By Dr. Joseph Mercola | mercola.com
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- A “double-mutation” of SARS-CoV-2 is now said to target younger people. Some “experts” interviewed by mainstream media claim it should be viewed as a whole new virus and a brand-new pandemic
- According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, clusters of positive cases among young people have been “connected to participation in youth sports and extracurricular activities.” As a result, the CDC is now suggesting that such activities should be limited
- According to pediatrician and California state senator Dr. Richard Pan, people who criticize the COVID-19 vaccine ought to be labeled as domestic terrorists
- The terms “disinformation” and “misinformation” are inconsistently and hypocritically applied to excuse government incompetence and punish opposition
- Under the pretext of public health safety, we’re told we need censorship, lockdowns, social distancing, mask-wearing, new domestic terrorism laws, and vaccine passports. We need none of those things in order to optimize public health. Those things, however, are necessary for the swift and easeful implementation of the Great Reset
In some areas of the world, including Florida, where I live, life has been fairly normal for almost a full year. Restaurants opened last April, and people have flocked here from out of state and even from other countries to enjoy the fresh air and open businesses. This clearly does not benefit the globalists’ agenda, so, right on cue, fearmongering is ramping up another notch. The latest fear du jour is a “double-mutation” of SARS-CoV-2, said to target younger people.
April 5, 2021, the New York Post1 reported the “double mutant” COVID-19 strain has been detected in California — a state that has experienced some of the longest and most restrictive pandemic measures in the U.S. At the time of that report, one case of the variant had been confirmed by a Stanford laboratory. Seven suspected cases were still being screened.
Fear Du Jour: Vaccine-Evading Variants
The double-mutation virus allegedly has two mutations previously found in two separate variants, which “help it latch onto cells,” the New York Post writes.2 What they want you to fear now is that this new variant may be more resistant to vaccine antibodies. Younger people might also be more susceptible to it.3
According to the Observer,4 “COVID-19 variants could beat vaccines within a year if pharma policy doesn’t change.” In other words, they claim that unless sufficiently high numbers of the global population are vaccinated within nine to 12 months, the virus might mutate to evade first-generation vaccines, rendering them useless.
Oklahoma has also confirmed the presence of variants — one that initially emerged in the U.K., and another that emerged in Brazil. According to The Oklahoman,5 “The faster people can get vaccinated, the slower the virus will spread and fewer people will be exposed to variant strains of the virus, said Dr. Dale Bratzler, the University of Oklahoma’s chief COVID officer.”
In other words, they’re putting everyone’s feet to the fire. Hurry, hurry. Get the vaccine now. If you wait, it’s going to be your fault that the vaccine fails and everyone dies. CNN6 also warns that, unless Americans “double down on safety measures until more people are vaccinated,” more contagious variants will spread like wildfire.
According to CNN, the variant known as B.1.1.7 “is changing the pandemic's playbook and could spell trouble for younger groups that haven't yet been vaccinated.”
‘We’re in a Brand-New Pandemic’
Dr. Peter Hotez went so far as to state that B.1.1.7 should be thought of as a “brand-new virus” that is “acting differently from anything we've seen before.”7 This “we’re in a brand-new pandemic” narrative is also being parroted by Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.8 Osterholm, however, claims that current vaccines are, in fact, effective against the B.1.1.7 variant.
According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, clusters of positive cases among young people have been “connected to participation in youth sports and extracurricular activities.” As a result, the CDC is now suggesting that such activities should be limited, CNN reports.9
If you’ve got the creeping suspicion that we’re about to face another round of lockdowns around the U.S., your spidey senses are probably working just fine. In a recent interview, Osterholm said:10
“There isn’t a country in the world right now that has seen a big increase of this B117 that is not locking down. We’re the exception. And so the bottom line message from all of these countries is, ‘we could not control this virus until we did lock down.’
We have to do a better job of helping the public understand that this is short term. All we’re trying to do is get through this surge of cases that are going to occur over the next six to eight to 10 weeks because of this B117 variant.”
Where, oh where, have we heard that before? “It’s going to be a short-term lockdown, just a couple of weeks to flatten the curve and ensure a functioning hospital system.” Right. Those short-term measures ended up lasting many months in many places, even though hospitals were at no risk of being overrun.
We now have a year’s worth of data showing that lockdowns simply do not work. They cause far more harm than good. Yet they’re trying to sell us the same non-solution using the same justification once more. As the old saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
Dissenting Is Now Domestic Terrorism
The problem we now face is that logical thinking is being vilified. According to pediatrician and California state senator Dr. Richard Pan, people who criticize the COVID-19 vaccine ought to be labeled as domestic terrorists. In an opinion piece in The Washington Post, he writes:11
“Vaccines don’t stop viruses. Vaccinations do. This common public health saying means a vaccine does no good if we can’t get it into people’s arms … but the overall goal of vaccinating a large majority of the U.S. population may ultimately be hampered by the anti-vaccine movement unless steps are taken to limit its impact …
[T]o poison public opinion against vaccinations, could result in countless American deaths. That is akin to domestic terrorism … Some anti-vaccine leaders’ financial well-being depends on endangering everyone else’s health and safety. Social media companies should not be complicit in this dangerous movement … Getting vaccinated is a patriotic act. So is speaking up to support public health efforts.”
With that manipulative and hostile diatribe against law-abiding citizens, Pan secures a lead role in the medical fascism directorate that is spreading faster than the virus.
He even stresses that local and public health officials, not politicians, should be relied upon to lead us to safety. In other words, he’s promoting iatrarchy — meaning government by physicians — which as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. points out has been catastrophic in every instance that it’s been tried. In his foreword to my new book, “The Truth About COVID-19,” Kennedy notes:
“The medical profession has not proven itself an energetic defender of democratic institutions or civil rights. Virtually every doctor in Germany took lead roles in the Third Reich’s project to eliminate mental defectives, homosexuals, handicapped citizens and Jews.
So many hundreds of German physicians participated in Hitler’s worst atrocities — including managing mass murder and unspeakable experiments at the death camps — that the allies had to stage separate “Medical Trials” at Nuremberg. Not a single prominent German doctor or medical association raised their voice in opposition to these projects.
So it’s unsurprising that, instead of demanding blue-ribbon safety science and encouraging honest, open and responsible debate on the science, the badly compromised and newly empowered government health officials charged with managing the COVID-19 pandemic response collaborated with mainstream and social media to shut down discussion on key public health and civil rights questions.”
War on ‘Disinformation’ Is Really War on Dissent
Having a frank and open discussion about the pros and cons, risks, and benefits of vaccination or any other pandemic measure is more likely to result in optimal public health than shoving just one side of the argument down everyone’s throat. But optimal public health is not what the technocratic, globalist elite are after. Their end goal is to manipulate the masses into obedience so that they can acquire even more of their assets.
As noted by Ash Staub in his article12 “The War on Disinformation Is a War on Dissent,” the terms “disinformation” and “misinformation” are simply used “to excuse incompetence and punish the opposition.” He provides a number of examples proving that “theories or facts that don’t fit the official narrative, despite being true, are treated as misinformation or disinformation.”
I would add that this is particularly true when it comes to health information, seeing how it’s virtually impossible to find a single remedy or strategy that works 100% for every single person. There are no absolute truths in medicine. It all depends. Many individual factors come into play. Staub continues:
“Whereas misinformation merely refers to inaccurate or misleading information, the label of disinformation implies an intent to deceive. Both have served as the source of much consternation and hand-wringing from media figures and politicians alike …
While our inability as a society to agree on basic facts is certainly a problem, what should be self-evident is that misinformation and disinformation naturally abound when there is very little trust in sense-making institutions.
If the information sources that are deemed ‘authoritative’ are so often wrong or misleading, and inspire little public confidence, is it any wonder that people turn to alternatives? Misinformation and disinformation are natural consequences of our public institutions’ inconsistency and incompetence.”
Most Americans Think Government Officials Are Lying
According to Staub, 69% of Americans “believe their government intentionally lies to them,” and 61% “believe the news media deliberately ignores certain stories or information.” These are record-low rates of confidence, and government and media would do well to take notice of the fact that censorship only erodes trust, it does not build it.
The fact that they turn to censorship rather than trying to be more forthright suggests they are in fact lying and have no intention of stopping. Since they refuse to tell the truth, the only option they have is to silence counter-narratives in the hope that, over time, objections will die out for lack of support.
The problem is, truth has an appeal of its own, and so, in what appears to be a desperate effort to maintain control, “disinformation” is now being called out as “dangerous,” indeed a form of “domestic terrorism,” because if people listen to “bad” information, they might make decisions that will harm them.
Basically, they’re saying that you’re too stupid to think for yourself. You’ll buy whatever you’re sold, no questions asked, and so they have to make sure you’re exposed only to information that will benefit you. Everyone on the planet ought to be insulted by censoring, because, ultimately, it’s a sign that government and media have zero trusts in your ability to make decisions for yourself.
“Just last month, former NSA general counsel Glenn Gerstell called for an ‘integrated disinformation center within the federal government’ that would employ ‘counterterrorism’ tactics to combat disinformation.
It’s not exactly clear what these counterterrorism tactics would entail, but the idea that institutions that so often lie to the public should be able to decide what is and what is not ‘disinformation,’ with the help of a surveillance apparatus designed to combat terrorism, is truly unnerving,” Staub writes.
“When the only acceptable information is that approved by the ruling administration, there can be no meaningful check on state power. Consent for the establishment agenda can easily be manufactured, and opposition can simply be deemed ‘disinformation’ and treated as ‘dangerous,’ deserving of censorship and removal. With a silenced opposition, power can therefore be exercised with impunity.”
Understanding the Plan Robs Their Power
In a nutshell, authoritarians are taking extreme steps to control the public discourse because they know we don’t trust them. What’s more, they also realize that if people understand the grand plan, their power over the people will be stripped away. The public can only be controlled as long as we don’t understand what they’re trying to accomplish.
So, what are they trying to accomplish? As detailed in many previous articles, it boils down to the global implementation of a new economic system based on technocratic ideology, that will so radically transform and dehumanize society that they simply cannot “sell” it with honesty. The vast majority would be horrified and refuse to go along with it.
Their only option is to sneak it in under the guise of something else. Right now, that something else is the so-called COVID-19 pandemic. Under the pretext of public health safety, we’re told we need censorship, lockdowns, social distancing, mask-wearing, new domestic terrorism laws, and vaccine passports.
We need none of those things in order to optimize public health. Those things, however, are necessary for the swift and easeful implementation of the Great Reset.
Supreme Court Justice Speaks Out Against Censorship
Needless to say, without Big Tech monopolies aiding and abetting, the current level of censorship simply could not occur. The good news is, we may slowly be inching toward a solution. As noted by The Federalist,13 “Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas offered a roadmap to eliminating rampant social media censorship from online monopolies on Monday.”
They’re referring to an April 5, 2021, ruling14 for writ of certiorari on the case of President Joe Biden v. Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, in which Thomas weighed in on the ability of social media giants to control free speech. The Federalist explains:15
“Thomas concurred in an opinion to send the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit with instructions to dismiss as moot, now that Biden is in the White House.
The case, launched in August, questions whether the First Amendment strips government officials of their ability to block third-party accounts on Twitter if the personal account is used to conduct official business. The lower court ruled Trump violated the First Amendment when blocking users on the platform, which served as a public forum.”
However, while then-President Trump was found to have violated free speech rights by blocking certain Twitter followers, Twitter faced no repercussions when it deleted Trump’s account in its entirety, thereby violating the First Amendment rights of 89 million people, which is the number of followers he had when the account was taken down. As noted by Thomas:16
“It seems rather odd to say that something is a government forum when a private company has unrestricted authority to do away with it. The disparity between Twitter’s control and Mr. Trump’s control is stark, to say the least.”
Immunity Without Corresponding Responsibility
Thomas highlights the monopoly power of Big Tech, stressing that when a company has unilateral control over a public forum, it ceases to be a public forum. The solution, then, might be to turn them into public utilities, which aren’t allowed to discriminate against any customer.
“Today’s digital platforms provide avenues for historically unprecedented amounts of speech, including speech by government actors. Also unprecedented, however, is the concentrated control of so much speech in the hands of a few private parties,” Thomas writes.
“We will soon have no choice but to address how our legal doctrines apply to highly concentrated, privately owned information infrastructure such as digital platforms … It changes nothing that these platforms are not the sole means for distributing speech or information.
A person always could choose to avoid the toll bridge or train and instead swim the Charles River or hike the Oregon Trail. But in assessing whether a company exercises substantial market power, what matters is whether the alternatives are comparable. For many of today’s digital platforms, nothing is.
If the analogy between common carriers and digital platforms is correct, then an answer may arise for dissatisfied platform users who would appreciate not being blocked: laws that restrict the platform’s right to exclude.
When a platform’s unilateral control is reduced, a government official’s account begins to better resemble a ‘government-controlled spac[e]’ … This analysis may help explain the Second Circuit’s intuition that part of Mr. Trump’s Twitter account was a public forum.
But that intuition has problems. First, if market power is a predicate for common carriers (as some scholars suggest), nothing in the record evaluates Twitter’s market power. Second, and more problematic, neither the Second Circuit nor respondents have identified any regulation that restricts Twitter from removing an account that would otherwise be a ‘government-controlled space.’
Even if digital platforms are not close enough to common carriers, legislatures might still be able to treat digital platforms like places of public accommodation … ‘[I]t stands to reason that if Congress may demand that telephone companies operate as common carriers, it can ask the same of’ digital platforms. Turner, 512 U. S., at 684 (opinion of O’Connor, J.).
That is especially true because the space constraints on digital platforms are practically nonexistent (unlike on cable companies), so a regulation restricting a digital platform’s right to exclude might not appreciably impede the platform from speaking …
Yet Congress does not appear to have passed these kinds of regulations. To the contrary, it has given digital platforms ‘immunity from certain types of suits’ … with respect to content they distribute, 47 U. S. C. §230, but it has not imposed corresponding responsibilities, like nondiscrimination, that would matter here.
None of this analysis means, however, that the First Amendment is irrelevant until a legislature imposes common carrier or public accommodation restrictions — only that the principal means for regulating digital platforms is through those methods.”
Thomas Confirms Illegality of Government-Sponsored Censorship
Thomas makes another very important point in his statement. He points out that while private entities are “not ordinarily constrained by the First Amendment,” they are indeed so constrained “if the government coerces or induces it to take action the government itself would not be permitted to do, such as censor expression of a lawful viewpoint.”
In other words, a private company has the right to decide what kinds of speech it will allow and which it will not, BUT, if government officials demand that they censor an otherwise lawful viewpoint on their behalf, then that company is liable for having violated the First Amendment.
This is pertinent right now, as elected officials are getting ever more belligerent in their demands that social media platforms censor certain kinds of speech, such as “anti-vaccine” material. As detailed in “Free Speech Threatened by Censorship Extremists,” what they’re doing is illegal, yet they’re doing it anyway. As noted by Thomas:
“The government cannot accomplish through threats of adverse government action what the Constitution prohibits it from doing directly … Under this doctrine, plaintiffs might have colorable claims against a digital platform if it took adverse action against them in response to government threats.”
