Some people I know have been waiting for mainstream media coverage of the Pfizer exec interview that went viral on Friday – the one describing plans of ‘directed evolution’ of the virus in order to sell more vaccines.
There has been none. Or almost none. Apart from the Daily Mail piece that briefly appeared on Friday morning, only to be taken down a couple of hours later, all I’ve seen is a weak and inconclusive Newsweek fact check and a truly rubbishy piece on Forbes that tries in vain to deny the existence of the executive in question. The piece apparently was written by an employee of a company in close co-operation with – guess who? Of course, Pfizer.
It has however been amazing to see how fast this person, Mr. Jordon Trishton Walker, was scrubbed from the Internet. Friday morning his LinkedIn profile came up in Google search results, while the profile itself had of course been deleted. In the afternoon it didn’t come up in search results, something I haven’t seen happening this fast before. Yet another indication of how all-pervading the censorship has now become.
But what is this?
When strong scientific voices like world-renowned Stanford professors John Ioannidis, Jay Bhattacharya, and Scott Atlas, or University of California San Francisco professors Vinay Prasad and Monica Gandhi, sounded the alarm on behalf of vulnerable communities, they faced severe censure by relentless mobs of critics and detractors in the scientific community — often not on the basis of fact but solely on the basis of differences in scientific opinion.
The above passage was not written by someone at the Brownstone Institute, the Daily Sceptic or the Conservative Woman; it comes from an article by a mainstream scientist, Kevin Bass, a medical student in Texas, published in Newsweek on Monday.
As Mr. Bass explains, he was not one of the sceptics, but supported the lockdowns, mask mandates, vaccination programs and the rest from the start. But now, Mr. Bass admits to his error: “I was wrong. We in the scientific community were wrong. And it cost lives,” he says. He doesn’t try to justify his actions, as we saw in the reprehensible piece by Emily Oster in the Atlantic last October, where she demands amnesty from those she harmed, claiming she didn’t know what she was doing.
Bass tries no such thing. He openly admits how the mainstream scientific community “systematically minimised the downsides of the interventions imposed”, violating “the autonomy of those who would be most negatively impacted by our policies: the poor, the working class, small business owners, blacks and Latinos, and children”. He reminds us how voices of warning “faced severe censure by relentless mobs of critics and detractors in the scientific community”. “We made science a team sport,” he says, “and in so doing, we made it no longer science. It became us versus them.”
Following the revelations from Mr. Walker, we have witnessed the long arm of censorship at its strongest. We have seen what it can do. What it has been doing. And we should be worried. Truly worried
But in the ocean of censorship, lies and deception, the honest voice of Mr. Bass brings hope. A lone voice still, to be sure, but many others in the scientific community must be thinking along the same lines. They may not dare speak up yet. But at some point they must. They must speak up, and they must face their responsibility. In Bass’s own words:
It’s okay to be wrong and admit where one was wrong and what one learned. That’s a central part of the way science works. Yet I fear that many are too entrenched in groupthink — and too afraid to publicly take responsibility — to do this.
Solving these problems in the long term requires a greater commitment to pluralism and tolerance in our institutions, including the inclusion of critical if unpopular voices.
Intellectual elitism, credentialism, and classism must end. Restoring trust in public health — and our democracy — depends on it.
Thorsteinn Siglaugsson is an economist, consultant and writer based in Iceland. This post first appeared on his Substack blog, From Symptoms to Causes, which you can subscribe to here.
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Scientism. Secular religion. Obey, pray to, follow.
Long list of non-science, posing as Deities including Darwinism. All come from the Enlightenment and materialism.
Follow the Money.
Follow the Power.
Very material indeed.
Fair play to this guy for articulately describing how he was wrong. I’ve way more respect for people like this then the sneaky reverse-ferrets trying to weasel out of their previous stances and attempting to memory hole the damage they’re responsible for. Grow a pair and own your sh*t. Don’t insult our intelligence by pretending you were always on our side.
”But the scorn that we laid on them was a disaster for public trust in the pandemic response. Our approach alienated large segments of the population from what should have been a national, collaborative project.
And we paid the price. The rage of the those marginalized by the expert class exploded onto and dominated social media. Lacking the scientific lexicon to express their disagreement, many dissidents turned to conspiracy theories and a cottage industry of scientific contortionists to make their case against the expert class consensus that dominated the pandemic mainstream. Labeling this speech “misinformation” and blaming it on “scientific illiteracy” and “ignorance,” the government conspired with Big Tech to aggressively suppress it, erasing the valid political concerns of the government’s opponents.”
https://www.newsweek.com/its-time-scientific-community-admit-we-were-wrong-about-coivd-it-cost-lives-opinion-1776630
From the bits you’ve quoted it sounds like he only thinks the censorship was wrong not that the response was wrong.
I’m even getting numerous emails on the dangers of the Great Reset etc in my spam emails now, it’s that mainstream
The attempts at censorship we are experiencing are appalling. No argument. But are we worse off than we used to be, or better off?
The reason there are so many attempts at censorship is precisely because the internet and the much maligned social media have opened up channels for us to hear other versions of what is going in the world.
And the problem the establishment has is not that social media and the internet are sources of lies and misinformation, but the opposite, sources of facts and opinions they don’t want aired.
30 years ago before widespread internet, smartphones and social media the establishment had a firm control of information, Now they don’t.
If government succeed in passing all these censorship laws and clamp down on alternative sources of info, then we’ll be reverting to where we were before.
Good points, though it does seem to me that compared to 30 years the MSM reflected a slightly broader range of political views, and now reflects the general drift leftward – ditto the mainstream political parties.
Agreed – the key change for me over the last 20-30 years is that the business model of the MSM, particularly the Press, has undergone massive change. Journalism used to be about exposing the truth and holding power to account, but the MSM is now beholden financially to corporations, governments and other bodies that provide it with advertising revenue and other funding.
Indeed, but I also think that because of the general leftward drift of public opinion, a lot of those in leadership positions genuinely believe in some of the crap they come out with. I’d love to be a fly on the wall and privy to the inner workings of their minds.
Undue advertiser influence on editorial decision is something people already lamented in the 1920.
I’m not sure traditional media ever held power to account. I think it might have appeared that way.
What I think was going on was that conflict between established powers were reflected in the media (e.g. the power struggles between the different established political parties.)
But I think we see.less of that now because all of a sudden the plebs with their easy to set up information channels are doing their own thing, which threatens established power. And so all of a sudden their finding they have a common enemy they want to subugate together: us, the plebs.
Perhaps when theiy are done putting down the “rebellion” they’ll go back to fighting each other more and it will look to us once again like the mainstream is “holding power to account”
Watergate would be a good example.
Were Bernstein Woodward holding power to account or were they useful idiots in helping the Democrats deal a huge blow to Republicans?
To me it’s obvious it was the latter given that American politics since then has become more corrupt, way beyond anything Nixon did and nobody in the MSM says much about it.
I agree with both your posts. But newspapers in the USA taking a Democrat stance or a Republican stance were probably smoothing the wheels of democracy and holding power to account (albeit Democrat-leaning papers holding Republican power to account, and vice versa). Whereas what we have witnessed over recent years (your “plebs” point) is the press acting as propagandists in advancing agendas which would not necessarily be supported democratically by the people (net zero, woke ideology, covid, arms to Ukraine, immigration, etc). And newspapers which used to take pride in being newspapers of record (The Times or The Telegraph or the NYT) seem now to be happy to lie and misinform.
Yeah, fine. But this guy is a final year medical school student.
He does not represent the scientific establishment and perpetrators.
That he was given a platform in Newsweek is noteworthy.
The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that this is due to it being part of the official whitewashing agenda via limited hangouts etc.: let a nobody repent in an MSM outlet and the bigwigs won’t have to and can carry on.
With a closing statement of ism, ism, and ism must end to restore public health and our democracy! the whitewashing bit can be taken for granted.
I was involved in some of the pandemic planning for Avian Influenza (remember that one?) it was still believed to have the potential to be a true worldwide crisis. We went to briefings given by people who attended COBRA meetings, disseminating their planning.
The government was clear and firm in its plan. As little as possible would be changed in the UK. It would be, as far s possible, “Business as usual.” There would be no restrictions, and no lockdown, even though, as they told us, they knew many European countries, though by no means all, were planning on lockdowns.
The UK, however, wouldn’t even be imposing restrictions on its ports or airports. The most significant change the government intended was to raise the number of hours HGV drivers could drive without having to take a break, knowing how crucial they were to the economy.
Other than that, the government’s biggest concern was that the banks should be able to run as normal, and there was to be a concerted effort to ensure that there was sufficient cash available in the system. This was expected to be a bit of a headache, so much stress testing was put on banks to ensure this would work.
When the Covid panic-demic came along, I fully expected the government to dust off its old Avian Influenza plan and carry on as usual. Indeed, I believe that that’s what I was hearing at the start of the government’s announcements. Until… the MSM, chiefly the BBC, started banging on at Johnson about why was he not emulating so many of the EU countries.
Suddenly, after a couple of days of the BBC bashing the government’s plans, everything changed. Look where that got us.
How much better off would we have been if Johnson (Carrie?) had stuck to the already stress-tested plans and carried on “Business as usual”? Would we have had this impact on debt, education, censorship, the work ethic, etc., etc., etc.?
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“How much better off would we have been if Johnson (Carrie?) had stuck to the already stress-tested plans”
Bozo was never in charge. Once the Scamdemic got the ‘Go’ sign from the Davos Deviants everything was taken out of his hands – Locksteps are Go and that was it.
Chunt and Fishy were installed precisely and only because they signed up to the WEF Agenda. They are pathetic, middle management order takers.
Your final para suggests ‘cock-up’ but what is occurring is pre-planned.
The illustration is missing those at the head of the procession: The Mobs – the environment/climate changers, food-Gestapo, animal rights, alphabet people, gizzagrant ‘scientists’, social justice warriors, pharmaceutical and medical industrial complex.
’But now, Mr. Bass admits to his error: “I was wrong. We in the scientific community were wrong.’
It would be interesting if he were to explain how? Can’t ‘we’ in the scientific community read? Decades of experience, accumulated knowledge, trial and error, papers and text books written, resulted in clear ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ for contagious disease. These were written down too in Government pandemic plans, and published on the WHO website until their sudden disappearance.
What ‘we’ in the scientific community, did was to promote and support every don’t and loudly admonish, denigrate, vilify and silence anyone who supported the ‘dos’ and highlighted the consequences of the ‘don’ts’. They then invented ‘science’ to justify themselves.
Now comes the backside-covering, hand-wringing sort-of apologies. ‘We got it wrong.’ Did you? I am not convinced. I want the ‘we’ in Court having to explain themselves so we can see what it was they did.
I found it interesting to see so many who had been loudly exhorting cancellation and no-platforming for anyone questioning the WEF/WHO/UN cabal’s totalitarian line suddenly calling for a Covid Amnesty at latterly last year.
Only too happy to dish out the punishments when they had the whip hand, they appear unable to suffer for themselves a fraction of what they so readily dished out.
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An occasional medic admitting error isn’t going to change anything unless the likes of Bill Gates recants …. and that will NEVER happen.
I imagine all the ‘official narrative’ liars will be denigrating Kevin Bass as he is “only a year 7 medical student”
As for the Project Veritas piece, I’m intrigued as to how they knew about the Pfizer exec and how they knew he could be set up for the ‘sting’
If I was Mr Jordon Trishton Walker I’d be seriously worried as the ultimate conclusion to removing his whole identity from public access would be to err ‘erase’ him physically too.
On politicised issues we do not have “Science”. We have “Official Science” with “Designated Experts”