PURELY POLITICAL, By James Buckley
If any sentient being had been in doubt as to which side virtually all the major media and social media companies were on, non-coverage of both the Hunter Biden laptop emails and the Great Barrington Declaration should have been proof positive of which presidential candidate they favored in October 2020.
When presidential candidate Joe Biden falsely told debate moderator Chris Wallace, formerly of Fox News, that the story surrounding Hunter Biden’s $83,333-a-month payment as a member of the board of directors of Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings had been “debunked,” there was no follow-up question from Mr. Wallace, who purportedly was “unbiased” and may even have leaned to the right.
We know now (though we suspected as much then) that Mr. Wallace was a sheep in Fox’s clothing and had no intention of getting at the truth of any matter that may have hurt Mr. Biden’s chances of becoming president.
That a seasoned reporter such as Mr. Wallace wouldn’t have asked why the son of a sitting vice president was on the board of directors of an energy company in far-off Ukraine, who had no background in nor knowledge of energy production of any kind and was pulling down $1 million a year in that position, wouldn’t have broached the subject is, at the very least, suspect.
That Hunter’s father — Vice President Biden — was put in charge of Ukraine affairs in the Obama administration, would have set off alarm bells to all but the densest “journalist”. That Vice President Biden bragged about getting a prosecutor fired who was looking into corruption at Purisima may have even spurred the dumbest reporter on planet Earth into a further question. That Vice President Biden then continued to brag that he was able to have that prosecutor fired by holding up a billion dollars in loan guarantees that had been approved for Ukraine would have given a freshman in Journalism 101 the opportunity to ask a follow-up.
But not Mr. Wallace.
Mr. Biden boasted that he gave the Ukraine administration six hours before leaving town to make a decision on the subject.
The following are direct quotes and are available for anyone to see and/or listen to from Mr. Biden himself.
“If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,” Mr. Biden bragged to a group at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“Well, son of a b—-, he got fired,” Mr. Biden said with a big grin.
President Biden’s evident corruption continues to draw very little attention from veteran “journalists” such as Chris Wallace, Carl Bernstein, Bill Kristol, et al.
THE GREAT BARRINGTON DECLARATION RE-VISITED
This same kind of diffidence towards truth seeking prevailed after the Great Barrington Declaration was issued in October of 2020.
“As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists,” the public pronouncement began, “we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies.”
The declaration went on to recommend an approach it called “Focused Protection,” before outlining some of the damaging results of lockdown policies that were in place, including the “devastating effects on short and long-term public health … lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health — leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden.”
The Declaration suggested that “keeping students out of school is a grave injustice” and that keeping such measures in place until a vaccine was available “will cause irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed.”
Another tidbit worth chewing over: “We know that vulnerability to death from COVID-19 is more than a thousand-fold higher in the old and infirm than the young. Indeed, for children, COVID-19 is less dangerous than many other harms, including influenza.”
The signing doctors and scientists encouraged the formation of “herd immunity,” along with the opening of businesses of all kinds, sending children back to school, and most importantly, taking additional measures to protect the most vulnerable as the central aim of the public health response to COVID-19.
The declaration’s final paragraph says it all (and you must remember, this was drafted in September and released in October 2020 at the height of the epidemic): “Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying at home when sick should be practiced by everyone to reduce the herd immunity threshold. Schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching. Extracurricular activities, such as sports, should be resumed.
“Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home. Restaurants and other businesses should open. Arts, music, sport and other cultural activities should resume. People who are more at risk may participate if they wish, while society as a whole enjoys the protection conferred upon the vulnerable by those who have built up herd immunity.”
So you may be thinking, this was a group of dissident scientists and doctors. Well, you would be wrong.
The declaration was released and signed on Oct. 4, 2020 in Great Barrington, Mass., by: Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University Medical School, a physician, epidemiologist, health economist and public health policy expert focusing on infectious diseases and vulnerable populations; Dr. Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University, an epidemiologist with expertise in immunology, vaccine development and mathematical modeling of infectious diseases, and Dr. Martin Kulldorff, professor of Medicine at Harvard University, a biostatistician and an epidemiologist with expertise in detecting and monitoring infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety evaluations.
The declaration had garnered support from over 10,000 doctors, scientists and influential individuals.
One would think that such a declaration, signed by leading health professionals from around the world, would have set off a series of discussions debating the subject.
One would be wrong.
The fix was in, and the declaration was given short shrift by the same crowd that actively stifled any suggestions of Biden family corruption or other news that may have negatively affected their candidate.
The declaration was “shadow banned” by Google, censored by Reddit and mocked by The Guardian, which chose to point out a couple dozen fake names on the by then over 15,000 signatories; fake, mainly because the online declaration invited anyone to sign on, and some of those who did used phony (and sometimes funny) names.
A publication called Science-Based Medicine compared Great Barrington Declaration supporters to “creationists,” “HIV/AIDS denialists,” “climate science deniers,” and called the Stanford, Harvard and Oxford doctors “grifters.”
Supporters of the Great Barrington Declaration, including Elon Musk’ President Trump’s health adviser, Dr. Scott Atlas, and the good doctors from Stanford, Harvard, and Oxford, were maligned in mainstream and social media outlets as evil cranks out to destroy the planet. They were “anti-science” flat-earthers, not worthy of further consideration.
But they were right.
And this conspiracy of dunces (The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, CDC, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Birx and all the rest) that defended Hunter Biden and his father’s obvious corruption, who buried the Great Barrington Declaration and fought to hide the Wuhan lab origin of Covid-19, should at the very least be pilloried in public if not summarily fired from their positions and/or expected to resign in disgrace.
That hasn’t happened yet, but now that the amazingly incurious Chris Wallace is gone, perhaps Fox News Sunday’s new host, Brett Baier, will take up the cause.
Maybe he will. After all, hope really does spring eternal, at least among some of us sentient beings.
James Buckley is a longtime Montecito resident. He welcomes questions or comments at jimb@substack.com.
