If Netsafe are serious about tackling fake news and Covid misinformation, they should start with the New Zealand government, the mainstream media, and the Jacinda Arderns, Siouxsie Wiles’ and Shaun Hendy’s.
After all, it was Jacinda Ardern who claimed to be “your sole source of truth”. Except that almost everything she said about Covid was false. The mainstream media got nearly everything wrong, too. As for the self-proclaimed “experts” — they were wrong on stilts.
In fact, here’s just a partial list of the biggest things the mainstream media are finally, if quietly, admitting the Sole Sources of Truth got wrong, wrong, wrong — and we “misinformation peddlars” got right.
In the past few weeks, a series of analyses published by highly respected researchers have exposed a truth about public health officials during Covid:
Much of the time, they were wrong.
Sure, it’s one thing to be wrong about something you don’t have a lot of information about. Especially when everyone’s clamouring for answers. Anyone can make a mistake. But it’s one thing to make a mistake — quite another to not only not admit you were wrong but double-down on being wrong and attack and censor the people who are right. Especially when the consequences of your being wrong are ruining lives and irreparably damaging public trust in medicine and science.
In the final analysis, public health officials actively propagated misinformation.
Natural immunity offers little protection compared to vaccinated immunity
A Lancet study looked at 65 major studies in 19 countries on natural immunity. The researchers concluded that natural immunity was at least as effective as the primary Covid vaccine series.
They don’t even have the poor excuse of a lack of information for this one. Doctors have known for over 2,000 years that people who’ve recovered from infection are protected against severe disease if reinfected.
Masks prevent Covid transmission
Cochrane Reviews are considered the most authoritative and independent assessment of evidence in medicine. And one published last month by a highly-respected Oxford research team found that masks had no significant impact on Covid transmission.
Again, they didn’t have to wait for a new study. Existing reviews had assessed the evidence before Covid and concluded the same thing: mass mask mandates were a wicked waste which did nothing to stop the pandemic.
I’m disappointed mask wearing is not being kept mandatory for schools and tertiary education… We should be normalising the wearing of masks
Siouxsie Wiles
School closures reduce Covid transmission
The CDC ignored the European experience of keeping schools open, most without mask mandates. Transmission rates were no different, evidenced by studies conducted in Spain and Sweden.
Not only that, we knew very early on that children were the least likely to catch Covid, let alone pass it on.
Myocarditis from the vaccine is less common than from the infection
Public health officials downplayed concerns about vaccine-induced myocarditis — or inflammation of the heart muscle. They cited poorly designed studies that under-captured complication rates. A flurry of well-designed studies said the opposite. We now know that myocarditis is six to 28-times more common after the Covid vaccine than after the infection among 16- to 24-year-old males. Tens of thousands of children likely got myocarditis, mostly subclinical, from a Covid vaccine they did not need because they were entirely healthy or because they already had Covid.
None of that means you have to buy into the “died suddenly” narrative that the vaccines are knocking people down like ninepins. But it does mean that, once again, the “sole sources of truth” lied and censored the truth.
Young people benefit from a vaccine booster
Boosters reduced hospitalisation in older, high-risk Americans. But the evidence was never there that they lower Covid mortality in young healthy people.
Yet the political pressure for vaccine mandates — something else they lied would never happen — was so intense that even FDA vaccine experts quit in protest.
Even if your child has already had Covid-19, it’s still a great idea to complete the full course of vaccinations
Siouxsie Wiles
Vaccine mandates increased vaccination rates
But after the broad recognition that vaccination does not reduce transmission, the mandates persisted, and still do to this day. A recent study from George Mason University details how vaccine mandates in nine major U.S. cities had no impact on vaccination rates. They also had no impact on Covid transmission rates.
Again, this was known to be untrue before Covid. European studies had shown that countries which mandated other vaccines showed no greater update than those that made vaccination voluntary — as it should be.
[I’m] immensely disappointed by mandate changes
Siouxie Wiles
Covid originating from the Wuhan Lab is a conspiracy theory
Google admitted to suppressing searches of “lab leak” during the pandemic.
And yet, now US government agencies are backing what we were screamed at was “harmful disinformation”.
There’s nothing to support the lab leak theory, and lots to support the natural origins [theory] — Siouxsie Wiles
NewsHub
Dr Wiles says some governments may be motivated to stoke conspiratorial fires to distract from their own abysmal responses to the pandemic.
One in five people get long Covid
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention claims that 20% of Covid infections can result in long Covid. But a U.K. study found that only 3% of Covid patients had residual symptoms lasting 12 weeks. What explains the disparity?
Yet again, there was no excuse for peddling lies about something we already knew, well before Covid: persistent fatigue and weakness after a severe lung infection are very common.
What’s most amazing about all the misinformation conveyed by CDC and public health officials, is that there has been no apologies for holding on to their recommendations for so long after the data became apparent that they were dead wrong. Public health officials said “you must” when the correct answer should have been “we’re not sure.”
Early on, in the absence of good data, public health officials chose a path of stern paternalism. Today, they are in denial of a mountain of strong studies showing that they were wrong.
New York Post
Not a single one of these lying troughers should be given a cent of public money until at least they make a full public apology. None of them should ever be cited by media or government as an “expert”, ever again. Politicians should apologise and stand down. The media should publish front-page retractions and apologies.
“Disinformation experts” who failed to speak up about the biggest campaign of disinformation in recent history should be sacked and forced to pay back any taxpayer funding.
Of course, “should” doesn’t mean “will”. Pigs will fly first.