Pandemia: How Coronavirus Hysteria Took Over Our Government, Rights, and Lives
So, I had initially planned on reviewing the president book this week, due to Christmas being next Sunday; however, I did not get a review up last week due to required home improvement project when we had to install a new washer/dryer, along with rewiring a part of our house and replacing drywall, taping, mudding, and painting the drywall. House project trumped book review, so the president is being moved out to next month, making this week’s book of the week Pandemia: How Coronavirus Hysteria Took Over Our Government, Rights, and Lives by Alex Berenson.
Alex Berenson hit my radar as the first person to get a permanent twitter ban overturned.... pre-Elon Musk...his ban was overturned by the courts, which was legendary. So, he hit my radar and I bought Pandemia and there it sat on my shelf until I had a spot in my reading schedule it would fit. This book does an excellent job reconstructing how the pandemic rolled out, from its earliest appearance in China until the book released in 2021. So, no updates for the last year. But here’s what IS in the book.
Berenson covers how the virus started in China, the corporate presses absolute demonization of Trump’s attempts to ban travel to China as racist. He explains how even if the press hadn’t vilified Trump on this point and the travel ban had been effective in stopping travel, it would not have stopped the virus. That cat was already out of the bag by the time travel bans were contemplated.
He goes over the pandemics from the last 100 years, the 1919 Spanish Flu pandemic, the Hong Kong flu of 1969, swine flu, bird flu, and how we failed to learn the lessons of the past. And he brings up HIV as an epidemic. I was a little surprised by that at first, not seeing the parallel between a blood born pathogen and an air born virus, but he gets there, in short order. The point he was making is that HIV when it was first discovered had a 95% fatality rate, as near to a guaranteed death sentence as one could get when diagnosed. And how the corporate press tried very hard to sell Sars-Cov-2 as the next HIV, fatal from infection to the grave, and government used this media-based fear to drive all the corruption, lack of freedom, and division in the country over the following months. Except it was NEVER that fatal. And there’s a lot of information to indicate the government knew it.
Don’t get me wrong, no one is saying the virus didn’t kill. It did and it does. Berenson never said otherwise and neither did anyone else. Those of us who failed to panic when told to by the government had a variety of reasons for keeping our cool. Whye people are just naturally fatalists...everyone dies so why get worked up about it? My reason for not trusting the government’s read on things is from a lifelong habit of reading about the shitty things government does. Knowledge of history breeds distrust in government. Berenson approached it from a scientific perspective. I know, I know.... trust the science is a gross phrase that has been so misused over the last two years it’s basically lost all meaning. But bear with me here.
Berenson literally read every scientific piece that came out, and then reports that information HERE in an easy-to-understand format. From the falsehood of 15 days to flatten the curve, to masking requirements, to the “cure all” promises of vaccination, Berenson covers all of this. Thoroughly. Systematically.
The simple truth, as shown by, you know, reality, is that the hospitals were never overwhelmed. They weren’t even close in most places. The first place to be hit hard was New York. And there, Mayor Bill de Blasio and Governor Andrew Cuomo maintained that they needed ALL the ventilators. Long after it was shown that ventilators actually worsened those who had contracted covid.
Berenson tears apart the news reports of how fast this was spreading. Covid was spreading fast enough on its own, but not nearly at the alarming rate the media was pushing. But he doesn’t just tear it apart, he goes to great lengths to explain where the media went wrong in their reporting. They started by reporting information from the past and then extrapolating it through the present day and into the future. But the ACTUAL number of hospitalizations, which were literally reported daily by Cuomo, did not support the fear-based predictions of the media. There were massive discrepancies between what was reported by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). Both were reported, but more play was given to the IHME predictions by the government. For example, the IHME would report that New York would have 61,000 hospitalizations with 11,500 in intensive care, when the reality was 14,810 patients with only 3,731 in intensive care. So, the misreporting being used by the government to drive coronavirus response was off by tens of thousands.
And that’s just one example of the sort of misreporting the media engaged in and the government used to take away our freedoms. Berenson blast’s the sort of lazy reporting done ad nauseum by The New York Times....which would come as no surprise to anyone who’s, I don’t know...READ the New York Times. But the one he really lambasts is The Atlantic. The Atlantic reported on how America was failing the doctors, was shocked by how people value youth over the elderly, how red states were ushering in excessive death by not following Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines, hysterically predicted half a million plus deaths in the areas that ignored government recommendations, reported wild stories of long haul covid, how republicans were the reason for rising covid cases, how racist Trump is (because obviously that’s the true source of the pandemic), and of course how wrong Berenson himself was about everything, despite the overwhelming evidence that he was not only spot on, but was the ONLY reporter willing to stand against the narrative. No wonder he wrote this book...the timing is right. I can only hope reprints and second editions include an additional chapter addressing The Atlantic article where they ask for amnesty for being such an awful, dreck filled rag during the Pandemic, and utterly failing to do their job.... their ONE job...which is to question everything the government says.
So, let’s address some of those. America is failing her doctors. Basically, this piece came out claiming that because we didn’t have enough ventilators, we were putting the doctors at risk of contracting the virus. And within a month of this alarmist article, the Journal of the American Medical Association published their findings on the use of ventilators, largely that they not only don’t work, but actually make the infection worse. Of the 1,151 patients who had been put on ventilators during the first covid wave, only 38 had been discharged and 282 had died. That’s almost 24% who had been ventilated died. And there’s a lot to indicate they died BECAUSE they were put on ventilators. But The Atlantic never reported that new information, and never retracted its prior statements. The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published their findings in April 2020 and I remember reading articles well into June and July of 2020 about the lack of ventilators.
Long haul covid= mental health…. See also my review on The United States of Fear.
The shock on valuing youth over the elderly is particularly disgusting. Look, no one wants to die. Fear of death is an all too human emotion. Maybe if the government would let us all eat a little psilocybin, that panic wouldn’t be so bad. But locking down the young, who were never at any serious risk from the virus, because those who were over 90 were at higher risk, was disgusting. The fact that the young are still being forced to mask in some places is disgusting...more on masking in a bit. But any culture that places a higher value on the life of the extreme elderly over the future of the young, is a society in an advanced state of decay. Children should be protected, but never raised in fear. And we have raised an entire generation to be terrified and obedient. And I weep for the future.
The reports on how red states were ushering in excessive death by not following CDC guidelines, hysterically predicted half a million plus deaths in the areas that ignored government recommendations, and how racist Trump is, go pretty much hand in hand, and speak to how heavily political the entire pandemic was. In the eyes of most media, blue state governors could do no wrong, and red state governors were the harbingers of death. And EVERYTHING was the fault of Trump. No matter what Trump did, it was wrong in the eyes of the corporate press. Look...I am NOT a Trump fan. But the media’s panicked, vengeful reporting of everything Trump did as wrong wrong wrong and everything the left did as right right right was so blatantly partisan, I remain stunned by the number of people who are genuinely incapable of seeing it. I have friends to this day who maintain the pandemic could have been avoided entirely if anyone else had been president when it started. And the presses refusal to report on the hypocrisy of the left.... Anyone else remember the Gavin Newsome/French Laundry incident?
Ok, so my outrage, to remind you, comes from general knowledge of history and how vilely governments tend to treat their people. Democide is the biggest cause of death globally, bar none. Keeping with what’s in the book, the reporting on the red states policies causing death came out when deaths were declining. And none of the reporting could explain why blue states had surging covid rates. But Berenson does explain it. Using the actual medical reports and tracking the waves of Covid as they rolled around the globe.
And of course, the attacks on Berenson himself were so wrong they were backwards. Berenson addresses why lockdown’s failed, why masks were nothing more than virtue signaling political grandstanding, why politicians knew both of those things, and how and why the vaccines failed and are failing. He addresses the literal elephant in the room: comorbidities. Why is this a literal elephant. Three words. Body Positivity Movement. The biggest co-morbidity and the reason why the US tended to a higher death count than other countries, is obesity. The US is fatter than any other developed nation. And it cost us. And instead of addressing this problem and encouraging a healthy lifestyle, encouraging people to lose weight and eat healthily, to exercise and move, and yes drink less, we have people espousing the lie of Health at Every Size. Obesity is not healthy. And rather than stepping on that political landmine, the reporters ceded all rational thought and let the government talking points run the day. And ruin American lives and livelihoods.
This book was full of information, and even better, it’s information that is backed by solid science...no not The Science. One senses the overall scorn for The Science throughout the book. And rightly so. The contempt for the political pandering that went on is palpable. For most of us, the outrage was the violation of the Constitution and the restraints it places on government. Allegedly. For Berenson, that outrage was there, but he was also professionally outraged. He is a professional journalist, and he was the guy who was staring at what was happening, reporting on what was happening, and every one of his professional colleagues was staring at him like he was a lunatic, screaming that the sky was falling.
Vindication is his, at last. As evidenced by the Atlantic article, asking for amnesty for being such a piece of garbage rag over the last two years. And his court ordered reversal on his Twitter ban. He’s done a hell of a piece of reporting with this book. The biggest problem with it, as near as I can see, is it’s chalk full of confirmation bias for the 1/3 of America who were pretty sure it was all a government power grab and believed Berenson. And the 1/3 who were able to follow the actual science and knew it was being misreported by the press. But the 1/3 who NEEDS to read this book, would never even look at it. The ones who are still masking up while driving alone in their cars and lining up for their fifth and sixth booster shots. Those are the ones who need to read this book. And they are also convinced that Berenson is a grifter, a hack reporter who’s just out to make a name for himself.
But I think the pendulum is starting to swing back. The Atlantic all but admitted it with their ridiculous amnesty request.
But if you find yourself, for some reason, stuck in an argument with a Covidian who refuses to give up the company line, this is a good book to read to have the facts in your pocket, and ready to go. Highly recommend it.
This book was initially reviewed on YouTube on December 18, 2022, but is now available on Rumble and PodBean.
