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New report blasts government's COVID response, warns of repeating same mistakes

Published

2 months ago

March 16, 2024

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New report blasts government's COVID response, warns of repeating same mistakes

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A new report has sharply criticized the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, writing that lockdowns, school closures and vaccine mandates were “catastrophic errors” resulting in many Americans losing faith in public health institutions.

The report, published this week by the non-profit Committee to Unleash Prosperity (CTUP), paints a damning indictment of the government’s role in the crisis and offers ten lessons that must be learned, to avoid the same mistakes from being repeated.

Some of the guidance includes halting all binding agreements or pledges to the World Health Organization (WHO), term limits for all senior health agency positions as well as limiting the powers of health agencies to make sure they are strictly advisory and do not have the power to set laws or mandates.

Then-President Donald J. Trump listens to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the then-director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaking with members of the coronavirus task force during a briefing in response to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on April 17, 2020, in Washington, D.C. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

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The paper, titled “COVID Lessons Learned A Retrospective After Four Years,” states that granting unprecedented powers to public health agencies, many of which imposed strict limits on basic civil liberties, had little positive benefit and instead helped stoke fear among the public.

“Conventional wisdom pre-COVID was that communities respond best to pandemics when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted,” the authors wrote. “During COVID, the public health establishment followed the opposite principle: they intentionally stoked and amplified fear, which overlaid enormous economic, social, educational and health harms on top of the harms of the virus itself.”

The report was written by Scott Atlas, M.D., a senior fellow in health policy at the Hoover Institution and a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, Steve Hanke, Ph.D., a professor of applied economics at the Johns Hopkins University, Philip Kerpen, the president of the Committee to Unleash and Casey B. Mulligan, Ph.D., a professor in economics at the University of Chicago. It draws on various reports and research papers that studied the pandemic.

People in cars attend Easter Sunday services at the Daytona Beach Drive-in Christian Church as a way to practice social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic. (Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

“SARS-CoV2 was a dangerous virus, but a calm, proportionate response would have applied the lessons from past influenza pandemics and used existing pandemic response plans. Instead, from the moment the virus was detected in America, the public health community and politicians spread an outsized message of fear and doom,” the paper reads.

The group wrote that lockdowns did not work to substantially reduce deaths or stop viral circulation, and although they were timed to claim credit for declining waves of the virus, they “rarely had any discernable casual impact.”

In reality, one of the results was that people’s health was negatively impacted as medical procedures were canceled, stoking fear, they wrote.

For instance, from April 2020 through the end of 2021, there were 171,000 non-COVID excess deaths, whereas there were none in Sweden, a country that did not lock down despite being heavily pressured to do so.

People gather in support of continuing the school mask mandate outside the Loudon County Government Center prior to a Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday, January 18, 2022, in Leesburg, VA. The report states that masking had little or no value to fight the spread of the disease. (Photo by Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

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“A much wiser strategy than issuing lockdown orders would have been to tell the American people the truth, stick to the facts, educate citizens about the balance of risks, and let individuals make their own decisions about whether to keep their businesses open, whether to socially isolate, attend church, send their children to school, and so on,” the authors wrote.

School shutdowns caused dramatic and irrefutable damage to children, they wrote, with reports of poor learning, school dropouts, social isolation, mental illness, drug abuse, suicidal ideation and 300,000 cases of child abuse unreported in the spring of 2020.

Masks also had little or no value and were possibly harmful, they wrote, “amplifying fears by creating the irrational belief that an unmasked face presented a threat, causing conflict and division among citizens, and giving high-risk people the mistaken impression that masks were protective, potentially resulting in some people risking exposure who otherwise may not have.”

They blasted the CDC for continuing to advise mask wearing “contrary to evidence . . . [and] undermining its credibility.”

On an economic level, the lockdowns put over 49 million Americans out of work, citing Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) survey data. Unemployment benefits approved by Congress prolonged unemployment and associated economic underperformance, too.

The report also criticized the media, Big Tech, the academic science and public health community for stifling debate.

U.S. President Joe Biden receives his updated COVID-19 booster in the South Court Auditorium at the White House campus on October 25, 2022. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

“Anthony Fauci, the head of the largest federal grantmaking entity, created an environment in which it was very difficult for most medical experts to break with the dominant narratives on lockdowns, masks, or overwhelmed hospitals,” the report states.

“The National Institutes of Health (NIH) became the principal advocate of lockdown policies, but failed to run high-quality trials of repurposed drugs and non-pharmaceutical interventions.”

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Elsewhere, the report praised the Project Warp Speed for getting effective monoclonal antibody treatments and vaccines in record time, but it failed to assess their safety. The authors wrote that the mandates and associated pressure campaign were wrong and undermined informed consent.

The authors recommend that Congress and the states define by law “public health emergency” with strict limitations on powers conferred to the executives and time limits that require legislation to be extended.

“Crises are when checks and balances and well-functioning institutions are most needed – not when they should be discarded and decision-making outsourced to alleged experts like Francis Collins, who casually confessed to a completely incorrect decision calculus years later,” they wrote.

Health

High levels of resistant bacteria found in uncooked meats and raw dog food: ‘Red flag’

Published

3 hours ago

May 2, 2024

Press Room

High levels of resistant bacteria found in uncooked meats and raw dog food: ‘Red flag’

High levels of E. coli were found in uncooked meats and raw dog food sold in grocery stores in the U.K., according to research presented last week at the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID) Global Congress in Barcelona.

Researchers from the University of Bristol examined 58 samples of raw beef, chicken, pork and lamb sold at grocery stores in the U.K., along with 15 samples of raw dog food sold at “specialty pet stores,” according to a press release.

Eighty-one percent of the meat samples and 87% of the dog food samples were found to contain E. coli (Escherichia coli) that was resistant to antibiotics.

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The raw chicken had the highest levels of the resistant intestinal bacteria.

“E. coli is an intestinal bacteria that may propagate in cows and chickens used for meat, especially when they are raised in squalor or close together,” Dr. Marc Siegel, clinical professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center and a Fox News medical contributor, told Fox News Digital.

High levels of E. coli were found in uncooked meats and raw dog food sold in grocery stores, according to research presented last week at the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID) Global Congress in Barcelona. (iStock)

“Since poultry and meat cows are often fed antibiotics to help them grow and to ward off infections, this helps to breed resistant strains, which emerge amid antibiotic overuse.”

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Siegel was not involved in the study.

“This study confirms that uncooked meat carries multiple resistant E. coli, commonly including resistance to critically important antibiotics important for human health,” the study authors said in a press release from ESCMID.

“E. coli is an intestinal bacteria that may propagate in cows and chickens used for meat, especially when they are raised in squalor or close together.” (iStock)

If ingested, the bacteria could colonize the intestines and cause resistant infections, according to study author Matthew B. Avison, a professor at the School of Cellular & Molecular Medicine, University of Bristol.

“They can sit in your gut for years without causing sickness, and in some cases the bacteria will cause different types of disease later on, including urinary tract infections and bloodstream infections that can kill,” Avison told Fox News Digital.

“Infections with resistant bacteria are more difficult to treat and so are more likely to get worse.”

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Uncooked meat sold to be eaten by people after cooking is “commonly contaminated” with antibiotic-resistant E. coli, Avison noted.

The study results weren’t surprising, he said, as there have been “numerous reports” of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in uncooked meat and some studies showing this in raw dog food.

“In some cases, the bacteria will cause different types of disease later on, including urinary tract infections and bloodstream infections.”

“People often believe that because raw dog food is sold frozen, the freezing kills the bacteria, but we have shown that it does not,” Avison told Fox News Digital.

“There were just as many samples of chicken-based raw dog food contaminated with resistant E. coli than there were samples of raw chicken meat. If you feed your dog raw meat, therefore, you are likely feeding it antibiotic resistant E. coli.”

These findings explain why researchers previously found a strong link between feeding dogs raw meat and the dogs excreting resistant E. coli in their feces, Avison noted.

“People often believe that because raw dog food is sold frozen, that freezing kills the bacteria on it, but we have shown that it does not,” a researcher told Fox News Digital. (iStock)

Most people are not aware of the risk of these antibiotic-resistant pathogens, the researchers stated in the release.

They emphasized the importance of cooking meat thoroughly before eating, and using “appropriate hygiene practices” while preparing it.

“Cooking the meat properly will kill those bacteria,” Avison advised.

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“Treat all raw meat as if it were contaminated with antibiotic-resistant bacteria and assume dogs fed raw meat will be excreting resistant bacteria,” he went on.

“Use appropriate hand-washing and general hygiene practices to minimize the risk that you and other people will accidentally ingest these bacteria.”

“If you feed your dog raw meat, you are likely feeding it antibiotic resistant E. coli.”

Dog owners who feed raw meat to their pets should dispose of the animals’ waste hygienically, Avison said.

“Don’t let your dog lick your face or share your bed, and wash your hands after petting it,” he recommended. “These are all common sense practices anyway, but even more important if you raw-feed your dog.”

Researchers emphasized the importance of cooking meat thoroughly before eating, and using “appropriate hygiene practices” while preparing it. (iStock)

“And, of course, treat raw dog food as if it were any raw meat, in terms of hygiene and cleaning practices.”

The study raises a “red flag,” Siegel said, underscoring the importance of making sure that poultry and meat is fully cooked prior to human consumption, and that dog food is also cooked.

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Andre Delattre, chief operating officer of Public Interest Research Groups (PIRG) in Washington, D.C., said the study “underscores the importance of ending the practice of routine use of antibiotics in animal agriculture.”

“Use appropriate hand-washing and general hygiene practices to minimize the risk that you and other people will accidentally ingest these bacteria,” researchers said. (iStock)

“An inevitable byproduct of antibiotic overuse is resistance to these drugs,” he told Fox News Digital.

“Studies have also shown that meat raised without antibiotics is less likely to be contaminated with resistant bacteria.”

The University of Bristol study was published on a pre-print server and has not yet been peer-reviewed.

Fox News Digital reached out to the U.K. Food Standards Agency (FSA) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for comment.

For more Health articles, visit www.foxnews.com/health.

Melissa Rudy is health editor and a member of the lifestyle team at Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to melissa.rudy@fox.com.

Health

This Is Why You’re Not Losing Weight on Semaglutide + Doctors’ Tips To Speed Results

Published

9 hours ago

May 1, 2024

Press Room

This Is Why You’re Not Losing Weight on Semaglutide + Doctors’ Tips To Speed Results

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Health

A mother's heartbreaking story, plus mammogram guidance and cancer-fighting nutrients

Published

10 hours ago

May 1, 2024

Press Room

A mother's heartbreaking story, plus mammogram guidance and cancer-fighting nutrients

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