COVID-19 has upended the world as we know it. But what if it was all just a compounded series of mistakes that no one in the halls of power is willing to own?
In 1983, a curious German-language song hit the airwaves in the US. The song “99 Luftballons” became such a hit in the US that an English language version was soon released. Rooted firmly in Cold War angst, the lyrics tell the story of a couple who release 99 red balloons inadvertently triggering automated air defense systems. The computer, believing it to be an actual attack, sounds the alarm leading to full military mobilization. The enthusiasm of the newly activated participants in World War 3 is captured in lines like “this is it, boys, this is war!” and “everyone’s a superhero” as they rush to play their part on the way to global nuclear destruction. Remember, all of it was started by 99 real but totally non-nuclear red balloons.
We now find ourselves in the grips of a situation that could be a case of life imitating art. A real virus, dubbed COVID-19, enters the world stage. A computer model predicts that it will be the worst pandemic since the Black Death wiped out much of Europe. Governments spring into action, assuring a panicked public that they will take whatever measures necessary to defeat the virus. They ask everyone to fall in line, do their part, and be superheroes. Their subsequent actions shatter the economy, drive millions into unemployment and poverty, break the backs of small businesses, and increase public debt to new heights. More than all of those, they enact extraordinary and sweeping measures far outside the bounds of their delegated authority and strip an unprecedented amount of freedom from the people. In short, much like the finale of the aforementioned song, they effectively destroyed the world as we knew it.
But what if COVID-19 is just the biological version of 99 red balloons?
The Origins of the COVID-19 Pandemic
The general details of the initial COVID-19 outbreak are well-known. Chinese authorities reported the first case on November 17, 2019, originating in Wuhan. Infamous for its wet-markets and sales of exotic meats, the official narrative from the Chinese government said that it was an animal-to-human transmission that started when someone decided that he had a craving for bat soup.
There is, however, a great deal of controversy over the official Chinese government story. The city of Wuhan also hosts a not-so-secret Chinese bioweapons laboratory giving the communist regime plenty of reason to obscure the truth. We’ll likely never know whether it was a normal animal-to-human disease transmission or if it was engineered in a substandard Chinese facility. No matter the source, there is a real virus. It’s what happens next that’s most important.
As the cases of viral pneumonia spread in China, the World Health Organization was called in. By January, COVID-19 was in 19 other countries and had already made it to Europe. Italy was hit especially hard. There is no consensus on why Italy was hit harder than any other European country. There is some speculation that it is a result of the tens of thousands of Chinese migrant workers who supply the labor force for Italian textile factories. The amount of migrant worker traffic is so massive between Italy and Wuhan specifically that there are direct flights between the two and have been for some time.
No matter the cause, TV news channels in Europe and America were soon filled with horrific images from Italian hospitals that looked like scenes from a disaster movie. The message from the media was consistent – we are experiencing a catastrophic outbreak of disease, and something must be done.
There was a problem. It wasn’t true. There was definitely an outbreak, and there were people definitely dying from it. That much is unquestionable. The lie was one of exaggeration and the omission of context. The extraordinary and dire claims came under scrutiny in March of this year as people tried to get to the bottom of the Italian disaster. It seemed that Italy’s numbers were such an aberration, that it drew the attention of actual journalists and scientists. What they found upended the narrative.
Italy has an influenza problem. For over a decade, they have been registering higher than normal spikes in their influenza mortality rates. This was interesting enough to warrant a long-term study of the issue. Over the four year period of the study, from 2013 through 2017, Italy registered 7,027, 20,259, 15,801, and 24,981 deaths from influenza, respectively.
However, in the flu season prior to the outbreak of COVID-19, something strange happened. There was a massive dip in the number of fatalities attributed to influenza. The unexpected dip was chalked up to an unusually warm winter that significantly shortened the length of the flu season. Those who would have otherwise been susceptible to influenza and would have likely died from it didn’t. This created a surplus of immunocompromised and elderly Italians for COVID-19 to run through.
The real impact, though, is in the numbers. During the study, the peak number of deaths from influenza was 24,981. The current COVID-19 death toll in Italy is 34,854. Even an article on Bloomberg.com observed that this was likely a contributing factor to Italy’s seemingly high mortality rate.
“In the northern cities that have borne the brunt of Italy’s more than 12,000 deaths, overall mortality among people age 65 and over was 6% below a baseline from previous years. In the cities of central and southern Italy, the deaths were 3% below expectations.”
When you take this into account, Italy’s COVID-19 deaths are on par with its typical flu season. This is why it was hard to take the World Health Organization’s Mike Ryan seriously when, at a March 20th briefing, he said, “This isn’t just a bad flu season.”
The Now-Infamous Imperial College COVID-19 Model
Spurred by the overhyped images in the media and responding to an increasingly panicked public, the data scientists at Imperial College in the United Kingdom spun up their computers and decided to run the numbers. Their stated goal was to predict the impact of COVID-19 and propose ways that public policymakers could deal with it.
The Imperial College team, led by Dr. Neil Ferguson, spent over a decade developing a computer modeling software that allegedly could predict the short-term and long-term spread and mortality rates of infectious diseases.
In early March, Ferguson’s team ran the models and generated a report that was given to the British government and shared with the US federal government. The report was initially treated as a state secret. As the government’s of the UK and the US suddenly shifted from a wait-and-see approach to a panicked and aggressive stance, everyone was left to wonder what changed. As governments on both sides of the Atlantic began to institute lockdowns and shutdowns, the consensus was that whatever was in the Imperial College report must be catastrophic. In the minds of many, the scenes from Italy that played out on their TV screens would soon be playing out in their cities and towns and they would play a starring role.
Governments sprang into action. We were all under orders to stay home or close our businesses. New rules we instituted telling us to stay 6 feet away from one another. Celebrities were soon enlisted to urge our compliance with the new rules. Medical professionals, often unsung heroes, became very public superheroes. Stadiums, convention centers, and sports arenas were turned into makeshift hospitals capable of accommodating tens of thousands of additional patients.
Once the Imperial College report was made public, it became clear why policymakers went into overdrive. In one model, the report predicted that 80% of Americans would get COVID-19, and 0.9% of them would die. It also predicted that those over 70 years of age would bear the brunt with 4 to 8 percent dying. In total, the prediction was that 2.2 million Americans would die directly from the virus if no actions were taken. The report went on to predict that the actual death toll would be closer to 4 million in a span of 3 months due to a shortage of ventilators.
The report essentially said that if no action was taken, 4 million Americans would be dead from COVID-19 by May.
The report offered options, though. Included in the report were predictions based on a strategy of mitigation that would place all symptomatic cases of COVID-19 in isolation, quarantine their families for 14 days, and order everyone over 70 to practice social distancing. This strategy was known as “flattening the curve” and became the mantra of every public figure and government official after the report’s release.
What government officials didn’t really explain or the public didn’t bother to comprehend is that “flattening the curve” meant only attempting to slow the spread of COVID-19 and not prevent everyone from getting it. It was meant only to isolate the disease to the people most likely to die from it to avoid overwhelming hospitals.
The mitigation model predicted that the death rate from the disease would be cut in half, and the peak need for ventilators would decrease by two-thirds. However, the demand would still exceed the supply of ventilators by eight times meaning that most people who would need ventilators wouldn’t get them.
Finally, the Imperial College team ran the numbers a third time, this time assuming a “suppression” strategy. In addition to isolating symptomatic cases and quarantining their family members, they also simulated social distancing for the entire population. All public gatherings and most workplaces would be shut down. Schools and universities would close. It would turn America into a veritable ghost town.
In this scenario, the model predicted that the death rate in the US would peak sometime in April with a few thousand deaths then the mortality rates would steadily decline. In the end, COVID-19 would go down in the history books as the equivalent of a bad flu season. There was one caveat to this scenario. These restrictions could not be lifted until a vaccine was developed and administered. If they were lifted, the other two nightmare scenarios would come to pass. The time estimated to get a working vaccine was 18 months.
When the report was finally made public, the draconian measures implemented by these governments made sense. The only problem is that the entire report was fiction. It was only a couple of weeks after its release that others started asking the questions that government officials failed to ask.
Other data scientists wanted to duplicate the Imperial College findings. They were initially denied access to the underlying computer code. Other teams ran their own simulations using the same initial data set as Imperial College and came up with wildly different findings. This brought even more scrutiny to Ferguson’s team and methodology.
When they finally coughed up the code, they had to admit that it wasn’t the actual code they had used to run the model and have, to this day, steadfastly refused to turn over the original computer code. What has been released has been thoroughly reviewed by experts around the world and found to be flawed to the point of being useless.
The failure of the Imperial College model is not a state secret. You can look around right now and see that its dire warnings and predictions didn’t come to pass. The makeshift hospitals have been dismantled. Hospitals beds that were reallocated exclusively for COVID-19 patients sat empty and unused. The excess medical staff have been laid off or had their hours cut back so severely that many have been relegated to making viral dancing videos on social media to pass the time.
Beyond the anecdotal evidence, the data doesn’t support the catastrophic findings of the report, either. Millions haven’t died in the US from COVID-19. In fact, as of now, there have been 132,000 reported deaths from COVID-19.
While the false predictions of the Imperial College report can be blamed on bad computer code and a sloppy research team, the COVID-19 mortality rate might actually be a complete and intentional fabrication.
Solving Problems By Changing The Dictionary
In the 1990s science fiction television series Babylon 5, the lead character is told by a government official that the problems of homelessness, unemployment, poverty, and prejudice have all been solved. The government official is asked when this happened. “When we changed the dictionary.”
Governments, both fictional and real, have a tendency to solve problems by redefining the terms. In the case of COVID-19, there is abundant evidence that intentional changes to definitions were made to inflate the danger and severity of both the disease and the outbreak.
The problems first came to light anecdotally as relatives of people who were dying in hospitals were reporting that the cause of death for their loved ones was being listed as COVID-19 when it clearly wasn’t. One family in San Antonio fired off an angry response to a local news channel who reported their grandfather had died from COVID-19 when he, in fact, had died from a stroke due to a long-term illness. However, since he had tested positive for COVID-19, his cause of death was listed as such.
Stories from all across Texas and the United States began to surface, reporting similar incidents. In some cases, there were allegations that even patients who died and had not been tested or had tested negative were still having their cause of death listed as COVID-19.
These stories went from anecdote and urban legend to reality when Dr. Deborah Birx, the Coronavirus Response Coordinator for the White House Coronavirus Task Force, publicly admitted, “All deaths of patients with a linkage to COVID-19 are now classified as COVID-19 deaths regardless of cause or underlying health issues that could have contributed to loss of life.”
Government agencies have been playing so fast and loose with the data and definitions related to COVID-19 that the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) took all of them to task for their unscientific methods.
In an article published in May of this year, the authors cited two indisputable facts about the inaccuracy of the numbers being offered as the “death toll” from COVID-19.
First, there is no evidence or proof offered by any scientist, pathologist, or virologist that confirms COVID-19 as the “cause” of death in the certification process. Additionally, the expanded definition of a “COVID-19 death” that was enacted by the CDC on March 24th, now includes probable but unconfirmed cases which “conflates and clusters test results creating a source of both under and overestimation.”
Their skepticism was confirmed and made accessible to the world when a video recording of an otherwise mundane meeting of the Collin County Texas Commissioners Court featured a presentation over the CDC and state health department’s new COVID-19 definitions. The briefing confirmed that under the new definitions, nearly everyone in Texas could be classified as a COVID-19 case whether they actually had the virus or not.
To further muddy the waters, according to the CDC, deaths from coronary disease, diabetes, morbid obesity, or pneumonia may be linked or connected to a COVID-19 positive test result. As the ACSH article noted, “The operative words “linked” or “connected” provide little explanation of how they’re related or indicate what the presumed link entails.” Even the Wall Street Journal saw through fuzzy math. “Tabulating deaths is tricky. Some states count probable deaths for cases where there weren’t test results available, but where the deceased had symptoms of the disease.”
The conclusion from the ACSH was damning.
“The weekly death tolls now attributed to an expanded definition from March 21st to April 18th have climbed from 494 to 11,051. But the exemptions and redefinitions suggest that the numbers of deaths attributed to Coronavirus have been counted haphazardly and incorrectly.”
To put these numbers in perspective, if we accept the skewed definitions of COVID-19 deaths given by the federal government and used by the Texas Department of State Health Services, the current death toll attributed to the illness in Texas is 2,646.
According to an October 19, 2018, article by the Texas Medical Association, “In Texas, more than 11,000 people died from flu and its complications during the 2017-18 flu season, including 16 children, the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) said.”
This doesn’t even take into account that the CDC and DSHS undercount the number of flu diagnoses and deaths resulting from the flu because of the lack of standardized reporting protocols.
The question remains as to why the government would purposely try to inflate the numbers. Ultimately, it looks like an attempt to run for political cover. They made a huge and unforgivable mistake acting solely on the basis of a report that is less accurate than a newspaper horoscope. They usurped power and authority from the people. They destroyed lives and livelihoods. Rather than admit their mistakes and pay the political consequences, they would rather prolong the panic and suffering and cook the books so that the numbers come closer to the doomsday prediction. Then, on the other side, they will claim that they saved us.
The Weaponization of COVID-19
While COVID-19 may or may not have been developed in a biowarfare laboratory, politicians and government officials have certainly found ways to weaponize it.
The mandates and edicts being handed down from the federal and state governments have divided the public like few other issues have been able to. Those who have become consciously or unconsciously skeptical of the government’s draconian measures have been vilified by those who have swallowed the party-line hook, line, and sinker. Called uncaring and unfeeling, the vilified have responded by labeling those who unquestionably comply as “sheep.”
Mask mandates have become a proxy war for gun rights. Small businesses fighting for survival have become proxy wars over abortion. The debate over the science behind the pandemic modeling has become a proxy war over the issue of global warming.
Politicians have been able to pour every divisive issue that the people have argued over for decades into the COVID-19 debate. As the debate rages, governments take more power, politicians send more fundraising emails, and political parties sell face masks with their logos emblazoned across the front.
Bars, restaurants, parks, beaches, churches, and schools are no-go zones because millions could die, but if we want to gather in the thousands to protest, loot, and destroy buildings and monuments, we should be perfectly safe. We are told by the CDC that masks are not an effective means to prevent the spread of COVID-19 only to have those same guidelines revised and the wearing of masks mandated. We are the potential victims of a virus that can only travel 6 feet and no more. This is a virus that cannot infect you at a big box retail store but will absolutely kill you if you shop at a business owned by one of your neighbors or attend church services.
In every instance, the message from the establishment political class is the same: “Give me more power, and I will fix the problem.” All the while, they will never admit that perhaps there wasn’t a serious problem until they created it.
Much like those 99 red balloons, COVID-19 has become an excuse to unleash destruction that has lain dormant, waiting for its moment to arrive. The political class is having its hey-day at the expense of the people. However, their time is growing short.
More and more Texans are refusing to comply. Those who were solidly in “Camp Fear” are awakening to the glaring inconsistencies in the narrative being pushed by the political class and their propagandists in the media. There is now a level of distrust for the government that hasn’t been seen in a long time. People are asking inconvenient questions about COVID-19, and their questions aren’t ending there. The actions of the government have spurred more Texans to study the Texas Bill of Rights than ever before and question every law and statute that flows from the pens of bureaucrats. As the falsehoods from the CDC and the federal government are exposed and the realization that our state government is taking its marching orders from unelected bureaucrats in Washington, it is even leading more Texans to support Texas independence.
Whether those in government who are promoting the COVID-19 falsehoods are master manipulators, politicians out of their depth, or useful idiots will not matter in the end. It will end, they will be held accountable, and the people of Texas will always choose freedom and independence over lies. As Sam Houston said, “Texas has yet to learn submission to any oppression, come from what source it may.”