Barton Swaim, an editorial page writer for the Wall St Journal, has written a brilliant piece about how censorship has become fashionable among America’s educated elites – and not just America’s – under the guise of ‘protecting’ democracy from ‘misinformation’. What’s particularly good about Swaim’s piece is that he links the mistaken belief that ‘data’ and ‘facts’ can drive complicated policy decisions with the avoidance of difficult decisions during the pandemic, with politicians outsourcing difficult decisions to ‘experts’. Here is an extract:
A quarter-century ago the word ‘censorship’ was almost a profanity in American politics. By the mid-2010s it was permitted, even praised, so long as it targeted heterodox thought. Speakers on college campuses were shouted down without a word of protest from people who in the 1980s had defended the public funding of sacrilegious photographs. Commentators in mainstream journals of opinion advocated the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, which required broadcasters to present both sides of controversial issues and had the effect of chilling debate on every contentious question. A large number of respected academics and intellectuals suddenly believed the U.S. government had a duty to stop people from saying things those same academics and intellectuals held to be factually inaccurate.
Sceptics mostly attribute this new support for censorship to bad faith. I prefer a more charitable explanation. The new censors sincerely mistake their own interpretations of the facts for the facts themselves. Their opinions, filtered unconsciously through biases and experience, are, to them, simply information. Their views aren’t ‘views’ at all but raw data. Competing interpretations of the facts can be only one thing: misinformation. Or, if it’s deliberate, disinformation.
It is in many ways a strange outcome. From the 1970s to the early 2000s, academic philosophies associated with ‘postmodernism’ coursed through American higher education. They held that there was no objectively knowable truth, only subjective interpretation. As if to demonstrate postmodernism’s total impracticality, yesterday’s straight-A college students have now retreated into a risibly facile non-philosophy in which there is no interpretation, only objective ‘fact’.
Such was the mental disposition of America’s enlightened politicos and media sophisticates when the pandemic hit in early 2020. The challenge of public policy, as they saw it, was not to find practical, broadly acceptable solutions. The challenge, rather, was to find and implement the scientifically ‘correct’ solution, the one endorsed by experts. Sound policy, for them, was a matter of gathering enough data and ‘following’ it.
But of course you can’t follow data. Data just sits there and waits to be interpreted.
When COVID-19 came ashore, the country’s political class, in thrall to the authority of public-health experts and the journalists who listen to them, was singularly ill-equipped to lead in a sensible way. What the pandemic required was not the gathering and mastery of information and the quick implementation of ‘data driven’ policy. The data was wildly elusive, changing shape from day to day and yielding no obvious interpretation. No one understood the spread of this astoundingly resilient virus, least of all the experts confidently purporting to understand it. There was, in fact, no clinically correct response.
The situation called for the acknowledgment of risk, the weighing of costs against benefits, the clear declaration of reasonable compromises between competing interests. What happened was an exercise in societal self-ruin – in the U.S. and elsewhere in the developed world. Politicians, especially those most inclined to see themselves as objective, pro-science data-followers, ducked accountability and deferred to experts who pretended to have empirically proven answers to every question put to them. They gave us a series of policies – business shutdowns, school closures, mask mandates – that achieved at best minor slowdowns in the disease’s spread at the cost of tremendous economic destruction and social embitterment.
Worth reading in full.
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I met up with three old school friends last night. Try as I might to provoke discussion, on all manner of subjects, it just didn’t happen. Smiling sideways at each other, it was all about their weird friend who always has to be awkward. Small talk was the name of the game.
They have no ideas. They just trust and believe everything. Or they’ve resigned themselves to it all. Can’t decide which.
I think they’ve all been jabbed. This may have something to do with it. One has been told he’s seriously ill, “because COVID”.
Why fight when there’s Ocado delivery and Netflix?
…and Peleton…
That’s sad to hear as I’m due to meet up with some friends next weekend and I suspect that it will be a somewhat similar experience.
C’est la vie.
Not worth discussing it and risking an argument.
At some point in the future someone will sidle up to you and tell you that you were right all along.
I’ve had a couple of those. Mainly family members vowing to never take another jab.
Always worth discussing it. If “friends” and family lose it, that’s their problem. Arguments ( or preferably calm, reasoned discussion) may be the only way the mugs are awoken….
Cancel it! Why waste precious time?
Don’t ask them whether they believe that the vaccine works. Ask them more general questions about the nature of truth, whether groupthink exists and how to come to justified decisions….
Have you listened to the recent Highwire with Geert vanden Bossche? It’s very alarming… (for the jabbed)
Would you please provide a little more information about that? Thanks.
He says that the vaccinated are now at very high risk from what he thinks is an inevitable more virulent version of the virus. And that this will happen quickly because of the huge evolutionary pressure they’ve put on it by vaccinating everyone -especially children who should be the ones absorbing and building up immunity to it. He thinks the vaccinated will become increasingly ill (within months) while the unvaccinated have built up strong immunity and have nothing to fear. He has also published a paper to demonstrate all of this which he’s trying to get every health authority to read and says that unless the vaccines are halted immediately and everyone who’s had one is given antiviral prophylaxis now, there will be ‘unprecedented’ numbers of deaths. I don’t know what to believe any more but he sounds sincere and seems visibly upset and angry.
Nice summary, cg
None of us know what to believe any more. You are not alone.
Thanks for the summary – I do hope he’s wrong! But, like many others here, I’ve been worried about the possible depopulation agenda. I found the Deagel population forecast from the year 2010 to be especially disturbing.
No idea seems too outlandish at this point. I think we’re living through a very significant historical moment.
You don’t know what to believe anymore so you lean towards believing Geert Vander Bossche who is a veterinarian. There is not one other scientist that supports his wild claims. His theories have been debunked and this is not hard information to find. The reason he’s having trouble getting any health authority to read his wild claims is because he is no longer credible.
His point in the beginning was that the virus would evolve to evade the vaccines, and he’s been proved right.
He’s now suggesting that evolution will enhance virulence, which must be taken with a pinch of salt. But his record to date has earned him the right to be taken seriously.
We’ll see in a couple of months.
It’s always “Wait – you’ll see!” isn’t it? Always sometime in the future. That could be said about anything.
A year ago on this site it was widely predicted and stated that people would be dying in their droves from the 2nd Jab before last Christmas…. when that didn’t happen, that was all hushed up, and replaced by yet more claims that “something terrible will happen ‘in the future’ “.
And anyone ‘of importance’ who hasn’t died so far, such as Boris Johnson, “must have been given the placebo”. The truth and facts are often distorted to fit their agenda by ‘conspiracy nutters’.
It’s like that ‘team of scientists’ in New Zealand that were “observing nanobots in the vaccines” as reported here, but now strangely swept under the carpet. Bring the subject up and you get a barrage of downticks…. that suggests to me that it was all a load of hysterical, fear-mongering rubbish, and those giving the downticks don’t like exposure of this nonsense.
There’s also the theory that Vanden Bossche is just another attention-seeking Reiner Fuellmich – promises everything, delivers nothing.
“everyone who’s had one is given antiviral prophylaxis now”
Has he teamed up with Dr Zelenko, hawking the magic ‘de-tox’ pills?
“And that this will happen quickly”
Still waiting……
This is mostly about BA.4 and BA.5 evading completely the original strain antibodies.
Also there are multiple research papers how vaccinated people lack of N antibodies (this is known since long time as also vaccine survailance report from UK had this information at the very end like a short sentence…)
And so on. GVB maybe wrong but there are many concerns and as we see it the vaccines were absolutely for nothing.
But tr jabbed are now shedding their pathogenic spike proteins all over the non-jabbed!
Big pharma, big business and big government does not have a monopoly on bad actors.
Opportunists abound.
If that’s the case then we are all f**ked. I work with people who have been jabbed and I have family members who have been jabbed (despite all my efforts to dissuade them). I suspect though, that this ‘shedding’ theory may have been introduced by those who want to make people suspicious and afraid of each other and cause division. Who knows what the truth is anymore?
That must make shopping in town really difficult for you.
A sad but all too familiar tale. Th Lost Covid Generation is with us – force fed with lies and brain fogged with censorship !
With a couple of old friends I would like to keep but who became Covid hysterics I simply said to them “we will never agree, so let’s just keep off the subject.” That worked. With others I don’t wish to keep I have just detached myself from them. It’s easier and I think more honourable than pretending we are still friends.
You’re probably right. It’s hard to let go of friends you’ve known all your life. It feels like such a waste…
Too many people think it’s easier to either keep quiet or just go with the flow / believe (publicly at least) what the ‘great and good’ tell them, because it means they don’t ‘get in trouble’.
Good ol’ cancel culture (under a different name) was alive and well centuries ago. People invent excuses in order to conform because its easier fitting in than standing up for what you really believe is right.
Welcome to the “Billy No-mates Club”!
It’s a classic trait of narcissism – which society is riddled with. A narcissist cannot conceive on any level that their ideas or opinions might be wrong. That leaves them with only two options when someone challenges them: either the person disagreeing with them is stupid, or the person disagreeing with them is deliberately lying in order to directly cause them harm.
The typical narcissist reaction to someone refusing to accept their own stupidity and/or mendacity is to lash out, often violently. To the narcissist, any attempt to make them consider their own fallibility is a violent attack that merits a similar response. It is an attack on their very sense of worth and being, an existential assault.
This is what is happening now – a narcissist mindset is embedded in the “elite” – incapable of self-criticism or self-realisation, their egos bloated by a system that constantly reassures them like an over-attached mother, that they are special and clever and better than the “others”. Social media – the ultimate platform for self-regard – has fed the malignant tumour of self-worship to the point where sick people, utterly self-absorbed and with the comorbity of Dunning-Kruger, are killing healthy debate rather than face the unthinkable prospect that they might sometimes be wrong.
Good observations.
All I would add is the underlying drive behind narcissism is fear of exposure. The lashing out, the rage when challenged, is perceived as an attack on their identity. When you politely point out some error or mistake they cannot cope.
This lack of coping skills alludes to the real issue, retarded development. Principally emotional development. These are not well rounded people. This alone goes a long way to explaining how seemingly intelligent people can get so much wrong.
Importantly for us, narcissists are not really the doers in society. They rarely have real accomplishments. A mundane example is the executive type at a big corporation. He gets on and does well, but he’s not the innovator, the engineer or producer of the products. He’s the bullshitter that impresses those higher up.
This is why the climate change agenda is dominated by visionaries and billionaires. They sell ideas well. But no one ever interviews power engineers as they can demolish green energy because they are numerate.
Narcissists are damaged people, however far their glib shallow approach gets them in life.
“fear of exposure. The lashing out, the rage when challenged”
I’ve seen it, whenever I ask about the ‘nanobots in the vaccines’ !
I went away with school friends last week and we’re now mid forties. Out of the 5 of us 2 are unstabbed and the other 3 are fully boosted. After a few drinks the conversation turned to going on holiday this year. Obviously from there it went into where can you go as you’re not stabbed etc? It then very quickly turned heated to the point of being toxic from the 3 fully boosted. I’ve known these lads for many years, grew up together, done so much through our teens, twenties, thirties and now forties and the vitriol thrown at myself and the other “sane” one of the group was something we’ve never experienced before. Narcissism doesn’t describe it. It was like they were taking it as personal insults that we didn’t bend to the propaganda and follow the government line. The vile insults were only going one way and it’s genuinely made me consider whether or not they have “buyers remorse” and are deflecting their own self loathing, OR whether they genuinely believe I am so wrong that I am a lunatic, conspiracy theorist and an idiot (as they described me) OR something was in the glue they were injected with and it’s affected their ability to be rational or even empathetic to an old friend who they grew up with and know everything about. One thing for sure is that it’s really sad and I will struggle to look them in the eye next time we meet, that is if I do meet them again. What the hell has this government done to people? I take comfort in reading sites like this or speaking occasionally to like minded people otherwise I’d feel more isolated than I already do. History will be on our side and I hope it comes soon enough. I read an article the other day and it said it will be Historians in the future that will show the truth as the Journalists today have failed us.
I think this is basic psychology. They cannot face the notion they were duped. Even worse, someone they know didn’t fall for it. There is comfort in being surrounded by the like minded.
I generally keep quiet. Most people assume everyone got it.
“I generally keep quiet. Most people assume everyone got it.”
Yep.
Them :”Have you had your booster?”
Me: “No”.
I tell them it’s nothing to do with them whether I’ve been jabbed or not.
Few people go any further because I’m known to be confrontational when provoked.
Likewise! I’ve reached the age where I say what I mean and mean what I say
This is where I fume at the government, the so-called opposition, SAGE and of course MSM. Between them they have created these divisions between friends and families and for that I will never forgive or forget.
Absolutely. The painful thing is no one really knows if or when these divisions will heal. I’m afraid my friends might only wake up/ agree with me when one of them gets an injury (or worse) from the 4th, 5th, 6th booster. As sure as shit they will take them. They’re in “the club”.
It’s unlikely they’ll ever blame boosters for their ill health. It’ll be ageing or misfortune or somesuch. My (once) closest friend’s husband has become ill and it has the potential to be nasty. He’s fully jabbed so they can go on holiday… He’s been a good boy and taken all the medication he’s been prescribed (which has made no difference) and Covid vaccinations wouldn’t enter his head as a possible stimulus. Both of them are all about ‘the good of everyone’, ‘ better safe than sorry’ etc and have just stopped short of accusing me of being selfish by not taking the jab. Covid is the elephant in the room so the conversations are always light and bright hence the reasons she’s my (once) closest friend…
That’s really sad. The world has truly gone nuts. Had to visit someone in hospital recently. At the main entrance, towards the end of the day, there was an ordinary swing bin overflowing with used blue face nappies – so scattered on the floor too! This deadly virus is so deadly that people have to restrict their breathing all day long; but it’s not a problem to have used masks dropped into ordinary bins?! It’s about time NHS staff stopped being complicit in this theatrical rubbish.
A national dread of “Hospitals”: is building up – that should help get the waiting lists down as people choose to suffer their ailments in silence .
Hospitals were the one place you could be sure of ‘catching Covid’ one way or another during the ‘pandemic’.
I spent the best part of six months between Sept 2020 and Feb. 2021 in hospital.
Four replacements of my right hip because the first got infected.
I couldn’t have been more vulnerable.
But I didn’t see covid, I didn’t catch covid and I refused to be vaccinated or masked.
I suspect covid is more frightened of me than I am of it.
Just crazy isn’t it? The whole thing is/ has been pure theatre and people who I thought were mentally and physically strong (the tough guy, snappy dresser, popular and a good laugh down the boozer…you know the type) have been totally sucked into the BS and have dug their heals in. I’m gobsmacked.
Including doctors, nurses and research virologists in my world… Gobsmacking as you say.
Well said.
Journalists have been censored by Ofcom under orders from the Johnson Cabal. Only a few like Mark Steyn have the course to resist – but will soon be cancelled when Dorris forces through total censorship of the web..
“Keeping noses clean” is the new motto of UK journalism.
That’s very sad. I went through the same thing over Scottish independence.
Two of my oldest and best friends, from primary school, we joined the police together, and they refused to speak to me because I had a different opinion to them.
One is now dead, and I have since reached out to the other, to no avail.
The bitter truth is, we walk through this life alone. Even family can turn against us. I had rows with my grown son and eldest daughter. The mental health of my wife and I were questioned. Fortunately, whilst the peace is fragile, it is at least a peace.
This is not of our doing though, and I mean both the vaccinated and unvaccinated.
Mankind is a tribal and warring animal. The world can’t afford WW3 but, as objectionable as they are, wars have always been a release of tension and an opportunity to value the following peace.
The war we are fighting now is like nothing anyone has seen before. It’s a war of intellect and we can never win it.
The best we can hope for is that the vaccinated are right, or we might be facing something unimaginable.
I agreed with you up to the last paragraph. The imposition of “vaccines” is never right and I hope those pushing the monkey-juice are comprehensively proved wrong.
The behaviour of your erstwhile close chums is everywhere. A fracture line between stabbed and ‘whole,’ has developed, and never the twain shall meet.
We have like-minded (unjabbed) friends who up until Covid, visited the Caribbean annually. Rules being what they are, they opted to go to Mexico (today as it happens) where zero restrictions apply and they will thus be welcomed.
In conversation with two (jabbed) acquaintances yesterday evening, down the pub, our Mexico-bound mutual friends unusual destination came up, as did the reason for its selection. The female of the pair opined haughtily, “I’d have thought they’d have been jabbed to protect others on board the aircraft.”
I almost spilled my pint! I replied, “why should it be the responsiblity of K and P to get jabbed to protect others? It’s the others who are solely responsible for their own well being, and given that the jab prevents neither infection nor transmission, what’s the point?”
There wasn’t another peep out of her. I doubt we’ll speak again!
Adults sr now treated like retarded children under the universal cult of ‘infantalising’.
People who see themselves being held up as examplars and elites find it very tough when faced with the real world.
I see it less about narcissism, and more about silencing critics and any criticism, all to hold on to power…at any cost. They are liars. They know they’re lying, and some of us know they lying. They know that we know, so we have to be silenced to prevent the rest of the population realising that they’re being lied to.
They know they are lying but they see it as a sort of Platonic noble lie and so they don’t see it as “real” lies but rather a necessary pathway to the truth. Similar to how election fraud isn’t election fraud if it’s for the “right” reasons – it is simply a necessary to ensure the world is the way it is meant to be, that it follows the pre-determined course to rightfulness. They – in their minds – are making the world right and eliminating unnatural wrongs, and so while they may technically be lying they are doing so from a basis of pure truth.
In other words, they are psychopaths/
Shame it’s paywalled.
When counter argument from equally qualified proponents is censored, maligned, and the proponents punished, asserted “facts”, become propaganda.
saw this quote this week, seems very apt for many of the discussions here at DS and those who shout “apologist” at many of us…
I managed to read it without a subscription.
your tech Fu must be strong, I tried 3 different browsers and still got a paywall <shrug>
Try this:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-disagreement-became-disinformation-misinformation-nina-jankowicz-governance-board-czar-11652450632
still got a paywall, but thanks anyway
Great quote…
Corporatism – Wikipedia Benito Mussolini.“Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato” (“everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state”).
When COVID-19 came ashore, the country’s political class, in thrall to the authority of public-health experts and the journalists who listen to them, was singularly ill-equipped to lead in a sensible way. Political placemen/women groomed to follow without question, don’t forget Greta, who they listened to in mesmerised awe
Do not sign any WHO Pandemic Treaty unless it is approved via public referendum
We want the Government to commit to not signing any international treaty on pandemic prevention and preparedness established by the World Health Organization (WHO), unless this is approved through a public referendum.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/614335
**
Stand in the Park Sundays 10.30 -11.30am
make friends & keep sane from the globalist propaganda
Wokingham –
Howard Palmer Gardens Sturges Rd RG40 2HD
I see they have their own face masks ready to smother their victims.
I recently noticed the rod of Asclepius emblem on the WHO flag.
A serpent around a rod of power over the world. The enclosing Laurel signifying victory (over the world?). A serpent wrapped around a rod, related specifically and directly to healing and eventual pagan worship…up to King Hezekiah’s reign, the symbol had been relegated to the status of a pagan idol and was being worshiped by the Israelites. As a result, the righteous Hezekiah destroyed the statue, having named it Nehushtan
Dont know could be nothing…
Serpent for ‘snake oil’ vaccines, and a rod to beat you with if you don’t want ’em!
“When news of the baby formula shortage first became widely known, one of the main causes, we were told, was that Abbott, the company that manufactures the formula, had put tainted formula onto the marketplace, killing two infants and forcing the FDA to shut down its plant. And indeed, that’s exactly what Jen Psaki blamed during her final White House press conference before heading to MSNBC. Abbott, however, pushed back hard, with facts supporting something Psaki knew or should have known: a federal investigation has shown it’s innocent of the charge.
And of course, there’s the fact that the Biden administration has been diverting massive amounts of baby formula away from American parents to illegal aliens crossing over our southern border.
But back to Abbott. It’s true that the facility has been closed since the contamination scare. What’s also true is that the factory has been deemed clear of contaminants, but the FDA refuses to certify it for reopening. Clearly, the government wants it closed. Perhaps that’s to have a scapegoat.
Abbott, however, politely pointed out, without explicitly saying so, that Psaki is lying — and she must know she’s lying. “
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/05/on_her_last_day_jen_psaki_lies_about_abbotts_baby_formula.html
The Biden administration is attempting to criminalize dissent by policing free speech and branding political opponents domestic terrorists. In the past, these people attempted to mandate vaccines and masks in both the public and private sectors.
The record is so dismal that even their propaganda wing — i.e., the mainstream media — finds it impossible to spin the disaster.
Also last month, Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas revealed during his testimony before Congress that a Disinformation Governance Board had been set up.
The Disinformation Board had a sterling opportunity to prove their merit by calling out the White House’s tweet and forcing them to delete it.
But that would happen only if the Democrats had any morals or values left. In reality, the self-righteous seldom feel the need to be ethical; they usually think their virtue is inherent — i.e., whatever they do is automatically virtuous. Also, whatever their opponents do is bigoted and replete with all vice.
The Democrats have of late become so brazen that they no longer care about how they are perceived. They think of citizens as inferior subjects to whom they can talk down. They probably even think lying is acceptable for the greater good.
What is this greater good? For the Democrats to remain in power. ”
It’s not just the Democrats, but politicians across the world. I see it less as narcissism, and more a desperate need to stay in power by silencing all and any criticism.
The puppeteers must be amazed at how easy it has been to divide, manipulate, deceive, fold, spindle and mutilate the public over the past few years. Here we are falling over ourselves to censor and de-platform each other so that we can angrily defend false narratives given to us by the puppeteers for their own ulterior motives. Peak human!
I generally agree with what Neil Oliver comes out with, he seems fairly sensible and not over-dramatic.
“This pandemic treaty is the greatest power grab any of us has seen in our lifetime, says Neil Oliver”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gafV6YhhnAQ
Well worth viewing.
Um. There are some half-truths here, but I think the key interpretation is missing.
This is that ‘scientific truths’ are not being wielded because they are ‘believed’. They are being created intentionally to drive a hidden agenda. This agenda is usually designed to benefit a bureaucracy and the Establishment. Similarly, any real findings which tend to disprove the narrative are suppressed.
This is not a confusion about what truth is. No one really believes that it is all relative. It is a simple power struggle for status, riches and control…
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean–neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean different things–that’s all.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master–that’s all’
As with Climate change.
What claim do you need supported by data? OK we’ll fire up the computer, cook up some numbers, call it ‘science’ and it will then become indisputable Fact.
Don’t you just love newspeak?
I agree up to a point. But I believe our politicians reaction was motivated by cowardice – a fear of being blamed by a media and a populace that has unreasonable expectations.
And these are the nitwits who have declared war on Russia and we must depend on their ‘wisdom’ and acumen to keep us out of a actual shooting war particularly one which involves radio-isotopes.
They handled CoVid so well I’m sure we are safe.
Oh, the irony, dear Toby. Remember how you (IMHO) tried to silence Dr Sam Bailey after letting Dr Roger Watson post a (in my view) hit piece article on this website and didn’t allow Dr Bailey one of her own as right of reply?
I want to talk about this quote in the article. “The data was wildly elusive, changing shape from day to day and yielding no obvious interpretation. No one understood the spread of this astoundingly resilient virus, least of all the experts confidently purporting to understand it. There was, in fact, no clinically correct response.”
Well it strikes me that the Diamond Princess data was quite clear. I was seeing obvious patterns in the UK-ONS mortality data by April 2020. There was six months of data from the whole world available on the epidemic when the decision was made not to deploy early treatement protocols in the autumn of 2020 when the 2nd wave flared up. The enormous rise in all-cause mortality that occured immediately on the introduction of the vaccination programme was about as unillusive as it is possible to get. I;m sure the data from Hunter Biden’s laptom was also not too difficult to discern.
I’m sorry, the article is nothing more than an gross misrepresentation of the US political class; a group of people whose daily bread and butter depends on making sure that decisions in Washington go the way of the organisations who contribute to their campaign funds. We’re talking about hardened politicians well experienced in a game where accuusations of ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ are a ploy as old as Aristotle.
No, the problem for the Democratic Party is that the vaccine programme is a political gambit gone wrong. The vaccine was supposed to bring huge profits for the very big businesses who can affort to fund politicians’ campaigns and allow those same politicians to claim they had “saved the day” to the electorate which would guarantee them victory at the next election. Unfortunately for them, while the vaccines have generated huge profits, it has been a public health disaster and the NPIs used to bolster their performance a nightmare for the larger economy. Now the Democrats are desperately trying every trick in the book to sling mud at the opposition, close it down, discredit it and dig themselves out of an enormous hold of their own making. They’re simply trying to close debate down on Covid where they are losing and move it anywhere else, say the Ukraine. The Ministry of Truth is just another political ploy and not a very good one as the Administration seems to be too desperate to think things through properly now.
My guess is that for the Democrates, there is no size of campaign donation that is going to save them from losing power. Let’s remember though, both parties in Washington made a cynical gamble on the vaccines with money and power being the prize if they won and the lives and wellbing of Americans being the price if they lost. It is simply that being the party in power, the Democrats had more to gain than lose. If it wasn’t for Kristi Noem and then Ron de Santis what would the Republican’s position be right now?. Those two have given the many Republicans, who were originally pro vaccine, a fig leaf to hide behind. No such luck for the Democrants. They all lost. and if they miscalculated the odds if their gamble, its not as if they don’t know the term due dilligance.
‘Data just sits there and waits to be interpreted.’
The entire political class and penumbra of advisors and acolytes are incapable of interpreting data on any subject.
‘There was, in fact, no clinically correct response.’
Of course there was! The one in the Pandemic Plan compiled and updated from experience of previous epidemics. The Plan the WHO had and the one Sweden followed.