Accountability Not Amnesty

Healthcare Leaders Must Own Up to Their Pandemic Mistakes

The failures and harms from our pandemic public policies are legion!

Fauci-endorsed lockdowns were ineffective (and damaging!)[1]; risks from COVID-19 are not uniform for the entire population but directly aligned to your age[2]; the mortality impact on children is almost immeasurable but we burdened them with mandates and school closures[3]; mask mandates have shown zero impact on quelling the spread of the virus[4]; denied by Fauci & Co., natural immunity offers strong protection[5]; and vaccines (designed for a 2-year-old variant) have proven ineffectual at stopping the current crop of feared COVID variants.[6]

Dr. Fauci and his cadre of unelected health officials were on the wrong side of every one of these outcomes. The were made aware of every data point above but their one-size-fits-all policies have not changed in the face of the evidence. In their minds, there is only the panic.

Recently, Professor Emily Oster of Brown University, admits in a recent article that interventions like social distancing “were totally misguided” but begs for amnesty for our serious damage wrought by health overlords like Dr. Fauci.

Emily herself had the data early on the pandemic to demonstrate that mask efficacy in schools was non-existent but under pressure from peers and establishment leaders, she caved, stayed silent and archived her data.

We welcome Emily and her newfound admission, but we must say firmly: they should not have any influence on public policy going forward.

Of course, no apology will be forthcoming from Dr Fauci. During numerous media interviews in the last several months he has refused to acknowledge any mistakes. Apparently, he fears that the slightest mea culpa would be taken “out of context”. Dr. Fauci’s only tactic was fear and he’s not going to allow that bludgeoned strategy to be sullied.

In his book, A Plague Upon Our House, Dr. Scott Atlas, onetime advisor to the Trump COVID-19 taskforce, recounts how he confronted Dr. Fauci and asked: “So you think people aren’t frightened enough?” Dr. Fauci reportedly replied: “Yes, they need to be more afraid.”

In the spring in 2020, multiple studies demonstrate that 50% of cancers went undiagnosed – people were too scared to seek treatment. From internal injuries to external ones – the flip side of lockdowns is not insignificant. One study extrapolates that we likely missed over 200,000 potential cases of domestic abuse – why? Because it’s typically sharp-eyed teachers and administrators who catch these things – and kids weren’t in school.

Fauci is unmoved by any of this. When their predictions fail, they simply wave them off or bury their past quotes.  It’s time to stop their gaslighting.

March 29. 2021, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, newly installed head of the CDC, told MSNBC: “Our data from the CDC today suggests that, you know, that vaccinated people do not carry the disease, don’t get sick.” Nearly two months later Dr. Fauci himself declared: “When people are vaccinated they can feel safe that they are not going to get infected.” He continues: “The fact that we know now that these vaccines are highly effective… they’re really, really good against variants.”[7]

None of the trials and none of the real-world data supported these statements but they put them out there anyway. After a large summer wave of the Delta variant and a massive vaccine-evading mountain of Omicron cases in the winter, they had to admit that the shots were not sterilizing – they did not stop the disease. Even Bill Gates, a big funder and booster of vaccines, admitted that mandates make little sense. In May of this year, he gave up the ghost quietly: “The idea of checking if people are vaccinated, you know if you have breakthrough infections, what’s the point?”[8]

A survey conducted for the CDC shows that the 2nd booster (approved in April for adults 50+ years of age) has barely just passed 1/3rd of eligible recipients. Even the riskiest age bracket (75+) has yet to hit the 50% mark. Meanwhile, the newly approved vaccines for children under 5 years old has yet to hit even 10% of the infant/toddler population. Are American adults and parents finally immune to the virus of bad public health policy?

Curiously, after the 2009 H1N1 public health debacle, an article was published on the NIH website entitled “‘Listen to the People’: Public Deliberation about Social Distancing Measures in a Pandemic.” The article notes the vital need for good and honest communication to the public about measures being taken the protect the citizenry. It states: “Public engagement in ethically laden pandemic planning decisions may be important for transparency, creating public trust, improving compliance with public health orders, and ultimately, contributing to just outcomes.”

The current crop of failed fearmongering virus prophets coupled with the low-uptake of boosters is stark and terrible reminder that the institutions that prided themselves on public health damaged the public trust more than anything else. Your trust should be in the bedrock of our Constitution, not in some self-endowed title of “science.”  Public trust in our institutions is sinking and it will require a public trial of our policy decisions to right the ship.

JUSTIN HART is the author of the new book: “Gone Viral: How Covid Drove the World Insane” from Regnery Publishing

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[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/eci.13484

[2] https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1186/s12879-022-07262-0.pdf

[3] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.30.21267048v1

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/31/briefing/masks-mandates-us-covid.html

[5] https://brownstone.org/articles/the-strange-neglect-of-natural-immunity/

[6]

Don't Get Gaslit. An Epic Thread on Why You SHOULD be Disappointed in the Vaccines

[7]

Justin Hart @justin_hart

Don’t get gaslit folks.

[8]

True North @TrueNorthCentre

“The idea of checking if people are vaccinated, you know if you have breakthrough infections, what’s the point?” Bill Gates questions the usefulness of vaccine mandates.