By Robert Bridge

Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. He is the author of ‘Midnight in the American Empire,’ How Corporations and Their Political Servants are Destroying the American Dream.

People protest against the covid-19 vaccine outside of the Raymond James Stadium prior to the Super Bowl match between Kansas City Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Tampa, Florida. © AFP / CHANDAN KHANNA

It is common practice for patients to request a second opinion before submitting to any medical treatment. Yet in the age of Covid only one opinion appears to count at all. This approach flies in the face of sound science.

On Tuesday, the top headlines on the Drudge Report, a popular US news aggregate for trumpeting the liberal party line, captured the full spirit of the ‘new normal’, which the doomsayers fear is snowballing into nothing less than a totalitarian police state:

• ‘CDC recommends vaccinated people wear masks indoors again…’
  
• ‘Government officials, health groups move to REQUIRE corona vaccines for workers;’
  
• ‘Maskless will have to wear stickers declaring status?’
  
• ‘More EU states require passes to enter bars, restaurants.’

And so on, ad infinitum, ad nauseam. Each passing day brings more of the same five-alarm articles about why people should get the jab, wear a mask, remain at home, even avoid casual conversation with their neighbors. At the same time, the media duly sugarcoats the grim prospect of a joyless bureaucratic future when a ‘vaccine passport’ will be required for performing the most mundane activities – shopping, traveling, attending a sporting event or concert – that we all took happily for granted in the ‘old normal’.

Conspicuous by their absence from the news headlines, however, is any sign of opposing voices to the official medical narrative. And that is no accident. Any doctor, activist or health organization that merely hints at an alternative method for tackling the pandemic is smacked down as a quack and dispatched to the sleek new version of Solzhenitsyn’s ‘gulag archipelago’. These are banishment from social media, news media and polite society. In a word, disappeared.

Considering that a tiny number of health officials are now dictating from their bully pulpits how the majority will be expected to conduct their lives from here to eternity, shouldn’t we, the masked taxpayers, demand a bit more bang for our buck? Before the citizens of any democracy are expected to be pricked, poked and probed for the rest of their lives, they should be demanding the greatest debate the free world has ever seen.

Yet this is precisely what the Covid totalitarians fail to grasp. By refusing to engage with the other side, they have become their very own worst enemies; censoring the views of ‘the dissenters’ only helps fuel conspiracy theories and ‘vaccine hesitancy’. We are not talking about ‘dissenters’ in the form of Alex Jones or David Icke, but rather the views of prominent medical doctors and scientists.

Just this weekend, for example, The New York Times ran with some sensational panic porn on its front page entitled, ‘The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Misinformation Online’. So, who is this ghastly villain leading the masses to slaughter? None other than Joseph Mercola, a Florida-based osteopathic physician, who has argued that Covid vaccines do not provide immunity or halt the spread of the disease, but rather “alter your genetic coding, turning you into a viral protein factory that has no off-switch.” Mercola is by no means the first doctor to forward such off-script arguments. Yet, although the author of the piece, Sheera Frenkel, said that Mercola’s “assertions were easily disprovable,” she offered nothing by way of medical discussion to disprove his claims, nor was a link provided to Mercola’s original piece so people could read it for themselves.

Among Dr. Mercola’s apparent ‘hate’ crimes is his profiting from “a vast operation to push natural health cures,” which makes the man sound like a Colombian drug lord pushing broccoli sprouts on unsuspecting youngsters. In February, Mercola received a warning letter from the FDA for attempting to sell products like Liposomal Vitamin C and Liposomal Vitamin D3 as methods for treating and preventing coronavirus. Ah, good to see that the ‘war on drugs’ is finally nabbing some baddies. The New York Times also seemed particularly peeved with Mercola because “rather than directly stating online that vaccines don’t work, [his] posts often ask pointed questions about their safety and discuss studies that other doctors have refuted” [Gulp, he asked “pointed questions” and challenged other doctors! Clearly a madman!].

However, the most disturbing thing about the Times piece was that it linked to the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), part of George Soros’ vast empire of action committees, which placed Mercola at the top spot among the so-called ‘Disinformation Dozen’, a group of shady individuals said to be responsible for “sharing 65 percent of all anti-vaccine messaging on social media.” While the messaging from these doctors and activists may (or may not be) wrongheaded, can it really fall into the ‘hate’ category?

Another individual who ranks in the ‘dirty dozen’ is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose organization Children’s Health Defense tackles a range of controversial subjects now affecting minors, including the passage of a law in the District of Columbia that allows children as young as 11 to be vaccinated without their parents’ knowledge or consent. Does that issue not deserve some discussion? Another story currentlyfeatured on its website reports that Pfizer and Moderna will increase the number of children in their Covid vaccine clinical trials after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) told the vaccine makers “the size and scope of their pediatric studies…were inadequate to detect rare side effects,” including myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle. Oops!

Anyone who thinks these individuals are just a small fraction of dissenting voices in the great Covid ‘debate’ has probably never heard of the Great Barrington Declaration, a document citing “grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies.” The document has been signed by thousands of epidemiologists and public health scientists, as well as private citizens.

Authored by Dr. Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University; Dr. Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University, an epidemiologist with expertise in immunology; Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University Medical School, and co-signed by 44 other prominent doctors, the declaration says in part that “[A]s immunity builds in the population, the risk of infection to all – including the vulnerable – falls. We know that all populations will eventually reach herd immunity – i.e. the point at which the rate of new infections is stable – and that this can be assisted by (but is not dependent upon) a vaccine. Our goal should therefore be to minimize mortality and social harm until we reach herd immunity.”

That is medical advice that is never reported by mainstream journalists except in a negative, condescending manner. Any medical opinion that discusses the possibility of natural immunity, herd immunity or other means of protection against the coronavirus aside from vaccines is shunned by the fourth estate, which is odd to say the least. The job of the media is not to declare allegiance to any one side of a debate, but rather to allow all of the voices be heard so that Joe Public and his government representatives can decide what is best for him.

In addition to being shoddy journalism, it is unethical medical practice not to consider other professional opinions when formulating a medical response that affects literally billions of lives around the planet, especially with mandatory vaccine passports on the horizon. People deserve to hear both sides of the Covid debate, not just the side that repeats the talking points of the pharmaceutical industrial complex.