Each anti-scientific, non-public-health measure in itself – e.g., universal cloth masking, testing and quarantining after the virus was widespread, focusing on cases instead of hospitalizations or deaths – was not intended to achieve anything, except the singular goal of fomenting massive fear. And the purpose of the fear was to ensure maximum compliance with lockdowns.
The only way to make sense of these contradictions within Birx’s narrative and between her, Atlas and Pottinger’s stories, is if we understand “align with us” and “our recommendations” to refer not to the perceived Birx-Fauci-Redfield troika, but to the Birx-Pottinger-lab leak cabal that was actually running the show.
In her “excruciating story” of the pandemic, The Silent Spread, Deborah Birx does not even try to make coherent scientific or public health policy arguments in favor of the Chinese-style totalitarian measures she advocated. Instead, she provides nonsensical, self-contradictory assertions – some downright false and others long disproven in the scientific literature.
How did my family, friends and neighbors – who I thought shared my liberal, humanist values – turn into a group-thinking, bullying herd? What forces were exerted to erase scientific and intellectual integrity from the minds of literally millions of doctors, scientists, economists, journalists, educators and other normally curious and compassionate people worldwide?
It’s exhausting and demoralizing to see glimmers of hope, like Fauci’s initial announcement, get muddied, misinterpreted and turned upside down, through more obfuscation and spin, like so much of the news and public health messaging since the pandemic began.
Thankfully we are moving away from many of the deeply misguided, terribly damaging Covid policies that have plagued us (pun intended) for the last two years. Let us now work together to get rid of this last vestige of scientifically ignorant, panic-induced groupthink.
Maybe the reporters and editors at the Times believe they’re advancing the cause of public health by stoking panic, even long after it is justified by the level of the threat (if it ever was justified in the first place). Or maybe, to be a bit more cynical (or realistic?) about it, the reporters and editors know that fear and panic draw readers, especially around Covid, so they just can’t let go.
BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE
2028 E BEN WHITE BLVD
#240-3088
AUSTIN, TX 78741
AND
WEST HARTFORD, CT
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
For reprints, please set the canonical link back to the original Brownstone article
de
pt
es
it
nl
fr
ja
ru
ar
zh-CN
