COVID “Conspiracy Theories” Have Now Magically Become “Fact-Checked” Mainstream Narrative

USA: I started out 2022 by predicting that capitalism and common sense would catalyze a massive pivot in how the mainstream media reports on Covid.

I believed that the media would eventually start the process of pivoting from hysteria and that politicians, understanding full well that they can’t get re-elected during mid-terms this year on a platform of locking people in their homes, would follow.

All I can say one month into the year is holy shit, does it look like I was right.

So far in 2022, innumerable U.S. states, in addition to countries like Sweden, Norway and Denmark, are lifting Covid restrictions.

Connecticut and Delaware are planning on lifting school mask mandates by the end of March. Oregon officials have also announced that general mask mandates would be lifted March 31. Even New Jersey and California announced they would ease mandates in coming weeks.

And the media narrative has very quickly changed, too.

Dr Leana Wen, columnist with The Washington Post and CNN medical analyst who has, in the past, gushed non-stop about following the government’s Covid guidance, has now completely changed her playbook for her appearances on CNN.

On Monday of this week, she told CNN:

“There was, and is, a time and place for pandemic restrictions. But when they were put in, it was always with the understanding that they would be removed as soon as we can. And, in this case, circumstances have changed. Case counts are declining. Also, the science has changed. The responsibility should shift from a government mandate imposed from the state or the local district of the school … it should shift to an individual responsibility by the family, who can still decide that their child can wear a mask if needed.”

In addition to sounding like she was erring on the side of freedom of choice, a concept Democrats may only now be conveniently adopting ahead of mid-terms, she also promptly took to Twitter to represent “the other side” of the Covid argument that, days ago, would have been written off as “conspiracy theory”. She Tweeted on Tuesday night:

“It can BOTH be true both that covid-19 causes illness and harm, and ALSO that its continued prioritization, to the exclusion of other issues, does, too.”
“It can BOTH be true that masks reduce respiratory infections and ALSO that they can have unintended harms”
“We must have an honest conversation about masking in schools. Two things can be true at once. Masks work to reduce transmission. And they could cause harm to kids, especially to young learners. There needs to be an ongoing risk-benefit analysis, as there is for any intervention.”

She also retweeted this statement from David Rubin, Policy director at CHOP:

“This is a moment to start removing the restrictions that have been placed on kids. Because the risk to their mental health, learning loss, those types of things are now far greater than the virus itself.”

She’s right: we do need to have an honest conversation. But the question is why are we having it now and why weren’t we allowed to have it just weeks ago?

In fact, where the fuck was this woman 6 months ago?

On New Years, she was urging people to mask up while heading outdoors to watch the ball drop:

“Make sure that you’re vaccinated and boosted. Make sure that you’re wearing a mask even though it’s outdoors. There are lots of people packed around you, wearing a three-ply surgical mask.”

In Spring of last year, she was expressing “fears” about the U.S. not being able to reach herd immunity.

In Summer of last year, she was spreading the narrative that “we can’t trust the unvaccinated”.

Heading into the Fall, she was writing op-eds called “Why Covid-19 Vaccines Should Be Required For All Americans”.

And now – and only now that millions of vaccines have been distributed and the public’s trust in the President and in his Covid response is at all time lows – she has completely and totally changed her tune.

The left is also starting to talk about concepts that they were completely silent on for the last 2 years. Most notably, natural immunity.

It was less than a month ago that I wrote a piece arguing why I thought “Capitalism and Common Sense Would End Vaccine Mandates in 2022”.

As part of that article, I wrote that natural immunity would soon have to be talking point due to omicron potentially acting as “nature’s vaccine”:

First, after this omicron wave passes, it should hopefully stir up a discussion about natural immunity that’s about 18 months overdue. Putting vaccine mandates aside, Omicron, given its extremely infectious nature and mild effects, may wind up acting like nature’s vaccine for almost everybody anyway. People will start to understand this concept and push harder on “the science” as to why it has conveniently ignore the topic of natural immunity – which has been proven to be more robust than vaccination – thus far.

And lo and behold, as The Hill pointed out this week, the CDC is – all of a sudden – starting to talk about natural immunity. A report published by the CDC on January 28, 2022, “finally acknowledges what many have suspected for a long time — that surviving COVID-19 provides excellent natural immunity not only repeat infection but also to hospitalization and death for the delta variant of COVID-19.”

Once again, where was this analysis during the Soviet style campaign to roll out vaccines throughout the country over the last 12 months?

We’re seeing articles like this now:

But we’ve known about the robust immunity provided by natural immunity for many months already. Studies in mid-2021 were showing “durable and robust” immunity from natural immunity. According to a large collection of data and trials by Dr. Larry Istrial in his post “Covid 19 Natural Immunity: A Deep Dive”, studies dating back to 2020 continued to confer that natural immunity against Covid was effective.

His comprehensive collection of sources is worth examining closely – not the least of which is Dr. Fauci’s own e-mail exchanges from the inception of the pandemic in March 2020.

Even Senator Rand Paul was exasperated when he called out the administration’s odd penchant for not mentioning anything involving natural immunity. Speaking about Dr. Fauci’s constant media appearances, Paul said in Fall 2021:

“Hey, this guy [Fauci] has an opinion on baseball, hockey, tinder, and Christmas, but he was asked the other day about natural immunity that you acquire after the disease [COVID-19], he is like, “Oh, that is really interesting thought, I never thought about that. I don’t have an opinion because I haven’t thought about naturally acquired immunity.”

He has and he is lying to you.

The reason he won’t bring up natural immunity is because it foils his plans to get everybody possible vaccinated. He thinks it might slow down vaccination.

And I’m for people getting vaccinated particularly people at risk, but the thing is, if you ignore naturally acquired immunity then you’re saying we don’t have enough people, you have to force it on younger people.”

What then may have seemed more of a conspiracy theory – that Fauci was purposely ducking the question of natural immunity – today starts to look like the most realistic scenario.

If we have FOIA e-mail from Fauci in early 2020, we know it was on his mind essentially as soon as the pandemic started. That begs the question of why were we so quiet about natural immunity for so long?

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In addition to natural immunity, we have seen a drastic shift on numerous major points of contention by “conspiracy theorists” during the pandemic.

Remember when questioning whether people were in hospitals for Covid or with Covid was written off as a conspiracy theory in 2020?

Rolling Stone went for the exacta by using the terms “anti-vax” and “conspiracy theory” when describing these questions.

Scientific American also took their shot in October of 2020, stating that inflated death counts were “false”.

Well, in early 2022, CDC director Rochelle Walensky took to Fox News and admitted she wasn’t exactly sure “on how many of the COVID-19-related deaths in the U.S. were directly due to the virus and how many were individuals who died with COVID-19 yet had underlying conditions.”

Even CNN’s Jake Tapper was astonished about the revelation and called it “misleading”:

Then, of course, there was the lab leak “conspiracy theory” that, after costing many people their social media accounts, has now widely been accepted as the leading likely genesis of Covid-19.

In February 2020, Zero Hedge lost its Twitter handle and its million followers for asking the question of whether or not the virus may have come from the lab:

There was then the wonderful op-ed written by Peter Daszak which charged that the lab leak was a “conspiracy theory”. We would later find out that Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance was at the center of gain-of-function research taking place at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

As soon as June 2021, Forbes was writing that the lab leak was a conspiracy theory.

Of course now what we know, per a report by the Telegraphlast month, is that scientists believed that Covid did leak from a lab, but didn’t want to interrupt “international harmony” by discussing it:

Among the other “conspiracy theories” that have become mainstream are the ideas that cloth masks don’t work – now part of the mainstream’s talking points – and what I believe is going to be a massive pivot on the use of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for use in treating Covid – as has been supported in recent leaked DARPA documents.

Finally, we’re learning that the vaccines, while helpful in reducing harm the first time someone gets the virus, also carry with them substantial side effects and may do more harm than good when administered to people who have already been infected with Covid.

Dr. Rand Paul noted that this week, during an interview with The Dana Show, stating: “If your 15 year-old [boy] has already had COVID and you vaccinate them, you put them at risk for myocarditis.”

“This is without question. The data is in on this. Each subsequent vaccination is a higher risk for myocarditis.”

Other than mass hysteria, if there’s one thing that the pandemic has been littered with, it has been hypocrisy.

What began as a small taste of hypocrisy with house speaker Nancy Pelosi going to get her hair done after shuttering all of the salons in the state she represents eventually turned into what felt like weekly examples of politicians ignoring their own mandates and adopting an elitist “do as I say, not as I do” attitude.

If that was the only extent of the hypocrisy, I might be able to write it off. After all, politicians are extremely well known for being full of shit and, to some degree, we unfortunately expect it at this point.

But the hypocrisy didn’t stop there – the magnitude with which it continued, as the facts of the pandemic started to reveal themselves, became beyond egregious.

Anyone who dared question the “official” findings of the NIH, CDC and WHO was quickly marginalized and sent for social-media-re-education camps in the form of suspensions or outright bans. For some citizens, regular common sense and everyday critical thinking not only had them dismissed as lunatics, but also cost them their jobs.

Looking back on some of these major issues now, it is still stunning to see the pivot – even though I knew it was coming.

In fact, it is both stunning and sickening to look back on and, when presented collectively, it paints a picture of either gross incompetence or nefarious ignorance to advance an agenda.

The one question that remains about the entire narrative, and now the pivot: what was it all for? To get the world vaccinated? Forgive me if I’m skeptical.