The Great Reset, page 9
“Fifty years of scientific and epidemiological research was dismissed, and instead Britain and Ireland, along with most of the developed world adopted the model espoused by the Chinese Communist Party,” explained McCloskey, a practicing physician who also works with the Ireland-based Freedom Alliance.
The world we once knew or thought we knew was transformed, seemingly overnight. “The entire healthy population was locked up, elderly people were taken from hospital beds without expectation of further medical care, and legislation was passed, without parliamentary debate, removing fundamental human and constitutional rights—to movement, to association, to earn a living, to an education, to engage in public worship, and to access the range of medical services to which people were hitherto entitled,” McCloskey wrote.18
Klaus Schwab, the World Economic Forum, China, the WHO, Gates, and the other forces behind the Great Reset had to be pleased as everyday liberties of citizens around the world were vaporized in favor of the collective good, with rule by an unelected expert class.
“Governments were advised in this course of action by scientists and medics whose identity, qualifications and aptitude for this work [were] largely hidden from public scrutiny. Even now, the conflicts of interest of these people on whose advice our futures depend are not publicly available,” McCloskey explained.19
On September 14, 2020, federal district judge William S. Stickman IV issued an opinion on the legality of COVID-19 lockdowns in a case involving Butler County, Pennsylvania.
“While, unquestionably, states and local governments restricted certain activities for a limited period of time to mitigate the Spanish Flu, there is no record of any imposition of a population lockdown in response to that disease or any other in our history,” Judge Stickman explained in County of Butler v. Thomas W. Wolf:
The fact is that the lockdowns imposed across the United States in early 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic are unprecedented in the history of our Commonwealth and our Country. They have never been used in response to any other disease in our history. They were not recommendations made by the CDC. They were unheard of by the people [of] this nation until just this year. It appears as though the imposition of lockdowns in Wuhan and other areas of China—a nation unconstrained by concern for civil liberties and constitutional norms—started a domino effect where one country, and state, after another imposed draconian and hitherto untried measures on their citizens. The lockdowns are, therefore, truly unprecedented from a legal perspective.20
In January 2020 the World Health Organization went into full propaganda mode for China when the Chinese locked down Wuhan and the Hubei province. “China’s decision to lock down Wuhan, a city of 11 million people, shows how committed the authorities are to contain[ing] a viral outbreak that emerged in a seafood market there, a World Health Organization representative in Beijing said,” noted a January 23, 2020, report by Reuters.
Throwing Out the Rulebook
“During the 1918–1919 flu pandemic, some American cities closed schools, churches and theaters, banned large gatherings and funerals and restricted store hours. But none imposed stay-at-home orders or closed all nonessential businesses. No such measures were imposed during the 1957 flu pandemic, the next-deadliest one; even schools stayed open.
“Lockdowns weren’t part of the contemporary playbook, either. Canada’s pandemic guidelines concluded that restrictions on movement were ‘impractical, if not impossible.’ The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in its 2017 community mitigation guidelines for pandemic flu, didn’t recommend stay-at-home orders or closing nonessential businesses even for a flu as severe as the one a century ago.” —Greg Ip in the Wall Street Journal, August of 202021
World Health Organization official Gauden Galea “told Reuters the move, also now replicated in nearby Huanggang, was beyond WHO guidelines,” the news agency reported. According to Galea, “the lockdown of 11 million people is unprecedented in public health history, so it is certainly not a recommendation the WHO has made.” Locking down Wuhan was “a very important indication of the commitment to contain the epidemic in the place where it is most concentrated,” Galea stated, adding that the public health community had to wait and see if the lockdown would work to stop the spread of the virus.22
By just one week later, on January 30, 2020, the WHO had apparently decided not to wait for any results but instead simply declared that China was doing an awesome job with their unprecedented lockdowns.23
The Virtue of Cowardice
“Socrates made clear in Plato’s Republic that he did not want doctors to rule. Philosophers or even poets would be better governors of society, because they at least attempt to understand political and social life in its entirety and minister to the human soul. Doctors, by contrast, tend to disregard the soul: it is the nature of their art to focus on the body in lieu of higher concerns…. But rule by public health officials, under which we increasingly live today, encourages excessive risk-aversion and almost transforms cowardice into a virtue.” —Jeffrey H. Anderson, director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics at the U.S. Department of Justice from 2017 to 202124
WHO Loves Authoritarianism?
WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who, as we have seen, owes his position to Communist China, had praise for his Chinese paymasters. “As I have said repeatedly since my return from Beijing, the Chinese government is to be congratulated for the extraordinary measures it has taken to contain the outbreak, despite the severe social and economic impact those measures are having on the Chinese people,” Tedros gushed.
Tedros continued his campaigning for China’s actions. “The speed with which China detected the outbreak, isolated the virus, sequenced the genome and shared it with WHO and the world are [sic] very impressive, and beyond words. So is China’s commitment to transparency and to supporting other countries,” he said.25
Tedros also said that he was personally “very impressed and encouraged by the [Chinese] president’s detailed knowledge of the outbreak.”26 He claimed that “in many ways, China is actually setting a new standard for outbreak response. It’s not an exaggeration.”27
Ruling by Ridicule
“Hundreds of thousands of social media posts later traced to China praised the lockdown, and criticized and ridiculed world leaders who failed to follow suit.” —Stacey Rudin at the American Institute for Economic Research28
The WHO’s Emergency Committee also issued similar praise for China’s show of authoritarianism. “The measures China has taken are good not only for that country but also for the rest of the world,” the WHO dutifully reported. “The Committee welcomed the leadership and political commitment of the very highest levels of Chinese government, their commitment to transparency, and the efforts made to investigate and contain the current outbreak.”29
Human rights activists, on the other hand, were horrified by the authoritarian lockdown that China was imposing on their citizens—and by the praise it was garnering from the World Health Organization.
“That the Chinese government can lock millions of people into cities with almost no advance notice should not be considered anything other than terrifying,” said Frances Eve, the deputy director of research at Chinese Human Rights Defenders. “Human rights should not be a casualty to the coronavirus crisis…. The WHO is ignoring Chinese government suppression of human rights regarding the outbreak, including severe restrictions on freedom of expression,” Eve wrote in The Guardian.
“The Measures Themselves Sow the Fear”
“[Lockdowns] thus create a feedback loop in which the measures themselves sow the fear that makes citizens… believe their risk of dying from COVID-19 is hundreds of times greater than it really is, which in turn causes them to support more lockdown measures.” —attorney, author of “China’s Global Lockdown Propaganda Campaign”30
“China’s response to the outbreak included a month-long government cover-up in Wuhan, the centre of the outbreak, that led to the rapid spread of the coronavirus,” Eve pointed out.
Eve ridiculed the WHO for touting China’s “transparency.” As she wrote, “Despite early evidence of human-to-human transmission when medical staff became infected, this information was not relayed to the public for weeks. Hardly a ‘commitment to transparency.’ ”
In addition, “Chinese police punished frontline doctors for ‘spreading rumors’ for trying to warn the public in late December [2019]. Police are still engaged in a campaign to detain Chinese netizens for spreading so-called ‘rumours,’ ” Eve wrote in February 2020. “Activists have been threatened with jail if they share foreign news articles or post on social media about the coronavirus outbreak.”
“A Subjugated Population of Undifferentiated Automatons”
Masks “work to signal political obedience and ferret out enemies of the state who do not go along. If government wants a subjugated population of undifferentiated automatons, universal mask mandates take a solid step in that direction. What they are after is not public health…. The longer the mask mandates exist, the more money government raises and the less incentive authorities have to relax them or allow them to go unenforced.” —Jeffrey A. Tucker of the Brownstone Institute, author of Liberty or Lockdown31
As Eve pointed out, the World Health Organization had betrayed its own principles: “The WHO declares that core principles of human rights and health includes accountability, equality and non-discrimination and participation. It even acknowledges that ‘participation is important to accountability as it provides… checks and balances which do not allow unitary leadership to exercise power in an arbitrary manner.’ ” In contrast to the principles espoused by the WHO, “China is not a democracy and the people cannot remove their leaders from power for governance failures related to the coronavirus outbreak. People expressing discontent online can go to prison. There is no free press and journalists trying to report on the frontline are obstructed, detained, and their stories deleted from the internet. Medical staff are gagged. Civil society organisations decimated by Xi’s crackdowns on human rights cannot work on the frontlines to support hospitals and communities. Frightened netizens are labelled ‘rumour-mongers.’ ”
In conclusion, Eve urged, “This should not be the new standard for outbreak response. The WHO should abide by its own human rights principles and demand the Chinese government end its censorship and police suppression surrounding the coronavirus outbreak.32
The February 2020 “Report of the WHO-China Joint Mission on Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)” included lavish praise for China’s lockdowns. “China’s uncompromising and rigorous use of non-pharmaceutical measures to contain transmission of the COVID-19 virus in multiple settings provides vital lessons for the global response,” the report proclaimed.33
Bruce Aylward—the former assistant director general of the WHO and senior advisor to WHO director general Tedros—headed up the WHO “Mission” to China and had nothing but rave reviews for China’s lockdowns. “China has taken one of the most ancient approaches for infectious disease control and rolled out probably the most ambitious, and I would say, agile and aggressive disease containment effort in history,” Aylward explained on February 24, 2020, during a “Press Conference of WHO-China Joint Mission on COVID-19.”
Na-Na Na-Na Na! I Can’t Hear You!
According to the Hong Kong Free Press, “World Health Organization advisor Bruce Aylward ended a video call with an RTHK journalist after she asked him about Taiwan’s status.”
“At first, [Aylward] appeared to pretend not to hear producer Yvonne Tong’s question about whether the UN body would reconsider Taiwan’s membership. ‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear your question, Yvonne… Let’s move to another one then,’ he said.
“When Tong called him back to ask again about Taiwan and its coronavirus measures, Aylward said: ‘Well, we’ve already talked about China.’ He then ended the interview, which was part of RTHK’s weekly news show The Pulse.
“Taiwan has been ruled by the Republic of China government since 1945, but Beijing insists the island is part of its territory and pressures other countries and international bodies to follow its ‘One China’ policy. Taiwan is excluded from the WHO,” Hong Kong Free Press noted. “Aylward has regularly featured in Chinese state media after he led a WHO mission to the country during the outbreak.”34
“What China has demonstrated is, you have to do this. If you do it, you can save lives and prevent thousands of cases of what is a very difficult disease,” Aylward urged.35
On February 26, 2020, the WHO’s Aylward was in campaign mode for China’s oppressive lockdown. “Copy China’s response to COVID-19,” Aylward urged the world in an interview with CGTN—China Global Television Network—in Europe.36
As Michael P. Senger pointed out, the World Health Organization was pushing the policy of a totalitarian dictatorship on the entire world with little justification. “The WHO did not even consider other countries’ economic circumstances, demographics, or even their number of COVID-19 cases—which were very few in most of the world—before instructing the entire world that ‘you have to do this,’ ” Senger wrote. “Anytime anyone endorses a lockdown for any length of time, even a few minutes, they are endorsing a Xi Jinping policy.”37
“Society Permanently in Crisis”
“COVID was the best thing to ever happen to these people. The panic over an unknown virus caused too many of us to rush to give up freedoms we once knew to be essential: The right to travel, for example, or the right to eat in a restaurant; the right to protest in public; and in many cases, the right to run a business and take [care] of our families; literally the right to say goodbye to our elders and to bury our dead…. We’ve rolled out the blueprint for a society that is nominally free, but willing to throw freedom away in a crisis. So now, the leadership class has realized there’s a lot of value to keeping society permanently in crisis.” —Christopher Bedford, senior editor at The Federalist38
Jane Fonda was so enthralled with the COVID lockdowns and restrictions that she blurted out an inconvenient truth. “COVID is God’s gift to the Left,” the actress and activist said—then suddenly realized and admitted, “That’s a terrible thing to say.” Fonda called COVID an “existential crossroads” for the world. “What a great gift, what a tremendous opportunity, we’re just so lucky—we have to use it with every ounce of intelligence and courage and wherewithal we have.”39
It was a “gift” that not everybody was glad to receive. Oliver Smith, travel correspondent for The Telegraph, summed up the global lockdowns this way: “No holidays, no weddings, no family celebrations, no live music, no live sport, no nights out, no cinemas, no theatre, no bustling bars, no buzzing restaurants. No spontaneity, nor any way to plan for the future. No life. Enough is enough.”40
CHAPTER 4 Following “The Science”—or the Chinese?
In the name of safety, the residents of the formerly free world gave up liberty and allowed “two weeks to flatten the curve” to turn into endless lockdowns, including stay-at-home orders, curfews, church closures, businesses decimated, schools canceled, and “phased reopenings”—which inevitably turned into a seesaw battle of restrictions loosened and tightened. “The lockdown and its consequences have brought a foretaste of what is to come: a permanent state of fear, strict behavioral control, massive loss of jobs, and growing dependence on the state,” as German economics professor Antony P. Mueller explained.1
A “permanent state of fear” based on dodgy statistics and questionable epidemiology. “The Science” behind the policies does not hold up to scrutiny.
Dr. Deborah Birx, the former White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator under President Donald Trump, revealed that “if someone dies with COVID-19, we are counting that as a COVID-19 death.”2
That’s “with” COVID-19, not “from” COVID-19—a crucial distinction, and one that may not have been reflected in the coronavirus death counts.
Thus Dr. Thomas T. Siler said succinctly, “Let’s demand a recount… of COVID deaths.” When Siler analyzed the official death count from COVID-19, he found that it came up wanting because of changes made by the CDC to the criteria for determining the deaths—and because of financial incentives Congress had put in place.
The Congressional CARES Act, which authorized more funding for hospitals with COVID patients, also created an incentive to push positive COVID-test results and patient “cases.”
“Perhaps done with good intentions, this incentivized financially pushing the COVID-19 diagnosis to the top of the list so that hospitals can pay for the care they give,” Siler wrote.3
And it wasn’t just the death counts and the case counts. As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pointed out, “They cannot tell you what the case fatality rate for COVID is, that’s basic. They cannot give us a PCR test that actually works. They don’t have—they have to change the definition of COVID on the death certificates, constantly, to make it look more and more dangerous. The one thing they are good at is pumping up fear.”4
COVID Deaths… by Gunshot
A Colorado coroner blew the whistle on how “two of their five deaths related to COVID-19 were people who died of gunshot wounds,” reported CBS Denver affiliate CBS4.
The coroner, Brenda Bock, says because “they tested positive for COVID-19 within the past 30 days, they were classified as ‘deaths among cases.’ ” She told CBS, “It’s absurd that they would even put that on there.”
“The state health department says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention requires them to report people who’ve died with COVID-19 in their systems because it’s crucial for public health surveillance,” CBS reported.5
