Letter addressed to the Honourable and Free Citizens of the United States of America

Copied to all the Honourable and Free Citizens of the World

Letter addressed to the Honourable and Free Citizens of the United States of America

Copied to all the Honourable and Free Citizens of the World

From a Free and Concerned Citizen of the World

PART 1 - INTRODUCTION

The COVID-19 pandemic has been going on for more than two years now, and we have had a lot of time to study and gather data about the different governments’ strategies implemented to respond to this crisis. While the particular strategy I would like to bring attention to was used not only by the United States of America’s government, but also by the governments of many other countries around the world, I will now mainly focus on the events that occurred in the U.S.A. for the purpose of brevity, even though most of what I will say might also apply to other countries around the world.

The U.S. government’s strategy to manage the COVID-19 pandemic was, to summarize, the implementation of general lockdowns until the arrival of the new mRNA covid vaccines, followed by the mass vaccination of the population. Now that we are more than two years into the pandemic, we have had ample time to gather data and evaluate this particular strategy and, unfortunately, the record doesn’t look too good. Let us begin with lockdowns. To put it in the most succinct and charitable way possible, on the one hand is not obvious at all that general lockdowns have been as effective as originally theorised at lowering mortality rates from the virus; and on the other hand, the very real harm caused by these lockdowns seems to have surpassed by far any potential benefits gained in terms of lives saved. These harms include but are definitely not limited to: missed potentially lifesaving medical appointments such as
cancer screenings, deteriorating mental health sometimes leading to domestic abuse or manslaughter or suicide, the loss of many people’s ability to make a living, the shutting down of the economy with all of its far reaching implications that we are only beginning to witness, etc.

So much for general lockdowns. What about vaccines? There too, unfortunately, the record is depressingly lacklustre. You were told that the mRNA vaccine was safe and effective and that it would prevent you from getting the virus and transmitting it to your loved ones. As time went on however, it has become more and more evident that these mRNA injections’ effectiveness fell very short of what had been advertised by their developers and your government, both in terms of preventing infections as well as reducing transmission. It also turned out that not only did the relative protection offered by these injections wane after just a few month, but their effectiveness seemed to further decrease, if not altogether disappear, in the face of newer variants of the virus. All of these facts have lead your government to double down and attempt to “top up” immunity with new rounds of booster doses, probably until a future time when they might settle on a yearly mRNA injection. Unfortunately this revised strategy, while undoubtedly very lucrative for the vaccine manufacturers, presents a very important drawback. Indeed, like a turd in the swimming pool that just won’t float away, it is becoming harder and harder to dismiss the increasingly worrying data that seems to show a non-negligible number of very serious negative side effects potentially emerging from the widespread repeated use of these mRNA injections, from a disproportionately increased risk of developing severe adverse long term health effects to death. As more data becomes available, it is becoming increasingly likely that governmental health agencies around the world will have to recalculate the risk/benefit ratio of using these mRNA injections on different population groups, especially now that there is a push to use these injections on babies against whom the virus represents almost no risk at all.

“Ok,” you might be tempted to say, “I’m not saying I agree with everything you said: I have to check the data, look at the studies myself and draw my own conclusions before I do that. But let’s say for the sake of argument that the way in which my government has managed the pandemic was not the best. So what? Hindsight is always 20/20 and everyone can make mistakes. Besides, there were no other options available.”

Allow me to disagree. I contend that not only were there many other reasonable options available for how to manage the pandemic, but furthermore, that when examining the events of the pandemic and the strategy chosen by your government to respond to them, the questionable choices and unfortunate mistakes they made do not seem completely innocent.

My purpose in this letter is to open your mind to that possibility.

PART 2 – A TROUBLING POSSIBILITY

An old part of your town burns down in a fire. You later learn that the biggest real estate company, who has a known history of paying the biggest fines for illegal dealings, was granted the new land by the mayor, who is also heavily invested in that company and has a known history of corruption and telling lies. You also learn that the real estate company and the mayor have raked in incredible profits from developing the new land. You also learn that some of the mayor’s agents were seen in the old part of the town at the outbreak of the fire. You also learn that they had plenty of water available but did not bother to try to contain the fire early on but instead caused a panic and waited until all the old buildings had burnt down. Having learnt all these things about the mayor and the real estate company, you must have an incredibly strong faith in human good will to think that there is not even the slightest possibility that they, in fact, might have started the fire.

I contend that the same can be said about the COVID-19 crisis.

Here is why.

The world suffers from a global pandemic. You are told that everyone is at risk. You are told that shutting down small businesses, stopping the economy, staying at home and waiting for a vaccine is the only sensible option available in order to save lives. You comply. You are then told that getting injected with a new mRNA vaccine developed by big pharmaceutical companies is the only way to stop the pandemic and regain your freedom. You comply. You are told that for the injections to work better everyone must be jabbed, and so coercive measures are implemented in order to motivate people to accept the injections. You are told that it is all done in order to save lives and so you do not question these measures. You are told that there are now two tiers of citizens: those who comply with the authority’s medical regulations and those who do not. Those who comply are let off the hook by the authorities, as long of course as they keep complying and show proof of their compliance through new documents and certificates; those who do not comply are barred from exercising basic freedoms, including the ability to have a job and earn a living, travel, and in some countries even buy food in supermarkets. You are told that those who protest these measures are a fringe minority of extremists and should be ignored. They are selfish and do not understand that all of this is done to save lives. In some places of the world, the police is even unleashed on these protesters. Some are arrested. Some have their bank accounts frozen to disperse them more quickly, their ability to spend money even to buy food being taken away from them. You are told that in order to save lives, the government is going to work more closely with banks and corporations and give itself new prerogatives, such as the right to freeze the assets of any citizen they deem to be a danger for public health. Some governments also talk about developing a programmable digital currency, a digital currency that can be programmed at will by the state to restrict certain types of transactions. You are told that the only transactions that would be restricted in such a way would be those that might endanger public health. You are reassured that all of this is done with the best intentions and in order to save lives. And so you do not question those measures. Why not, you tell yourself. After all, the state exercising greater control over everyone’s lives allows for more effective responses to crises and threats, both foreign and domestic. And you are partially correct. And it is perfectly fine and understandable to wish for safety from harm. However, in your desire for safety, you glossed over a small but critical flaw in your reasoning. And that flaw is this: what guarantee do you have that the threats you want protection from will not precisely come from the state that has amassed so much power? What guarantee do you have that the politicians in power have the same interests as you do? And even if you assume that they do have the same interests now, what guarantee do you have that it will always be so in the future?

But you dismiss that consideration. Your politicians are not corrupt and selfish. They are self- sacrificing and only work for the best interests of all. Of course, you are aware of the entirety of known human history. You are aware of the numerous examples of government corruption, of governments abusing their power, of governments oppressing innocent people, hurting innocent people, killing innocent people. Of governments passing laws that only support the interests of a small privileged minority. Of governments starting wars that only support the interests of large corporations. In fact, in your conversations with your friends, you are often extremely cynical about past politicians, about stories of past corruption, about the gap between political discourse full of noble ideals and what actually goes on behind the scenes. And yet, you firmly believe that your present politicians are not corrupt, that they believe in the noble principles they keep repeating every chance they get, that they truly wish to fulfil the promises they have made to you. You dismiss your past experience and the lessons of history because of someone’s pleasing rhetoric and enticing promises and noble ideals. If they tell you that their sole concern is public safety, and they use that reason as a means to concentrate more and more power, you trust them. You support them. You comply with what they tell you to do. For some reason, you believe that this time they are not lying; that this time, they are amassing power for your own interests and for the interests of all your fellow citizens; that this time, it will be different and they will not abuse that power to benefit themselves and their corporate friends at your expense; this time, you have faith in them.

And so you comply. You give them a chance. Fine. Sure, they seem to make a few unfortunate choices along the way, but everyone makes mistakes, right?

But then you learn something that you did not know.

PART 3 – WHY YOU SHOULD BE SUSPICIOUS

You learn that some of the pharmaceutical companies responsible for developing the mRNA injections have a history of paying large criminal fines and settlements for corrupt and fraudulent activities such as bribing physicians to promote their drugs, or making misleading claims about drugs’ safety and efficacy.

You learn that your government’s main regulatory body for pharmaceutical drugs is partially funded by the very same pharmaceutical companies it regulates and so receives large sums of money from them. You also learn that many of the employees working in that regulatory body often end up working for these big pharmaceutical companies when they decide to move to the private sector.

You also learn that this regulatory body, when compelled to release the safety and efficacy data pertaining to its approval of the mRNA injections, declared that it would release the documents at the rate of five hundred pages a month, therefore taking upwards of fifty-five years to reveal to the public the very same data that had only taken less than four months to process when it decided to authorise the mRNA injections for emergency use.

You also learn that throughout the pandemic, your government’s health protection agency arbitrarily decided not to publish large amounts of data it was collecting, such as data about the effectiveness of the mRNA injections in large age groups of the population, or data about hospitalisation rates according to vaccination status.

You then learn that due to the arguably unethical markup on the price of these mRNA injections, and due to the mass vaccination strategy chosen by your government, these mRNA injections are one of the most lucrative pharmaceutical products in history, bringing in tens of billions of dollars to their developers. You learn that some of these pharmaceutical companies have in fact profited so much from the sales of these mRNA injections that they have even been accused of pandemic profiteering.

“Ok,” you might be tempted to say, “I understand the point you are trying to make. There is a chance that those pharmaceutical companies have somehow influenced or maybe bribed or maybe colluded with my government, or at least a number of key government officials, and come to an arrangement in order to capitalise on the pandemic and make a lot of money out of it. Maybe these big pharma companies knew that their mRNA injections weren’t as safe and effective as they had advertised them to be, and maybe my government’s regulatory body turned a blind eye to that fact and authorised them anyway. Maybe these big pharma companies wanted to sell as many doses as possible, and maybe my government’s mass vaccination strategy and handling of the data was more motivated by that interest rather than by what would have been best for the health of its citizens. It does seem very immoral, and probably very illegal, but so far nothing that my cynical self wouldn’t expect. There was a lot of money on the line and so they exaggerated a drug’s effectiveness and tried to sell as much of it as possible through influencing policies and bypassing regulations; it happened in the past, and will probably happen again in the future…”

But wait, it gets worse.

PART 4 – THE SUPPRESSION OF ALTERNATIVE TREATMENTS

You learn that doctors all around the world, and especially in lower income countries, have made very good use of certain safe and cheap drugs for the early treatment of patients infected with the virus. You also learn that some of the poorest and most populated areas of the world have managed to halt the pandemic and potentially save thousands of lives after having implemented widespread use of these early treatment drugs. You learn that some celebrities and politicians who got infected with the virus and supposedly had access to top medical advice also made use of these early treatment drugs successfully. You even learn that doctors have been using these early treatment therapies in your own country throughout the pandemic to great effect. You realise that many of these doctors have been ignored, silenced or outright banned from mainstream media platforms and their claims have been dismissed out of hand as
false instead of being evaluated scientifically in an open, free and public manner. This seems too big to be true; surely the medical authorities of your country would have acknowledged the effectiveness of such drugs if that were true? Surely your health agencies would have authorised the hospitals of your country to implement these drugs in their protocols if they were so effective at treating covid patients and preventing deaths?

So you go look at what the fact checkers have to say about the purported effectiveness of these drugs, and here is what you find: some deflect the question by talking about different drugs used for livestock instead of humans, and reach the obvious although completely off topic conclusion that those livestock drugs are ineffective and unsafe for human use. Others describe the history of these drugs and their uses for other medical conditions before concluding that they have not been recommended or authorised for use by your health agencies in the context of the pandemic. A vanishing few mention that there have been many reports correlating the use of these early treatment drugs with a drastic reduction of covid cases and deaths, but conclude that the currently available data does not show that these drugs are effective for treating the virus. What the fuck?

Now you are getting frustrated with the fact checkers. You can’t help thinking that their ridiculous deflections and shallow answers seem to show a suspicious amount of bad faith. Besides, are you really expected to believe that while governments and pharmaceutical companies had the time and resources to fast track the development of new complex mRNA injections with all of their unknown potential long-term effects, they did not have the time or resources to conduct basic clinical trials with old and safe drugs whose widespread use in the field had already, by itself, provided much of the necessary data required to determine their safety and efficacy? You look further into that point and realise that some of the clinical studies required to determine the efficacy of these promising early treatment therapies are still ongoing, more than two years into the pandemic! You also learn from your research that, early in the pandemic, most of the data collected on these drugs looked extremely promising, until a number of new studies appeared in the research databases, apparently showing that these drugs were largely ineffective. You are puzzled by such contrasting results and decide to dig deeper. What could cause such a discrepancy in results? You then notice something that confuses you: the protocols used in these new studies seem to be all over the place; in their trials, the early treatment drugs are either used way too late in the progression of the disease, or in completely random and unexplainable dosages that have nothing to do with the real dosages used in the field, or with arbitrarily long gaps of several days between doses, etc. In addition, you notice that in many of the new studies, the results summarised in the abstract misrepresent the actual findings of the studies, thereby leading anyone who does not give these studies much more than a cursory reading to draw inaccurate conclusions. And you wonder, what could be the motivation to flood the research databases with such irresponsible and obviously flawed studies? What else but the desire to muddle the waters, to obscure the data on the efficacy of these cheap early treatment drugs, to create artificial doubt and the need for more research, thereby pushing back the time when those cheap early treatment drugs might be recognised as safe and effective in treating covid and be approved by your regulatory agency?

And then you think of something else. Even if those cheap drugs’ effectiveness was still considered uncertain, their safety was well established. Why not then grant these drugs an emergency use authorisation, when the potential benefits to patients far outweighed the risks, especially at a time when there was such a pressing need for early treatment covid therapies? So you look into it and you discover another unexplainable fact. You learn that the regulatory body of your government granted emergency use authorisation, for the treatment of covid patients, to an expensive repurposed experimental drug developed by a large pharmaceutical company, despite clear evidence that the drug was very unsafe, combined with unclear evidence as to the drug’s effectiveness. This puzzles you. How could the regulatory body of your government justify such a decision when the studies about the expensive drug seem to show that its risks far outweigh its benefits? Besides, why would there be such a double standard when it comes to granting emergency use authorisation to a dangerous and expensive drug made by a big pharmaceutical company, but not granting it to cheap, safe, widely used and widely available drugs?

You break things down to try to understand the decision. So on the one hand you have cheap drugs that have been used safely for decades by millions of people, whose mechanisms of action are well known and well understood and that are currently being used in other countries as early treatment for covid with almost no adverse effects (i.e. drugs whose potential benefits far outweigh their very low risks); and on the other hand you have a much more expensive experimental drug that had proven ineffective for its original use and has been repurposed as a candidate for covid treatment, yet whose effectiveness in that role is not well established by studies and that presents disproportionate safety issues (i.e. a drug whose very high risks far outweigh its potential benefits); and yet the regulatory body of your government decides to grant emergency use authorisation to the dangerous, expensive drug and not to the safe, cheap ones? How is that possible? How can you explain such a wide double standard? What are the reasons that could possibly guide such a decision? And then you realise. Who benefits from that decision? Certainly not the covid patients. No, the ones who clearly benefit from that decision are the big pharmaceutical companies that suddenly find an outlet to sell their expensive experimental drug with no competition. You notice that the same reasoning also applies to the new mRNA injections. Again, why would there be such a double standard when it comes to granting an emergency use authorisation to a fast-tracked, brand new mRNA vaccine, which by necessity cannot be determined not to have any long-term effects since it is so new, but not to safe and cheap drugs that have been in use with little side effects for decades already and are already showing a lot of promise in the real world as effective early treatments for covid? You can’t help thinking that something doesn’t seem to add up.

And then you realise that had these cheap and safe drugs been recognised as effective for early treatment of covid patients and been authorised, it would have been much harder for your government’s health agencies to justify granting emergency use authorisation to the big pharmaceutical companies’ brand new mRNA injections and all the potential risks they posed with their fast-tracked development, arguably insufficient testing and unknown long-term effects. With cheap and safe drugs available for early treatment, it would have been much harder for your government to justify the implementation of coercive measures in an attempt to push every single individual to get injected with all the paraphernalia of first shot, second shot and boosters from a new substance whose long term effects are by necessity unknown to us. Had the safe and cheap drugs been recognised as effective, been authorised and then widely implemented in early treatment protocols, bye-bye to the fear based narrative of the unstoppable and deadly pandemic where your only hope of survival is to stay at home until everyone gets their shots. And all of this would have meant missing out on a lot of money for the big pharma companies, who would have been unable to promote their mRNA vaccines and other expensive drugs as the only option for stopping the pandemic.

This begs the question: why would the health agencies of your government seemingly chose to support the financial interests of large pharmaceutical companies over the interests of the people they are meant to serve and protect? Why would they behave in such a way, unless they were thoroughly corrupt and in the pockets of these big pharmaceutical companies?

“Ok,” you might be tempted to say. “So first we mentioned the possibility that big pharmaceutical companies had influenced or maybe bribed or maybe colluded with members of my government and come to an arrangement to capitalise on the pandemic and make a lot of money out of it in an unethical and illegal way. But now things are getting uglier. Now you’re saying that they might also have participated in the suppression of cheap and safe early treatment drugs in order to increase the competitiveness of their own expensive products and promote them as the only option for stopping the pandemic, in order to encourage the emergency authorisation and widespread use of their fast-tracked mRNA shots and other expensive drugs whose safety risks were either unknown, or known and significant. Worse than that, you are saying that my own governmental health agencies seem to have taken part in the suppression of these cheap and safe early treatment drugs in favour of promoting unsafe and expensive drugs. Now I am starting to feel more than my usual cynicism when I think of all the lives that could have been saved and all the harm that could have been avoided had these effective early treatment drugs not been suppressed. This is taking it a step further. Now I am starting to feel a strong sense of disgust at such criminal behaviour, such immoral and harmful behaviour that seems to amount to nothing less than indirect mass murder.”

But wait, there’s more.

PART 5 – TOTALITARIAN PRACTICES

You learn that at the beginning of the pandemic, many doctors and scientists had come together to reject your government’s course of action of mass lockdowns while waiting for mass vaccination. They underlined that the very real harms on public health caused by general lockdowns would greatly outweigh their potential benefits. They proposed instead to focus protection and medical attention on the most vulnerable, the people who carried almost all of the risks from the virus (older people, people with multiple co-morbidities, people with obesity, people with a weakened immune system…) and allow the rest of the population, for whom the virus represented a very low risk, to resume all of their activities while following basic hygiene measures until most of the population had gained natural immunity from the virus, which would ultimately lead to a lowering of the transmission rate due to herd immunity and so theoretically lead to a better protection for the entire population.

This seems to you like a well-thought, balanced and reasonable proposal that, at the very least, raises an important point that had seemingly been glossed over by your government’s agencies and that merited discussion: that the risk/benefit ratio of lockdowns might turn out to be very unfavourable in terms of harm done to public health. And you wonder why you never heard of this proposal before and what were the rational considerations that lead to its rejection. So once again you go to the fact checkers and other online publications, but you cannot find a single source of rational discussion based on the merits and demerits of the proposal. All you can find are lazy attacks targeting a straw man version of the proposal that sound something like this: “fringe scientists promote immoral survival of the fittest covid strategy”, “scientists claim that keeping the economy going matters more than saving lives”, “fake signatures of the Great Barrington Declaration prove it is a hoax”, “no serious scientist or doctor supports the Great Barrington Declaration, only a handful of fringe and unqualified scientists”, etc… This greatly surprises you because you can see that the main authors of the proposal are all doctors working in some of the most prestigious universities in the world, Oxford, Stanford and Harvard, and you think that these universities must not live up to their reputation if scientists working there are considered fringe and unqualified. You are also frustrated that such a proposal would be dismissed on such ridiculous grounds, instead of being seriously taken under consideration and rationally evaluated. You are no scientific expert by any means, but you are pretty sure that a rational evaluation of the matter at hand should at least put a little bit more weight on analysing the estimated risks and benefits that different measures would have on public health.

You then learn via the public release of personal emails that the heads of the public health agencies of your government, instead of engaging in a scientific, ethical and rational re-evaluation of their agenda, seem to have agreed behind the scenes that this proposal should not be allowed to gather any more attention than it already had. You learn that these public health officials seem to have used their influence to smear and discredit the proposal, its authors and its signatories, in an effort to shut down any chance of real debate and push forward their agenda of general lockdowns and mass vaccination, all the while claiming to be “following the science”, to “represent the science”, and to have “scientific consensus”. Because you like to hear both sides of a story before making conclusions, you check what these officials have to say about these accusations, and you learn that they deny everything. Confused, you go to the primary evidence, the released emails, and find their exchanges about the Great Barrington Declaration, which contain the characterisation of the authors of the proposal as three fringe epidemiologists, the recognition of the attention that the proposal is beginning to gather, including from a co-signatory Nobel Prize winner biophysicist working at Stanford, and the need to quickly execute a devastating published take down of the proposal’s premises online. And as you read this, you can’t help but notice that even though the public health officials in question deny having conspired to discredit the Great Barrington Declaration, a quick and devastating take down of it by the press is exactly what happened shortly after these emails were exchanged. And so you ask yourself if these officials really expect you to believe that their stated desire to execute a quick and devastating take down of the proposal just happens to coincide with the fact that the proposal was precisely taken down by a quick and devastating smear campaign. You are starting to get a headache from the unashamed and constant lies that you have to wade your way through in order to reach even the smallest sliver of truth.

You start wondering how many scientists and doctors have been ignored, dismissed, censored and outright banned from media platforms just because their views and recommendations did not fit the narrative pushed by your government. You start wondering if all the doctors labelled as fringe, unqualified, dealers of misinformation and “anti-vaxx” really are what the media have represented them to be. You decide for the first time to hear what these scientists and doctors have to say directly and judge for yourself instead of forming an opinion solely based on the government’s and media’s representation and commentary of what they say. You look for them online and are surprised at how hard it is to find a direct record, in text or video, of their views. After having dug a little deeper than what you are used to, you finally manage to find video records of interviews and conventions where these censored scientists and doctors present and justify their views. You are surprised to see that what they say sounds very rational and logical and that the evidence they use to support their claims is hard to dismiss. And you wonder why these respectable and eminently qualified scientists and doctors do not have a voice via the mainstream channels. And the only explanation you can come up with, the only thing that they seem to all have in common, is that what they are saying does not fit the narrative that your apparently corrupt government and its parroting media outlets are trying to shove down your throat.

Talking about shoving things down your throat, you even learn that your government has a social and behavioural sciences team, a so-called “nudge unit”, that advises it on how to apply behavioural psychology on public policy in order to influence the public to think or act in certain ways that are considered to be more desirable. Incredulous, you check online and are reassured when you read that your government only uses behavioural psychology to influence people in making better choices for their own interests, like the general improvement of society and leading healthier and better lives. What a relief, you think. But then you learn that many other western democratic governments also have their own nudge units, and a few members of such units have come out and said that what they had been tasked to do during the pandemic, the control of human behaviour mainly via fear, amounts to the worst kind of propaganda usually seen in totalitarian governments. Having learned this, you just sit there in disbelief. You knew it was bad, but you didn’t suspect it was that bad.

“Ok,” you might be tempted to say. “So at first we saw that a few pharmaceutical companies might have influenced or maybe bribed or maybe colluded with members of my government and come to an arrangement to capitalise on the pandemic and make a lot of money out of it in an unethical and illegal way. Then things got uglier as we saw that these big pharma companies, with the help of my own governmental health agencies, might have taken part in indirect mass murder by suppressing cheap and safe early treatment drugs in order to promote the use of their mRNA technology as the only option for stopping the pandemic. But now we are even starting to see that my government, using mainstream media as a propaganda tool and censoring dissident voices, also seems to have taken part in the wider suppression of scientific discussion around alternative pandemic management strategies and other relevant issues in order to further facilitate the promotion of these mRNA products, and I cannot understand why my government would have behaved in such a way unless, once again, it was thoroughly corrupt and in the pockets of the pharmaceutical companies. Now I am in awe at the implications of such widespread corruption in my government. I wonder how it would even be possible to root it all out. I’d rather go lie down and think of something else.”

But wait, there’s more.

PART 6 – THE ORIGIN OF THE PANDEMIC

You learn that the first reported outbreak of the virus that started the pandemic occurred in the very same city in which was also present an institute of virology, a bio lab that conducted biological research. And you also learn that the research conducted in that particular lab just before the virus outbreak was precisely research on coronaviruses, and more specifically on how to make coronaviruses from bats more pathogenic and more transmissible to human cells. You also learn that this particular installation was partially funded with money from some of your government’s agencies. You also learn that early in the pandemic, when journalists and scientists attempted to bring attention to the fact that the virus might have either leaked or been intentionally released from that lab, they were ridiculed, fact checked, dismissed as stupid conspiracy theorists, silenced, and even censored from social media platforms, until the piling evidence made it impossible for your governmental agencies and their media outlets to dismiss the possibility.

You also learn that early research on the virus’s genetic makeup found that it possessed highly unusual insertions that are not found in any other coronavirus known to man, but are instead found in the HIV virus, and that it seemed extremely unlikely for such a feature to have developed naturally. You also learn that these findings were then retracted by the publisher, who also blocked any attempt from the authors to publish further findings on the topic. You also learn that some of the researchers behind theses findings complained that they had been forced to retract their study by vested interests, but that they still backed their original conclusion that the virus had very likely been engineered in a lab, and called for further investigation on the origin of the virus to be conducted.

You also learn that two years into the pandemic, other scientists discovered a piece of genetic material in the spike protein of the virus that matches a genetic sequence patented three years prior to the pandemic by one of the pharmaceutical companies that went on to develop the mRNA injections. Furthermore, these scientists found the matching sequence precisely in the part of the virus that makes it so good at infecting humans, and claim that the odds that the patented sequence would randomly appear through natural evolution are extremely low.

Taken with a sudden doubt, you decide to fact check all of this new information, and you can’t help noticing that most of the things you have just learned are quickly dismissed by fact checkers either as coincidences, or as debunked theories. However, you fail to find the justifications required for making such decisive and confident verdicts. You try to look for a sign of the cautious, nuanced and open minded discourse that you are used to seeing in science, but you cannot find a trace of it on the fact checking websites. All you find is an authority, a fact checker, that dogmatically tells you which scientific theory is correct and which one is not. And you suddenly think back on the early lab leak theory for the origin of the virus, which had also been considered as debunked by fact checkers early on, until it became impossible to dismiss the piling evidence and they were forced to accept it as a possibility. And you wonder, what if they are wrong here as well? Why do they seem so keen on rejecting or minimising that theory? Why do they act exactly like people scrambling to do damage control? What are their interests? Who funds them? Do they have conflicts of interests? And most importantly, what gives them the prerogative to hand out authoritative conclusions as if what they claimed was necessarily true and universally accepted, as if they were the sole arbiters of truth, as if they were impervious to mistakes, to bias, to errors of judgment and, more importantly, to conflicts of interests and to corruption?

“Ok,” you might be tempted to say. “So at first we saw that a few pharmaceutical companies might have influenced or maybe bribed or maybe colluded with members of my government and come to an arrangement to capitalise on the pandemic and make a lot of money out of it in an unethical and illegal way. Then things got uglier as we saw that these big pharma companies might have colluded with corrupt government agencies and taken part in indirect mass murder by suppressing early treatment drugs and alternative pandemic management strategies, as well as increasing compliance in the public through the use of totalitarian practices like the use of propaganda, behavioural psychology and censorship of dissident voices, all this in order to promote the mass use of their new mRNA injections and raking in huge profits. Then things got really ugly when I learnt that there was a high likelihood that the virus that started the pandemic might have been engineered in a bio lab partially funded by my own government. Now the only question I can think about is this: was the virus escape from the lab an accidental leak, which was later capitalised on? Or was it purposefully done in order to start the pandemic and initiate a premeditated plan to profit from it?”

You do not have the answer to this question. However, having learnt all these things about your corrupt government institutions and their close friends, the big pharmaceutical companies, you must have an incredibly strong faith in human good will to think that there is not even the slightest possibility that they, in fact, might have started the pandemic.

Love,

A free and concerned citizen of the world.