Last month, Legal Insurrection reported that the states of Missouri and Louisiana filed a complaint alleging that such collusion violated, among other things, its citizens first amendment rights.
Legal Insurrection readers may also recall my reports about the Great Barrington Declaration. The formal statement promoting “focused protection” rather than blanket lockdowns and restrictions was signed by over 40,000 scientists (including myself), and was authored by Dr. Martin Kulldorff (professor of medicine at Harvard University), Dr. Sunetra Gupta (professor at Oxford University, an epidemiologist with expertise in immunology, vaccine development, and mathematical modeling of infectious diseases), and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (professor at Stanford University Medical School).
Now Bhattacharya, Kulldorff, and other scientists have joined the lawsuit filed by the states of Missouri and Louisiana, alleging that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) worked with Big Tech companies to censor Americans discussing covid. The scientists are represented by the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA).
Social media platforms, acting at the federal government’s behest, repeatedly censored NCLA’s clients for articulating views on those platforms in opposition to government-approved views on Covid-19 restrictions.This insidious censorship was the direct result of the federal government’s ongoing campaign to silence those who voice perspectives that deviate from those of the Biden Administration. Government officials’ public threats to punish social media companies that did not do their bidding demonstrate this linkage, as do emails from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to social media companies that only recently were made public.Government-induced censorship is achieved through a wide variety of mechanisms, ranging from complete bans, temporary bans, “shadow bans” (where often neither the user nor his audience is notified of the suppression of speech), deboosting, de-platforming, de-monetizing, restricting access to content, requiring users to take down content, and imposing warning labels that require click-through to access content, among others. These methods also include temporary and permanent suspensions of disfavored speakers.This sort of censorship, which strikes at the heart of what the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was designed to protect—free speech, especially political speech—constitutes unlawful government action.
Time has proven the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration completely correct. The lockdowns had negligible effect on outcomes and came with enormous social cost. Focused protection was the way to go, as evidenced by Sweden’s experience.
In fact, countries are rapidly ditching all remaining covid restrictions in the wake of another cycle of infections. For example, South Korea is simply ignoring the latest surge in infections.
So far in August, an average of 101,290 cases and 31 deaths were reported per day, climbing from the 80,648 cases and 24 deaths seen between July 25-31.Over two days on Friday and Saturday, 92 patients with Covid-19 died — the highest since mid-May in the aftermath of a deadly Omicron wave that peaked in March.In recent briefings, the government’s Covid-19 response headquarters has vowed that social distancing won’t be returning, while expanding the eligibility of fourth vaccine doses to people in their 50s.As the cumulative count of cases here crossed 20 million, which is 38 per cent of the entire South Korean population, Vice Minister of Health and Welfare Lee Ki-il said in an August 3 address that Covid-19-related restrictions such as social distancing would not be reinstated.
This nation is still reeling from the impact of covid lockdowns. Hopefully, the lawsuit will reveal exactly how the silencing of real science occurred so it doesn’t happen again…further destroying this nation.
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