Opinion | In their understandable enthusiasm to roll out the novel covid vaccines as widely and quickly as possible in early 2021, the public health establishment succumbed to two dangerous temptations: Propaganda and coercion.
That their approach deployed these with the common good in mind (achieving herd immunity) and with good intentions (ending the pandemic as quickly as possible) does not alter the fact that such approaches were deeply misguided and represented deeply disturbing trends in public policy. Public pronouncements in the name of science could not be questioned, and behavioral outcomes could be achieved by any means necessary.
Coercive covid vaccination mandates rested on several unproven postulates, which mainstream opinion took to be axiomatic and unassailable: (1) the vaccines were safe for everyone; (2) the vaccines were necessary for everyone; therefore, (3) any vaccine hesitancy is a public relations problem that must be overcome.
The “needle in every arm” goal was set in advance; the only deliberation permitted was about the most efficient means toward this predetermined end. Any scientist, physician, or policymaker who broke ranks to question one or more of these axioms was at best a nuisance or at worst dangerous—someone to be ignored as backward or dismissed as a threat to public health. People who asked inconvenient questions were labeled with the dismissive “anti-vax” epithet, a term that functioned to exclude them from the realm of reasonable discourse.
Some of the vaccine propaganda would have been laughable if it wasn’t so clearly displaying sanctimonious contempt for its audience. Consider a televised public service announcement from Ohio’s Department of Health: a friendly immunologist clears up misinformation about what’s in a covid vaccine by explaining, “There are just a few simple ingredients: water, sugar, salt, fat, and most importantly, a building block for protein. … That’s less stuff than a candy bar or a can of pop.”
The absurd message suggests that vaccine risks are no different from the risks of eating a candy bar or drinking a soda—clearly government-sponsored misinformation if that word means anything. The condescension on display also tells you all you need to know about what Ohio’s public health officials think of the intelligence of the average citizen.
Aside from what was said, the most egregious form of propaganda was the vaccine-related information that was deliberately withheld or deemphasized. As mentioned earlier, The New York Times reported in February 2022: “Two full years into the pandemic, the agency leading the country’s response to the public health emergency [the CDC] has published only a tiny fraction of the data it has collected.”
For example, when the agency “published the first significant data on the effectiveness of boosters in adults younger than 65 … it left out the numbers for a huge portion of that population: 18- to 49-year-olds, the group least likely to benefit from extra shots.” The CDC’s stated reason for withholding much of its data was that it did not want to increase vaccine hesitancy.
The result was messaging from public health officials that sounded indistinguishable from the marketing departments of Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson. Granted, public health communications must be simplified for broad consumption; but there is a key difference between simplifying information for the layperson and dumbing it down to manipulate the masses, or deliberately suppressing information that might undermine a predetermined public policy.
This was not public education but a manipulative effort at behavioral control. In the most precise meaning of the term, it was propaganda. Large swaths of the public who were not hypnotized by the repetition of memes could sense, even if they could not explain, that they were subjected to manipulation. As vaccination rates approached 50% in the United States, vaccine uptake slowed by April 2021. Reports began to emerge of serious side effects, and studies from Israel, which started its mass vaccination campaign before the US, suggested that vaccine efficacy waned rapidly.
Public health efforts pivoted from propaganda to heavy-handed nudges and bribes. Several states entered vaccinated citizens into lotteries awarding cash prizes of $1 million or more. Other states and cities launched promotions for vaccination ranging from free beer in New Jersey to raffles for full-ride college scholarships in New York and Ohio to a free marijuana joint in Washington for those who took the jab. (The latter brought to, naturally, by people who sincerely care about your health.)
When these nudges didn’t work, officials simply mandated the vaccines, with severe penalties for those who declined. As my own institution, the University of California, prepared to issue its vaccine mandate, I argued publicly in the pages of The Wall Street Journal in June 2021 that university vaccine mandates violated foundational principles of medical ethics, including the principle of informed consent.
Although the minimal conditions for justifying vaccine mandates were never close to being met, institutions embraced these misguided policies with little meaningful public discussion and no debate.
This article was originally published by the Brownstone Institute. Aaron Kheriaty, former Professor of Psychiatry at the UCI School of Medicine and Director, Medical Ethics at UCI Health, is a Senior Scholar of the Brownstone Institute. He is the author of the book “The New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State.”
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15 Responses
Well stated and concise. Thank you.
It is that deb
One of the more well worded and informative I have seen.
Nov 15 2022 Myocarditis & Matt Hancock – The Great Covid Swindle
As Matt Hancock is “interrogated in I’m A Celebrity”, Pfizer and Moderna announce they are launching clinical trials to track vaccine-associated heart problems such as Myocarditis – a topic that’s been censored for months. Was Covid the real reality show?
https://youtu.be/LE_MLJpv71k
Thank you for providing straight forward information on this critical matter. I fear that the repercussions of this engineered illusion will be severe for those whom trusted the presumed authorities. This scam is criminal in its intent to cause harm/death, yet through the propagating media continues to gain the trust of the unwitting public whom accept what they are presented as truth. Men and woman would be wise to actualize that the are not creatures of man made statutes up until they constent by their actions to be subject and act accordingly. The bottom line is are you a living man or woman answerable to your creator or are you a person answerable to the creator of the office of the person? And thus subject to the man made legislated statutes. The office of the person is the largest office in government. Most persons do not realize the are holding the office, created for them without disclosures, their conduct determines whether they hold the office or not. The 1st definition of the work person is, mask. Only the man or woman can individually decide (consent) to wear the mask on the office.
With that said, can man mandate other men to perform through legislation (statures)? Can corporte government mandate their creation (office of the person) to perform? God commands over his creation and government rules over what it creates. It is important to actualize who we are, and more importantly to act in accordance. I am a man, I have not consented to be ruled by men holding their respective created offices. The propaganda at play only consumes those whom do not know they are the principal party on every engagement or contract they enter into upon their own free will. Edward Bernays illustrates in his writings the methods used capture and manipulate the minds of the public. Who created the general office of the public (an operable collective of (masks) persons. The media mediates the perception of a public. Through consent of whatever sort persons assent into melding to become the label of public. Public is in my mind the steerable collective within which none within this fictional grouping retains their voice as none can speak for the collective, especially with the conception of a public including such a vast number of persons. Hence the opportunity for a representative to define the group. On the word representative, no one can re present another. One can only present ones self. One can not represent ones self either. Are you the mask or are you the living man or woman? As crazy as it may seem, this is in every sense a serious question we answer with our conduct everyday. We are drawn into the fictional realm, without notice everyday.
Good ideas do not require force. More people need to learn to resist out of principal, whenever and where ever anyone attempts to use force or coercion.
We are saddened to learn that a substantial portion of our society and the worlds society in general, are equivalent to walking automatons. Performing tasks often for exceptional pay, while maintaining very little personal integrity nor the ability to discern and pass information through both a logic filter and an ethical filter. Programmed beings incapable of thinking independently, wholly dependent on the systems around them. Probably the best highlight of this is the organic eaters whom paid a fortune for non gmo foods, only to turn around and purposefully genetically modify themselves with rnma covid shots. They must not have researched the issue of gm very thoroughly, having missed the obvious correlation that rnma tech is the root action of all dna code manipulation via crispr tech. They were just trying to be trendy when reaching for the non gm foods, they did not posses adequate intellectual backing as to why. Hence the safe foods battle long since devolved into a battle of whom can message the consumer more frequently and via a targeted vector. That’s just one example. Welcome to the age of big corporate, where the reason and justification take a back seat to the power of messaging, hence the explosion in data brokerage and privacy violating data tracking, targeted marketing, cookies, phones that spy on you, loss of 4th amendment principals, all of that.
As the medical establishment persons ran crash carts and epi pens all day every day when they were administering this deadly poison. Now we’re observing people whom should otherwise be healthy, dying left and right. The masses simply are incapable of responding, having been long since lulled into a state of mass formation psychosis from their pre existing tolerance to an infinite stream of propaganda and coercement. I suppose it should not have been as surprising that they’d simply stay the course.
Fortunately, some of us have remained committed to ‘ad free spaces’, and ‘one a day commercial advertisement limits’, and for the exceptional few, still do not have cell phones aka government sanctioned cellular spy devices. If you don’t put a collar around your neck, and around your mind, it’s slightly more difficult to get jerked around and deceived. Imagine it from our point of view; people consumed propaganda, and reacted in a predictable manner, accepting and promoting that propaganda themselves. It’s been a thing for a while now. Repeat after me; Safe AND effective.
Kill your television. Get a desk phone. Whip out the old personal computer and learn to use it on a higher level, a level a mobile device will never in a million years allow you. Never trust people in authority whom are using the power of the state to enrich themselves. Avoid globalist minded companies and persons whenever possible, if not possible to avoid, mitigate their influence. Try living your life at least one day a week if not far longer, without any commercial advertisement exposure, aka propaganda and fake news.
My religious objection is simple; The irony of appealing to persons whom do not respect the principals of choice and voluntary engagement, why we should maintain our ability to make voluntary decisions. All religion is based around the fundamental principals that people are allowed to choose for themselves. Persons whom do not respect the principals of volunteerism and free choice in all walks of life, are godless heathens whom have no business judging anyone else, much less being in a position of authority to approve medical or religious opt out requests. Because the use of force is being applied, we chose to opt out and wait. We chose to resist on principal alone, because good ideas never require force. Teach people this essential principal and you can skip most other ethical and societal implication debates. Without choice and volunteerism, there is only the dark void of totalitarianism and tyranny to look forward to. Does anyone have a pitchfork I can borrow?
Especially cruel and sadistic when no vaccine has been proven safe and effective in any blinded-non-drug placebo trials.
You nailed it!. I was never fooled from the very beginning when this nonsense erupted in March of 2020. I tried to warn everyone I knew what to expect in the near future and as time went on everything I told family and friends occurred and yet 95% of them were convinced that the authorities were correct and accepted the shots. Now with dozens of deaths among my family and friends and even more numbers have been damaged, some are starting to wake up. But, I am afraid it is too late for them.
Hi catryna
And hello to all from the Celtic shores.
I am glad I found this site as it has become a rather Lonely road the last 3 years.
I am with you and I feel your pain.
I genuinely do.
It sometimes feels like I’m in a dream
Firstly I have lost my mother in this Covid madness ( may 2020)
And Due the covertly evil disguise of a deadly disease they told us my father and us could not see her and say goodbye.
I was on my way to the hospital and of course told my siblings that I ( and they ) will not obey such a nasty almost satanic ruling and nothing will stop me as i will be going in to see her
She died before I got there.
The pain haunts me but more so for my father.
As if not enough I then had to endure all the hate thrown my way for putting forward logical and rational opinions as to why I won’t be taking a vaccine and why my family shouldn’t either.
Yet all of them did.
Being lied to by my sibling regarding dad being vaccinated wasn’t great either.
It gives me no pleasure To talk in such a way about my sibling who before this has loved me unconditionally as I have her.
But she unfortunately became so brainwashed it was almost cult like.
By the time I knew it was too late.
So I think you know what’s coming re the vaccine
On the first dose within a month he developed epilepsy
On the 2 nd he rapidly developed Alzheimer’s and on the 3rd he had a stroke .
Of course it’s all just a coincidence and not the vaccine I am told.
This a man who before vaccination was a fit 84 year old ( yes the usual age related things but nothing major)
A small mercy is that I stopped the 4 th one which they tried to force on him but it’s of no consolation.
The damage is done.
My dad is now in a health service care home and as far are they are concerned it’s great and don’t even see the irony that the very people that care for him now are on the same “ team of evil” that put him there .
Of course I’m the black sheep ( I always questioned when something didn’t seem right ) and throughout this madness I did not hold back but it seemed most of the time like no one wanted to know and l was stuck in a glass box screaming but no one was listening.
I am generally in life a happy glass half full type and living in the moment but even I ( like many I guess ) have had moments of deep deep sadness even contemplating what’s the point anymore ( thankfully the moments of joy with dad and knowing we have to look after him stopped that )
So I will stop now as I have just realised I’m blethering.
I hope your all well
I don’t think the word “evil” is justified. I want to forward people here but not if there’s articles with such bombastic hyperbole.
I have been saddened and also outraged by the vaccine mandates, but I am also disappointed in the majority of the public who are intellectually lazy and unwilling to do the research required to make an intelligent decision regarding vaccines! Much less electing a president! I don’t understand how people can be so trusting of their government especially in light of our last presidential election, the Integrity of which has been considerably doubtful! And even though I voted for Trump, I was very disappointed when he ordered the vaccine research at operation warp speed! He may be a good business man and he’s done much for this country, but he knows very little about medicine, and viruses. And he should have checked out other resources besides what thé White House staff was telling him. The Biden Administration has pushed away any and all concerned and ethical physicians who have been opposed to the mandatory vaccine. And if that doesn’t cause anyone with any sense of self preservation to see red warning lights, then they are not paying close enough attention! And if you are not willing to avail yourself of the overwhelming evidence regarding the mortality rate of the vaccines, then not only are you putting yourself in danger, but you are also putting everyone else in danger and it’s not fair to those of us who choose not to be vaccinated because we are choosing to at least learn more about the Covid-19 vaccines before we blindly sign up for them! When a government threatens to take a physician’s hard earned license away from him for prescribing or recommending alternatives to the vaccine, that should tell anyone who’s provax something. When a certain social media outlet presents me with a list of conditions that I need to adhere to, to become a member of, one of which was that I couldn’t talk about Pneumonia, because it’s no longer a threat, and I couldn’t mention any form of alternative medicine at all and especially as it applies to COVID-19, and I was forbidden to mention homeopathy, especially homeopathic cures for COVID-19. As much as I miss being reunited with my cousins, I could not continue to participate in a social media outlet that has been so fascist and UnAmerican, as well as devoid of any sense of spirituality in its rules of conduct! And thanks for giving me the idea to look for a homeopathic cure for COVID-19! I never would have thought of doing that unless you had ordered me not to discuss homeopathic cures for Covid-19! Is there a homeopathic cure for greed, narcissism, psychopathic behavior, and an inability to exercise an ounce of compassion! What we really need in this country are people who are willing to shut their mouths and open their eyes and ears, and hearts! And get off of social media where privacy is nonexistent! If you really do care and are not looking to just gossip about our political leaders, then we need to be spending time with our families and our friends in person where we can really speak freely, and without fear of some government agency looking to incarcerate you for spreading misinformation! And that’s a huge breach of privacy and also illegal! Last time I checked! The denial that I am seeing from ordinary tax paying citizens is very similar to the denial I have read about that was very pervasive the night the titanic sank. And to have to witness that every day has felt more traumatizing than all the other evil policies that our lawmakers are passing and getting away with because no one is paying attention. Republican and Democratic senators alike have voted for elementary and preschool children to be subjected to mandatory vaccines. And this was announced in a not very well known newspaper, «The Federalist. » Ted Cruz and Rand Paul were the only 2 senators who voted against it. And Senator Cruz has been trying to come up with a bill that will negate the mandatory vaccines for all ages of children. It takes a little bit of digging around, but there are some very good conservative sources of information out there. I found out about the mandatory vaccines for children through Conservapedia.com. C-Span.org is another good resource where you can actually view congressional sessions dating back to 1979.
We all need to be calling, emailing, and writing our congressmen and congresswomen about mandatory vaccines. Senators and congressmen like hearing from citizens. And if enough people object to a bill soon to become law, they will strongly take that into consideration and mention it in their discussions. This government is not going to work if citizens don’t start speaking up and making representatives hear what they have to say. And not enough people are doing this, so why should we wonder if they think we are ignorant, and uncaring. We cannot expect those who represent us to show one ounce of interest in us if we are unwilling to do our homework and to speak up on our own behalf and the behalf of others. To not do so, makes us just as evil as the most evil amongst the reptilian swamp creatures.
Another excellent resource is put out by C-Span. They publish a directory of all government officials, senators, representatives, members of the Senate and the executive branch. As well as information about how to contact them. I would recommend this for every legal citizen. For $30.00 which includes s and h, it’s a real bargain and can save you valuable time searching online, where Google is probably watching! Thanks for the article. It’s very validating without being too scary. And Thanks for allowing me to comment.
Please pray for a better world with leaders who truly do care about people and are not just looking out for Corporate America.
Congratulations on a brilliant comment. I am in Australia but we have had the same problems.
Absolutely
As for oz stephen.
I had my childhood there after we left Scotland .
It was astonishing to watch how it all progressed down there
Not a great watch
Their was no common good in mind.
As far as this article goes, there are three categories of accomplices that spring to mind: the willful, the coerced, and the enforced. Care to guess who falls into which?
Wish someone would provide information about the reasons we have NOT went after those PLANNING this overall tyranny; like the Soros/Gates/Obidens/Clinton/Bush…And, the rest of the International Mob. We KNOW who they are and where to find them. Those from the U.S. are GUILTY of TREASON/SEDITION as well as CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY and they know it. Is there some reason the FBI, CIA, DARPA AND DOD have not been dismantled as they do NOT serve ‘The Constitution, Republic and PERSONS OF THE UNITED STATES’ as they took oaths to do. WHAT MUST HAPPEN FOR THE CORRUPT, SELFISH AND EVIL shielding other corrupt, selfish and evil to be brought to JUSTICE?