Researcher acknowledges in 'Newsweek' that the scientific community got it wrong with anticovid protocols: "It cost lives"

The magazine published an article stating that the lockdown, mass vaccinations and masks were a mistake that "forged a more fractured society than ever and increased inequalities."

Vacunas mascarilla contra el covid-19 — (Pixabay)

Published by

Israel Duro

1 de febrero, 2023

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Newsweek magazine published an article written by a Texas researcher that acknowledges that the scientific community, and he himself, got it wrong with the anti-Covid protocols that were implemented around the world. Kevin Bass said that this single approach to fighting the virus cost "thousands, if not millions, of preventable deaths." Moreover, the monolithic response by administrations and healthcare elites "forged a society more fractured than ever, and exacerbated longstanding health and economic disparities," with blacks, Hispanics, and children among the most affected.

Bass begins the article by stating that he himself was convinced that the scientific community's proposals for anti-Covid protocols were adequate. "I believed that the authorities responded to the largest public health crisis of our lives with compassion, diligence, and scientific expertise. I was with them when they called for lockdowns, vaccines, and boosters," he said.

Anti-Covid measures cost "thousands, if not millions, of deaths"

However... "I was wrong. We in the scientific community were wrong. And it cost lives," said the Texas researcher, who is currently finishing his PhD. Once the worst of the pandemic was over, and after reflecting on what had happened, what decisions were made and the consequences they had on society, governments, and even the scientific community, Basster decided to share his analysis:

I can see now that the scientific community from the CDC to the WHO to the FDA and their representatives, repeatedly overstated the evidence and misled the public about its own views and policies, including on natural vs. artificial immunity, school closures and disease transmission, aerosol spread, mask mandates, and vaccine effectiveness and safety, especially among the young. All of these were scientific mistakes at the time, not in hindsight. Amazingly, some of these obfuscations continue to the present day.

The dogma of anti-Covid protocols

However, according to the researcher, "perhaps more important than any individual error was how inherently flawed the overall approach of the scientific community was and continues to be," he said. " It was flawed in a way that undermined its efficacy and resulted in thousands if not millions of preventable deaths."

Bass pointed out that imposing anti-Covid protocols as absolute, dogmatic truths caused an unbridgeable fracture in the scientific community. It created an "us" against "them" mentality in which some were persecuted, defamed, and retaliated against for refusing to join the official discourse. "We created policy based on our preferences, then justified it using data. And then we portrayed those opposing our efforts as misguided, ignorant, selfish, and evil. We made science a team sport, and in so doing, we made it no longer science. It became us versus them, and 'they' responded the only way anyone might expect them to: by resisting."

Persecution of wayward scientists

As a consequence of this partisanship, prominent figures were attacked for offering alternatives and warning of the dangers to which the population that was supposedly being saved by the anti-Covid protocols was being subjected. Their colleagues, far from defending them or opening a productive debate, threw the first punch.

Most of us did not speak up in support of alternative views, and many of us tried to suppress them. When strong scientific voices like world-renowned Stanford professors John Ioannidis, Jay Bhattacharya, and Scott Atlas, or University of California San Francisco professors Vinay Prasad and Monica Gandhi, sounded the alarm on behalf of vulnerable communities, they faced severe censure by relentless mobs of critics and detractors in the scientific community—often not on the basis of fact but solely on the basis of differences in scientific opinion.

"Monolithic" defense of anti-Covid policies

This lack of debate, the "monolithic" defense of the single vision, caused physicians to lose sight of the people they intended to save, as well as the impact of the anti-Covid measures imposed on their lives. Minorities were the most vulnerable and the most affected. "We systematically minimized the downsides of the interventions we imposed—imposed without the input, consent, and recognition of those forced to live with them. In so doing, we violated the autonomy of those who would be most negatively impacted by our policies: the poor, the working class, small business owners, Blacks and Latinos, and children. These populations were overlooked because they were made invisible to us by their systematic exclusion from the dominant, corporatized media machine that presumed omniscience," said Bass.

The researcher believes that the consequence of this disruption between people's reality and scientific theories was what sparked citizens to accuse the political, economic, and scientific elites of lying. He says the answer was to label anything that said otherwise as "disinformation," "ignorance" and "scientific illiteracy." In addition, the Biden Administration "conspired with Big Tech to aggressively suppress it, erasing valid policy concerns of government opponents."

Blacks, Latinos, and children are most affected

For Bass, the elites' arrogance in dealing with the fight against AIDS caused many of the problems that are we are dealing with, now that the worst is behind us. The researcher believes that if we would have listened to other opinions and people's personal experiences, we would be in a much better situation right now:

We have witnessed a massive and ongoing loss of life in America due to distrust of vaccines and the healthcare system; a massive concentration in wealth by already wealthy elites; a rise in suicides and gun violence especially among the poor; a near-doubling of the rate of depression and anxiety disorders especially among the young; a catastrophic loss of educational attainment among already disadvantaged children; and among those most vulnerable, a massive loss of trust in healthcare, science, scientific authorities, and political leaders more broadly.

Restoring confidence in science

Bass ended up writing the article once he realized the consequences everything was having on society. "My motivation for writing this is simple: It's clear to me that for public trust to be restored in science, scientists should publicly discuss what went right and what went wrong during the pandemic, and where we could have done better."