Few experts came out of the COVID era looking like anything but tools for the Establishment.

That’s a bit unfair. In all likelihood, most scientists were merely cowards, not tools. They kept their head down as the regime scientists lied, censored, manipulated, and bullied the rest of us. Most were merely intellectual weaklings, not actual agents of evil.

A few did stand up and speak out against the absolute corruption of science and were viciously punished for doing so. Yet they persisted.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya was one of those few. He, along with Dr. Martin Kuhldorff and Dr. Sunetra Gupta, wrote The Great Barrington Declaration. As of now, nearly a million people have signed onto the principles of that document.

The significance of the Declaration is not well understood and for a good reason: the regime hated it and worked overtime to bury it.

At its simplest, these scientists argued that the response to COVID should follow well-understood and established principles of epidemiology and public health in responding to COVID. Identify who is at risk and protect them. Keep society functioning so that the ancillary damage caused by extraordinary measures doesn’t destroy society. They didn’t SAY “Do what Sweden is doing,” but that was the gist at its simplest form.

Sweden has the lowest excess mortality in the world right now. In other places it is hovering around 15%-20%, still. People are dying like flies in most OECD countries due to non-COVID illnesses, thanks to the extraordinary policies that broke our societies.

When the Great Barrington Declaration came out the NIH, CDC, and NIAID went to war with the authors, calling them “fringe epidemiologists.” Public health bureaucrats went after them viciously, leading both to reputational destruction and actual censorship. They were silenced.

Who are these fringe epidemiologists?

Harvard. Oxford University. Stanford. They are literally at the top of their fields, and thankfully tenured. Otherwise, they would have been out of jobs. Signatories to the Declaration came from all walks of science, including Nobel Prize winners. They were all derided and silenced at the behest of the government, and their reputations were attacked in the MSM relentlessly.

Being obviously right isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Now Bhattacharya is telling his story in a podcast called The Illusion of Consensus, and it is a riveting listen. The production values are, to be kind, horrible. Bhattacharya’s interlocutor, a young independent journalist, has not mastered the art of conversation. He seems very smart but out of his depth in the format, and uncomfortable with the fact that in almost all cases the conservatives were right and the Leftists were wrong.

But nevertheless, the podcast is riveting, because Bhattacharya’s story and his insights are very important for understanding what has happened to science itself in recent years. It is a deeply corrupt enterprise, and Dr. Bhattacharya is clearly surprised and disturbed that it has gone this far.

"Principles like evidence-based medicine, informed consent, and the necessity of scientific debate serve as the bedrock on which the public can have confidence in science and public health"

Subscribe here: https://t.co/mK4NwPIqnm
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— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) May 11, 2023

The podcast is hosted as part of a Substack, to which you can subscribe. I believe the podcast itself is free, although you can subscribe to the Substack for a fee. I did because I hope my contribution to the effort will help them increase the production values and keep the discussions going.

“The illusion of scientific consensus throughout COVID-19…led to disastrous policies…evidence from places like Sweden, which did not impose draconian lockdowns or close schools…suggests that lockdowns failed even narrowly to protect population health.”https://t.co/L06UKmwCWd

— Michael P Senger (@michaelpsenger) May 10, 2023

Dr. Bhattacharya and his partner in crime Rav Arora lay out their reasons for starting the podcast at the indispensable Brownstone Institute, which I have called “the most important new think tank in the world.”

The illusion of scientific consensus throughout the COVID-19 pandemic led to disastrous policies, with lockdowns the primary example. It was clear even on the eve of the lockdowns in 2020 that the economic dislocation caused by them would throw tens of millions worldwide into food insecurity and deep poverty, which has indeed come to pass.

It was clear that school closures – in some places lasting two years or longer – would devastate children’s life opportunities and future health and well-being wherever they were implemented. The emerging picture of catastrophic learning loss, especially among poor and minority children (with fewer resources available to replace lost schooling), means that lockdowns will fuel generational poverty and inequality in the coming decades.

And the empirical evidence from places like Sweden, which did not impose draconian lockdowns or close schools and which have among the lowest rate of all-cause excess death in Europe, suggests that lockdowns failed even narrowly to protect population health during the pandemic.

At its core the message of the podcast is simple: the scientific project was abandoned in favor of grabbing power, and I would add money.

I highly recommend dipping your toe into the deep waters of the podcast. It is about as amateur a production as you can find, yet the content itself promises to be worth it. I’ve already listened for two hours, and I can assure you that my time is very limited.

Bhattacharya makes the investment worthwhile.