Brownstone » Brownstone Journal » History » The Great Overreaction
overreaction

The Great Overreaction

SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

If there is one thing that people should have learned from the pandemic, it is that the more control government takes over our day-to-day lives, the less we have of everything that makes life worth living.

The list of questions about our dystopian Covid-19 response will be analyzed and investigated for years to come. It’s essential we continue the work of uncovering the lies and manipulation we’ve all experienced, and bring those responsible to account. Some things may never be adequately uncovered or explained, but we can’t get caught up in the many aspects of the pandemic response at the expense of the bigger picture. 

The following examines two key realizations about the pandemic on which we need to focus, regardless of what else we discover and what actions are taken:

  1. The Covid-19 pandemic response was not based on sound medicine or science, and was not commensurate with the actual threat of the illness. Even if Covid-19 had proved to be as lethal as it’s falsely claimed to be, violating human rights and depriving individuals of personal autonomy are never the appropriate response to a pandemic. We must never let this happen again.
  2. The Covid-19 pandemic revealed movements, led by globalists and wealthy technocrats, but also supported by many of our government and public leaders, to grasp power in ways that have the potential to destroy the foundations of Western civilization. There is a push toward global governance, in which all citizens are tracked and controlled in every aspect of their lives through digital identification, under the guise of preserving and distributing Earth’s resources in a more “equitable” manner.

Some kind, or naïve, souls will still try to say that our Covid response was a result of the government and public health authorities trying to do the best they could, to handle a brand new virus that no one could predict. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Here are 10 facts we knew about Covid-19 in March 2020, which should have informed our pandemic response, but did not:

  1. Data from China and Spain informed us that Covid-19 was a disease that mostly impacted the elderly and those with chronic health problems. An early study from China confirmed that children could contract Covid, but with less severe symptoms than adults. From the petri dish Diamond Princess Cruise Ship, we knew that the virus spread rapidly in close quarters, but that most people who tested positive were either asymptomatic, or not seriously ill.
  2. We knew that SARS-CoV-2 was similar in structure and pathogenicity to the SARS virus of 2002, was likely spread through airborne transmission, and was made up of  29 proteins, of which spike protein was one. We knew that similarities in human and viral proteins could lead to vaccine-induced autoimmunity (when the body attacks itself), and that this had occurred when using spike protein in-vivo to elicit immune response in rodents during the first SARS outbreak. We knew that the spike protein has similarities to human DNA, and that instructing the body to make spike protein could possibly cause autoimmune illnesses or pathogenic priming, which is when the body overreacts to the virus, leading to systemic inflammation. Only one immunogenic (producing an immune response) epitope in SARS-CoV-2 had no homology to human proteins. For this reason it was recommended that the spike protein not be the basis of any vaccine developed to treat SARS-CoV-2.
  3. We still remembered what every medical student was taught: the purpose of a surgical face mask is to prevent dropping saliva or other contaminants into your patient while conducting surgery. (And in fact, studies that had been conducted on the benefit of masking in surgery found no difference in infection outcome, whether the surgery group was masked or not.)
  4. We knew that face masks were not effective at preventing the spread of respiratory diseases. In analyzing the Spanish flu of 1918, doctors and scientists had concluded that, “Masks have not been proved efficient enough to warrant compulsory application for the checking of epidemics.” This was also the conclusion of a meta-analysis of studies from different countries and settings that was published by the CDC in May of 2020. A study of  6,000 people, early in the Covid-19 pandemic in Denmark, found a less than one tenth of one percent difference in contracting Covid between those who wore masks while going about daily activities, and those who were unmasked.
  5. We were aware of six coronaviruses that infect humans, including four that regularly circulate and cause the common cold, and knew the basic pattern and treatment of the symptoms of coronavirus infections. We knew that coronaviruses mutate rapidly, and that all attempts to develop a vaccine for them in the past had failed, partly for that reason. In March 2020 we already knew that.
  6. We knew the mantra “early treatment saves lives.” No one considered it good medical practice to send an ill person home to tough it out, without any treatment other than to go to the ER if breathing was so labored your lips were turning blue.
  7. We knew that chloroquine, an antimalarial medication, was shown in vitro to be effective against SARS in the outbreak of 2002. We knew that hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), a slightly altered version of chloroquine, had been in routine use for decades, with so few side effects it was considered safe for pregnant women and children. Other antivirals, including ivermectin, were also being tested by doctors and found to be effective in treating Covid-19. (see Peter McCulloughPierre Kory – Dept of Homeland Security; Pierre Kory U.S. Senate; Zev Zelenko)
  8. Pandemic planning scenarios prior to March 2020 had unequivocally determined that lockdowns of the general population were not a proper pandemic response because of the extreme damage they would cause the poor, the vulnerable, and the overall structure of society.
  9. We knew that influenza and other respiratory viruses are seasonal, hence the term “flu season,” and that some years are worse than others. For example in the severe 2017-2018 flu season, hospital resources were strained enough that they put patients in hallways, and even erected outdoor tents to make space for more patients, without creating fear and panic in the general population.
  10. It was accepted that hypothesis and experimentation, and the discussion and challenge of different ideas and methods are what lead to advances in science and medicine. If anyone had said in March 2020, “I represent science…Attacks on me are quite frankly attacks on science,” as Dr. Anthony Fauci did in November 2021 (see here and here), they would have been fodder for Saturday Night Live, not the object of sycophantic consideration on every mainstream media platform.

In looking back, March 11, 2020, when  the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic, will be remembered as the day we threw our knowledge of science, medicine, good governance, and healthy society right out the window of a speeding train that was carrying democracies toward medical tyranny.

We slapped face masks on toddlers and children. We closed businesses, public schools, universities, and churches. We put little circles on the floor six feet apart, and directional arrows in the grocery store aisles, maintaining that 6-feet of distance that former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb said was an arbitrary number without scientific or medical basis. We shut down movie theatres, concert halls, and Broadway. We canceled trips, family gatherings, funerals, weddings, holiday celebrations, commencement exercises, and sporting and community events.

All this panic for a disease with an infection fatality rate similar to the flu (even lower than the flu, for children) as was established early on by John Ioannidis of Stanford University.

But no one seemed to want to draw on prior knowledge and maintain calm and perspective. Instead, the “dangerous nature” of this new Covid-19 disease was constantly outlined for us by our public health and government leaders.  Mainstream media outlets reported case counts and death counts in serious tones of dismay every day, without any context or comparison to standard death rates and the impact of respiratory diseases in years past. Emotional abuse of the public was rampant, with the authorities blaming the natural rise and fall of Covid cases on people not properly complying with the pandemic mandates. Even as the public was driven to a panic, government leaders hypocritically violated the masking and lockdown rules that they imposed on everyone else.

Illogical fear, driven by a hyperactive media, and by cowardly and controlling government leaders and public health authorities ruled the day. One of the most insidious results of our descent into ignorance about medicine, and our discarding of social contracts and human rights, was the rise of self-righteous intolerance for, and censorship of, anyone who questioned what was happening.

The Covid-19 response revealed that there is a movement, being pushed by wealthy ideologues, to control people through medical mandates and digital identification. In January 2019, Bill Gates boasted a 20-to-1 return on vaccine investments in an interview at a World Economic Forum Davos meeting, having turned $10 billion into $200 billion over a 10-year period. Gates, who labeled the 2010’s the “decade of vaccines,” can’t get enough of pandemic simulation games in which every aspect of a future calamity is addressed.

In March 2020, while the rest of us were coming to terms with the idea that there was a pandemic, Gates was already talking about the need for a Covid mRNA vaccine (a product in which Gates had conveniently invested $20 million in 2016). Gates also happily opined that everyone would need digital proof of immunity in order to open the world back up and allow travel between nations. In March 2020, Gates, who had predicted a pandemic in a 2015 TED talk where he said “we’re not ready,” was talking enthusiastically about being better prepared for the next epidemic (having already invested heavily in vaccines, testing, and surveillance).

The requirement to show proof of Covid vaccination in order to participate in public life was brutally adopted in places such as New York CityAustria, and New Zealand, and in varying degrees in many other states and countries. The so-called “vaccine passport” was a trial run for a digital ID for every human being on the planet. Digital ID was already in process in Canada when the peaceful Freedom Convoy protestors, and their supporters, had their bank accounts digitally frozen and their truck licenses and ability to do business in certain provinces revoked. The complete control of citizens through digital ID is already in place in China where protestors recently saw their green Covid pass turn to red overnight, causing them to lose access to public transport and essential services, and removing the right to travel.

Digital identification for the whole world was a topic at the World Economic Forum Davos conference this year. “Our future is digital. If you’re not part of it, you’re out of it,” said a UN representative to the WEF Conference, as the group discussed “digital inclusion.” The UN’s International Telecommunication Union focused on the “world’s digital transformation” at their summit in Bucharest, Romania in September 2022.

The digital ID is touted as a convenient and uniform way for assuring medical “safety” for ourselves and others, but Brett Solomon, an expert on human rights in the digital age, states,”[D]igital ID, writ large, poses one of the gravest risks to human rights of any technology that we have encountered.” Journalist and author Naomi Wolf, who has for years studied the factors that destroy democracies, is adamant that vaccine passports are a foot in the door that leads to fascism. Wolf states, “Vaccine passports sound like a fine thing if you don’t know what those platforms can do. I’m CEO of a tech company; I understand what this platform does…It’s not about the vaccine, it’s not about the virus, it’s about data. And once this rolls out you don’t have a choice about being part of the system. What people have to understand is that any other functionality can be loaded onto that [digital] platform with no problem at all.”

Control of people through digital ID is the goal of the UN, of Bill Gates, the WEF, the WHO, and many government leaders worldwide. Covid-19 was just a vehicle for trying out what they could get away with. Now it’s climate change. In a Project Veritas undercover interview, CNN  Technical Director Charlie Chester acknowledged that people were experiencing Covid fatigue, so “once the public would be open to it,” CNN would be focusing on climate change, “constantly showing videos of decline, and ice, and weather warming up, and, like the effects it’s having on the economy.” Chester stated, “There’s a definitive ending to the pandemic, you know it will taper off to a point that it’s not a problem anymore. The climate thing is gonna take years, so they’ll probably be able to milk that for quite a bit,” because, “Fear sells.”

Now in the name of “preserving the planet,” the same technocrats and billionaires who have orchestrated much of the pandemic response are pushing the green agenda at the expense of food and warmth, freedom, and life itself.  While the globalist elites fly around in their private jets telling everyone else how to live and what they need to go without, government lackeys sucked into the globalists’ agenda are closing down farms and limiting the use of fertilizers and fuels, creating food insecurity and misery.

The globalists, oh so concerned about our planet, are coming up with lovely plans for innovations such as The Line, a glass-enclosed 105-mile long building that will house 9 million residents, rectifying the problem of “dysfunctional and polluted cities that ignore nature.” (Walk it in 20 minutes! No need for a car! Everything you need in one spot!) They’ve also designed the 15-minute-city, another “innovation” designed to corral and control the peoples of the world. (Check out the movie In Time if you want a feel for the concept of the 15-minute-city.)

Whether foisting Covid restrictions on humanity, or overturning our lives for the green agenda, the end goal is the same. Klaus Schwab’s right-hand man, Yuval Noah Harari, said at the ironically named Athens Democracy Forum in September 2020 that, “Covid is critical because this is what convinces people, to accept, to legitimize total biometric surveillance.” Harari said, “We want to stop this epidemic? We need not just to monitor people; we need to monitor what is happening under their skin…And Covid is important because Covid legitimizes some of the crucial steps [toward biometric surveillance] even in democratic countries.”

The marriage of Big Pharma and government in the pursuit of the Covid-19 vaccines was one of the most dangerous of all developments during the pandemic. A vaccine development process that normally takes 5-10 years was shortened to 9 months. As explained by Dr. Tess Lawrie of The World Council for Health, the randomized control trials shortened Phase I, merged Phase II and III together, and then the control group was given the vaccine, meaning there is no control group to follow long-term. A Pfizer spokesperson acknowledged that they did not test the vaccines for preventing transmission, yet multiple health and government officials continuously claimed they were 95% effective. No pregnant women were included in the trials, but our health officials recommended that pregnant women take the Covid shot.

The vaccines were proclaimed “safe and effective” ad nauseam, and the vaccination of millions began. The CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) accumulated thousands of reports of injuries and deaths associated with the Covid shots – more for the Covid shots than for all other vaccines combined in the previous 30 years – but the mantra of “safe and effective” was just proclaimed louder. On December 13, 2022 a documentary about people who have been injured by the Covid shots was released. Within 24 hours, YouTube took it down, labeling it “medical misinformation” because, “YouTube doesn’t allow claims about Covid-19 vaccinations that contradict expert consensus from local health authorities or the World Health Organization.” I guess if you’re injured by the Covid shots you have to call the WHO to confirm it happened? You can view the documentary here: “Anecdotals.

The Covid-19 bivalent booster was tested on eight mice, and zero humans, but the FDA and CDC deemed these shots safe for everyone age 6 months and up as well. When the FDA gave full approval for Pfizer’s Comirnaty on August 23, 2021, two main points were made: Comirnaty and the Pfizer/BioNTech emergency authorized vaccine are the same formula, and can be used interchangeably, but are “legally distinct.” As in, you can’t sue a drug company for vaccine harms resulting from an EUA-only vaccine, but you can sue if you’re injured by a vaccine that has full FDA approval.  Interestingly, Pfizer has not distributed Comirnaty to be used by the public, and has stated that it won’t. To date, all the available Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and boosters for Covid are only authorized for emergency use.

Every person who has received a Covid shot is participating in the largest long-term clinical trial in the history of the world. We will not know the full impact for years, but what we’ve seen so far is alarming and heartbreaking. How long will people ignore the evidence all around them of vaccine injury?

From dozens of performers dropping on the stage, or cancelling shows “due to illness” or the sudden death of a band mate, to people developing sudden chronic illnesses and cancers, to menstrual problems and an increase in miscarriages and stillborn babies, to athletes dropping dead on the field and young people dying in their sleep, to children having heart attacks, journalists keeling over mid broadcast, to the emergence of Sudden Adult Death Syndrome, the evidence is all around us. What we’re seeing is not normal, and the attempt of authorities to explain it all away as being caused by “stress,” or “dehydration,” or “just one of those unfortunate medical events,” is not going to be able to cover the vaccine damage forever.

The world was played during the pandemic. The pharmaceutical industry saw the rise of multiple new billionaires; government leaders flexed their emergency-powers muscles; the mainstream media promulgated lies; and people took their government-funded hush money and did what they were told.

Meanwhile fundamental human rights were taken from us, and dangerous precedents were set. Every freedom-loving person needs to step up, become informed, and be ready to speak out and push back, because the people who gained power and money during the pandemic want to keep the gravy train rolling.

A repeat of the medical tyranny we were subjected to during the pandemic, and the fulfillment of a vision of a “digital transformation of the world,” will only happen if we comply.

Reposted from the author’s Substack



Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
For reprints, please set the canonical link back to the original Brownstone Institute Article and Author.

Author

  • Lori Weintz

    Lori Weintz has a Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communications from the University of Utah and currently works in the K-12 public education system. Previously she worked as a special function peace officer conducting investigations for the Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing.

    View all posts

Donate Today

Your financial backing of Brownstone Institute goes to support writers, lawyers, scientists, economists, and other people of courage who have been professionally purged and displaced during the upheaval of our times. You can help get the truth out through their ongoing work.

Subscribe to Brownstone for More News

Stay Informed with Brownstone Institute