2/ The purpose of this letter is to request an expedited federal investigation into the scientific debate on major policy decisions during the COVID-19 crisis.
Downloadable PDF:
https://t.co/gOX6sTSFbT Archived Medium article:
https://t.co/01ZaOGYNTz
3/ In early 2020, the public turned to the advice of scientific authorities when confronted with an apparent viral outbreak. Soon after, most nations followed the advice of prominent scientists and implemented restrictions commonly referred to as “lockdowns.”
4/ While the policies varied by jurisdiction, in general they involved restrictions on gatherings and movements and the closure of schools, businesses, and public places, inspired by those imposed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Hubei Province.
5/ SECTION 1 - LOCKDOWNS ORIGINATED ON THE ORDER OF XI JINPING, GENERAL SECRETARY OF THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY, AND WERE PROPAGATED INTO GLOBAL POLICY BY THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION WITH LITTLE ANALYSIS OR LOGIC
6/ Lockdown proponents have rationalized them by comparing them to actions taken to combat Spanish influenza. But a realistic look at mitigation efforts in response to Spanish flu reveals that nothing remotely approximating lockdowns was ever imposed.
https://t.co/AG1xO20vOS
7/ Not only are lockdowns historically unprecedented in response to any previous epidemic or pandemic in American history, but they are not so much as mentioned in recent guidance offered by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (“CDC”).
https://t.co/TwlmdMamyM
8/ In the words of Judge Stickman, “It appears as though the imposition of lockdowns in Wuhan and other areas of China… started a domino effect where one country, and state, after another imposed draconian and hitherto untried measures on their citizens.”
https://t.co/0YzAdKiebO
9/ Judge Stickman’s intuition regarding the real history of lockdowns is in line with the opinion of the foremost infectious disease scholars.
https://t.co/mXtppAdWgU
10/ As Donald Henderson, the man credited with eradicating smallpox, wrote, “communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted.”
https://t.co/eF4K6jBAz5
11/ Indeed, to our knowledge, no scientist ever publicly supported imposing lockdowns until Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, personally authorized the “unprecedented lockdown of Wuhan and other cities beginning on Jan. 23.”
https://t.co/9v5ij9w64i
12/ Xi is perhaps best known for the reeducation and “quarantine” of over a million Uyghur Muslims “infected with extremism” pursuant to the CCP’s pet hybrid of public health and security policy, fangkong, which inspired Xi’s lockdown of Hubei province.
https://t.co/d5d5pxTlOW
13/ General Secretary Xi later affirmed that he had issued these instructions to the CCP’s Politburo Standing Committee on January 7, 2020, but his instructions have never been revealed.
https://t.co/WPGI1dOLri
14/ Chinese business leader Ren Zhiqiang was sentenced to 18 years in prison for an open letter in which he requested Xi’s instructions be made public.
https://t.co/Kqy06fmWSF
15/ When the lockdown of Hubei began, the World Health Organization (WHO)’s representative in China noted that “trying to contain a city of 11 million people is new to science… The lockdown of 11 million people is unprecedented in public health history…”
https://t.co/Ct1UIu5OD2
16/ Human rights observers expressed great concern with China’s lockdowns.
https://t.co/6TLCSgq5Jy
17/ But human rights concerns didn’t stop WHO from praising CCP’s “unprecedented” lockdowns just days later, long before they produced any results. “The measures China has taken are good not only for that country but also for the rest of the world.”
https://t.co/HK47a5KPiY
18/ WHO Director Tedros Adhanom added that he was personally “very impressed and encouraged by the president [Xi Jinping]’s detailed knowledge of the outbreak” and the next day praised China for “setting a new standard for outbreak response.”
https://t.co/q65zjMhCyM
19/ In its February report, WHO waxed rhapsodic about CCP’s triumph: “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”
https://t.co/nMCXBYphrz
20/ Soon after, Bruce Aylward—who disconnected an interview when asked about Taiwan—told the press: “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.”
https://t.co/PwyEVkLNeP
21/ Two days later, in an interview for China Central Television (CCTV), Aylward put it bluntly: “Copy China’s response to COVID-19.”
https://t.co/MmAJ5Tqq7N
22/ 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.”
https://t.co/jUHQpHJPbf
23/ The idea of locking down an entire state or country and forcibly shutting down its businesses and public places was never entertained, never discussed, and never implemented in any pandemic literature until it was done by General Secretary Xi in January 2020.
24/ Lockdowns were never tried before 2020 and never tested before 2020, even on a theoretical basis. The idea of “lockdown” was brought into human history on the order of General Secretary Xi; it otherwise never would have entered the collective human imagination.
25/ Anytime anyone endorses a lockdown for any length of time, even a few minutes, they are endorsing a Xi Jinping policy. The remainder of this letter concerns how lockdowns were laundered into the world’s go-to pandemic policy.
26/ SECTION 2 - THE MOST INFLUENTIAL INSTITUTION FOR COVID-19 MODELS, SELF-DESCRIBED AS “CHINA’S BEST ACADEMIC PARTNER IN THE WEST,” HAS BEEN BY FAR THE MOST ALARMIST AND INACCURATE COVID-19 MODELER
https://t.co/CxW7dFjxfl
27/ In February 2020, a team from Imperial College London led by physicist Neil Ferguson ran a computer model that played an outsized role in justifying lockdowns in most countries.
https://t.co/VxSzkcS46M
28/ Imperial forecast that by Oct 2020, 2.2 million people in the U.S. would die as a result of COVID, and recommended months of lockdowns. The model predicted the United States could incur up to one million deaths even with “enhanced social distancing”
https://t.co/CmXaZCoLfe
29/ In reality, by the end of October, approximately 230,000 deaths in the U.S. had been attributed to COVID-19 (though deaths from all other leading causes mysteriously declined, indicating even these low counts from CDC and NHS are vastly overstated).
https://t.co/1ueqRdeUXM
30/ A study compared the accuracy of various institutions’ models predicting COVID-19 mortality. Across all time periods, the models produced by Imperial College were measured to have FAR higher rates of error than the others—ALWAYS too high.
https://t.co/hWEhz20aUw
31/ Imperial’s inaccuracy continued unabated. In Oct 2020, Imperial’s model predicted the U.K. would experience 2,000 deaths per day by mid-December. In fact, deaths per day in the U.K. never reached 400, per NHS.
https://t.co/zvmNEg8m5T
32/ Five years earlier, on Oct 21, 2015, General Secretary Xi personally visited Imperial College London for the announcement of “a series of new UK-China education and research collaborations” including “nanotechnology, bioengineering…and public health.”
https://t.co/nAG5EUtpeZ
33/ In a speech welcoming Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan, a goodwill ambassador to WHO, Imperial College President Gast announced: “Imperial College London strives to be just that, China’s best academic partner in the west…”
https://t.co/atMmKB2o6H
34/ In 2019, Gast became part of the notably pro-China WEF’s AI Council with Chinese AI Expert Kai-Fu Lee, and to this day, Imperial College continues to advertise itself as “UK’s number one university collaborator with Chinese research institutions.”
https://t.co/8zzP3Fd6m9
35/ In March, Imperial produced a report, “Evidence of initial success for China exiting COVID-19 social distancing policy after achieving containment,” concluding: “social distancing measures enacted in China have led to control of COVID-19 in China…”
https://t.co/koBIVvhU1R
36/ Imperial had no way of knowing if this was, in fact, true, and its conclusion directly contradicted that of the U.S. intelligence community around the same time that China had intentionally misrepresented its coronavirus numbers.
https://t.co/NQAUs4Ji9a
37/ Neil Ferguson recalled how China inspired him:
“It’s a communist one party state, we said. We couldn’t get away with it in Europe … And then Italy did it. And we realised we could… If China had not done it, the year would have been very different.”
https://t.co/0BV3NKLcZ8
38/ SECTION 3 - DEADLY RECOMMENDATIONS FOR EARLY MECHANICAL VENTILATION CAME FROM CHINA
https://t.co/aE58Wdj20K
39/ In early March 2020, the WHO released COVID-19 provider guidance documents to healthcare workers. The guidance recommended escalating quickly to mechanical ventilation as an early intervention for treating COVID-19 patients.
https://t.co/1IzhYj7MUs
40/ WHO cited the guidance by Chinese journal articles, which published papers in January and February claiming that “Chinese expert consensus” called for “invasive mechanical ventilation” as the “first choice” for people with respiratory distress.
https://t.co/YgkGEzhQUJ
41/ As Wall Street Journal later reported: “Last spring, doctors put patients on ventilators partly to limit contagion … “We were intubating sick patients very early. Not for the patients’ benefit, but in order to control the epidemic … That felt awful.”
https://t.co/NFO7V1CLaM
42/ On March 31, 2020, Dr. Cameron Kyle-Sidell, who had been caring for ICU patients at one of the hardest-hit hospitals in New York City, acted as an early whistleblower, sounding the alarm about the ventilator issue in a widely-shared video.
https://t.co/sPrgm3qTNn
43/ “We are operating under a medical paradigm that is untrue… This method being widely adopted at this very moment at every hospital in the country … is actually doing more harm than good.” said Dr. Kyle-Sidell.
https://t.co/CAOXhJXE0N
44/ In an April Reuters interview with dozens of medical specialists “Many highlighted the risks from using the most invasive types of them - mechanical ventilators - too early or too frequently, or from non-specialists using them without proper training.”
https://t.co/ZTJxUWEjGi
45/ By May 2020, it was common knowledge in the medical community that early ventilator use was hurting, not helping, COVID-19 patients, and that less invasive measures were in fact very effective in assisting recoveries.
https://t.co/WLeapnaWLs
46/ A New York City study found a 97.2% mortality rate among those over age 65 who received mechanical ventilation. This “early action” ventilator guidance that WHO distributed to the world killed thousands of innocent patients; it was obtained from China.
https://t.co/ablpfZGQxc
47/ SECTION 4 - THE WORLD’S PREDOMINANT, WILDLY-INACCURATE PCR TESTING PROTOCOLS ARE BASED ON INCOMPLETE, THEORETICAL GENOME SEQUENCES SUPPLIED BY CHINA
48/ Virologists Victor Corman and Christian Drosten led the exceptionally-rapid creation of the first COVID-19 PCR test, now the most commonly-used testing protocol in the world for detecting the SARS-CoV-2.
https://t.co/27igqjKUfS
49/ Corman and Drosten were provided with the in silico (theoretical) genome sequences used to create their PCR protocol by Chinese scientists including Yong-Zhen Zhang and Shi Zhengli, Director at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
https://t.co/ECs8cO6rBe
50/ The Corman-Drosten Protocol was submitted to the WHO on January 13, eight days prior to the date it was submitted to the medical journal Eurosurveillance for “peer review.”
https://t.co/27igqjKUfS
51/ WHO released the Corman-Drosten Protocol on January 21, the same day it was submitted to Eurosurveillance. Drosten sits on the board of Eurosurveillance, a conflict of interest.
https://t.co/6FHy2yL8c3
52/ The Corman-Drosten Protocol was accepted by Eurosurveillance the very next day, Jan 22, a comically quick turnaround; peer review for scientific journals is an intensive process requiring external reviewers which typically takes weeks to months.
https://t.co/tJP5tz5PZU
53/ Of all 1,595 publications at Eurosurveillance since 2015, not one other research paper was reviewed and accepted in fewer than 20 days.
https://t.co/V0Jk1ThblL
54/ Eurosurveillance’s peer review process also requires an author declaration that no conflicts of interest exist, which was, in this case, a false statement.
https://t.co/ljPjjgpreB
55/ The molecular biologist Pieter Borger and his team submitted a retraction request for the Corman-Drosten PCR protocol. According to Borger’s report, the Corman-Drosten PCR test workflow contains multiple, fatal errors.
https://t.co/Er4UCrMMWH
56/ The most glaring issue is the fact that, at the time the Corman-Drosten Protocol was submitted on January 21, 2020, there was no good reason to believe widespread PCR testing would even be necessary.
57/ “Why did the authors assume a challenge for public health laboratories while there was no substantial evidence at that time to indicate that the outbreak was more widespread than initially thought?”
https://t.co/Er4UCrMMWH
58/ Borger’s report goes on to specify ten major flaws with the Corman-Drosten protocol, the biggest issue being the fact that the entire test “is based on in silico sequences, supplied by a laboratory in China.”
59/ In addition, the primers and probes in Drosten’s protocol are incomplete; the primer concentrations are far too high; the GC content is far too low; the annealing temperature is far too high; the PCR products have not been validated; and it was obviously never peer reviewed.
60/ Corman and Drosten’s PCR protocol, the most commonly-used COVID PCR test in the world, based on in silico genome sequences from China, thus has every indication of being fraudulent.
61/ A study compared COVID PCR tests on WHO's list. The CDC protocol is also based on in silico sequences from China:
"The E Charité [Drosten] and N2 US CDC assays were positive for all specimens, including negative samples and negative controls (water)."
https://t.co/OsaZHHfIm6
62/ SECTION 5 - PREDOMINANT, EXCESSIVE PCR TESTING PROTOCOLS CAME FROM CHINA
63/ In accordance with recommendations by the WHO and other public health authorities, countless laboratories have engaged in mass PCR testing for the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Fundamental to PCR testing is the concept of “cycle thresholds.”
https://t.co/xiLOK6qaxt
64/ If PCR cycle threshold indicating a “positive” is too high, a positive result may not even indicate any meaningful amount of live virus. As Anthony Fauci mentioned in a July 2020 interview, a cycle threshold over 34 should not be considered a positive.
https://t.co/aVPuCDMv3I
65/ “a bit of a standard … if you get a cycle threshold of 35 or more...the chances of it being replication-confident are minuscule… So, I think if somebody does come in with 37, 38, even 36, you got to say, you know, it's just dead nucleotides, period.”
https://t.co/mCxK4GVDrt
66/ WHO published its currently-outstanding guidance on laboratory testing for COVID-19 on March 19, 2020. WHO’s guidance contained only three studies discussing PCR cycle thresholds. All three are from China and use cycle thresholds from 37 to 40.
https://t.co/xiLOK6qaxt
67/ As described by the New York Times, most laboratories and manufacturers in the United States now set their cutoff for a positive PCR test from 37 to 40 cycle thresholds: “Most tests set the limit at 40, a few at 37.”
https://t.co/T2sutljsOu
68/ Michael Mina said he would set the figure at 30, or even less. Using current testing standards, “from 85 to 90 percent of people who tested positive in July with a cycle threshold of 40 would have been deemed negative if the threshold were 30 cycles.”
https://t.co/T2sutljsOu
69/ The Court of Appeal of Lisbon concluded: “In view of current scientific evidence, this test shows itself to be unable to determine beyond reasonable doubt that such positivity corresponds, in fact, to the infection of a person by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.”
https://t.co/ZjiKwe1FAq
70/ The Court cited a study by “some of the leading European and world specialists,” showing that if someone tested positive for COVID-19 at a cycle threshold of 35 or higher, the “the probability of… receiving a false positive is 97% or higher.”
https://t.co/Xx8Dyi5Hqp
71/ To summarize, labs across the world are using COVID-19 PCR tests that were created using in silico genome sequences from China, and PCR testing standards from China, pursuant to which positive COVID case counts have been inflated ten- to thirty-fold.
72/ SECTION 6 - STUDIES SHOWING SIGNIFICANT ASYMPTOMATIC TRANSMISSION, THE ONLY SCIENTIFIC BASIS FOR LOCKDOWNS OF HEALTHY INDIVIDUALS, CAME FROM CHINA
73/ Underpinning the policy of “lockdown” is the scientific concept of “asymptomatic spread.” According to the WHO, “Early data from China suggested that people without symptoms could infect others.”
https://t.co/qgJPDOFKAf
74/ This idea of asymptomatic spread was reflected in the WHO’s February report. According to this concept, healthy individuals, or “silent spreaders” might be responsible for a significant number of SARS-CoV-2 transmissions.
https://t.co/nMCXBYphrz
75/ The concept of significant asymptomatic spread was believed to be a unique feature of SARS-CoV-2 based on several studies performed in China. Multiple studies from other countries could not find any asymptomatic transmission of SARS-CoV-2.
https://t.co/qgJPDOFKAf
76/ A paper from McGill University concluded that “transmission in the asymptomatic period was documented in numerous studies,” but every one of those was conducted in China; where studies outside of China have tried to replicate them, they have failed.
https://t.co/xmw7UCB7H5
77/ An Italian study concluded that two asymptomatic individuals who tested positive had been infected by two other asymptomatic individuals, but this was based on 2,800 PCR tests; given the false-positive rate discussed above, the conclusion is dubious.
https://t.co/3gUmz9fYUE
78/ An influential study from Brunei found significant asymptomatic spread, but its findings are considerably weakened by a poor case definition; its two findings of asymptomatic spread were both supposedly individuals who had “a mild cough on one day.”
https://t.co/GCLW6av6Gl
79/ A study co-authored by Christian Drosten claimed “Transmission of 2019-nCoV Infection from an Asymptomatic Contact in Germany,” but the researchers didn’t speak to the woman before publishing and officials later confirmed she did in fact have symptoms.
https://t.co/DLuvmq0siQ
80/ Absent this concept of significant asymptomatic spread, there is no scientific case for locking down healthy persons. This concept of significant asymptomatic transmission of SARS-CoV-2, and the studies backing it, came from China.
https://t.co/0vqbVYXIv8
81/ SECTION 7 - THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY ENGAGED IN AN EARLY, BROAD, SYSTEMATIC, AND GLOBAL PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGN TO PROMOTE ITS LOCKDOWN RESPONSE
https://t.co/VdC2DklAW6
82/ Beginning the day the CCP locked down Hubei, “leaked” videos from Wuhan began flooding social media sites—all of which are blocked in China—purporting to show the horrors of Wuhan’s epidemic in scenes likened to Zombieland and The Walking Dead.
https://t.co/PfNi5fyvJ5
83/ Official Chinese accounts widely shared an image of a hospital wing supposedly constructed in one day, but which actually showed an apartment 600 miles away.
https://t.co/sluSidd5lS
84/ Then, beginning in March 2020, the entire world was bombarded with propaganda extolling the virtues of China’s heavy-handed approach.
https://t.co/BEOkiFXq6U
85/ Chinese state media bought numerous Facebook ads advertising China’s pandemic response (all of which ran without Facebook’s required political disclaimer).
https://t.co/4Xs295P6z2
86/ Chinese media accounts began erroneously describing “herd immunity”—the inevitable endpoint of every epidemic either by naturally-acquired immunity or vaccination—as a “strategy” violating “human rights.”
https://t.co/RotxKiKNnz
87/ Sweden, whose leaders were unique in foregoing lockdowns, became a primary target of the CCP’s propaganda campaign.
https://t.co/4PbDS0z5lX
88/ Per Global Times: “netizens doubt herd immunity and called it a violation of human rights… 'rights, democracy, freedom are heading in the wrong direction in Sweden, and countries that are extremely irresponsible do not deserve to be China's friend …”
https://t.co/PzIeNdfB4a
89/ That was, of course, before the WHO adopted the bold strategy of attempting to rewrite the historical definition of herd immunity wholesale. In October 2020, WHO effectively erased the eons-long history of naturally-acquired immunity from its website.
https://t.co/cKHGF2kAY7
91/ China’s official spokesperson, Hua Chunying, posted a video of a 7-year-old girl reciting the importance of strict social distancing among children.
https://t.co/4I0JYggJvR
92/ Simultaneously, hundreds of thousands of clandestine social media posts, later flagged as state-sponsored, admired China’s lockdowns and asked governments around the world to emulate them, denigrating countries and leaders who failed to follow.
93/ Governments including, but not limited to: Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Namibia, Kenya, France, Spain, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, Australia, India, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
94/ Not only is this very poor global citizenship, but especially in light of the dubious science discussed above, it’s worth wondering whether this massive social media propaganda campaign was intended to popularize lockdowns as the end in themselves.
https://t.co/VdC2DklAW6
95/ When Italy became the first country outside China to lock down, Chinese experts arrived on March 12 and two days later advised a tighter lockdown: “There are still too many people and behaviors on the street to improve.”
https://t.co/l0x0MybNXI
96/ On March 19, they repeated that Italy’s lockdown was “not strict enough.” “Here in Milan, the hardest hit area by COVID-19, there isn't a very strict lockdown … We need every citizen to be involved in the fight of COVID-19 and follow this policy.”
https://t.co/dBzOR1fJBN
97/ Chinese company DJI donated drones to 22 U.S. states to help enforce lockdown rules.
https://t.co/69WZQ1CZVL
98/ Later, DJI was blacklisted for having “enabled wide-scale human rights abuses within China through abusive genetic collection and analysis or high-technology surveillance, and/or facilitated the export of items by China that aid repressive regimes …”
https://t.co/kTQYwphzGh
99/ On July 7, FBI Director Christopher Wray disclosed that the CCP even specifically approached local politicians to endorse its pandemic response.
https://t.co/3SWf5eAgM9
100/ Per FBI Director Wray: “[W]e have heard from federal, state, and even local officials that Chinese diplomats are aggressively urging support for China’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis. Yes, this is happening at both the federal and state levels.”
https://t.co/B8Z8a6rhAS
101/ China has financial stakes in virtually every top media entity.
https://t.co/9BrfLm3hIU
102/ With regard to complex issues like lockdowns, China’s influence can collectively tip these media entities in a dangerous direction, such as encouraging countries to copy China’s response to COVID-19.
https://t.co/4twg5WpCTV
103/ The CCP has shaped the media’s scientific narratives by consistently promoting the falsehood that “China controlled the virus,” which is—of course, a baldfaced lie—effectively transforming elite media outlets into water carriers for CCP propaganda.
https://t.co/ny85mJGFVn
104/ Nonetheless, by encouraging mainstream publications to repeat the lie that “China controlled the virus,” the CCP has normalized this lie and ensured its forged data remains integral to scientific discourse.
https://t.co/QelP2Rp9gi
105/ Meanwhile, the CCP began closely monitoring Chinese academic publications on COVID-19.
https://t.co/199dLWuvuB
106/ The significance of China’s global lockdown propaganda is its intent. While bad science could be incompetence, the CCP’s propaganda is evidence of deliberation. Sloppy science is not a crime—corruption and fraud, on the other hand, are another matter.
https://t.co/RgbLlnRZ6B
107/ SECTION 8 - MANY PROMINENT PRO-LOCKDOWN SCIENTISTS SHOW CONSPICUOUS PRO-CHINA BIAS
108/ In China Central TV, Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet, praised China’s lockdowns: “It was not only the right thing to do, but it also showed other countries how they should respond…So, I think we have a great deal to thank China for…”
https://t.co/wpUPBinsn6
109/ In July, Horton reiterated his gratitude toward China:
https://t.co/1wpkxWnPR9
110/ In August, Horton doubled down in a piece that had little to do with health:
“The ‘century of humiliation,’ when China was dominated by a colonially-minded west and Japan, only came to an end with the Communist victory in the civil war in 1949…”
https://t.co/yzYDAjLr7B
111/ On October 8, The Lancet published a ringing endorsement of China’s pandemic response: China's successful control of COVID-19.
https://t.co/MapwIOe7KP
112/ This article was met with high praise by Chen Weihua, China Daily EU Bureau Chief:
https://t.co/qjUki3DF0t
113/ Chinese scientists later submitted an article to The Lancet arguing that SARS-CoV-2 originated in India, in the midst of ongoing border skirmishes with India.
https://t.co/5EDOAA75sA
114/ Just weeks later, however, the party line changed again amid economic tensions with Australia, and Global Times claimed the coronavirus may have come from Australia.
https://t.co/ZWlqxzjVh9
115/ In October 2020, China Daily syndicated a column from William A. Haseltine, Chairman of the US-China Health Summit, in which he toed the CCP’s party line on Sweden, chastising Sweden for choosing to “forego lockdowns” and pursue “herd immunity”
https://t.co/EXqOuZqe60
116/ Haseltine erroneously states:
“where policymakers decided to forego lockdowns and business closures in favor of more lenient advisories… Unsurprisingly, Sweden's subsequent COVID-19 infection and fatality rates were among the world’s highest.”
https://t.co/tvttCIiXLr
117/ Throughout 2020, Haseltine repeatedly praised China’s lockdowns while disparaging the U.S. response:
118/ Tom Frieden, former director of the CDC, is another prominent advocate of COVID-19 lockdowns. In 2015, “Frieden praised the public health partnership between China and the United States,” per Global Times.
https://t.co/DihuKzNun6
119/ In 2017, Frieden joined China in backing Tedros Adhanom as director of the WHO over the United Kingdom’s eminently-qualified David Nabarro: “Tedros is an excellent choice to lead WHO. He succeeded in Ethiopia, making remarkable health progress…”
https://t.co/4Qr3Z1Mr7y
120/ To the contrary, as was widely-known at the time, Tedros had helped Ethiopia’s regime cover up three cholera epidemics during his time as Ethiopia’s Minister of Public Health.
https://t.co/EbLO0uaEwn
121/ As a senior member of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, Tedros personally oversaw war crimes for which charges of genocide have recently been submitted against him at the International Criminal Court at the Hague.
https://t.co/8iHqXel9bR
122/ Tom Frieden praised China’s response early on, writing for CNN on February 25: “China’s extraordinary cordon of Hubei province and other areas bought the world at least a month of lead time to prepare.”
https://t.co/TgKDMbfasi
123/ In an April interview, Frieden told China Global Television (CGTN): “There’s a lot the world can learn from China on stopping COVID-19.”
https://t.co/M1QyfEN3mH
124/ Like Haseltine, throughout 2020, Frieden repeatedly sung the praises of China’s lockdowns while shaming the U.S. response:
125/ While these individuals are unique in their pro-China pro-lockdown bias, as scientists they’re far from alone in their apparent ties to the CCP. In June, NIH disclosed that 189 of its grantees had received undisclosed funding from foreign governments.
https://t.co/BgbpBucShC
126/ In 93% of cases, including that of Charles Lieber, chair of Harvard’s chemistry department, the undisclosed funding of NIH scientists came from China.
https://t.co/DCxKGk4YAn
127/ The co-founders of CanSino Biologics, a Chinese vaccine company collaborating with Canada, were found to be members of the CCP’s Thousand Talents Plan for co-opting and incentivizing scientists to transfer research and knowledge to China.
https://t.co/5KgJ50Dco6
128/ The largest gift in history of Harvard’s Chan School of Public Health came in part from a “pawn of the CCP… cheerleader for a government responsible for significant humanitarian crises” through shell companies—largest was named in the Panama Papers.
https://t.co/VLAAcz7h3L
