How They Convinced Trump To Lockdown

It's all classified but here is a conjectural history

We’ve going to get to the bottom of this one way or another. Brownstone’s research is now heavily informing inquiries at all levels of government and even around the world. Much of the history behind the great calamity is, of course, classified but that doesn’t mean that we cannot figure it out. Try as they might to wrap this in secrecy forever, it’s not going to work. 

Knowing the history is hugely important to learning the lessons we need to take from these three years of disaster. Brownstone is on the case like no other institution, as you well know. And what’s the goal? We seek to drive public debate toward the values that have built civilization over hundreds of years. 

If you have never before supported our work, now is a great time. We certainly need it. 

As a member of this list, please mark your calendars for November 4, 2023, Dallas, Texas. That’s our annual conference and gala dinner. We have Dr. Ramesh Thakur confirmed as our dinner speaker. He is among the most articulate scientists out there, and it so happens that he served as assistant secretary of the UN before the institution fell apart. 

We are honored to have him but there will be dozens more of your favorite writers. You can’t register yet but we hope to have that available in the coming week. 

Meanwhile, our monthly supper club is bursting at the seams. The next meeting is April 19, and will feature Debbie Lerman, the powerful researcher who first discovered the role of the national security state in the Covid response. For that you can register now. 

Here is some content since our last email:

The DOD Plays Hardball with Covid Vaccinations by SCOTT STURMAN. The DOD mismanaged the Covid mandatory vaccine program, which degraded morale and negatively affected recruitment goals.  Now is the time to rectify these abuses and welcome rather than punish those men and women who choose to serve the country but exercised their rights under the Nuremberg Code.  Exerting financial pressure, failing to offer administrative services, and ostracizing these service members will discourage enlistments and further erode the public’s confidence in the United States military.

Madness in the Law Schools  by WILLIAM SPRUANCE.  Tirien Steinbach’s censorious and sanctimonious diatribe embodies larger trends of the modern era: institutions’ abandonment of free speech principles, the most powerful people in the country posturing under the banner of victimhood, and the entitlement of wrongdoers who regurgitate the proper shibboleths. 

How They Convinced Trump to Lock Down by  JEFFREY A. TUCKER. To be sure, this scenario cannot be proven because the entire event – certainly the most dramatic political move in at least a generation and one with unspeakable costs for the country – remains cloaked in secrecy. Not even Senator Rand Paul can get the information he needs because it remains classified. If anyone thinks the Biden approval of releasing documents will show what we need, that person is naive. Still, the above scenario fits all available facts and it is confirmed by second-hand reports from inside the White House. 

The Lab Leak and the Counter Measures: What Really Happened by DEBBIE LERMAN. Some have argued that it was the powerful forces backing the vaccines, without reference to or need for a lab leak, that set the whole Covid disaster in motion. There is also some resistance to the idea that the entire Covid disaster was – and still is – a conspiracy of the international biodefense network. I would contend that the only explanation for the cascade of Covid events is that it began with a lab leak that required a cover-up, and that those involved in the cover-up were those who dictated and benefited from the response.

The Latest in the War on Science By  TOM JEFFERSON and CARL HENEGHAN. We do not know what spooked the Editor in Chief, but given the speed and highly unprofessional nature of the reaction, could it be one of their big funders?  How the decision was made to undermine the review so quickly and so well – was it a prepared strategy? Finally, the relationship between all this and the NYT opinion piece published on 10 October is unclear.  Nor have the Editors of Cochrane had the decency to explain what happened and what the haste was for. Therefore, why were folk working on the review since 2006 not consulted?

The Covid Disaster was Foreshadowed with Love Canal by  TARA RADDLE. Those at the highest risk from Covid were given a piece of cloth to wear over their faces, while those at very little risk from the virus itself saw their future prospects decimated because of overly broad restrictions.  Both groups were told that $.05 masks were the difference between life and death, despite a lack of scientific consensus at any juncture.  Both groups were told that questioning any of this was tantamount to terrorism; that embracing one-size-fits-none restrictions held the only path forward. 

The Real Trauma of Love Canal by  TARA RADDLE. In thinking only about the (very real) dangers posed by benzene and dioxin, activists forgot about everything else. They forgot about the fact that happy communities are healthy communities; that family dinners and book clubs are every bit as essential to a healthy life as staying away from pools of chloroform. Well-meaning people developed tunnel vision; thinking only about the dangers of the landfill, while forgetting about the dangers that come with upending a community. 

The Narrative in Retreat by Ramesh Thakur. The puzzle of why there was a worldwide cascading abandonment of a hundred years of accumulated knowledge by scientific and policy advisers will occupy researchers for many years. The result is that old lessons are having to be relearned. Judging by the rush of studies now coming through to contradict key tenets of the 2020–22 narrative, there’s hope that the wall of silence rooted in groupthink and fear of consequences to career and reputation might have been irreparably breached.

The Mandates Themselves Carry Grave Costs By Aaron Hertzber. The inevitable consequence of public denouncements of the unvaccinated is that those who made them are necessarily rooting for the unvaccinated to suffer the grim fates they had articulated, at least in part, having invested themselves and their credibility in this narrative.

Dr. Frieden’s Follies By Bret Swanson. The failure of public health authorities to honestly appraise a series of historic failures shows why they were so ill-suited to the task. Perhaps they do not have the skills to analyze, execute, learn, and course correct. Or maybe the institutions – from the FDA and CDC to local and state health departments to medical schools – lack some kind of organizational fortitude or resistance to groupthink.

Once More to the Lectern By Rob Jenkins. So, yes, I have removed myself from the New-Agey circle of desks in the middle of the classroom and gone back to the lectern—and it feels good. It’s where I belong. believe, in the long run, my students will benefit, too, as over time I wean them from the spoon-feeding we have all been doing during the pandemic.

The Devastation is Deeper and Wider than We Know By Justin Hart. The Covid policies and their aftermath have had far-reaching impacts on our society. People now have lowered trust in public institutions, raised worries about privacy and freedom of speech, and the financial ramifications will persist for a long time. As we face the challenges posed by this pandemic and its policy outcomes, it’s vital to draw lessons from these missteps so future responses are more balanced, open, and successful in tackling public health crises without compromising civic rights and public confidence.

Your Daughter for a Rat? By David Bell. Health professionals who do not prioritize people over animals may get by as veterinary surgeons, but are unsafe with people. It is time for those who believe in the intrinsic and undefinable value of each human to find their voice, and rebuild our institutions on that basis. Public health should elevate humanity rather than degrade it.

The Tantric and the Terrible Tempest By Bhaskaran Raman. The tranquil tropical town which has restarted whipping kids is Puducherry (India): “H3N2 outbreak: This UT shuts schools from 16-24 March.” In a normal world, people should not ask for evidence to not whip kids to ostensibly prevent future tempests. Regardless, there is a mountain of scientific evidence that whipping kids has no effect on tempests.

Eye Protection Wasn’t Misdirection By Megan Mansell. Consider all of the people you’ve seen donning masks or respirators over these past three years, assured in the merit of their virtue. How many still got sick? Did you ever once see someone donning goggles? Are we ever going to get around to discussing exhaustion of the hierarchy of controls, or are actual mitigating measures too taboo, too fringe?

Strict Safety Standards for Cough Syrup, but mRNA Shots Get a Free Pass By Sonia Elijah. It’s unequivocal: anaphylaxis was a known life-threatening adverse event, around the same time emergency use authorization was granted for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. Yet, because it’s an “injectable vaccine” it somehow has gotten a free pass from all the drug regulators, no matter how much damning data accumulates, when a cough syrup or capsule on the other hand gets urgently recalled on the basis of a “a very rare risk of anaphylaxis.”

Censorship Masquerades and Disinformation Control By Andrew Lowenthal. The Virality Project however is just part of a broader cultural shift that reverses long standing liberal/left commitments to free expression and allows censorship in the name of protection and safety. However in suppressing “stories of true vaccine side effects” the Virality Project put people in danger. Rather than keeping people safe they exposed us to the depredations of BigPharma.

Three Years to Slow the Spread Marked the Advent of Push-Button Tyranny By Jordan Schachtel. Covid hysteria and the three-year anniversary of 15 Days To Slow The Spread serves as the beginning period of a permanent scar resulting from government power grabs and federal overreach. While life is back to normal in most of the country, the Overton window of acceptable policy has slid even further in the direction of push-button tyranny. Hopefully, much of the world has awakened to the reality that most of the people in charge aren’t actually doing what’s best for their respective populations.

Curious: Angela Merkel’s September 2019 Visit to Wuhan By Robert Kogon. What an incredible coincidence that the German Chancellor was visiting Wuhan’s Tongji Hospital at almost precisely the time when, according to Redfield’s speculations, a potentially catastrophic event was taking place across the river at the Wuhan Institute of Virology! This was, moreover, merely three months before the first officially acknowledged cases of Covid-19 began to turn up in the city.

Rage With the Machine: Stanford Law and SBV By William Spruance. As opposed to fifty years ago, today’s protesting students do not exhibit an instinctive aversion to authority. With each controversy, they join the country’s most powerful forces in calling for more censorship, fewer civil liberties, and less tolerance for dissenting viewpoints.

It’s Open Season on Scientists By Tom Jefferson, Carl Heneghan. We warned our readers a couple of weeks back that opinion pieces were taking on the role of editors of scientific journals. We stated, “The arguments put forward are virtually all the same: loud, strident and based on the poorest quality evidence available.“ Unfortunately, this was the case with the Cochrane Review on Physical Interventions to interrupt the spread of respiratory viruses.

Psyops Are Not New, Just More Dangerous By Alan Lash. As the terrifying totalitarian regimes used it against their people to foment murderous rage, the same could be in store for us. It’s going to take people who understand they are being manipulated, who understand they are being used, who understand they want their independence and freedom, to engender a peaceful and meaningful life for all.