By Jeffrey A. Tucker
An epic disaster like the COVID-19 response, one might suppose, should inspire some humility and rethinking on how the public health establishment could have gone so wrong. They had their run at it but created a global disaster for the ages.
This is more than obvious to any competent observer. The next step might be to see if there are any places where matters went rather well, and Sweden comes first to mind. The educational losses were non-existent because they didn’t close schools. In general, life went on as normal and with very good results.
One might suppose the Swedish way would be vindicated. Sadly, our leaders care nothing for evidence, apparently. Their concern is for power and money at any cost. As a result, we are witnessing a concerted effort not only to double down on errors the next time but make them even worse.
Two exhibits emerged in mainstream media publications recently. The first is an opinion article in The Wall Street Journal on March 17, 2023, by Tom Frieden, former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, titled “What Worked Against Covid: Masks, Closures and Vaccines.”
The commentary by Tom Frieden is so infuriating it is frustrating to write a response. His conclusion is baked into the prose peppered, with a flurry of links to other studies in case you doubt his veracity, but carefully avoids the huge numbers of studies on masks, lockdowns, and vaccines that show otherwise.
Put WHO in Charge?
The second is a column in The New York Times on March 19, 2021, by Bill Gates, titled “I Worry We’re Making the Same Mistakes Again.”
Gates deploys his privileged place at The New York Times to agitate once again for a Global Health Emergency Corps, ensconced at the World Health Organization (WHO) and managed by the same people who created the pandemic response this time around. Keep in mind that Gates isn’t just another bloke writing an op-ed; he is de facto owner of the WHO, so his push for a permanent pandemic bureaucracy carries a lot of weight.
Gates’ dream bureaucracy would override national sovereignty to make sure that never again would there be another Sweden.
“It’s difficult for any one country to stop a disease from spreading on its own,” wrote Gates. “Many of the most meaningful actions require coordination from the highest levels of government.”
Gates Learned Nothing
Gates has learned nothing from the last mess he created, and he is completely shameless about it.
In his view, the only problem is that we didn’t lock down fast enough, get vaccines out fast enough, and conduct enough research ahead of time to craft the perfect vaccine. And yes, this necessarily requires gain-of-function research.
In Gates’s view, we need to have research continue to fiddle around in labs with tricks that anticipate pathogens of the future, again raising the risk of lab leaks that then necessitate fixes that can only be produced and distributed by the pharmaceutical companies in which Gates has such heavy investments.
As a result, we have this hellish loop in play: gain-of-function research to anticipate the next pathogen by creating it—thus risking a lab leak that has to be fixed by the vaccines themselves. But the world has to lock down until they can be put into billions of arms.
Wiping Disks, People
The model is always the same and it is taken from the world of computer science:
There is a clean hard drive, analogized to the human body or whole societies. They are working fine but then an exogenous threat comes along in the form of malware. To defeat it, we need software that is updated. You clearly should not turn on your computer until you can get the hard drive cleaned up.
Gates’s understanding of viruses is no more sophisticated than that. He is repeating ridiculous lines from his TED Talks of years ago. Gates finds it inconceivable the best strategy for healthy people is to meet the virus and train the immune system.
Lost on Gates is the natural epidemiological dynamics of pathogenic spread. The more deadly they are, the less likely they are to spread. And the reverse is also true: the more prevalent they are, like COVID-19, the less severe they are. The reason is simple: a pathogen needs a living host.
Sound the Alarm
The reason Gates has so much influence over pandemic policy is, simply, his money. It is shocking how his money alone managed to buy the silence of scientists the world over. Scientists have shown themselves to be appallingly obsequious and deferential to the crankism Gates has peddled for decades.
There is a reason to be deeply alarmed by these two articles. The authors speak for some of the world’s most powerful people. They are explaining exactly what they want to do. They are completely impervious to evidence. And they reveal every ambition to override, reverse, and effectively abolish everything once known as freedom.
Jeffrey A. Tucker (jeffrey.a.tucker@gmail.com) is the founder and president of the Brownstone Institute. A version of this article was published by The Epoch Times on March 21, 2023. Reprinted with permission.
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