The time has come for a COVID Truth Commission, say two of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, the 2020 document that argued against pandemic lockdowns and was signed by more than 936,000 doctors, scientists, and concerned citizens.
A commission like the one that examined the Challenger disaster is needed, wrote Martin Kulldorff and Jay Bhattacharya in an op-ed in the New York Post on February 21.
The Challenger commission included physicist Richard Feynman, who demonstrated that a faulty O-ring failed to withstand cold temperatures and caused the shuttle to explode upon launch, contrary to NASA’s claims.
“The American people deserve a similar bipartisan, scientifically minded COVID-19 commission so the public health disaster of the past three years is not repeated,” Kulldorff and Bhattacharya wrote.
Issues to Investigate
Kulldorff and Bhattacharya have formed the Norfolk Group to provide a blueprint for such a fact-finding commission. The group has published a list of 10 issues to investigate.
Among topics that should be investigated, the group’s website states, are whether anything could have been done to improve the protection of older Americans who were more at risk for hospitalization and death, why schools and universities were closed, and why epidemiological models were so strongly emphasized. The commission should also investigate mask and vaccine mandates and why testing was so poorly rolled out, says the group.
In addition to Kulldorff and Bhattacharya, the other members of the Norfolk Group are physicians Ram Duriseti, Tracy Beth Hoeg, and Marty Makary; veterinarian Leslie Bienen; and immune and infection disease scientists Margery Smelkinson and Steven Templeton.
Violations of Principles
Kulldorff discussed errors in the COVID-19 response in a March 13 talk at Hillsdale College.
“After the [mRMA shots] had been approved, they were pushed on people who had COVID, which is very strange because there was no clinical data on it and we’ve known for two and a half thousand years, if you have an infectious disease, then you have natural immunity,” said Kulldorff. “It might not be permanent or complete, but it would at least reduce the severity of the disease. In fact, hospitals should hire nurses with natural immunity because they’re less likely to pass it on to patients. Instead, they fired nurses with natural immunity.”
In response to a question about whether U.S. pandemic policy was stupid or criminal, Kulldorff said it was a combination of several factors: groupthink, censorship by the government, silence by the science community, and Anthony Fauci.
“He [Fauci] is a lab scientist,” said Kulldorff. “He does not know about public health, so ‘stupidity’ because it is not his field, but he ended up being the key person for the COVID response and he basically violated most of the principles of public health. “
Kevin Stone (kevin.s.stone@gmail.com) writes from Arlington, Texas.
AnneMarie Schieber (amschieber@heartland.org) is the managing editor of Health Care News and assisted with this article.