From the Brownstone Institute

By  Maryanne Demasi  

Morens implicated Margaret (Marg) Moore, known colloquially as “The FOIA lady” in trying to hide information from the American people, particularly that related to the origins of Covid-19, which is a felony.

A relatively unknown public records officer at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is now at the centre of a burgeoning scandal involving Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

The saga unfolded after subpoenaed emails belonging to David Morens, a former top advisor to Anthony Fauci, revealed that someone had taught him to game the system and avoid emails being captured by FOIA requests.

“i learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear after i am foia’d but before the search starts, so i think we are all safe,” Morens wrote in a Feb 24, 2021, email. “Plus i deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to gmail.”

Morens implicated Margaret (Marg) Moore, known colloquially as “The FOIA lady” in trying to hide information from the American people, particularly that related to the origins of Covid-19, which is a felony.

It sparked an investigation by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic to expose what Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) called a “cover-up.”

A letter to NIH director Monica Bertagnolli in May suggested “a conspiracy at the highest levels” of these once trusted public health institutions.

“If what appears in these documents is true, this is an apparent attack on public trust and must be met with swift enforcement and consequences for those involved,” Wenstrup wrote.

Wenstrup said there was evidence that a former chief of staff of Fauci’s might have used intentional misspellings — such as “Ec~Health” instead of “EcoHealth” — to prevent emails from being captured in keyword searches by FOIA officials.

Today, Wenstrup announced a subpoena to compel Moore (The FOIA lady) to appear for a deposition on October 4, 2024, saying that she’d repeatedly resisted these efforts and delayed the Select Subcommittee’s investigation.

“Her alleged scheme to help NIH officials delete COVID-19 records and use their personal emails to avoid FOIA is appalling and deserves a thorough investigation,” said Wenstrup.

“Holding Ms. Moore accountable for any role she played in undermining American trust is a step towards improving the lack of accountability and absence of transparency rapidly spreading across many agencies within our federal government,” he added.

Moore, however, has indicated through her lawyers that she would invoke her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Her lawyers wrote to Wenstrup explaining that she’d cooperated with the Select Subcommittee to find “an alternative” to sitting for an interview, including expediting her own FOIA request for her own documents.

They also explained that Morens’ emails suggesting Moore gave tips “about avoiding FOIA,” were misleading because Morens, under oath said, “That was a joke…She didn’t give me advice about how to avoid FOIA.”

Nonetheless, Moore’s decision to plead the Fifth has only fuelled concern over the lack of transparency and accountability of one of the nation’s top health research institutions.

It’s not over until the FOIA lady sings!

Further reading: The great FOIA dodge

Republished from the author’s Substack

Author

Maryanne Demasi

Maryanne Demasi, 2023 Brownstone Fellow, is an investigative medical reporter with a PhD in rheumatology, who writes for online media and top tiered medical journals. For over a decade, she produced TV documentaries for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and has worked as a speechwriter and political advisor for the South Australian Science Minister.

From the Brownstone Insitute

By  Ian Miller 

It’s late 2024, and masking has managed to remain a contentious issue. Years of misinformation from supposed “experts” like Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx and organizations like the CDC have convinced millions of Very Smart People to believe that masks are an effective tool to reduce the transmission of respiratory viruses. This applies also to the flu, despite those same experts and organizations somehow neglecting to recommend masks for the decades of flu seasons pre-2020.

Forcing anyone to mask, given the substantial and robust evidence base showing conclusively that masks don’t work, was an indefensible policy decision. But specifically forcing children to mask was decidedly much, much worse.

And not just because it was a pointless exercise in pandemic theater, with zero evidence of efficacy.

But because it was actively causing harm too, as a new study shows.

New Study Confirms Harms of Masking Children

A new study co-authored by Tracy Beth Høeg delves into the side effects of masking, a subject completely ignored by experts and politicians desperate to exert control over individual behavior.

And in their discussion, it’s immediately obvious why their research and conclusions will be completely ignored by the mainstream media.

“There is a lack of robust evidence of benefit from masking children to reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2 or other respiratory viruses,” they explain. Couldn’t have said it better myself.

The highest quality evidence available for masking children for COVID-19 or other viral respiratory infections has failed to find a beneficial impact against transmission. Mechanistic studies showing reduced viral transmission from use of face masks and respirators have not translated to real world effectiveness. Identified harms of masking include negative effects on communication and components of speech and language, ability to learn and comprehend, emotional and trust development, physical discomfort, and reduction in time and intensity of exercise.

It’s a masterpiece. No notes.

As the Cochrane Library review explained, as the data shows, as decades of accumulated evidence confirmed: Masks Don’t Work. For anyone, but especially for children, who could not wear or use masks properly, even if they were shown to have worked. Which they did not.

Experts demanded and politicians mandated that they wear them anyway, based on speculation, hope, and mechanistic studies that were conclusively disproven. And the harms were remarkable.

“Negative effects on communication and components of speech and language.” “Ability to learn and comprehend.” “Emotional and trust development, physical discomfort, and reduction in time and intensity of exercise.”

Just, you know, the basic building blocks of human development that children need to grow as well-adjusted, physically and mentally healthy teenagers and adults.

As Høeg and the other authors explain, this necessarily means that forcing children to mask fails any objective standard of harms and benefits.

Effectiveness of child masking has not been demonstrated, while documented harms of masking in children are diverse and non-negligible and should prompt careful reflection. Recommendations for masking children fail basic harm-benefit analyses.

Their next section is a complete dismantling of the CDC and the US public health bureaucracy, how they handled Covid, and how poor an example this sets for future pandemics.

In many locations in North America, children as young as two years of age were required to wear face masks daily for multiple consecutive hours, both indoors and outdoors, in school and childcare settings [1], [2]. This stood in stark contrast to European countries where masking was never recommended for children under the age of six and, in many countries, never under age twelve [3]. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s child masking recommendations deviated substantially from international guidelines [3], [4], [5]. The CDC continues to recommend masks for children down to age two in certain settings [1], [6], and this is in the absence of strategies for exiting these restrictions. In the event of a future public health threat, clear and consistent communication from public health officials about the criteria that will be used to withdraw temporary public health recommendations while data are gathered could serve to ease public anxiety, lessen distrust, and facilitate a return to a more normal life wherein ineffective recommendations are promptly discarded.

It’s a calm, thorough demolition of the incompetence and authoritarianism of the US public health establishment.

They repeat that there is no evidence to support masking children and explain that there is no real-world evidence showing the effectiveness of child mask mandates, with zero randomized controlled trials conducted to determine whether masking kids would prevent the spread of Covid. It’s inexcusable to mandate a policy with no evidence, but even worse considering the demonstrable harms.

“Speech, language, and learning: Humans rely on visual information provided by a speaker’s face to decode speech. Seeing mouth movements and facial gestures accelerates recognition of words and enhances speech comprehension [12], [19], [20], [21]. The integration of audio and facial information is crucial to speech perception and development. Visually impaired children often have delays in speech and language development [22], which may be due, at least in part, to reduced ability to perceive,” they write.

Masks prevent children from learning, from seeing mouth movements to facial gestures. They fundamentally detract from a child’s ability to develop speech and language. Among many other problems covered in the full study.

These harms were well-known before Covid. This isn’t new information, and it’s obvious common sense. So why did public health authorities ignore it, in favor of promoting evidence-free policies and mandates?

There are few reasonable explanations: panic, fear, or incompetence. Likely some combination of all three.

Forcing their absurd, fatalistic, hyper-safetyism on adults was and is one thing. Imposing it on children is another. And their refusal to admit they were wrong meant the growth and development of kids were most certainly harmed and stunted for years, while ensuring that there would be terrified, misinformed parents who would continue to force their kids to wear masks indefinitely.

When you consider those consequences, rationality fades, and a disturbing likelihood of malicious intent becomes a lot more realistic.

Republished from the author’s Substack

Author

Ian Miller

Ian Miller is the author of “Unmasked: The Global Failure of COVID Mask Mandates.” His work has been featured on national television broadcasts, national and international news publications and referenced in multiple best selling books covering the pandemic. He writes a Substack newsletter, also titled “Unmasked.”