Make America Healthy Again: Senator Rand Paul on why the liberal reign of lies is OVER



“Make America Healthy Again” was a winning message for Trump’s campaign, especially considering the government appears to have been making America as unhealthy as possible over the past four years.

“There’s been such a groundswell across political categories of Americans who, just looking around, they can tell that people are spiritually and physically unwell, that there’s a pandemic of sorts of just real unfitness in America, and they’re suspicious of their food, they’re suspicious of vaccines,” James Poulos of “Zero Hour” tells Senator Rand Paul.

Paul agrees, telling Poulos that “the government needs to turn over a new leaf and try being honest.”

“Because of their vast dishonesty, people are hesitant. People don’t believe the government any more, and I’ll give you an example of why they probably shouldn’t,” he adds, before citing the COVID response as the primary reason.


“The vaccine committees that came forward to approve a booster vaccine for COVID, they really recommended only for over 65, or those who are at risk for COVID. The Biden administration, though, came forward and said, ‘No, your 6-month-old should take it. Everybody from 6 months of age and up should take this COVID vaccine,’” he continues.

“Well, when you do the investigation, you find that the vaccine is actually of greater risk to a young person, to a child, a toddler, adolescent, teenager, young adult, than the disease,” he adds.

But why wouldn’t they warn the American people that the cure may be more dangerous than the disease? Because that’s not how the pharmaceutical companies, who worked with the federal government to make the vaccines, make their money.

“It appears as if the government perhaps is more concerned with the profit of Pfizer and Moderna than they are actually with the truth,” Paul says, adding, “People are suspecting everything the government tells them, because we’ve had such a spate of dishonesty.”

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Former NIH Director Francis Collins is worried that health officials have lost the public's confidence, suggests creation of a new government agency to counter 'misinformation'



Former National Institutes of Health director Dr. Francis Collins said recently that his biggest mistake during the COVID-19 pandemic was failing to communicate to the public how the government's recommendations on everything from masking to vaccinations were subject to change constantly.

“The big thing that I know I didn’t do, and I don’t think a lot of the communicators did, was to say, 'This is an evolving crisis. This is going to change,' every time we made a recommendation, whether it was about social distancing or mask wearing or vaccines,” Collins said on Sept. 16 at a gathering for the 21st Health Coverage Fellowship hosted by Babson College in Wellesley, Mass. “And we lost their confidence as a result of that.”

Collins, who now serves as a science adviser to the White House, suggested to journalists that a new government agency may be required to improve communications and fight "misinformation," according to the health news website STAT, which provided excerpts of his remarks.

He praised the work and "unanimity of the scientific community" in the early days of the pandemic, which he credited with "trying to make sure that no stone was unturned to come up with vaccines and therapeutics and diagnostic tests that might save the lives that we were losing every day."

Remarking on the "breathtaking" speed of mRNA vaccine development, he lamented that millions of Americans declined to get vaccinated against COVID-19 because of distrust in public health authorities.

"We had that remarkable experience with the mRNA vaccines where you went from knowing the sequence of the virus to designing the mRNA vaccine in 48 hours, to 63 days later, having the first patient injected in a Phase 1 trial — just breathtaking in its speed. And I never dreamed that six months later, when anybody who wanted the vaccine could get it, that 50 million people weren’t and still aren’t [vaccinated]," Collins said.

He continued, "The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates well over 300,000 Americans are in graveyards today because of the misinformation, the doubt, the suspicion, the distrust that caused them to say, 'That vaccine is not safe for me.' How did that happen? I never saw that coming. And the consequences of that are all around us now. And it continues. We’re still losing 400 people a day, many of them still unvaccinated."

He blamed widespread distrust in the government on failures "to convey scientific information in a fashion that was compelling."

"We were basically outgunned dramatically by lies and conspiracies in social media. We should have had our own version of flooding the system with truth instead of having the system completely flooded with lies," Collins said. "Some people I’ve talked to have said, 'You know, every lie, every conspiracy about COVID, whether it’s the chips in the syringes or whether it’s going to make you sterile, every one of those were predictable.' We should have immunized people against that ahead of time, because that’s exactly what is going to happen in a situation like that."

Moving forward to the future, he suggested that the government should officially act to counter "misinformation."

"Maybe we need a Communication Corps for the United States," he suggested. "I’m deeply concerned that science trust has taken a significant downward turn, and that is really putting us in a very bad position for whatever is coming up next: the next pandemic, polio, certainly climate change."

Collins's leadership at NIH throughout the course of the pandemic was controversial. He and his subordinate Dr. Anthony Fauci have faced questions over the roles they played in supporting gain-of-function research — studies that genetically alter pathogens to become transmissible among human beings to study how a virus may evolve in nature. In 2011, he and Fauci co-authored an op-ed in the Washington Post defending the practice.

In 2014 and 2019, NIH approved at least two separate grants for the nonprofit group EcoHealth Alliance to study bat coronaviruses in China. These grants funded gain-of-function research studies, which have been at the center of a hypothesis that COVID-19 originated from a research-related laboratory accident in China.

Collins has repeatedly denied that NIH ever funded gain-of-function studies on coronaviruses "that would have increased their transmissibility or lethality for humans." He has also coordinated with other prominent public health scientists and officials, including Fauci, to discredit the lab-leak theory.

Dr. Scott Atlas savages Fauci, claims he undermined Trump and misled Americans on COVID: 'I was stunned at what I saw'



Dr. Scott Atlas, onetime member of former President Donald Trump's COVID-19 task force, said that Dr. Anthony Fauci worked hard to undermine the Republican president and greatly misled the American public over the coronavirus pandemic.

What are the details?

During a recent interview with the Daily Signal podcast, Atlas — a radiologist and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University — said that Fauci, former White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx, and former director of the CDC Dr. Robert Redfield were to blame for the woeful response to the pandemic.

In his latest book, "A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America," Atlas wrote, "The American people need to know the level of incompetence, the lack of rigor, the lack of critical thinking. I was stunned at what I saw. We had bureaucrats in charge of the policy and that policy was the restrictions and lockdowns. And it failed.”

"From your vantage point, both in the White House, when you were working on the task force, and since then, what is the most egregious example of where individual and academic freedom came under attack?" the Daily Signal's Rob Bluey asked Atlas during the interview.

Atlas said that he experienced the suppression of academic and individual freedom firsthand — and that he experienced an inherent bias against him simply for helping Trump in an advisory capacity.

"I was asked to help the president in the biggest health care crisis in the century, and as a health policy at expert and a medical scientist for 25 years, and more in the decade of full-time work in health policy, I said yes," he told Bluey. "It had nothing to do with politics. There’s something wrong with you, frankly, if you would not say yes. I knew the president was despised by a significant proportion of the country, but that didn’t matter. And when I got there, I was under attack by people who were really attacking me out of a political animus toward the president."

'I represent science'

Bluey cited Fauci's recent statement in which he insisted he represents science.

"What do you make of his statement in this pushback that he seems so offended by?" he asked.

Atlas said that no person with any common sense would take Fauci's remark seriously.

"I think every person with a with any commonsense brain really has the same reaction to that kind of delusional statement that I would. So I won’t go into my personal reaction to that statement, but I will say it this way: That’s not what I saw when I was in the White House," he insisted. "What I saw when I was in the task force meetings were three doctors on the task force that controlled the medical policy, really, which were Dr. Fauci, who was the most visible face of the policy to the country, but not in charge of the task force. Dr. Deborah Birx, who was in charge of the medical side of the task force, she was the official task force coordinator with capital letters. She had the role and personally wrote all of the written advice to every state. All of the governors received her advice as the federal policy guidelines. She flew to dozens of states, she personally visited all of these state’s public health officials doling out the federal guidance. And Dr. Redfield was the third doctor who was the head of the CDC."

He added, "These people were bureaucrats, Drs. Fauci and Birx were 40-year bureaucrats. I was very different. I had more than a decade of health policy expertise practicing. I had 25-plus years of medical science clinical research and education. I brought in dozens of papers, the world’s literature."

'I was stunned at what I saw'

Pointing to his new book, Atlas said that the American people deserve to know the truth of what he said was a "level of incompetence" and "lack of critical thinking" on the task force.

"I was stunned at what I saw," he admitted. "We had bureaucrats in charge of the policy and that policy was the restrictions in lockdown. And it failed. It failed by the data to stop the spread of the infection. It failed to protect the elderly and stop them from dying. And it destroyed millions and millions of families, including the children who were sacrificed, and I’m talking about particularly low-income families."

Atlas added that as a public health leader, you shouldn't make wild promises such as "I'm going to stop this one infection at all costs, without regard for all of public health."

"It failed, by the way," he continued. "But it also inflicted massive harm because you have to remember, we shut down a lot of medical care. It wasn’t just cosmetic surgery or something like that that was shut down. We had 650,000 people with cancer on chemotherapy. Half of them skipped their chemo just during the spring of 2020 out of fear. We had 85% of living organ transplants did not get done compared to the previous year. We had two-thirds of cancer screenings did not get done. These people still have cancer."

Atlas added that many people who put their chronic health conditions on the back burner during the early days of the pandemic, whether voluntarily or because hospitals were full, are now finding themselves sicker than ever.

"They’re going to come back with widespread, what’s called metastatic, disease. A lot of them are going to die," he continued. "We had massive increases in drug abuse, in spousal abuse, in child abuse. ... So this was a massive harm, and the harm, again, all the losses, we are almost on the verge of destroying a younger generation, by the way, we have a massive rise in anxiety disorder, in depressive disorder."

Atlas added that the mental health crisis in younger patients is a direct result of the lockdowns during the pandemic.

"We had tripling of medical visits to doctors by teenagers for self-harm in the United States compared to the previous year. What does that mean? That means these are kids putting out cigarettes on their skin, slashing their wrists out of the isolation," he insisted. "It’s the lockdowns that did this. It’s the isolation. It’s not the virus. The isolation was caused by the grossly wrong public health advice. And this is going to take decades to solve."

Biden is also failing the American public, he says

Atlas elsewhere during the interview blasted President Joe Biden, whose performance as president thus far he said is a "failure."

"It’s a failure because there’s been a continuation of the disconnect from fact," he insisted. "First of all, there’s this bizarre notion that restricting people indoors, or whatever restrictions you want to impose on people, or these mask mandates, or anything else stop the spread of the infection or eliminate the virus. That’s proven wrong. We knew it a year ago, a year and a half ago. It’s still going on. There’s a sort of a bizarre lack of understanding of fact."

Atlas also said that many people are in denial concerning vaccine mandates and that natural immunity is far too discounted.

"There is very good protection in people who have recovered from the infection," he said. "That’s natural immunity. It would’ve been a shock, if that didn’t occur. This goes back centuries, by the way. But it certainly goes back decades in the medical literature. And it’s proven with this specific virus that people who recover from the infection have very good protection. In fact, the protection in people who’ve recovered from the infection is superior to the protection of vaccinated people who have never had the infection. That’s factually true, that’s inarguable. And to not acknowledge that is almost inexplicable, really, except if you’re just motivated to just be blind to the truth, or to hide the truth from the American people."

Bill Maher slams panic porn peddling media, 'high-information' liberals, and Andrew Cuomo while praising Ron DeSantis for COVID-19 response



Bill Maher delivered a spirited diatribe regarding the response to the COVID-19 pandemic on the latest episode of his HBO talk show. The "Real Time" host took aim at pandemic mismanagement by Democratic governors, ignorance about the factual dangers of coronavirus by liberals, and how the panic porn-peddling media exacerbated the entire situation. Surprisingly, the liberal-minded Maher praised the coronavirus response by Republican governors in Texas and Florida.

"Over the past year, the covid pandemic has prompted the medical establishment, the media and the government to take a 'scared straight' approach to getting the public to comply with their recommendations," Maher said in his closing monologue on Friday night. "Well, I'm from a different school, 'Give it to me straight, doc.' Cause in the long run, that always works better than 'You can't handle the truth.'"

Maher attacked the mainstream media for the "if it bleeds, it leads" mantra."

"The more they can get you to stay inside and watch their panic porn — the higher their ratings," he said.

The HBO host cited a Dartmouth study from last year that found that of approximately 20,000 coronavirus-related news items from the most popular U.S. media outlets, more than 90% were negative, even when there were positive developments in the COVID-19 pandemic.

"When all of our sources for medical information have an agenda to spin us, yeah, you wind up with a badly misinformed population, including on the left," Maher said. "Liberals often mock the Republican misinformation bubble ... but what about liberals? You know, the high-information, behind-the-science people?"

Maher referenced a Gallup survey that asked: "What percentage of people who have been infected by the coronavirus needed to be hospitalized?" The correct answer is between 1% and 5%, and only 18% of American adults responded correctly — 26% of Republicans answered correctly versus only 10% of Democrats. There were 41% of Democrats who believe at least 50% of people infected with COVID-19 need to be hospitalized, compared to 28% of Republicans. Additionally, there were 28% of Democrats who think that 20% to 49% of people who contracted COVID-19 must be hospitalized.

"So almost 70% of Democrats are wildly off on this key question, and also have a greatly exaggerated view of the danger of COVID, and the mortality rate among children," Maher said. "All of which explains why today the states with the highest share of schools that are still closed are all blue states."

The host asked, "So if the right-wing media bubble has to own things like climate change denial, shouldn't liberal media have to answer for 'How did your audience wind up believing such a bunch of crap about COVID?'"

Maher slammed government officials who closed outside activities and the media that supported it.

"Sunshine is the best disinfectant and Vitamin D is the key to a robust immune system," Maher declared. "Texas lifted its COVID restrictions recently and their infection rates went down in part because of people getting outside to let the sun and wind do their thing. But to many liberals, 'That can't be right because Texas and beach-loving Florida have Republican governors,' but life is complicated."

A study released last year found that Vitamin D can reduce the chances of contracting COVID-19 by at least 54%. In another study, researchers from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Foundation Trust and the University of East Anglia in England discovered links between low levels of Vitamin D and higher COVID-19 mortality rates.

The liberal Maher then lauded Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for being "a voracious consumer of the scientific literature," which enabled him to enact policies that helped save senior citizens.

"And maybe that's why he protected his most vulnerable population, the elderly, way better than did the governor of New York," Maher said, criticizing Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo for his nursing home scandal. "Those are just facts, I know it's irresponsible of me to say them."

"Look, here's what I'm saying: I don't want politics mixed in with my medical decisions," Maher proclaimed. "And now that everything is politics, that's all we do. If their side says, 'Covid is nothing,' our side has to say, 'It's everything.' Trump said it would 'go away like a miracle,' and we said it was World War Z."

"And now, of course, we find out that all that paranoia about surfaces was bulls*** anyway," he added. "If you lie to people, even for a very good cause, you lose their trust."

Maher then hypothesized that many people died because the government and media didn't provide warnings on how dangerous obesity can be, especially during the coronavirus pandemic.

"Imagine how many lives could have been saved if there had been a national campaign à la Michelle Obama's 'Let's Move' program with the urgency of the pandemic behind it," Maher noted. "If the media and the doctors made the point to keep saying, 'But there's something you can do,' but we'll never know because they never did because the last thing you want to do is say something insensitive. We would literally rather die. Instead, we were told to lock down. Unfortunately, the killer was already inside the house. And her name is Little Debbie."

Analysis by the World Obesity Federation found that about 90%, of the global coronavirus deaths were in countries with high levels of obesity.

Last month, the CDC released a study showing that approximately 78% of people who have been hospitalized, needed a ventilator, or died from coronavirus have been overweight or obese.

A new study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine said that regular exercise could protect against severe COVID-19 hospitalizations.

New Rule: Give It to Me Straight, Doc | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO) www.youtube.com

Biden asks governors to reinstate mask mandates in COVID-19 update



President Joe Biden on Monday raised concerns about rising COVID-19 cases and called on state governors to reinstate mask mandates, saying it is the "patriotic duty" of each American to continue to wear a mask.

The president appeared to place blame for rising coronavirus cases on states like Texas and Mississippi that have relaxed coronavirus restrictions and ended statewide mask mandates in recent weeks. That assertion is not supported by evidence, which shows the rate of positive COVID-19 cases falling in those states even after ending mask mandates. The largest increases in positive virus cases comes from states that never removed mask mandates.

"I'm reiterating my call for every governor, mayor, and local leader to maintain and reinstate the mask mandate. Please, this is not politics. Reinstate the mandate if you let it down," Biden said during a White House update on additional efforts to expand COVID-19 vaccine distribution nationwide.

"The failure to take this virus seriously is precisely what got us into this mess in the first place — risks more cases and more deaths," he added.

Biden issued his appeal to state and local officials after Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rachel Walensky told reporters she has a sense of "impending doom" because of rising confirmed cases of COVID-19.

"The CDC expressed earlier today this is not a time to lessen our efforts," Biden said. "We could still see a setback in the vaccination program and most importantly, if we let our guard down now we could see the virus getting worse, not better."

The president warned that new variants and a recent increase in positive coronavirus cases nationwide could lead to more deaths if Americans engage in "reckless behavior" by ignoring CDC recommendations on sanitation, social distancing, and mask-wearing.

"People are letting up on precautions, which is a very bad thing," Biden said.

According to the most recent daily report from the White House COVID-19 team, more than 420,000 people tested positive for COVID-19 between March 21 and March 27 — an 11% increase in positive cases from the week prior and an average of about 60,000 new cases each day. Though this is well below the all-time high of 250,000 new daily coronavirus cases recorded last January, health experts advising the president are concerned that a fourth surge in coronavirus infections may be imminent as several states remove restrictions and end mask mandates.

"Cases have fallen two-thirds since I took office. Deaths have also fallen two-thirds. But now cases are going back up and in some states deaths are as well," said Biden. "We're giving up hard-fought, hard-won gains. And as much as we're doing, America, it's time to do even more. All of us have to do our part, every one of us."

It is not clear at all that lifting COVID-19 restrictions is leading to increases in positive COVID-19 cases.

Texas, for example, ended its statewide mask mandate on March 10 and lifted restrictions on businesses in a move that Biden criticized as "neanderthal thinking." Over the past two weeks however, the rate of positive cases in Texas has fallen by 17% and deaths have fallen by 34%, according to the New York Times.

In Mississippi, which lifted its mask mandate on March 2, positive cases have fallen by 44% over the past two weeks and deaths have fallen by 52%.

Results are mixed elsewhere. In Iowa, Montana, North Dakota, and Wyoming (states that ended mask mandates) positive rates of COVID-19 cases have increased over the last two weeks. But death rates have fallen by 41% in Iowa, 33% in North Dakota, and 78% in Wyoming over the same period of time. The only state currently without a mask mandate that saw an increase in cases and deaths over the last two weeks is Montana, which ended its mandate on March 8.

The states experiencing the largest percentage increases in confirmed COVID-19 cases over the last two weeks are Michigan (133% increase), Connecticut (62% increase), Minnesota (47% increase), Pennsylvania (45% increase) and New York (42% increase), all of which have mask mandates currently in effect.

Nationwide, cases have increased by 15% but virus deaths have fallen 29% and hospitalizations have decreased 6% as vaccine distribution progresses.

The president announced that 33 million vaccine doses will be available this week and that the nation is on track to have at least 75% of American senior citizens receive their first vaccine shot by the week's end.

In a previous executive action, Biden directed state governments to open up vaccine eligibility for all adults no later than May 1. He praised state governors, both Republicans and Democrats, who have taken action to open up vaccine eligibility sooner than that deadline because of increases in vaccine supply.

Going forward, Biden announced that his COVID-19 team will take action to ensure there is a vaccination site within 5 miles of 90% of all Americans by April 19. He plans to have 40,000 pharmacies be made available to provide vaccine shots and he will create 12 more federally run mass vaccination sites to speed up vaccine distribution. The Department of Health and Human Services will also be enlisted to provide transportation to senior citizens and vulnerable individuals who lack the means to travel to their vaccine appointments.

"I'm taking these steps to make our American turn around story, our vaccination program, move even faster," Biden said.

If all goes according to plan, Biden predicted that at least 90% of all American adults will be eligible to be vaccinated by April 19 and the remaining 10% should be vaccinated by May 1. Accomplishing this goal would mean that Americans may have a "normal" 4th of July celebration, the president said.

While the nation waits for vaccines to become available, Biden said every American has a "patriotic duty" to continue to practice social distancing and wear masks.

"As I do my part to accelerate the vaccine distribution of vaccinations I need the American people to do their part as well," Biden said. "Mask up, mask up! It's a patriotic duty. It's the only way we ever get back to normal."

He noted that nearly 1,000 Americans die of COVID-19 each day and almost 550,000 people have died since the beginning of the pandemic.

"Until this country is vaccinated each of us has to do our part. We have an obligation, a patriotic obligation. Wash your hands. Stay socially distanced. Wear a mask as recommended by the CDC. And get vaccinated, get your friends and family vaccinated when you can help," Biden said.

"Now is not the time to let down. Now is not the time to celebrate. It is time to do what we do best as a country, our duty, our jobs. Take care of one another and fight this to the finish. We can and we will do this, but don't let up now."

Sen. Rand Paul rips Dr. Anthony Fauci's school closures guidance: He owes apology to 'every single parent and school-age child in America'



Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) blasted Dr. Anthony Fauci in a Sunday tweet after the infectious diseases expert said that schools should be open amid the coronavirus pandemic.

During a Sunday interview on ABC's "This Week," Fauci said that the government's "default position" should be to keep children in school — but close bars.

"If you look at the data," he explained during the interview, "the spread among children and from children is not very big at all, not like one would have suspected. So let's try to get the kids back. But let's try to mitigate the things that maintain and push the kind of community spread we are trying to avoid. And those are the things you know well. The bars, the restaurants ... those are the things that drive the community spread. Not the schools."

What are the details?

Following Fauci's remarks, conservative activist Jack Posobiec tweeted, "Dr Fauci owes @RandPaul an apology."

Paul immediately took notice and added his own two cents.

He wrote, "No, [Fauci] owes one to every single parent and school-age child in America. ... I told him this multiple times this summer."

What else?

Indeed, in July, Paul took Fauci to task during a Senate hearing regarding school closures amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the hearing, an incensed Paul accused Fauci of politicizing the coronavirus pandemic and the government's response to mitigate the effects.

"When are we gonna tell the people the truth?" Paul asked. "That it's OK to take their kids back to school. Dr. Fauci, every day, virtually every day we seem to hear from you things we can't do. But when you're asked, 'Can we go back to school?' I don't hear much certitude at all, I hear, 'Well maybe it depends.'"

"All of this body of evidence about schools around the world shows there's no surge," he continued. "All of the evidence shows it's rare. I mean, we're so politicized this and made it politically correct that the WHO releases that it's rare, you have a scientist up there honestly giving her opinion. What happens to her? She's blackballed and her report that she refers to is taken off the website!"

Paul wasn't finished there.

"When you go to that scientist's speech and you try to click on the link, the WHO has now screened it from us because it said something that's not politically correct. Guess what?" he exclaimed. "It's rare for kids to transmit this. But I hear nothing of that coming from you! All I hear, Dr. Fauci, is 'We can't do this, we can't do that, we can't play baseball.' Even that's not based on the science! I mean flu season peaks in February, we don't know if COVID is gonna be like the flu season, it might, but we don't know that!"

Fauci responded by saying that he agreed with much of what the Kentucky Republican had to say.

"So very quickly, Senator Paul, I agree with a lot of what you say about you know, this idea about people having to put their opinions out without data," he began. "And sometimes you have to make extrapolations because you're in a position where you need to at least give some sort of recommendation."

"But if you were listening, and I think you were, to my opening statement and my response to one of the questions, I feel very strongly we need to do whatever we can to get the children back to school," he continued. "So I think we are in lock agreement with that."