fail, so powerful are the forces of secrecy in the world today.
What RTK is trying to find out is what our government knows about the virus' origins, whether it occurred naturally or was conceived in lab manipulations using gain-of-function research, or even occurred naturally but escaped from a lab.
It's easy for the government to say that we already know what they say they know - the virus and pandemic started far, far away from any Wuhan lab - but their responses to RTK's open records requests scream otherwise. Of course they know things they don't want the public to know. Why else would the state department try to stonewall a request for records for nearly two years? Why would the National Institutes of Health deny the requests for information outright?
Are they covering up for their own culpability? Are they misusing public health data for their own political ends? Do they simply believe the public cannot be trusted with the truth?
Some might wonder why the origin of the virus even matters now. But it does, and critically so, because it will shed insight into the safety and viability of so-called gain-of-function (GOF) research, which attempts to make pathogens more infectious and more lethal to better study them.
For years now, a strong cohort of international scientists have called for an end to GOF research precisely because of its dangers as well as the inherent vulnerabilities of many labs - after all, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) escaped from a Chinese lab twice - and now we all need to know whether their fears have come to pass.
But the need for transparency extends far beyond the origins of the virus. For most of the year now, our communities have been subjected to a smorgasbord of mandates that have helped to ruin the economy and rob us of our civil liberties. And yet most of these mandates are based on so-called "sound science" that public health experts won't divulge or be honest about.
Take mask mandates, for instance. For decades study after study concluded that masks generally don't work, and the consensus was they offered only residual protections. The even stronger science concluded that, at best, masks might help prevent an infected person from spreading it, but offered no personal protection for those who wore masks.
Then came the pandemic and overnight there were a raft of studies - observational studies, mind you, hardly rigorous - that concluded, conveniently, masks do work, after all.
To be sure, all consensus is made to be overturned, but the overnight evaporation of time-tested scientific conclusions are suspicious, to say the least. And the CDC's about-face when it comes to its conclusion that a mask protects the wearer rather than merely helping to prevent the spread of the virus from an infected person is even more incredulous.
The problem with new studies that have arisen during the pandemic is many are flawed but there has been no time to sift them out. There are always flawed studies that turn out to be right in their conclusions, but studies that stand the test of time are emphatically more sound than those that are overnight sensations.
What's missing is transparency. Instead of saying new studies show masks definitely work, as the CDC and public health officials are doing, they should tell the public the truth: That the new studies have challenged what was a generally consensus view of mask wearing as ineffective but are just that, new studies that cry out for further verification and research, and in the meantime, wearing masks is probably a good idea.
But you can't base a mandate on that, so instead we get a new "settled science." The problem with that is, if all the old science was so dramatically wrong, why should we trust the new science won't turn out to be as dramatically wrong, particularly in a politically charged atmosphere?
Or take quarantines. Once upon a time, like two weeks ago, we were told we had to quarantine after traveling or exposure for 14 days. Now the CDC says you only have to quarantine for 10 days. So where's the science in that? Again, there's no way to really know because, as the CDC says in its fine print, the new numbers are based only on "modeling."
In the past we have seen just how wrong models can be, from climate change temperature predictions to this year's disease, illness, and fatality modeling of COVID-19. Why should we trust this model any more? Especially when the new, shorter quarantine period will catch only the "vast majority" of cases and especially when the CDC continues to caution people to continue to monitor for symptoms for 14 days, even as they merrily go out into the world?
Or when they are having sex. In Canada, the nation's chief medical officer warned back in September that people should wear masks when they engage in sexual activity, or, better yet, she said, just go it alone. Wonder where she got the science on that?
In South Africa, somebody else's science caused the government to prevent the sale of short-sleeved shirts.
Again, the government is not being transparent, and a government that is not transparent is oppressive. Today, the governments not being transparent are also in league with an elite cartel whose partners have vested interests - either political or financial or both - in keeping the truth from us all. Today government officials and their corporate allies have come to dominate too much of our lives.
Their limit our freedoms and choices, they rob us of our prosperity, and more and more they take away our ability to protest their actions and petition our government with our grievances. Sadly, too often secretive government agencies are their gatekeepers and guardians.
To say it bluntly, and it seems incredible to believe in the United States, but it is true, we are being oppressed by these special interest coalitions. Our constitution and our civil liberties are not merely being overthrown, they are being imprisoned as things that can no longer be tolerated.
We must surrender to corporate judgements about what we can see and hear to protect us from misinformation, Facebook and Twitter tell us. We must relinquish our freedom to assemble and travel so the government can keep us safe, government officials decree. We must agree to let government act in secrecy, so the experts can concentrate on keeping us healthy without fear of distraction or, God forbid, of any disagreement with their science.
Censorship and secrecy are the foundations of this new coalition; open government and freedom of speech are its enemies.
Without question, open government, the freedoms of speech and religion and assembly, the freedom to petition our government and protest, and, not least, our freedom to think are on the line. Open government and civil liberties are the weapons we have, and they must be foundational, core principles.
An old protest sung once cautioned us that "freedom doesn't come like a bird on the wing; it doesn't come down like the summer rain; Freedom, freedom is a hard-won thing; you've got to work for it, fight for it, day and night for it, and every generation has to win it again."
It is time for our generations to fight again. To win that fight, it will take a powerful force of a citizenry united in the critical cause of freedom. It will take Republicans and Democrats alike to fight for the most important cause of transparency.
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