Amnesty for an Apology? COVID Dictators Looking for Way Out
by Dr. Joseph Mercola
February 15, 2023
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/a...bid=1721821130
"STORY AT-A-GLANCE
Draconian COVID measures ruined the lives of millions of lower- and middle-class Americans while lining the pockets of the liberal cabal, and those who spoke the truth were punished rather than lauded for their reason
Now, the tide is starting to shift. Recent polling shows 49% of Americans believe the COVID shots may be responsible for the massive rise in sudden deaths and 28% say they know someone they believe was killed by the shots
In early November 2022, The Atlantic published an article by Brown University economist Emily Oster, who suggested COVID dictators be granted “amnesty” for their mistaken beliefs about COVID-19.
It failed miserably, as just about everyone saw through her ill-conceived arguments
January 30, 2023, medical student Kevin Bass followed in Oster’s footsteps, penning an opinion piece for Newsweek in which he urges the scientific community to “admit we were wrong about COVID and it cost lives”
Communications analysts agree Bass’ essay is another manipulative effort to overcome public distrust in authorities
In The Hill segment above, Batya Ungar-Sargon reviews how draconian COVID measures ruined the lives of millions of lower- and middle-class Americans while lining the pockets of the liberal cabal. Indeed, the cost of the COVID measures were definitely not born equally by all. Moreover, those who spoke the truth were punished rather than lauded for their reason.
Now, the tide is starting to shift. Recent polling shows 49% of Americans believe the COVID shots may be responsible for the massive rise in sudden deaths and 28% say they know someone they believe was killed by the shots.1
With half the country now questioning the shots, the propagandists surely have their work cut out for them. Perhaps some of them are realizing it's now a losing battle and they need an escape plan, a new narrative to salvage what little public trust is left.
Apologies and Calls for Amnesty Are Just More Propaganda
Back in early November 2022, The Atlantic published an article by Brown University economist Emily Oster,2 who suggested COVID dictators be granted "amnesty" for their mistaken beliefs about COVID-19. "We need to forgive one another for what we did and said when we were in the dark about COVID," she wrote. Her arguments were so ill-conceived, most of those who read it answered with colorful variations of "Not a chance."
January 30, 2023, medical student Kevin Bass followed in Oster's footsteps, penning an opinion piece for Newsweek in which he urges the scientific community to "admit we were wrong about COVID and it cost lives":3
"I staunchly supported the efforts of the public health authorities when it came to COVID-19. I believed that the authorities responded to the largest public health crisis of our lives with compassion, diligence, and scientific expertise. I was with them when they called for lockdowns, vaccines, and boosters. I was wrong. We in the scientific community were wrong. And it cost lives.
I can see now that the scientific community from the CDC to the WHO to the FDA and their representatives, repeatedly overstated the evidence and misled the public about its own views and policies, including on natural vs. artificial immunity, school closures and disease transmission, aerosol spread, mask mandates, and vaccine effectiveness and safety, especially among the young.
All of these were scientific mistakes at the time, not in hindsight … Our emotional response and ingrained partisanship prevented us from seeing the full impact of our actions on the people we are supposed to serve.
We systematically minimized the downsides of the interventions we imposed — imposed without the input, consent, and recognition of those forced to live with them. In so doing, we violated the autonomy of those who would be most negatively impacted by our policies: the poor, the working class, small business owners, Blacks and Latinos, and children …
Most of us did not speak up in support of alternative views, and many of us tried to suppress them … But the scorn that we laid on them was a disaster for public trust in the pandemic response."
Tucker Carlson Lauds Bass' Honesty
Kevin Bass
@kevinnbass
My segment with the great
@TuckerCarlson
139K views
2:32 / 4:14
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February 4, 2023, Fox News host Tucker Carlson invited Bass onto his show to discuss his apparently newfound humility. But while Carlson and a majority of Bass' Twitter followers applauded his "honesty," many scientists and doctors who have been defamed, censored and fired for speaking truth right from the start are none too impressed.
Bass Wipes His Twitter Account
Curiously, Bass seems to have predicted trouble, as he wiped his Twitter account clean three days before his Newsweek piece was published.
Could one potential reason for wiping his Twitter history be that it revealed some of his long-held stances on even more unpopular topics than lockdowns and the COVID jabs? For example, Bass is apparently a fan of eugenics, as evidenced in a couple of tweets highlighted by Dr. Meryl Nass:4
Early Truth Tellers Reject Bass' Belated Awakening
Paul E. Alexander, a Canadian health researcher and former Trump administration official at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, wrote a scathing critique5 of Bass' performance on Tucker Carlson's show, referring to him as a spineless grifter trying to separate himself from the COVID tyrants as proof of their falsehoods mounts.
"This Bass guy is delusional to compare himself to … esteemed real warriors and fighters," Alexander writes. "The frauds, the grifters, benefitted on the upside joining in on the lockdown lunacy and being incentivized and making money, now wanting to benefit on the downside too. Filth …
This is the ultimate grifter, ultimate, grifting off of fame, this Bass guy, was never interested in the harms and pain and suffering from the lockdown lunacy and the vaccines, now stealing air time after having blood on his hands, his and his buddies, his doctor buddies and academic scientists …
[F]or as you see, Kev was all too happy and joined in, and he wrote this, when Atlas, Kulldorff, Breggin, me, Jeff Tucker, McCullough, Ladapo, Wolf, Risch and us freedom fighters, us contrarians, us skeptics, all of us, were scorned and smeared and cancelled, income taken etc. …"
Indeed, while Bass now presents himself as a courageous truth teller, he's still scornful of the original truth tellers — the very ones he admitted were correct from the start and were unfairly castigated and excluded from the decision-making process.
As recently as February 4, 2023, Bass blew them off en masse as being "no good." His dismissal of the Stockholm conference as a whole — during which scientists and doctors from around the world reviewed the very mistakes he admitted to in his Newsweek "apology" — also raises questions about his sincerity.
Propaganda Refined
Dr. Pierre Kory — who got fired for standing firm on early treatment for COVID-19 and now treats post-jab injuries and long-COVID in private practice — initially welcomed Bass' apology, but quickly changed his mind after reading a more in-depth analysis by Substack author, A Midwestern Doctor. Kory writes:6
"Although I have been describing myself of late as an 'expert' in spotting COVID Disinformation and propaganda tactics, this week I discovered that I, along with many others, got fooled by the above Newsweek article, naively thinking it as representative of the genuine reflecting of a bold medical student …
A Midwestern Doctor saw the article for exactly what is was — yet another lame attempt at a 'plea for amnesty' by those in power … The decision to use a medical student as an author of this 'Oster 2.0' article was ingenious and was one way in which I got suckered by it.
The other reason is that, the tactics used in the article were much more nuanced than in Oster's piece and thus required a close reading, especially to the actual words/language used and the intent behind their use …
If you are like me and thought Newsweek's decision to publish an article like that was a genuine reflection of changing sentiment among not only the scientific community but also political and industry leadership, then please read [A Midwestern Doctor's] essay. It wasn't. At all. We are still getting played, but, at the same time, I think the decision to publish that article shows they are getting desperate."
Dissecting Bass' Plea for Amnesty
In his February 3, 2023, analysis, A Midwestern Doctor wrote:7
"In Oster's plea for amnesty, I felt she was providing an excellent example of a pseudo-apology8 — she 'asked for forgiveness' but simultaneously refused to admit she was in any way at fault for any of her previous actions, and used a variety of linguistic constructs to try to both have her cake and eat it too …
I believe the goal of [Bass'] piece is to test out soundbites that could be used to address the major issues that the medical establishment has created for itself as a result of how it handled COVID-19 …
Because of how much things have changed in the last three months, we are now in the position to ask for a lot more than before, which is why a much more candid apology is being given. However, since there is a lot more nuance here than in Oster's (as this one attempts to be more persuasive), I felt compelled to place Oster 2.0 under a microscope."
The Substack author then goes on to list a series of screenshots from Bass' article with commentary in red. To start off, in saying "I was wrong. Wein the scientific community were wrong. And it cost lives," Bass explicitly gave Oster's critics what they asked for. A direct admission that they were wrong.
He also addressed a central objection to Oster's non-apology by stating that "All of these were scientific mistakes at the time, not in hindsight." In sharp contrast, Oster argued that COVID tyrants ought to be forgiven because they didn't know any better; at the time, nobody knew what was best and everyone was basically just guessing. This argument was one of the most egregious lies in Oster's piece, and Bass wisely avoids making the same mistake.
Thirdly, Bass admits that the errors committed by the scientific community continue to this day. By addressing these three issues, it almost seems like Bass' apology was customized to correct Oster's utterly failed attempt to appease those wronged. Importantly, however, Bass does not specify how erroneous COVID policies killed "thousands if not millions" of people, thereby side-stepping the elephant in the room that is the COVID jabs.
An Attempt to Minimize Vaccine Pusher Losses?
The following section was highlighted by A Midwestern Doctor as one of the central passages that make him doubt Bass' sincerity:9
"This specific passage is why I do not believe this is a genuine apology; rather, it's a forced apology and an attempt to minimize the losses of the vaccine pushers who have discredited themselves to the general public.
Throughout this essay, he attempts to say we had 'valid concerns' (that I must emphasize were not political in nature) but nonetheless, in a backhanded way dismisses all the actual objections (e.g., the alleged 'conspiracy theories' that all proved themselves true).
Similarly, to help people who have been injured by their vaccine, I have been forced into the very 'cottage industry' he lambasts. This is not my preferred 'cottage industry' to be in.
Due to the political nature of the subject, you take on a lot of professional risk as a physician if you try to treat these injuries. Everyone I've talked to says the same thing: we've been forced to do it because the medical profession is doing nothing to help these victims (other than to gaslight them), and they really need help … [L]et's look at the actual reason I believe this Newsweek article was written:
… [T]here are a lot of signs that because of COVID-19, general vaccine use is beginning to drop globally. This is completely unacceptable to the pharmaceutical industry and medical establishment (as it will cost them a lot of money and create a control group that allows the public to recognize the harm of vaccination …)
Because of this drop, I am beginning to see pleas essentially stating that 'we are sorry we messed up here, but please trust us on the other vaccines.' I do not believe they should be allowed to have their cake and eat it here …
[I]f you believe in vaccination, then you must also believe in natural immunity. However, that doesn't sell products, so a lot of rationalizations must be made to only permit vaccination. As we have seen throughout the pandemic, natural immunity to COVID-19 is vastly superior to vaccine immunity (even though earlier in the pandemic we were repeatedly told the opposite by every healthcare authority).
More importantly, developing natural immunity is also much safer. This is especially true if you use reasonable measures to mitigate the severity of the infection so that it can be cleared up and full immunity develops naturally.
If we want to move forward, the medical community must be willing to recognize that their rules on viral infections are beliefs that need to be critically re-evaluated …
If you look at this article within the context of Oster's previous plea and its response (both of these articles are essentially trying to do the same thing), I believe a strong case can be made that these were tests to see what narrative needs to be pivoted to.
Likewise, Germany's minister of health (and a well-credentialed scientist) finally made a limited apology10 for the disastrous policies he pushed on the German people without acknowledging the worst mistakes while simultaneously shifting the blame for his decisions to unnamed scientists who gave him bad advice …
In my own opinion, if these people are actually sorry for what they did to us, they would be willing to relinquish some of their power so it could not happen again, and I believe moving forward it is critical for us to hold them to that. Anything less should not be considered acceptable for them to be granted amnesty."
Growing Political Backlash
ZeroHedge weighed in on Bass' essay, noting that the major problem during the pandemic was:11
"… the organized antagonism and censorship against anyone presenting data that was contradictory to the mandate agenda … LA Times … argued that mocking the deaths of 'anti-vaxxers' might be necessary and justified. After two years of this type of arrogant nonsense it's hard to imagine people will be willing to pretend as if all is well … People are still livid.
One cannot help but notice that the timing of the Atlantic's appeal for passive forgetfulness and now this op-ed mea culpa coincides with the swiftly approaching end of the COVID emergency declarations, amid a growing political backlash to the last two years of meaningless lockdowns and mandates, and Democrats were instrumental in the implementation of both.
A large swath of the population sees one party as the cause of much of their COVID era strife.Perhaps the mainstream media is suddenly realizing that they may have to face some payback for their COVID zealotry?"
Globalist Pawns Are a Dime a Dozen
While we cannot prove Bass is insincere, since we're not inside his head, many have pointed out troubling telltale signs that suggest he's just another pawn of the globalists who engineered this situation for their own benefit and now realize the train is veering off their well-laid tracks.
They're trying to figure out how to regain people's trust because, without it, finalizing the implementation of The Great Reset will be far more problematic than if people follow their lead and do as they're told.
In the final analysis, Bass does little to rehabilitate public trust in the medical and scientific fields, or 'authorities' in general, especially government authorities.
At the end of the day, the globalists fear losing the power they've managed to seize, and they are absolutely not willing to do what A Midwestern Doctor suggests, which is relinquish their powers and put laws in place that will prevent this kind of tyrannical overreach from happening in the future.
So, the best thing that can happen for humanity at this point is for everyone to completely lose faith in and respect for the institutions that further the globalist takeover agenda. They pose a direct threat to mankind as a whole, and they've long since lost their right to "benefit of the doubt." They all need to be dismantled.
In the final analysis, then, Bass does little to rehabilitate public trust in the medical and scientific fields, or "authorities" in general, especially government authorities. His effort is a valiant one, and far more refined than Oster's, but it still falls short. Bass simply isn't believable and comes across as two-faced at best when you take into account his other communications, such as comments made on Twitter — and that's after sanitizing his feed.
The Real Purpose of Bass' Essay
In closing, here are a few select quotes from Sarah Reynolds' insightful critique of Bass' op-ed:12
"Nowhere in the piece does Bass say the vaccine mandates were unethical or immoral. Not once does he say the lockdowns should not have taken place … 'I was wrong' is a sham apology in this case because he never specifies what he was wrong about.
He dips a toe in the waters of taking responsibility, saying, '…when Dr. Antony Fauci opposed Trump and became the hero of the public health community, we gave him our support to do and say what he wanted, even when he was wrong.' Ok, Kevin — but when was he wrong? Which actions did he take that were incorrect? Kevin doesn't say.
What he does say is horrifying enough though, God help me and us: 'My motivation for writing this is simple: It's clear to me that for public trust to be restored in science, scientists should publicly discuss what went right and what went wrong during the pandemic, and where we could have done better. Guess how many times the words trust or distrust appear in the piece?
1. "Trump was not remotely perfect, nor were the academic critics of consensus policy. But the scorn that we laid on them was a disaster for public trust in the pandemic response."
2. (And 3.) "Instead, we have witnessed a massive and ongoing loss of life in America due to distrust of vaccines and the healthcare system … a massive loss of trust in healthcare, science, scientific authorities, and political leaders more broadly."
4. "… for public trust to be restored in science, scientists should publicly discuss what went right and what went wrong during the pandemic, and where we could have done better."
5. "Intellectual elitism, credentialism, and classism must end. Restoring trust in public health—and our democracy—depends on it."
Trust is such a sticky word … It drips guile. It oozes manipulation. As soon as someone says 'trust me,' I know it would probably be wise not to …
Last February, almost a year ago now, the Department of Homeland Security issued a call for 'trusting the authorities' and literally labelled those who don't as 'threat actors seeking to exacerbate societal friction to sow discord and undermine public trust in government institutions.'
Which leads me to my bottom line analysis: the powers that be are Monday morning quarterbacking. Why didn't people just do what we said and obediently comply? Because they don't trust us. If they trusted the media, the government, and scientists, they would do what they were told …
Bass is the puppet they've sent out to deliver this narrative … [T]he only reason one Monday morning quarterbacks is so that one can win the next game. They want to identify how better to induce compliance for the next pandemic …
The degree of lack of awareness of reality itself that was required to think that this message would work to shift the narrative could be attributed to a few of things — youth, inexperience, low IQ … So GOOD. It means we're dealing with weakness. All we have to do is be stronger (smarter, more experienced, braver) and we will win. We will continue to win." "
Sources and References
1 A Midwestern Doctor January 2, 2023
2 The Atlantic October 31, 2022
3 Newsweek January 30, 2023
4 Meryl Nass Substack February 5, 2023
5 Paul Alexander Substack February 11, 2023
6 Pierre Kory Substack February 5, 2023
7, 9 A Midwestern Doctor Substack February 3, 2023
8 A Midwestern Doctor Substack November 1, 2022
10 Igor Chudov Substack January 30, 2023
11 ZeroHedge January 31, 2023
12 Sarah Reynolds Substack February 1, 2023
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