Where would we be today if the mainstream media was staffed with the gin-swilling muckrakers of yore and not the easily triggered posers selected for employment in the field by demonstrating their servility to power?

The following will repeat the indisputable facts of 2020 as reported at The National Pulse. No theories emanating from the facts will be proposed. Instead, at appropriate intervals, questions will be suggested that legacy media reporters should have asked but did not.

The United States funds and staffs a bureaucracy whose sole purpose is to prevent pandemics, and when that is not possible, to have in place the means and methods to mitigate them. The highest paid employee of the federal government, Anthony Fauci, oversees this elite-response team, to give an idea how seriously our nation takes the imperative of preparedness.

During his extended tenure, Fauci has authorized large expenditures of American taxpayer dollars for the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, either knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that the facility was taking naturally occurring bat viruses and making them into human viruses, through gain-of-function research.

Questions: 

• How does creating deadly human viruses and putting them in vials on shelves in Communist China assist pandemic-bureaucrats in the U.S. to fight such viruses?  

• Did anyone bother to measure the potential harm of creating bat virus against the possible good? Where’s that research? 

• Were strings attached to U.S. funding to assure maximum protection against accidental release? 

• Was there a separate and enforceable provision in all grants to the Wuhan Institute of Virology that said in the event a virus of the type being manufactured in the lab infects anyone, the U.S. will have an absolute right to send investigators and China will have an obligation to fully disclose all potentially relevant details?

A deadly virus emanated from Wuhan attacking mostly the old and the otherwise physically vulnerable.

The most logical explanation is that the virus was released from the Wuhan Institute of Virology where it had been created, in part, using Fauci’s gain-of-function grants. Yet, those who explored the lab-leak theory were derided and suppressed in the mainstream media.

Computer modeling showed that if left unchecked, COVID would cause an immediate cluster of illnesses that would overwhelm hospitals. A policy decision was made to try a series of prophylactic measures – social distancing and lockdowns – to “slow the spread” for 15 and then 30-days so that hospitals would not be overwhelmed.

There was not a body of peer-reviewed research saying that these measures could actually slow the spread of a virus. As The New York Times has noted, “The origin of the 6-foot distancing recommendation is something of a mystery. ‘It’s almost like it was pulled out of thin air,’ said Linsey Marr, an expert on viral transmission at Virginia Tech University.”

Lockdowns, instead, were a “might-as-well-try-it” response to predictions that millions were at risk of asphyxiation if hospitals were overwhelmed and could not provide enough respirators. They first had been imposed in China in response to the virus.

Although unscientific, these desperation measures were implemented. Even dyed-in-the-wool Trumpists, like President Trump himself and Florida Governor DeSantis, agreed with this policy, because the alternative was unthinkable.

Question:

• Were lockdowns themselves a Chinese Communist Party tactic promoted into the West by CCP connected scientists at the World Health Organization?

The hospital overcrowding never happened. New York came close, but not close enough to ever use a 1,000-bed hospital ship the federal government had parked at Pier 90 in Manhattan. We now know New York came close because the governor there sent pandemic patients into nursing homes and they infected other vulnerable people.

Question: 

• Why did New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and some other governors send COVID patients into nursing homes? 

• When will they be held accountable?

At the conclusion of the 30-days to slow the spread, The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), a politically unaffiliated association of highly credentialed scientists in the heart of Trump-country, recommended an end to lockdowns.

On May 6, 2020, UPMC’s Chief Medical and Scientific Officer, Steven Shapiro, M.D., provided a frank assessment of what had been learned in the 30-days to slow the spread. He pointed out that although hospitals were essentially emptied during the thirty days, virus patients never “surged” to fill the beds.

He wrote: 

At peak in mid-April, COVID-19 patients occupied 2% of our 5,500 hospital beds and 48 of our 750 ventilators. Subsequently, admissions have been decreasing with very few patients now coming from the community, almost all now being from nursing homes. Of note, in the 36 UPMC-owned senior facilities we have had zero positive cases.

Our outcomes are similar to the state of Pennsylvania, where the median age of death from COVID-19 is 84 years old. The few younger patients who died all had significant preexisting conditions. Very few children were infected and none died. Minorities in our communities fared equally as well as others, but we know that this is not the case nationally. In sum, this is a disease of the elderly, sick and poor….

…. Epidemiologic prediction models have performed poorly often neglecting critical variables….

….For New York and a handful of other cities with high case rates as a result of density, travel and socioeconomic issues, they must open up in a measured step-wise manner with extensive testing, tracing and treatment.

But for the rest of the country, as people come out of their homes cautiously and safely, if we protect our vulnerable seniors, particularly those in nursing homes, we should be able keep case rates low, buying time for a potential resurgence as we bolster our supply chain and find effective intervention.

COVID-19 is a disease that ravages those with preexisting conditions – whether it be immunosenescence of aging or the social determinants of health. We can manage society in the presence of this pathogen if we focus on these preexisting conditions.

What we cannot do, is extended social isolation. Humans are social beings, and we are already seeing the adverse mental health consequences of loneliness, and that is before the much greater effects of economic devastation take hold on the human condition.

By government edict, though, the lockdowns continued, even against the emerging science. In Pittsburgh, where I live, UPMC – my health care provider – was overruled by Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf, who claimed a superior grasp of medical science based on advice he was receiving from Pennsylvania’s health secretary Rachel Levine, a transgender doctor who had previously headed Hershey, Pennsylvania’s eating disorder clinic.

Running an eating disorder clinic as a transitioned female in Chocolatetown, USA must present unique challenges. It does not, however, make Rachel Levine more qualified to address a pandemic UPMC’s Chief Scientific Officer.

Question:

• If someone with a penis claims to be a woman, has that person already demonstrated a willingness to favor political judgment over science? 

Fauci and his federal bureaucrats, too, were advocating for continued lockdowns.

The situation recalled President Obama’s promise, “no matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period.”

During a pandemic, my own doctors at UPMC were overruled by less credentialed bureaucrats. The government, and not doctors in coordination with patients, made fundamental medical decisions.

Question: 

• Why did continued lockdowns advocated by the Pennsylvania governor, his health secretary, and a compromised federal bureaucracy implicated in the development and release of the virus, prevail over the science being proposed by the far more credentialed experts at places like UPMC?

By May 2020, the desperation measures taken to slow the spread – lockdowns – were no longer justified. As Dr. Shapiro pointed out, hospital overcrowding simply had not happened, and epidemiological prediction models have performed poorly in the 30-days. 

Question:

• Where was the pressure to continue lockdowns coming from?

At the time, there were 151 lawsuits filed in 41 states mostly to loosen mail-in voting requirements because of COVID. 

In June, Attorney General Bill Barr sat for an interview in CNN’s Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and predicted widespread fraud with mail in voting. He said: “People trying to change the rules to this, to this methodology – which, as a matter of logic, is very open to fraud and coercion – is reckless and dangerous and people are playing with fire.”

Also that spring and summer, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg was spending hundreds of millions of dollars to finance the Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL), which was conducting an organized political operation in inner-city, Democratic, precincts.

The cash was handed over to local government offices with strings attached. Basically, the CTCL took over the function of local governments in mostly black inner cities to “get out the vote.”

In a typical election year, the funding would have gone to pay for vans and canvassers to drive people to polling places on election day, where they would enter a booth and vote in private. 

If this political operation could somehow change laws to permit mail in ballots and drop boxes, though, they could go door to door months in advance, harvest ballots for their preferred candidate, and mail or put them in drop boxes with none of the mandated voter verification or chain of custody.

Questions:

• Were canvassers paid by CTCL money to go to residences with blank ballots to have them filled out or where the ballots that had been mailed to the residents recovered and used?

• What did the canvassers do with the ballots once they were filled out – did they take them and mail them or put them in drop boxes, or were the “voters” themselves required to mail them?

• What inducements or incentives were given to voters to have the ballots filled-out and was there any advocacy whatsoever on the part of the canvassers to direct voters to a preferred candidate?

In March 2020, Zuckerberg sent Fauci an email offering to help get information out about the dangers of the pandemic through his mega-platform, Facebook. Fauci describes the purpose of the email:

Mark said, hey, is there anything that we can do to help out to get the messages out, the right public health messages? I have a very important medium here in Facebook. Can I help? And as a matter of fact, if you guys don’t have enough resources and money to do some of the things you want, just let us know.

Zuckerberg’s email asked Fauci for assistance with “building a Coronavirus Information Hub” on Facebook.  Fauci responded by informing his staff, “I will write to or call Mark and tell him that I am interested in doing this.” 

Essentially, the person whose political operation in 2020 depended on continued lockdowns to gain approval of mail-in ballots – Zuckerberg – was also offering cash to the American bureaucrat in charge of deciding whether lockdowns should continue. 

Facebook’s virus information hub, when finally constructed, did not permit any message except those that would fan panic over the virus. This is the sort of political/private conflict of interest that muckrakers of yore would have explored with a heavy dose of skepticism:

Question:  

• Isn’t it true that the entity humping for changes in mail-in ballot procedures based on lockdowns (CTCL) was being funded by the entity most responsible for controlling the sky-is-falling messaging that was behind the lockdowns (Facebook)?

Changing voting rules due to the pandemic was ostensibly done to advance the civil rights of the poorest Americans. The actual result, though, was to secure control of public policy on behalf of America’s largest corporations. 

Certain business models like Walmart and Amazon were permitted to bypass lockdowns and experience incredible growth at the expense of smaller enterprises that were generally subjected to the harshest restrictions.

Big-tech has emerged from the 2020 election as the strongest political force in America.

Questions:

• When the decision was made to continue lockdowns, what peer reviewed scientific studies was the decision based upon?

• Were alternative viewpoints and opinions sought or was the decision to continue lockdowns made exclusively based on facts, analysis, and opinion that would not carry a warning or be banned on Facebook?

• When Fauci joined with Zuckerberg on messaging, was he aware that Facebook was excluding viewpoints that counseled against continued lockdowns?

• Was Fauci aware that Zuckerberg was spearheading a political project that hinged on getting courts to approve mail-in ballots based on lockdowns?

Fauci has taken to calling his political maneuvering “science.” Here are a few questions specifically for Fauci with that in mind:

• You’re the most powerful career civil servant in the American bureaucracy since J. Edgar Hoover. Doesn’t that mean you are most adept at acting politically and not scientifically?

• If there was political pressure emanating from the Democratic Party in an unholy alliance with Big-Tech to continue lockdowns, would you have the political will and motive to stand in the way? 

• In retrospect, were your pandemic policies based more on politics than on science? 

• Will you admit, at least, that you were getting political pressure in 2020 from democrats and Big-Tech to continue lockdowns?

How important were continued lockdowns and the mail-in ballot operation? Time Magazine has reported there was a “shadow campaign” that was the single most important factor in deciding the election of 2020:

Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears…. This is the inside story of the conspiracy to save the 2020 election, based on access to the group’s inner workings, never-before-seen documents and interviews with dozens of those involved from across the political spectrum. It is the story of an unprecedented, creative and determined campaign whose success also reveals how close the nation came to disaster. “Every attempt to interfere with the proper outcome of the election was defeated,” says Ian Bassin, co-founder of Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan rule-of-law advocacy group. “But it’s massively important for the country to understand that it didn’t happen accidentally. The system didn’t work magically. Democracy is not self-executing.”

It is time to start asking questions.