There have been a number of hints at the US government’s circumvention of the first amendment by pressuring tech companies to censor viewpoint-based content ( e.g., on COVID vaccines, elections, …). However, the latest Twitter drop and FOIA request outputs seems to make connection quite clear, including damningly coercive corresponding between Rob Flaherty (Deputy Assistant to the President) and Facebook and Google.

The Wall Street Journal outlines the case, with some links, as does Tracy Høeg and Minnesota Attorney General Andrew Bailey on Twitter. Here is one example of the brow-beating:

From: Flaherty, Rob EOP/WHO [REDACTED]@who.eop.gov>

Date: Friday, April 9, 2021 at 2:56 PM

To: [REDACTED]@fb.com>

Subject: RE: Follow up--WA responses

Thanks for this, [REDACTED]oor should be trying to land a time.

Will say I'm really mostly interested in what effects the interventions and products you've tested have had on increasing vaccine interestwithin hesitant communities, and which ones have shown promise. Reallycouldn'tcare less about products unless they're having measurable impact. And while the product safari has been interesting, at the end of the day, I care mostly about what actions and changes you're making to ensure sure you're not making our country's vaccine hesitancy problem worse. I definitely have what I believe to be a non-comprehensive list of products you're building but I still don't have a good, empirical answer on how effective you've been at reducingthe spread of vaccine -skeptical content and misinformation to vaccine fence sitters in the now-folded "lockdown." If [REDACTED] can speak to those things, great [REDACTED] hasn't been able to, but I'm sure someone there can.

In the electoral context, you tested and deployed an algorithmic shift that promoted quality news and information about the election. This was reported in the New York Times and also readily apparent to anyone with cursory social listening tools. You only did this, however, after an election that you helped increase skepticism in, and an insurrection which was plotted, in large part, on your platform. And then you turned it back off. I want some assurances, based in data, that you are not doing the same thing again here.

The main question, in my mind, regards what can be done at this point. I’m sure that the administration would be happy enough to issue a public apology and then find alternative methods for censoring unwanted data … is there a systematic remedy?

Harvey Risch has been a consistent voice for sanity and rationality during the COVID pandemic. Though he may have been largely ignored or pilloried by the political class, I have no doubt that his analyses will continue to withstand the test of time.

His latest piece, Plausibility But Not Science Has Dominated Public Discussions of the Covid Pandemic [1], does a great job of supporting what used to be one of the pillars of science: the scientist must review data and analyses objectively and without favor. It does not matter who thinks what … it matters what they can support. As Einstein supposedly responded to the hundred (or so) authors who publicly denounced his theory of relativity:

Main points

The main points of the article are, in order of appearance:

• Plausibility motivates but does not dictate science. Many plausible statements are wrong. Many true statements initially seem implausible. Careful, learned analysis and experimentation is needed to properly distinguish the two.

• Evidence-based medicine is a term of hubris. Medicine has always been based on evidence, not in whole but in part. It remains that way, and the moniker “evidence-based” is used as a crutch to prop up bad science.

• Randomized Controlled Trials can be woefully wrong. It is extremely important that they be run with sophistication, instead of being provided immediate prominence solely on the basis that they are “randomized”.

• Empirical evidence can (and often is) as powerful as poorly run RCTs. As a result, every study must be judged carefully and on its own merits.

• Criticisms of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) for early COVID treatment are not well founded. The papers attacking this medication were hopelessly flawed.

My Criticisms

Although I feel that the articles is excellently written and conceived, I do have some criticisms for the author (as I do for any work I review!):

• Prof. Risch is too easily offended. He is insulted by the “evidence-based medicine” crowd, a flawed paper on randomization, publication of bad papers in medical journals, etc. I understand the offense and even empathize with it … but I do not feel that it does anything to strengthen the paper. Au contraire, it injects unnecessary emotion into a rational debunking of popular irrationality.

• The argument about the plausibility of the heliocentric orbit of Earth, due to 335 years of observational data, is a red herring (see “The Copernican Revolution” in my piece, Climate Science and other religions).

• Given a choice between a generic politicized observational trial and a confounded randomized trial, I would still generally prefer the latter because it reduces the risk of error. The reality is that there will be bad science out there … and probably even that it will be the vast majority of what is published. We cannot eliminate it, but we can try to guide it with best practices, caveats, and, most importantly, humility.

Quotes

• “Dr. Fauci has not reported accurately on scientific questions throughout the Covid-19 pandemic … the essential dialectic of science is arguing, questioning, debating. Without debate, science is nothing more than propaganda.”

• “… we hardly think about the plausibility of elliptic heliocentric solar system orbits… But we might balk at thinking it plausible that light travels simultaneously as both particles and waves … and we can choose to observe either particles or waves, but not both at the same time. Nature is not necessarily plausible.”

• “Historically, pharma control and manipulation of RCT evidence in the regulation process provided an enormous boost in the ability to push products through regulatory approval into the marketplace, and the motivation to do this still continues today.”

• ‘A bigger failure of evidential reasoning is Sackett’s statement that one should use “the best available external evidence” rather than all valid external evidence.(Hartling et al., 2013; Bae, 2016).’

• “The problem is, RCT studies essentially never explicitly demonstrate adequate randomization of their outcome subjects, and what they purport to show of randomization for their total treatment groups is almost always scientifically irrelevant.”

• “Censorship is the tool of the undefendable, since valid science inherently defends itself. Until the public begins to understand the difference between plausibility and science and … [the] science “product” that looks like science but is not … leaders seeking authoritarian power will continue to rely on it for fake justification.”

  Thanks for reading Ignorantia Peritorum ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

[1] Harvey Risch, Plausibility But Not Science Has Dominated Public Discussions of the Covid Pandemic, Brownstone Institute, November 26, 2022: https://brownstone.org/articles/plausibility-but-not-science-has-dominated-public-discussions-of-the-covid-pandemic/

Provocative piece by Vinay Prasad on his substack:

Vinay Prasad's Observations and Thoughts

We need to strip CDC and Public Health of Powers

Eventually politicians will strip CDC and other public health agencies of their power, and I won't be able to argue with them. Why? Public health misused and abused its powers with: Closing beaches Pouring sand into outdoor skateboard parks Discouraging people from outdoor activities…

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3 years ago · 35 likes · Vinay Prasad

Some salient points from his piece:

• “Public health misused and abused its powers with: [some points elided]

  • Lying about the evidence for cloth masks in community settings (to this day)…

  • Not running any randomized control trials of masking in high income nations…

  • Using the police state to enforce lockdown…

  • Not letting people hold their father's hand when their father dies…

  • Inventing a 6-ft distance…

  • Continuing emergency powers when the emergency has passed…

  • Spending billions on remdesivir when it doesn't do s***…”

• “So as someone who has long believed in the value of the regulatory state, and long been a champion for increased funding of public health, if the politician asks me should we destroy the CDC, I would have to say 'yes, please and let me help you'.”

• Thanks for reading Ignorantia Peritorum ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

A great piece on from Sensible Medicine on the need to factor in unknown costs to medications: There is no Such Thing as a Free Med [1]:

Sensible Medicine

There’s No Such Thing as a Free Med

In this guest post from Prof. Fenyves, he discusses the idea of a risk tax. That means there could be downsides to giving a medical product that we only learn of down the road— and we should include this in our decision making today. I think all great physicians think about this, but we don’t discuss it enough. Prof Fenyves puts it into words nicely…

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3 years ago · 31 likes · 2 comments · Paul Fenyves

Some quotes from the article:

• ‘When suggesting a medical treatment, doctors often proffer the justification “it can’t hurt.” I believe “it can’t hurt” is fundamentally false, and should never be accepted as the sole reason for a medical intervention. A better adage to guide medical decisions is “there’s no such thing as a free lunch.”’

• ‘To be clear, I say this not as a criticism of the medical community, but as a rationale for medical conservatism. In medicine, we are always playing with fire, wielding potent tools that can bring tremendous benefits, but must be handled with care, lest we get burned.’

• ‘In the United States, we have recommended bivalent booster vaccines to young healthy people, and have doled out Paxlovid to low-risk vaccinated patients.  Both of these interventions lack evidence of benefit, and the maximum potential benefits are small.  While there might be no benefit, there always might be risk of harm (both known and unimagined), and doctors should scrupulously follow our first dictum to do no harm.’

• ‘More generally, the history of antibiotics should remind us to exercise medical humility. The human body is complex, our understanding is incomplete, and our interventions can have unexpected consequences that only come to light years later. When the benefits are small and uncertain, we should proceed with caution.’

[1] P. Fenyves, There’s No Such Thing as a Free Med, Sensible Medicine, 11/1/2022: https://sensiblemed.substack.com/p/theres-no-such-thing-as-a-free-med

Chad LeVaglia reports about a recent decision out of NY regarding former Department of Sanitation employees, who were fired for failure to show proof of COVID vaccination:

It looks like a complete victory for the petitioners (with some amazing legal representation):

ORDERED that a declaratory judgment is granted in that the Commissioner of Health and Mental Hygiene's order dated October 20, 2021, violates the Petitioners' substantive and procedural due process rights pursuant to NY Constitution Article I, §6.

ORDERED that a declaratory judgment is granted in that this Court finds that the Commissioner lacks the power and authority to permanently exclude the Petitioners from their workplace.

ORDERED that this Court finds the Commissioner of Health and Mental Hygiene's order dated October 20, 2021, arbitrary and capricious pursuant to CPLR §7803.

ORDERED that this Court finds the Commissioner of Health and Mental Hygiene's order dated December 13, 2021, arbitrary and capricious pursuant to CPLR § 7803.

ORDERED that this Court finds the Mayor's Executive Order No. 62 arbitrary and capricious pursuant to CPLR §7803.

ORDERED that the Petitioners' claim for breach of contract is denied.

ORDERED that the terminated Petitioners are hereby reinstated to their full employment status, effective October 25, 2022, at 6:00AM.

ORDERED that the Petitioners are entitled to back pay in salary from the date of termination.

Two of my favorite bloggers, Vinay Prasad and Bari Weiss have teamed up to publicize the folly of the CDC’s latest decision to add COVID vaccines to the US childhood immunization schedule:

Common Sense

Covid Vaccines Shouldn't Be 'Routine' for Kids

On Thursday, the CDC’s advisory committee on vaccines voted unanimously—15 to 0—to add the Covid-19 vaccine to the country’s childhood immunization schedule. This schedule of vaccines—which includes the vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR); tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis (Tdap); and inacti…

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3 years ago · 492 likes · 361 comments · Vinay Prasad

From the article:

• “We do not intrude upon individual autonomy unless that intervention provides sufficient benefit to third parties. This means there must be a large benefit to others— enough so the loss of autonomy is acceptable. Given that the Covid-19 vaccine does not halt virus transmission, the prerequisite is not met. “

• “The harm to kids from substandard education—after nearly two years of disruption—far exceeds any gains from compliance. And that harm will disproportionately hurt poor, black kids. The same is true for mandates that prevent kids from participating in school sports.”

• “One of the worst outcomes of the CDC Covid-19 vaccination recommendation would be if parents decide it is unnecessary for their children to get the Covid shot, they will also skip vital vaccines that have been saving lives for decades.”

• “We need the public to believe in medically essential vaccines and be willing to give them to their children. To add an unnecessary and controversial vaccine to this list—at the risk of some states or local actors mandating it—undermines the broader good of public health.

  ”

Alex Gutentag has (yet another) excellent piece in Tablet Magazine [1], wherein he describes how many people (and especially those in “authority”) attempted to marginalize, denigrate, and scapegoat those who chose not to take the (full series of) COVID vaccines.

I myself saw this at play in my community, where people, who were ordinarily nice, friendly, and productive citizens, had no trouble sinking into downright nastiness at the insolence of the “unvaccinated” among them. In great numbers, they supported stripping these unwashed of their education, jobs, medical care, and travel rights without any serious evaluation of the underlying science or moral implications.

The common denominators were:

• Fear - stoked by their panicked friends, politicians, and international press.

• Authority - people in “authority” making strong, unambiguous, but ultimately unsupported, statements stoking the fear.

I have absolutely no doubt that this can and will happen again, and I similarly have no doubt that the potential damage to society could have been much greater. Book smarts and Holocaust education programs did nothing to stop the many otherwise friendly and intelligent thugs in the community from enthusiastically enforcing Draconian policies.

The only thing that could help mitigate such behavior is mass development of character: the ability to think independently, measure statements against evidence, and stand up to the mob when appropriate.

Here are some quotes from the article:

• 'The New York Times ran pieces like “I’m Furious at the Unvaccinated,” and “Unvaxxed, Unmasked and Putting Our Kids at Risk.” The Los Angeles Times published a column titled “Mocking anti-vaxxers’ COVID deaths is ghoulish, yes—but may be necessary.” An opinion piece called “The Unvaccinated Are a Risk to All of Us” appeared in Bloomberg, and The Washington Post printed a piece called “Macron is right: It’s time to make life a living hell for anti-vaxxers.”’

• ‘Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said unvaccinated people “are very often misogynistic and racist,” and asked, “Do we tolerate these people?” President Joe Biden said that his “patience [was] wearing thin” and that we needed to “protect vaccinated workers from unvaccinated coworkers.” Michael Gunner, chief minister of the Northern Territory in Australia, stated that even if you are vaccinated, “if you are anti-mandate, you are absolutely anti-vax.” French President Emmanuel Macron declared that 5 million French people who remained unvaccinated were “not citizens.”’

• ‘Vaccine mandates were mainly rationalized through the belief that the higher the rate of vaccination, the less the virus would spread…. But recently, on Oct. 10, 2022, a Pfizer spokesperson told the European Parliament that the vaccines had never actually been tested for preventing transmission.’

• ‘Simply put, the reason many people believed the vaccines stopped transmission was because government officials and media outlets across the Western world were either careless with their words or did not tell the truth.’

[1] Alex Gutentag, Vaccines Never Prevented the Transmission of COVID, Tablet Magazine 10/18/2022: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/science/articles/vaccines-never-prevented-transmission-covid-alex-gutentag

The Netanyahu administration bet the farm on a secretive deal for Pfizer’s vaccines, and the citizens of Israel have borne the risks of that decision. I hope that the Israeli voters will consider whether this was a reasonable gamble when they next vote.

From Guy Shinar at the Brownstone Institute[1]:

Netanyahu decided to bet on Pfizer’s vaccine as the strategy that could potentially allow him to solve the COVID problem, with the added benefit of substantial political gain…In this way, in exchange for the privilege to be the first country in the world to roll out the vaccine among its population, Israel entered into two agreements with Pfizer

Only one of the agreements is partially public, and in it:

None of the outcome measures that were explicitly agreed upon in advance were safety outcomes, such as overall mortality, hospitalizations from any cause or the known side effects of vaccines, whatever they may be.

As part of the agreement, Israel’s Ministry of Health game up its scientific independence:

Pfizer has the power under the agreement to omit any reference to its contribution to the research, so its involvement in setting research goals, methods or even in writing the research results is not mentioned at all ... a study may be portrayed as independent of Pfizer, although it is not necessarily so.

Finally, the potential political angle (although it is speculative):

Why did Ministry of Health officials enter into this agreement? Why didn’t they maintain their role as regulators, and why did they volunteer to serve as Pfizer’s marketing, distribution, research and publication branch? It appears highly likely that pressure from Netanyahu and his bureau contributed to the matter.

[1] G. Shinar, How the Israeli Ministry of Health Became an Agent for Pfizer, The Brownstone Institute: https://brownstone.org/articles/how-the-israeli-ministry-of-health-became-an-agent-for-pfizer/

Julie Ponesse, a professor of ethics who was placed on leave because of her refusal to conform to her campus’s vaccine mandate, writes a powerful piece about the need for accountability for COVID sins: [1]

• "‘most people still believe in the narrative, still cling to the idea that lockdowns and masking were necessary and effective, that their questioning friends are unstable “anti-vaxxers,” that government is noble and mainstream media unimpeachable.’

• ‘In the aftermath of the Holocaust, at a time when the world was so morally injured, so eager for a new start, Auschwitz survivor Elie Wiesel saw it as his responsibility to speak for those who had been silenced. At a time when most could not bear to remember, Wiesel could not bear to forget.’

• ‘We were taught to believe that institutions would act as our surrogate moral conscience, taking account and making apology for us. I don’t deny the importance of collective responsibility. But sometimes moral injury is personal, done by individuals to one another, and the accountability needs to happen in kind.’

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[1] J. Ponesse, What If the Truth Never Comes Out?, https://brownstone.org/articles/what-if-the-truth-never-comes-out/.

Fascinating article implicates a connnection between Evergrande Company (a Chinese real estate company) and the MassCPR - a partnership apparently between Harvard, (Medical School), Boston University’s NEIDL, and MGH: (article here) [1]

• “It was an odd question on its own: What business did Evergrande — then the most valuable real estate company on earth, but also widely known to be catastrophically indebted — have with the director of America’s pandemic response?”

• ‘Despite this, just three days after the conference call, a dramatic reversal took place regarding the scientists’ assessment of the possible origin of the virus … Andersen claimed the data “conclusively show” that the virus was not engineered and that speculation about a possible lab leak was nothing more than “conspiracy” and “fringe” theories spread by “crackpots.”’

• “All in all, HMS would see just $12 million of the promised $115 million donation. For Evergrande, which attached its brand to numerous scientific studies and enjoyed a channel to America’s top science officials at a bargain price, this was the deal of the century.”

(Hat-tip MartyMakary)

[1] https://spectatorworld.com/topic/fauci-harvard-and-the-ccp/

Berenson is reporting that Denmark is banning further COVID vaccinations for almost everyone under 50.

Unreported Truths

Denmark ENDS Covid vaccinations for almost everyone under 50.

Denmark will bar almost everyone under 50 from receiving more mRNA Covid jabs, the Danish Health Authority said yesterday. Denmark had already ended Covid shots for nearly everyone under 18. The new rules go much further. Danes under 50 will only be allowed to receive the shots if they are “higher risk of becoming…

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4 years ago · 468 likes · 84 comments · Alex Berenson

A great piece from the Sensible Medicine substack (appended below) written by Robert Kaplan (member of the National Academy of Medicine) and Sander Greenland (Fellow of the American Statistical Association).

A few quotes:

• “Using publicly available data from Pfizer and Moderna studies, we found one serious adverse event for each 800 vaccinees.“

• “Regrettably, our analysis was hindered by an addressable problem:  The individual level data that could confirm or refute our analysis have not been made public.”

• “ There is no legitimate reason why scientists and the public should not have access to the evidence that justified that purchase. Yet evidence is being withheld, which adds uncertainty to our conclusions and leaves lingering questions about the scientific foundation for COVID-19 vaccine promotion.”

Sensible Medicine

Why We Question the Safety of COVID-19 vaccines

By Robert Kaplan and Sander Greenland A new bivalent COVID vaccine will become available this week. The FDA used results from mouse experiments and the original vaccine trials to reassure the public that the new boosters are safe. Is this evidence sufficient…

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4 years ago · 125 likes · 23 comments · Robert M Kaplan

Great post from eugyppius’s substack:

• ‘CDC official Dr. Sara Oliver: “We know that the myocarditis risk is unknown but anticipate a similar risk to that seen after the monovalent vaccines.”’

• “Anyone who has followed the corruption of the FDA and CDC over the past two years could hardly find these developments surprising.”

• “Do you trust a state-recommended medical intervention based on a 10th grade science experiment on eight mice (all of which got Omicron anyway)?”

eugyppius: a plague chronicle

Guest Post: Biden Administration Orders 171 Million Bivalent Booster Doses After Successful Eight-Mouse Trial in Which All the Rodents Got Corona Anyway

Vaccine zealotry has reached a fever pitch. Last week, a day after the FDA authorized the new “Omicron booster” targeting the dominant Omicron BA.5 subvariant, the CDC’s vaccine committee formally recommended the shots for Americans as young as 12. Pfizer’s Omicron boosters will be available for people ages 12 and older, while Moderna’s new shots are for…

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4 years ago · 465 likes · 211 comments · Rav Arora

Legal Insurrection points to an interesting effort to bring some reality back into the “climate change crisis”:

https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/08/over-1000-scientists-and-professionals-sign-formal-declaration-there-is-no-climate-emergency/

I think that you can get a very rough sense of the value of academic freedom around the world by normalizing the number of professors signing the document by the total number of people in a given country1:

• Italy: 56 / 60M ~ 9.3 E-7

• Canada: 19 / 37M ~ 5.1 E-7

• France: 26 / 65M ~ 4.0 E-7

• Australia: 6 / 25M ~ 2.4 E-7

• Germany: 19 / 84M ~ 2.3 E-7

• United States: 32 / 331M ~ 1.0E-7

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Recently, researchers at Boston University published an article1 on in-class transmission of COVID-19 during the pandemic. The conclusions of the article are unremarkable, but the data were coerced from the university community.

Background

The data for this article came from COVID testing performed on the entire in-person university community during the fall 2021 semester. Several important elements stand out about the way the data was collected:

• Subjects (such as myself) were required to participate in weekly or biweekly COVID surveillance testing as a condition of continuing employment (faculty) or participation on campus (students).

• Subjects were not told how or what would be done to samples beyond that they would be used for COVID surveillance. There were neither clear limitations on the use of the data nor informed consent.

• The collected samples were expressly not subject to HIPAA protections, the university having apparently decided that it is not a “healthcare provider” for these purposes.

• According to the article, the analysis protocol included “sequencing to determine variant distribution and emergence on the BU campus”.

• Some of the researchers who published the article appear to have been on the university’s medical advisory committee that, presumably, recommended the specific COVID testing protocol employed by the university.

Institutional Review Board

Intuiting the potential that this coerced data would be used in subsequent research, I contacted the university’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) with my concerns2, as an “unwilling subject”. Their response was disappointing:

… While we are aware of the possibility of research that may be conducted using the BU COVID-19 samples, my understanding is that any such research would (a) be the exception and with a very small sample of results and (b) involve only deidentified or anonymized samples…

The response continued to note that deidentified samples are not even considered to meet the definition of ‘human subjects’ and, as a result, fall outside of the IRB’s purview, and that the collection of samples as part of the university’s health surveillance infrastructure obviated the need for informed consent. In effect, the data is being treated as “secondary use” (the primary use being health surveillance), and the IRB is suggesting that this clears it of ethical concerns.

JAMA network

When this article was published, I complained to the JAMA Network executive editors that this study was based upon coerced data, they punted to the institution:

Given approval of the study by Boston University’s institutional review board, we are in agreement that your concern rests with the university and no further action is needed by the journal.

Please help!

I am appalled that subjects could be so blithely coerced into involuntary experimentation in today’s age and at a world-class research university in the United States. There appears to be no way for an unwilling subject (e.g., me) to exempt themselves from the research, and no apparent limit on the research may entail.

Having exhausted the minimal appeals processes of which I know, I appeal to my readership to suggest effective remedies and future mitigations. Please feeel free to comment below!

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Tracy Beth Høeg has an excellent piece on the Sensible Medicine substack: Sacrificing children’s health in the name of Health: A look at the US’s Counterproductive Covid Policies and why Scandinavia did Better.

She contrasts the Swedes protection of their childrens’ education with the rest of the world’s paranoiac isolation of this largely low-risk population. At some point, I think that we (as a society) will have to come to a reckoning over how we treated our children.

A few quotes:

• “Sweden never closed primary schools and Denmark and Norway had brief, transient closures; they never masked children under 12 and free childcare was always available. Children always had a safe place to go throughout the pandemic. Disruptions to normalcy were minimized.”

• “I believe the burden of proof should have always been on showing that the benefits of these interventions [e.g., school closures] outweighed the harms. None of the above passed any sort of rigorous or thoughtful risk benefit analysis in the US or elsewhere.”

• “The main benefit of vaccination is to reduce risk of severe disease. This benefit is clear in older adults but much less so in children. In fact, 1) we have no evidence that vaccination will lower the risk of severe disease in previously infected children and, 2)in healthy children without prior infection, the harm of the second vaccination dose from myocarditis alone may outweigh the benefits in healthy children.”

• “The way we viewed public health in children strangely turned upside down during Covid-19; children have always been an ethically protected group. This means they should not be subjected to unnecessary harms without known benefits. But in the US, they inexplicably faced the harshest restrictions of any age group.”

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Interesting review of Deborah Birx’s new book in Tablet magazine: [1]

The lockdowns that Xi pioneered and Birx so zealously advocated for reportedly led to over 170,000 non-COVID excess deaths among young Americans while failing to meaningfully slow the spread of COVID anywhere they were tried. It would have been impossible for an enemy agent armed with anything less than nuclear weapons to have inflicted so much damage on America’s economy, social fabric, and historical freedoms in such a short period of time.

[1] https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/deborah-birx-guide-destroying-america

The Brownstone Institute links to a trove of emails apparently obtained by America First Legal (through FOIA requests and the like) seemingly detailing an extremely cozy relationship between the government agencies and Big Tech. The three examples below suggest to me that:

• CDC had a significant amount of input into what was censored on Facebook.

• Facebook eagerly supported the CDC’s efforts.

• The Facebook campaign had a tangible (and demonstrated) effect in encouraging people to follow CDC guidance, despite some signficant concerns.

Even if this passed constitutional muster, it represents a scary entanglement between government and extremely influential tech companies that probably stamped out legitimate and important discussions about the CDC’s positions on matters of national significance.

COVID “misinformation”

(April 12, 2021 from Facebook to the CDC1)

Over the last month, we’ve given state health departments access to CrowdTangle to help address localized vaccine misinformation in a given state or region. CrowdTangle is a Facebook tool that tracks low content spreads online. When health departments tag potential vaccine misinformation on Facebook and Instagram, we review and remove this content if it violates our policies against false COVID-19 and vaccine claims. This is similar to how governments and fact-checkers use CrowdTangle ahead of elections to identify potential voter suppression.

Followed by several apparently relevant messages, including this one on April 13:

We're working to get our COVID-19 misinfo channel up for CDC and Census colleagues. Could you kindly confirm if the below emails are correct for on boarding to the reporting channel and if there are others you'd like to include?

Special Access

(April 23 from Carol Crawford [CDC] to Payton Iheme et al. [Facebook])

The Wyoming Dept. of Health mentioned to one of our groups that the algorithms that Facebook and other social media networks are apparently using to screen out postings by sources of vaccine misinformation are also apparently screening out valid public health messaging, including WY Health communications. They were looking for advice about how to work with social media networks to ensure that verifiable information sources are not blocked.

Following the subsequent elements of the conversation, it seems that state (and probably federal) agencies had significant clout in what was and was not labeled misinformation (unlike the random user who could do pretty much nothing about getting banned by a random bot or stupid fact-checker

Support from Facebook

(April 1, 2021 from the CDC to Nkechi Payton Iheme [Facebook])

On behalf of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and by the authority delegated to me through Section 231 of the Public Health Service Act ( 42 U.S.C. Section 238), as amended, thank you for Facebook's non-monetary gift ofFacebook ad credits, with an estimated value of $15,000,000. This gift will be used by CDC's COVID-19 response to support the agency's messages on Facebook, and extend the reach of COVID-19-related Facebook content, including messages on vaccines, social distancing, travel, and other priority communication messages.

Facebook’s letter of donation has a whole host of appropriate caveats to the donation (e.g., that it cannot be used for political purposes), but who on Earth was policing this?

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Shmuel Shapira, former head of Israel’s Defense Ministry’s Biological Institute (who had tried to develop Israel’s experimental coronavirus vaccine) has apparently been censored by Twitter, according to a substack article:

Kanekoa's Newsletter

Twitter Censors Pfizer-Injured Israeli COVID Vaccine Director

Professor Shmuel Shapira, M.D., MPH, served as the Director General of the Israel Institute for Biological Research (IIBR) between 2013 and 2021, where he led Israel’s effort to develop a coronavirus vaccine. Prof. Shapira is also the founder and head of the Department of Military Medicine of the Hebrew University Faculty of Medicine and IDF Medical Corp…

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4 years ago · 114 likes · 32 comments · KanekoaTheGreat

It must feel good for a flunky in Twitter’s censoring group to maintain the ideological purity of the Twitterati. Here are some choice quotes from the article:

• ‘Last week, Twitter censored Prof. Shapira—who was "physically injured” after his third Pfizer vaccine—and forced him to remove a post which said: "Monkey pox cases were rare for years. During the last years a single case was documented in Israel. It is well established the mRNA vaccines affect the natural immune system. A monkey pox outbreak following massive covid vaccination: *Is not a coincidence."‘

• ‘“I received 3 vaccinations, I was physically injured in a very significant way as many others were injured[.] And in addition, my trust in the nature of the decisions and in the processes of making them has been severely eroded. No one asked and checked…”’

• ‘"According to official data from Australia the more you are injected the more likely you are to get sick as the fourth injection jumps the chance dramatically. According to this study it is supposedly an anti-vaccine at least according to what I have been taught.”’
  

(Hat-tip Jo@MeWe)

Though Fauci had a mottled history before the pandemic (largely due to his mismanagement of AIDS), Collins used to be widely respected. Unfortunately, they have both ruined their legacy with the horribly destructive and arrogant politicization of their COVID response.

I have no doubt that history will judge them harshly.

From the Wall Street Journal editorial board (12/21/2021): [1] (Hat tip @DrJBhattacharya)

• ‘"This proposal from the three fringe epidemiologists . . . seems to be getting a lot of attention – and even a co-signature from Nobel Prize winner Mike Leavitt at Stanford. There needs to be a quick and devastating published take down of its premises," Dr. Collins wrote.’

• “The emails suggest a feedback loop: The media cited Dr. Fauci as an unquestionable authority, and Dr. Fauci got his talking points from the media. Facebook censored mentions of the Great Barrington Declaration. This is how groupthink works.”

• “Rather than try to manipulate public opinion, the job of health officials is to offer their best scientific advice. They shouldn't act like politicians or censors, and when they do, they squander the public's trust.”

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/fauci-collins-emails-great-barrington-declaration-covid-pandemic-lockdown-11640129116