Little White Bureaucratic Lies
By Mitch Berg
With the impending retirement of Dr. Fauci, we are learning more about how much our federal and state public health bureaucracies deceived the public in the interest of “the public good“.
And, perhaps worse, the extent to which it is standard operating procedure:
When experts or agencies deliver information to the public that they consider possibly or definitively false to further a larger, often well-meaning agenda, they are telling what is called a noble lie. Although the teller’s intentions may be pure—for example, a feeling of urgency that behavioral change is needed among the lay public—the consequences can undermine not only those intentions but also public trust in experts and science. During the first year of COVID-19, leaders were faced with an unknown disease amid a politically sensitive election in the era of social media, and the preconditions for noble lies became especially fertile. Not surprisingly, we witnessed several examples. More than anything, these examples illustrate the destructive potential of such lies.
The moment that I realized we were being lied to at the state level? May 11, 2020 Dash the Governors press conference, where the states “healthcare economist“ told a reporter that they had no plans on releasing the code for the “models“ that had predicted between 20,000 and 70,000 deaths in Minnesota by July 2020, because “people might use that to reach different conclusions than we did“.
That is the opposite of science, and a repudiation of any idea of trusting that particular institution.
August 30th, 2022 at 7:10 am
Slate telling their 80 IQ readership “yeah, they lied to you, but it was for your own good!”
The “Noble Lie” is a talking point directed at nitwits like rAT Emery, that had marched around lecturing their intellectual betters about science, and are now being outed for the witless dupes they are. It’s something they can use to deflect the mockery.
And hey, that’s fine. The hapless little twits were useful and now they need the help before the mean MAGA’s hurt feels. But, what are they going to do when it becomes impossible to deny that the bug juice is not only ineffective, but has been killing people?
What spin do you put on a poison that has caused a 40% rate of miscarriage in women who shot the juice while pregnant?
August 30th, 2022 at 7:17 am
The thing that shocks me the most here is actually not the “white lies”, but rather the failure to follow basic tracks of logic. Fauci et al missed so many obvious points–128 nm particles tend to form aerosols, outdoor is far safer than indoor, best therapy to avoid death by ‘rona is to control blood pressure and sugar, don’t send COVID patients into nursing homes, etc..–that you have to wonder what on earth he was thinking.
August 30th, 2022 at 7:43 am
they say they had good intentions and told a little white lie to save us cuz were too stupid to take good advice thats the spin theyre putting on it now but thats not what happened
everybody knew whwn that cruize ship landed that it wasnt a deadly virus only 14 died all old and untreated no risk to the rest of hte nation but they lied about it and threw out 100 years of science so they could claim it was too risky to stand in line to vote shiftr to mail votes and then kick everybody out so nobody could watch them cheat the counting
it was not a little white lie it was a massive lie to steal an election dont let them get away with pretending its not cuz theyll do it again
August 30th, 2022 at 7:50 am
Bubba, Fauchi was playing “Simon says” to see how many idiots there are among us. Turns out, it correlates exactly with the number of leftists roaming around.
And they’re all pumped full of contaminated, toxic shit, too! 🤣
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/japan-finds-stainless-steel-particles-in-suspended-doses-of-moderna-vaccine-1.5569480
August 30th, 2022 at 8:18 am
In Britain there is starting to be a hint at “truth and reconciliation” over that country’s draconian lockdowns, probably because Boris Johnson is out of power.
Former Tory cabinet member Rishi Sunak has exposed how poor the covid decision making process was under Johnson, and how any criticism of the lockdown protocols was quashed:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-lockdown-files-rishi-sunak-on-what-we-werent-told
August 30th, 2022 at 8:42 am
Fauci’s belief in the ‘Noble Lie’ as an important policy tool — whether it be cloth mask efficacy; the sterilizing nature of vaccines; the role of natural immunity; the value of vaccinating young children — has sowed political discord and discredited public health.
There is one inviolable rule in public health: always tell the whole truth no matter what. Fauci’s cavalier attitude to this rule will do more to set back trust in vaccines and public health in the decades to come than any other single policy action over the last half century.
August 30th, 2022 at 8:52 am
Was it a noble lie when Fauci said that the NHS hadn’t funded gain of function research at the Wuhan Institute of virology?
Nope, that was a “cover my ass” lie, intended to hide the truth because it would make Fauci himself look bad.
August 30th, 2022 at 8:56 am
Oh, don’t be to hard on Fauchi, rAT. He knows his audience. 🤓
Besides, you’re still happily being dragged around by the nose on any number of leftist issues. 🤡
BTW…isn’t it time for your fall booster? 💉
Lmao
August 30th, 2022 at 8:57 am
Once he gets outta federal prison, maybe Michael Avenatti and Fauci can go out on the ol’ Chautauqua circuit and tell their devotees about the depredations of Truthers. What a show!
August 30th, 2022 at 9:03 am
MP – I was just about to post that same Spectator article with Rishi Sunak’s account of what was happening behind the curtain. It would be funny now, if it weren’t so horrific. Even cabinet members – including the Chancellor (the guy with the pursestrings) – being shut out and ignored by a small, shadow-cabinet that was making lockdown decisions without any real science – or accountability. A bit reminiscent, in fact, of Mayor Frey and his mini-City Council of three that set policy during the Floyd riots and pandemic in the name of safety and expediency.
Powerline also linked similar stories: https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/08/facing-the-truth-about-lockdowns.php
August 30th, 2022 at 9:07 am
but the lie did not stop did it? it changed the paradigm and allowed unfettered push of experimentation on the low IQ voters and their spawn. For the greater good! Tell me where is the science in THIS:
The shots have been modified to target the latest Omicron variant, but won’t have finished testing in humans when the FDA makes the decision. Instead, the FDA is relying on data from other sources – like research in mice and older vaccines, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The skid had been greased and it had been shown that the goobernments can force their malthusian vision on the populace, and even more scary, that populace was buying and swallowing it line, hook and sinker. Solyent Green!
August 30th, 2022 at 9:11 am
Man, look at the little weasel indicating that all his mindless admonitions to being vaccinated maybe weren’t so smart after all. And all without admitting that for week after week he repeated these admonitions through lame links to BS articles from MSM and feeble efforts at sarcasm of all of us who doubted. All while expressing opinions that we, the unvaccinated, be punished for our Bad Think.
Yeah, well, eff you, We were right. Of course, our greatest regret is yet to come: not a single one of these ignorant authoritarian jerks will suffer one iota of punishment.
August 30th, 2022 at 9:18 am
The lockdown dynamic in the UK was driven by terror that the NHS would be overwhelmed, and this terror had its beginning with, of course, shit-poor modeling done by the “experts” (who were know to have developed really bad models in the past).
The British government also kept the public in the dark about the bad social and economic effects of the lockdowns that they knew were real. The British government then used propaganda techniques to terrify their own population, which in turn led to public demands for lockdowns.
Sound familiar?
August 30th, 2022 at 9:18 am
I don’t know if it’s a genetic thing to obey any stupid thing they’re told or if the country/culture has just simply suffered a mental breakdown over the past 3 years, but Germany is going for the gusto fascism-wise, New Normal Germany’s Geisterfahrer Geist
So, it’s official. On Wednesday, August 24, New Normal Germany’s Bundestag rubber stamped the government’s latest revision to the so-called “Infection Protection Act” (i.e., New Normal Germany’s new Enabling Act), authorizing the continued persecution of “the Unvaccinated” (i.e., New Normal Germany’s new official Untermenschen), the mandatory wearing of medical-looking masks (i.e., the ideological-compliance symbol of the New Normal Reich throughout the world), the banning of protests against the New Normal (i.e., the new official ideology of Germany), and assorted other “emergency measures.”
August 30th, 2022 at 9:24 am
The lockdown dynamic in the UK was driven by terror that the NHS would be overwhelmed
That’s the excuse, but it was really the propaganda hook to convince the lightweight thinkers to simply accept any authoritarian action they dreamt up. And it worked.
August 30th, 2022 at 9:53 am
jdm, there is a conference in Germany that I really need to attend but cannot afford to get stuck in that shithole. And I am not alone, a lot of people are choosing not to go.
August 30th, 2022 at 9:55 am
What is astonishing is that Rishi has cost the UK hundreds of billions of pounds for something he now says he didn’t believe in. This is an astonishing revelation.
Imagine being so inept that you’re losing to Liz Truss by double digit margins. Rishi really does define incompetence.
What I find hilarious is all the billions Rishi has lost the country to Covid loan fraudsters.
I would also like to hear what he has done during his time as chancellor to stop the £34 billion+ lost to tax evasion. I suspect the answer is very little.
It is the hallmark of this government and its ministers to always be wise after the event, but never before it.
August 30th, 2022 at 9:59 am
Emery is the poster boy for “always be wise after the event, but never before it” syndrome.
August 30th, 2022 at 10:03 am
Now consider the similarities between the elite’s reaction to rising atmospheric CO2 and elite’s reaction to covid.
Models developed by “experts,” basing public policy on unfalsifiable propositions, demands for greater government control of individual human behavior, lies, exaggerations, a desire to control speech, etc.
These people are not start. The elites think that they can tell people to starve to death in a banquet hall.
August 30th, 2022 at 10:11 am
UMMP
Australia and New Zealand both did the same thing. That UK lineage still dictates their mantra. Australian dictators, even went full blown Nazi, putting non jabbed citizens in camps.
August 30th, 2022 at 10:12 am
^^ You’re learning precisely the wrong lesson.
You’re mixing up one policy failure — failure to take early and effective steps as in Taiwan or Korea or HK, with being placed in the position to be forced into late lockdown steps that others were able to avoid as they understood (if I may put it in gramma’s terms) that a stitch in time saves nine.
Interesting consensus of commenters here who believe that:
1. Lots of people falling ill simultaneously would have no effect on the economy
2. …or healthcare (and operations would have been just fine and no uptick in hospital-borne COViD infection)
3. Forgetting that the mild effects now are the result of a 12 month+ vaccination programme
4. Forgetting that over 150,000 people in the UK died from COVID.
August 30th, 2022 at 10:25 am
^^You are talking nonsense again, Emery.
1) No one believed that the pandemic would have zero economic effect.
One of the reasons the models failed is that they assumed that the only thing that would make people change their behavior was mandates from the government. Since mid 2020, I have been commenting here that the best way to handle the pandemic was the way humans have handled pandemics for centuries: take common sense precautions, quarantine the sick, and protect at risk populations.
2) Again, nonsense. No one believes that a deadly pandemic would not stress the health care system.
3) You’ve forgotten that the mild effects of covid are the result of natural immunity acquired by infection, and that viral diseases tend to become less deadly over time.
4) I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. The UK is now experiencing a spike in deaths from the ill effects of lockdown.
You are clearly not a person who has the ability to analyze complex issues.
August 30th, 2022 at 10:31 am
With all that we’ve seen these past two years, my most memorabl!e moment continues to be…the candy store!
August 30th, 2022 at 10:39 am
nobody knows how many died of covid
nobody knows how many will die of lockdown denied treatment
nobody knows how many will die of fake vaccine
its all part of the big lie to terrify the public
we dont need no stinking constitution
save us obiwan walz your our only hope
August 30th, 2022 at 10:44 am
FYI, New Zealand, under a hard lockdown with travel restrictions, strict masking requirements, and a vax rate of 84%, is losing almost 400 people a day to covid, and the infection rate per million in New Zealand is now higher than it is in the US.
August 30th, 2022 at 10:46 am
^^ regarding your 10:25
Nonsense. Why do you keep spouting this nonsense?
The Govt looked at this in 2016
Project Cygnus: Pandemic preparedness exercise
Guess what they did with the recommendations?
Absolutely nothing.
August 30th, 2022 at 11:32 am
Give a link to just one of the many commenters on SITD who you say think that “[l]ots of people falling ill simultaneously would have no effect on the economy”
As I wrote, you are spouting nonsense.
August 30th, 2022 at 12:12 pm
you are spouting nonsense
MP, you really expect an inanimate trollbot to spout anything but?
August 30th, 2022 at 12:21 pm
How come you don’t know this?
https://bit.ly/3KyL7k5
Covid deaths per million in hard lockdown, 85% vaxxed New Zealand, higher than the US.
Literally, as New Zealand’s vax rate increased, so did covid cases and death count.
August 30th, 2022 at 12:38 pm
^^ This is what decompensation looks like.
August 30th, 2022 at 1:52 pm
Not just in NZ and Oz, but Israel too (Aug 28)
Israel official total mortality numbers released
2020 was the year of “once-in-a-century pandemic” with no vaccines available. But total mortality in 2021 and 2022 is dramatically higher.
What’s killing people en masse? Climate change?
August 30th, 2022 at 2:09 pm
“When you have no argument, distract,” does not work against real human beings, Emery.
What else did they teach you troll school that is wrong?
August 30th, 2022 at 2:16 pm
Hey… Germany too?
In 2020, the observed number of deaths was close to the expected number with respect to the empirical standard deviation. By contrast, in 2021, the observed number of deaths was two empirical standard deviations above the expected number. The high excess mortality in 2021 was almost entirely due to an increase in deaths in the age groups between 15 and 79 and started to accumulate only from April 2021 onwards. A similar mortality pattern was observed for stillbirths with an increase of about 11 percent in the second quarter of the year 2021.
Something must have happened in April 2021 that led to a sudden and sustained increase in mortality in the age groups below 80 years, although no such effects on mortality had been observed during the COVID-19 pandemic so far.
Something must’ve happened indeed.
August 30th, 2022 at 2:32 pm
Not to dance on graves here, but over 95% of those WuFlu after jabs, are FAUXci cult members and true believer DemoCommies like Emery. Those voter rolls will drop daily.
August 30th, 2022 at 3:17 pm
The lockdowns and masking mandates were the opposite of science. Your hypothesis (and that is what a model is) cannot be falsified because your error bars are huge, but of course you never admit that you are shooting in the dark. You overstate your conclusion, refuse to allow anyone to look at the underlying data, and, when real-world results do not match your predictions, you deny, deflect and rationalize.
It really is more like the “science” done by Medieval alchemists than science done by modern day physicists.
They kept talking about “science” while they modeled human behavior. A complete recipe for disaster.
August 30th, 2022 at 7:24 pm
Keeping my ear to the rail, looks like in the next little while the CDC will advise pregnant women to avoid the jab.
This is really awful, our people in the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) seem to be actively promoting protocols which spread disease.
August 30th, 2022 at 8:59 pm
An oldish youtube of Trump press secretary McInerney showing videos of Democrat politicians violating the lockdown rules they imposed on everyone else: https://youtu.be/st6A1AqgpLs
Covid lockdowns & mandates have always been a joke. Democrats know this. Why do they lie and say that they were important public health measures?
August 31st, 2022 at 9:53 am
MP, I crown thee king of rhetorical questions.