Was it illegal to say "We don't know" when public health officials didn't know? Instead, they showed hubris when they should have admitted ignorance, hurting millions of people, killing some of them and setting children backwards in their education, by imposing a nationwide lockdown. Here's an example of how they "followed the science."
For the past two years, Billboard Chris has traveled across North America wearing a billboard and carefully explaining his concerns that children and teenagers are being grossly mistreated and permanently injured by those who embrace gender ideology. In a recent tweet, Chris is shown talking to those who would like to discuss these issues:
Thank you to everyone for the outpouring of support. I’ve been at this for 2 and a half years, with the audacious idea that having intelligent conversations out in the real world would help educate millions, and spread awareness about the abuse of child transition.
Much has happened, and we are winning spectacularly. I will try to get back to as many of you as I can in the coming days. If you are media and I have missed your message, please send it again.
Children are never born in the wrong body!
In the process of trying to have conversations, Chris has repeatedly been assaulted by trans rights activists, resulting in several serious injuries. The TRAs are desperately trying to keep the rest of us from having meaningful discussions about the damage being done to children, especially by the "gender affirming care" version of treatment.
I take the position that adults (those over 18) have, and should have, the liberty to do whatever they want with their own bodies. With regard to those under 18, I largely agree with Chris. He recently explained his position to the Florida Health and human Services Committee (I created the transcript you will find below):
The Washington Post reported a story today without mentioning that until today, the paper has been engaging in reckless journalism for many months prior. Here's today's headline:
"‘Havana syndrome’ not caused by energy weapon or foreign adversary, intelligence review finds: After a years-long assessment, five U.S. intelligence agencies conclude it is ‘very unlikely’ an enemy wielding a secret weapon was behind the mysterious ailment.
To be a modern corporate journalist, you don't need any evidence to publish a story. All you need is to know someone in the federal government who whispers something to you that furthers your employer's favorite narrative. Just look at these clowns go at it, convincing each other that the sounds made by crickets were caused by a Russian high tech weapon that was frying the brains of U.S personnel. WaPo published DOZENS of these xenophobic articles. How much of our Russia-hate these days is because of journalistic malpractice?
Glenn Greenwald adds (and I agree that this is an easy bet):
This is yet another hoax where any ethical and actual news organization would go on air and say: "for years we told you something that turned out to be false. Here's why we did it. We apologize and retract our stories."That they don't tells you all you need to know about them.
I just checked (March 1, 2023 at 11pm CT): The corporate media refusing to mention that the story was a hoax include: NYT, Washington Post, NPR, MSNBC and CNN.
Steven Pinker was asked to name one thing wrong with the world that he would change. His answer (excerpt):
Too many leaders and influencers, including politicians, journalists, intellectuals, and academics, surrender to the cognitive bias of assessing the world through anecdotes and images rather than data and facts.
Our president assumed office with a dystopian vision of American “carnage” in an era in which violent crime rates were close to historical lows. His Republican predecessor created a massive new federal department and launched two destructive wars to protect Americans against a hazard, terrorism, that most years kills fewer people than bee stings and lightning strikes. In the year after the 9/11 attacks, 1,500 Americans who were scared away from flying perished in car crashes, unaware that a Boston-LA air trip has the same risk as driving 12 miles.
One death from a self-driving Tesla makes worldwide headlines, but the 1.25 million deaths each year from human-driven vehicles don’t. Small children are traumatized by school drills that teach them how to hide from rampage shooters, who have an infinitesimal chance of killing them compared with car crashes, drownings, or, for that matter, non-rampage killers, who slay the equivalent of a Sandy Hook and a half every day. Several heavily publicized police shootings have persuaded activists that minorities are in mortal danger from racist cops, whereas three analyses (two by Harvard faculty, Sendhil Mullainathan and Roland Fryer) have shown no racial bias in police shootings...
People are terrified of nuclear power (the most scalable form of carbon-free energy) because of images of Three Mile Island (which killed no one), Fukushima (which killed no one; the deaths were caused by the tsunami and a panicked, unnecessary evacuation), and Chernobyl (which killed fewer people than are killed by coal every day).
The Cochrane Review recently declared that there is no evidence supporting the use of masks to prevent COVID. Dr. Vinay Prasad took that Review seriously and uses this finding as an example of a commonly occurring dysfunction in modern public health:
In medicine, when we give therapies without RCT support, at least we know our limitations. We spend time with patients counseling them about the pros and cons. We don’t straight up lie to patients, and say this drug will lower your risk of death 85% (without good data that is true). Kiss them on the forehead and say “shhhh question time is over”, “why don’t you trust me. TrUSt DoCTorS. We don’t want the mis-information police to come get you.”No, we are honest about what we don’t know. And furthermore, as much as possible, we design and conduct RCTs to reduce our uncertainty. Some of us are more conservative than others, and refrain, in so far as is possible, from prescribing unproven costly drug combinations knowing the unknown risks may exceed unknown benefits. But even the most exuberant prescribers tell patients, “I gotta be honest with you, I don’t know for sure this will work”
And yet, public health is actively engaged in a campaign of lies. Cochrane reviewed masking RCTs and it is profoundly negative. In response has been a steady stream of excuses that frankly are inconsistent with how we interpret evidence.
In Public Health, the US government (CDC and NIAID) and WHO literally ran ZERO trials of community masking— for 3 years— while recommending it AGAINST pre-pandemic guidance based on NO NEW data, and then incorporated it into future guidelines. All they while they denied the data from dozens of RCTs. If you did that to a patient, they would remove your license.
Furthermore, if anything, Public Health has a greater obligation to generate data than the cancer doctor. Our interventions are done with the consent of the person, often someone dying. Each day, they feel their body weaken. Our patients are willing to take risks, after all they know what happens if you do nothing.
Public health is for average people. Many are healthy. We impose upon these people and promise them we can make them better off. We need the very best evidence before boosting a 20 year old man who had 3 doses and covid twice, and yet we get worse evidence than a drug for a terminally ill penta-refractory cancer patient. It’s entirely backwards.