Brownstone Institute
Sorry, This Is Not Going Away
From the Brownstone Institute
The kids are two years behind in education. Inflation still rages. White-collar jobs are disappearing thanks to the reversal of Fed policy. Household finances are a wreck. The medical industry is in upheaval. Trust in government has never been lower.
Major media too is discredited. Young people are dying at levels never seen. Populations are still on the move from lockdown states to where it is less likely. Surveillance is everywhere, and so is political persecution. Public health is in a disastrous state, with substance abuse and obesity all at new records.
Each one of these, and many more besides, are continued fallout from the pandemic response that began in March 2020. And yet here we are 38 months later and we still don’t have honesty or truth about the experience. Officials have resigned, politicians have tumbled out of office, and lifetime civil servants have departed their posts, but they don’t cite the great disaster as the excuse. There is always some other reason.
This is the period of the great silence. We’ve all noticed it. The stories in the press recounting all the above are conventionally scrupulous about naming the pandemic response much less naming the individuals responsible. Maybe there is a Freudian explanation: things so obviously terrible and in such recent memory are too painful to mentally process, so we just pretend it didn’t happen. Plenty in power like this solution.
Everyone in a position of influence knows the rules. Don’t talk about the lockdowns. Don’t talk about the mask mandates. Don’t talk about the vaccine mandates that proved useless and damaging and led to millions of professional upheavals. Don’t talk about the economics of it. Don’t talk about collateral damage. When the topic comes up, just say “We did the best we could with the knowledge we had,” even if that is an obvious lie. Above all, don’t seek justice.
There is this document intended to be the “Warren Commission” of Covid slapped together by the old gangsters who advocated for lockdowns. It is called Lessons from the Covid War: An Assessment. The authors are people like Michael Callahan (Massachusetts General Hospital), Gary Edson (former Deputy National Security Advisor), Richard Hatchett, (Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations), Marc Lipsitch (Harvard University), Carter Mecher (Veterans Affairs), and Rajeev Venkayya (former Gates Foundation and now Aerium Therapeutics).
If you have been following this disaster, you know at least some of the names. Years before 2020, they were pushing lockdowns as the solution for infectious disease. Some claim credit for having invented pandemic planning. The years 2020-2022 was their experiment. As it was ongoing, they became media stars, pushing compliance, condemning as disinformation and misinformation anyone who disagreed with them. They were at the heart of the coup d’etat, as engineers or champions of it, that replaced representative democracy quasi-martial law run by the administrative state.
The first sentence of the report is a complaint:
“We were supposed to lay the groundwork for a National Covid Commission. The Covid Crisis Group formed at the beginning of 2021, one year into the pandemic. We thought the U.S. government would soon create or facilitate a commission to study the biggest global crisis so far in the twenty-first century. It has not.”
That is true. There is no National Covid Commission. You know why? Because they could never get away with it, not with legions of experts and passionate citizens who wouldn’t tolerate a coverup.
The public anger is too intense. Lawmakers would be flooded with emails, phone calls, and daily expressions of disgust. It would be a disaster. An honest commission would demand answers that the ruling class is not prepared to give. An “official commission” perpetuating a bunch of baloney would be dead on arrival.
This by itself is a huge victory and a tribute to indefatigable critics.
Instead, the “Covid Crisis Group” met with funding from the Rockefeller and Charles Koch Foundation and slapped together this report. Despite being celebrated as definitive by the New York Times and Washington Post, it has mostly had no impact at all. It is far from obtaining the status of being some kind of canonical assessment. It reads like they were on deadline, fed up, typed lots of words, and called it a day.
Of course it is whitewash.
It begins with a bang to denounce the US policy response: “Our institutions did not meet the moment. They did not have adequate practical strategies or capabilities to prevent, to warn, to defend their communities, or fight back in a coordinated way, in the United States and globally.”
Mistakes were made, as they say.
Of course the upshot of this kvetching is not to criticize what Justice Neil Gorsuch calls “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.” They hardly mention those at all.
Instead they conclude that the US should have surveilled more, locked down sooner (“We believe that on January 28 the U.S. government should have started mobilizing for a possible Covid war”), directed more funds to this agency rather than that, and centralized the response so that rogue states like South Dakota and Florida could not evade centralized authoritarian diktats next time.
The authors propose a series of lessons that are anodyne, bloodless, and carefully crafted to be more-or-less true but ultimately structured to minimize the sheer radicalism and destructiveness of what they favored and did. The lessons are cliches such as we need “not just goals but roadmaps,” and next time we need more “situation awareness.”
There is no new information in the book that I could find, unless something is hidden herein that escaped my notice. It’s more interesting for what it does not say. Some words that never appear in the text: Sweden, Ivermectin, Ventilators, Remdesivir, and Myocarditis.
Perhaps this gives you a sense of the book and its mission. And on matters of the lockdowns, readers are forced to endure claims such as “all of New England — Massachusetts, the city of Boston, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine — seem to us to have done relatively well, including their ad hoc crisis management setups.”
Oh really! Boston destroyed thousands of small businesses and imposed vaccine passports, closed churches, persecuted people for holding house parties, and imposed travel restrictions. There is a reason why the authors don’t elaborate on such preposterous claims. They are simply unsustainable.
One amusing feature seems to me to be a foreshadowing of what is coming. They throw Anthony Fauci under the bus with sniffy dismissals: “Fauci was vulnerable to some attacks because he tried to cover the waterfront in briefing the press and public, stretching beyond his core expertise—and sometimes it showed.”
Oooo, burn!
This is very likely the future. At some point, Fauci will be scapegoated for the whole disaster. He will be assigned to take the fall for what is really the failure of the national security arm of the administrative bureaucracy, which in fact took charge of all rule-making from March 13, 2020, onward, along with their intellectual cheerleaders. The public health people were just there to provide cover.
Curious about the political bias of the book? It is summed up in this passing statement: “Trump was a comorbidity.”
Oh how highbrow! How clever!
Maybe this book by the Covid Crisis Group hopes to be the last word. This will never happen. We are only at the beginning of this. As the economic, social, cultural, and political problems mount, it will become impossible to ignore the incredibly obvious. The masters of lockdowns are influential and well-connected but not even they can invent their own reality.
Author
From the Brownstone Institute
Politico reports that RFK, Jr. plans to ban fluoridation, and the work is already underway. Multiple news outlets repeated this story, yet none of them checked the evidence.
According to the CDC, adding fluoridation to water supplies was among the 20th century’s top ten public health achievements.
“a cornerstone strategy for prevention of cavities in the US It is a practical, cost-effective, and equitable way for communities to improve their residents’ oral health regardless of age, education, or income.”
The CDC states that fluoridated water keeps teeth strong and reduces cavities by about 25% in children and adults.
To validate this statement, the CDC refers to two studies. The first, is a meta-analysis of 20 studies. Eleven studies examined the effectiveness of self- or clinically applied fluoride, and of the nine that examined the effectiveness of water fluoridation none were RCTs, and all were cross-sectional studies. Also, the review, which wasn’t systematic, included adults and no children. The conclusion was limited to suggesting fluoride effectively prevents caries in adults of all ages.
The second study was a Cochrane review. Notably, most studies (71%) were conducted before 1975, when fluoride toothpaste was widely introduced.
The review concludes that little contemporary evidence evaluates the effectiveness of water fluoridation in preventing caries. The observational nature of the studies, the high risk of bias, and the lack of generalisability to current lifestyles limit confidence in the size of the effect estimates.
The review goes on to say that insufficient information exists to determine whether initiating a water fluoridation program changes levels of tooth decay across socioeconomic status. No studies that met the review’s inclusion criteria investigated the effectiveness of water fluoridation in preventing tooth decay in adults.
RFK, Jr. says he would advise the water districts using fluoridation that a lot of science says safety studies still need to be done. RFK, Jr. considers fluoride an industrial waste. He also thinks a federal court ruling could speed up the end of fluoridation in the US.
A judge ordered the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to undertake a risk assessment. Judge Edward Chen found fluoridation could cause developmental damage and lower IQ in children at the levels found in drinking water.
Following this judgment, four water systems, including Salt Lake City’s provider, have stopped or suspended fluoridation due to the ruling.
At the TTE office, we searched for updated evidence published in the last decade, including 32 reviews. A word of caution: the overworked staff at the TTE office is currently unable to assess the evidence fully.
Dental Caries (tooth decay)
A 2021 review of ten studies on Brazilian populations reported that water fluoridation effectively prevents dental caries in children younger than 13 years, even with the widespread use of fluoridated toothpaste. A further review of fluoride for under-fives reports the evidence supporting oral fluoride supplementation for caries prevention is limited and inconsistent.
The WHO reports fluoride intake has both beneficial effects – in reducing the incidence of dental caries – and negative effects – in causing tooth enamel and skeletal fluorosis following prolonged high exposure.
Potential Harms
Reviews include an assessment of dental fluorosis, which affects individuals of all ages, with the highest prevalence below age 11. A further review reported that in 6-18-year-olds, at a water fluoride level of less than 0.7 parts per million, dental fluorosis occurred in 13% (95% CI: 7.5-18%) of the children. Above two parts per million dental fluorosis prevalence rose to 98% (95% CI: 96‒100%). In some regions, the amount of fluoride in the water represents a public health problem as it exceeds national and international regulation levels.
Reviews also assessed an association with hypothyroidism and children’s intelligence. Regarding neurological disorders, the evidence was inconclusive, and the authors call for epidemiological studies to provide further evidence regarding the possible association. A call for evidence that is repeated for establishing whether there is an association with Hip Fracture Risk.
Reviews have also assessed the potential correlation with increased blood pressure, association with chronic kidney disease, and risk of fluoride contamination in groundwater and its impact on the safety and productivity of food and feed crops.
The Impact of Stopping Fluoride
A systematic review, including six cross-sectional design studies, indicated that fluorosis significantly decreased following either a reduction in fluoride concentration or the cessation of adding fluoride to the water supply.
A systematic review of 15 studies identified methodological considerations for designing community water fluoridation cessation studies. These studies would permit an assessment of the effects of cessation on dental caries and the impact on reducing harm.
So, Where Does This Leave RFK, Jr.?
Beware of the swift condemnation of anyone who asks questions. Experts will espouse that fluoride is well-tested, it definitively or significantly decreases caries, and it has no association with any harm—all without reference to the evidence. Furthermore, the argument is lost when an individual who puts forward questions about healthcare exposures is referred to as a denialist.
RFK, Jr. rightly asks questions about an intervention based on evidence going back to the 1930s. In the meantime, there have been growing concerns about harm and little contemporary evidence evaluating the effectiveness of water fluoridation in preventing caries. So, stopping fluoride in the context of epidemiological evaluations isn’t far off the mark.
This post was written by two old geezers who regularly clean their teeth, and remain overworked and apolitical.
Republished from the author’s Substack
Authors
Martin Kulldorff, Sunetra Gupta, Jay Bhattacharya. Authors of the Great Barrington Declaration
From the Brownstone Institute
“At some point in summer of 2020, I decided—what is my career for? If it’s just to have another CV line or a stamp, I’ve wasted my life—that I would speak no matter what the consequences were.”
Many years ago, I was at the wedding of a good friend, a guy who everyone seemed to like. He was/is humble, considerate, kind, and down to earth. I remember telling his mother while at the wedding that I would tell anyone that, “If you don’t like him, then the problem is you.”
I also feel that way about Stanford health economist Jay Bhattacharya. Jay’s nomination by President-elect Trump to be Director of the National Institutes of Health has been a long time coming and is a hopeful signal that national health research policy is headed in the right direction.
Jay was right about all the big things during the Covid pandemic and was an important counter to the destructive hubris of lockdown and mandate-promoting public health leaders and scientists in the US. Along with Martin Kulldorff and Sunetra Gupta, Jay took enormous personal and professional risks in drafting the Great Barrington Declaration in October of 2020. In response to the highly age-stratified mortality of Covid-19 and with the threat of serious collateral damage of continuing lockdowns, school closures, and mandates, the GBD instead promoted the policy of focused protection for vulnerable elderly and infirm people while allowing young and healthy people to live their lives.
The virus was going to infect everyone eventually and establish herd immunity, and there was no evidence that a vaccine (none approved at the time) would stop that natural process. The big question was how to deal with a natural disaster without making the situation much worse. Thus, the debate was focused protection versus unfocused protection—sheltering everyone regardless of their risk of mortality or serious disease until the entire population could be vaccinated with a vaccine of unknown efficacy and net benefit.
At least that’s the debate that should’ve happened. Unfortunately, it didn’t. Jay and his GBD coauthors were attacked, threatened, and slandered. When Jay’s research group published a study showing that the seroprevalence of Covid-19 in Santa Clara County in California was much higher than previously believed, it destroyed the delusion that the virus could be eliminated, that containment was at all possible. Many people didn’t want to hear that, and Jay was subjected to numerous attacks in the media, including a defamatory article in BuzzFeed claiming he was funded by dark money and implied he used questionable methods because he was biased toward the study’s outcome.
The fact that he shortly thereafter authored a paper showing very low seroprevalence in Major League Baseball franchises wasn’t enough to prove his objectivity. The message put forth by the public health establishment would simply not allow any dissent or debate. The policy needed to drive The Science™, and lower-case science could not be allowed to drive the policy.
I signed the Great Barrington Declaration the day it was published on October 4th, 2020. I had seen, and was greatly impressed by, interviews of Jay by Peter Robinson in March and April of 2020 and was heartened by Jay’s calm display of knowledge and humility. Jay described in one of these interviews the uncertainty surrounding the number of people infected and the claims being made by experts like Anthony Fauci regarding the infection fatality rate:
They don’t know it and I don’t know it. We should be honest about that. And we should be honest about that with people who make these policy decisions when making them. In a sense, people plug the worst case into their models, they project two to four million deaths, the newspapers pick up the two to four million deaths, the politicians have to respond, and the scientific basis for that projection…there’s no study underlying that scientific projection.
When asked about the potential for collateral damage to lockdowns, “It’s not dollars versus lives, it’s lives versus lives.” An understanding of the responsibility to avoid collateral harm of lockdowns was essential yet was in extremely short supply. Jay was attacked for this nuanced message. He got emails from colleagues and administrators telling him that questioning the high infection fatality rate was irresponsible. Yet, someone had to do it. However, the interviews went viral, because Jay gave millions of people something they didn’t have and desperately needed. He gave them hope.
As the year went on, Jay became the face of the opposition to unfocused protection, appearing in countless interviews and writing countless articles. He became an advisor to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who vowed to not lock down the people of Florida again after an initial wave of closures. When waves of Covid inevitably hit Florida, Stanford students papered the campus with pictures of Jay next to Florida death rates, implying Jay’s nuanced message was responsible for the deaths of thousands of people. When the age-adjusted mortality rate of Florida ended up being rather average compared to other states, including lockdown and mandate-happy California, no one apologized.
YouTube censored a public forum with Jay and Martin Kulldorff and Governor DeSantis, where they made claims about the hazards of continuous lockdowns, school closures, and mandates that months before wouldn’t have been at all controversial. After the GBD was published, Jay and Martin were invited to the White House by Covid advisor Scott Atlas to discuss the idea of focused protection with President Trump. Despite that meeting, the political battle continued to be an uphill fight.
The response of federal officials was shameful. Fauci and White House Covid Advisor Deborah Birx boycotted the meeting. Then NIH Director Francis Collins called for a “swift and devastating takedown” of the GBD’s premise and called the authors “fringe epidemiologists.” There simply was no appetite at the highest levels for a nuanced message or any debate whatsoever. Media coverage of Jay and other Covid response critics continued to be toxic.
Yet Jay’s appearances and message continued to inspire millions of people and give them hope. I began writing in support of focused protection and against the constant doom-saying that was harming everyone, especially children. I met Jay in the fall of 2021 because of my writing, at a conference organized by Brownstone Institute. “I think we are making a difference,” he said after shaking my hand. Like many other people he had inspired to take a stance against Covid hysteria, I needed to hear that.
The next day, Jay was preparing to give his speech in front of a small crowd in the ballroom, and I sat next to him while he reviewed his notes during the previous speaker’s talk. Although he was dressed in a suit and tie, when glancing down, I noticed Jay had a hole in his dress shoe. This truly wasn’t about money or even status. He was simply doing what he believed was morally right.
Later on, Jay helped spearhead a couple of Covid-related projects I was also involved in (I was there largely due to his influence). First was the Norfolk Group, which produced a resource document for the US Congress titled “Questions for a COVID-19 Commission” and the second was Florida’s Public Health Integrity Committee formed by Governor DeSantis and led by Florida Surgeon General Joe Ladapo. Both groups attempted to bring accountability for the US public health response, and I believe they were successful in spotlighting just how wrong and harmful lockdowns and mandates were for the very public they were supposed to help.
During the initial Norfolk Group meeting, Jay often talked about the moment of no return, “crossing the Rubicon,” as he put it, the moment that each one of us made a conscientious decision to stand up against the mob. He later recalled in an interview with Jordan Peterson: “At some point in summer of 2020, I decided—what is my career for? If it’s just to have another CV line or a stamp, I’ve wasted my life—that I would speak no matter what the consequences were.”
The world has benefitted from Jay’s crossing of the Rubicon. His nomination, after years in the wilderness and on the “fringe” of public health and health policy, restores a sense that there is in fact justice in the world. Now he moves on to the significant task of reforming health research policy. We should be cheering him on all the way.
And if you don’t like Jay, then the problem is you.
Republished from the author’s Substack
Author
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