Trust the Authorities, trust the Experts, and trust the Science, we were told. Public health messaging during the COVID-19 pandemic was only credible if it originated from Government health authorities, the World Health Organisation and pharmaceutical companies, as well as scientists who parroted their lines with little critical thinking.
In the name of ‘protecting’ the public, the authorities have gone to great lengths to create an illusion of consensus about the appropriate response to COVID-19 – as described in the recently released Twitter files that document collusion between the FBI and social media platforms. They suppressed ‘the truth’, even when emanating from highly credible scientists, undermining scientific debate and preventing the correction of scientific errors. In fact, an entire bureaucracy of censorship has been created, ostensibly to deal with so-called MDM – misinformation (false information resulting from human error with no intention of harm); disinformation (information intended to mislead and manipulate); malinformation (accurate information intended to harm). From fact checkers like NewsGuard, to the European Commission’s Digital Services Act, the U.K. Online Safety Bill and the BBC Trusted News Initiative, as well as Big Tech and social media, all eyes are on the public to curtail their mis- and dis-information.
“Whether it’s a threat to our health or a threat to our democracy, there is a human cost to disinformation,” says Tim Davie, Director-General of the BBC.
But is it possible that ‘trusted’ institutions could pose a far bigger threat to society by disseminating false information?
Although the problem of spreading false information is usually conceived of as emanating from the public, during the COVID-19 pandemic, governments, corporations, supranational organisations and even scientific journals and academic institutions have contributed to a false narrative. Falsehoods such as ‘lockdowns save lives’ and ‘no one is safe until everyone is safe’ have far-reaching costs in livelihoods and lives. Institutional false information during the pandemic was rampant. Below is just a sample by way of illustration.
The health authorities falsely convinced the public that the COVID-19 vaccines stop infection and transmission when the manufacturers never even tested these outcomes.
The CDC changed its definition of vaccination to be more ‘inclusive’ of the novel mRNA technology vaccines. Instead of the vaccines being expected to produce immunity, now it was good enough to produce protection. The authorities also repeated the mantra (at 16:55) of ‘safe and effective’ throughout the pandemic despite emerging evidence of vaccine harm. The FDA refused the full release of documents it had reviewed in 108 days when granting the vaccines emergency use authorisation. Then in response to a freedom of information act request, it attempted to delay their release for up to 75 years. These documents presented evidence of vaccine adverse events. It’s important to note that between 50% and 96% of the funding of drug regulatory agencies around the world comes from Big Pharma in the form of grants or user fees. Can we disregard that it’s difficult to bite the hand that feeds you?
The vaccine manufacturers claimed high levels of vaccine efficacy in terms of relative risk reduction (between 67% and 95%). They failed, however, to share with the public the at least as important measure of absolute risk reduction that was only around 1%, thereby exaggerating the expected benefit of these vaccines. They also claimed there were “no serious safety concerns observed” despite their own post-authorisation safety report revealing multiple serious adverse events, some lethal. The manufacturers also failed to publicly address the immune suppression during the two weeks post-vaccination and the rapidly waning vaccine effectiveness that turns negative at six months or the increased risk of infection with each additional booster. Lack of transparency about this vital information denied people their right to informed consent.
They also claimed that natural immunity is not protective enough and that hybrid immunity (a combination of natural immunity and vaccination) is required. This false information was necessary to sell remaining stocks of their products in the face of mounting breakthrough cases (infection despite vaccination). In reality, although natural immunity may not completely prevent future infection with SARS-CoV-2, it is however effective in preventing severe symptoms and deaths. Thus vaccination post natural infection is not needed.
The WHO also participated in falsely informing the public. It disregarded its own pre-pandemic plans and denied that lockdowns and masks are ineffective at saving lives and have a net harm on public health. It also promoted mass vaccination in contradiction to the public health principle of ‘interventions based on individual needs’. It also went as far as excluding natural immunity from its definition of herd immunity and claimed that only vaccines can help reach this end point. This was later reversed under pressure from the scientific community. Again, at least 20% of the WHO’s funding comes from Big Pharma and philanthropists invested in pharmaceuticals. Is this a case of he who pays the piper calls the tune?
The Lancet, a respectable medical journal, published a paper claiming that hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) – a repurposed drug used for the treatment of COVID-19 – was associated with a slight increased risk of death. This led the FDA to ban the use of HCQ to treat COVID-19 patients and the NIH to halt the clinical trials on HCQ as a potential COVID-19 treatment. These were drastic measures taken on the basis of a study that was later retracted due to the emergence of evidence showing that the data used were false.
In another instance, the medical journal, Current Problems in Cardiology, retracted – without any justification – a paper showing an increased risk of myocarditis in young people following the COVID-19 vaccines after it was peer reviewed and published. The authors advocated the precautionary principle in the vaccination of young people and called for more pharmacovigilance studies to assess the safety of the vaccines. Erasing such findings from the medical literature not only prevents science from taking its natural course but withholds important information from the public.
A similar story took place with ivermectin, another drug used for the treatment of COVID-19. Andrew Hill stated (at 5:15) that the conclusion of his paper on Ivermectin was influenced by Unitaid which is, as it happens, the main funder of a new research centre at Hill’s workplace – the University of Liverpool. His meta-analysis showed that ivermectin reduced mortality with COVID-19 by 75%. Instead of supporting I=ivermectin use as a COVID-19 treatment, he concluded that further studies were needed.
The suppression of potentially life-saving treatments was instrumental for the emergency use authorisation (EUA) of the COVID-19 vaccines as in the United States the absence of a treatment for the disease is a condition for EUA (p.3).
Many media outlets are also guilty of sharing false information. This came in the form of biased reporting or by acceding to be a platform for public relations (PR) campaigns. PR can be understood as a form of propaganda or the art of sharing information to influence public opinion in the service of special interests groups. The danger of PR is that it passes for independent journalistic opinion to the untrained eye. PR campaigns aim to sensationalise scientific findings, possibly to increase consumer uptake of a given therapeutic, increase funding for similar research or increase stock prices. The pharmaceutical companies spent $6.88 billion on TV advertisements in 2021 in the U.S. alone. Is it possible that this funding influenced media reporting during the COVID-19 pandemic?
Lack of integrity and conflict of interests have led to an unprecedented institutional false information pandemic of mis- and dis-information.
Public trust in the media has seen its biggest drop over the last five years. Many are also waking up to the widespread institutional false information. The public can no longer trust ‘authoritative’ institutions that were expected to look after their interests. This lesson was learned at great cost. Many lives were lost due to the suppression of early treatment and an unsound vaccination policy, businesses ruined, jobs destroyed, educational achievement regressed, poverty aggravated and both physical and mental health outcomes worsened. A preventable mass disaster.
We have a choice: either we continue to passively accept institutional false information or we resist. What are the checks and balances that we must put in place to reduce conflict of interests in public health and research institutions? How can we decentralise the media and academic journals in order to reduce the influence of pharmaceutical advertising on their editorial policy? As individuals, how can we improve our media literacy to become more critical consumers of information? There is nothing that dispels false narratives better than personal inquiry and critical thinking.
Abir Ballan is the co-founder of Think Twice Global. She has a Masters in Public Health and a BA in Psychology, and is the author of 27 children’s books. Find her on Twitter, LinkedIn (suspended), Substack and Telegram.
Many thanks to Jonathan Engler, Domini Gordon and Chris Gordon for their valuable review and feedback on this article.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Let’s not forgive or forget the king of liars: Sir Tony Bliar. I have believed almost nothing from government since his monumental lie, almost twenty years ago. I have also not forgotten that in 1997 he was promising total fairness and the moon on a stick; and then the very first thing he did was make students pay for university. And the first thing he did when he was re-elected? Award himself a 50% pay rise. Now, if the government says something, it makes it all the more likely to be false, as far as I am concerned.
Yes it was the invasion of Iraq in search of WMDs as George Bush’s puppet that did it for me
We can’t trust them. WMD should have been enough to wake up the masses but it wasn’t.
Good article with interesting links. Agree with its premise.
$cientism. This is the reigning secular religion and it demands obeisance. It has nothing to do with real science, rationality and certainly not morality. It demands unbending faith.
I believe Rona was planned in detail over about 5 years, with 15 years of templates from Sars I, Ebola to Mad Cow nonsense, to use as pilot projects.
The NHS, Dr. Quack and Nurse Tik Tok, The Government, The Crown, The Fake News, Criminal Pharma, ‘The Experts’ who know nothing, Fake Models, Useless Universities, The Totalitarian Plod, Your Neighbour, Your co-worker, Your Family – all proved themselves unworthy of being listened to and respected. We live in a world, where 50% at least are irredemiably stupid, fascistic or both.
As I said to one friend who is 2x stabbed but now says ‘never again’ – one benefit to the planned Rona fascism might be that some people finally woke up. But given the Church is ‘Scientism’, it might not be difficult to get them back into the pews.
Spot on post.
And don’t forget making solemn international treaties purely to buy time to prepare for war. being a propgandist seems to make one incapable of truth in the same way satnavs destroy one’s sense of where one is.
Nothing is good in world of official lies.
With respect, another point of view – and more worrying in a way – is that everything that happened was made possible through a combination of hubris, groupthink and noble-cause corruption pervading scientific, academic, media and political institutions, with a tiny peppering of opportunistic psychopaths in the mix to stir up advantageous chaos and reap the benefits.
Post normal science – placing a finger on the scales of the scientific method to favour a predetermined outcome – came about through the final push towards complete politicisation of an already leftist-biased academia in the 90’s. This paradigm had one foot in mid 20th century post-modern subjectivism. According to its adherents, the outcome of scientific research should be driven by a social justice agenda beyond a search for objective truth. As is always the case with subjectivism however, the dominant agenda was always going to be that of the group paying the piper to serve their political and financial interests, and they could always find a way to spin it into a moral or existential necessity.
Gatekeeping in the scientific press, irreproducibility of results, science by press release, P-value hacking, laundering dodgy methodology in sophistry, cherry picking and burial of data and outright fraud were already a problem in science. The new field of ‘climate science’, designed and funded from the outset to subordinate populism, reducing the impediments of scrutiny and protest from a fractious public towards the actions of leaders in government and supranational organisations, was not only subject to this corruption but actively rooted in it.
An entire field of science freed from the difficult and unforgiving need to actually scientifically prove anything, comprised of previously underfunded and unexciting disciplines suddenly attracted all the funding, moral weight and a level of kudos amounting to hero worship. As an academic, what was there not to like? It suited academics, activists, and even more those funding academics, who could now coat their agenda with the patina of scientific respectability, and gave birth to scientism: the resulting poison which spread through all academic fields, including virology.
Because of this new paradigm, gain of function research could be conducted unimpeded and in the most lax of safety conditions, despite, or even because of (in the case of research farmed out to countries like China with a more gung-ho approach) repeated warnings of its dangers. Pharmaceutical giants could stand to reap vast benefits from vaccines, treatments and genome patents resulting from the research, and scientists involved could bolster their publishing record and reputation, all of them from top to bottom repeating to themselves the mantra that they were serving a noble cause of protecting civilisation from the consequence of a deadly future pandemic. This mantra might have held a grain of truth, but the corruption of science and academia that preceded it drowned out any moderating sense of caution, and any disincentives for bad behaviour.
When disaster unfolded (most likely) as a result, the same corruption kicked in as a response. Noble cause corruption and post-normal science offered a lever for the powerful to play the situation in a way that suited them best, regardless of the long term costs to society. At first this amounted to protecting themselves, both physically and politically, by taking the most blunt, illiberal and costly action possible, regardless of consequences. Then a minority began to see opportunities for exploiting the situation. Fear had already proved itself a potent tool in controlling populations, creating bubbles of power, and passing corrupt and potentially unpopular legislation, and the pandemic offered fear on tap.
The peppering of psychopaths in influential layers of society worked out how to turn the situation to their advantage, using it literally and figuratively as a money printing machine and a way to vastly increase their reach.
A majority however, even those in powerful positions, were just dragged along with the current, even when they had helped cause the flood. Some of their responses, even if unwise, were understandable in a climate of fear and uncertainty.
My point is that none of this had to be planned from the outset. All it required was a fearful and largely apathetic public, a band of ever present opportunists, and a wilful abdication of the scientific method by academics and their administrators in favour of the shiny appeal of post-normal science.
The world could be drastically improved by the wholsesale abolishment of so-called social science as that’s really nothing but creating statistics about stories random people chose to tell about certain topics.
Agreed. SARS v1 locked down cities, the Icelandic volcano was an opportunity to ground all air traffic and see who would disobey the no-flight edict. The credit crunch was an opportunity for governments to nationalise high street banks and increase regulation… Everything since 9/11 has been heading this way full tilt.
I’ll never trust anyone ‘in authority’ again and, worse, I have friends who agree with this post-COVID-19 lockdown nonsense that I can no longer bring myself to be around. I’ve never said anything to them and I’ve not avoided the ones who were genuinely frightened, a couple of whom have been psychologically damaged and left agoraphobic, but I’m wary of the ones who have been condemnatory. Also, there are friends I care about and still swap texts with, but I’ve figured their opinions based on their comments. If I meet those friends and our views crystallise in front of each other, I fear an argument. So I don’t see people I care about, because I want to continue to love them, not despise them.
I’ve been back living with my elderly parents since just before the lockdowns. My Mum’s best friend and best friend’s husband won’t come round our house to lunch anymore, because my Mum told them last year (to my despair and fury) that I’d turned down the COVID-19 shot. I told her not to put around that I refused the jab, because it was potentially very dangerous for me – it’s weird to think that at the time there was talk of fines and internment camps around the world – but she didn’t seem to understand the risk at which she was putting me. I think she does a bit more now, but like a lot of people seems to be in denial about just how terrifying things have become.
Her best friend’s husband has previously said that people who refuse the shot belong in jail. He’s a good man and I like him very much, but he’s an honest, recently-retired, hardworking guy who takes the practical view that if you’re told to do something by the people in charge, you do it. I think the trouble is that it’s easy to dehumanise people as ‘anti-vaxxers’ and say we belong in a prison camp, but he knows me as a decent human being and thus I cause him a kind of cognitive dissonance. Why would I – as good person he’s known for years, that he knows is intelligent and well-read – turn down something that’s supposed to be ‘good’? He’s swallowed what he was told, because he’s obeyed the law his whole life and respects authority.
That’s why I despise the people in government so much: they’ve driven friends apart, wrecking vital emotional support groups. My closest anti-lockdown friend moved to Poland – he told me that where he was, no one was obeying the lockdown restrictions and no one was giving their real name and address in restaurants.
Brexit caused enough division (several remainer friends dumped me, c’est la vie!) but COVID-19 is far worse and has brought out something ugly in us straight out of East Germany.
Aided and abetted by the tv and radio stooges, you know the “celebrities” also known as the stupid ones!
Difficult nut to crack this one given that the minds of the majority are in hands of the trusted news types. The only upside is that if you see a story that you are 50-50 on it’s now fairly safe to take the opposite view to the fact checkers et al.
“But is it possible…..”?
They’ve lost their reputation, that’s for sure. At a minimum, they have been selective with the truth, and telling a few lies as well, for whatever reason. No doubt money talks for many of them, but it is quite likely to be a self-defensive activity. Well established institutions do not like being caught with their pants down. This is not limited to health issues – I can remember several major industrial difficulties (as it were) which have the same psychological effect on us all.
A simple start would be to remove any individual from public life, politicians, civil servants, teachers,trusted university people, regulatory bodies, and those senioe people in the health service who attend/belong to or have connections with the WEF. This organisation has infiltrated many of our core services, it is a cult and its members need to be removed from their positions,
I would then ask the above institutions and individual to openly declare any donations, sponsorship etc received from the WEF/any of the Gates related “charities/foundations”, Soros or Pharma and Wellcome trust operations, plus of course the CCP. These should be excluded organisations. All other donations/sponsorship should be notified and must be conditional on being freely given without influence on where and how it is spent. Thos organisations/individual who have received funds from any of the above must be investigated to understand if the money influenced their behaviour for example did Gates or the CCP influence Mr Ferguson of imperial?
The current structure and funding of the WHO by individuals who gain from the funding means that the organisation has lost its integrity and purpose. The UK should withdraw from this organisation until such time it is cleansed and reset, in other words remove Tedros etc and replace with trusted individuals such as the Barrington declaration group.
Non of this will happen of course there is too much money and too many greedy hands involved.
I didn’t trust government, the police, the judiciary or the MSM in the guise of the BBC or their fellow traveller the Guardian much to begin with, but I generally gave then the benefit of the doubt, mainly because they are big organisations and big organisations make mistakes. But with a science based career in big pharma I did trust the FDA, the MHRA and the EMA. And scientists and the scientific journals, along with the peer review process. And the NHS and the medical profession. Never again. Added to that is the way in which at least ‘western’ governments moved in lockstep with net zero, covid measures, the death jabs, and now Ukraine means that I now believe exactly the reverse of what the government says, as promulgated by the MSM.
Not a chance, I would trust the North Korean regime before our bunch of lieing b%#@×ds
I’ve always subscribed to the “believe nothing you hear and only half of what you see” tendency. I assume if a Government Minister is speaking, then he is (at best) obfuscating and quite probably outright lying.
That assumption now applies to all the “Experts” who have killed hundreds of thousands through the Covid Lunacy, and ruined the lives of millions. And the medical profession which has colluded with them.
Can trust be restored. NO. I will never believe a word they say, ever again.
As a general rule of thumb, any topic that you are told is closed for debate or ‘settled’ is because it’s evidence is flakier than a leper in a sandstorm.
Am I alone in getting the feeling that our society is completely split and travelling in divergent directions on this issue of trust in authority and its institutions?
When I read this my reaction is a mixture of “old news” and “just more proof that the covid response was a disaster and of course the authorities cannot be trusted. Duh!!”
At the same time, I know that there are people out there who genuinely think that we’ve been saved by tough government measures and jabs and that without them we would be looking at a pile of corpses. To them, jab injuries are anecdotal and the necessary price for being saved. They see the authorities not unlike parents. Are they perfect? No. Do they mess up some times? Of course. Do they try their best and get it right for the most part? Yes. I encounter this mind set all the time.
I don’t see too many of these people waking up, to be honest. If they haven’t realised after all this fiasco that state authorities and their sponsors are hopeless at best and really evil at worst, then when will they?
And there is no chance I’ll ever have their sort of trust in our authorities. Human nature doesn’t allow for benevolent, selfless authority truly dedicated to the well being of others. Anything but the pursuit of minimal government, as local as possible is a recipe for abuse and tyranny.
We’re on very different trajectories and I don’t know where it ends up.
Great comment, stewart. You have managed to articulate the way I feel about what has happened.
I think we now have the sheeple and the sceptics, and the former is by far the majority. And a combination of plausible deniability and a compliant mainstream media (and social media, Twitter excepted) means the sheeple keep going along, oblivious to the fact that they are being manipulated and propagandised… and impoverished and stripped of freedom, and killed and injured.
The two rays of hope on the horizon for me are: Twitter genuinely becomes a free speech and non-censorship platform; and legal action by the attorney generals of individual US states (such as Florida) to expose the truth and hold people accountable.
But the MSM will still quash the truth…
Well said. I think most people at this stage are being given the opportunity to forget about the excesses of the Covid farce/fraud which is comforting because on some level they know they’ve been had. I don’t know how it must feel, for instance, to have insisted your child was jabbed and then become aware of the growing sense that the injections were useless and harmful. I suspect you’d want to forget the whole thing ever happened, most people are happy to do just that!
This article ends by asking “how” questions. These will never be answered without first establishing “why”. Our ancestors had an inkling that there was a God who was watching them and would hold them to account. This to some extent moderated their wrongdoing. Modern thought allows us to suppress that knowledge. Thus ethics is a matter of opinion, that of the powerful. In this case, the ‘sheeple’ have got it right. For example, instilling fear by psychological techniques is ethical because the governing body says so. There is no appeal. “.
I do wonder whether there is anyone left who still believes that the whole exercise was justified. My sense is that no one wants to even talk about it.
Anyone who feels it is okay to use a trusted, authoritative position to coercively lie, exaggerate or selectively cherry-pick the truth, whatever it is, no matter how noble they feel the cause, cannot be trusted to hold that position. It’s as simple as that. If you can justify lying to others, you’ll always be able to justify lying to yourself.
Good & succinct article. Would be a good starting point in Brigden’s defence, perhaps?!
I really like the author of 27 children’s books in the bio line. That’s much better than the Master in Public Health and BA in Psychology.
That’s some nose! But however does he pick it?
We cant but the masses still do trust them
We can’t. That’s why our plan is to up sticks and move to a country with lowest possible tax (presumed less state interference).
I never trusted them before COVID so I’m certainly not trusting them now!
Politicians cannot be trusted because the higher they rise the more they must focus on political survival rather than being trustworthy.