Authored by Lori Weintz via the Brownstone Institute,

From a Russell Brand video posted May 28, 2024:

Quote from former CDC Director Robert Redfield: “[The Covid vaccines] really aren’t that critical for those that are under 50 or younger, but those vaccines saved a lot of lives…To be honest, some people got significant side effects from the vaccine. I have a number of people that are quite ill and they never had Covid, but they are ill from the vaccine, and we just have to acknowledge that.

Russell Brand’s response: “How long can you maintain the sort of slow drag that it was all worth it?… I have a question, why are there so many excess deaths all around the world?…Attempting to continue to claim that the pandemic was a success, that it was well handled, that the medications were effective, that there hasn’t been an extraordinary swindle practiced on the people of the world – seems more and more difficult to do with a straight face.”

Limited Hangouts:

To present a “limited hangout” is to put part of the information out there, in order to divert from other facts or activities you don’t want someone to notice. It is a sleight of hand, a way of getting ahead of damning truths that are too big to keep covered up, like the 1,637,441 Vaccine Adverse Event Reports (VAERS) connected to the Covid-19 injections in the US (It’s estimated that VAERS is largely underreported and represents only around 1% of actual adverse events.)

We apparently have reached a moment of communal introspection with regard to Covid-19 and our pandemic response, leading to increasing limited hangouts. The New York Times in a May 4, 2024 article informs us that some people have been injured by the Covid vaccines and implies, rightly so, that we should help them. The Brookings Institution report of 2024 commends us for saving thousands of lives by “slowing the spread” of Covid through changing our behaviors (aka social distancing and masking) until we could get the Safe and Effective™ vaccines. Everyone from former FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock to former CNN reporter Chris Cuomo now acknowledges that maybe some things could have been handled better. But they all assure us, “We did the best we could with the information we had at the time.”

An insightful individual who writes under the pseudonym of A Midwestern Doctor accurately describes the New York Times vaccine injury article as a piece, “sculpted to redeem the medical system’s reputation while admitting the absolute minimal amount of guilt necessary to accomplish that objective.”

Widening the Overton Window

It’s good to see the Overton window concerning the pandemic response opening up a bit in the mainstream media and government agencies. But it’s important to be very clear that their concessions are largely a limited hangout, designed to deflect from their own failures. In addition, these limited hangouts are an attempt to distract from the continuing goal of controlling everyone through repeated use of “emergencies” that require us to give up our freedom in order to be “safe.” Or at least to be “good citizens,” which was a powerful guilt-inducing motivator during the pandemic to gain compliance from people who weren’t actually afraid of the virus.

Why Can’t We Just Move on?

With the expansion of acceptable dialogue, some admissions that mistakes were made, and the Covid pandemic seeming to be fully in our rearview mirror some ask exasperatedly, “Why do you want to keep talking about the pandemic anyway? Why can’t you just move on?”

I’ll tell you why. There are many powerful people and organizations who are weaponizing “pandemic preparedness” for ulterior motives having nothing to do with health. In fact, the perpetrators of pandemic harms have doubled down, even as they engage in limited hangouts. It appears they believe, probably correctly, that if they say something enough times such as, “The vaccines saved a lot of lives,” people will believe it.

The Push for Digital ID’s

Buried in the Times article that finally acknowledges the possibility of some vaccine injuries is the idea that we need a national medical database in order to better track, and therefore compensate for such injuries. This would be a database where all citizens’ medical records are tracked electronically and managed by the federal government. Not only would this complete the government takeover of our medical system that has been underway for years, but it would also be the end of personal privacy. The phrase “national medical database” is a euphemism for “vaccine passports” – required medical proof in order to participate in the public square.

FDA Still Wants Money for Hazardous Gain-of-Function Research

Another reason why we can’t just forget about the pandemic is because of people like Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Robert Califf. In a May 8, 2024 US Senate Appropriations Committee Hearing, Califf requested a total of $3.69 billion for the FDA budget, including an additional $168 million partly to pay for “countermeasures” to prevent a “wider outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza.” Califf states, “If we institute the countermeasures now, and reduce the spread of the virus…we’re much less likely to see a mutation that jumps to humans – for which we’re ill-prepared.”

Califf, among others, is attempting to generate fear of H5N1 avian flu that has been circulating for decades in various animal populations, and likely won’t become easily transmissible to humans unless someone in a lab tinkers with it. Let’s not forget that the nature of viruses, even lab-made ones, is to be either highly transmissible, or highly virulent, but not both. A virus can’t survive long and infect many others if it kills its host. With the medical advances we have today, we know how to treat the symptoms of illness, even in those infected with a new virus. However, the policy response to a pathogen can be horrific, as seen throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.

Yet Robert Califf wants even more money for the FDA, partly so they can develop virus countermeasures, which is an Intelligence Community term having to do with biological warfare. In other words, Califf acknowledges that lab-made viruses are being studied around the world, and the viruses created in these labs require antidotal vaccines. Making a pathogen more transmissible, or more virulent, through experimentation is called gain-of-function research, and it is a controversial practice. Not all research in biological laboratories involves gain-of-function, and perhaps some of the research has public health benefits, but there is often lax oversight and poor adherence to containment protocols.

Lab Leaks Have Led to Multiple Disease Outbreaks in the Past Century

Epidemiologist Donald A. Henderson, credited with the eradication of smallpox through a targeted vaccination campaign, coauthored a paper in 2014 expressing concerns about gain-of-function research on the H5N1 virus:

Scientists recently have announced that they genetically modified H5N1 in the laboratory and that this mutated strain spread through the air between ferrets that were physically separated from each other. This is ominous news. Since ferret influenza virus infection closely mirrors human infection and is similarly transmissible, these scientists appear to have created a bird flu strain with characteristics that indicate it would be readily transmissible by air between humans. In fact, the lead scientist on one of the experiments explicitly stated this.

The question is this: Should we purposefully engineer avian flu strains to become highly transmissible in humans? In our view, no. We believe the benefits of this work do not outweigh the risks. Here’s why. There are no guarantees that such a deadly strain of avian flu would not escape accidentally from the laboratory. (emphasis added)

There is substantive evidence that various diseases in the past century including the 1976 swine flu outbreak, the surge of Lyme disease in the US, and the Covid-19 pandemic can be traced to lab experiments that escaped and infected the general population.

The best thing the Appropriations Committee can do for the health of the US and all citizens of the world is put a moratorium on gain-of-function research. While they’re at it, the Senate should consider restructuring that needs to happen at the FDA, and throughout the entire National Institutes of Health (NIH). They could start by removing Califf from his position, as his investments in pharmaceutical companies and stints working for them have surely compromised his ability to properly regulate the products from which he profits. In addition, the Senate should outlaw the current corrupt system in which over half of the NIH’s operating budget is provided by pharmaceutical companies the NIH is charged with regulating.

Bill Gates and the World Health Organization

Another reason we cannot just “move past” the Covid-19 pandemic is because in addition to people like compromised Director Robert Califf, we have Bill Gates, the largest donor to the World Health Organization (WHO) just behind the United States and Germany. Gates, with his outsized influence on the WHO, has the stated goal to deliver a vaccine in 100 days against the next virus. He’s heavily invested in mRNA vaccines and has found the returns on investments in vaccines to be highly profitable.

Gates, who has engaged consistently in pandemic wargame simulations for over two decades, espouses a preparedness plan that involves year-round pandemic teams in every community around the world. These teams would immediately enforce contact tracing and quarantine upon the appearance of any communicable disease until the vaccine can be deployed. In a 2022 TED talk, Gates even provided a visual of his dream, coming soon to a city near you:

The WHO is pushing for a worldwide Pandemic Treaty, and changes to the International Health Regulations. These changes, if approved by member countries, will allow the WHO unprecedented influence on community responses to epidemic and pandemic threats, as identified by the Director General. The current Director General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is not a medical doctor, is known to be weak on human rights, and has an uncomfortably close relationship with the Chinese Communist Party.  Tedros is among the many unelected persons, including government bureaucrats and public health officials, who wreaked havoc during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Pandemic Preparedness as a Weapon:

The reason why we must still attempt to unpack the facts is because so many are willing to use “pandemic preparedness” as a weapon, and so few have acknowledged the absolute failure of our Covid-19 pandemic response. For example, the previously referenced Brookings Paper from March 2024, titled “The Impact of Vaccines and Behavior on US Cumulative Deaths from Covid-19,” attempts to lend validity to the unscientific human disaster of “social distancing.”

Social distancing was found to have zero impact on the spread of disease. Former FDA Director Scott Gottlieb even stated that the 6-foot distancing rule was “arbitrary,” and Dr. Anthony Fauci said the 6-foot rule “sort of just appeared.” Those admissions bring small comfort to schools, care centers, hospitals, churches, businesses, performing arts, and other organizations, and individuals whose day-to-day lives were harmed, sometimes permanently, by the 6-foot rule.

Johns Hopkins: Lockdowns Have Had Little to No Effect on Covid-19 Mortality

A 2022 analysis conducted by professors at Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics considered 18,950 studies on the effectiveness of lockdowns, paring down to 24 that met the screening procedures for their meta-analysis. For purposes of the analysis, lockdown was defined as “at least one compulsory, non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI)…that directly restrict(s) people’s possibilities, such as policies that limit internal movement, close schools and businesses, and ban international travel.” The 24 qualified studies were divided into three groups: lockdown stringency index studies, shelter-in-place-order (SIPO) studies, and specific NPI studies, and determined that “Lockdowns have had little to no effect on COVID-19 mortality.” The authors summarized:

While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted. In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.

New Zealand: a Lesson in Lockdown Failure

One need only look at the data from New Zealand in the following chart to know that social distancing and locking down entire populations does not prevent the spread of respiratory viruses.

Because it’s an island, New Zealand was able to keep out visitors and lock down residents. The lockdowns harmed the country in every way, but only delayed the arrival of Covid. In the above chart, the orange line shows mask compliance at almost 90% in September 2021. The black line shows daily new cases. Note the exponential rise of cases in February 2022, despite coerced/forced Covid-19 vaccination.

As pointed out by former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General Ramesh Thakur, 99.3% of Covid deaths in New Zealand occurred after 60% of the population was fully vaccinated. In Australia, another hard lockdown country, that figure was 93%. In other words, harsh lockdowns can delay the spread of a respiratory virus, but not prevent it. Meanwhile, the lockdowns cause economic mayhem, and social and emotional devastation, and inflict permanent disadvantages on the upcoming generation. Lockdowns are a violation of fundamental human rights and should never be tolerated again as a viable means of containing viral spread, not even if a perfect vaccine antidote can be manufactured in less than 100 days.

The above, and similar charts for other states and countries, was created by Ian Miller from official publicly available data. It’s mystifying that anyone can actually look at these charts and claim, “Yes, but Covid-19 would have been so much worse if we hadn’t masked, locked down, and taken the vaccine.” How can there be worse results than exponential growth in cases; increased illness, hospitalizations, and deaths in the vaccinated; increased Covid deaths after vaccination, and a marked rise in excess deaths – especially among the young?

Brookings Advocates for More of the Same in the “Next Pandemic”

Yet the Brookings paper joins emotionally abusive governments in praising people for engaging in anti-human social distancing because it was effective in “slowing the spread of a dangerous infectious respiratory disease for a long time.” Brookings does acknowledge that these “behavior changes” came at a “tremendous economic, social, and human cost.” The solution, according to Brookings? More of the same, but with more targeted interventions:

To avoid similar pain from mitigation in the next pandemic, we argue that we need to make investments now not only in vaccine development, but also in data infrastructure so that we can precisely target behavior-oriented mitigation efforts to minimize their economic and social impacts of the next pandemic.

Brookings advocates for both vaccine development and a centralized “data infrastructure,” so “we can precisely target behavior-oriented mitigation efforts” in the next pandemic. Refer back to Bill Gates’ paradise of swooping in by helicopter with medical SWAT teams ready to take you and yours down in order to save the world. 

One might consider the times a mask was worn below the chin, a trip was taken to get away from onerous Covid regulations, a fake vaccine card was obtained to facilitate normal life, or a dinner party exceeded the numbers allowed by government decree.  Then project what it might be like as the recipient of targeted “behavior-oriented mitigation efforts” in a world where those behaviors are digitally tracked and “corrected” in real time.

Bill Gates compares people to computers that need new software, and viruses to something that can be prevented from spreading by dousing them with interventions, like putting out a fire. Both analogies are untethered from real science and tone-deaf to the complexities of the human body, normally functioning societies, and our interdependence with a microbial planet. 

Believing the Evidence of Your Own Eyes

The Brookings paper does a lot of talking and citing of selective data but ignores the common sense facts before our eyes. We all observed that social distancing and masking did not prevent the spread of Covid. The data and our own experiences consistently showed that Covid-19 largely was not a serious disease except for the elderly and the medically frail – something that was already known in February 2020. We all noticed that most vaccinated people contracted Covid-19. We also have observed that many multiple-vaccinated people appear to be repeatedly ill with cold and flu symptoms, while many have developed autoimmune illnesses, neurological issues, infertility problems, cancers, and heart issues within the past three years.

Those with the Megaphone Still Claim the Pandemic Response was a Success

Yet still the official Covid narrative persists, as does the fear-mongering. On May 16, 2024, the New York Times ran an opinion piece from John M. Barry, a scholar at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, titled “As Bird Flu Looms, the Lessons of Past Pandemics Take on New Urgency.” In his article, Barry claims that the public health measures taken to slow the spread of Covid are effective, but:

[E]ven the most extreme interventions cannot eliminate a pathogen that escapes initial containment if, like influenza or the virus that causes Covid-19, it is both airborne and transmitted by people showing no symptoms. Yet such interventions can achieve two important goals.

The first is preventing hospitals from being overrun. Achieving this outcome could require a cycle of imposing, lifting and reimposing public health measures to slow the spread of the virus. But the public should accept that because the goal is understandable, narrow and well defined.

The second objective is to slow transmission to buy time for identifying, manufacturing and distributing therapeutics and vaccines and for clinicians to learn how to manage care with the resources at hand.

The number of inaccuracies in just these three paragraphs from Barry’s opinion piece is astounding, qualifying more as outright propaganda than as a limited hangout.

We hear the word a lot, but a refresher from Britannica on Propaganda is in order:

Propaganda is the more or less systematic effort to manipulate other people’s beliefs, attitudes, or actions…Propagandists…deliberately select facts, arguments, and displays of symbols and present them in ways they think will have the most effect…To maximize effect, they may omit or distort pertinent facts or simply lie, and they may try to divert the attention of the reactors (the people they are trying to sway) from everything but their own propaganda. Comparatively deliberate selectivity and manipulation also distinguish propaganda from education.  (emphasis added)                                                                       

Propagandists such as Barry draw on their credentials, and use their writing and reasoning skills, to “distort pertinent facts or simply lie” to prop up the official Covid narrative, in this case. Gratefully there are resources for balanced discussion.  There are credible individuals discussing legitimate studies and data that refute the false statements in Barry’s opinion piece. Unfortunately, many people do not know where to find their work, or simply don’t want to know.

Power, Control, Money: The Great Motivators

It would indeed be wonderful to say that the Covid-19 pandemic is behind us. Been there, done that. But unfortunately, there is an entire industry comprised of billionaires, corporate, NGO, military, intelligence, and government interests that is driving the idea of scary pandemics, and preparing radical interventions to deal with them. What could possibly be their motive? Nothing new under the sun. It’s always power, money, and a desire for control driving any human experiment that leads to cruel oppression, misery, and death. We saw it writ large through the campaigns of Stalin, Lenin, Hitler, and Mao. We saw it with Mussolini, Pol Pot, and Pinochet.

The desire for power at the expense of others is as old as the history of mankind, but for the first time, the campaign is being orchestrated on a global scale. What was revealed during the Covid pandemic was not new ways to handle frightening pandemic-causing pathogens. What was actually revealed was a global trial run of how to bring entire populations into subjugation through fear and medical tyranny under the false assurance of Safety.

The experiment wasn’t completely successful, largely because the Emergency Use Authorized (EUA) vaccines failed to prevent disease or transmission. It’s not hard to develop a product at “Warp Speed” when all safety regulations and accountability are removed from product development, approval, and distribution. The mRNA platform was not ready for human use, and still isn’t, but the EUA Covid injections were administered to billions of people under cover of a “global emergency.” The debacle of increasingly noticeable vaccine injuries is the direct result.

Plans to Extend the mRNA Platform to all Vaccines:

Nonetheless, there are plans to convert traditional vaccines to the flawed mRNA platform, as well as to develop new profitable mRNA injections to treat pandemic-potential viruses in the future. Health and Human Services is currently in discussions with Pfizer and Moderna to produce mRNA flu vaccines to treat H5N1, which announcement led to a surge in biotech companies’ stocks this week, according to the Financial Times.

An academic who went through WWII in Nazi Germany was interviewed afterward and explained how the horrors of that time gradually grew upon them, over several years, almost without them noticing. He said:

What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security…

One had no time to think. There was so much going on…I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to…we were decent people – and kept so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated…that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us.” (p. 166-168, They Thought They Were Free, By Milton Mayer)

Government Intent to Silence Dissent:

It’s very important to those in charge that we not think and not notice. This is why we hear so much today about the dangers of misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation, and how much the government wants to protect us from such harmful speech. In fact Homeland Security is so worried they published a Terrorism Threat Bulletin calling people who say things that might undermine public trust in government institutions “domestic threat actors.”

This bulletin was accompanied by government censorship efforts that led to removed posts and accounts throughout all social media platforms, as well as character defamation, loss of employment, and other forms of persecution – all as a consequence of exercising freedom of speech. It also led to a Disinformation Governance Board created by the Biden Administration, that was “paused” after three weeks of comparison to the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s 1984, and following concerns raised about the head of the Board.

The government’s concerns about correct information do not extend to itself, or its mouthpieces, of which the New York Times is one. Despite the limited hangout acknowledging some “rare but serious” Covid-19 vaccine injuries, the Times is quick to claim there’s no way to know for sure if these people really were injured by the injections. The Times states:

The government’s understaffed compensation fund has paid so little because it officially recognizes few side effects for Covid vaccines. And vaccine supporters, including federal officials, worry that even a whisper of possible side effects feeds into misinformation spread by a vitriolic anti-vaccine movement.

Ah, yes. Those nasty anti-vaxxers. The ones that Homeland Security calls domestic terrorists, along with parents who speak out at school board meetings, and people who have concerns about election integrity. Homeland Security says people who question, “sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions.” So don’t ask questions and just do as you’re told. Whatever happened to the widespread consensus of the truth in Pres. Ronald Reagan’s quip, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help?’”

Multi-billionaire Bill Gates in his grandfatherly sweater and glasses said in the previously referenced TED talk that it’s, “Kind of weird” how the anti-vaxxers respond to him. He claims his Gavi foundation has saved tens of millions of lives through vaccines. Gates states, “It’s somewhat ironic to have someone turn around and say no, we’re using vaccines to kill people or to make money or…some strange things like, that I somehow want to track, you know, the location of individuals because I’m so deeply desirous to know where everybody is. Uh, I’m not sure what I’m going to do with that information.” Cue the helicopters.

I understand people who want to believe that we did the best we could with the information that we had, and that our efforts to stop a virus made a difference. It’s comforting to believe that those in charge have our best interests at heart. It’s easier and less frightening to believe wise scientists, doctors, and government officials know just what we need to be “safe.” 

It’s generally thought that we enlightened modern people could never be susceptible to a mass formation like that of Nazi Germany, or Mao’s Cultural Revolution; we would recognize what was going on and we wouldn’t fall for it. There seems to be a general belief that the freedoms guaranteed in the US Constitution are inviolable, and therefore we do not need to fight to retain them.

A limited hangout may open the Overton window a bit, but it’s being made very clear to anyone who is paying attention that the powers that be are loathe to give up the control they tasted during Covid-19, and next time they intend to completely squash dissent.

Combatting the Tidal Wave of Corporate and Government Control:

From attorney Jeff Childer’s Substack on US Memorial Day May 27, 2024, we gain some insight into the call to action for our times:

Lincoln’s [Gettysburg Address] could just as well have been written for us the living in the equally extraordinary year 2024, Anno Domini. In particular, the second half of President Lincoln’s short speech seems aimed right at us, reminding us that the honored dead made their ultimate sacrifices for a reason.

Our heroic dead expect that we, the living, will keep fighting to the last man and woman. In Lincoln’s own words:

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Ours is not a war fought with cannons and musket balls. Our generation’s war is a mental, emotional, and cultural war, a war waged in secret and in lies, a war with needles and mysterious snake oil payloads, a mendacious war waged against truth, thoughts and feelings.

Keep fighting! Fight for the dead. Fight for the living. Fight for those not yet born. Fight and never stop fighting, until we have achieved a new birth of freedom in America.

Tidal waves don’t discriminate between those who believe in them, and those who don’t. A wave of censorship and government controls is building, fueled by fears about another pandemic, or climate change, or whatever “emergency” can be exploited to justify government power grabs. The only thing that will stop the censorship and control from washing over everyone is enlightened people who refuse to be swept up, and who work together to push back.

Republished from the author’s Substack