It’s quite apparent that there is more to the official reaction to Covid than trying to limit the harm done from this particular virus, as discussed here: Fearmongering Has Done More Damage Than the Virus.

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

• John Tierney, a contributing science columnist for The New York Times, looks back over the pandemic, providing a timeline of the media-induced viral panic that led to censorship and suppression of scientific research on an unprecedented scale
• Experts who spoke out against the official narrative were attacked and accused of endangering lives by questioning lockdowns
• Numerous research journals refused to publish the results of studies that featured data questioning lockdowns, masks and other COVID policies
• Certain states have stood out for their refusal to buy into the draconian public health measures that were adopted throughout much of the U.S.; Florida is chief among them and has a COVID mortality rate that’s lower than the national average
• The “crisis crisis,” or the ‘incessant state of alarm fomented by journalists and politicians,’ is one reason why so many government, academic and policy leaders could support rampant censorship and suppress scientific debate for so long, all while propagating panic

I am as much interested in what he has to say as where he is from, being a “contributing science columnist for the New York Times. There is no actual truth content in any story from the modern media unless it helps to reinforce some other agenda. Where is this heading if this is what he writes?

The panic was started by journalists beginning in March 2020, when the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team released “Report 9” on the impact of nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPSs) to reduce deaths and health care demand from COVID-19.²

The report’s computer model projected that intensive care units in the U.S. would be overrun, with 30 COVID-19 patients for every available bed, and 2.2 million dead by summer.³They concluded that “epidemic suppression is the only viable strategy at the current time,”⁴ which led to lockdowns, business and school closures and population-wide social distancing. But as Tierney noted:⁵

“What had originally been a limited lockdown — ‘15 days to slow the spread’ — became long-term policy across much of the United States and the world.

A few scientists and public-health experts objected, noting that an extended lockdown was a novel strategy of unknown effectiveness that had been rejected in previous plans for a pandemic. It was a dangerous experiment being conducted without knowing the answer to the most basic question: Just how lethal is this virus?”

Now we know the virus wasn’t all that lethal but there is still the full court press pretty well everywhere else, but not here. It has been absurd from the start, but the question now is whether there is now an agenda in letting the actual truth come out.

In  a similar vein, let me also bring this to your attention: At Every Level, Government Has Botched the Covid Response. Lots there but let me focus on this which is not new but is just as true for being old news.

PCR testing was never intended as a diagnostic tool, according to its Nobel Prize-winning inventor.  The test shoves a swab up your nose and scrapes around for everything, and then the PCR procedure amplifies what’s in the background. As inventor Kary Mullis says, “It allows you to take a miniscule amount of anything and make it measureable and then talk about it.”

If the sample results are amplified 35 times, everyone would test negative.  If the sample results are amplified 60 times, everyone would test positive.

Thus, what nobody really knows or understands is that the number of positive cases are likely vastly over-reported.  Yet because the government proclaimed it the gold standard, it became the gold standard, because the government was so terrified of Covid that it had to lock onto something that gave it the feeling of control.  “Here’s a test!  Let’s go with it!” The result was an unreliable test that produced unreliable data that was presented as gospel.

It’s not that “nobody really knows”, it is that lots of people know but don’t care. There is an agenda in play and that works for those who are trying to set the agenda.