Don’t Let the Guitar Fool Ya

Honestly, this is not my fault.  I look at our “Quote of the Week,” and see the furrowed, faux consternation of former NIH director Francis Collins, giving possibly the only honest utterance in his oh-too long career, an outright advocacy of censorship, and it was infuriating still.

Collins may no longer head the NIH, but his ideological progeny are with us still, and like a disembodied Sauron, his spirit haunts the halls, again rising through them with the approaching fall, as more of trusted “experts” on cable and the Interweb are starting to nag about masks and completely lifesaving, always safe boosters to the horizon.  Ahem.

It’s not time to let this go, not yet, not by a long shot.  So, ambling around, and I see this from jamanetwork.com.  Up front, I apologize for being dumb enough to look at anything “JAMA,” and doubly so for inflicting it on my readers.  This piece is all about “infodemics,” protecting the gullible who must be cared for despite their desires, and is led off by referencing good ol’ Francis Collins, MD, Ph.D., and his final interviews before strumming his hokey guitar into the blackness.  The sympathetic Soviet writing tells us, “Some have used the term “infodemic” to describe the glut of COVID-19 information—much of it false or misleading—on social media. During a disease outbreak, an infodemic ‘causes confusion and risk-taking behaviors that can harm health” and “leads to mistrust in health authorities and undermines the public health response,’ according to the World Health Organization.”  Collins’ response is, “I wish we had more insights from behavioral social science research into how this has come to pass, and why it could have gotten so completely widespread.”  Gee, Frank, I wonder?  Could it have been that every #$&^% one of you lied about masks, lockdowns, the wonders of Remdesivir, the practically fatal risks of cheap HCQ and Ivermectin, the efficacy of mRNA shots, and the safety of mRNA shots, and that you specifically lied about gain-of-function funding before stepping down?

I would have said that it’s too bad they never developed a vaccine against the Original Collins Strain, but it would have been a bust, so quickly have mutated variants spread.  Acting as Biden’s science advisor, Collins must have been delighted to recommend the latest NIH power grab: “The NIH Common Fund would pay for the proposed program, entitled Advancing Health Communication Science and Practice … the Common Fund supports ‘high-risk, innovative endeavors with the potential for extraordinary impact’ that are a high priority for the NIH as a whole.”  Anyone taking that excuse for rhetoric seriously is seriously dumb, except the awful people who all agree that there should be federal dollars for “health communication.”  The program was to “to investigate and share new #community-engaged #equity-focused ways of #HealthCommunication and #SciComm.”  The inclusion of buzz terms like community and equity makes this a phony, socialist boondoggle from a mile away, and any honest person would say so.

Now we start to see the real glint of the knife’s edge: “The program’s objectives were to ‘investigate, develop, test, and disseminate new approaches for effective and equitable health communication,’ an effort that would include addressing misinformation.”  Intended to partner with social media, the NIH funded $154 million worth of censorship.  A psychologist speaking to the Common Fund workshop said, “’We find the cures … And then they say, ‘Here are the cures. We’re done.’ In reality, Reyna explained, “there’s far more to it than that. We realized that writ large during the COVID pandemic.”  At this point dear reader, you should be getting angry past simmer.  No one ever says community and equity without a clenched fist to back it up.

And then, as the concerned writer explains, there was (ominous music) ”A Pause.”  Some of the researchers who thought they were going to get their snouts in the trough a chance to expand science noticed the program had been halted.  The agency gave some mumble-mumble as it waved and got in the limo, and Collins, who is still soaking the taxpayers  researching at this $47 BILLION money pit, referred questions to the NIH PR drones. 

“I was looking forward to this funding mechanism,” clinical psychologist Sherry Pagoto, Ph.D., director of the UConn Center for mHealth & Social Media, said in an interview. “My program of research is shaped very much by what ends up getting funded.”  Oh, I’ll bet you were.

And here we have another key, perhaps THE key point.  The most important question to ask of any study or program is who funded it.  Just slapping “Institute” or “Center” on the title does not make it ethical or even objective, and just because it’s government-funded doesn’t make it any more reliable or honest than the worst Big Pharma balloons & dancers weight loss TV ads.  Reading the responses of researchers who hoped to get a piece of the financial pie shows it: “I truly honor and respect the leadership of the NIH, and I can only imagine this has been a very difficult decision made over someone’s dead body, and it’s a crying shame.”  Or, “Even though it may not be a ton of money, if it’s a sign they’re moving away from this topic because they’re getting a lot of intimidation, that would be a concern.” Or, “They’re backing away from research that could save lives because there’s some political agenda they’re afraid they’re going to run afoul of.”  

I don’t know if this incestuous network of researchers, bureaucrats, and allied media were drawn into this because they are essentially bad people, or if this system turned a pre-selected group of idealists to evil works.  I DO know that what they are about is absolutely evil, and that how they got there is no longer important.  

            (See, Joseph Goebbels had a friendly smile too)

Yeah, I like to go for the off-color joke, the playful hyperbolic rants, the slap at the self-important if only because it’s fun.  This is different.  Please read this next bit from Richard Baron, MD, president and chief executive officer of the American Board of Internal Medicine, and friend of this NIH censorship initiative:  “Is it free speech to blog that COVID-19 vaccines have killed more children than the disease itself, manipulating data to prove one’s point? Is it free speech to tout the antiparasitic drug ivermectin as an effective COVID-19 treatment despite clinical trial data to the contrary?

Although some would answer, ‘Yes,’ the First Amendment doesn’t protect all speech, Baron noted. ‘Freedom of speech is not absolute,’ he pointed out. ‘Fraudulent speech is illegal.’ For example, he said, when physicians are slapped with malpractice suits for giving bad advice, ‘they don’t get to say, ‘I have the free speech right to say this.’ They don’t.’”  This dishonest analysis, in the context of all the government-approved lies that killed a lot of people, wrecked the economy, suspended civil liberties, stunted childhood development for years to come, and that were used to beat down unfashionable viewpoints, is the voice of evil, and true physicians should have nothing to do with it.  If you think that using government force – and taxpayer money funding social media collaborations IS – to censor medical points of view is acceptable, then you have chosen to stand with the worst sort of thugs.  

The NIH whines that it has halted funding for its censorship program due to lawsuits aimed at the Biden Politburo over their well-documented efforts to shut down medical dissidents.  Lots of FOIA requests are flying, and to the author’s credit, she cites one of the initiating groups:  “’Many Americans are concerned that such efforts have infringed, and will infringe, upon the First Amendment rights of American citizens,” the FOIA requests say, adding that the ‘federal government’s disturbing commitment to spending taxpayer dollars to fund ‘research’ on how best to censor speech is undoubtedly alarming.’”  Exactly right.  Pitiful psychologist Pagato referenced above, wailed, “In my entire career, I’ve never been told I’m a threat to democracy.”

And so we arrive back where we started, please exit the ride safely, with Francis Collins, MD, Ph.D, WFC. Collins, along with his fellow gangsters The Fauci, Birx, Surgeon Admirals Adams and Murthy, and the vast web of academia, government regulators, corporations, organized medicine, and the media all, ALL lied to us without fail or stop since February 2020, wrecked the nation and destroyed trust in medicine, and as that became apparent, they tried their best to shut down anyone who publicly noticed.  The tragic, infuriating fact is that we neither need a NIH nor is it a proper role for the federal government, much less arming it with a censorship division.

If actual practicing physicians truly want to improve health care by delivering Authentic Medicine, that should include vocal opposition to the government in health care.  Since World War II, this increasingly dependent society has been indoctrinated to believe otherwise, and it has resulted in the top-down control of medicine so horrifyingly demonstrated these past three years.  We do not need a NIH, NIAID, IOM, and their cartels of university principal investigators who work for kickbacks, and should only tolerate a scaled-down version of the CDC, if anything.  Remember how we said that study results depend on who pays for them?  The government first suggested, then funded, then directed, then forced what care would be given or withheld, and who could say what about those actions.  We were all co-opted, you and I both, willingly or otherwise, into harming a lot of people.  On our level, we did so out of rushed good intentions and were almost immediately directed from those above, increasingly against the evidence of our own experience and judgment.  We owe it to those who suffered, and to ourselves, to never, ever trust these bastards and their media cheerleaders again, especially with our right to speak as we see fit.