COVID-19
The New York Times Finally Admits to the Harm Done to Children
From the Brownstone Institute
The New York Times published an op-ed over the weekend entitled ”The Startling Evidence of Learning Loss Is In.” Here’s the second paragraph:
The evidence is now in, and it is startling. The school closures that took 50 million children out of classrooms at the start of the pandemic may prove to be the most damaging disruption in the history of American education. It also set student progress in math and reading back by two decades and widened the achievement gap that separates poor and wealthy children.
For anyone who has been paying even a modest amount of attention for the past 3 ½ years, the evidence is anything but startling.
People often ask me, and even more so since this “startling” piece hit the digital airwaves: “Don’t you feel redeemed?”
In fact, it’s hard to describe how angry this “revelatory” piece of writing makes me. More than 3 years too late, the New York Times has now given permission to acknowledge what was obvious from the beginning. But if you dared to say so in 2020, or 2021, or even 2022, you were smeared with all sorts of career-ending ad hominem attacks, including but not limited to: racist, eugenicist, ableist, science-denying alt-right Trumper, flat earther and sometimes Nazi.
So no. I don’t feel grateful that the New York Times has finally deemed this subject acceptable to talk about when the damage has already been done to both American children and those dissenters who challenged the fear-mongering, and data-denying mainstream narrative with actual science and facts.
Furthermore, this “journalistic” outfit fails to acknowledge their own complicity in these devastating results.
It was clear what would happen all along, but the New York Times failed to interrogate the issue and instead published “the science” as determined by Big Pharma press releases, teachers’ unions, and government leaders cowing in the face of public health bureaucrats.
My first writing on the subject was this in February 2021, but I had started pushing back from day one — March 2020 — in my own community, on news programs, on social media, and with open schools rallies, like the one pictured here from December 2020.
There were times I felt like I was going insane because it was all so patently clear what was happening and would only be made worse the longer schools stayed close: the learning loss; the disengagement from education overall; the depression and anxiety and suicidality due to severe isolation (often summarized as “mental health impacts”); the chronic absenteeism that would inevitably come because when you tell kids that their education isn’t important – isn’t a societal priority – well, they will believe you; the dropout rates; the graduating without being able to read; the abuse at home; the loss of community and hope.
But the more we sounded the alarm bell the more we were demonized.
Unsurprisingly, the poorest, most vulnerable children were harmed the most. Which is also clearly what was going to happen from the outset if you exercised even a modicum of common sense. Because, despite the wealthy hordes in Los Angeles and New York City shrieking about how We’re all in this together! –from their fancy balconies in the Hollywood Hills and the acreage of their Montana vacation homes — they also hired private tutors and formed learning pods with hired help to guide their kids and make sure they stayed on track. And, their children returned to their $60k a year private schools in the fall of 2020, a year before those who couldn’t afford the luxury of in-person education.
It was poor and low-income children who were left home alone to navigate “Zoom school” while their parents worked hourly wage “essential” jobs. And it was poor and low-income children left home to take care of younger siblings. Or find community – and trouble – outside of school. It was poor and low-income children who missed meals by not being in school, who didn’t have WIFI that worked, who didn’t have adult intervention and oversight that happens in school.
But no child was immune to the impacts. Just when adolescents are meant to be individuating from their parents, they were forced to be at home, alone, relying on screens for any sense of connection to their peers. They missed out on proms, football games, debate club, youth sports, graduations, and all of the small everyday milestones that make a teen’s life. And they were given no hope that it would ever end because it just kept going and going. In some states students experienced disruption to their schooling for as long as 19 months.
And even then, when they finally returned to school full time, they suffered under onerous restrictions including masking, distancing, testing, periodic closures, and no extra-curricular activities.
Furthermore, young people were made to feel like horrible monsters if they struggled with this isolation. They were called selfish grandma killers if they yearned for their friends or wanted to celebrate their graduations. They were made to feel shame for being human. Is it surprising that record numbers of young people were thrown into depression, anxiety, eating disorders, suicidal ideation, drug use, and sometimes, even suicide?
It’s nice that the New York Times has caught on now. But in this accurate oh-so-too-late piece, they fail to acknowledge their own complicity in extending and furthering the devastating, ineffective, and morally abhorrent school closures during 2020-2021, with restrictions to children continuing for more than a year after schools actually opened everywhere in the Fall of 2021.
They elevated the voices of those who furthered fear with a schools needs to be closed or else all the children and teachers will die hysteria.
Science reporter Apoorva Mandavilli persistently stoked fears about the danger of Covid to children and downplayed the significant risks of keeping them at home, “learning” on screens, isolated from their peers.
In October 2021, just as children across the country were heading back to school, Mandavilli exaggerated the number of children hospitalized for Covid by 14x, or 837,000 cases.
She continued to stoke unwarranted fear just when kids were going to get a semblance of their lives back, at a time when adults had been going to bars and dance clubs and sports stadiums for over a year.
Was her intention to encourage school districts to shut down again? Who knows. Certainly, she got the numbers way way wrong. She was so caught up in the fear-furthering hysteria — having participated in it for a year and a half at that point — she must have lost the ability to count.
Certainly, there was ample evidence that kids were at little to no risk, nor had they been since the very beginning. But any suggestion — with data cited — that Covid was not in fact dangerous to kids, was deemed “Covid denialism” by Mandavilli.
This is a science reporter for the New York Times, folks, not some Twitter rando. Her articles and Tweets carried real weight and influence.
The New York Times failed to interrogate the issue of closed schools during Covid in real time. They platformed fear-mongers and silenced, vilified, or just ignored dissenters, which included renowned doctors and scientists who dared to challenge the mainstream narrative like those featured in the pages of this publication.
The New York Times consistently published government and Big Pharma issued press releases as if they were journalism. They platformed the spokespeople of these entities and their paid influencers furthering unwarranted fear and packaging it as “the science.”
If a normie like me could read and interpret the data available since March 2020 and know that not only would closed schools be incredibly harmful to the most vulnerable children, but that their risk from Covid was thousands of times less than an elderly person, then certainly the science desk at the New York Times should have been able to do so.
Simply pushing the narrative that “everyone was at equal risk” was journalistic malpractice.
The news organization needs to go so many steps further than this op-ed.
They need to apologize for their untruthful, damaging reporting which gave cover to government leaders in refusing to open schools and teachers’ unions in refusing to return their members to the classroom.
They need to apologize for smearing those of us who challenged. We didn’t just suffer reputational harm and hurt feelings. We lost friends, our communities, our jobs, in some cases. And our voices were not part of the necessary societal discussion that needed to happen but didn’t. Because the New York Times presented one viewpoint — kids are at terrible risk and schools need to stay closed — as the undisputed “science.” As inarguable fact. Anyone who dissented was clearly an insane, selfish, and very dangerous lunatic.
Lastly, after apologizing to both the children harmed and the dissenters dragged through the mud, the New York Times needs to pursue this story relentlessly. So that children get the help they so desperately need and deserve.
And so that it never happens again.
Author
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| Dr. Raphael Lataster provides an update on the emerging peer-reviewed literature that continues to expand the data, analysis, and confirmation that the EUA/OWS mRNA vaccines were neither safe nor effective. Drs. Peter Marks, Robert Kadlec, NIH/NIAID VRC, Pfizer and Moderna were wrong to rush these products out while bypassing the accumulated regulatory and bioethics wisdom developed over decades. They must be held accountable. |
Raphael Lataster, PhD
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Two new peer-reviewed medical journal articles indicate that the science is starting to catch up with the ‘conspiracy theorists’ and ‘anti-vaxxers’ such as myself, also known as people that rationally asked questions of novel products that were rushed out the door, to help stem a pandemic that was far less deadly than all other causes, including cardiovascular disease, cancer, and even tobacco use (and note that COVID-19 deaths tend to be inflated). Publishing in the Polish Annals of Medicine, Thoene conducts a limited literature review on the reporting of COVID-19 vaccine severe adverse events in scientific journals, finding:
“From 2020 to 2024, the literature has gone from claiming there are absolutely no SAEs from mRNA based vaccines (2020/2021) to an acknowledgment of a significant number of various SAEs (2023/2024); including but not limited to neurological complications, myocarditis, pericarditis and thrombosis. … The early scientific literature was biased, so as not to report SAEs, due to social and political concerns and overwhelming corporate greed. Only in the last year have scientists been able to publish articles that acknow- ledge a high number of SAEs linked to mRNA based vaccines. This should act as a warning that science should be completely objective when evaluating health risks, but can often be influenced by social and economic considerations.” Source.
Proving once again that Eastern Europeans are based (the Hungarians stand up to the EU on immigration [source], and the Bulgarians published my little study on the correlation between COVID-19 vaccination and European excess mortality), the Polish journal kindly accepted my brief response, entitled ‘Scientific views around mRNA based covid vaccines are changing, but to what end?’, praising them and Thoene for this important paper, and noting that this is only the tip of the iceberg. Source. There is so much more in the published science that most people are unaware of, such as:
- Thacker, on “issues such as data falsification and patient unblinding concerning Pfizer’s vaccine trial”.
- Fraiman et al., on the “excess risk of serious adverse events of special interest with the mRNA vaccines”.
- Benn et al., on there being “no statistically significant decrease in COVID-19 deaths in the mRNA vaccine clinical trials, while there was an increase (also not statistically significant) in total deaths”.
- The JECP4 articles by Doshi’s team and Lataster’s team (of one, because nobody likes me…) on “counting window issues (such as counting window delays, counting window biases, and counting window misclassifications), likely leading to exaggerated effectiveness and safety estimates” in the clinical trials and major observational studies, with one of the major problems being “when COVID-19 infections are being overlooked in the ‘partially vaccinated,’ and in some cases were even ascribed to unvaccinated groups”. Note that Mead et al. discussed some similar issues and yet was astonishingly retracted.
- Faksova et al., which Thoene barely mentioned, and which demonstrated that the vaccines are associated with several concerning adverse effects, despite employing a counting window endpoint of only 42 days following vaccination.
- Raethke et al., “which noted a rate of serious adverse drug reactions of approximately 1 per 400 people”, which I note compares “very unfavourably with UK government estimates on the numbers needed to vaccinate in young and healthy people to prevent a severe COVID-19 hospitalisation being in the hundreds of thousands”.
- Mostert et al., on the “mysterious problem of excess mortality post-pandemic, which they hint could be related to the COVID-19 vaccines”, and my aforementioned Bulgarian Medicine article demonstrating that there are indeed correlations between COVID-19 vaccination and European excess deaths.
- Of course, my ‘favourite’ topic, COVID-19 vaccine negative effectiveness, where “the vaccines increase the chance of COVID-19 infection, and even COVID-19 death, a ‘benefit’ which is of course a poor trade-off for the risk of (other) adverse effects”. This “led to some discussion in major medical journals such as the BMJ [and also AJGP], with the most common excuse for this phenomenon being that there must be some confounding variable at play”, an “excuse that somehow does not apply before vaccine effectiveness crosses the x-axis, indicating a clear double standard (one of many) in how the vaccines are evaluated”.
- Fürst et al. (those Eastern Europeans again!), on evidence “that a healthy vaccinee bias is at play”, which “would further imply that the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines is being exaggerated, beyond the effects of counting window issues and other data manipulations, even when declining to zero and beyond”.
- The “substantive critiques appearing in influential medical journals of major observational studies purporting the benefits of the vaccines (with more on the way)”. These include my BMJ rapid response on the WHO’s jab study and the little academic debate between myself and a team from Johns Hopkins. Much more coming soon…
Still wondering how I managed to get this published, I end with a stark warning for those who partook in the deadly con:
“There is clearly much research on the COVID-19 vaccines, published in the biggest medical journals, which greatly contradict the mainstream and early, as well as ongoing, claims concerning their safety and effectiveness, and even necessity, for all. There is much more not mentioned in this brief article, and there is no doubt more to come. It seems obvious to me, that at least for the young and healthy, COVID-19 vaccines are most certainly not worth the risk, even when considering just a single adverse effect (myocarditis), no matter how rare it is purported to be – serious COVID-19 in the young and healthy is rarer still, and the same is even more true when considering the little to no benefits offered by what increasingly appears to be a feckless vaccine.
There have already been many legal actions, including victories (as with myself), initiated on behalf of the (somehow still alive) unvaccinated who were persecuted over a pharmaceutical product that they clearly did not need, and the vaccinated who have died and otherwise been injured as a result of vaccination. I anticipate that many more lawsuits are on the horizon, involving – amongst others – the vaccine manufacturers; the government officials that approved, encouraged, and even mandated the vaccines; and the many doctors and scientists who effectively betrayed their professions and public trust in encouraging the use of these flawed products based on very limited and even manipulated scientific evidence.”
Of course, while the science is starting to catch up, and the lawsuits are continuing apace (source), we’re still being told by our governments and mainstream media to roll up our sleeves, even those of us as young as 6 months. Source and source.
Okay then.
Okay Then News (and the associated forum at CovidSkeptics.com) is my personal collection of evidences against mainstream narratives, made freely available to the public. Subscribe for free email updates, here.
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To preface, the amount of knowledge I have in our legal system would fit into a thimble with a lot of room leftover to hold, well…a lot of other stuff that would fit into a thimble.
But I’m going to do my best to cover the certification hearing for the Class Action Lawsuit against the Province of Alberta by Rath and Company, on behalf of Rebecca Ingram and Chris Scott.
For the purposes of keeping this to a reasonable length, I’ll be hitting more along the lines of the high-notes instead of going through and summarizing the thousands of pages submitted by Rath and Co + the Province and keep to what I found most interesting throughout the 2 days I’d spent down at the courthouse viewing. The hearing was to allow both sides to submit their briefs and so that Justice Feasby could make sure that he understood the base of their cases, qualify information and take it away for judgement.
Even if Rath is successful in having this Class Action Certified, there is still a long road ahead to succeed in getting damages covered and a trial to be had and because of the specifics of the mishandling by the Province throughout the pandemic, if they are successful here, it doesn’t mean that every other province can proceed ahead, under the same criteria.
What does this mean?
The previous case against the Province with Rebecca Ingram, showed that the non-pharmaceutical interventions – lockdowns, businesses closed, capacity limits…were ruled Ultra Vires (beyond legal power or authority), by Justice Romaine…in that, these weren’t actually made by the Chief Medical Officer of Health (CMOH), Deena Hinshaw, they were made by Cabinet…and Cabinet hid behind Hinshaw issuing these orders under the Public Health Act instead of working with the Emergency Management Act.
Because of “Cabinet Privilege”, information was revealed by the CMOH and Justice Romaine – in camera (private) – we can only speculate the reasons for this.
One could argue that because the province and Alberta Health Services got 100% of everything wrong during the pandemic, that this was just another link in the very weak chain…
However, it’s also possible that the Cabinet Members making these decisions wanted to hide and remain hidden for political purposes, as in…those making the decisions to close down businesses didn’t want to have to face voters in a subsequent election, knowing the damages that they’d caused in the business community.
Seeing how many small businesses were closed down, to never reopen…savings spent, jobs and homes lost, lives impacted by these decisions, arguably touching every single person in the province, would make for some bad press and a constituencies filled with voters showing up with a chip on their shoulder towards those who made these decisions and still chose to run for Legislature again.
In addition to this…If the orders were run through the Emergency Management Act, all of the businesses impacted would be entitled to compensation, whereas under the Public Healthcare Act…they weren’t.
It’s based on these specificities that Rath argued that the Province acted in ‘Bad Faith’ as the basis for their case, in that, the province made decisions that they didn’t have the authority to make and absolutely had to have known would harm businesses and made them through the PHA which restricted these businesses from being compensated.
Rath had completed his presentation of their brief before lunch on the first day, where Feasby had a couple of points that he wanted clarified…which was completed after lunch on this same day.
And then…the Province took the podium.
As I’d previously stated, this was a bloodbath for the afternoon of Day 1 and continued on throughout their presentation on Day 2, where by Feasby openly mocked each member of the Province – Dube, Chu and Flanders.
Rightfully so, if I might add, because a lot of their logic was illogical and even to those of us in the gallery, laughable both with and without comments from the Justice.
On day 2, because of the chorus of opened mouthed guffaw from the gallery, we’d all received a warning try and keep it down.
Arguments made by the province which were stunning and laughable:
- The public does have a right to accountability and that these would be ‘Ballot Box Issues’, of course recognizing that Cabinet was the ones who made these decisions but because they were hidden behind Cabinet Confidence, we can’t actually have accountability, which of course Dube knew;
- The Plaintiffs (Rath on behalf of Ingram and Scott) needed to name the members responsible – which were, again, hidden by cabinet confidence;
- There is no fiduciary accountability afforded under the Public Health Act, where the interventions were deemed Ultra Vires;
- The Province couldn’t have known that businesses would be harmed by the orders – where Feasby stated that it would be impossible for them to Not Know;
- Businesses are not members of a vulnerable group – though were identified by the CMOH orders;
- There is no Nexus or Proximity between the Acts (CMOH orders) and Injury – where Feasby stated causation where orders made, closed businesses, that caused injury was the connection;
- A breach of the Bill of Rights does not necessitate compensation, where the use of the Public Health Act was engaged illegally by cabinet;
- No common issues exist – where all businesses that were impacted were impacted financially;
- Not all businesses that were impacted abided by the CMOH orders, though they may be able to still show financial losses during these times;
- Abuse of Power, by Cabinet in their orders, wasn’t actually an Abuse of Power because it was done in good faith;
- Even without the orders, during the pandemic, people still wanted to just stay home and avoid going out – they actually said this;
- Although the Pandemic Orders were deemed Ultra Vires, they were valid at the time. This was particularly stupid as an argument made repeatedly by Chu and lost the province some large points with Feasby. Her logic is that the orders WERE Valid up until the time they were deemed Ultra Vires…where Feasby stated, a definitive ‘Nope’. Once they were deemed Ultra Vires, this extended back to when they were put in place.
- The Plaintiffs should be suing Alberta Health Services, arguing that AHS is not the province, again another stupid point where the judge stated, “You can’t stand here with a straight face and make this as an argument”.
- Expropriation of businesses wasn’t actually expropriation (businesses shut down or limited in capacity were essentially expropriated – partially or fully taken away from leaseholders and property owners), because there were no transfer of titles and they weren’t kept by the province on a forever hold. When I’d asked Eva Chipiuk about this, she stated that the province had effectively made this up as terms of expropriation, this isn’t what it actually means…and this was clarified to the Justice by Jeff on reply following the Province stating their case on Day 2.
- Classes of businesses could not be identified for a Class Action Lawsuit – where, orders put out by the CMOH on behalf of Cabinet, specifically identified the types of businesses that would need to close or limit capacity. Jeff made a point on this where in the early stages, Casinos and Stripper Bars were allowed to be left open while Schools were closed. I did get a good laugh out of this recollection of events;
- It would be more beneficial for businesses who were harmed to represent themselves individually instead of through a Class Action – where smaller businesses would pay in excess of their claim in legal fees and clog the courts for decades;
- Businesses that lost money throughout this time would have immediately made it back once they were reopened – of which there is absolutely no way they could make this determination especially given the fact that hundreds of businesses closed forever during this time;
- Chris Scott and the Whistle Stop Cafe isn’t a suitable representation in the class action because Scott didn’t abide by CMOH orders, crowd funded over $100k, needed to hire more staff because of the surge of business that he’d received because of publicity around his location, paid off a loan for property, all in 2021…where, Chris did actually abide by CMOH orders in 2020, did lose money, was on the verge of bankruptcy and only worked to mitigate damages following several months of losses due to the CMOH orders;
- Chris Scott may have actually made more because of the pandemic, despite the fact that he was arrested, closed down, abided by CMOH orders in 2020, was getting death threats because of being branded negatively through media spun by his lack of compliance for the orders to keep him from losing everything;
There may be more…this is what I could get out of the 36 pages of notes that I’d taken over the course of the 2 days…but basically the Province brought in the C-Team of Lawyers making in attempts to make the case that:
AHS is not the province, acted illegally but in good faith, is not responsible for any damages because they didn’t fully expropriate businesses forever, couldn’t have known that businesses wouldn’t suffer from financial losses in being closed or restricted for months on end and even if they did, probably made their money back if not more money when they finally opened and couldn’t be lumped together because REASONS.
Whereas against the province, Rath and Company makes the claim that:
Cabinet made decisions that turned into illegal orders under the Public Healthcare Act, not using the Emergency Management Act so that they could hide the identity of the decision makers and skate on being financially liable for losses they knew would be incurred by businesses that were shut – acting in bad faith.
And again…while I don’t know a whole lot about the legal system, all of the laws and terms used throughout these 2 days, can appreciate that all requirements for a Class Action were met and responded to. The legality and relevance of these will be weighed by Justice Feasby and he’d seemed confident that he’ll be able to have a ruling on the Certification for Class Action by December 1st, 2024…and closed out with a statement that he wasn’t going to be accepting any additional documentation from either party. They’d effectively had their ‘day in court’, and had opportunity to clarify their cases.
Hope ya made it through all of this…and I hope it makes as much sense to you as does to me as in a solid – kinda. If you were watching the livestream or in the gallery and noted anything additional worthy of mention or correct me in any errors, please do so in the comments.
I’m looking forward to the next leg in this journey!
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