Pandemia: How Coronavirus Hysteria Took Over Our Government, Rights, and Lives
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Review : Alex Berenson previously worked for the New York Times as a business investigative reporter, and is the author of many ‘spy novels.’ Berenson takes such a ‘scattershot’ approach that he hits the target on occasion. But his caustic tone removes him from the legion of responsible journalists and public health officials who are trying to minimize the negative effects of the pandemic. (And currently, while the U.S. is attempting to ‘open up’ again, countries like China are having huge outbreaks once more. And note that the U.S. still is the world ‘leader’ in COVID deaths, and we will shortly reach the one million figure.) Berenson seems to recommend letting everyone catch COVID, and then simply accept the fact that 1% or whatever proportion of our population will die---after which, most of the survivors will have a ‘natural immunity’ to COVID. (Is that really what a responsible journalist would urge?) He wrote in the first chapter of this 2021 book, “This is the true story of how media hysteria, political partisanship, overreliance on unproven technology, and scientific illiteracy brought the United States and the world to the brink of breakdown. The true story of how we trashed civil liberties we had treasured for generations. How we denied school to our children and destroyed small businesses. The true story of how we locked down and hid our faces from one another on the thinnest possible evidence. Of how a public health emergency became big business overnight… and unnecessary lockdowns destroyed small businesses… and forced people off paid employment onto government checks. How we spent a year hiding the risks and overestimating the benefits of vaccines based on a radical new biotechnology. And how we then tried to force the shots on tens of millions of unwilling Americans---while censoring those who raised questions about them. All in response to a virus much less dangerous than the Spanish flu, much less Ebola… This is the true story many of you have never heard… The facts that I and a handful of other journalists and ‘skeptics’ have reported since March 2020 are readily available in government documents and hospital records and scientific papers.†(Pg. 1-2) He continues, “This is the true story of how---to my surprise---I became a leading voice calling for an end to lockdowns and a return to normality… People followed my feed to get information they couldn’t find anywhere else. I tried to source my tweets, offering links to the material I quoted… I will do the same in this book.. But it wasn’t the information I offered that made people love or hate my feed---and me. It was my tone: enraged at the lockdowns, prodding, often sarcastic. I didn’t treat the epidemic with fear. Instead I insisted that ‘virus gonna virus.’ … Even readers who supported me occasionally told me I was going too far, that I needed to remember that the coronavirus really did kill people. But I believed I needed to speak out in a way that couldn’t be ignored.†(Pg. 4) He continues, “Please understand: I am not saying Sars-Cov-2 is not real. I am not saying it does not kill people. What I am saying is that our response to eh coronavirus has been vastly disproportionate. The coronavirus has not disrupted the food chain… It has not overrun hospitals… It kills fewer American children than drowning, cancer, abuse, or a dozen other conditions. We panicked anyway.†(Pg. 9) He asserts, “[Anthony] Fauci and other public health experts … intentionally obscured the fact that the coronavirus posed only a tiny risk to healthy people under fifty… Why? A March 22 paper from a SAGE subcommittee… offered and answer. Only by pretending the virus posed a significant risk to everyone could governments ensure the public would accept lockdowns.†(Pg. 54) He recounts, “doctors tried dozens of therapies. The first to gain wide attention was … hydroxychloroquine or HQC… Other doctors were less convinced… Then President Trump became involved, repeatedly speaking of HQC’s potential. The drug suddenly became a pawn in the larger battle between Trump and the media… Because Trump had supported it, a shocking number of reporters and scientists seemed almost to WANT the drug to fail.†(Pg. 62) Later, he adds, “By late March, the fear and anger were aimed as much at Trump as the virus itself.†(Pg. 75) But he admits, “Trump did not do himself any favors, of course. He repeatedly made foolish and sometimes false statements about Covid. ‘It’s going to disappear,’ he said on February 28. “One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.’ … But his most embarrassing gaffe came … when he suggested rather incoherently that ultraviolet light or a disinfectant might cure Covid.†(Pg. 76-77) He states, “Yet a few of us looking closely at the data---not at what public health authorities or governors …were saying about the data… could see two crucial facts emerging… First, Covid was far less threatening than it had originally seemed. Yes, it could be deadly, especially to the elderly and people with sever comorbidities… But it would NOT overwhelm the medical system, much less all of society. Second, the lockdowns… were useless, if not counterproductive… We grew to understand that tone single datapoint mattered most in charting the epidemic: the number of people HOSPITALIZED with Covid each day, not the number of new cases or death.†(Pg. 117) He argues, “We will never know how many people would have died in 2020 if Covid had not existed, of course… part of the 2020 increase came from deaths caused by lockdowns. Deaths of despair. Surged. Rising overdoes were the most obvious example… Homicides and traffic deaths also rose.†(Pg. 144) Of the federal government’s stimulus/relief programs, he comments, “Ordinary Americans did not cause the Covid epidemic, so why should the government allow lockdowns to bankrupt them? Yet by blunting the economic hardships of lockdowns, policymakers reduced the pressure to end them quickly.†(Pg. 155) He acknowledges, “ ‘The U.S. accounts for 4 percent of the world’s population, and for 22 percent of confirmed Covid deaths,’ the Times reported… These figures were accurate. But… they were a form of misinformation. Wealthier countries accounted for a disproportionate share of Covid deaths. They had more older people at higher risk, and they counted deaths aggressively.†(Pg. 234) Interestingly, he recounts his wife’s reactions to his actions: “My wife’s frustration grew as I became a more public figure, my appearances on Fox rising to multiple times a week… She felt my tone on Twitter was counterproductive. I wasn’t a physician or a scientist. I should debate humbly and with an understanding of what I didn’t know… Instead, I acted arrogantly and alienated potential allies… She told me … I preferred fighting and snark to civil discussions that might change minds.†(Pg. 275) He points out, “The stories were the same everywhere, in every wave. Hospitals were always ABOUT to collapse. But they never did. And the field hospitals, which should have provided the most tangible evidence that Covid patients were too great a strain for the system, instead showed the opposite.†(Pg. 302) He laments, “For more than a year, I had used [Twitter] to put out scientific studies, government data, news articles, and emails from readers about Covid---with a dollop of cynicism and sarcasm. Sometimes two dollops. My audience reached roughly a quarter-million followers… Twitter didn’t pay me. But it gave me access to its audience of 200 million daily users. I could tell them about the ‘Unreported Truths’ booklets---which were not free… Most of all, Twitter LET ME WRITE.†(Pg. 347) Ultimately, he was permanently banned from Twitter, and he complains, “The only answers to the questions I’ve raised for the last two years is to take away my ability to use a platform supposedly intended for free speech?... What has happened to journalism?†(Pg. 380-381) Berenson has not had his ‘free speech’ rights taken away; he publishes his booklets and this book, and posts on Substack, rather than Twitter. Caveat emptor, to his followers.
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