It was always clear that the risk to otherwise healthy children was near zero, so shutting down active teaching for the great majority of kids was a dumb, dumb decision. And even now there are still some systems that want to mandate children wearing paper masks even when it has been clearly demonstrated that they do practically no good whatsoever.

Looking back on it all, it seems obvious that much of the decision-making was driven by unwarranted fear, much of it caused by a news media anxious for ratings.

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If the doctor had been a sycophant for Trump's right wing, how Tom's tune would have changed.

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Pot...kettle.

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Originally Posted by tomder55

What are you talking about ?

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You aren't reading my posts correctly. What if the government had NOT lifted a finger to do anything about covid, had just ignored it?

And the concern wasn't for the students as much as it was for the adults on staff -- teachers, principals, custodians, etc.

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Originally Posted by tomder55

Herr Dcotor cared so much that he funded the gain of function research that caused the pandemic

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Absolutely untrue.

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Originally Posted by Wondergirl

You aren't reading my posts correctly.

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Par for the course.

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What if the government had NOT lifted a finger to do anything about covid, had just ignored it?

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Don't expect an honest answer.

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What if the government had NOT lifted a finger to do anything about covid, had just ignored it?

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impossible to answer that question . I only know what happened . I can suggest that if the government had acted by concentrating on protecting the most vulnerable than there would not have been thousands of needless deaths at nursing homes. But that would've been a government action.

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Originally Posted by tomder55

impossible to answer that question . I only know what happened .

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I gather you would have preferred the government keep its nose out of the covid scare.

wrong . I would've preferred they did not over react by shutting down the econony ;by denying a generation of children a proper education for 2 years + . What the Federal and State governments did was do more harm than good by this thinking that they had to do something regardless of how dracotnian it was .

China did "something " when they locked down the country until now . What happened is that in that time ;the Chinese did not develop immunity and now 9,000 Chinese are dying each day from covid .

I supported some of out government actions . I supported the travel bans that went into effect early in the pandemic. I supported the flatten the curve initiative until it turned out to be completely ineffective . But the governments doubled down on them and ran the country like dictators .

Sweden never ordered a "shutdown" ;kept day care centers and primary schools open. , Swedes could be seen chatting in cafés and working out at the gym while the rest of the western world turned into ghost towns , Swedes were trusted to use their own judgment . Swedish authorities actively discouraged people from wearing face masks, which they said would spread panic, are often worn the wrong way, and can provide a false sense of safety. Sweden's official policy stated people without obvious symptoms are unlikely to spread the virus. So instead of being quarantined or asked to stay home, children attend school and show up for work, unless they had symptoms themselves.

They of course had sick and dead from the virus . But those numbers were in line with the rest of the western world . It was a holistic approach that balanced the threat of the virus against the damage that would be done by over reacting .

The same agency that called Hunter Biden's laptop disinformation is calling the release of the Twitter files misinformation

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FklOzXDa...jpg&name=small

The Twitter files related to censorship of covid information not approved of by Herr Doctor will be released this week . I'm sure it will be met with the ususal response by the left .

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ee_Monkeys.JPG

If you care to read a preview ;there is a series of postings by David Zweig on government suppression of covid information already . Fauci's involvement is to be released later

David Zweig on Twitter: "1. THREAD: THE TWITTER FILES: HOW TWITTER RIGGED THE COVID DEBATE – By censoring info that was true but inconvenient to U.S. govt. policy – By discrediting doctors and other experts who disagreed – By suppressing ordinary users, including some sharing the CDC’s *own data*" / Twitter

Thank you for posting this. It should be of great concern to us all.

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"and how execs rewrote the platform’s rules to accommodate their own political desires."

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It's the real story of Trump's loss in 2020.

A new study out of Germany, funded by the German government, and published in the medical journal 'Science Immunology', suggests the mRNA vaccines, reduces a person’s level of antibodies that fight covid and increases the level of another kind of antibody that is much less effective at fighting the virus.
Class switch towards non-inflammatory, spike-specific IgG4 antibodies after repeated SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination | Science Immunology

By using these mRNA vaccines we are ridding our bodies of the most competent antibodies against this virus, and replacing them with antibodies less effective....ones used to tolerate allergens ;not fight viruses .

The vaccine is training your body to tolerate the virus ;not fight it .


It usually takes years of research before vaccines are approved . That lessens the chance of unintended consequences that come from a rush to market .

And yet both the woke military and many, many school systems are attempting to compel people to take these vaccines. Quite a number of military personnel are now ex-military personnel.

and remember . The vaccine manufacturers already admitted that there was no research to support the claim that the vaccines prevented transmission. Pfizer never claimed to have studied it . It was a contention by our government medical gurus made without any scientific support .

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Originally Posted by tomder55

The same agency that called Hunter Biden's laptop disinformation is calling the release of the Twitter files misinformation

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FklOzXDa...jpg&name=small

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I notice you failed to present the FBI statement, just dissed it without a by-your-leave.

Here's part of it:


"The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries," the law enforcement agency said on Wednesday in a statement provided toFox News. "As evidenced in this correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to protect themselves and their customers. The men and women of the FBI work every day to protect the American public."


"It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency," the agency added.


The "Twitter Files" are filled with half-truths, disinformation, misinformation and reflect Musk's desperate attempts to retrieve his $44B which he so foolishly spent and now wants back.

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The "Twitter Files" are filled with half-truths, disinformation, misinformation and reflect Musk's desperate attempts to retrieve his $44B which he so foolishly spent and now wants back.

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I wonder if the FBI would have any reason to lie about an attempt to swing the 2020 election to a democrat? Perhaps you put it very well. "...just dissed it without a by-your-leave." After all, a fed agency working against Trump by encouraging the ignoring of a major news story that would have been harmful to the Biden campaign just couldn't have happened, could it?

longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements,

yes that is what they would call it . I would call it coercion That was from no fan of Trump Twitters'Trust and Safety head Yoel Roth . He resisted the bureau’s efforts to coerce the platform into providing user data outside of the normal search-warrant process.

Michael Shellenberger on Twitter: "18. It's not the first time that Twitter's Roth has pushed back against the FBI. In January 2020, Roth resisted FBI efforts to get Twitter to share data outside of the normal search warrant process. https://t.co/NAssnLMpds" / Twitter

To put it in context ; Roth was a key decision maker in so called "content moderation" that disproportionately censored right wing political thought. He led the censoring of the NY Post's story about Hunter Biden's laptop . He resigned when Musk took over the company .

Musk's decision was to be transparent . You have no basis for calling it half-truths, disinformation, misinformation .I'd like to see your evidence for that claim . The Twitter files being released are direct internal communications inside the company .

Read what Ross Barkan of the liberal publication 'The Nation ' says about the Twitter files and the real threat of government outsourcing the suppression of Free Speech and thought .
Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Twitter Files? | The Nation

Liberals didn’t care in 2020 because the New York Post is Rupert Murdoch’s toy. But what if a future Republican administration pressures Musk or anyone to start locking the account of The New York Times? The Washington Post? The possibilities for abuse are endless. The Twitter Files, at the minimum, should push us closer to reckoning with the gravity of these unsettling questions.

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Musk's decision was to be transparent . You have no basis for calling it half-truths, disinformation, misinformation .I'd like to see your evidence for that claim

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Great observation. Great request for evidence.

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Originally Posted by tomder55

You have no basis for calling it half-truths, disinformation, misinformation .I'd like to see your evidence for that claim .

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Let's start with this one. Others as time allows.

Schellenberger tweeted that the FBI was paying Twitter millions of dollars for help with its "influence campaign". He quoted an associate that, "I am happy to report we have collected $3,415,323 since October 2019!”

Next is right from your website;

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latest instalment of the files reveals that Twitter was essentially an FBI PAID informant and collaborator . The FBI paid the company $3.4 million taxpayer monopoly bucks to do their bidding.

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The first example is a gross example of disinformation distorted as a half-truth. The second example is an absolute lie.

The actual truth was that the FBI reimbursed Twitter for its expenses in complying with requests for information from Twitter. This is a statutory rule requiring the FBI to reimburse private companies for their expenses. It is done with all private companies, not just Twitter.

It was grossly misrepresented as a "payoff" for successfully bribing Twitter to gain influence.

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The Twitter files being released are direct internal communications inside the company .

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You only have Musk's word for that. Taibbi has admitted that he had to agree to "conditions" to be a recipient of Musk's plan. Musk had admitted that he is sending selected files, not all the files.

Your posts here re Twitter Files are dense and almost unreadable. Rather than c/p (which is sometimes necessary for lengthy info), you should try to digest the info and present it in manageable sections.

It is also necessary to vet the "Twitter Files" - if you don't, you wind up with sloppy research and false conclusions like occurred in the examples cited above.

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It is done with all private companies, not just Twitter.

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That is correct . They did not ONLY use Twitter to suppress speech .Matt Taibbi reported, “the government was in constant contact not just with Twitter, but with every major tech firm.” There’s no reason to think that has stopped. Twitter is small potatoes compared to Google and Fakebook. Maybe some day those companies will also open up about the government campaign to pressure social media ;the town square of the 21st century ;to suppress speech ,thought and association .

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Taibbi has admitted that he had to agree to "conditions" to be a recipient of Musk's plan

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The sole condition he agreed to was to do the reporting on Twitter's platform. I agree that regrettably it makes it a much tougher read given the restrictions on words per Tweet . I would prefer to read them in an essay. But the fact is that the truth about government censorship by proxy is finally being revealed .

To me Musk was the man of the year .