YouTube reverses a decision to demonetize a video produced by Matt Orfalea for TK. However, there’s a new issue with a second video
Earlier today, YouTube demonetized an item Matt Orfalea produced for TK. The video, Democrats’ Stolen Election Claims, has been remonetized, as the company has corrected what it characterizes a mistake. We’ve thanked them for doing so. From a pair of tweets earlier this evening:
Given that the company was prompt in its first review and came to a correct decision, I’m hopeful this issue will also be fixed, and thanks will shortly be in order again. I obviously don’t want to take up too much of anyone’s time with this, so unless a problem continues, we’ll close the book on the matter with this update.
Editor’s Note: In response to a subscriber question, one of the points underscored by Matt Orfalea’s videos is that YouTube routinely allows behavior in violation of its guidelines. Today’s compilations of clips showing people decrying the 2016 election as “illegitimate” or “stolen” contradicts the company’s clear prohibition with regard to:
Whether the firm prohibits such behavior or not, it should be consistent, and isn’t.
Rumor has it a small delegation ( California, Washington state, Florida, and the new soft porn capital New Mexico ) was going to come and protest. Until they found out they didn’t have enough Popeye’s chicken and orange drink to make it.
President Trump held a rally in Youngstown, Ohio the previous weekend for Republican U.S. Senate nominee J.D. Vance and other Ohio GOP candidates for federal and state offices. The rally was held at the mid-sized Covelli Center and drew an enthusiastic crowd of over 6,000, falling a few hundred short of a ‘sellout’, but a great crowd in a deep blue part of Ohio (while Ohio State played a home game against Toledo.)
The rally became controversial because Hillary Clinton and the media smeared Trump supporters at the rally as being like Nazis for raising their arms and index fingesr during the closing remarks of Trump’s speech. The gesture was seen by churchgoers as an ‘altar call’ response to a very moving passage by Trump that was set to soft, mournful music and describes America’s swift downfall since Trump left office in January 2021. Others saw a ‘Q Anon’ salute and accused Trump of playing footsie with Q Anon, while others like Hillary likened the rally to Hitler’s night rallies.
https://youtu.be/B_iH5nCn8qQ
See for yourself what kind of people were at the Trump rally.
This video (in two parts) shows some people in the crowd raising their arms in the same manner while a recording of Elvis Presley singing An American Trilogy played right before Trump was introduced. Note the loud cheers at the end as Elvis thunders, “His truth is marching on.”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1574274945516961792
https://twitter.com/i/status/1574277431124545536
TGP Photos:
A man in the stands behind Trump was wearing a Jews for Trump t-shirt. Do you think he thought he was at a Nazi rally, Hillary?
Two Hasidic Jewish men sat in the upper rows behind Trump. Do you think they thought they were at a Nazi rally, Hillary?
I saw the Hasidic men after the rally. They stayed to the end. No one bothered them, no one attacked them.
Photos of the crowd as they raised their arms. They look more like Deplorables, right Hillary?
More photos from the rally:
Ohio favorite son Rep. Jim Jordan.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene spoke at the rally and also greeted supporters on the floor.
Mike Lindell says he’s feeling great despite everything.
President Trump gave an excellent speech that kept the crowd riveted with serious topics and Trump humor.
The crowd was thrilled when Trump busted a few moves from the Trump Dance as Sam and Dave’s Hold on, I’m Comin’ played.
Trump acted out the story of the woman weightlifter losing out to a transgender man.
The crowd roared as Trump ended his speech with his vow of , “We will make America great again!”
While some may think the Trump rally staff should let supporters react the way they want, and whatever one thinks of Q Anon supporters, Trump is saving them, and himself, the grief of having to fight off the Nazi smear every rally with photos taken in low light to give the impression of a ‘night rally’.
CNN announced Thursday that hosts Jake Tapper, left, and Alisyn Camerota, right, will be moving to primetime. (Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images; Kevin Mazur / Getty Images)
By Abby Liebingfor WESTERN JOURNAL September 23, 2022
As CNN continues to change its programming and shuffle its hosts, Jake Tapper and Alisyn Camerota have been promoted to primetime spots despite their current viewership falling behind other major networks.
Tapper, who works as CNN’s main Washington anchor, will move to the 9 p.m. slot throughout the election season, CNN announced Thursday.
That slot hasn’t had a set host since the network fired Chris Cuomo in December 2021, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
“The world has come to rely on Jake’s no-nonsense approach to covering the news, especially during high-stakes election cycles,” CNN’s new CEO and chairman, Chris Licht, said in a statement.
Tapper has been with CNN since 2013, hosting shows such as “State of the Union” and “The Lead.” Before that, he was ABC News’ senior White House correspondent, the Inquirer reported.
CNN said he will start his stint in the 9 p.m. slot on Oct. 10 and remain there until Nov. 11.
John Berman and Brianna Keilar will move from the morning to take over Tapper’s 4 p.m. slot.
Meanwhile, Camerota will be moving from her co-anchor spot on the afternoon “CNN Newsroom” to the 10 p.m. spot that was previously held by Don Lemon, CNN announced. She will share anchor duties with senior legal analyst Laura Coates.
“This move will showcase [Tapper’s] tough reporting, smart analysis and consequential interviews as our audiences navigate the myriad of issues at stake in the midterms,” Licht said. “By adding the insights, experience and strong voices of Alisyn and Laura, we will advance and expand on that coverage, creating something complimentary and compelling in primetime.”
However, neither Tapper nor Camerota has fared very well with viewers in their current time slots on the network, Mediaite reported.
Looking back at some of last week’s numbers, Fox News thrashed the CNN hosts.
Tapper had a mere 742,000 viewers for “The Lead” at 4 p.m. Friday, just over half the number — 1.37 million — that Fox News drew for “Your World with Neil Cavuto” in that period, Mediaite reported. MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace was first in the time slot with 1.51 million viewers.
“CNN Newsroom,” which Camerota co-hosts from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., was similarly pummeled by Fox News on Friday, with about half the viewership, according to Mediaite.
In their primetime slots, Tapper and Camerota will be up against Fox News heavyweights Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Greg Gutfeld, who routinely dominate from 9 to 11 p.m.
Licht continues to shuffle a lot of CNN anchors and shows since he started as CEO in April.
The announcement of Tapper and Camerota’s moves comes on the heels of the news that Don Lemon was losing his 10 p.m. spot and moving to a morning show, Wolf Blitzer was getting more time on air as he anchors 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., and “Reliable Sources” host Brian Stelter was fired.
Erin Burnett and Anderson Cooper are two of the only anchors who will remain on their regular shows during their regular hours (7 and 8 p.m., respectively), CNN said.
Radical-Rep-Rashida-Talib-ERUPTS-After-CEO-Jamie-Dimon-Schools the loon.
Drill baby drill is the message the nations largest bank CEO’S told the House Banking Committee. One of the House Loons was not happy. By her comments it was obvious that she hasn’t a clue of what’s going on. The whole hearing was over six hours long. Bur this one loons comments stood out. This from Survive The News.
Executives from the country’s six largest banks testified before the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday for its annual oversight to discuss issues including climate change and fossil fuels.
Far-left Rep. Rashida Talib (MI-D) asked all the bank executives if they have a policy against funding new oil and gas products.
Talib erupted after JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon humiliated her with his highly concise and on-point response.
“Absolutely not and that would be the road to Hell for America,” Dimon replied.
Dimon — asked for his analysis of modern energy investments into older forms of power including coal and gas — said the US is not on the right path.
“We aren’t getting this one right. The world needs 100 million barrels effectively of oil and gas every day. And we need it for 10 years,” Dimon said.
“To do that, we need proper investing in the oil and gas complex. Investing in the oil and gas complex is good for reducing CO2,” he continued.
“We’ve all seen, because of the high price of oil and gas — particularly for the rest of the world — you’ve seen everyone going back to coal.”
He added, “Not just poor nations like India and China, Indonesia and Vietnam — but wealthy nations like Germany, France and the Netherlands. CO2 is getting worse. We need to have proper rules and regulations and government policy to have an effective transition to reduce CO2, keeping energy secure.”
The loons response is in this tweet.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1572682957562978304
Best part was the CEO’S all agreed that they would continue funding new oil and gas drilling.
President Trump will speak Saturday night in Youngstown, Ohio at a Save America rally to stump for U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance. Additional speakers scheduled to appear include Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Bill Johnson (R-OH) and congressional candidates Madison Gesiotto Gilbert, J.R. Majewski and Max Miller.
Trump’s Save American Super PAC said in a statement that the rally continues an “unprecedented effort to advance the MAGA agenda by energizing voters and highlighting America First candidates and causes.”
The President’s supporters began camping out ahead of the event.
There is already a line forming outside of the Covelli Center in anticipation of Trump’s visit.
A traveling group of supporters of former President Donald Trump has been camping out at the Covelli Centre ahead of Saturday’s rally.
They came from all over — Indiana, Tennessee, Connecticut, Florida and near Cleveland. Some have been in Youngstown since early this week.
“We come and hang out so we can get a good place in line,” said Sharon Anderson, of Tennessee.
Anderson is part of a group called the “Front Row Joes.” They head to the former president’s rallies early to tailgate, in a sense.
Libby Earle DePiero has been to more than 60, while Saturday will be Jared Petry’s 10th rally.
They say the experience is one of a kind.
“I just love being there. It’s like going to a rock concert, like from the old days when you used to travel around. It’s like the enthusiasm and the crowd, it’s just such energy, and it gives you such joy,” said Earle DePiero, of Connecticut.
“It’s incredible. It’s the most fun thing I’ve ever had, just the energy and the passion and the crowd. It’s just really a remarkable experience. Actually, it’s kind of addicting. You do one, and it’s so exciting and fun, you look on your phone, ‘Where’s the next one? Where’s the next one?’” said Petry, of Brunswick, Ohio.
“It’s incredible. It’s the most fun thing I’ve ever had, just the energy and the passion and the crowd. It’s just really a remarkable experience. Actually, it’s kind of addicting. You do one, and it’s so exciting and fun, you look on your phone, ‘Where’s the next one? Where’s the next one?’” said Petry, of Brunswick, Ohio.
You can watch the rally live at Right Side Broadcasting on Rumble.
Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel gestures as he speaks during a session at the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos on May 23, 2022. (Photo by Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP) (Photo by FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images)
By Zachary Stieber for Epoch Times August 26, 2022
Moderna sued Pfizer and BioNTech on Aug. 26, alleging the companies infringed on its patents for technology utilized by COVID-19 vaccines.
Both the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines are built on messenger RNA (mRNA) technology. The problem is that they both use key features that Moderna scientists developed, including the same coronavirus protein encoding, according to the 39-page lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. court in Massachusetts.
“Despite recognizing the importance of patents to innovators such as Moderna, Pfizer and BioNTech have copied Moderna’s intellectual property and have continued to use Moderna’s inventions without permission. Moderna therefore brings this lawsuit to protect the mRNA technology platform it innovated, invested in, and patented, and to ensure that intellectual property is respected,” the suit says.
Pfizer, based in New York, and BioNTech, a German company, did not respond to requests for comment.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said during a conference in 2020 that the company’s mRNA vaccine was using an antigen “which is, I think, the same like the [one] Moderna is using,” the suit notes.
Moderna, based in Massachusetts, says it is suing over patent infringement from March 8. The time before that is not contested, because of Moderna’s pledge that it would not assert its patents because of the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic. Moderna is also not seeking damages for Pfizer sales where the U.S. government would be financially responsible, or for sales to 92 poor countries.
Moderna announced on March 7 that companies would have to start abiding by patent rules. The company said it would consider selling licenses if they were requested. But Pfizer and BioNTech have never reached out to request a license, according to the suit.
“We believe that Pfizer and BioNTech unlawfully copied Moderna’s inventions, and they have continued to use them without permission,” said Shannon Thyme Klinger, Moderna’s chief legal officer, in a statement.
Moderna also filed a patent infringement suit in a court in Germany.
“We are filing these lawsuits to protect the innovative mRNA technology platform that we pioneered, invested billions of dollars in creating, and patented during the decade preceding the COVID-19 pandemic,” Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said in a statement.
Moderna itself was sued for patent infringement earlier this year.
Two companies, Arbutus Biopharma and Genevant Sciences, said in one of the suits that Moderna infringed on a patent for technology utilized in the COVID-19 vaccine, while another company, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, accused both Moderna and Pfizer of violating a related patent.
Moderna is also embroiled in a battle with the National Institutes of Health, which says its scientists were wrongly left off of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine patent. The new suit does not concern that patent, Moderna said.
The mounting number of voter fraud cases disprove the narrative that voter fraud isn’t real and election integrity measures aren’t needed. Pictured: A tongue-in-cheek modified version of the “I Voted” stickers given out on Election Day to those who vote. (Photo: BackyardProduction, iStock/Getty Images)
Absentee ballots are particularly susceptible to fraud.
We recently added nine new cases to the Heritage Election Fraud Database, bringing the total number of entries of proven instances of voter fraud in the database to 1,374. The mounting collection of cases continue to disprove the narrative that voter fraud is not real and that further election integrity measures are not needed.
The database does not purport to be comprehensive. Rather, it contains a sampling from across the country of proven cases, each one demonstrating how election fraud occurs. It shows the vulnerabilities within our current electoral system and provides measures state legislators can take to ensure integrity in every vote cast. To assist state legislatures in that task, Heritage has also produced its Election Integrity Scorecard.
Here is a summary of the recent entries:
In Louisiana, two public officials orchestrated a vote-buying scheme during the Tangipahoa Parish 2016 and 2020 open primary and general elections. Jerry Trabona, who served as Amite City chief of police from 2005-2020, and Kris Hart, an Amite City councilmember, solicited individuals to buy votes for them and other candidates they supported during both the 2016 primary and general elections in Tangipahoa Parish. Hart also solicited vote buyers during his reelection in the 2020 primary and general elections as well.
Hart and Trabona provided sample ballots with names and candidate numbers to vote buyers to ensure voters being paid were voting for Hart and Trabona as well as the other candidates they supported. Hart also employed vote buyers to identify individuals who had not yet voted, take them to the polls (and back home, if necessary), and then pay them for their vote.
In an effort to cover his tracks and conceal the scheme, Trabona had the vote buyers sign contracts stating they would not “make any overture of any kind to any voter or other person of financial award or benefit in exchange for a vote.”
To ensure their vote-buying scheme was getting a return on investment, Hart and Trabona made the vote buyers provide a list of the voters paid. The vote buyers would be paid up to $20 for each vote they had procured.
Trabona pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit vote buying. Hart pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit vote buying and three counts of vote buying and to aiding and abetting vote buying. They are both awaiting sentencing.
But they weren’t the only candidates for public office added to the database in this most recent batch.
In New Jersey, Frederick Gattuso, a former Carteret Republican mayoral candidate, was charged with one count of fraudulent voting for voting twice during the November 2020 presidential election as different people with similar names. Gattuso pleaded guilty to one count of tampering with public records and was sentenced to one year of probation.
As Heritage scholars have often said, no one disputes the need for absentee or mail-in ballots for people who cannot make it to their neighborhood polling places on Election Day because they are sick, physically disabled, or serving the country abroad, or because they cannot make it to the polls for some other legitimate reason. However, absentee ballots are particularly susceptible to fraud.
Some argue that such instances of fraud are rare and could never alter the results of an election.
Four cases in this most recent batch of entries involve fraud using an absentee ballot.
Muse Mohamed of Minneapolis, Minnesota, was charged with lying to a federal grand jury about trafficking absentee ballots during the 2020 primary election in Minneapolis for a state senate position. He requested and filled out absentee ballots on behalf of three individuals whom he did not know. His crime was first detected when one of the people Mohamed defrauded went and voted in person. Mohamed was convicted following a jury trial of two counts of making false statements to a grand jury. He will be sentenced later this year.
Melissa Fisher of Quakertown, Pennsylvania, submitted a mail-in ballot on behalf of her deceased mother during the 2020 election. She pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of violating absentee and mail-in ballot provisions and two unrelated theft charges and was sentenced to three to 23 months in prison and three years’ probation.
Elizabeth Gale of San Diego, California, was charged with four felony offenses after casting an absentee ballot on behalf of her deceased mother during the 2021 California gubernatorial recall election. After absentee ballots were sent to all registered Madera County voters, Gale filled out the ballot, forged her mother’s signature, and falsely swore as a witness to her mother signing the ballot. Gale pleaded nolo contendere (accepting the conviction without admitting guilt) to one felony count of fraudulently casting a vote. She was sentenced to two years’ probation.
In Colorado, Barry Morphew was charged with one count of forgery and a mail-in ballot offense after submitting an absentee ballot on behalf of his missing wife during the 2020 general election. He told the FBI he submitted the ballot because he “wanted Trump to win.” Although murder charges against him related to his wife’s disappearance were recently dropped, Morphew recently pled guilty to the forgery charge and was sentenced to one year of probation and fined $600.
Another way people defraud the system is by using commercial addresses as residential addresses when registering to vote, which shows them as registered in another state or voting district and allows them to vote for candidates they are not eligible to vote for or allows them to vote more than once.
Lawrence Klug used the address of a UPS Store in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, as his residential address to vote in a town in which he did not live during the 2020 general election. He was convicted of one misdemeanor charge of falsifying voter registration and fined $500.
Some argue, of course, that such instances of fraud are rare and could never alter the results of an election. There are cases in our database, though, that prove otherwise.
Take, for example, the case out of Texas where the results of an election for the board of directors of a road utility district were overturned because three individuals used a hotel address to register to vote, even though none of them were residents of the district.
And in another case out of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, Donald Holz, who was not eligible to vote after having been previously convicted of a felony DUI charge, voted in the 2020 general election. He served 10 days in jail and was fined $500.
Vulnerabilities to fair and free elections will continue, and perhaps even get worse, if states don’t prioritize efforts to secure the integrity of their elections. These cases demonstrate some of the myriad ways fraudsters can take advantage of vulnerabilities that occur within the electoral process. Since maintaining election integrity is an issue that affects all citizens, state legislatures should respond by taking reasonable steps to protect the votes of the American people.
As we say in the introduction to the Election Fraud Database:
Preventing, deterring, and prosecuting election fraud is essential to protecting the integrity of our voting process.
Winning elections leads to political power and the incentives to take advantage of security vulnerabilities are great, so it is important that we take reasonable, common-sense steps to make it hard to cheat, while making it easy for legitimate voters to vote.
Americans deserve to have an electoral process that they can trust.
This is a cautionary tale for all Americans, both white and black.
Last Sunday, a college couple, 22-year-old Adam Simjee and his 20-year-old girlfriend, Mikayla Paulus, were driving through Talladega National Forest when they were flagged down by a black woman having car trouble. If I tell you the good Samaritans may have been National Review readers, you can probably guess that one of them ended up dead.
As they were trying to fix the car, the woman, Yasmine Hider, pointed a gun at them and demanded they walk into the woods and hand over their phones and wallets. At some point, Simjee pulled out his own gun and started firing at Hider, wounding her. She shot back, killing him.
The reason I suspect the couple were National Review readers is that the “good Samaritan” ruse was one of the bullet points in John Derbyshire’s famous “The Talk: Nonblack Version,” which got him fired from National Review in 2012 — standing athwart history and mewling, “Please like me, liberals.” Derbyshire hadn’t even published the piece in NR.
He was responding to a spate of lachrymose accounts of black parents describing “The Talk” they have to give their sons, instructing them to be super polite to police officers — smile and say, “Yes, sir” — lest the officer shoot them to death for no reason whatsoever. (Ask any police officer, and they will tell you black arrestees, to a man, are the politest people you will ever meet.)
In the piece, Derbyshire issued exhortations about treating black people with “the same courtesies you would extend to a nonblack citizen,” but then listed “some unusual circumstances,” requiring extra vigilance due to “considerations of personal safety.”
The ”personal safety” rules concerned only complete strangers. His point was that when you have no other information to go on, you have to rely on statistics.
Derbyshire’s Rule 10 (h) was: “Do not act the Good Samaritan to blacks in apparent distress, e.g., on the highway.” He appended links to stories like the one that began this column.
Here are a few other examples from a general Nexis search for “good Samaritan w/s shoot! or kill! w/s car”:
Feel free to look them up, but I’ll save you the trouble and tell you: All the perps were black. National Review: DO NOT WARN OUR READERS ABOUT THE “CAR TROUBLE” SCAM!
Derbyshire did warn his readers, so NR editor Rich Lowry dumped him, denouncing the piece as “nasty and indefensible.”
Not good enough! Slate magazine’s William Saletan thundered, complaining that Lowry had not attacked the “ugly,” “racist” column with sufficient ferocity. He, Saletan, would proceed to explain “what Derbyshire got wrong.” Whereupon he demonstrated that he has no idea what the words “statistical” or “averages” mean — much less the phrase “[when] you have nothing to guide you but knowledge of those mean differences.”
Thus, his central complaint was: “Derbyshire thinks his data warrant his conclusions. But all his data references include the crucial term ‘mean’ or ‘average.’ They don’t tell you about the person walking toward you. They tell you what you can assess about the probability of danger when the only information you have is color.”
Yes, exactly, you complete moron. That’s the point, subtly indicated by Derbyshire stating that he was referring only to those occasions when you don’t have any other information about a person. (Do black parents giving “The Talk” remind their sons not to make assumptions about any particular cop walking toward them?)
Back in the halcyon days of Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, we had one other fact to guide us: Criminals were in prison. Unfortunately for black people, a small percentage of their community commit a boatload of crime. But as long as criminals went to prison, New Yorkers could pass black men with little concern because if they were criminals, they’d most likely be locked up, not standing on a subway platform next to you.
Not anymore. Now, the criminals are out among us. There’s no possible way to evaluate a stranger, except the statistics. E.g.: Blacks, who make up about 20% of New York’s population, commit more than 70% of the shootings. In Los Angeles, blacks are only 8% of the population, but commit nearly half of the murders.
Suddenly, New Yorkers, Los Angelinos and anyone else living under Democratic control are behaving like the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who once remarked that when he heard footsteps on the street behind him, he would, “look around and see it’s somebody white and feel relieved.” He made that statement in 1993 — the very year Giuliani was elected mayor, before proceeding to drive down crime rates and liberate black people from dangerous neighborhoods, as well as from suspicious looks.
This is the cautionary note for black people. The Democrats’ Free All Criminals policies have hurt black people in myriad ways — mostly by getting thousands more of them robbed, assaulted and killed each year — but also in other, more subtle ways, like this.
As Senate candidate Blake Masters of Arizona said — and the media lied about — it is blacks, frankly, who suffer the most when criminals aren’t locked up. And the Democrats don’t care.
Anthony Fauci is ending his long and celebrated government career by being widely lauded for getting so much so very wrong on Covid-19.
Now 81 years old, Dr. Fauci has spent 38 years as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health. He has been rightly honored for his many contributions over the decades, most notably during the fight against AIDS, for which he was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush. But to Covid-19 he brought a monomaniacal focus on vanquishing a single virus, whatever the cost—neglecting the damage that can follow when public health loses sight of the public’s health.
As the lead medical authority to two administrations on Covid-19, Dr. Fauci was unwavering in his advocacy for draconian policies. What were the impact of those policies on millions of Americans? And what would the country look like now had our public health experts taken a different approach? As Dr. Fauci is preparing to leave his post, those are a few of the questions worth asking as we consider his various Covid-19 legacies.
Dr. Fauci attends the National AIDS Update Conference in San Francisco on Oct. 12, 1989. (Deanne Fitzmaurice via Getty Images)
On Children:
Very early on in this pandemic, we knew that there was an extremely stratified risk from Covid. The elderly and those with co-morbidities were especially vulnerable, while children were extremely unlikely to get dangerously ill.
Instead of acting on the good news for children—or drawing on the ample experience in Scandinavian and European countries where schools were open and students were without masks—American kids were seen as vectors of disease. Young children were forced to wear masks inside school and out, affecting the language and social development of many. The effects of school closures will play out for decades, but we already know that children suffered major learning loss, and many left school never to return. Throughout the pandemic, Dr. Fauci supported the most oppressive restrictions for children, including school closures and mandatory cloth masking.
Yesterday on Fox Neil Cavuto asked Dr. Fauci whether Covid restrictions “went too far” and if they “forever damaged” the children “who couldn’t go to school except remotely.” Dr. Fauci replied: “I don’t think it’s forever irreparably damaged anyone.”
Parents know otherwise.
A generation is coping with learning loss, and the impact has been the worst in poor and minority communities. According to the Brookings Institute, test-score gaps between students in low-poverty and high-poverty elementary schools grew by approximately 20 percent in math and 15 percent in reading over the pandemic. Meantime, anxiety and depression have hit record highs among young Americans, and the surgeon general has described a youth mental health crisis. Of all of Dr. Fauci’s legacies, this might be the gravest.
On Research:
Dr. Fauci let basic research questions about the nature of the Covid-19 virus go unanswered. Somehow, despite the NIH’s more than $45 billion budget, only 2 percent of grants went to basic Covid research while billions of federal money was invested in developing vaccines, according to a study conducted by my colleagues at Johns Hopkins and I.
The federal government failed to conduct timely studies on the following: masks; the susceptibility of people in nursing homes; natural immunity; wastewater data; vaccine-induced heart injury in young people; and the optimal interval between the first two vaccine doses.
In short, Dr. Fauci didn’t deliver the basic research we needed so that public policy would be shaped by the best science. Because policymakers lacked good evidence to support their dictates, political opinions filled the void. So Covid-19 became a highly politicized health emergency—to all of our detriment.
On Natural Immunity:
One of the most inexplicable decisions by Dr. Fauci and his team was to ignore natural immunity—that is, the immune response generated by contracting Covid-19. As the evidence mounted that having had the virus was as good as—perhaps even better than—a vaccine, Dr. Fauci and his circle ignored it.
When Dr. Sanjay Gupta asked Dr. Fauci in the Fall of 2021 on CNN: “As we talk about vaccine mandates, I get calls all the time, people say I already had Covid, I’m protected, and now the study says even more protected than the vaccine alone. How do you make the case to them?” Dr. Fauci answered: “I don’t have a really firm answer for you on that.”
Hundreds of studies have now shown that natural immunity is better than vaccinated immunity and that the level of protection vaccines have against severe disease is at the same level of natural immunity alone.
But Dr. Fauci didn’t talk about it.
Americans had circulating antibodies against the virus, but they were antibodies that Dr. Fauci seemed to ignore. The upshot was that thousands of Americans lost their jobs for their choice not to get vaccinated. Some of those Americans were nurses, pilots, truck drivers, and dock workers central to the American supply chain of food, medication, and other essential products. This summer, more than 60,000 National Guard and Reserve soldiers who refused the Covid-19 vaccine were not allowed to participate in their military duties and lost pay and benefits. All of these people should have their jobs reinstated.
On Dissent:
Any physician who has met Dr. Fauci will agree that he is one of the kindest, most charming human beings you will ever meet. That’s why it was so jarring to witness the way that he and Dr. Francis Collins, his close friend and former director of the NIH, denigrated dissent on Covid-19.
Just ask the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration—the open letter published in October 2020 that called for focused protection of the most vulnerable instead of blanket shutdowns of schools and businesses. It was authored by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford, Dr. Sunetra Gupta of Oxford, and Dr. Martin Kulldorff, then of Harvard, and it was signed by tens of thousands of doctors and scientists.
Drs. Fauci and Collins never talked to these prominent authors to discuss their differing points of view. Instead, they criticized them.
Four days after the Great Barrington Declaration was published, Dr. Collins sent an email to Dr. Fauci in which he called the authors “fringe epidemiologists.” “There needs to be a quick and devastating published take down of its premises,” Dr. Collins wrote. “I don’t see anything like that on line yet—is it underway?” Dr. Fauci replied: “Francis: I am pasting in below a piece from Wired that debunks this theory.” Soon after, big tech platforms like Facebook and Google followed suit, suppressing their ideas and falsely deeming them “misinformation.”
The ultimate irony is that federal officials are now endorsing many of the policies the Great Barrington Declaration authors suggested, insisting schools stay open and quietly ending isolation and quarantine requirements. In the end, Sweden, which adopted many principles in the Great Barrington Declaration, had roughly half the Covid deaths as Michigan, despite having the same population, percent of elderly, and climate.
If dissent had been welcomed from the start—which is what science demands—a lot of suffering could have been avoided.
On Science:
Here’s what Dr. Fauci and other public health authorities could have been saying from the start: We strive to provide you with the best information and recommendations, but in the face of an emergency we will surely make mistakes. We will sometimes change our minds. We may even reverse our guidance. But we will always own up to our mistakes, explain our policy changes and strive to do better. Instead, Dr. Fauci admitted to telling noble lies.
Covid brought us the concept of “The Science.” Dr. Fauci famously said last year: “Attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science.” But no person embodies science. To suggest as much betrays a cast of mind that is entirely at odds with science itself.
On Leadership:
George Washington was onto something when he decided to limit his presidency to two terms. New leaders don’t just avoid the risk of too much power concentrated in the hands of one person or group, they also bring new ideas. New perspectives are especially important to accelerating scientific inquiry by challenging deeply held assumptions. In his long tenure, Dr. Fauci made tremendous contributions, but during this crisis we needed someone at the top who took a broad view of how to fight a novel virus, and made recommendations based on weighing the direct and indirect consequences to society.
How to Regain Trust:
We now face the threat of a future pandemic in a country in which a large number of people no longer trust public health authorities. What happens when we have a novel, highly contagious, airborne virus with a much higher fatality rate than that of Covid-19?
We desperately need to rebuild public trust now. That begins by having public health officials apologize for being dogmatic in their pronouncements, when the correct answer should have been: “We don’t know.” One lesson we should all learn from Covid-19 is that we should not put our entire faith and trust in one physician.
Dr. Marty Makary is a public health expert, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and the author of the bestselling book The Price We Pay.
His last piece for Common Sense was about top doctors and scientists at the NIH, FDA and CDC who are alarmed at the direction of those institutions. Read it here.
Having a flat tire is never a happy experience, especially after “office hours.”
But what if you called your “trusty” AAA hotline — and were told they wouldn’t help you? Not “couldn’t” but WOULDN’T! It seems the purpose the American Automobile Association was created for has been forgotten.
This happened August 9, 2022. A 68-year-old retiree called the Roadside Assistance hotline — finally getting through on the third attempt. He went through the ritual dance of name, card number, location, etc.
Then, the PA CSR asked if the car had a current inspection. Being honest, the member admitted that he was out of date — having mistaken the “6” for an “8” in casually glancing at it after purchasing it earlier that year. He was already in the process of making an appointment for the missed inspection but didn’t have it confirmed yet.
If you live in a state that requires inspections, you could find yourself stranded if your car’s inspection is not current.
Then he got the bombshell. The CSR told him bluntly that AAA didn’t do service calls if a car was more than 10 days past due. Not for a tow, not for a jump, not for a tire change. Not for ANYTHING. She compounded the already exasperating situation by stating it was a PA state law. (It isn’t, she was lying.)
To say the retiree reacted badly to the news would be a masterful understatement since it was now almost completely dark and he was parked just off a busy state route in a township near Penn State, but with no tow-capable gas stations nearby.
The CSR was unsympathetic.
This left the man to his own devices. Covid lock-downs had killed the only tow-truck business in the area that he had a phone number for. Many places had ceased 24-hr operations even if he had been able to find a working number.
He was out of luck.
In the age of air-powered torque wrenches, getting the lug nuts loose by hand was no easy task. After about fifty minutes of straining, he was finally able to drive back home, exhausted.
Once there, he immediately went to his computer and filed a complaint via the website. About 10:30 the next morning, he received a call from the Southern PA office.
This agent — while careful not to repeat the CSR’s lie that it was against PA state law to render roadside assistance based on a car’s inspection status — was equally unsympathetic. He reiterated that it was company policy not to render assistance to a member who was otherwise in good-standing.
Redacted Screenshot of complaint filed with AAA- Southern PA
Ohio favorite son Rep. Jim Jordan.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene spoke at the rally and also greeted supporters on the floor.
Mike Lindell says he’s feeling great despite everything.
