'Group-Think' Or Follow The Money?

I've been listening to a lot of interviews lately with Dr. Robert Malone, who has his own Wikipedia page now (although he says it's not exactly how he'd like it). One recurring theme in these interviews is the prevalence of 'Group-Think' among scientists--a tendency to toe a party line, an official narrative, rather than thinking independently. However there's another theme that crops up, which is that the scientific establishment knowingly engages in lies to protect its narrative, and that there is money behind it all. I get the impression that Malone is not a natively confrontational guy, although he's not a pushover, and so he avoids personal attacks. However the special podcast from yesterday with Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro differs a bit in that respect--Malone makes some very pointed remarks that go beyond 'Group-Think' or going along to get along.

In fact we've been prepared for this. Back when the Wuhan origin of coronavirus hit the fan (early June) we learned that a well regarded virologist, Kristian Andersen, had--upon first learning of Covid-19--immediately emailed Fauci stating that he and other virologists were quite certain that Covid was an engineered virus. Within only about a day--or a weekend at most--Andersen had totally flip flopped and was actively promoting the idea that his original view was basically a conspiracy theory. Andersen, as it happens, got a lot of funding for his research from Fauci's gang.

So, with that in mind, we turn to the second segment of yesterday's Warroom podcast. I'll present just the parts that interested me--once again, part transcript, part summary:

Episode 1,137 – Deep Dive into COVID

[The second segment begins with a video of a crank named Arthur Caplan advocating on MSNBC for coerced vaxxing of the population. Bannon next briefs viewers on military coercion in Australia and other forms of coercion. He then quotes a NYT headline: "Immunized People Can Spread Virus, CDC Reports" and reads the second paragraph of the story:]

"The vaccines remain powerfully effective against severe illness and death and the CDC said infections in vaccinated people were comparatively [basis of comparison not stated] rare, but the revelations follow a series of other recent findings about the Delta variant that have upended scientists' understanding of the coronavirus."

Bannon: I find that an incredible admission, Dr. Malone, and I would like to ask you: When you hear a phrase "recent findings about the Delta variant that have upended scientists' understanding of the coronavirus", what was the understanding of the coronavirus at the government and inside the CDC that have been upended by this, sir?

Malone: So the belief was that this vaccine was perfectly protective and perfectly safe. That's been the party line. Yet we've known all along that this is what's called a 'leaky vaccine.' It protects in the range of 50-70% against infection and spread. But if you get infected you still replicate and you still spread to other people. Now this is clearly laid out, this is one of the bombshells in the new CDC [slide] deck. They show a bunch of graphs and they show about the effects of universal masking. They kinda tweak the data, but what it shows is that this vaccine cannot protect us from rampant ongoing spread of Delta, no matter how much you vaccinate--we can't get there because the reproductive coefficient is about the same as chickenpox. It's really high. It's in the range of 8. And the prior one was in the range of 2 to 2.5, the Alpha variant. We just can't get there with a vaccine this leaky. So the logic of universal vaccination has been that we can get to protection and get to herd immunity with this vaccine, and that's just not viable. There's a bunch of other underlying assumptions. 

...

Bannon: There's something deeper here. That's the official party line. We're told: Believe the science, believe the evidence. You saw the WH spokesman yesterday. She couldn't even answer a question about facts. Just believe the science, believe the scientists. And then they admit, you can actually get it and spread it, and then they hafta say, Hey, we're finding out new things about the coronavirus, all our previous stuff was wrong. The problem is, they make these assertions based on facts they don't really put forward and a year and a half into this now they're saying, Oh, we didn't really understand the coronavirus.

Malone: So, that's basically another lie. What we're seeing is the effects of rampant Group-Think and enforcing a common party line. In my world, with the leading virologists that are communicating with me, none of this is a surprise. We've all known this was gonna happen. We've known a lot about coronaviruses and coronavirus biology and replication. The NYT is really misrepresenting the truth. It reflects on the opening clip. What you had there was someone who doesn't understand vaccinology and virology shooting off their mouth and insisting that we hafta take an authoritarian policy--when it doesn't even match up with the science. We've had a whole lot of people talkin' about their personal opinion and substituting it for evidence based medicine. But this idea that the NYT is promoting is part of this Great Pivot that they're gonna hafta do now, and it was laid out in the WaPo article yesterday.

Bannon: The Great Pivot. This is what I'm trying to get to, the Great Pivot. They're pivoting now and, by the way, you notice who you've not seen in front of this is Tony Fauci. Tony Fauci's not in the White House, Tony Fauci's not saying, We had this wrong from the beginning. [Malone shaking head affirmatively] They're saying right there that they had a basic misunderstanding of the coronavirus. When you say, the Great Pivot, what do you mean?

Malone: So this was rolled out in the WaPo as they looked at this slide deck, they said that the CDC is gonna hafta pivot from its messaging from before and they're gonna hafta do it in public view and it's gonna be extremely difficult for them to do that in terms of public policy. And I'm just gonna say it: What it amounts to is, we can all see the lies now. They are transparent. There was a leaked slide deck. This is why Erin Burnett just lost her cookies the other day on her show, is because the press is coming to terms with the fact that they've been lied to repeatedly. They've had this party line pushed at them, they've bought it, hook line and sinker. Those that aren't dependent on Tony's money have been speaking out, saying, No, no, no, this isn't right. There's no surprise here as far as I'm concerned. There is a certain amount of validation, and I'll admit, I've had some pleasure in that. I wish it wasn't the case. But now the government, that's been promoting this noble lie strategy where the vaccines are perfect, they have no adverse events, they can get us to herd immunity--all that's been known to be false. I've been talking about that for over a month now. Now they gotta confront the fact that they've been caught in the lie.

[Navarro switches to talking about what Malone would recommend as an overall strategy. Malone tees this part of the discussion up by putting on the screen a tweet from Pfizer, advertising their new drug.]

Malone: So this is fascinating. Pfizer is now acknowledging, now that they have a drug candidate in advanced development, they're explicitly saying, The vaccines aren't good enough. Now suddenly it's OK for Pfizer to tell us, Oh, by the way, the vaccines aren't good enough, we've gotta have a drug and you should think about taking our drug. What a surprise! But we've had drugs available, repurposed drugs [HCQ, Ivermectin], they're not perfect, but we've had them available virtually from the beginning of the outbreak.

[... Discussion re "Options that do not require universal vaccination": risk assessment tools, data on vaccine risks, treating early stages, etc.

[Re vaccine risks ...]

Malone: Number two, provide clear and complete data on vaccine risks. For some reason the government has felt--and I know why, it's written into the Federal Register, back in 1984--that the government believes that it's OK to lie to us and block any information that would cause people to have any reservations about accepting vaccines.

Bannon: That would be the noble lie.

Malone: Precisely! Ok, the government believes that this is OK, and they've believed that for decades. ...

[Number 5 on the list is the use of "sequence independent" medicines. That means that these medicines [Ivermectin, Vitamin D, and others listed] are effective no matter what the variant. Re Ivermectin:]

Malone: Ivermectin? The data continues to show that there's strong evidence that it has some benefit, both as a prophylactic and a therapeutic. It's used all over the world for that, people wouldn't be using it otherwise. It is not a silver bullet. ... There's a number of agents that can be used, even in the out-patient environment.