From the Brownstone Institute

By Jayanta Bhattacharya

The Most Devastating Report So Far

The House report on HHS Covid propaganda is devastating. The Biden administration spent almost $1 billion to push falsehoods about Covid vaccines, boosters, and masks on the American people. If a pharma company had run the campaign, it would have been fined out of existence.

HHS engaged a PR firm, the Fors Marsh Group (FMG), for the propaganda campaign. The main goal was to increase Covid vax uptake. The strategy: 1. Exaggerate Covid mortality risk 2. Downplay the fact that there was no good evidence that the Covid vax stops transmission.

The propaganda campaign extended beyond vax uptake and included exaggerating mask efficacy and pushing for social distancing and school closures.

Ultimately, since the messaging did not match reality, the campaign collapsed public trust in public health.

The PR firm (FMG) drew most of its faulty science from the CDC’s “guidance,” which ignored the FDA’s findings on the vaccine’s limitations, as well as scientific findings from other countries that contradicted CDC groupthink.

The report details the CDC’s mask flip-flopping through the years. It’s especially infuriating to recall the CDC’s weird, anti-scientific, anti-human focus on masking toddlers with cloth masks into 2022.

President Biden’s Covid advisor Ashish K. Jha waited until Dec. 2022 (right after leaving government service) to tell the country that “[t]here is no study in the world that shows that masks work that well.” What took him so long?

In 2021, former CDC director, Rochelle Walensky rewrote CDC guidance on social distancing at the behest of the national teachers’ union, guaranteeing that schools would remain closed to in-person learning for many months.

During this period, the PR firm FMG put out ads telling parents that schools would close unless kids masked up, stayed away from friends, and got Covid-vaccinated.

In March 2021, even as the CDC told the American people that the vaxxed did not need to mask, the PR firm ran ads saying that masks were still needed, even for the vaxxed. “It’s not time to ease up” we were told, in the absence of evidence any of that did any good.

In 2021, to support the Biden/Harris administration’s push for vax mandates, the PR firm pushed the false idea that the vax stopped Covid transmission. When people started getting “breakthrough” infections, public trust in public health collapsed.

Later, when the FDA approved the vax for 12 to 15-year-old kids, the PR firm told parents that schools could open in fall 2021 only if they got their kids vaccinated. These ads never mentioned side effects like myocarditis due to the vax.

HHS has scrubbed the propaganda ads from this era from its web pages. It’s easy to see why. They are embarrassing. They tell kids, in effect, that they should treat other kids like biohazards unless they are vaccinated.

When the Delta variant arrived, the PR firm doubled down on fear-mongering, masking, and social distancing.

In September 2021, CDC director Walensky overruled the agency’s external experts to recommend the booster to all adults rather than just the elderly. The director’s action was “highly unusual” and went beyond the FDA’s approval of the booster for only the elderly.

The PR campaign and the CDC persistently overestimated the mortality risk of Covid infection in kids to scare parents into vaccinating their children with the Covid vax.

In Aug. 2021, the military imposed its Covid vax mandate, leading to 8,300 servicemen being discharged. Since 2023, the DOD has been trying to get the discharged servicemen to reenlist. What harm has been done to American national security by the vax mandate?

The Biden/Harris administration imposed the OSHA, CMS, and military vax mandates, even though the CDC knew that the Delta variant evaded vaccine immunity. The PR campaign studiously avoided informing Americans about waning vaccine efficacy in the face of variants.

The propaganda campaign hired celebrities and influencers to “persuade” children to get the Covid vax.

I think if a celebrity is paid to advertise a faulty product, that celebrity should be partially liable if the product harms some people.

In the absence of evidence, the propaganda campaign ran ads telling parents that the vaccine would prevent their kids from getting Long Covid.

With the collapse in public trust in the CDC, parents have begun to question all CDC advice. Predictably, the HHS propaganda campaign has led to a decline in the uptake of routine childhood vaccines.

The report makes several recommendations, including formally defining the CDC’s core mission to focus on disease prevention, forcing HHS propaganda to abide by the FDA’s product labeling rules, and revamping the process of evaluating vaccine safety.

Probably the most important recommendation: HHS should never again adopt a policy of silencing dissenting scientists in an attempt to create an illusion of consensus in favor of CDC groupthink.

You can find a copy of the full House report here. The HHS must take its findings seriously if there is any hope for public health to regain public.

Author

Jayanta Bhattacharya

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is a physician, epidemiologist and health economist. He is Professor at Stanford Medical School, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research, a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, a Faculty Member at the Stanford Freeman Spogli Institute, and a Fellow at the Academy of Science and Freedom. His research focuses on the economics of health care around the world with a particular emphasis on the health and well-being of vulnerable populations. Co-Author of the Great Barrington Declaration.

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Ian White recounted how he walked across the Canada-U.S. border in minus-20 degree weather just to be able play hockey without a COVID jab mandate.

A former National Hockey League (NHL) star who refused to get the COVID jabs recounted his harrowing ordeal to escape Canada on foot into the United States so he could continue to play the game he loved.

Recently resurfaced footage from a 2022 Slangin’ The Bizkit podcast shows former NHL player Ian White tell his tale to the interviewer of how he had no choice but to walk across the Canada-U.S. border in minus-20 degree weather just to be able to go to the U.S. to play hockey in a “normal” land.

“I was just happy to get out of get out of Winnipeg, get out of Canada. I know life was fairly normal down in the southern states,” he said.

The former NHL star played on multiple teams, including the Toronto Maple Leafs, Calgary Flames, Carolina Hurricanes, and San Jose Sharks. He said he got the idea to leave Canada to play in the U.S. after getting a call from an acquaintance from years ago that there was a job waiting for him in the U.S.

Because he had not gotten the COVID shot, he was not able to play in any league in Canada. His acquaintance told him he had heard there was a chance he could play hockey in the Federal Prospects Hockey League (FPHL) in Georgia. However, due to a mandate in place at the time from the Canadian federal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, those without COVID shots were barred from traveling by air or rail. This meant the only way White could get into the U.S. was to try do so via a land border crossing.

“I’m like, man, I have this opportunity to go play hockey again and just break out of this,” said White, adding that he hoped to escape the “misery that has been kind of foisted upon humanity with the lockdowns and everything else.”

Undeterred, White spent about three weeks figuring out a way he could drive down to the border. He eventually got the help of a friend, who ran a pizza shop that was forced shut due to the COVID mandates.

When the pair got to the Canada-U.S. border at the Pembina crossing, he was told by Canadian border agents that, should he be refused entry into the U.S., he would be forced to quarantine for two weeks. He decided to call the U.S. side to see if they would let him in. According to White, the U.S. customs agent told him to walk down to the U.S. side in the car lane, and he would be “good” to go.

White noted he was apprehensive about doing this, noting that “nobody crosses the northern border by foot.” He said after about “five minutes” of sitting in the car thinking, he decided to take a chance and cross the border.

Once allowed into the U.S., White got a job playing with the Columbus River Dragons and as of now is still in the country playing hockey.

Besides White, other prominent Canadian professional athletes have recalled their oppression due to choosing not to get the COVID shots.

In October 2021, Trudeau announced unprecedented COVID-19 jab mandates for all federal workers and those in the transportation sector. He also announced that the unjabbed would no longer be able to travel by air, boat, or train, both domestically and internationally.

This policy resulted in thousands losing their jobs or being placed on leave for non-compliance. It also trapped “unvaccinated” Canadians in the country.

The mandates remained in place until June 2022.

COVID jab mandates, which also came from provincial governments with the support of the federal government, split Canadian society. The shots have been linked to a multitude of negative and often severe side effects, such as death, including in children.