10 coronavirus myths told by ‘experts’ that have been debunked

Here is an excerpt from the article by Professor Marty Makary, describing six of those myths. For the other four myths, visit the New York Post’s website at this link.

public health officials actively propagated misinformation that ruined lives and forever damaged public trust in the medical profession. Here are 10 ways they misled Americans:

Misinformation #1: Natural immunity offers little protection compared to vaccinated immunity

A Lancet study looked at 65 major studies in 19 countries on natural immunity. The researchers concluded that natural immunity was at least as effective as the primary COVID vaccine series.

Public health officials downplayed concerns about vaccine-induced myocarditis — or inflammation of the heart muscle.

In fact, the scientific data was there all along — from 160 studies, despite the findings of these studies violating Facebook’s “misinformation” policy.

Since the Athenian plague of 430 BC, it has been observed that those who recovered after infection were protected against severe disease if reinfected.

That was also the observation of nearly every practicing physician during the first 18 months of the COVID pandemic.

Most Americans who were fired for not having the COVID vaccine already had antibodies that effectively neutralized the virus, but they were antibodies that the government did not recognize.

Misinformation #2: Masks prevent COVID transmission

Cochran Reviews are considered the most authoritative and independent assessment of the evidence in medicine. And one published last month by a highly respected Oxford research team found that masks had no significant impact on COVID transmission…..If all the energy used by public health officials to mask toddlers could have been channeled to reduce child obesity by encouraging outdoor activities, we would be better off…..

Misinformation #4: Myocarditis from the vaccine is less common than from the infection

Public health officials downplayed concerns about vaccine-induced myocarditis — or inflammation of the heart muscle…..We now know that myocarditis is six to 28 times more common after the COVID vaccine than after the infection among 16- to 24-year-old males.

Tens of thousands of children likely got myocarditis, mostly subclinical, from a COVID vaccine they did not need because they were entirely healthy or because they already had COVID.

Misinformation #5: Young people benefit from a vaccine booster

Boosters reduced hospitalizations in older, high-risk Americans.

But the evidence was never there that they lower COVID mortality in young, healthy people.

That’s probably why the CDC chose not to publish its data on hospitalization rates among boosted Americans under 50, when it published the same rates for those over 50.

Ultimately, White House pressure to recommend boosters for all was so intense that the FDA’s two top vaccine experts left the agency in protest, writing scathing articles on how the data did not support boosters for young people…….

Misinformation #7: COVID originating from the Wuhan lab is a conspiracy theory

Google admitted to suppressing searches of “lab leak” during the pandemic…..Ultimately, overwhelming circumstantial evidence points to a lab leak origin — the same origin suggested to Dr. Anthony Fauci by two very prominent virologists in a January 2020 meeting he assembled at the beginning of the pandemic.

According to documents obtained by Bret Baier of Fox News, they told Fauci and Collins that the virus may have been manipulated and originated in the lab, but then suddenly changed their tune in public comments days after meeting with the NIH officials.

The virologists were later awarded nearly $9 million from Fauci’s agency.

The theory that COVID-19 originated from a Chinese lab in Wuhan proved to be true.

Misinformation #8: It was important to get the second vaccine dose three or four weeks after the first dose

Data were clear in the spring of 2021, just months after the vaccine rollout, that spacing the vaccine out by three months reduces complication rates and increases immunity.

Spacing out vaccines would have also saved more lives when Americans were rationing a limited vaccine supply at the height of the epidemic.

More myths are debunked at this link.

Professor Markary is right that COVID originated in the Wuhan lab, as the FBI and the Energy Department eventually concluded. “The U.S. Energy Department has concluded that the Covid pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak, according to a classified intelligence report recently provided to the White House and key members of Congress. The shift by the Energy Department, which previously was undecided on how the virus emerged, is noted in an update to a 2021 document by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines,” reports the Wall Street Journal:

The Energy Department now joins the Federal Bureau of Investigation in saying the virus likely spread via a mishap at a Chinese laboratory.  The Energy Department’s conclusion is the result of new intelligence and is significant because the agency has considerable scientific expertise and oversees a network of U.S. national laboratories, some of which conduct advanced biological research. US officials declined to give details on the fresh intelligence and analysis that led the Energy Department to change its position. The updated document underscores how intelligence officials are still putting together the pieces on how Covid-19 emerge. David Relman, a Stanford University microbiologist…welcomed word of the the updated findings….”Kudos to those who are willing to set aside their preconceptions and objectively re-examine what we know…about Covid origins,” said Dr. Relman, who has served on several federal scientific advisory boards. “My plea is that we not accept an incomplete answer or give up because of political expediency.”

This is probably not the only virus to come from a Chinese lab. An earlier “Russian flu” that killed 700,000 also likely came from a lab leak in China.

Yet, when people like evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein suggested the possibility that the virus leaked from a Chinese government lab in 2020, they were dismissed by the mainstream media as kooks. In February 2021, Facebook banned any mentions of the lab leak, following “consultations” with “the World Health Organization.”

But the possibility was always obvious to experts. In private, Anthony Fauci and NIH officials worried about the possibility of a lab leak they publicly denied as a “conspiracy theory.”

Yet, in a fact-check it later retracted, PolitiFact gave a Tucker Carlson guest a “Pants on Fire” for the “debunked conspiracy theory” that COVID came from a lab. MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace similarly claimed that it was a “conspiracy theory” to talk about “COVID coming from a lab in Wuhan.” A New York Times reporter dismissed the possibility of a lab leak, saying that the lab leak theory had “racist roots.” In 2020, the Associated Press dubbed the COVID-19 lab leak theory a debunked conspiracy theory.

It was foolish for reporters to dismiss the possibility of a lab leak based on denials by entities that have a history of peddling Chinese government propaganda. As Bret Stephens, one of the few conservative-leaning writers at the New York Times, asked in 2021,

Was it wise to suppose that the World Health Organization, which has served as a mouthpiece for Chinese regime propaganda, should be an authority on what counted as Covid “misinformation” by Facebook, which in February banned the lab-leak theory from its platform?…To its credit, Facebook reversed itself [in 2021]. News organizations are quietly correcting (or stealth editing) last year’s dismissive reports.

Yet, many in the media dismissed the possibility of a Wuhan lab leak as a “conspiracy theory” because Trump was talking about it, notes a Washington Post reporter.

Government-funded disinformation blacklists also gullibly accepted Chinese government claims that there had been no lab leak, calling the idea of a “Chinese cover-up” racist “disinformation.” The London-based Global Disinformation Index, which has received taxpayer money from the U.S. and foreign governments, supplies advertisers and advertising agencies with a list of web sites to avoid. In a July 2020 report, GDI treated the concept of a “Chinese cover-up” or COVID resulting from a “lab experiment” as “COVID-19 disinformation” that caused “real-world harms,” such as harms to “specific groups” based on “race.” It complained that “ads for big brands have been found” next to “stories that…traffic in theories that the Chinese government … should be blamed for the virus’ spread,” treating that as disinformation.

The discussion of a Chinese cover-up that GDI falsely branded as “disinformation” was common on conservative web sites, many of which were given bad ratings by GDI. Virtually all of the news outlets given bad ratings by GDI were either conservative, or pro-free-market (such as libertarian Reason Magazine, which was critical of lockdowns and treated the lab leak as a possibility. GDI gave Reason a bad rating, even though it has won journalism awards, and a journalism-standards entity gave Reason a perfect score).

GDI often treats criticism of the government or progressive policies as an “adversarial narrative” that amounts to disinformation, even when it is factually true.

GDI compiles a blacklist — a “dynamic exclusion list” — that it feeds to advertising agencies and big corporations. One of the largest ad agencies, Xandr, told companies last year that it was using GDI’s “exclusion list.” Xandr recently stopped using the blacklist after a public outcry. Former State Department official Mike Benz said that the impact of these blacklists on conservative news outlets is “devastating.”