Bret Weinstein Speaks On The Pandemic Regime And The Censorship Of Science

Jan Jekielek spoke at length recently with Bret Weinstein--a biology professor, formerly at Evergreen State. He was ousted for speaking out against identity politics on campus. The interview deals with troubling aspects of the Pandemic Regime--especially censorship of those who dissent from an artificially imposed narrative. You can find a video of the interview plus a transcript at American Thought Leaders:

Perverse Incentives’ in the Vaccine Rollout and the Censorship of Science

Here are a few excerpts to give you a flavor for the whole. It's well worth your while--these are important issues that are evolving from day to day but which have ramifications for almost every aspect of our lives

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Mr. Jekielek: Something that you mentioned in one of your podcasts that I was watching—actually, you’ve mentioned this a few times—there are certain types of data that seem to be very important, in your view and for some experts, that just simply isn’t being gathered. I found that really fascinating. Can you elaborate on this a little bit?

Dr. Weinstein: Yes. I learned this from Robert Malone, who is the inventor of mRNA vaccine technology, and he is also somebody who has been involved in a professional capacity inside the regulatory apparatus. What he said is that at the point that the Emergency Use Authorizations for the vaccines were granted, there was the opportunity to require extra data to be collected to find out what the impact of these vaccines was on the people who received them.

A choice was made not to collect the data, which I find quite alarming in light of the fact that the process of establishing the safety of these vaccines was necessarily truncated in order to bring them to the public so quickly.

Mr. Jekielek: What are the ramifications of that?

Dr. Weinstein: Well, the ramifications of it are that we are exposing a huge fraction of the population to what is in effect, a scientific experiment, except that it isn’t a scientific experiment because we are deliberately avoiding collecting data that would allow us to evaluate the impact.

I find that shocking. It is one thing to argue that we have no choice, that COVID-19 is an emergency and we have to make shortcuts that we would not ordinarily consider. ...

But the right thing to do in order to make proper medically justified decisions and epidemiologically justified decisions is to collect the data on what happens after administration.

These are brand new technologies. They have many different ways in which they could fail, and it is our obligation, especially to the people who receive these vaccines, that we collect the data on what happened. And to not do so means that we are very likely to put people in danger in the future with no justification for it.

...

Mr. Jekielek: You’ve called the mass vaccination of COVID-19 the biggest gain-of-function experiment ever. What does that mean?

Dr. Weinstein: Well, what we are doing is unusual. We are deploying a novel technology that contains the code for a very narrow antigen signal, and we are deploying it into an active pandemic. And because the vaccines are not perfectly effective at preventing breakthrough cases, they are effectively exerting a very strong kind of selection on the virus.

And there’s every reason to worry that this selection will drive the evolution of escape mutants. That is to say selection in favor of mutations that make the virus invisible to the aware immune system that has been alerted by the vaccines. And that could produce an ongoing pandemic, where we might end the pandemic if we were to approach it differently.

...

Dr. Weinstein: Well, let’s start with the why question. I should say my channel was very early on this topic. It was quite clear to many of us starting with the tremendous coincidence of this virus having emerged first in Wuhan, where there is a biosafety level four lab studying these viruses and enhancing them. It was quite clear that there was at least a viable hypothesis that needed to be discussed.

As you point out, those of us who did discuss it were stigmatized and demonized and portrayed as everything from racist to reactionary when in fact, all we were doing was following the evidence.

The change in that story was, I have to say, completely mysterious. What we had was a moment in time in which an article written by Nicholas Wade emerged, and suddenly it became discussable. It was a very unnatural event because although the article was quite good and it did make a very strong case, it was not the first such article.

I've made that point repeatedly. Nothing Wade said was news. This had all been addressed credibly almost from the very outset of the Covid Panic, but it had been suppressed and ignored. Then when Wade wrote his article--explicitly citing what others had said--it suddenly became credible for the establishment. And they had to change their narrative.

 

It was as if on the basis of no new evidence whatsoever, suddenly the case had been solved. That, I must say, gave those of us who were paying attention to it whiplash.

There was then a headlong rush by all of those who had gotten the story wrong to explain themselves, and their explanations made less than no sense. They seemed to center on the fact that because Donald Trump had been favorable to the idea that this might have emerged from a lab, that made it not true, which of course is such an illogical conclusion that it’s hard to imagine how anybody who considers themselves a journalist could for a moment have been misled.

At worst, if you thought everything that Donald Trump said was a lie, at worst, you would have to take it as no evidence either way. But that’s not how people treated it. They treated it almost as if the truth was always the opposite of what he said.

And this response was treated, in the MSM, as somehow reasonable. When, in fact, it's the sheerest irrationality.

 

In any case, when the story changed, I had the distinct sense that what had happened was those of us who had been dogged about revealing the evidence and discussing what it meant and pointing to the implications of it—the implications being that although there is no conclusive proof, there is good reason to think that this emerged from a lab, that is actually the most likely explanation—Eventually, I think we made it impossible to maintain the public lie that a laboratory origin was somehow obviously in conflict with the evidence.

We now know from Dr. Fauci’s emails that behind the scenes, the top people didn’t believe it either. They were just simply feeding the public a lie that they had their own reasons for wanting the public to believe. The answer to your question is simple. There comes a point at which you’re caught lying and your best move is to revise the story. And that’s what happened to them.

...

Dr. Weinstein: My fear is that each time we go through one of these, the antagonists to truth are learning. They’re evolving. What happened with the lab leak has alerted them to the danger of allowing people to sort through evidence in public, and that their level of tolerance for that is going to be driven through the floor, that they effectively will be motivated to pay a higher price in terms of the ridicule that arises when people censor in order to make sure that the discussions don’t happen.

That is what I am feeling on my channel. And I fear that it could work, that those of us who face this, some of us will choose not to bend, and we will be purged from these platforms. Once we are purged from these platforms and other people have been induced to self-censor, the conversation simply won’t be taking place. That means that the official narrative will function as received wisdom.

...

We have three levels. The immune system is a complex system embedded within a person, which is a complex system embedded within a society, which is a complex system. And all three of these are in play with respect to the harms.

That does not mean that ultimately we will see all these things play out, but it means that anybody who is saying: “These vaccines are simply good. They are the route out of the pandemic. And therefore we must get everybody to get vaccinated because it is obviously a good idea for us to do that.” That is not clear.

Those who proceed from the idea that it is clear seem to be motivated by a removal of the normal constraints that typically surround discussion. They are fighting as if they’re dealing with an evil foe, but they are not dealing with an evil foe. They are dealing with people who on the basis of the evidence, and on the basis of what we understand about this three layer complex system are alarmed at what we are doing.

This may not be an entirely new insight, but I think it's a powerful way of expressing the mindset of the people we're dealing with. They inhabit a Manichean world of pure good and evil, and since they self identify as good what they seek is also good, and as for anyone else ...

 

At the very least, even if we are wrong, it is vitally important that we pay attention to what might be wrong here, so that we will find out whether or not we are doing harm and among other things stop it if that’s what we’re doing.