Episode 16: Drew Holden, Commentary Writer and Maker of Threads on Media Hypocrisy and the COVID Policy Communication Failures

28 mrt 2022 · Unmasked

Drew Holden, who does more than almost anyone on Twitter to hold pundits, media members and news organizations accountable for intellectual hypocrisy and inconsistency, joins the podcast to discuss the coverage of COVID, the failures of government communication and his favorite examples of the media’s rush to judgment.

Follow Drew on Twitter and check out a list of his articles here.

***Unmasked: The Global Failure of COVID Mask Mandates is available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble***

Past episodes of the Podcast are available here on Substack, or also available on Spotify or Apple Podcasts

Full transcript is below:

Ian Miller:

Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the unasked podcast. We have a very special guest today drew Holden, who is a a maker of threads and, and defender of intellectual consistency in those threads. He's also a freelance commentary writer who is written for a lot of major publications, New York times, Washington post Federalist Fox news, et cetera. So welcome drew. Thanks so much for doing this,

Drew Holden:

Ian. Pleasure's mine, sir. I appreciate you having me on.

Ian Miller:

Yeah. so I wanted to ask, and you might have answered this previously, but I'm curious what, what got you started making these threads? They're so, you know, brilliantly simple, but incredibly important. And to me, especially, what was it that made you start putting these together?

Drew Holden:

Well, I, I appreciate that. So the first time I remember the, that I ever put together a thread was it was, it was back around the time when general Soleimani, the, the Iranian general was killed. And the reason I had put it together was because I, I remember the coverage and I looked at a lot of it and I was like, man, this is, this is weird. And I don't know that we always get these honorifics for for, for these sorts of titles, but who knows, maybe, maybe there's some new trend where we're trying to be nicer to people when, when they die. So wash forward a couple weeks and Don, I miss the bomb throwing radio host, who famously made a, a racist comment about the Rutgers women's basketball team back probably about a decade ago. So he passed away a couple weeks later and just got slammed his obituaries, the, the headlines across all his corporate press were just really trashing this guy hours after he had died.

Drew Holden:

And I saw them and I was like, you know, I, I get it. People had issues with, I miss. Obviously he made some, some really indefensible comments, but there's no way on any sort of moral playing field. Is he worse than a guy who is the leader of a terrorist organization, right. Who has, who has an enormous amount of innocent blood on his hands? And so I went through for a bunch of different outlets and I posted the two side by side and I didn't even, I didn't think I even said anything, right. There was no real analysis. It was just the pictures. And I looked at them and they jumped off the page to me. And I was like, whatever, I'm, I'm gonna string six or seven of these together and see if folks like it. And you know, I got, I had a pretty good response. And then I started thinking about it and I was like, man, there's, there's definitely a lot to say here, and I should figure out how to do that. And then from that, that kind of moment, the, the thread, the at least as a concept was born. And then I've had to tinker and refine a little bit on the format to, to try and get the point across a little bit better. And I'm, I'm sure I'm still learning too.

Ian Miller:

Hmm. Do you have a, a favorite example of an issue? I mean, obviously that one kind of jumped out at you, but what, you know, after you started making them has been going down through this, through the process, was there something that came up where you're like, oh, this is, this is it. This is gonna be perfect. I've already got, I know, I already know the examples are coming for this one.

Drew Holden:

Yeah. So this, I think the one that, that comes to mind, it's not so much the side by side, but it's the the takes that were preposterous in the moment. And people didn't realize that until they saw the light a day, a little bit later. And it was the, the coverage around Michael Anot, I think was really, you know, what I end up doing is when, whenever I see something that just doesn't pass the sniff test for me, I end up going through and taking a whole bunch of screenshots. Sometimes they pan and, you know, whatever, whatever I thought was gonna happen happened, sometimes they don't, sometimes it's not close enough. And so they just kind of sit in, in my phone forever. But I remember during the heyday of Michael Ave, when CNN was speculating about what his primary strategy was going to be as a potential democratic nominee for president 2020, I was watching.

Drew Holden:

And I was like, man, the fever on this is, is just unbelievable. And eventually all of these people are going to regret these just really preposterous takes about Anot, not just in terms of his political future, but in terms of his intellect and his savvy and his morality and everything else. And I, I remember I just, I kept collecting and collecting and then, you know, the, the trial started and I was like, well, eventually these I think are gonna have to come back around. And so that, that to me was probably the most egregious example of, you know, the, during the Trump era. I think there were a lot of people who were made in the heroes for really no conceivable reason other than they were in opposition to Trump. But I think he was probably the most dramatic now in, in hindsight where I think he's in prison now. Right. Or if he's gone through his whole trial, yet he, he is either in or headed to prison.

Ian Miller:

Right. Yeah. You hit on a, a very important point though, which I think has become increasingly relevant over the past couple years with the, with the pandemic as well, which I I'll get into it later a bit. But so speaking of COVID, I, you know, I wanted to get your, you know, everybody comes out from a different, different point of view and, and so I was kind of curious what your initial reaction was to it. Were you concerned about COVID? Were you, what did you think of the policies lockdowns, all of that stuff as it rolled out?

Drew Holden:

Yeah. Good question. Good question. So I think when it first happened, I, I was pretty much your standard 20 something living a blue city who was, was definitely concerned and was handling the ambiguity of it as something where we should have a, a strong and urgent response. So, in retrospect, I remember, I think I put, I posted something on Facebook that I, I ended up coming to regret that that was about how all we need to do is, is just be quiet and trust the experts on this one. And so my knee jerk first couple of days, first couple weeks were, were very much that. And I remember part of that was, you know, my my, my girlfriend works on Capitol hill and she had gotten sick in the first couple of weeks. And we were like, oh, I mean, I'm sure it's not connected at all, but who knows maybe.

Drew Holden:

And then it turned out that, you know, the district she was working in was one of the first that that had cases. And so she might have been, you know, one of, one of the first cases here in DC of, of COVID. And so my first thought was, eh, you know, if it, if it's maybe already here, we should really kind of clamp down and, and be, and be, and be cautious with this. And I think that probably for the first week, week and a half, I, I stuck to that. And then that started eroding. I think, you know, when I, when I look back and I try and think through how I would've done it differently, I think I probably just wouldn't, I wouldn't have responded with a a level of fear that was inconsistent with what we knew at the time. And I think the time I really did do that is that I really, I really kind of jumped and got spooked and scared and, and was calling for policies that have had really, you know, calamitous long-term impacts. I certainly wasn't, wasn't I think pushing too hard on them early on. But I think I, I wasn't, I wasn't as clear out as some other folks were right outta the gate.

Ian Miller:

Well, don't blame yourself too much because just by, by saying that you've already exceeded the, how everybody that you you know, post on your, your Twitter threads, what they're willing to say about anything that they ever post on the internet, but that's fair. And, and also to be fair, you know, the world health organization initially was saying that like three and a half percent of people that got COVID were gonna die. So, you know, I think the expectations were, you know, wildly overstated early on by, by the experts and yep. But it did, it did influence opinion. Speaking of early days of COVID you, your pin tweet is still about the origins of, of COVID in, in Wuhan from a couple years ago. It, to me at this point, I, I mean, it, it feels pretty obvious. It's very likely it came from the lab. So, you know, why do you think so many of the media have been kind of desperate to avoid coming to terms with that or, or have been unwilling to examine that at all?

Drew Holden:

Yeah, that's a good question. So, yeah, I've been thinking a lot about this one lately, cuz there was a new, I think maybe two studies in pre-print that came out recently that claims to fully debunk the lab league hypothesis, which, which just isn't true. And so to me, there's, there's a few factors. I think one is, you know, when it first came up, there was enormous resistance to the idea because the people who were suggesting it were the media's bad guys. And so it was Donald Trump, it was Tom cotton, it was Republicans. It was, you know, the, the, the people who the corporate press saw as not just the fringe, but kind of morally compromised, right? You've got all of these people who are GNED up with these racist or at least racialized intonations who are, are concerned about this thing and China and cleanliness and all of these things that aren't quite fair.

Drew Holden:

And so I think that that that's cast a really, really long shadow and it led the media to be very deliberately one way about the, that they talked about the potential for the lab league and I think Fauci and the CDC and other people too. And you eventually, eventually the fever broke a little bit. Right. I remember to me, one of the really big breakthrough moments was I think it was in January of, of, of 2021. There's a piece in the new Yorker about why the lab leak theory was plausible. Not that it was right, not making the case, that it was more believable than the, than the the, the wet market theory, but just this is plausible there. The, the hypothesis here at least holds some water. And to that was the first time that I can remember at least where there was a, a corporate mainstream press outlet that was even willing to give voice to it.

Drew Holden:

And then you saw things change pretty quickly. I think, thereafter where you had Fauci come out and say, yeah, you know, I'm not a hundred percent positive that it really was from the wet market. And you had a lot more outlets who at least starting to consider the idea that maybe this hypothesis is worth exploring. And then they hit, I think another set of headwinds where the researchers, particularly the researchers involved realize that one of two things is gonna happen either. They're gonna really go to the mat and say, this isn't plausible. Even if it might be, or they're gonna have government prying around in things that one government probably doesn't understand and two will make their jobs and lives more difficult. You know, if you, if you look at these two new studies they're by people who do a lot of call it cutting edge medical and biological research.

Drew Holden:

And if the government starts imposing restrictions, even in good faith, even if they're the right things to do, which I certainly think that they are, it's gonna make these people's lives and research a lot more difficult and probably cut off access and resources in China. And so that's the last thing they wanna have happen. And so you see these new studies come back around that are pushing back on the loudly hypothesis. And then of course the media, cuz this is confirming everything that they've thought all along is more than willing to run with those ones and not anything that, that cuts counter to the narrative.

Ian Miller:

Yeah. There's a lot of great points in there. It speaks to the, the power of media that all it took was one piece by an established outlet and all of a sudden that kind of Overton window shifted. And but also it, it, it brings up a, a, a hypothetical that I've thought about a lot and have asked people a lot you know, would the response have been different if we had a different president in Marshall, 20, 20, you know, would, what would the media's real action have been? How would that have changed? Do you think?

Drew Holden:

Yeah, that's a good question. You know, there's, there's a part of me that wants to think that if it, if it weren't Trump and it was someone that the media thought was more reasonable, then we could have had a more open and honest conversation about the potential for the lab league. Like there's, there's a part of me a, a little bit a wet behind the ears part of me, but there's a part of me that wants to believe that the that's true, but to be honest with Eden, I think what what's probably more likely is that if we had a president who felt more beholden to China than, than Donald Trump did, which I think is anyone else who might have been president quite frankly including more of the like kind of core participant, more traditional Republicans, then I think they probably would've had the same MIS that most of the voices in the media had about the lab league that even talking about it was kind of racist and we should, like China got hit so hard.

Drew Holden:

It couldn't possibly be their fault, right? The morality in all of that is, is, is complicated. If you're not even like, if you, if you are not of the opinion that the lab league theory is relatively probable, which I think most people in good faith are, but like, let's, let's say it's something new to you. I think it's really easy to cast off and say, oh yeah, it's racism. It's xenophobia. It's, you know, this, that, and the other thing. And so I, unfortunately I think what probably would've happened is no one would've been giving it voice at all. People who would've been giving it voice wouldn't have had the same kind of a microphone. And so there wouldn't have been that dialogue. And I think it, in some ways, having the leader of the free world come out and push on this thing, even if he didn't do it particularly articulately, it forced people to kind of take up sides on the issue. And in a lot of cases, I think it, it forced a lot of people on the left corporate press and otherwise to, to make themselves seem a little bit foolish by trying to, trying to write off this possibility that was eminently plausible by saying, no, no, no. If Trump is pushing it, it's gotta be off the walls. And so I think that as a result of that, we've actually had a lot more valuable and good dialogue around this thing. Again, even if Trump wasn't exactly coming in understanding any stuff,

Ian Miller:

That's very interesting. I that's, that's a really unique answer. I haven't heard anybody say that the trumping president actually helped something in, in this, in the pandemic though. Yeah.

Drew Holden:

I'm skeptical. Like there's a part of me that even as I say that I'm like, is that really true? But like it is right. I'm I, I'm very rare accused of giving Trump too much credit. And, and, but I, I, I think that in this case, it actually, again, not, not because he was playing some 14 dimensional chess or anything, but I do think the way that he handled it probably benefited everyone.

Ian Miller:

Interesting. so I write a lot about masks and, and I've been curious to see what you think and, and, you know, what did you think of the mask minute's when it started rolling out, because obviously you, you Chronicle a lot of these kind of intellectual inconsistencies and, and then you have the experts saying everybody needs to wear a mask after all these statements saying, oh, you're an idiot for wearing one early on in the pandemic,

Drew Holden:

Right? Yeah, exactly. And like, so I, I think as a result of that, because I spend so much time kind of nose, nose down and media, and I saw all those early takes, I was already a little bit skeptical, I think, of, of masks and whether or not they made sense. I live in DC at, at, you know, by the time that masks really started taking off, it had started to get warm. And so I think just from a comfort perspective, I was definitely definitely opposed the idea that from, from very, very early on, but I remember seeing those, you know, the, the original that of people like the surgeon general saying don't buy masks and Fauci saying, don't buy masks then coming around and saying, well, we said, we only said that because we wanted you to behave a certain way. And that I think triggered, you know, had my, my hairs a little bit on end of maybe we're not getting the full range of information here.

Drew Holden:

And if we're gonna require everyone change their behavior and if they don't be punished by the government, then like the, the bar should be decently high. And I would think that if masks were, were helpful and beneficial, we never would've had this back and forth. Right. You wouldn't have outlets like VX coming out and saying that masks don't make sense. The, the way that they did early on in the pandemic. And you saw a lot of outlets in the corporate press, or, you know, just outright left wing outlets saying, no, no, no, this mask thing, it doesn't make any sense either as a Dick to Trump or because they had just familiarized theirself with the information and it didn't really hold a lot of water. And so I think for me, I was, I, I came out of it skeptical of the idea that these, these things actually helped and made sense willing and open to the idea that maybe that they maybe they do. But I think I was a little bit skeptical right. From the jump on them.

Ian Miller:

Hmm. Yeah. And what's interesting is they, they said that, oh, it's about protecting supply, but privately, and that we found out later in the buzz feed emails, Fauci was telling people, you know, individual people, February of 20, 20, oh, you don't need to wear a mask. So, you know, I think it's pretty clear. He was, that was a, a, a post hoc justification for what they were saying. Exactly. Yeah, yeah,

Drew Holden:

Exactly. And when, you know, when you have leading you're right. It would've been one thing if all along, they said, Hey, we can't have a run on these things. So don't, don't worry about them right now. We're still not what their benefit will be. We're not sure that there's gonna be mandates or anything like that. So yeah, don't sweat it for now. We'll figure it out, down the road, if they had done that and then come out strongly in favor of math, then I think maybe I would've, I would've been a little bit less resistant to go along with it, but the fact that they, so adamantly came out and say, look, these things don't make any sense. BA you know, based on the particle sizes, they're, they're not really gonna do you a whole lot of good. And we're not sure that anything is even gonna work outdoors, you know, as soon as I, I heard that, and then I saw the tune change 180 degrees. You, I, I thought to myself pretty quickly, like whenever, whenever you have to get this quickly into the behavioral modification element of government origin, it's not, it's not encouraging that they have the facts on their side.

Ian Miller:

Yeah. It really has felt like COVID has kind of exacerbated the kind of tendencies of politicians and authority figures to engage in the kind of like hypocrisy and rush to judgment. That's, that's been prevalent that you Chronicle so well. Is that, is that fair assessment, do you think that's accurate?

Drew Holden:

Yeah. Yeah. UN unfortunately, I, I do. I do think that's really accurate, you know, I think some of it is it's, it's a little bit of, of the, the Trump era in miniature, where whenever something is, is on fire or of concern or off the tensions, get ramped up on these things. And I think you have people who aren't aren't, aren't quite as worried about intellectual consistency as I tend to be. And so that, that's, that's just a natural, a natural side effect of this. But I think part of it too, in Fauci, really, to me, has been kind of the spitting image of one is as soon as you start trying to play your guidance based on what you expect, the response to it will be, you really start rather than what's true. I think you really, really can trip up extremely quickly because you're not thinking about the facts and it's, it's, it's the same idea of, if you tell, you know, if you tell one lie, it's harder to tell a whole bunch more lies, cuz not only do you have to worry about whether the thing you're saying in the moment makes sense.

Drew Holden:

You have to be looking backward at least somewhat to make sure that you're not contradicting yourself. And I think that that, that that's that kind of second set of eyes of, oh no. Did I say the other thing last week? It just never clicked in and at some point I really do think that that folks like Fauci just stopped caring, right? They, they had, they had lost the confidence of so many people. We're looking at a public health system that has, has just seen its public approval, absolutely crater. And so I think when you know that you, you are losing the number of people who are buying the thing that you're saying, it be a lot easier to, to lean into the things that maybe in the moment would be really helpful if you could get at least some people to believe them. And that's obviously not particularly good when you're worried about actual public health outcomes.

Ian Miller:

Right. That's a good point. So you know, my, my personal view is that over time, the media really helped kind of the paper over how poorly the predictions and all these kind of dramatic assertions and Fauci statements and kind of contradictions as you brought up, how well they aged over time. I blatantly ripped off your style and did a long thread last year after Texas lifted their mask mandate, you know, it was, it's like 25 things of, of experts and politicians and cetera and nothing happened, cases went down. So, you know, media is supposed to be the first to kind of question authority at least theoretically, but they never seem to do that with COVID. So why is that

Drew Holden:

Right? You know, I, I think that's a really good way to put it, you know, because the one thing that I, that I could at least pat the media on the back for during the Trump years is, is they were dogged in their criticism of the most powerful person on earth. Right. And I, I did like that. I think there were times where it was unfair, but I'd much rather they, they missed in that direction. But you know, one of the things that I, that, that I think has really been exposed from COVID is that, you know, people like me and plenty of others, and I know you do too. Talk a lot about the, the kind of media group think and conformity, and the fact that the people who tend to become reporters and journalists overwhelmingly have a certain set of values and world view and everything else.

Drew Holden:

And so I think that that's always problematic. It's always a challenge for the media. Certainly during the election of Trump, it was a big challenge for the media. But I actually think that COVID is probably the most acute challenge where that group think is really what gets mired and kind of bogged down because you've got a whole bunch of people who, even if they're somewhat conservative, they're educational attainment and, and, and income and familial income and all these other different kind of variables, point them in a direction of seeing the world in a particular way, which is pro mandate pro-government control pro everything else. And I think it made it really, really hard for them to look back and say, actually, this is the government doing a bad thing, as opposed to, well, we need the government to step in cuz no one else is willing to, to do this thing.

Drew Holden:

And so since it was kind of cloaked in that fuzzy paternal sort of we're, we're just here to help because there's no one else to help. Then the media, almost one, they, they, I think they were overly willing obviously to believe that. But I think to them, it's like, well, duh, what else would we possibly want? And I, I can, I can never help with the think that maybe, you know, just maybe if we had 10% more conservative journalists, you would have at least one reporter in the newsroom who would be like, Hey, are we have we thought through what this is gonna look like in next months when all of these governors and mayors still have the same power and authority? Like, are, are we sure that's really something we're comfortable with, but we haven't, I think at any point had that. And I, I, I, I think unfortunately a lot of it is due to just the, the, the type of people who tend to be journalists.

Ian Miller:

Yeah. You hit on something. I think that's really a problematic going forward in just general life, which is these echo chambers. And it kind of gets consolidate even more in things like corporations now it's, you can see it's, it's affecting that. Right. So you work in communications a bit and obviously communications about COVID policy have been incredibly important and also extraordinarily bad, in my opinion, where you see things like the former CDC director saying mass are gonna provide better protection than vaccines, things like that. Yeah. So as somebody who does this professionally, what's that, what's that been like watching this unfold in the communication style?

Drew Holden:

Yeah. I mean, certainly frustrating is, is, is the, the first word that comes to mind. And, and I think it's, it's frustrating, not just cuz it's bad, but because it's avoidable, right? Like I, there was a really, really good piece early on in the pandemic that I think was a New York magazine that compared the crisis responses from Seattle and New York city to the pandemic and, and what they did, particularly from a communications perspective of how did they relay important public health information to the people who needed to know it. And I think one of the things that's really killed me throughout the them, but particularly coming out of New York with Cuomo and, and, and with other authorities is you saw time and time again, individuals over promising the amount of information and confidence that they had, or at least had a rights to have based on the limited information that we had.

Drew Holden:

And so one of the things that piece, I think explored really well as out in Seattle, they were, they were ground zero for cases, right. And so they knew and kind of put their hands up and they're like, look, we're gonna keep giving you the best of our information and we'll do that as long as we can, but we don't have much to go on right now. And in New York you saw a very different approach where you, you, one had way more confidence and two, the people who were communicating it were partisan actors, right? You add someone like an Andrew Cuomo get up there and tell people what it was, you know, what he thought the case was and what, what the situation on the ground was gonna be. And that's kind of, you know, from my understanding, that's basically a 1 0 1 thing that you don't do.

Drew Holden:

If you are a government that's communicating through a crisis, you don't want all of these issues refracted through the lens of politics. And you saw from, I, I think unfortunately eventually from you certainly, but from a lot of blue state governors, you, you had these two things get meshed. And I think some of that unfortunately was deliberate where there, they were appealing to their voters to say, look, you trust me, you care about people, you wise and seasoned Democrats, you need to do the right thing. And so for me, I think the, the really, really frustrating things you had that spirit of, of overconfidence and this kind of political calculation, very obviously undergirding so much of the communications that it was only a matter of time before they got something wrong and needlessly destroyed their credibility at a time where their credibility was incredibly important. And so that, to me, I think seeing that first happen and then snowball from the sidelines was, was unbelievably frustrating.

Ian Miller:

Yeah. That's a great point. Kind of relatedly, it, it seems like all of their mandates and, and, you know, the vaccine passports and things, it all went away at once. And like the last couple of weeks you know, there's been some polling data and PR advice that continue to come out, suggesting Democrats have gone too far with COVID measures. Obviously, you know, the kind of sideline Fauci he is not out there every week talking on the, the, the news shows. Yeah. so do you think that that, that kind of polling shift explains how quickly and dramatically everything changed?

Drew Holden:

Yeah. Yeah. You know, and I think I do the one other thing too, and it's probably on fair in terms of what its impact is, but, you know, I keep thinking that that time should at least nominate Stacy Abrams as, as person of, cause I, I do think a big part of it was that picture, right? That, that, that picture that she shared of her sitting crosslegged and masks in a sea of masked children. And I think that was so Vista a role for so many people and particularly so many parents who are unbelievably frustrated that within two or three weeks you saw mass mandates in schools. And then just in general too fall in places like in New York and California, that had really been some of the most oppressive in terms of their restrictions. I do think what it comes down to is mostly how, how ever and UN unfortunately is the polling.

Drew Holden:

You know, I think the, I think not just the, the loss of the governor's race in Virginia and then the close call, this is the one that I think it's overlooked too much, the close call in New Jersey, a reliably blue state. That really just by a couple, you know, a couple of fractions ended up going to a democratic incumbent over a, a little known Republican challenger. I think that caused a lot of Democrats to finally wake up and go from saying, eh, whatever, leave it to leave it to the states and people to decide to this is a five alarm fire for our party. And if we don't, if we don't do this soon enough, so that people have forgotten it by the time they're casting their, their Mailin ballots in a few months, then this could be CATA li. And so I think that they, they collectively took a hard look at that. They put out some new talking points, and then I would imagine there was a lot of really strong internal pressure on blue state governors to say, you gotta knock this off. And it should happen a long time ago. Right. I'm certainly glad with the outcome. But as, as you've written, there's, there was never compelling information to support these anyway. So it really is unfortunate that what took us getting to that point were some really awful poll numbers.

Ian Miller:

Yeah. It shows you how much of this is influenced by, by politics in a lot of ways. So kind of on the flip side of that, I you mentioned California, I live in Southern California. So, you know, the messaging here has, has definitely been that master almost certainly gonna come back, you know, whether that's in the fall or you get a new variant or whatever, the CDC even phrase it as, oh, we're gonna give people a break from asking this. So, you know, am I being too pessimistic to think that they will bring it back up? You know, the next time cases go up or after the midterms are over,

Drew Holden:

You know, that's a, that's a great question, Dean. And my, my thinking is that it's, it's gonna have to be state by state, whether there are different places that are more confident in the willingness of their population to subject themselves, to masks where you probably will see it come back. But, you know, getting, getting back to your political point. I, I do think a lot of this will have to do with when do case to spike and what do polling numbers look like and how can, what, what are, what are these, you know, these blue state governors, what do they think about what's, what's gonna happen come 20, 22? Cause if I'm, if I'm Gavin Newsom and I've just survived the recall election, I might be a little bit more confident in my ability to reimpose the mass mandate or just encourage cities and other localities to, to reimpose the mask mandate.

Drew Holden:

But man, you know, if I'm, if I'm a, a governor of a, of a purple state, you know, your, your Colorados or something. And I look at the polling of parents when it comes to masks and masks in schools, and I don't know if I'm willing to, and, and to me, and I, I'd be curious to get your take on this. The thing that I think is really complicating, a lot of this is the, the messaging on mask mandates in general versus mask mandates in schools. Right? And so to me there, it's, it's always been untenable that we would expect kids who are in the least high. They are the lowest risk when it comes to contracting and suffering severe consequences from or dying from COVID. It always seemed to me to be pretty untenable, that we would force them to wear masks in the long term.

Drew Holden:

But I'd be really curious what you think is gonna happen if that, if that switch does flip, because now those facts are all out there because when, when they pull the mask outta schools, a lot of 'em admitted that, right. They said the quiet part out loud around, around kids being pretty soon. And so what do you do now? Do you repo a mass mandate, but not in schools? Do you put the, the mass back on in schools and risk frustrating all of these parents who have already had it up to here with, with, with states and governments?

Ian Miller:

Yeah, that's a great question. I, I personally, my concern is that they are willing to risk it in large part due to the teachers unions where, you know, in Los Angeles, they lifted the mask mandate in schools, or I, I think they at least mostly did. And the teachers unions were furious and basically said, no, we want to keep it. You know, New York is still masking toddlers. It's the only age demographic in the whole city that required to wear masks or unbeliev ages, like two to four. Yeah. It's because exactly, it's unbelievable. So I don't know. I really, I would like to believe, like you said, they keep kind of destroying their own arguments after the restrictions lift, cuz they go, oh, well actually, you know, Leanna went on, CNN says ma cloth, master, facial decorations, you know, Washington post and mass mandate. It's never worked, but you still kinda have that, that, you know, I, I don't know. I'm concerned that cat is out of the bag as far as like people think that masks work and, and a lot of these specific demographics and it's go gonna be hard for them to give it up.

Drew Holden:

Yeah. That, that sounds right to hopefully I'm wrong. I think you make two really good points there. One or three really good points. Really one is just the power of the teachers unions. I think in, in places like LA and Chicago and New York where the teachers unions really have a ton of poll, then in some cases it doesn't matter, which is the second point that I think you, you kind of alluded to here, which is that there's a shamelessness about all of it where like, I wish the, I wish the hypocrisy mattered and I wish it would prevent people from doing something, but it, it just doesn't right. Like Dr. Le went is a, a great example where I think it was maybe a month, a month and a half apart. She went from saying that kids in schools needed to wear at least at least a three apply surgical quality mask in schools to their facial decorations.

Drew Holden:

Right. If, if you can have an expert flip the switch that quickly in terms of what she thinks schools should be doing, then like, yeah, you're right. The cat is out of the bag, but unfortunately, so many of these people don't care. And so the thing that compels them, I think to care is going to be those polling numbers. And, you know, I was, I was walking around DC, we got a little bit of snow early this week and I was walking the dog and I looked and I, I started counting at about 50% of the people outside on Saturday morning when I was walking, my dog were wearing masks outdoors while it was snowing. And it was like, you know, these maybe, maybe some of these people like they've, they, they just, they feel safe wearing these stupid things. And so they don't care.

Drew Holden:

Like if, if the mandate comes back, they're the they've, they've still got their masks cleaned and ready and washed sitting by the side of their, of, of, of their bed waiting to put them on as soon as they wake up in the morning. And so maybe bringing back the mandates, aren't gonna hurt them with those people. And so I think in some places, particularly in cities, maybe they do, and maybe it's because they don't think there's gonna be huge political repercussions, but I really do think it's some of those states, like the, the, the parents are done, right? Yeah. Like if you are, if you are a, a, a governor and a Virginia or, or a Colorado, or I, I wonder even a Michigan, if you're looking at this and you're like, man, I, unless I'm willing to lose 65% of the parent vote, then this ship is sailed.

Ian Miller:

Yeah. Sometimes it makes Florida seem seem very appealing when you think about these things coming back forever. So, you know, there's obviously other issues in the world other than COVID and, and you recently put together a, a great large threat on, on the Biden claims about energy production. You know, you could say this about most of the threats you do, but you know, these people do realize the internet exists. Right. I mean, it's, it seems like an especially greatest example of asking people to kind of ignore or forget reality.

Drew Holden:

Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I think so too. And, you know, as I, as I was putting it together, I, I started to think it, like, maybe this is just how gas prices is a political issue have always worked a little bit, right. Where like, this is, it's a, it's a famous can to kick on the, on the other side of the street, whenever there's someone else in office doing this. But, you know, I, I think one of, one of the reasons I wanted to pull together the thread, wasn't just that the way people had talked about, about gas prices at one time or another before and after, it really was about what Biden had done on energy production and how it was greeted. Right. You know, I was, I was reminded today about the, the secretary of energy, making some statements back about a year ago, about how fossil fuel companies need to get on board with a green transition.

Drew Holden:

Like the people seem to have forgotten in about a year's time that Biden and his, and, and the people around him, both on his campaign. And now that he's in office, this was a really important point where he took flack from both sides on the environmental issue. And he scored a lot of points with, with the greens, the environmentalist voters, everything else by saying, I'm gonna stick it to fossil fuels and legacy fuel sources. We're gonna be tough on these things in a way that other presidents haven't been, and he got all sorts of Plotts for this, when things were going at least. Okay. And now, as soon as things really take a turn, you see all of that kind of commentary get memory hold. And, and for me, it was so frustrating because you would think like, if you were someone who is a, even like, let's say you're a reporter, but you're committed to the environmental. Cause whatever, like your talking points should be the same. Even if gas prices go up. And it was so obvious that so many people were, were willing to very, very quickly abandon these principles and precepts that they purported to believe in. So as strongly a year ago that it, it, it really did gimme a sense of whiplash.

Ian Miller:

Yeah. that's a, that kind of is related to one of the other things I wanted to ask you about, which was our, our good friend, Jesse SMOT

Drew Holden:

Yeah, yeah.

Ian Miller:

That, that seems like a, a, a really perfect distillation of the rush to judgment that kind of turns out to be inaccurate. Right. Is, I mean, it's, it's just kind of, so sums up so much of what we've been kind of talking about, doesn't it?

Drew Holden:

Yeah, it does. It does. You know, now, now that I think about it, the, the better answer to the, an, the question you asked earlier about kind of the perfect distillation, it may not have been Ave. It might have been, it might have been small. It really you know, one of the things, one of my favorite kind of details that I think confirms enormous amount about the media from the Molet cases. And, and so CNN was one of the first outlets to break the Molet story. And one of the reasons they did is that they confirmed his account. They said in, in their reporting on it, and, you know, you know, how they had confirmed his, his account of what had happened.

Ian Miller:

I actually don't know this because

Drew Holden:

Don lemon friend of Jesse will talked to him and that was their confirmation that, that it had happened. And so you got like, to, to me, the, the, you know, the, the Jesse Case does a, does a few things. One I think it is really the, the perfect capture of the media's willingness to believe that something happened when it fits their priors and what could possibly fit their prior more neatly than a gay black man attacked by, by mega hat wearing Trump voters. Right. It's, it's, it's, it's so perfectly constructed to, to hit those priors that it allowed the media to overlook just preposterous things. I mean, I'm sure you've seen this, this, the Chappelle bit about this, where, you know, people really did believe, at least in the moment that there were, you know, the, the two chunkiest fans of the TV show empire who were just hiding out in Chicago at two in the morning when it was like negative 30 windchill and just happened to see him, right.

Drew Holden:

Like, I would love to know the ven diagram of people who voted for Trump and people who are such big fans of empire, that they could recognize small it out on the street, particularly in the middle of the night. Cause I don't, I don't think, I think those are two separate circles. And so it wasn't just, you know, the gets back, I think to a little bit of what we talked about with the COVID stuff. It wasn't just that they were willing to believe it it's that they were willing to ignore. So, so many potential inconsistencies to believe it and believe it with Gusto, right. When you look back at the coverage, one of the things that still, when I look back at it strikes me is how unbelievably and kind of shamelessly confident in the narrative corporate pressed mainstream outlets were, we're not talking about opinion, commentary people or opinion analysis. This was supposedly straight reporting from some of these places about what this, what this incident said about Trump and Trump voters. And so the ability to draw those kinds of over hyped conclusions in general should be problematic. But the fact that they did it based on a hoax really does, I think, capture so much of what so many people are frustrated about, about the modern media.

Ian Miller:

Yeah. It reminds me of the the Lincoln project stunt in Virginia with the oh yeah. Just exactly the same thing. They just kind of immediately buy into something that it never made any sense and is completely unrealistic, but it fits the narrative. Yeah,

Drew Holden:

Exactly, exactly. And like, look, obviously mullet knew it was gonna fit the narrative. Right. You don't, you don't go out and hoax a hate crime if you didn't think anyone's gonna believe you. Yeah. And so to, to me, there's a little bit of, there has to be at least a smidgen of self-awareness on these sorts of things where they were the mark, right? Like the, the, the people who ended up defending him to the death were the mark all along and they got taken for a ride. And, you know, I remember I, I went back and saw there's, there's a tweet from like a CNN talking head guy. Keith, what was a Keith Pointon I think is his name. And he, he came out like a week or maybe two weeks after all this blew up and tried to dunk on people who questioned whether or not small was, was like entitled to his, you know, a, a, a fair day in court or something because the, because Chicago had temporarily dropped some of the charges against him. Right. Cuz he's like friends with Kim Fox or whatever all it was. Yeah. And remember I saw that and I was like, how, like what, how blinkered does your reality have to be where you think this is your opportunity? Not just to be vindicated, but to dunk on your opponents because you think you've been momentarily vindicated.

Ian Miller:

Yeah, exactly. And that kind of is related to, I just a couple more questions for you. And that's kind of related to one of the ones that I wanted to get your idea just broadly, you know, like where are we heading with all of this? It it's, you know, fact checks are often completely ridiculous. You have, like you said, CNN verifying the reporting by talking to one of the reporters and, and similarly with the Cuomo situations with them you know, people can kind of ignore reality and get away with it. I, I, the Nicholas Sandman story. Yep. So is this just what life is going to be like going forward? Is there any hope for that to ever kind of go back to normal?

Drew Holden:

You know, it's a, it's a great question. This is probably the one question in kind of like American life that I spend the most time thinking about. And I, I think I'm kind of, of two of mines. There's a, the opt optimist in me that wants to say that the Trump years, so ridiculous with some of this reporting and the things that they bought on and like, you know, the Russian collusion hoax and everything else that surely by now, the fever has broken trust in the media is at an all time low. And they have to be able to just look in the mirror at this point as their industry repeatedly contracts. And no one is watching them anymore and say, Ugh maybe we were wrong on this and that there has to be some correction if they wanna survive. And so that's, that's the optimist in me.

Drew Holden:

Unfortunately I think the side that probably wins out, usually when I have this argument with myself is, is the opposite case where I, I think unfortunately the incentives in media are really, really bad if your goal is telling the truth, which is an unfortunate fact, I think between social media and the fact that all of these places make a ton of their, their revenue from ads and clicks and views, and that none of those things are necessarily tied to building trust with their audiences. Right. And so to me, my worry is that their, the, the, the media ship is sinking for a lot of those reasons, plus cuz of the group think, but that no one really individually has much in the way of an incentive to change or stop that. And so what we're probably gonna see, I think is you'll see these trends continue and amplify and speed up.

Drew Holden:

And I think, you know, if, if Donald Trump runs for office in 2024, forget it everything's out the window, it's gonna get a thousand. But, but I think even like everything else kind of staying as it is, let's say we get a normal nominee in 20, 24 and things could conceivably or should at least calm down. I, I, I don't think they do because you, you know, you look at places like MSNBC or like the Bryan SELs of the world, their audiences are a tiny, tiny fraction of what they were in the Trump heyday. And I think that they've been designed over the last couple of years to chase those clicks and chase those views. And the only way they know how to do that, even if it's unsuccessful is by cranking up the volume to, to a, a decibel level that is inconsistent with reality.

Ian Miller:

Mm. Yeah. I as a somebody pessimistic person myself, I tend to agree with you, so hopefully we're wrong, but I, yeah, I,

Drew Holden:

I hope, I, I hope beyond hope that I'm wrong. Right. And I do tend to be an optimist about, about this and most things, but ah, I, I, I unfortunately don't see this ship writing itself anytime soon.

Ian Miller:

Yeah. So that's, that's kind of related to my last question, which is a little bit more of more fun. You feature all a lot of the same people in your threads. I mean, are queen Jennifer Ruben, for example. So do, do you have, have a favorite? Is there somebody you're just like, I gotta, as soon as some major event happens, I gotta go to their feed. I know they're gonna have just the, the hottest take in the world right now.

Drew Holden:

That's a, that's a great question. Yeah, I mean, it's, I wish I could come up with one. I, I, I wish it were true that there was like a, a deep cut take of someone who was just super reliably wrong and super interesting who could outdo Jennifer Ruben. But, but there just isn't. I mean, like if you need, like if I had to make my perfect arch nemesis in a lab, it would come out as Jennifer Ruben, like it, I don't think I would change a single detail. And so, you know, there, there are a lot of other people who are kind of in that cloth, right. Of those former Republicans, the max boot types, who I think are, are good and reliable for, for producing something ridiculous. But to me, what really sets Ruben apart in at least in the Biden years is just the shameless pandering. Like she is truly willing at one point with Ruben, it was, she was willing to say something today. That was the antithesis of what she believed three or four years ago, but now it's week to week. I mean, whatever, whatever the political goal is, she'll, she'll spout the talking points and that just creates such perfect fodder for what I'm looking to do on Twitter. That, that she can't be top. She, she simply can't be topped

Ian Miller:

It's it's, it's amazing and hilarious.

Drew Holden:

Yes, it is.

Ian Miller:

Thank you so much drew for doing this. Please, everybody go follow drew on Twitter. If you're not already, which you should be it's drew Holden 360, it's it? I mean, legitimately you're probably my favorite person, individual person on Twitter. So thank, thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it.

Drew Holden:

Pledge is mind. I, I really appreciate you having me on it's a blast of conversation.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ianmsc.substack.com/subscribe

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Episode 20: The Failure of Mask Mandates, Public Health and Central Planning with John Tierney, Former New York Times Science Writer, Author and Contributing Editor at City Journal
12 mei 2022· Unmasked
The latest podcast episode is a fascinating conversation with John Tierney from City Journal discussing his fantastic work documenting the lack of justification for vaccine mandates for kids, the failures of Dr. Fauci and Deborah Birx, and society's addiction to crisis.
John's work at City Journal can be found here, and his excellent book "The Power of Bad" is available here.
"Unmasked" is available here, now in hardcover format as well.
**Transcript isn’t available for this episode, unfortunately the software was not able to produce a usable one**

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ianmsc.substack.com/subscribe
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- Later beluisteren Later beluisteren
Episode 19: Laura Dodsworth, Substack Writer and Author of "A State of Fear"
23 apr 2022· Unmasked
Laura Dodsworth, author of the fantastic book: "A State of Fear: How the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic" joins the show to discuss masks and how global governments used fear to ensure compliance with mandates.
You can find Laura’s Substack here and her incredibly important book here. You can also follow her on Twitter here.
The podcast is also available through Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Full transcript is available from the web version of Substack.
Ian Miller (00:00):
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the unasked podcast. We've got another very special guest today. Her name's Laura Dodsworth she's the author of the book, a state of fear, and she writes the Laura Dodsworth Substack. Everybody should go check that out. But so Laura, welcome. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this.
Laura Dodsworth (00:17):
Oh, thank you for having me. I can't think of a better podcast really you know, fit wise for me. So it's fantastic. I loved your book.
Ian Miller (00:26):
Yeah. Well, thank you. And I, I really enjoyed speaking with you, so I'm glad we're getting to do this again. My, my first question for you was kind of about your initial reaction to it. And, and you wrote about it in the book that the virus you were initially seemingly were a little concern because it's something new you weren't familiar with and, but you kind of seemed a little bit more, fairly measured in your response, but then when Boris Johnson gave his speech saying everybody needs to stay home, we're locking down. That's you know, we're moving in that direction in terms of policy, it seemed like you kind of reacted a bit more viscerally. So why do you think it was that his speech in particular kind of do that way? Maybe even more so than the virus did?
Laura Dodsworth (01:06):
Mm, yeah, isn't it funny? I think that there was just a lot of fear in the air and really everybody was subjected to some fears. It's just which fears you yourself are susceptible to. Now, I did have some fear about the virus and, you know, I remember up on tined food, I'm a, a single parent. And I thought, well, if I'm, if I'm terribly ill, how will my children cook? Because we were being told we couldn't leave the house at all. Mm-Hmm . And so the sort of normal recourse to help like family and friends wouldn't be available. So I had some nerves and my children still tease me about the fact that I asked them to wash hands when they came indoors for the first couple of weeks. . But my my approach is often to sort of deep dive and research and, and look things up for myself.
Laura Dodsworth (01:56):
And from very early, I was reading up on different epidemiologists and scientists, views of the virus. So rather a lot of unknowns at the beginning, there were also very respected voices urging caution on the IFFR for instance professor Johnny and Artis and contextualizing epidemics and pandemics. And I don't think I had an out of scale fear of it. And you see here in the UK, the initial response was that we would cocoon the elderly and a certain amount of herd immunity would build up. And then there was this sudden U-turn and I think I found the U-turn discombobulating. I just couldn't believe the address to the nation. On the 23rd of March, it was very stern. It was really going for a wartime vibe, you know, war on a war, on a virus. And for some reason I fast forwarded mentally very quickly, not that night, but very quickly into what the consequences could be.
Laura Dodsworth (03:06):
And to be honest, watching those fears become fulfilled, you know, to see them on furl over time has been quite horrific. So the longer lot I went on it was, it was obvious that we would have high inflation because we were quantitative easing our way through this. I was surprised that people were so adamant that children were resilient and children would be okay, and shutting schools and masking children would be fine because clearly it hasn't been. And I felt very frightened about the consequences of the very extreme, absolutely unprecedented actions we were taking. I think what confounded that as well was, as soon as you stepped outside your, your daily allowed exercise, people were really different with each other, just, you know, where I live just semi country side. They would hop to the side of country lanes or pavements to avoid each other.
Laura Dodsworth (04:06):
And it, it created that additional fear in the air. So for me, the fear wasn't of the virus, I thought it was strange that people were so frightened of a virus out in the open. For me, the fear was how easily fear was communicated and how manipulated people could be and what the effect of lockdown would be. And I did, I did feel it viscerally that first night of the speech. I had that freeze response. I felt everything drained from my body. It was, it was a very, very wobbly, shaky feeling. I've always thought I've got the most useless fear response. this is not the first time this has happened to me, that I drain and become, become useless. And interestingly, there is a lot of shame with this fear response because you know, it's people feel like they should have been able to run away or, or to fight, I guess I'm a freezer.
Ian Miller (05:03):
Hmm. Did you also mentioned in the book about a section about his body language during that speech, and did you know, is that something that you noticed as well that he, it, you know, I think it was phrased something like that. It was almost like a hostage situation. Was that something that you noticed when you were watching it or was that something that just kind of came up with in conversations with people?
Laura Dodsworth (05:24):
No. The whole thing felt completely weird to me and it threw me and it is part of what scared me. His words about the virus did not scare me the extreme semi Churchillian and authoritarian language SC me. And it was that combined with this very staccato, peculiar body language, there was something about it that just felt off. And that's why I thought it would be a good place to start the book. So I consulted with forensic psychologists, somebody who interviews people who have lied to the authorities and tried to cover their traces and somebody who also works with body language to see what they made of it. And actually it's more that their professional opinions concurred with the feeling that I'd had that is his body language. Wasn't congruent with his words. There are parts when he's more relaxed, cause he, he appears to believe what he's saying. And there are parts where he's not comfortable with what he's saying at all, what that means exactly. Who knows whether he was lying, whether he just felt uncomfortable, maybe with delivering some very bad news to the nation. This is a man who likes to be liked and to deliver the news about lockdown would be a very difficult message for any statesman.
Ian Miller (06:45):
Yeah, it's interesting. And it's, it's one of those like important moments of history and, and it's really important I think, to kind of go back and look and see and what they were thinking and saying at the time and how they, how they were saying it. Another thing I think that we, we kind of both bring up a lot is what a poor job the media has done with with regards to COVID. And, and I know you wrote about it, how they kind of gave a lot of softball questions to, to Boris Johnson or to other health leaders which was definitely the case of the United States as well with certain governors that were not Ron DeSantis from Florida. So why do you think that that was a consistent feature across both countries? Like what, what was it about the journalism profession that was so ready and willing to go along with, with lockdowns and all these other policies?
Laura Dodsworth (07:29):
Oh, it was just so depressing. I had to stop watching the press briefings, cause I felt like shouting at the TV to, you know, tell the journalists off for not asking more probing questions. We had questions like, do you think we'll be able to have Christmas? Or can we hug our relatives? It was truly pathetic. all the questioning came from within the framework, not outside of the framework. So things like the, you know, the, the assumption to the model weren't challenged, the ingests were never questioned the data wasn't questioned. The presumptions weren't questioned. The only question was, are we doing enough? Are we doing it early enough? Hard enough, soon enough. I think that there are it's multifactorial. There are probably a number of reasons for this. I think activists, journalism is a real problem. The response to COVID has been very partisan among journalists.
Laura Dodsworth (08:25):
You know, if Trump said something had to be wrong, you know, orange man, bad wrong. And here, you know, there's also a lot of Tory bashing. So anybody who doesn't like the conservatives or didn't like Brexit might taking opposing position and give their conservatives a hard time for their handling. Also, you know, it was a pandemic, things were happening fast. There isn't a lot of time in newsrooms to consider things carefully. It's been obvious to me as well that some journalists aren't very Nuer or scientifically minded. Now I'm not saying that I'm especially Nuer or scientifically minded. I had to work harder to it. And where I didn't understand, I I've asked maths with friends to help me with, with stuff. And I think there's a big problem about click bait, journalism fear, fear cells, better than sex. It turns out, and there is a way in which remuneration is very, at least subtly connected to those clicks. There is one there's one broad sheet journalist I interviewed anonymously who explained that there remuneration is linked to the success of their articles. So, you know, the most lurid headline, the most fear driven headline will also generate the most clicks and views. And then journalists are compensated for that. Everybody likes their likes on, on Twitter. You know, Twitter's an important habitat for journalists too. And you'll see that you'll see broadcasting, print, journalists break their thoughts and stories on Twitter.
Ian Miller (10:04):
Yeah.
Laura Dodsworth (10:05):
So I think, I think it's multifactorial and, and there's another really important aspect, which is off com that's the the regulator for broadcast media here to guidance saying that broadcast journalists should be careful not to go against the government advice cause it might create public harm.
Ian Miller (10:29):
It's, it's crazy. It, it's insane to think about that. That a regulator was telling journalists not to question the government. I mean, that's just mind boing. It's, that's literally their whole job, you know, it's seemingly that's their whole job. But you, you mentioned how the fear seems to sell and, and that was a section I really enjoyed of your book was where there's a lot of these quotes that you, you bring up from the media with these kind of outrageous, at least looking back, they're outrageous headlines that are very obviously fear driven. And it, it seemed like, and let me know if I'm wrong, but it seemed like the vast majority of people, especially in the UK and in the us bought into that would you have, have expected that people would buy it pre COVID or were you surprised that people weren't skeptical? I, I mean, I, my personal sense as an outsider is that a lot of, you know, Britain, there's a lot of skepticism towards these things, but it seemed like that kind of went away recently.
Laura Dodsworth (11:17):
Oh no, I think we've got a very, he healthy, skeptical community here. I'm gonna have to say, but I think you can't underestimate something like this off con guidance. You know, it really chilled the inclination of the media to explore theories. And the broadcast media is very important and also big tech were sensory views that went against the world health organization or governments. And we gotta to remember that their positions changed on things. Now, if you know, social media like say YouTube or Twitter, we we're going to hold up the world health organization view at any one given time think about things they said during this pandemic, there's no human to human transmission. That's one thing world health organization said or it didn't originate from a lab or it's not airborne. Well, you know, the, the advice and the, the thoughts change constantly.
Laura Dodsworth (12:08):
So it's very, you know, you have to have debate and allow questions. And this is, this is part of, of science to, to ask questions and challenge hypotheses. There shouldn't be a faith in it. You know, the situation we had here is where the, the state broadcast or the BBC and other broadcasters couldn't really challenge the state orthodoxy because of off con guidance. So that's, you know, that's part of the, the media landscape. Now publications, which have had a, a good epidemic were probably more skeptical, such as the Telegraph and the spectator. They've both seen their subscriptions grow substantially during this time. And they, they have online subscriptions as well. They have a subscription model, which personally I, I'm a really big fan of, you know, you're gonna pay for your news one way or the other you're gonna pay via ads or sponsorship or the sale of your data, or you're gonna pay through individual copy sales or subscription.
Laura Dodsworth (13:05):
I think subscription is a really good model for providing sound journalism. So we have had a, a mix and, you know, that chapter referring to my book that is called headlines. So it's really some of the very worst examples. It, I mean, it was horrific in a way, keeping the tally of it through the year. People were told to be frightened of literally everything from ice cream to semen. There wasn't anything you couldn't catch COVID from. And there wasn't any aspect of your health that could, it could damage. I dunno how much people believed it all. I, I mean, I really don't know in my own little bubble, I, I brought quite a lot of skepticism to it, but I think there's something about Britain, you know, where we're definitely at home of liberal thought and I nation, and I, I think there's actually been a lot of pushback in this country about things such as vaccine mandates, for instance, and vaccine passports, a very successful political pushback and some political rebellion. And I think overall there has been a good amount of skepticism, but it's very difficult to know in your own bubble. And of course, this is one aspect of, of lockdown where atomized we talk, you know, during those really crucial peak times, we didn't talk to other people as much in real life. Whereas you might settle some ideas in the par or, you know, by the water cooler at work. We were all at home and really engaging with our screens a lot more.
Ian Miller (14:30):
Mm-Hmm . Yeah. and so you, you brought up kind of the vaccine mandates and, and that there was a little bit, it, more of a success successful pushback. And I did want to ask you about that as well, because you, you recently wrote a SubT stack kind of to talking about how masks were essentially the idea was to soften the public up for plan B, which was essentially vaccine passports among other things. But it seemed like they, you know, were, were, do you think that they were successful in that attempt to soften people up, but, or did, were they, were the people willing to kind of fight back against, was that like a bridge too far for them at that point?
Laura Dodsworth (15:03):
No people dawned their masks again. See, that was very interesting. That's some, somebody who works on a COVID task force within government contacted me to say they would like to talk to me anonymously about developments and they, they shared some documents with me and we talked, and that was a report of that conversation really. And the reason those contacted me is I'd written about this already in the Telegraph, one of our national newspapers, when the government brought out its its winter plan, it had plan a and plan B. And for me it was obvious that the, the whole point of these plans were to, to lay the groundwork for what they really want to do. And the government advice were saying, yes, that's correct. Masks have been reintroduced to soften you up for the next stage. It's it's like a, you know, a form of psychological technique.
Laura Dodsworth (16:01):
And the interesting thing about that person that contacted me and really some of the most severe criticism of the government is it has come from government advisors. You know, some, some quite shocking accusations, really. I mean, one of the, one of the behavioral psychologists who spoke to Mely anonymously did warn about creeping authoritarianism in government, that the pandemic can be used to grab power and drive things through that wouldn't happen otherwise. And another told me that psychology is, is a, is a weapon without a psychology without vaccine psychology is your best weapon and said, psychology has had a really good epidemic actually. And another told me that the use of fear had been dystopian. And I think this is part of the reason that the works and it's had such a good audience it's because there are people who are close to government who report with the techniques with the psychological with the games, with the behavioral psychology approach. And that's why they wanted to talk to me anonymously to, to help expose it.
Ian Miller (17:12):
Yeah. Well, I I'm, I'm glad that they did because it is, I think it's very, very important, but you know, I, I, I focus a lot on mass. We're just kind of talking about it. And so I wanted to, to get your thoughts, you know, what was, what did you think of mass as the mandates started to roll out in the UK and especially there, because I feel like early on maybe even more so than the us, a lot of the, the kind of health leaders in the UK were downplaying masks and saying that they weren't going to make a difference and what gonna work.
Laura Dodsworth (17:41):
Oh, that's exactly right. I mean, you had Fauci, didn't you say that masks wouldn't actually prevent transmission. They might just stop a few droplets. And we had the, the, the same here from multiple public health officials, senior public health officials. And then there was this U-turn wasn't there. Now, one of the MPS I interviewed for the book told me that the sec of state for health and social care told the MP that masks were introduced to encourage confidence when the first lockdown ended. The problem was that the high street didn't bounce back. When the lockdown ended, people didn't go and hit the shops and hit the high street in the way the government had expected. And so masks were supposedly reportedly introduced as a way to give people confidence. The problem is they turned people into walking billboards for danger, and it became obvious that masks offer another kind of signal known a select committee hearing.
Laura Dodsworth (18:48):
That's when MPS get to ask experts for their almost like witness statements for their opinions David Halpin, who is the head of the behavioral insights team, that's the nudge unit referred to masks as being a signal that masks be useful as a signal, as well as the underlying evidence that they reduced transmission. I think it's really important to note that there are people in government ministers, the head of the nudge unit and behavioral psychologists science for my book who referred to masks primarily as serving the purpose of being a signal. Now, how did I feel about it? I hated it. I couldn't actually believe that the uptake was as high as it was mm-hmm cause it was clear that there wasn't any new scientific evidence to justify the use of cloth and surgical masks in the community to reduce transmission. And I think it's incredibly onerous to make a law, to compel people, to dress a certain way without evidence, because really without evidence, it is just a form of dress.
Laura Dodsworth (19:54):
It's not PPE mm-hmm . And I think over time, the symbolism of masks has really changed while they were signals to indicate that we were in a pandemic, they've become something else. It's, it's fading now it's receding now, but they've really become signals of morale and virtue, you know, good compliant, virtuous people wear masks, your mask shows you care for other people. And if you don't wear a mask, what does that mean? That you don't care? And so that's, that's the thought behind it. Now, there also was quite a lot of shaming attached to masks. Don't CRE to Dick who's the head of the, the met police said that police wouldn't be enforcing the mask mandates and shops. And instead she was trusting on the public to shame each other for not own masks. Now in this country, we did actually have exemptions.
Laura Dodsworth (20:45):
For instance, let's say you had a physical disability that might prevent you from wearing a mask or even if the idea of wearing a mask could cause you significant stress. You didn't have to wear one. So you can imagine that could in, that could include perhaps people who have been raped, who might commonly have a problem with stomach covering the mouth or veterans with post-traumatic stress to I've spoken to two veterans with PTSD that make masks very difficult. There's lots of reasons people could have for not wearing a mask. So we always had exemptions. So the idea that we had the head of London police saying she wanted the public to shame each other was quite staggering. Going back to, again, the head of the UK's nudge unit, he also talked about the, that the British public would do most of the heavy lifting in socially enforcing masks. And this is all part of the behavioral psychology approach to use that kind of herd mentality so that we are really policing each other and making, you know, enforcing the mask querying.
Ian Miller (21:45):
Yeah. And, and the nudge unit thing I wanted to, to ask you about as well, because, you know, I think in the us, most people listeners are probably in the us. That's not something that we've been familiar with. I mean, I've read about it obviously because of your book and, and other sources, but you know, can you explain to people what exactly the nudge unit is and, and how they've been operating during the pandemic?
Laura Dodsworth (22:07):
Yes. Sure. So you will also have nudge in the us, you do, you just don't have something called a nudge unit. you need to find out where your nudges are lodged within government, because nudge is really part of how governments do their business now. So the nudge unit is the col political term for the behavioral insights team. And that was set up in the UK in, oh, I'm gonna get the date right now. I hope 2011 under the David Cameron department. And originally it was part of strategy and policy. And then it spun out to become its own unit. And it was one third owned by the government. It's one third by an organization called nester and one third by the nudge unit directors. So that's lovely set up a expense, but it's ended up making some of them really quite rich and the idea behind behavioral psychology and nudge is that it's all about helping us to become better people and model citizens without having to resort to new laws.
Laura Dodsworth (23:17):
In fact, there's a great quote from cast Einstein, who you probably have heard of as he, he held from your side of the pond mm-hmm and he said, let think I got the quote just here. Yes. So Kas Einstein is a famous behavioral psychologist, scientist. He's a famous behavioral scientist. And he said by knowing how people think we can make it easier for them to choose what is best for them, their families and society. So isn't it great. There are people who know what's best for you. Now, cast Einstein was quite close to the Obama administration. I believe he still works for the us government now. So behavior, the behavioral insights team of it exported their company around the world. They have offices around the world, but other, other countries too, have nudge units embedded in government. And even beyond the nudge unit, there are behavioral scientists in other government departments too. I believe there are 54 in the treasury, in the UK governments and also in government agencies, you know such as the UK HSA and also the NHS in the cabinet office itself, they're everywhere.
Ian Miller (24:34):
Hmm. That's in, it's very interesting and it's kind of scary and that's, that's, I also wanted to, to get your thoughts on that because you know, do you think that this is something that will, the public will be more aware of now? I mean, it it's obviously been around for 10 years or a little more, but you know, this, it feels like this was the most concerted effort to, to deploy that kind of behavioral psychology to get people to comply with, with lockdowns and mandates. So do you think the population will be more aware of it and more skeptical towards these kinds of, of ideas now? Or is it gonna be continued and, you know, accepted going forward?
Laura Dodsworth (25:06):
I think it's interesting that well, I do, I do think, I like to think, I hope that my book has moved the dial. I mean, it was out early, it was out in may 21, and it was really important to me to, I mean, in a way, lay ego aside and get it out early so that it would move the dial because I, I could have turned out a more, a more complete and more perfect book had waited another year, but I really wanted people to be aware. And they obviously are. Now there was a poll that was conducted this week in the UK by a grassroots organization called recovery. And, you know, they used a, a reputable polling company to do this with a representative sample of the British public. And they were fi they were trying to find out what people think of the COVID inquiry terms of reference.
Laura Dodsworth (25:54):
So the government is gonna hold an inquiry into its handling of the pandemic, but there are quite a few things missing from the terms of reference, you know, most, most famously people talking about the fact that children aren't specifically mentioned in the inquiry mean, obviously we have to look at what lockdown and school closures did specifically to children. Now, this poll by recovery found that 42% of the British public want the inquiry to consider the use of behavioral psychology in influencing public behavior. And I think that's incredible because before the I before the pandemic, the issue of nudge rarely, rarely hit the headlines. And although my books had some very favorable press and media coverage in certain outlets, it's been completely ignored by others. So it was on the Sunday times best sell list for four weeks. It's sold really well. It's had reviews from really respect to public figures, such as law assumption.
Laura Dodsworth (26:55):
Number of times it's been mentioned by the BBC, or I've been invited for interview zero, you know, it's, it's interesting, there's been a real I really tend to ignore nudge and the fear Mon growing on use behavioral psychology in some areas, but not in others. So the fact that 42% of British people want this specifically to be looked at in the inquiry, I think is incredibly hopeful. It's the best news I've had for ages in . However, I don't think the government will want to look at it. Cause I think the enactors are the policy, you know, that plans deliberately frighten people to make them comply with the lockdown is a really difficult charge to answer. Yeah, most people would say that frightening people beyond the scale of a threat is quite egregious. It's quite sinister, quite insidious, and it's also anti-democratic to subliminally influence people and frighten them in to doing what you want them to do. You know, furthermore, they're still nudging all the time. You know, depending how much time we got to send this interview, but there are other areas where nudge is being applied now to not just towards policy goals, to soften us up for tough, tough policies. It's incredibly convenient and effective for government rather than passing laws and having all the tricky and convenient debates.
Ian Miller (28:08):
Mm-Hmm , if you can get people to do what you want without having to force them to do it, it's theoretically it's better for them. And it's kind of the implications of that are really, really horrifying when you think about it in detail mm-hmm I did wanna ask you one, one more thing about kind of a data related question and it was, it was mentioned, I believe in your, in your Subec about masks making the comparison between England and Scotland and, and I've done this recently with, you know, you can post the charts showing that England without mandates is doing better than Scotland with, with mask mandates in place. And you show, you said it was, you know, essentially the trial and it showed that really matter. So how are people able to kind of continue to get away with ignoring these comparisons? It just, it feels inarguable at this point, doesn't it?
Laura Dodsworth (28:56):
Oh, in you'd think so. I wish I had an answer to that because literally just today there, there were calls for mask mandates to be in IED because cases are so high in England. And like you I'm thinking, excuse me, would you look at Scotland? They haven't dropped their mask mandates and they've had higher case numbers in England. Yeah. So although there might be other confounding factors, there's no clear argument in favor of masks here. It's ridiculous us. And you know, the number of cases has recently just peaked and it's peaked despite the fact that we haven't reintroduced masks or lockdowns or any other restrictions. So that kind of illusion of control that people might have been, you know, hanging onto before it's got to be dispelled by the fact that a wave has, has peaked and is declining all on its own.
Ian Miller (29:51):
Yep. Yeah. It's it seems so obvious, but it, it's still so hard to get people to to accept that. Because
Laura Dodsworth (29:59):
There's such vision reminders. That's the thing, because it seems to be common sense. It's covering your mouth where you breathe or you cough, you know, it feels intuitive and it feels like common sense for people. Plus it's something that they can do. It gives them the illusion of control, which is why they were introduced in the first place.
Ian Miller (30:17):
Yeah. But it,
Laura Dodsworth (30:19):
An illusion,
Ian Miller (30:20):
It is an illusion, but it's very hard to convince people of that. And ironically, you know, they can't use the nudge unit to convince people that it was all an illusion in the first place.
Laura Dodsworth (30:28):
Well, absolutely. Now I, I have had an MP say to me, do you think we need a reverse nudge plan? I said, no, I couldn't possibly agree with that. What we need is a honesty from now mm-hmm and forever not gonna happen. But the, you know, the, the problem with using fear is how you reverse from it. You do see some signs of reverse nudging now. So a little bit of challenging of the data. So while a year ago, you would not have been able to challenge or drill down on hospitalization easily, not without insight sources, which, which I had, and some journalists that the Telegraph had, and you were kind of breaking the story that the overall hospitalization figure we had was including people who were admitted hospital with COVID and had symptoms. It also included people who went to hospital with something entirely different and were tested and found to have COVID.
Laura Dodsworth (31:21):
And it also include people who called COVID hospital. So it's important to know about all of those subgroups people, but the reason the number was presented as one big number was for effect mm-hmm . Now what they've done this year is say, ah, but this number includes incidental hospitalization. So you have people who hospitalized with COVID and from COVID and they're different things. So this is what I'd call a little reverse, nudge, a little bit of honesty about the granular detail of the data in order to start dispelling fear, because you can't go back and say, well, we were exaggerating before.
Ian Miller (31:57):
Yeah. Well, do you, and do you think that part of that also was, was to show, okay, well, you know, we've had this incredible vaccination roll out huge amount of uptake. If hospitalization numbers are so high, people are gonna start doubting how well these are working and not potentially going to get a booster or a, you know, they're rolling up four shots now, or fish shots down the road. Do you think that that played a part in that as well?
Laura Dodsworth (32:20):
Yeah, I mean, absolutely because I think people oversold what the, what the vaccines could do and were four at the beginning which I think is very unfortunate. There was never any evidence in the trial data that they would stop death or reduce transmission. Those were hopes there was an evidence. But you know, indeed if they have reduced severity of symptoms and reduced hospitalization, then that has to be shown in the figures. Otherwise it would look like it hadn't worked. So you're right. The data has to correspond, although have been enormous amounts of inconsistencies in data at various times.
Ian Miller (32:57):
Yeah. looking at, at the UK's reports on those occasionally it's it's you can see there's a shift when they started putting in a little add-on there saying, you know, we we've calculated vaccine efficacy ourselves. So look at our numbers. Don't go look at the rates that we've posted down further on. Those are those can't be interpreted properly. That that was very entertaining. Well,
Laura Dodsworth (33:16):
I mean, that, that is difficult because the HSA has published really transparent data about vaccine efficacy. And it's quite hard to know what it means. Cuz for instance, at the moment, if you look at the report, it would appear that the triple vaccinated are much more likely to be effective COVID than the UN vaccinated. But this is, it depends which population estimate you use. Cause there are different ways of estimating the overall population. And so that's what all those disclaimers are about. I would have personally, no idea mm-hmm which population estimate is the right one to use and therefore what it shows about vaccine efficacy.
Ian Miller (33:52):
Yeah. It's it is a really hard question to answer. I don't think we'll ever get a, a perfect answer and it might be totally different between different populations even as well. So but I wanted to ask you as well you know, the UK has pretty much dropped almost every restriction and, and it kind of seemed like it happened pretty quickly after going from, you know, mass mandate or softening up to plan B to almost essentially back to normal, just a matter of months. Mm-Hmm so do you think that kind of Boris Johnson's political issues that happened around that timeframe that kind of came up the party gate, things like that, did that play a part in it? You think?
Laura Dodsworth (34:26):
Yes. Two things party gate was an absolute gift. I mean, nobody E everybody likes fair play don't they, nobody likes hypocrisy. So the idea that while people were suffering really, really strict restrictions, which came enormous personal that the number 10 Downing street was hosting parties was so unpalatable and that had to has in the end of the restrictions here, but also Omicron. So although our own public health officials didn't want to concur with the view coming out South Africa, that it was milder and needing to feel of hospitalizations. Ultimately it has proven to be milder and like, so I think it's the combined effective party gate massive gift and on micron.
Ian Miller (35:14):
Yeah. Well, I guess we have one thing to be grateful for with being hypocritical about not follow our own rules. So what, what's the end game for kind of the opposite side of the coin, which is countries like, you know, Australia, New Zealand and others, you know, Chinas and these incredibly strict lockdowns now and they're, they seemingly are okay with having kind of endless pandemic policies. You know, what, what do you think is the end game for those places?
Laura Dodsworth (35:40):
They'll have to reverse out of it because it's not sustainable. The, the social, the health, the economic destruction can't be, can't be sustained. You can't keep countries lodge down. I think, you know, zero, zero, that zero COVID is being revealed as the absolute nightmare that it was, it was always going to be cause funny people don't talk about Sweden much anymore. Do they? Yeah. You know, Sweden was in the news all the time, all the time when they were branching out on their own and following existing pandemic policy. But look how well it's worked out for Sweden.
Ian Miller (36:19):
Yep. That's
Laura Dodsworth (36:20):
Good. So yeah, I, I, I I'd say it can't be sustainable because if it is all that will be all that will remain is to salt the earth in those countries.
Ian Miller (36:28):
Yeah. I was gonna say that's exa and that I listened to an interview with one of the Swedish epidemiologists at the time who was saying, you can't sustain these policies forever in democracy. You just, you can't do it. But some, some, some places are still trying. Your latest sub was about something other than COVID, which I think is, is also good to have reminders of there are other issues in the world.
Laura Dodsworth (36:50):
and
Ian Miller (36:51):
, it was kind of about how ignoring biology is, is impacting the NHS in a real way in, in, and and it's become a hot topic here in the us as well with the we've had this, the, the transgender swimmer that has been swimming in these, in female sports competitions. So I wanted to ask what you think about this topic and you know, where does it go from here with these kinds of policies?
Laura Dodsworth (37:12):
Mm, well, it's been quite hot topic in the UK for several years because the conservative government proposed to reform the gender a recognition act, which would mean that somebody would change their gender just on self identification. They wouldn't need to go before a medical panel or have a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. They certainly wouldn't need to embark on any kind of medical treatments. And there have been concerns that that would impact single sex spaces and single sex rights and the most obvious examples of sport. Like your you're just saying with Leah Thomas also prisons, we have had a transgender male sexually assault women in a, in a woman's prison here in England. But also, you know, this, this issue with the NHS is just arisen and it's kind of incredible really because the NHS waiting list has gone from 4.2, 4 million, the outset of the pandemic to 6.1 million in January, 2022.
Laura Dodsworth (38:04):
So the NHS has got some big problems on its hands and with the hidden backlog, that's going to grow millions more that's people who avoided elective outpatients or elective procedures. So it was just astonishing to find out that thanks to advice from the society of radiographers that some hospital trusts are asking everybody man, or woman, if they could be pregnant before they have cancer treatment or scans involve radio. Now, obviously it's essential to protect unborn babies from radiography. You know, patient safety is paramount, but it's normally quite obvious whether somebody could be pregnant or not based upon their sex. And there will be times when it's not in the case of say a pregnant trans man, but these case are quite rare. And you would think that in those cases, a question might suffice or even referring to the patient notes. But in fact, the NHS doesn't record biological sex anymore.
Laura Dodsworth (39:06):
It records gender identity, and it could record both, but it's not it's recording gender identity. So it just seems incredible that where, you know, in the exact place where biological facts and data are really important, they're not being recorded. So my article was to draw attention to that. We've got the NHS asking very silly questions of elderly men, whether they're pregnant before they have an x-ray. And at the same time you know, journalists are asking politicians here, you know, what's a woman, what's a man because they hot topic and some of foundering unable to answer. So we've got the NHS asking silly question and politicians completely unable to answer them.
Ian Miller (40:00):
Yeah. I mean, do you think that this continues just to get worse as far as these, these kinds of obvi things that seem very obvious that don't make sense? Is that just gonna get worse or is it, do you think that there will be some pushback and get better?
Laura Dodsworth (40:14):
Oh, there's lots of pushback. And there has been, there has been here for a while. So I think ultimately truth always wins. Sometimes it just takes time, you know accommodating people's identity and rights is one thing, but denying biological reality is ultimately going to be futile. And you know, it's a bit like zero COVID, it's not, it's not gonna work long term. I don't think.
Ian Miller (40:44):
Hmm. I hope you're right. And so my last question for you is, is back to COVID because, you know, what else are we gonna talk about at the end of the day so I just wanted to, to get your idea of the future of pandemic policy in the U. Okay. And, you know, specifically with COVID and or if they're a future pandemic. So, you know, I mean, do you think mass vaccine passports that they, that there's the political capital for them to come back there at some point? Or are they gone permanently and then, you know, down the road there's another pandemic or severe flu or something like that will lock downs become kind of a permanent feature now of societies.
Laura Dodsworth (41:18):
Yeah. I think there's a real danger that some people would exert muscle memory and want to go back into lockdown and also masks. And I just pray that the inquiry will be independent, will be robust and dispel any remaining ideas that they're scientifically proven. I think that the vaccine passport isn't going anywhere, it's just quiet at the moment because Saed, Jat made a speech at a digital transformation summit and he was talking about the NHS app and saying, it's been, you know, it was the most downloaded free iPhone app in England. And, and that would've been unthinkable just, you know, just a little while ago, couple of years ago now he said he wants to keep the momentum going. And he would like by March 20, 24 for 75% of adults to have the NHS app. So he actually said he wants the app to be life, not just for COVID now using the app as a way of interacting with the NHS.
Laura Dodsworth (42:28):
I remain to be convinced whether it's a good thing or a bad thing. I haven't looked at that. And it doesn't mean it's the same past sports being required for entry into civic, social and, and economic life, but it's not actually going away. There's clearly some plan to retain it. So I think that's something to be aware of. There is at the moment, a lot of bad press right now about some of the effects of the pandemic things, which, I mean, honestly, they're, they're kind of enraging. I, I barely have words to express how I feel about what's being done to children. You know, it's coming increasing that children have got social development and language issues from having been surrounded by masks in their early years. And not having had normal social interaction and not going to school. And I, I think this has been an explosion of drugs, bullying and depression among teenagers.
Laura Dodsworth (43:20):
You know, I have teenage sons and I've, I've seen this for myself. So there is gonna be more and more coverage, I think about the harms of lockdown. And I hope that will make people pause for thoughts in the future, but what we've seen kind of an ideological split in people where, you know, the difference between left and right left and white wing, isn't really the main thing anymore. It's about authoritarianism and, and Liberty. And we've seen, there are a lot of people who want to lean into that sort of strong on government into the government, making decisions for them and into this authoritarian response. And that is, that is still what frightens me. It frightens me. It frightens me when I wrote the book and, and it frightens me now.
Ian Miller (44:02):
Yeah, well, hopefully you know, the, the inquiry and another kind of pushback will hope get, get these policies out of the, the public view of as being acceptable. You know, we gotta stop thinking of them as something that could even be tolerated at any point. Cuz like you say, the harms are tremendous Lu Laura, thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate all of your input and everybody you can follow Laura on SubT stack, Laura dot SubT stack. The book is called a state of fear, how the UK government weaponized fear during the COVID 19 pandemic you can also follow follow Laura on Twitter at at bear reality. And again, and thank you so much Laura for doing this. This was great.
Laura Dodsworth (44:39):
Oh, it's an absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me.

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Episode 18: David Zweig, Author and Frequent Contributor to New York Magazine, The Atlantic and The New York Times
12 apr 2022· Unmasked
David Zweig, author of the book "Invisibles" and frequent contributor to The Atlantic, New York Magazine, The New York Times, Wired and many others, joins the show to discuss his fantastic work on school masking, CDC flaws and how experts and politicians make decisions
A collection of David’s work is available through his website and his upcoming book on schools during the pandemic will be released next year. You can follow him on Twitter and Substack as well.
His fantastic article on the CDC’s flawed justification for masking kids is available here.
**Unmasked: The Global Failure of COVID Mask Mandates is available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ianmsc.substack.com/subscribe
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Episode 16: Drew Holden, Commentary Writer and Maker of Threads on Media Hypocrisy and the COVID Policy Communication Failures
28 mrt 2022· Unmasked
Drew Holden, who does more than almost anyone on Twitter to hold pundits, media members and news organizations accountable for intellectual hypocrisy and inconsistency, joins the podcast to discuss the coverage of COVID, the failures of government communication and his favorite examples of the media’s rush to judgment.
Follow Drew on Twitter and check out a list of his articles here.
***Unmasked: The Global Failure of COVID Mask Mandates is available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble***
Past episodes of the Podcast are available here on Substack, or also available on Spotify or Apple Podcasts
Full transcript is below:
Ian Miller:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the unasked podcast. We have a very special guest today drew Holden, who is a a maker of threads and, and defender of intellectual consistency in those threads. He's also a freelance commentary writer who is written for a lot of major publications, New York times, Washington post Federalist Fox news, et cetera. So welcome drew. Thanks so much for doing this,
Drew Holden:
Ian. Pleasure's mine, sir. I appreciate you having me on.
Ian Miller:
Yeah. so I wanted to ask, and you might have answered this previously, but I'm curious what, what got you started making these threads? They're so, you know, brilliantly simple, but incredibly important. And to me, especially, what was it that made you start putting these together?
Drew Holden:
Well, I, I appreciate that. So the first time I remember the, that I ever put together a thread was it was, it was back around the time when general Soleimani, the, the Iranian general was killed. And the reason I had put it together was because I, I remember the coverage and I looked at a lot of it and I was like, man, this is, this is weird. And I don't know that we always get these honorifics for for, for these sorts of titles, but who knows, maybe, maybe there's some new trend where we're trying to be nicer to people when, when they die. So wash forward a couple weeks and Don, I miss the bomb throwing radio host, who famously made a, a racist comment about the Rutgers women's basketball team back probably about a decade ago. So he passed away a couple weeks later and just got slammed his obituaries, the, the headlines across all his corporate press were just really trashing this guy hours after he had died.
Drew Holden:
And I saw them and I was like, you know, I, I get it. People had issues with, I miss. Obviously he made some, some really indefensible comments, but there's no way on any sort of moral playing field. Is he worse than a guy who is the leader of a terrorist organization, right. Who has, who has an enormous amount of innocent blood on his hands? And so I went through for a bunch of different outlets and I posted the two side by side and I didn't even, I didn't think I even said anything, right. There was no real analysis. It was just the pictures. And I looked at them and they jumped off the page to me. And I was like, whatever, I'm, I'm gonna string six or seven of these together and see if folks like it. And you know, I got, I had a pretty good response. And then I started thinking about it and I was like, man, there's, there's definitely a lot to say here, and I should figure out how to do that. And then from that, that kind of moment, the, the thread, the at least as a concept was born. And then I've had to tinker and refine a little bit on the format to, to try and get the point across a little bit better. And I'm, I'm sure I'm still learning too.
Ian Miller:
Hmm. Do you have a, a favorite example of an issue? I mean, obviously that one kind of jumped out at you, but what, you know, after you started making them has been going down through this, through the process, was there something that came up where you're like, oh, this is, this is it. This is gonna be perfect. I've already got, I know, I already know the examples are coming for this one.
Drew Holden:
Yeah. So this, I think the one that, that comes to mind, it's not so much the side by side, but it's the the takes that were preposterous in the moment. And people didn't realize that until they saw the light a day, a little bit later. And it was the, the coverage around Michael Anot, I think was really, you know, what I end up doing is when, whenever I see something that just doesn't pass the sniff test for me, I end up going through and taking a whole bunch of screenshots. Sometimes they pan and, you know, whatever, whatever I thought was gonna happen happened, sometimes they don't, sometimes it's not close enough. And so they just kind of sit in, in my phone forever. But I remember during the heyday of Michael Ave, when CNN was speculating about what his primary strategy was going to be as a potential democratic nominee for president 2020, I was watching.
Drew Holden:
And I was like, man, the fever on this is, is just unbelievable. And eventually all of these people are going to regret these just really preposterous takes about Anot, not just in terms of his political future, but in terms of his intellect and his savvy and his morality and everything else. And I, I remember I just, I kept collecting and collecting and then, you know, the, the trial started and I was like, well, eventually these I think are gonna have to come back around. And so that, that to me was probably the most egregious example of, you know, the, during the Trump era. I think there were a lot of people who were made in the heroes for really no conceivable reason other than they were in opposition to Trump. But I think he was probably the most dramatic now in, in hindsight where I think he's in prison now. Right. Or if he's gone through his whole trial, yet he, he is either in or headed to prison.
Ian Miller:
Right. Yeah. You hit on a, a very important point though, which I think has become increasingly relevant over the past couple years with the, with the pandemic as well, which I I'll get into it later a bit. But so speaking of COVID, I, you know, I wanted to get your, you know, everybody comes out from a different, different point of view and, and so I was kind of curious what your initial reaction was to it. Were you concerned about COVID? Were you, what did you think of the policies lockdowns, all of that stuff as it rolled out?
Drew Holden:
Yeah. Good question. Good question. So I think when it first happened, I, I was pretty much your standard 20 something living a blue city who was, was definitely concerned and was handling the ambiguity of it as something where we should have a, a strong and urgent response. So, in retrospect, I remember, I think I put, I posted something on Facebook that I, I ended up coming to regret that that was about how all we need to do is, is just be quiet and trust the experts on this one. And so my knee jerk first couple of days, first couple weeks were, were very much that. And I remember part of that was, you know, my my, my girlfriend works on Capitol hill and she had gotten sick in the first couple of weeks. And we were like, oh, I mean, I'm sure it's not connected at all, but who knows maybe.
Drew Holden:
And then it turned out that, you know, the district she was working in was one of the first that that had cases. And so she might have been, you know, one of, one of the first cases here in DC of, of COVID. And so my first thought was, eh, you know, if it, if it's maybe already here, we should really kind of clamp down and, and be, and be, and be cautious with this. And I think that probably for the first week, week and a half, I, I stuck to that. And then that started eroding. I think, you know, when I, when I look back and I try and think through how I would've done it differently, I think I probably just wouldn't, I wouldn't have responded with a a level of fear that was inconsistent with what we knew at the time. And I think the time I really did do that is that I really, I really kind of jumped and got spooked and scared and, and was calling for policies that have had really, you know, calamitous long-term impacts. I certainly wasn't, wasn't I think pushing too hard on them early on. But I think I, I wasn't, I wasn't as clear out as some other folks were right outta the gate.
Ian Miller:
Well, don't blame yourself too much because just by, by saying that you've already exceeded the, how everybody that you you know, post on your, your Twitter threads, what they're willing to say about anything that they ever post on the internet, but that's fair. And, and also to be fair, you know, the world health organization initially was saying that like three and a half percent of people that got COVID were gonna die. So, you know, I think the expectations were, you know, wildly overstated early on by, by the experts and yep. But it did, it did influence opinion. Speaking of early days of COVID you, your pin tweet is still about the origins of, of COVID in, in Wuhan from a couple years ago. It, to me at this point, I, I mean, it, it feels pretty obvious. It's very likely it came from the lab. So, you know, why do you think so many of the media have been kind of desperate to avoid coming to terms with that or, or have been unwilling to examine that at all?
Drew Holden:
Yeah, that's a good question. So, yeah, I've been thinking a lot about this one lately, cuz there was a new, I think maybe two studies in pre-print that came out recently that claims to fully debunk the lab league hypothesis, which, which just isn't true. And so to me, there's, there's a few factors. I think one is, you know, when it first came up, there was enormous resistance to the idea because the people who were suggesting it were the media's bad guys. And so it was Donald Trump, it was Tom cotton, it was Republicans. It was, you know, the, the, the people who the corporate press saw as not just the fringe, but kind of morally compromised, right? You've got all of these people who are GNED up with these racist or at least racialized intonations who are, are concerned about this thing and China and cleanliness and all of these things that aren't quite fair.
Drew Holden:
And so I think that that that's cast a really, really long shadow and it led the media to be very deliberately one way about the, that they talked about the potential for the lab league and I think Fauci and the CDC and other people too. And you eventually, eventually the fever broke a little bit. Right. I remember to me, one of the really big breakthrough moments was I think it was in January of, of, of 2021. There's a piece in the new Yorker about why the lab leak theory was plausible. Not that it was right, not making the case, that it was more believable than the, than the the, the wet market theory, but just this is plausible there. The, the hypothesis here at least holds some water. And to that was the first time that I can remember at least where there was a, a corporate mainstream press outlet that was even willing to give voice to it.
Drew Holden:
And then you saw things change pretty quickly. I think, thereafter where you had Fauci come out and say, yeah, you know, I'm not a hundred percent positive that it really was from the wet market. And you had a lot more outlets who at least starting to consider the idea that maybe this hypothesis is worth exploring. And then they hit, I think another set of headwinds where the researchers, particularly the researchers involved realize that one of two things is gonna happen either. They're gonna really go to the mat and say, this isn't plausible. Even if it might be, or they're gonna have government prying around in things that one government probably doesn't understand and two will make their jobs and lives more difficult. You know, if you, if you look at these two new studies they're by people who do a lot of call it cutting edge medical and biological research.
Drew Holden:
And if the government starts imposing restrictions, even in good faith, even if they're the right things to do, which I certainly think that they are, it's gonna make these people's lives and research a lot more difficult and probably cut off access and resources in China. And so that's the last thing they wanna have happen. And so you see these new studies come back around that are pushing back on the loudly hypothesis. And then of course the media, cuz this is confirming everything that they've thought all along is more than willing to run with those ones and not anything that, that cuts counter to the narrative.
Ian Miller:
Yeah. There's a lot of great points in there. It speaks to the, the power of media that all it took was one piece by an established outlet and all of a sudden that kind of Overton window shifted. And but also it, it, it brings up a, a, a hypothetical that I've thought about a lot and have asked people a lot you know, would the response have been different if we had a different president in Marshall, 20, 20, you know, would, what would the media's real action have been? How would that have changed? Do you think?
Drew Holden:
Yeah, that's a good question. You know, there's, there's a part of me that wants to think that if it, if it weren't Trump and it was someone that the media thought was more reasonable, then we could have had a more open and honest conversation about the potential for the lab league. Like there's, there's a part of me a, a little bit a wet behind the ears part of me, but there's a part of me that wants to believe that the that's true, but to be honest with Eden, I think what what's probably more likely is that if we had a president who felt more beholden to China than, than Donald Trump did, which I think is anyone else who might have been president quite frankly including more of the like kind of core participant, more traditional Republicans, then I think they probably would've had the same MIS that most of the voices in the media had about the lab league that even talking about it was kind of racist and we should, like China got hit so hard.
Drew Holden:
It couldn't possibly be their fault, right? The morality in all of that is, is, is complicated. If you're not even like, if you, if you are not of the opinion that the lab league theory is relatively probable, which I think most people in good faith are, but like, let's, let's say it's something new to you. I think it's really easy to cast off and say, oh yeah, it's racism. It's xenophobia. It's, you know, this, that, and the other thing. And so I, unfortunately I think what probably would've happened is no one would've been giving it voice at all. People who would've been giving it voice wouldn't have had the same kind of a microphone. And so there wouldn't have been that dialogue. And I think it, in some ways, having the leader of the free world come out and push on this thing, even if he didn't do it particularly articulately, it forced people to kind of take up sides on the issue. And in a lot of cases, I think it, it forced a lot of people on the left corporate press and otherwise to, to make themselves seem a little bit foolish by trying to, trying to write off this possibility that was eminently plausible by saying, no, no, no. If Trump is pushing it, it's gotta be off the walls. And so I think that as a result of that, we've actually had a lot more valuable and good dialogue around this thing. Again, even if Trump wasn't exactly coming in understanding any stuff,
Ian Miller:
That's very interesting. I that's, that's a really unique answer. I haven't heard anybody say that the trumping president actually helped something in, in this, in the pandemic though. Yeah.
Drew Holden:
I'm skeptical. Like there's a part of me that even as I say that I'm like, is that really true? But like it is right. I'm I, I'm very rare accused of giving Trump too much credit. And, and, but I, I, I think that in this case, it actually, again, not, not because he was playing some 14 dimensional chess or anything, but I do think the way that he handled it probably benefited everyone.
Ian Miller:
Interesting. so I write a lot about masks and, and I've been curious to see what you think and, and, you know, what did you think of the mask minute's when it started rolling out, because obviously you, you Chronicle a lot of these kind of intellectual inconsistencies and, and then you have the experts saying everybody needs to wear a mask after all these statements saying, oh, you're an idiot for wearing one early on in the pandemic,
Drew Holden:
Right? Yeah, exactly. And like, so I, I think as a result of that, because I spend so much time kind of nose, nose down and media, and I saw all those early takes, I was already a little bit skeptical, I think, of, of masks and whether or not they made sense. I live in DC at, at, you know, by the time that masks really started taking off, it had started to get warm. And so I think just from a comfort perspective, I was definitely definitely opposed the idea that from, from very, very early on, but I remember seeing those, you know, the, the original that of people like the surgeon general saying don't buy masks and Fauci saying, don't buy masks then coming around and saying, well, we said, we only said that because we wanted you to behave a certain way. And that I think triggered, you know, had my, my hairs a little bit on end of maybe we're not getting the full range of information here.
Drew Holden:
And if we're gonna require everyone change their behavior and if they don't be punished by the government, then like the, the bar should be decently high. And I would think that if masks were, were helpful and beneficial, we never would've had this back and forth. Right. You wouldn't have outlets like VX coming out and saying that masks don't make sense. The, the way that they did early on in the pandemic. And you saw a lot of outlets in the corporate press, or, you know, just outright left wing outlets saying, no, no, no, this mask thing, it doesn't make any sense either as a Dick to Trump or because they had just familiarized theirself with the information and it didn't really hold a lot of water. And so I think for me, I was, I, I came out of it skeptical of the idea that these, these things actually helped and made sense willing and open to the idea that maybe that they maybe they do. But I think I was a little bit skeptical right. From the jump on them.
Ian Miller:
Hmm. Yeah. And what's interesting is they, they said that, oh, it's about protecting supply, but privately, and that we found out later in the buzz feed emails, Fauci was telling people, you know, individual people, February of 20, 20, oh, you don't need to wear a mask. So, you know, I think it's pretty clear. He was, that was a, a, a post hoc justification for what they were saying. Exactly. Yeah, yeah,
Drew Holden:
Exactly. And when, you know, when you have leading you're right. It would've been one thing if all along, they said, Hey, we can't have a run on these things. So don't, don't worry about them right now. We're still not what their benefit will be. We're not sure that there's gonna be mandates or anything like that. So yeah, don't sweat it for now. We'll figure it out, down the road, if they had done that and then come out strongly in favor of math, then I think maybe I would've, I would've been a little bit less resistant to go along with it, but the fact that they, so adamantly came out and say, look, these things don't make any sense. BA you know, based on the particle sizes, they're, they're not really gonna do you a whole lot of good. And we're not sure that anything is even gonna work outdoors, you know, as soon as I, I heard that, and then I saw the tune change 180 degrees. You, I, I thought to myself pretty quickly, like whenever, whenever you have to get this quickly into the behavioral modification element of government origin, it's not, it's not encouraging that they have the facts on their side.
Ian Miller:
Yeah. It really has felt like COVID has kind of exacerbated the kind of tendencies of politicians and authority figures to engage in the kind of like hypocrisy and rush to judgment. That's, that's been prevalent that you Chronicle so well. Is that, is that fair assessment, do you think that's accurate?
Drew Holden:
Yeah. Yeah. UN unfortunately, I, I do. I do think that's really accurate, you know, I think some of it is it's, it's a little bit of, of the, the Trump era in miniature, where whenever something is, is on fire or of concern or off the tensions, get ramped up on these things. And I think you have people who aren't aren't, aren't quite as worried about intellectual consistency as I tend to be. And so that, that's, that's just a natural, a natural side effect of this. But I think part of it too, in Fauci, really, to me, has been kind of the spitting image of one is as soon as you start trying to play your guidance based on what you expect, the response to it will be, you really start rather than what's true. I think you really, really can trip up extremely quickly because you're not thinking about the facts and it's, it's, it's the same idea of, if you tell, you know, if you tell one lie, it's harder to tell a whole bunch more lies, cuz not only do you have to worry about whether the thing you're saying in the moment makes sense.
Drew Holden:
You have to be looking backward at least somewhat to make sure that you're not contradicting yourself. And I think that that, that that's that kind of second set of eyes of, oh no. Did I say the other thing last week? It just never clicked in and at some point I really do think that that folks like Fauci just stopped caring, right? They, they had, they had lost the confidence of so many people. We're looking at a public health system that has, has just seen its public approval, absolutely crater. And so I think when you know that you, you are losing the number of people who are buying the thing that you're saying, it be a lot easier to, to lean into the things that maybe in the moment would be really helpful if you could get at least some people to believe them. And that's obviously not particularly good when you're worried about actual public health outcomes.
Ian Miller:
Right. That's a good point. So you know, my, my personal view is that over time, the media really helped kind of the paper over how poorly the predictions and all these kind of dramatic assertions and Fauci statements and kind of contradictions as you brought up, how well they aged over time. I blatantly ripped off your style and did a long thread last year after Texas lifted their mask mandate, you know, it was, it's like 25 things of, of experts and politicians and cetera and nothing happened, cases went down. So, you know, media is supposed to be the first to kind of question authority at least theoretically, but they never seem to do that with COVID. So why is that
Drew Holden:
Right? You know, I, I think that's a really good way to put it, you know, because the one thing that I, that I could at least pat the media on the back for during the Trump years is, is they were dogged in their criticism of the most powerful person on earth. Right. And I, I did like that. I think there were times where it was unfair, but I'd much rather they, they missed in that direction. But you know, one of the things that I, that, that I think has really been exposed from COVID is that, you know, people like me and plenty of others, and I know you do too. Talk a lot about the, the kind of media group think and conformity, and the fact that the people who tend to become reporters and journalists overwhelmingly have a certain set of values and world view and everything else.
Drew Holden:
And so I think that that's always problematic. It's always a challenge for the media. Certainly during the election of Trump, it was a big challenge for the media. But I actually think that COVID is probably the most acute challenge where that group think is really what gets mired and kind of bogged down because you've got a whole bunch of people who, even if they're somewhat conservative, they're educational attainment and, and, and income and familial income and all these other different kind of variables, point them in a direction of seeing the world in a particular way, which is pro mandate pro-government control pro everything else. And I think it made it really, really hard for them to look back and say, actually, this is the government doing a bad thing, as opposed to, well, we need the government to step in cuz no one else is willing to, to do this thing.
Drew Holden:
And so since it was kind of cloaked in that fuzzy paternal sort of we're, we're just here to help because there's no one else to help. Then the media, almost one, they, they, I think they were overly willing obviously to believe that. But I think to them, it's like, well, duh, what else would we possibly want? And I, I can, I can never help with the think that maybe, you know, just maybe if we had 10% more conservative journalists, you would have at least one reporter in the newsroom who would be like, Hey, are we have we thought through what this is gonna look like in next months when all of these governors and mayors still have the same power and authority? Like, are, are we sure that's really something we're comfortable with, but we haven't, I think at any point had that. And I, I, I, I think unfortunately a lot of it is due to just the, the, the type of people who tend to be journalists.
Ian Miller:
Yeah. You hit on something. I think that's really a problematic going forward in just general life, which is these echo chambers. And it kind of gets consolidate even more in things like corporations now it's, you can see it's, it's affecting that. Right. So you work in communications a bit and obviously communications about COVID policy have been incredibly important and also extraordinarily bad, in my opinion, where you see things like the former CDC director saying mass are gonna provide better protection than vaccines, things like that. Yeah. So as somebody who does this professionally, what's that, what's that been like watching this unfold in the communication style?
Drew Holden:
Yeah. I mean, certainly frustrating is, is, is the, the first word that comes to mind. And, and I think it's, it's frustrating, not just cuz it's bad, but because it's avoidable, right? Like I, there was a really, really good piece early on in the pandemic that I think was a New York magazine that compared the crisis responses from Seattle and New York city to the pandemic and, and what they did, particularly from a communications perspective of how did they relay important public health information to the people who needed to know it. And I think one of the things that's really killed me throughout the them, but particularly coming out of New York with Cuomo and, and, and with other authorities is you saw time and time again, individuals over promising the amount of information and confidence that they had, or at least had a rights to have based on the limited information that we had.
Drew Holden:
And so one of the things that piece, I think explored really well as out in Seattle, they were, they were ground zero for cases, right. And so they knew and kind of put their hands up and they're like, look, we're gonna keep giving you the best of our information and we'll do that as long as we can, but we don't have much to go on right now. And in New York you saw a very different approach where you, you, one had way more confidence and two, the people who were communicating it were partisan actors, right? You add someone like an Andrew Cuomo get up there and tell people what it was, you know, what he thought the case was and what, what the situation on the ground was gonna be. And that's kind of, you know, from my understanding, that's basically a 1 0 1 thing that you don't do.
Drew Holden:
If you are a government that's communicating through a crisis, you don't want all of these issues refracted through the lens of politics. And you saw from, I, I think unfortunately eventually from you certainly, but from a lot of blue state governors, you, you had these two things get meshed. And I think some of that unfortunately was deliberate where there, they were appealing to their voters to say, look, you trust me, you care about people, you wise and seasoned Democrats, you need to do the right thing. And so for me, I think the, the really, really frustrating things you had that spirit of, of overconfidence and this kind of political calculation, very obviously undergirding so much of the communications that it was only a matter of time before they got something wrong and needlessly destroyed their credibility at a time where their credibility was incredibly important. And so that, to me, I think seeing that first happen and then snowball from the sidelines was, was unbelievably frustrating.
Ian Miller:
Yeah. That's a great point. Kind of relatedly, it, it seems like all of their mandates and, and, you know, the vaccine passports and things, it all went away at once. And like the last couple of weeks you know, there's been some polling data and PR advice that continue to come out, suggesting Democrats have gone too far with COVID measures. Obviously, you know, the kind of sideline Fauci he is not out there every week talking on the, the, the news shows. Yeah. so do you think that that, that kind of polling shift explains how quickly and dramatically everything changed?
Drew Holden:
Yeah. Yeah. You know, and I think I do the one other thing too, and it's probably on fair in terms of what its impact is, but, you know, I keep thinking that that time should at least nominate Stacy Abrams as, as person of, cause I, I do think a big part of it was that picture, right? That, that, that picture that she shared of her sitting crosslegged and masks in a sea of masked children. And I think that was so Vista a role for so many people and particularly so many parents who are unbelievably frustrated that within two or three weeks you saw mass mandates in schools. And then just in general too fall in places like in New York and California, that had really been some of the most oppressive in terms of their restrictions. I do think what it comes down to is mostly how, how ever and UN unfortunately is the polling.
Drew Holden:
You know, I think the, I think not just the, the loss of the governor's race in Virginia and then the close call, this is the one that I think it's overlooked too much, the close call in New Jersey, a reliably blue state. That really just by a couple, you know, a couple of fractions ended up going to a democratic incumbent over a, a little known Republican challenger. I think that caused a lot of Democrats to finally wake up and go from saying, eh, whatever, leave it to leave it to the states and people to decide to this is a five alarm fire for our party. And if we don't, if we don't do this soon enough, so that people have forgotten it by the time they're casting their, their Mailin ballots in a few months, then this could be CATA li. And so I think that they, they collectively took a hard look at that. They put out some new talking points, and then I would imagine there was a lot of really strong internal pressure on blue state governors to say, you gotta knock this off. And it should happen a long time ago. Right. I'm certainly glad with the outcome. But as, as you've written, there's, there was never compelling information to support these anyway. So it really is unfortunate that what took us getting to that point were some really awful poll numbers.
Ian Miller:
Yeah. It shows you how much of this is influenced by, by politics in a lot of ways. So kind of on the flip side of that, I you mentioned California, I live in Southern California. So, you know, the messaging here has, has definitely been that master almost certainly gonna come back, you know, whether that's in the fall or you get a new variant or whatever, the CDC even phrase it as, oh, we're gonna give people a break from asking this. So, you know, am I being too pessimistic to think that they will bring it back up? You know, the next time cases go up or after the midterms are over,
Drew Holden:
You know, that's a, that's a great question, Dean. And my, my thinking is that it's, it's gonna have to be state by state, whether there are different places that are more confident in the willingness of their population to subject themselves, to masks where you probably will see it come back. But, you know, getting, getting back to your political point. I, I do think a lot of this will have to do with when do case to spike and what do polling numbers look like and how can, what, what are, what are these, you know, these blue state governors, what do they think about what's, what's gonna happen come 20, 22? Cause if I'm, if I'm Gavin Newsom and I've just survived the recall election, I might be a little bit more confident in my ability to reimpose the mass mandate or just encourage cities and other localities to, to reimpose the mask mandate.
Drew Holden:
But man, you know, if I'm, if I'm a, a governor of a, of a purple state, you know, your, your Colorados or something. And I look at the polling of parents when it comes to masks and masks in schools, and I don't know if I'm willing to, and, and to me, and I, I'd be curious to get your take on this. The thing that I think is really complicating, a lot of this is the, the messaging on mask mandates in general versus mask mandates in schools. Right? And so to me there, it's, it's always been untenable that we would expect kids who are in the least high. They are the lowest risk when it comes to contracting and suffering severe consequences from or dying from COVID. It always seemed to me to be pretty untenable, that we would force them to wear masks in the long term.
Drew Holden:
But I'd be really curious what you think is gonna happen if that, if that switch does flip, because now those facts are all out there because when, when they pull the mask outta schools, a lot of 'em admitted that, right. They said the quiet part out loud around, around kids being pretty soon. And so what do you do now? Do you repo a mass mandate, but not in schools? Do you put the, the mass back on in schools and risk frustrating all of these parents who have already had it up to here with, with, with states and governments?
Ian Miller:
Yeah, that's a great question. I, I personally, my concern is that they are willing to risk it in large part due to the teachers unions where, you know, in Los Angeles, they lifted the mask mandate in schools, or I, I think they at least mostly did. And the teachers unions were furious and basically said, no, we want to keep it. You know, New York is still masking toddlers. It's the only age demographic in the whole city that required to wear masks or unbeliev ages, like two to four. Yeah. It's because exactly, it's unbelievable. So I don't know. I really, I would like to believe, like you said, they keep kind of destroying their own arguments after the restrictions lift, cuz they go, oh, well actually, you know, Leanna went on, CNN says ma cloth, master, facial decorations, you know, Washington post and mass mandate. It's never worked, but you still kinda have that, that, you know, I, I don't know. I'm concerned that cat is out of the bag as far as like people think that masks work and, and a lot of these specific demographics and it's go gonna be hard for them to give it up.
Drew Holden:
Yeah. That, that sounds right to hopefully I'm wrong. I think you make two really good points there. One or three really good points. Really one is just the power of the teachers unions. I think in, in places like LA and Chicago and New York where the teachers unions really have a ton of poll, then in some cases it doesn't matter, which is the second point that I think you, you kind of alluded to here, which is that there's a shamelessness about all of it where like, I wish the, I wish the hypocrisy mattered and I wish it would prevent people from doing something, but it, it just doesn't right. Like Dr. Le went is a, a great example where I think it was maybe a month, a month and a half apart. She went from saying that kids in schools needed to wear at least at least a three apply surgical quality mask in schools to their facial decorations.
Drew Holden:
Right. If, if you can have an expert flip the switch that quickly in terms of what she thinks schools should be doing, then like, yeah, you're right. The cat is out of the bag, but unfortunately, so many of these people don't care. And so the thing that compels them, I think to care is going to be those polling numbers. And, you know, I was, I was walking around DC, we got a little bit of snow early this week and I was walking the dog and I looked and I, I started counting at about 50% of the people outside on Saturday morning when I was walking, my dog were wearing masks outdoors while it was snowing. And it was like, you know, these maybe, maybe some of these people like they've, they, they just, they feel safe wearing these stupid things. And so they don't care.
Drew Holden:
Like if, if the mandate comes back, they're the they've, they've still got their masks cleaned and ready and washed sitting by the side of their, of, of, of their bed waiting to put them on as soon as they wake up in the morning. And so maybe bringing back the mandates, aren't gonna hurt them with those people. And so I think in some places, particularly in cities, maybe they do, and maybe it's because they don't think there's gonna be huge political repercussions, but I really do think it's some of those states, like the, the, the parents are done, right? Yeah. Like if you are, if you are a, a, a governor and a Virginia or, or a Colorado, or I, I wonder even a Michigan, if you're looking at this and you're like, man, I, unless I'm willing to lose 65% of the parent vote, then this ship is sailed.
Ian Miller:
Yeah. Sometimes it makes Florida seem seem very appealing when you think about these things coming back forever. So, you know, there's obviously other issues in the world other than COVID and, and you recently put together a, a great large threat on, on the Biden claims about energy production. You know, you could say this about most of the threats you do, but you know, these people do realize the internet exists. Right. I mean, it's, it seems like an especially greatest example of asking people to kind of ignore or forget reality.
Drew Holden:
Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I think so too. And, you know, as I, as I was putting it together, I, I started to think it, like, maybe this is just how gas prices is a political issue have always worked a little bit, right. Where like, this is, it's a, it's a famous can to kick on the, on the other side of the street, whenever there's someone else in office doing this. But, you know, I, I think one of, one of the reasons I wanted to pull together the thread, wasn't just that the way people had talked about, about gas prices at one time or another before and after, it really was about what Biden had done on energy production and how it was greeted. Right. You know, I was, I was reminded today about the, the secretary of energy, making some statements back about a year ago, about how fossil fuel companies need to get on board with a green transition.
Drew Holden:
Like the people seem to have forgotten in about a year's time that Biden and his, and, and the people around him, both on his campaign. And now that he's in office, this was a really important point where he took flack from both sides on the environmental issue. And he scored a lot of points with, with the greens, the environmentalist voters, everything else by saying, I'm gonna stick it to fossil fuels and legacy fuel sources. We're gonna be tough on these things in a way that other presidents haven't been, and he got all sorts of Plotts for this, when things were going at least. Okay. And now, as soon as things really take a turn, you see all of that kind of commentary get memory hold. And, and for me, it was so frustrating because you would think like, if you were someone who is a, even like, let's say you're a reporter, but you're committed to the environmental. Cause whatever, like your talking points should be the same. Even if gas prices go up. And it was so obvious that so many people were, were willing to very, very quickly abandon these principles and precepts that they purported to believe in. So as strongly a year ago that it, it, it really did gimme a sense of whiplash.
Ian Miller:
Yeah. that's a, that kind of is related to one of the other things I wanted to ask you about, which was our, our good friend, Jesse SMOT
Drew Holden:
Yeah, yeah.
Ian Miller:
That, that seems like a, a, a really perfect distillation of the rush to judgment that kind of turns out to be inaccurate. Right. Is, I mean, it's, it's just kind of, so sums up so much of what we've been kind of talking about, doesn't it?
Drew Holden:
Yeah, it does. It does. You know, now, now that I think about it, the, the better answer to the, an, the question you asked earlier about kind of the perfect distillation, it may not have been Ave. It might have been, it might have been small. It really you know, one of the things, one of my favorite kind of details that I think confirms enormous amount about the media from the Molet cases. And, and so CNN was one of the first outlets to break the Molet story. And one of the reasons they did is that they confirmed his account. They said in, in their reporting on it, and, you know, you know, how they had confirmed his, his account of what had happened.
Ian Miller:
I actually don't know this because
Drew Holden:
Don lemon friend of Jesse will talked to him and that was their confirmation that, that it had happened. And so you got like, to, to me, the, the, you know, the, the Jesse Case does a, does a few things. One I think it is really the, the perfect capture of the media's willingness to believe that something happened when it fits their priors and what could possibly fit their prior more neatly than a gay black man attacked by, by mega hat wearing Trump voters. Right. It's, it's, it's, it's so perfectly constructed to, to hit those priors that it allowed the media to overlook just preposterous things. I mean, I'm sure you've seen this, this, the Chappelle bit about this, where, you know, people really did believe, at least in the moment that there were, you know, the, the two chunkiest fans of the TV show empire who were just hiding out in Chicago at two in the morning when it was like negative 30 windchill and just happened to see him, right.
Drew Holden:
Like, I would love to know the ven diagram of people who voted for Trump and people who are such big fans of empire, that they could recognize small it out on the street, particularly in the middle of the night. Cause I don't, I don't think, I think those are two separate circles. And so it wasn't just, you know, the gets back, I think to a little bit of what we talked about with the COVID stuff. It wasn't just that they were willing to believe it it's that they were willing to ignore. So, so many potential inconsistencies to believe it and believe it with Gusto, right. When you look back at the coverage, one of the things that still, when I look back at it strikes me is how unbelievably and kind of shamelessly confident in the narrative corporate pressed mainstream outlets were, we're not talking about opinion, commentary people or opinion analysis. This was supposedly straight reporting from some of these places about what this, what this incident said about Trump and Trump voters. And so the ability to draw those kinds of over hyped conclusions in general should be problematic. But the fact that they did it based on a hoax really does, I think, capture so much of what so many people are frustrated about, about the modern media.
Ian Miller:
Yeah. It reminds me of the the Lincoln project stunt in Virginia with the oh yeah. Just exactly the same thing. They just kind of immediately buy into something that it never made any sense and is completely unrealistic, but it fits the narrative. Yeah,
Drew Holden:
Exactly, exactly. And like, look, obviously mullet knew it was gonna fit the narrative. Right. You don't, you don't go out and hoax a hate crime if you didn't think anyone's gonna believe you. Yeah. And so to, to me, there's a little bit of, there has to be at least a smidgen of self-awareness on these sorts of things where they were the mark, right? Like the, the, the people who ended up defending him to the death were the mark all along and they got taken for a ride. And, you know, I remember I, I went back and saw there's, there's a tweet from like a CNN talking head guy. Keith, what was a Keith Pointon I think is his name. And he, he came out like a week or maybe two weeks after all this blew up and tried to dunk on people who questioned whether or not small was, was like entitled to his, you know, a, a, a fair day in court or something because the, because Chicago had temporarily dropped some of the charges against him. Right. Cuz he's like friends with Kim Fox or whatever all it was. Yeah. And remember I saw that and I was like, how, like what, how blinkered does your reality have to be where you think this is your opportunity? Not just to be vindicated, but to dunk on your opponents because you think you've been momentarily vindicated.
Ian Miller:
Yeah, exactly. And that kind of is related to, I just a couple more questions for you. And that's kind of related to one of the ones that I wanted to get your idea just broadly, you know, like where are we heading with all of this? It it's, you know, fact checks are often completely ridiculous. You have, like you said, CNN verifying the reporting by talking to one of the reporters and, and similarly with the Cuomo situations with them you know, people can kind of ignore reality and get away with it. I, I, the Nicholas Sandman story. Yep. So is this just what life is going to be like going forward? Is there any hope for that to ever kind of go back to normal?
Drew Holden:
You know, it's a, it's a great question. This is probably the one question in kind of like American life that I spend the most time thinking about. And I, I think I'm kind of, of two of mines. There's a, the opt optimist in me that wants to say that the Trump years, so ridiculous with some of this reporting and the things that they bought on and like, you know, the Russian collusion hoax and everything else that surely by now, the fever has broken trust in the media is at an all time low. And they have to be able to just look in the mirror at this point as their industry repeatedly contracts. And no one is watching them anymore and say, Ugh maybe we were wrong on this and that there has to be some correction if they wanna survive. And so that's, that's the optimist in me.
Drew Holden:
Unfortunately I think the side that probably wins out, usually when I have this argument with myself is, is the opposite case where I, I think unfortunately the incentives in media are really, really bad if your goal is telling the truth, which is an unfortunate fact, I think between social media and the fact that all of these places make a ton of their, their revenue from ads and clicks and views, and that none of those things are necessarily tied to building trust with their audiences. Right. And so to me, my worry is that their, the, the, the media ship is sinking for a lot of those reasons, plus cuz of the group think, but that no one really individually has much in the way of an incentive to change or stop that. And so what we're probably gonna see, I think is you'll see these trends continue and amplify and speed up.
Drew Holden:
And I think, you know, if, if Donald Trump runs for office in 2024, forget it everything's out the window, it's gonna get a thousand. But, but I think even like everything else kind of staying as it is, let's say we get a normal nominee in 20, 24 and things could conceivably or should at least calm down. I, I, I don't think they do because you, you know, you look at places like MSNBC or like the Bryan SELs of the world, their audiences are a tiny, tiny fraction of what they were in the Trump heyday. And I think that they've been designed over the last couple of years to chase those clicks and chase those views. And the only way they know how to do that, even if it's unsuccessful is by cranking up the volume to, to a, a decibel level that is inconsistent with reality.
Ian Miller:
Mm. Yeah. I as a somebody pessimistic person myself, I tend to agree with you, so hopefully we're wrong, but I, yeah, I,
Drew Holden:
I hope, I, I hope beyond hope that I'm wrong. Right. And I do tend to be an optimist about, about this and most things, but ah, I, I, I unfortunately don't see this ship writing itself anytime soon.
Ian Miller:
Yeah. So that's, that's kind of related to my last question, which is a little bit more of more fun. You feature all a lot of the same people in your threads. I mean, are queen Jennifer Ruben, for example. So do, do you have, have a favorite? Is there somebody you're just like, I gotta, as soon as some major event happens, I gotta go to their feed. I know they're gonna have just the, the hottest take in the world right now.
Drew Holden:
That's a, that's a great question. Yeah, I mean, it's, I wish I could come up with one. I, I, I wish it were true that there was like a, a deep cut take of someone who was just super reliably wrong and super interesting who could outdo Jennifer Ruben. But, but there just isn't. I mean, like if you need, like if I had to make my perfect arch nemesis in a lab, it would come out as Jennifer Ruben, like it, I don't think I would change a single detail. And so, you know, there, there are a lot of other people who are kind of in that cloth, right. Of those former Republicans, the max boot types, who I think are, are good and reliable for, for producing something ridiculous. But to me, what really sets Ruben apart in at least in the Biden years is just the shameless pandering. Like she is truly willing at one point with Ruben, it was, she was willing to say something today. That was the antithesis of what she believed three or four years ago, but now it's week to week. I mean, whatever, whatever the political goal is, she'll, she'll spout the talking points and that just creates such perfect fodder for what I'm looking to do on Twitter. That, that she can't be top. She, she simply can't be topped
Ian Miller:
It's it's, it's amazing and hilarious.
Drew Holden:
Yes, it is.
Ian Miller:
Thank you so much drew for doing this. Please, everybody go follow drew on Twitter. If you're not already, which you should be it's drew Holden 360, it's it? I mean, legitimately you're probably my favorite person, individual person on Twitter. So thank, thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it.
Drew Holden:
Pledge is mind. I, I really appreciate you having me on it's a blast of conversation.

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Episode 15: Phil Kerpen on School Masking, the CDC and Dr. Fauci
17 mrt 2022· Unmasked
Phil Kerpen goes into detail on the problems with listening to CDC guidance, the disastrous Fauci and Birx lockdowns, and the possibilities of indefinite masking in certain parts of the country.
Follow Phil on Twitter.
Ian Miller: (00:27)Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the unasked podcast. We've got a special guest today, Phil Kerpen the president of American commitment principal at the committee to unleash prosperity frequent Fox news contributor, and, and also a CDC critic. So we'll we'll get into that. Welcome to the show, Phil. Thanks so much for doing this.Phil Kerpen: (00:47)Hey, Ian, my pleasure. Great to be with you.Ian Miller: (00:49)Yeah. so I wanted to start with kind of where we we've started a lot with these conversations, which is, you know, what were your initial thoughts about COVID where you immediately skeptical about, I mean, how severe it was any of the policies we were doing or were you concerned, you know, what was, what was your response?Phil Kerpen: (01:08)Well, you know, I thought the it's interesting. I thought the most striking feature of the early data out of China was the extreme age skew in all of the data. And, you know, I remember telling my kids in like January and February of 2020, this really doesn't affect kids. It's nothing you have to worry about. It's not gonna ha have any effect on you. And of course I was incorrect only because of the way it was mediated by bad government policies. But you know, it became pretty clear pretty early on that the policy response was going to be, you know, catastrophically off course poorly targeted, poorly designed that it was being politicized in an extremely destructive way. And so, you know, normally I work on kind of economic issues, taxes, spending, regulation, that kind of stuff, but it was kind of obvious that all the usual stuff they care about was about to become largely irrelevant because we didn't have government, you know, forcibly shutting down people's businesses and schools and kind of destroying their lives. And so I've been on kind of this two year detour trying to fight all of this stuff and unfortunately with a lot less success than I would've liked, especially when Trump administration was in. Cause I had a lot of pretty good ties there and for the most part, they, they didn't listen to much of what I have to say. Unfortunately,Ian Miller: (02:33)That is, it's funny. You mentioned that, cause that was my next question for you. So you know, obviously you have a lot of contact with politicians and, and especially in the Trump white house early on. So what do you think, what is your opinion or, or what was your sense of what was going on inside the Trump white house with regards to COVID policy? Did they kind of unquestionably accept the, the Fauci Burke's lockdowns or was there concern that these would have other impacts or, you know, what, what did you think their sense was early on of what the policies were gonna do?Phil Kerpen: (03:03)Well, you know, I think the first of all, they had a team that was very poorly designed for dealing with this virus. And, and this has continued to this, to this very day, but I mean, they had people whose experience and expertise really was from fighting HIV and just a completely different type of virus, you know, for, for a sexually transmitted infection, you can actually do contact tracing and it has some value even, even for that, it it's you know, limited, but it has some value for a highly infectious respiratory virus it's completely absurd. And yet they took kind of this whole mentality, this whole model. And I think that the Burkes hire was kind of the key bad hire of the Trump administration because they took this, this sort of paradigm that really didn't fit at all. And they tried to use that as the foundation of everything that came after.Phil Kerpen: (03:55)And I actually think that Trump had some reasonably good instincts fairly early on. You might own, remember when he said, you know, everything's gonna open again by Easter, it's gonna be the greatest Easter ever. And he certainly had some people in the white house for, from sort of the more economic policy side that I think kind of got how incredibly destructive lockdowns were particularly Larry Kudlow at the national economic council. But you know, the president you know, president Trump was very susceptible to public opinion, an expert opinion. And he had cable news on all the time. And I just think that the onslaught was enough that it kind of got to him. He said, you know, I'm gonna get killed if I go outta my own and sort of disregard my own so-called experts. And you know, I don't, it goes against my and instincts, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna go with them. And I think that's essentially what he did.Ian Miller: (04:45)Yeah. And it's interesting because, and it it's related to something I wanted to ask you about as well. Was there anything that they, that he could have done to avoid the kind of media criticism? I, it feels like it was a no win situation for him because if it, if they just kept everything open and it never lockdowns never fought listen to Fauci or Burkes, they would've been crucified in the media, but they did lock downs. And, and obviously there was mask recommendations pretty early on and they still got crucified by the media. So, you know, was there anything they could have done that wouldn't have been criticized?Phil Kerpen: (05:17)No, I don't think so. I mean, I think that the, you know, the, the, the truck Trump was on track to be reelected. I think when COVID came along and the, you know, the entire establishment to a certain extent of both parties really disliked president Trump. And, you know, I think that this was their opportunity to disrupt him, to defeat him and you know, the anything he did would have been wrong in catastrophic and he would've been attacked for it. And, and given that reality you know, he should have done what was actually substantively, correct. He should have been concerned about the reaction, which was gonna inevitably be negative. And, you know, I, the other problem is, you know, when nobody kind of thought that a job like CDC director mattered. Okay. And if he had thought the job had been important, I think he would've hired someone much more competent.Phil Kerpen: (06:08)And you, so it's been same thing for surgeon general. So you have these jobs that are sort of afterthought kind of backwater type jobs in the hundreds of appointment that a president has to make. You know, he probably gave it 10 seconds of thought. But then once you're in sort of a crisis mode, now, if you fire someone, then that's a big, it's a big story that you fired them, even though maybe you hadn't even given much thought to hiring them in the first place. And so I think he was sort of a little bit just felt, felt a little bit constrained. And the other thing is, you know, he put the vice president in charge of that task force. And you know, I think vice president Pence did a really bad job of, you know, criticizing any of the inputs that he was being given.Phil Kerpen: (06:52)And so, you know, there's a lot of blame to go around. Ultimately, I think that you know, look, we would've had something pretty similar if the president had come out and said, we're, we're not shutting anything down, it's not worth it. We've gotta keep society functioning. We've gotta avoid panic. The blue states and cities still would've shut down. Yeah. And the mid states and cities for the most part would not have. And so you, you know, you, would've kind of, I think you would've ended up where you were by, you know, April or may from the big beginning, essentially. But I don't think it would've been that much different in terms of the way it played out.Ian Miller: (07:24)Yeah. do you think that that the Trump white house that they realized pretty early on that Fauci was gonna be kind of, I, I don't know the lack of a better word, an enemy in terms of, of the response from them, because he was gonna be kind of this, he are gonna become the, the Saint that the, for the left or for the media that to look to and become the kind of counterpoint to Trump. Do you think they realize thatPhil Kerpen: (07:50)I think they probably understood that by, you know, mid February or something like that. But you know, they, they, I think made a calculation that if you fire him well, you know, then, you know, you'd rather have him on the inside of the tent, I guess peeing out or, or, you know I don't know the right metaphor, but basically look, if they fired him, then he's even more powerful ubiquitous media figure. And he's expressly against them all the time. Whereas if you keep him on, he's gotta walk a little bit of a tightrope of supporting his administration and that kind thing. And they may have been actually correct in that assessment. I'm not sure that they actually had the ability to stop him from being what he was even if they had fired him.Ian Miller: (08:32)Hmm, interesting. Hypothetical to think about what do you think was behind the early flip flop on masking from the CDC and, and Fauci and others? I mean, obviously it's, it's a question we may never get a great answer to, but just from your own sense, if, if you had any conversations with people, what do you think was behind that, that initial recommendation change?Phil Kerpen: (08:54)Well, I think there were a few things going on. First of all, there was a very there was a major global effort going on to upend the science up to that point based on political activism and advocacy. And yet the guy Jeremy Howard, out of Australia with his masks for all, and the fake studies they were pushing. And so the, this wasn't a us specific phenomenon. This happened basically everywhere, except the Nordic countries, which for whatever reason, don't fall, right. Of this kind of political influence operation. But it happened almost everywhere in the world around that time. So it's hard to say that it was something specific to what was happening even in the us or in the Trump administration, cuz it happened kind of everywhere all at once. And I think that, you know, at, at least to me and I wasn't really against it when it was done, which is kind of my one huge regret.Phil Kerpen: (09:40)Not that it would've necessarily mattered what I had said at that point, but you know, I think that the logic of it at least to me, and I think to a lot of others who who otherwise might have fought it, but allowed it to kind of go and, and I think the thinking was we got all these irrationally scared people who are sort of sidelined from a functioning society. And if you don't somehow get them out of their houses and back to work and you know, back to sort of engaging in the world, then this is, there's just no bottom to how catastrophic this is gonna be. And so, you know, if these idiots think that a piece of fabric on their face is enough to sway their irrational fears, then you know, we'll do that for a little bit. It'll be kind of obvious to everyone that it's not really doing anything.Phil Kerpen: (10:23)So it won't last that long, but it'll, it'll get people away from being like hold up in their basements and afraid. And it'll kinda start returning things to normal, I think was the logic. At least the reason I was okay with it at that time. And of course that was catastrophically incorrect. You know, I, I dunno how, how, how much more wrong something could ever be. So, you know, people sometimes ask, what did you get wrong about COVID? And I said, you know, I thought the mess would help things get back to normal. And they wouldn't last very long would be kind of obviously ridiculous. Even for schools, I was kinda like, Hey, whatever, if you get the schools old open, it'll be obvious to everyone. They're not doing anything, kids aren't gonna wear them. It won't last long. And so I, I really got that wrong.Phil Kerpen: (11:04)But I think that the main motivation for the political decision makers, at least, I mean, I guess some of the science people actually believed that, you know, decades of science were wrong and a mask somehow does stop you know, respiratory virus. But I think the logic for kind of the political and executive level decision makers was kind of look, we gotta do something to end this lockdown and this fear cycle and get people back out and about. And it was, it was a little bit misguided. But I think that was the logic.Ian Miller: (11:37)Got it. Yeah. In theory it makes some sense. Obviously in practice, it's, it's one of those things where you, you know, you take an, give an inch and they take a mile where it's, it's just become an endless cycle of, of masking. But so you've, you've astutely repeatedly pointed out that CDC guidance is, is often completely absurd and, and just com out outdated, outdated entirely. But you know, like for example, they still haven't updated their Zika virus guidance. Yeah,Phil Kerpen: (12:04)This is very important. And, and any of your listeners, this is very, very important. Any of your listeners who think it's very important to follow hello, CDC guidance scrupulously should be aware that basically the entire United States is in the purple zone for Zika and therefore, therefore among other recommendations that are very important. If you and your wife have sex any time during pregnancy, you need to use a condom. Very important. See the CDC I I've been trying to I've been trying to ask when they might think it's safe to lift that, but I never did reply, but that is an effectIan Miller: (12:48)It's, it's mind boggling. Isn't, it's, it's incredible hard to believe. So that was, I wanted to ask you, you, what, what's their problem? Why is there like this? Can it be fixed or is the organization just so broken that it's impossible to repair it?Phil Kerpen: (13:01)Well, look, I mean, I think the, if the CDC is some dumb government entity that people kind of mostly ignore and they put like dumb recommendations out okay, fine, whatever, let that exist. It's a waste of billions of dollars, but okay. If people actually take their recommendations, their guidance and transform them into binding mandates that disrupt people's lives indefinitely, then we have a big problem. And so I, I think that the problem is not necessarily that guidance exists because they've got lots of dumb guidance on law of things COVID being kind of the least of it. The problem is that somehow for COVID and only for COVID, we've got a lot of government entities, federal, state, and local that think if CDC recommends something, they ought to mandate that thing.Ian Miller: (13:51)Yeah. That's the big distinction that politicians are really incapable of making. And and, and so that is related to my next question for you, which was, you know, my concern is that this, this guidance and this new obsession with following CDC guidance is designed to kind of continue indefinite masking. You know, you, you recently just did this transcription basically of what Rachel Wilkis speech where she's basically implied I'd, didn't get a cold, so masks work andPhil Kerpen: (14:18)Right, right, right. Which is, you know, the head of our August scientific organization, the CDC is suggesting that maybe healthcare workers should be masked literally forever because haha I haven't had cold in two years, which by the way, she's mostly zooming into work. I mean my another reason she might not have had a cold. I mean, I, I, I don't, you know, you almost have to laugh to not cry and I am really worried. I, I think we're finally ending school masking most places, although certainly not here in DC anytime soon. Yeah. But the majority of the country but I see no short term end to the healthcare sector, which is a huge, huge problem. Healthcare workers being subject to, and by the way, I think a lot of the reason this is totally speculative, but I think a lot of the reasons so many healthcare workers are claiming that they're so overworked and all overwhelmed even though volumes are objectively lower than normal and have been throughout the pandemic is they're wearing masks all day and they don't wanna admit that that's a problem.Phil Kerpen: (15:20)But I think that is a problem for them. I think it's part of why they've been so grumpy and angry all the time about everything. So I'm worried about the healthcare. I'm worried about the healthcare workers that it becomes and institutionalized and permanent essentially. Not least to which, because the CDC director seemed to say that last week that that's something she wants because she hasn't had a cold in two years. Yeah. But you know, I also worry if we don't, if we don't force the masks to admit they were wrong, then this is gonna become an annual ritual in blue areas. You know, every winter, when we get into respiratory season, they're gonna bring it back and say, we know it works and that'll be the extent of their evidence presentation.Ian Miller: (16:02)Yeah. well, that's, I, my, my question is really, is this going to continue until there's a new president? Obviously you get directly a new CDC director, but at that point, does it even matter because the guidance has now been out there and it'll be seen as a, a political move that a new CDC director under a new president that maybe from a different party, for example, would make a different recommendation. You know, is it, is it too late now? The cat's out of the bag?Phil Kerpen: (16:28)Yeah. I mean, I don't think the CDC under, I think if you get Republican president and the CDC director says, oh, mass, you know, we put in Jay aria or somebody you know, smart to run the CDC and they say it was all a big mistake. It never worked. The evidence never supported it. I mean, I don't see DC or Los Angeles or San Francisco or New York caring. Do you? I mean, no,Ian Miller: (16:53)ButPhil Kerpen: (16:53)They'll say, they'll say no, no, no. We believe in the real science, which is Rochelle Wilensky. And I don't, you know, not that they ever really had, you know, they'll say we believe in the fakers from the old CDC and there will be. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, maybe we'll get, maybe we'll get some, you know, I, I was one of the most disappointing things that we've seen is how corrupt a lot of the scientific researchers have been. Because if you know, there was that big, big study that was done in Bangladesh by this guy, Jason Avalo and a bunch of his collaborators. And if they had just presented the data with a conventional presentation, it clearly would've been a Noll outcome. And instead they published with this to twisted contorted econometric model where they, they hid the ball. They didn't even say anywhere in their paper that the total difference across 300 villages between mass and unasked was 20 cases.Phil Kerpen: (17:46)And two months they didn't even the number 20 doesn't appear anywhere in their paper. It had to be dug out of the dataset by a professor from Berkeley in Ben rec. And they, they just, they twisted and contorted and they got these headlines everywhere saying that it proved masking works. You know, the biggest study that's been done that clearly demonstrated that there was no impact and they twisted their own results to lie about it. And, you know, I, if researchers are so bent on producing a certain result, regardless of what their own data shows, then it's really hard for us to ever, you know, for us to ever get any of these people to admit they were wrong. I mean, there's a woman from brown university, a professor named Emily Oster who started collecting data last year on school masking. And she had a very good data set and it showed that there was no impact.Phil Kerpen: (18:32)In fact, there were slightly higher cases in the mass schools and the unask schools. And then governor DeSantis quoted her findings, quoted her data. And of course the media, you know, they all start calling Rob and she said, oh no, I love masks. Everyone should mask. He shouldn't have used my study. So yet people actually running away from their own data data from their own conclusions just to be part of, kind of the, this, this herd, this masks you know, this political masking movement, whatever you want to call it. And when people have that kind of level of commitment to something where, you know, their own, data's not gonna matter because the conclusion has to be what they want it to be for whatever their policy end of politics, ideology, whatever you want to call it. It's, you know, those people are never gonna change their tune.Phil Kerpen: (19:17)And so you can replace 'em in most places with people who are not gonna do something so destructive and stupid, the problem is in the bluest places where you're just never gonna replace them. There's no OB end to any of this. And so I, that, that's, that's the challenge. I think we're gonna have, we're gonna be in a state we're a couple of years from now. I think all of this is gonna be totally forgotten in most places, but in the most liberal places, they're gonna be bringing it back every year, still indefinitely. Just because it they've you know, they've set themselves on a path where they can't, don't really escape from that. Their own base wants it. And, you know, liberal cities are, are one party jurisdictions.Ian Miller: (20:00)Yeah. It's, it's terrifying to think about that. I think I, I think you're right. I hope you're not right, but I think you're right. I,Phil Kerpen: (20:06)I'm not right tooIan Miller: (20:07)Living in one of those areas myself, as I know you do, it is it is definitely infuriating even think about that possibility, but you brought up the Bangladesh study, which I think is a great example of, of one of the things I wanted to ask you about, which was how bad these, these studies are. The CDC studies, the, the researcher studies you know, there's, there was one that just came out that I know we've been talking about with the the county level data where they classified certain counties as not having a mandate when they did or pairing ridiculous counties all across the country. So, you know, why are they so bad at this? If it worked, it should be so easy to show it instead of doing these ridiculous pairings. Right.Phil Kerpen: (20:47)Well, that's the thing. Okay. So, you know, you, if you, if you just aggregate, you take the counties from that study and you, you just aggregate them and you compare the mask to the unasked you see, there's no, there's no difference at all, other than a timing effect, the ones that masked earlier peaked earlier, which just tells you that mask mandates were put in around the peak, because you know, the other ones, mostly all put in masks also around their peak and just later in the study period. And so, you know, if you sync these county, you know, if you pair them, however, your pairing method is, and you sync 'em so that the you know, the mask mandate ones are the ones that peaked earlier then you'll, you know, you'll have the decline of those paired with the you know, the rise of the other ones you can say, oh, it worked, you know, the, so it's a totally spurious result.Phil Kerpen: (21:30)It's the, the outcome is a residue of the design of the study. It doesn't tell you anything about what mask mandates actually did. And but somehow the, the main guy is like on Twitter, acting extremely earnest while people, clown him, which I find endlessly entertaining. But you know, the, the, your point is exactly right. If they had a substantial effect, which is what we keep being told in the media, and they say, you know, CDC says it's one of the most effective, but you would not have to have these tortured twisted methods to try to find some effect. If the effect size weren't tiny, it would be obvious. And, you know, a lot of people attack you for your charts and say, you're not adjusting for all the various confounders and so on and so forth. But, you know, if the effect were anything other than tiny, then you wouldn't need to do that.Phil Kerpen: (22:20)Then it would be obvious. It would be clear. You would see an inflection point when it's put in. And so, you know, we, it it's it to, to me, it's extremely clear that the effect of masking is somewhere between zero and very, very small. And so you can have this sort of academic debate, you know, is it zero or non zero, but if it's non zero, it's so small as to be essentially irrelevant, it's negligible, it's overwhelmed by a million other factors. And so the effect size is so time that talking about whether it's statistically significant, totally misses the point.Ian Miller: (22:55)Yeah. That's, it's a great point. And, and I, it's not, I brought that up myself many times where, you know, the, it, there's so many demonstrable harms to this, especially with schools that it has to be an overwhelming amount of, of difference to be worth the trade offs. And, and that's obvious if we, if that was possible, we would've seen it by now OB, and obviously we haven't, but,Phil Kerpen: (23:16)But not to mention Ian, almost everyone got COVID.Ian Miller: (23:18)Yeah. Right. Exactly.Phil Kerpen: (23:20)So it's like, you know, it's pretty obvious this stuff didn't work. Cause almost everyone got COVID and you know, like, so really what was it all for? I mean, I guess pro-vaccine, you could say, well, yeah, everyone's gonna get it, but we're gonnas slow it down. They'll get it later when there's a vaccine. If they'll, I, I don't know what it is now.Ian Miller: (23:36)Yeah, exactly. And obviously, so I just mentioned school masking it's, it's been an incredibly important issue for you as it has been for, for so many people and rough. So teachers unions have just completely bought into this and, you know, we, we see our good friend, Randy bringing up how important the guide important the guidance will be going forward in assessing masks and when they should be implemented in schools can this be salvage at this point? Can you, can you pass legislation to band school masking? You know, what can we do?Phil Kerpen: (24:03)Yeah. Some states are doing that. Virginia notably did it, despite Democrats controlling the state Senate, which I thought was a big deal. Of course, Florida has done at Iowa. I think Utah so some states have done that. The interestingly, the governor of North Carolina veto to bill. So we'll see if there are enough vote to, to override as veto, but I think, you know, your only meaningful, long term protection against them bringing the mask back is to have legislation that enshrines a parental, right. To yeah. You know, opt out of any mask mandate. And you know, we've only got a handful of states that have done that so far. And I, I worry a little bit that a lot of places will say, oh, it's over. We don't need to worry about that anymore. It actually, when, when there's very, very little COVID and people are sort of in retreat is the time you wanna put sort of permanent protections in because it's gonna be much harder to put them in.Phil Kerpen: (24:55)If the panic ramps back up again, at some point you wanna have those legal protections in place so that you can rely on them when you need them. You know, the teachers you need. It's interesting. I assume the, that most of the decision makers are smart enough to know the masks don't do anything, especially, you know, cuz their teachers all saw, you know, people got COVID anyway. I mean they saw it didn't but I, I think they must perceive that there's a disciplinary or a social control benefit that it makes children more docile, something I don't, I, I would like to understand more what their true motivations are because I don't really get why they're so intent on keeping these things in as long as possible. I mean the Seattle teachers union, I don't know if you saw the letter, they just put out a couple days ago, the Seattle teachers union is totally against removing masks before May 1st at the earliest.Phil Kerpen: (25:45)And that's because masks are necessary for us sense of normalcy for the students according to, and they actually wrote this in a letter. I, I, I, you know, when, when people are making arguments that are so blatantly, contrary to reality, you have to wonder what their motivations actually are. And I don't have a good handle on what it is other than maybe they wanna bargain it back for more money or, you know, they think that somehow it controls. I, I don't know. I don't know what it's really about. I I'm sure some of them really believe it, but a lot of them have to know better by now and there must be some other motivation, but I, I have trouble figuring out what it might be.Ian Miller: (26:21)Yeah. I posted just a, a tweet the other day basically saying, you know, LA county teachers union is, is fighting mass New York be still masking toddlers, et cetera. Somebody replied to me and said, you know, LA county teachers unions, when, and when opening schools, their demands were to something like defund the police and yeah.Phil Kerpen: (26:38)Yeah. It'sIan Miller: (26:39)Just, it's, it's hard to believe how, how blatantly political these, these groups have become with no apparent pushback. But that, that is something I wanted to get your, your sense of is will people realize now how important local governance is? Will, will they get up there, speak out vote out the bills who have kind of perpetrated these policies or will people just kind of forget of further, we get away from March, 2020?Phil Kerpen: (27:06)You know, I think the the local level backlashes are enormous and, and it's not. And that we have even seen in blue airs. I mean, they fired three school board members in San Francisco. Of course, you know, the problem is the mayor gets their replacements. I don't know how much better the replacements are gonna be. But you know, I think that we saw just unbelievable revolt in New Jersey, in New Jersey. My favorite one was in New Jersey where a 19 year old kid got elected to school board on a platform of those guys ruined my senior year, which I, which I enjoyed. Yeah. You know, I, I think that Phil Kerpen: (27:45)There is a, there is a broad understanding among parents in particular and with, with some exceptions in the most insane liberal areas, but there's a broad understanding among parents in particular, that children were really badly harmed by the policy response for, for no reason that there was, they, they, they had nothing to show for, especially after this winter where so many kids got COVID anyway, and it was a minor, nothing thing. And they said, what did we do all that for two years to prevent this thing? It was a minor, nothing thing. And I think that there's gonna continue to be a massive backlash. I think that what we saw in the places that at school board elections last year we'll see a continuation of this year in a, in a pretty massive way. And that manifests itself differently in different areas, of course, because, you know, there's some places where you know, you're gonna have maybe slightly less crazy people in the democratic primary or something like that in areas that are one party areas, but you're gonna have a lot of places that don't usually elector Republicans that will and you're gonna have a lot of places that, you know, the incumbents always get real elected where they won't.Phil Kerpen: (28:48)And so I think you're gonna see a lot of turnover on school boards. And I think that's probably a good thing. The, it is gonna be a bit of a challenge. I need a lot of inexperienced people in and they're going to need help, I think to, to do a good job in those roles beyond kinda like, you know, we're not doing COVID so of anymore, you know, I'm hoping we can get some broader improvements in educational policy and curriculum and a lot of the other things and what I would really, what, what I really think has been kind of the silver lining in terms of the, the COVID schools disaster is we've also seen a huge increase in school choice laws passing all over the country. And to me, this is a better solution than trying to fix the public schools is just let people take their money and go especially in more liberal areas, if you could get, you know, statewide school choice legislation in where people can take their tax dollars and go somewhere that fits them better, they're gonna have a much better chance of finding a place that's, you know, more ideologically consistent with what they wanna see and more focused on education and less on left wing politics and so forth.Phil Kerpen: (29:55)And so to me, escape from the public schools is probably a better route in some these cities than trying to fix them. And so we especially, we've got blue cities in red states. I think that's possible blue cities and blue states. It's not for obvious reasons. You know, that's kind of the, the hardest challenge to deal with. But I, I do think that I do think there are a lot of people that never, would've gone to a school board meeting in their whole life that went to a whole bunch of them and yelled a whole lot and are gonna stay engaged. Now.Ian Miller: (30:29)I certainly hope so, obviously it's, it's made it clear how important these things are that, you saidPhil Kerpen: (30:36)One of the point on that, you know, the other thing is when a lot of parents kind of had no sense of how crazy the curriculum one was until they started watching it on zoom at home. And so, you know, there's a, there are, there are concerns that go way beyond just, you know, the COVID protocols per se, to like, you know, why are they teed? Why are they telling my son he's a racist because he is white and that kind of stuff. And so there are all these sort of broader concerns that have been brought to the forefront now, because you know, parents were essentially in the classroom cause the classroom became their house.Ian Miller: (31:04)Hmm. Yeah. That's a good point. And it's something I, I wouldn't have considered, I don't have kids. So that, yeah, that's a good point. And, and it, it brings up that, that idea of what you were saying earlier about how the CDC appointments were jobs that nobody thought about for more than 10 seconds. It's like a lot of these things nobody thinks about cuz it was not in front in their house, as you say. So yeah. If there is one, one positive takeaway, I hope that is something that we can change going forward. But looking forward to the rest of this year, we have obviously with the midterms coming up there's a lot of expectation. That's gonna change Congress, the, the composition of Congress. Do you think that that would have a significant impact on policies going forward? Or is it just not gonna, because he, you know, Biden could veto new legislation or things like that?Phil Kerpen: (31:47)Well, you know, my I always prefer divided government in Washington because the vast majority of things, the vast majority of laws that are passed do more harm than good. And I think most Americans agree with that, which is why when we do give one party unified government, we usually have a corrective in the next election and we divide it again. And so I think it's gonna be a good thing. I mean, look, I mean, I think the the, the, just the catastrophic amount of spending just been shoveled out the door has really fueled inflation even before the energy problems and everything else that was going on. And just the trillions and trillions of dollars. I saw one report the, of the day that 400 billion of COVID checks was just lost to straight up fraud. And then maybe half of that went to China, which like funds their entire defense budget for a year.Phil Kerpen: (32:35)And we were just like anyone who said, oh, I can't work. COVID we were just sending 'em 600 bucks a week, like indefinitely. I mean, it was just the insane amount of money that was wasted. And you know, I think the, the nice thing about Republican Congress with the democratic president is they're not gonna pass more massive spending bills and, you know, more kind of giant, you know, do something government bills that are gonna mostly be wasteful and harmful. You know, that said, are they gonna be able to reverse things? Are they gonna be able to improve things sort of in a positive direction? That's much more difficult. And I don't know, I don't know the answer to that. I think it'll depend on the extent to which Biden feels a need to tack to the center. Of course, you know, the under are both Obama and Clinton, when we had the big backlash in the first midterm election, we then had a substantial moderation for the next two years.Phil Kerpen: (33:27)And we were actually able to do some things. We were able to do the budget control act under Obama. We were able to extend all the Bush tax cuts under Clinton. We were able to do welfare reform. And so, you know, if Biden follows that pattern and kind of moves to the center, then, you know, I think we will be able to do some things to kind of restore some, some sanity and, you know, I hope, you know, kind of pair back some emergency power, some of, some of this stuff doesn't recur and that kind of thing. If he decides he's gonna disregard it Congress and not worry so much about his reelection, but just go all out with abusing regulatory power and continue to push things, then, you know, may maybe we don't. I mean, it's hard, it's hard to say. Because you know, normally in a first term presidency, you get that moderation cuz they wanna be reelected, but given how old Biden is and that he may not be the preferred candidate, his party, anyway, this may be more like a second term where that doesn't happen. So I it's a big open question. I don't know, but it's worth it. I think to have a big sort of Republican takeover landslide year, I think is highly beneficial if only because it restores gridlock, which is generally a good thing in Washington.Ian Miller: (34:41)So it, it's obviously very early and as you just mentioned, this could be kind of an irrelevant concept going forward because we don't know what the situation is gonna be like with Biden. You know, obviously it's he was just mentioning the, how important the Iranian resistance to vitamin Putin is. And then he, you mentioned how vitamin Putin was gonna invade Russia. So, you know, we, we Don well, how he's gonna make it into 22, he's gonna make it to 20, 24, but it, it, what's your sense of the political field that would oppose him. And, and do you have an ideal ticket to kind of go up against a potential Biden reelection?Phil Kerpen: (35:14)Well, you know, I think that if president Trump runs, he, he can't be beaten in a Republican primary and he would not, not be my preferred candidate for a number of reasons, but, you know, I just thanked the the, the number of committed supporters he has is too large to be defeated in a primary. And he couldn't be defeated last time with a lot of, you know, with basically the whole field against them. And so I think if Trump wins, he'll be the nominee and we'll have, you know, either rematch against Biden or maybe against Hillary, which some people are floating or, you know, but, but very likely two very, very old guys who had bad COVID records essentially is what that rematch would be. I'm hoping that he doesn't run I'm hop. This is that he's floating it to stay relevant and important and influential, but he, he won't actually think it's worth the you know, the headaches and everything that goes with that very difficult job.Phil Kerpen: (36:07)And, you know, if he doesn't run then the field opens pretty wide and there are probably 10 people who want to run. And, you know, I think that the clear front runner, assuming he gets reelect it this year as governor would be governor DeSantis who has I think the best record on COVID of any big state governor. And you, you could argue maybe of any governor, but there there's some small state ones that never locked down and stuff like that, that you might, you might quibble, but I think he's so knowledgeable and articulate on all of the issues, but especially on everything that went wrong with COVID that I think that that would be ideal for us to have kind of, to force the national conversation and reckoning that we wanna have, because if he could make the campaign largely about that and be reelected, then I think it would sort of resolve the don't do it again, don't repeat it every year thing, you know, assuming that we're still in that cycle at that point.Phil Kerpen: (36:59)And so I, yeah, I think, you know, he would, he would be my preferred candidate because of, of, you know, the issues he'd bring to bear and what it would represent. But, you know, I think there are a lot of other good potential candidates. I thought, you know, I thought Kim Reynolds did a very good job in her state of the union response, for instance you know, I think that you know, a lot of people talk about Pompeo because of his foreign policy experience. And he actually was a pretty, pretty solid member of Congress as well. So there's a pretty long list, you know, as long as it's not one of the blue state Republican lockdown artists like Charlie baker or or you know, Larry Hogan or someone like that who wouldn't have much of a chance with Republican primary electorate. Anyway, I think we, we should have a pretty, pretty good candidate you know, to kind of carry, you know, some of the points that we wanna make.Ian Miller: (37:50)Yeah, I, I hope so. I just had a couple more questions for you and, and one just kind of a broad, broader societal question, which was just, have you been by how many people have been willing to tolerate these measures for two years? Has that surprised you at all? Or was this kind of expected that people would go along as soon as the fear kind of got rolled out early on?Phil Kerpen: (38:12)Well I didn't think people would tolerate, you know, I, I got this wrong. I thought that people would kind of say, yeah, okay, enough, we'll move on. And, and instead I, what happened is, you know, the, the COVID restrictions became part of the political identity of the left and, you know, therefore you had no logical endpoint in the more liberal areas. And, you know, if a mask is, you know, like a liberal equivalent of a mega hat, you know, why would you stop wearing it unless you've become a Republican? Right? So it, it, you know, the, the political identity issues make it very difficult to, to find an exit. And you know, maybe, and I'm hoping that the CDC kind of calling off the dogs will help in that regard, but, you know, they could always talk a lot back on. So that's not really you know, you don't know how permanent that is, but it's I look, I, I didn't think this would last two years and now I really do worry. Look, I, I, this could last 10 years or forever in healthcare context. I mean, how many places of lift masks in healthcare settings? Any, I, I don't know.Ian Miller: (39:23)I don't know either. I, I assume they must, it must be zero. I'm not sure. I don't know if, if FloridaPhil Kerpen: (39:29)Healthcare worker's just gonna tell are they, I, I don't. And by the way, like, just as a normal person, I don't wanna go to a doc when they're requiring masks, because it's like, how do I take medical advice from somebody who thinks that a freaking piece of cotton stops sub microparticle? Like, I can't take your medical advice.Ian Miller: (39:44)Right. Well, well, that, that's one of the things that I think have, has been very surprising to me is how poorly doctors have done during all of this with, with how they've just, most of 'em have completely one in line. And, and it's like, again, if you guys were, you're the, you're the medical experts, where were you for a hundred years recommending masks for, to stop respiratory viruses? How many millions of people have died over the last a hundred years? Because we've had flu pandemics and, and flu seasons every year. And you, none of you have been recommending masks. And I don't, I don't never got an answer to that question. What, what's the end there?Phil Kerpen: (40:17)The, the science changed,Ian Miller: (40:19)The sci, the science changed, but it's just physics. That was, that was one I just saw recently where I think it was Joseph Allen, who was like, oh, it's just physics that masks were, if it was just physics, what, where again, where were you if I go back and search through your tweetsPhil Kerpen: (40:31)From, yeah, he's one of the worst, Allen's one of the worst. I mean you know, the a and Oster and Gandhi you know, they drive me up a wall because they pretended to be on our side and sort of like defined the safe opposite, sort of the controlled opposition, if you will. But whenever it mattered, they failed us. Right. Yeah. And so, you know, with friends like those, I mean, I actually think they were more destructive than just the outright I villains in some regards, you know, it's but yeah, I mean, look, I mean, they it's, first of all, none of these medical doctors have any relevant expertise on the physics of aerosol particles. They don't know anything about fluid dynamics. I mean, there was a, there was a, there was like a British engineering PhD who had some, I think it was in the Telegraph last summer at this thing about you, like doctors have this cartoonized view of the world, they don't understand the way things are. It's not a biomedical issue. How particles move through the air, you know, when it gets in the body, then it's their expertise until then they should like leave it to people who actually understand this stuff.Ian Miller: (41:32)Exactly. makes a lot of sense. So to end on slightly more positive note if there is some semblance of, of hope it's that I think at least my personal view is that it's clearly, they've, they've kind of sidelined Fauci. He's he's not on the news every, every minute of the day now which appears to showPhil Kerpen: (41:51)You see the article, our friend Jordan shale wrote on this.Ian Miller: (41:53)Oh yeah, absolutely shared it.Phil Kerpen: (41:55)One of the funniest things I've ever seen he's they got pouchy on like the most obscure, random YouTubes and like the, the local, the local news here in DC.Ian Miller: (42:05)Yeah, exactly. There was some random, far left podcast. It was, it was crazy. So it, it kind of, to me, it shows that they are aware of how polarizing and, and negative his he is and, and, and by extension, the restrictions are, so am I being too optimistic that it shows some, maybe some, some modicum of awareness here of how unpopular these measures have become?Phil Kerpen: (42:28)I think that the marching orders from the democratic pollsters and you a kind of political brain trust is keep all of this stuff on ice through the election. And so we've got, you know, it's, it's March now we've got till November, the next eight months, it's basically gonna be held in check. But, you know, I, I really think that unless they're forced to admit that it was never justified and it was a mistake and it was wrong, then you, you get it back again in the fall and winter, they get through that election and they say, okay, great. You know, our base wants it. And, you know, we're safely reelected and, you know, masks on.Ian Miller: (43:04)Yeah. I, I certainly hope not, but I, I have fears that that could be exactly what happens. Anyway, thank you so much, Phil, for, for joining the show. Thanks for doing this. You all fill on Twitter at Kapin, which you should, because there's you share just so much great information and with a lot of humor, which I always appreciate. So thank you again for doing this, Phil.Phil Kerpen: (43:26)All right. Have a good one, Ian.

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Episode 14: Adam Creighton, Washington Correspondent for The Australian
8 mrt 2022· Unmasked
Adam Creighton, the Washington correspondent for The Australian and contributor to Sky News, discusses Australia's strict lockdowns and the long term policy implications, as well as the political climate in the US and his thoughts on the public opinion of COVID interventions.
Follow Adam on Twitter here and check out his work at The Australian here.
Listen to the Unmasked podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
The book “Unmasked: The Global Failure of COVID Mask Mandates” is available for purchase through Amazon and many other outlets.
Full transcript of the interview is below:
Ian Miller: Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of The Unmasked Podcast. We've got a special guest today. Adam Creighton, who's the Washington correspondent for the Australian and also contributor to Sky News Australia, which is very exciting, Adam, thank you so much for doing this.
Adam Creighton: Thanks very much for having me.
Ian Miller: Yeah, first of all, I wanted to say thank you for your wonderful review of my book. It's it's been really, really great to see all the positive response to it. It helped dramatically help to get the get it into Australia and kind of awareness of it down there, which I hugely appreciate. Yeah so thank you for that.
Adam Creighton: No, I hope lots of people read it. It was excellent.
Ian Miller: I appreciate it. So my first question for you was when when COVID first started you know this was back March 2020. What were your kind of initial thoughts and reactions to it? Were you skeptical of the policies we were putting in? Were you supportive of them and has there been any kind of adjustments or changes in your thinking overtime?
Adam Creighton: You know, certainly at the start I was actually very scared about the whole thing going back to March 2020 because I knew a bit of history. I knew about the Spanish flu. I knew how bad these things could be, and so I was kind of expecting the worst. I mean, I was so scared. I actually shifted my money out of a one of the smaller financial institutions that I was in and put it in a larger bank, but I was just worried about. You know what was gonna happen to the global economy? Uhm, of course, as it turned out, those those fears were, you know, were kind of ill founded at least as fast. As far as the virus went, and I guess because I was so concerned, I was checking everyday the publicly available statistics on worldometer and the various U.S. government websites, and it became pretty clear to me by the end of March at least, that we were massively overreacting to this thing, that there was a climate of hysteria. And I felt as though it was my responsibility as a journalist to point that out, but that was quite a risky move. But as I say, there was a climate of hysteria and it wasn't until the middle of April the 13th or 14th of April that I wrote in my weekly column in the Australian that we were over reacting to an unremarkable virus. And you can imagine how that went over. So because it really was that was kind of peak hysteria and I pointed out things like the number of deaths every year. You know, know, million odd every year that the numbers that the infection fatality ratios were likely very very low. Drawing on some of the work of John Ioannidis, very eminent professor in this field, and he made a lot of sense to me. So I you know, I quoted him. So yeah, so I, so I guess I changed my view pretty quickly and then I you know, I became a champion of that view really up until now and. In terms of how I changed my view at all, well, I mean I'm shocked how long this whole thing has gone on for I would never have, you know, never have thought that almost two years on would be talking about this. I think that's just extraordinary and I was wrong about the vaccines and how quickly that arrived. I guess I was skeptical based on history and based on. The conventional view that these vaccines would take many years to develop, but but as it as it turned out, they arrived much sooner and they appear to have had some effectiveness. Certainly in reducing illness. So I was wrong about that. But really, I haven't changed my view on anything else.
Ian Miller: Yeah, that's a great point. I remember thinking to myself that what's going to happen here. If it takes five years to develop these things, can't we can't keep doing this for five years, can we? But I think a lot of politicians kind of got bailed out by how quickly. They arrived and were able to kind of say, OK well that
Adam Creighton: Yes, exactly that's the shift could justify what they've done by that too. They could say, well, you know the lockdowns make sense because we were just waiting for the vaccines and you know there is some internal logic to that. Even though I still think the lockdowns were very wrong and a grievous assault on human rights which would never have happened. And of course you know barely effective anyway as you know, but right? But even if they were effective, you know, even if they did work, so to speak, I still think there'd be a good case that they're wrong, and I'd probably still argue that case. I mean, the fact is that they haven't worked and it's extremely embarrassing for for proponents of them to try to make a coherent empirical argument that they have.
Ian Miller: Yeah, absolutely. So I wanted to get your thoughts on the early on in the United States. I mean, you're Australian, but you live here in the US. You're Washington correspondent. So how much do you think the political climate of the US played into the kind of early on the policies of COVID during the first year or so? Kind of specifically, would masks and and kind of these symbols of taking COVID seriously have maintained the same level of level of importance if there had been a different president?
Adam Creighton: Yeah, look, it's a good question and I think the fact that Trump was president polarized the issue more because early on he expressed doubt about the effectiveness of lockdowns and masks. I know that I was actually living in Australia at the very start of it, but certainly the US is followed very closely in Australia. And we say back home, this thing called Trump Derangement syndrome. I assume it's a phrase here as well. But Oh yeah, it's kind of a joke that, you know, uh, lefties, vulnerable to this to this disease. And whenever Trump says something is good, they must say it's bad. And I think that was part of this extraordinary polarization that we have to. Champion these things that Trump. Didn't want and look it was in the UK as well and I know that's that's less of a focus in the US, but the Johnson government was in power too and. And Boris Johnson very early said similar things to Trump that look we should just not. You know, we should not overreact. These think must don't work. You know, lockdowns don't work. We don't want to do that. And of course, as you know, the British Government changed its tune in a few weeks. But but I think there was a similar phenomenon there as well, and so yes, to answer your question, yes, I think the US does play a huge role in how the Western world responds and also how they politically perceive the response as being a left or a right wing issue.
Ian Miller: It's very interesting, and so one question that I I just kind of comes. It came up to me a second ago. We asked a lot of people. I've asked a lot of people I've been asked myself, why do you think the shift happened so much with with Boris Johnson and and Trump and all these governments kind of going back on what they were saying about masks and lockdowns early on. What do you think were the underlying reasons behind it?
Adam Creighton: Yeah look, it's a really good question and we don't really know the answer. I mean, of course it was the Italian Government that was the 1st Western government to follow China down the lockdown path and as. As you will know, every pandemic plan that was written by a western country either explicitly ruled out lockdowns as insane or or did not mention them at all. Something happened in the middle of March 2020, second half of March when all Western governments did this, and I think it was. I think it's just basic political economy that. It's pretty cost less politically to introduce these lockdowns because. If you do it, you can't be blamed for not doing anything, and if everyone else is doing it, you can't be blamed for doing it so. It's just basic political calculus. I mean, of course that's kind of horrifying calculus for the general public, because it means they get subjected to the most awful rules just just for the political benefit of the leaders. But look, I think that's a lot to it. And also, there's of course the modeling that. That was produced by Imperial College. Neil Ferguson, famously predicting extraordinary numbers of death, millions of deaths within six months or so, which never never happened. It was the most ridiculous modeling, but that scared the world. I mean, it freaked the world out and and also it sent the media into paroxysms of hysteria and. And you know, basically scared the daylights out of the Western world. And I think I think if anyone is culpable for for all of the horrible things that have happened on the COVID front, I think you know you have to point to the media which I'm a member of. But the bulk of it was very hysterical and I think it scared people and then governments responded to that fear. Not many politicians in private completely agree with you and me on these issues. I mean, I've spoken to them, but they're incapable of saying saying that in public because, well, they can now more. But certainly a year or two ago they could not, because it could be held down.
Ian Miller: Yeah, Speaking of lockdowns and tough COVID policies, I obviously you you write for an Australian news outlet, you're Australian so I wanted to get your sense of what the public opinion in Australia has been like. Maybe over time with regards to you know what many see is a very draconian COVID policy in Australia. So has there been, has there been, you know, a lot of universal support near universal. Has there been any significant kind of pushback or or response to the policies there?
Adam Creighton: Well, at the first point to make is it's been very popular. He's very strict policies, kind of the whole time, really. I mean there's there's been some decline in popularity. I'd say over the past, you know, three to six months, as people just get sick of this, and I think more and more people realize that many of the measures are dubiously effective. But Australia's experience is really in two phases. I mean 2020. We pretty much missed COVID entirely, so there was the first six week lockdown that that are pretty much all Western cities had around the world. And we had those in Sydney, Melbourne, etc. But COVID never took off. There was a blip in the second half of in Victoria. Our second biggest state. Uhm where supposedly security guards slept with someone in quarantine that had COVID and then it escaped and got into the community and about 5:00 or people subsequently died over the next three or four months from COVID in Melbourne. And look, I don't know whether it was a security guard. Certainly that's what the media said, and that's what most people would say was the reason. But I mean, who really knows how the virus evolved there? But certainly that's what prompted the beginning of seven lockdowns in Vic. 7, right? It's kind of remarkable to even say so. They had viciously strict lockdowns, brutal, they even had curfews. I think. 9:00 PM at night you couldn't be outside. Or maybe it was. 10:00 PM I can't remember, but just unbelievable rules that really hadn't been seen. Anywhere else in the world. I don't think I then I'm gonna go in France and Spain had very strict lockdowns too, but there's certainly extremely strict following very few cases and the virus eventually fizzle out there, and then it wasn't until the middle of last year that it really took off pretty much everywhere in Australia, and that's when the rest of the world started taking notice of the, you know, the teargas, the massive protests which were occurring, the police, the helicopters screaming at people on the beach, the quarantine centers. Uh, you know it was. It was pretty extraordinary, and by that time I was living in the US and and I was just shocked by the whole thing. I mean, I was ashamed to actually. I was really ashamed as an Australian and how? Just crazy in hysterical response walls and just how stupid if you ask me. I mean, that's obviously my view, but just embarrassingly stupid when there was a wealth of data out there as you and I know that shows that these measures basically do very little at at best. Well look it was. Yeah, it's and they're still popular. That's that's the depressing thing. And and one of the lessons over the past two years is the extraordinary faith that people have in their governments. Not so much here. Maybe in the US, but certainly in Australia the obedience of people is just remarkable. And I think maybe partly explaining that buy in Australian history of governments have never really. Being seen as the enemy of the people like they have been in the US and other countries so so we don't have that, but nevertheless, just the extraordinary faith in what the government says and that the motives of the government are as pure as the snow. It's just. It's shocked me.
Ian Miller: So that's that was related to kind of my next question for you, and it sounds like you might have answered it, but I was going to ask. Have you been surprised by what the people in Australia have been willing to put up with in terms of this? Strict lockdowns interventions and not being able to travel between states, for example, but it sounds like you might not be surprised because it it might be kind of built into their to the psyche.
Adam Creighton: There is that accurate coming up, we've justified it now. Kind of after the fact by kind of referring to Australia's history as a former penal colony and always having very strict governments, some of our state governments were or except for a few exceptions, prisons. And you know, early on in the early 1800s had very strict rules about alcohol consumption and being outside because at that point they were, you know, largely dealing with prisoners or former prisoners. So that's that's in the psyche, I guess. As I said, there's a there's a general faith in the benevolence of government, because you know, Australia is a wealthy country. You know it's never had any revolutions or civil wars or anything like that. But nevertheless, yeah, look, I. I was surprised by the fact people were OK, for instance, with the Victorian police actually going inside a woman's out invading a woman's house. And arresting her for simply posting on a Facebook site that she was against lockdowns. Now that actually happened actually happened. That was like the second half of 2020. And it was a reminder of me at least, although as I've as I've probably indicated, not many Australians seem to care, but that there are no human rights in Australia whatsoever. I mean absolutely none. I mean, if the government decides just you know the state government decides that there's a so called emergency it can really do anything it wants, including invading peoples houses without warrants and. Arresting them for merely for typing something on a website? I mean, that's that's the extent of the power of Australia state governments. And that's been a real shock to me because our states are just like the US. In a sense, they were independent countries, more or less, with their own governors. And they answered to the British Crown, and they never had constitutions. And when Australia united as a country in the Commonwealth government, the federal government does have a constitution with some limitation on its powers. But the states that make it up do not. And I think that's that's been the real wakeup call for Australians who care about these things is that the state governments can do whatever they want.
Ian Miller: Interesting, so you mentioned a minute ago that that there's been a kind of a a big surge of infections and hospitalizations as well over the past few months. Have people there started to question the wisdom of the policy at all you know. Obviously Australians had extraordinary success rolling out the vaccines early on. It was slow, but now it's taking up where it's huge uptake there. It seemed like that was kind of their policy was was wait until the vaccination rates to try to prevent these increases, and unfortunately. Somehow the population still has these huge increases, so has there been any surprise about that there or any questioning of of the wisdom of the policy?
Adam Creighton: Look, not really a great deal of questioning the wisdom of the policy, and I think this is because throughout COVID, the restrictions have been so punishing on so many people that there's a real desire to think that they were the right thing to do, regardless of what the data says. And yes, it is. It is extraordinary look around the world, not just Australia. You look at countries like Israel and other highly vaccinated countries have had huge outbreaks in COVID. And even significant numbers of deaths. I mean Australia had most of its deaths. After like 90% of people vaccinated, I mean, it's that's not what you would have expected from first principles and but those facts really get an airing in the press, certainly not by the government. There's an extraordinary reluctance to criticize vaccines at all. You know, they're kind of considered almost like some sort of religious requirement, and you must kind of venerate them at all times, regardless of what the data says about them. And anyone who, even you know, dares to criticize it is going to be called an anti-vaxxer. So that so that creates a great deal of reluctance in the public space, at least to criticize the vaccines. And so yeah look. I mean, I think people know that there's been a wave of hospitalizations, but they still support these policies. By and large, you know, I guess you could say it's a level sort of national cognitive dissonance, but I don't think Australia is unique in that regard. I think a lot of countries have it to a greater or lesser extent. I mean certainly not parts of the United States where I think. That's it's been wonderful to see such a skepticism here. In some states, at least of these measures. But but yeah, I think cognitive dissonance nationally explains explains that in Australia.
Ian Miller: Yeah, so we gonna mention how the government doesn't necessarily provide all the information is, or at least part of the perspective. But one thing they have done and that I was kind of stunned to see, was at least in the Northern Territory in Australia. They made some very extraordinary statements about locking down unvaccinated people and all of the the language and rhetoric he used seemed seemed really kind of extreme. And so I was wondering, was there any pushback against him for saying that? And maintaining this, you know, lock down for the unvaccinated as a policy and from the outside at least it seems kind of upsetting that that this demonization of others, and we've done. We've done it here too. But this demonization of others has been tolerated or even encouraged.
Adam Creighton: Yes, look, it's a it's a sad insight into. Human nature, I think this kind of pile on to minorities which. In this case manifested itself. In the direction of the cycle unvaccinated, you know whatever that means given they wear out in four months. And so I mean, I don't really know what that means. But but yeah, it's it's depressing and you know, just specifically answer. No, there wasn't much of a pushback. I mean, you know mostly. That leader Michael Gunner, the leader of NT. You know he was just seen as as you know, making the tough decisions, so to speak. You know. And and at the end of the day, Australian politicians are extremely sensitive to public opinion because we have compulsory voting in Australia, everyone has to vote. So what the average person thinks or what the median person thinks. It's very important and they do all their their focus groups and their polling. So pretty much Australia's political leaders just say what they think everyone thinks. So the sad thing is that. Yeah, Michael Gunner said that because he thought that that would be popular in the NT and it was. And if you look at if you look down at Victoria where the premier Dan Andrews I mean he overall presided over the strictest and in my view. Most disastrous regime in Australia throughout you know, throughout the pandemic I mean I, I would say, is the greatest peacetime disaster in Australian history of Victoria. He is now, you know, his popularity is like 60% and his approval rating 60%. And there's going to be an election later this year and he's expected to easily win. So that gives you an idea of how popular these measures. You know has been and. And it's depressing that people cheer for for these sorts of measures. You know, like I say, it isn't insight into human nature and how fragile human rights and and classical liberalism are. I mean, people don't really care much for it. And I think it's been a wake up call that many people on the right of politics who have liked in the past. To imagine that they are the people's champion that they're, you know that they're kind of up against the elites, and they're arguing the case for the ordinary man. Well, the ordinary man for the past two years has cheered for massive restrictions, and the suspension of basic human rights. And and for cracking down on free speech, all of these things are the ordinary man has wanted. And that's quite sad. I mean, for me, it's a very. It's a very sad outcome of this whole thing.
Ian Miller: It absolutely is. It's a lot of great insights there. I think that you hit the nail on the head and it's very upsetting to see. And I think we've learned a lot. We've all learned a lot about this over the last couple of years. Maybe kind of changed some preconceived notions about who people actually are and how they think. So I wanted to get your thoughts on on what the end game is. For a lot of these policies in Australia, I mean you know a lot of the United States has has gone back to normal, at least temporarily. Are they going to kind of permanently reorganize their society around COVID policy, or will things really go back to you know, 2019 normal there?
Adam Creighton: Well look, I think 2019 is going to be some way off. And when I say that. Probably at least a year. And it's been heartening. Looking at the success of U.S. states that have dumped all of their mandates. I think that's that's an inspiration and an example to Australians that we don't have to have all these restrictions. And also probably even more so because the UK resonates more in Australian culture than the US of obvious historical reasons. And the fact that the UK has pretty much dumped every single regulation as far as I know, I mean the whole lot, vaccine passports, all of it. I think that is very kind of that's inspiring, or that's. That offers me some hope that that Australian states will do the same but but right now you know there there are still vaccine mandates effectively in Australia. I mean, I like how the various government websites they typically say at the top that are vaccination is optional in Australia and you don't have to get a vaccine. But then they say except if you work in these following industries which is about 40% of the population. So it's not really. It's not really optional at all. So look the end game, I hope. Is that people get sick of it and look just on the current war between Russia and Ukraine, which is obviously a shocking tragedy. But I think it's making people realize that. Look, you know, here's a group of people in Ukraine suffering enormous hardship. You know, real hardship, and you know why on Earth are we still worried about this ridiculous in virus with a, you know, with the fatality rate of nought point nought or whatever it is percent. Uhm, you know. So I so I think maybe the fact the news has shifted so much to another issue are people will forget about COVID and won't pay as much attention to the you know the various COVID dashboards and counters and all that sort of rubbish that we've been subjected to for two years, right?
Ian Miller: It puts it all in perspective a bit
Adam Creighton: Exactly. That's what I was trying to say. Yeah, yeah, it absolutely does. At least hopefully does.
Ian Miller: Speaking of of kind of ridiculous perspective, lack of perspective, what was your sense of what people there thought about the Novak Djokovic situation? I mean, the news cycle moves so quickly. I think people have already forgotten that it even happened, but. He was, he was literally kicked out of the country after it seemed like he followed all the rules. So were people there supportive of it? Or did they see it for being kind of a political stunt? What? What was the response there?
Adam Creighton: Well look, I think I think more more informed observers realized it was a political stunt that worked in the government's favor. But you know, by and large it was extremely popular to kick him out. I mean, I think there were polls showing 70 or 80% support for kicking him out, which is which by any poll is a lot. That's a huge majority. Or when any political question is asked, as you know. And it was. The interesting thing for me is most people realize the rules were ridiculous because COVID was rife in Australia at the time. So, so the argument that we couldn't let him in, in case he had COVID was just obviously stupid, so people tended to say that, well, look, they're our rules, and they might be stupid, but he's gotta follow the rules like everyone else. Uh, yeah, I don't know others who said well he did follow the rules, but it was a disagreement between the Victorian government and the federal government in Canberra. The Victorian government, somewhat ironically, said that he could come and then after he arrived, the federal government realized that there's actually some box or something that he didn't take properly from their point of view, and so then they. They kicked him out using this arbitrary kind of immigration power that that that the minister has in emergencies to basically kick out whoever he wants. I mean, it's a it's a completely arbitrary power, and it goes back to a point I made earlier about the power of Australian governments. I mean, there is no human rights bill or act in Australia, so a lot of these laws that have been on the books for decades. In many cases they have little tiny clauses that no one ever paid any attention to. You know, kind of part 25, part 4, BCD etc. Which say that in an emergency you know the Minister can do whatever he wants, you know, and I think we've seen a lot of those powers used. In Australia, and that was one of them. Yeah, I hope that that's a lesson we all learn to that if we need to kind of curtail these emergency powers because it it really can get out of hand incredibly quickly with politicians.
Ian Miller: Absolutely, yeah, so moving back to the US, we've seen recently a lot of these jurisdictions and in counties, cities, states lifting mask, mandates, other kind of COVID policies seemingly out of nowhere all at once. And there's been a lot of conversation on the Internet about, you know, there's a polling data showing it's unpopular. Memos going out so you're in Washington and and from what you've heard, do you think political concerns are the main reason for all these dramatic changes?
Adam Creighton: Yeah, well, look. I think you know, I think political concerns were the reason for them being introduced in the 1st place. I mean, I was talking to someone reasonably senior at the DC government. Actually about four, maybe four or five months ago, and even they said, and I was surprised that they said it. Actually, that that mask mandates were purely performative. I mean like that wasn't the official view, he was just an employee, but nevertheless a fairly and senior employee. And so I thought, oh, that's really interesting that someone sent you in the DC government thinks that this whole thing is performative, but look to answer more specifically. It was a great coincidence, wasn't it? That they all ended by the state of the Union speech on Tuesday? It did happen very, very quickly. My sense is there was there was a lot of you know that that there was political polling involved in this decision because. I mean, if you look at the DC, for instance, they introduced a mandate for vaccines honestly five weeks ago or so and they went to the great trouble of rolling it out, you know, and there is significant at administrative effort. I mean, someone who's once worked in government. I know these things, you know, take a lot of effort to roll out these new policies and then it was gone. Just five weeks later, which which could not have been the intention when it was introduced. So therefore I do think that the polls have changed quite dramatically across the US, and you're seeing all these governors. And mayors and so forth. Dump these policies quite regardless of the fact that there's still 1500 people dying a day in the United States, which is, you know, almost near the peak, right? I mean, it's you know it's high. It's a high level and that could be used to justify keeping the restrictions in place, but it's not. So I think people are moving on, you know, the great test, of course is gonna be if there's a 7th wave between now and November. That's going to be very, very interesting to watch.
Ian Miller: Yeah, and that's something I wanted to ask you about as well. You know, do you think that in areas like DC, California, New York, I mean, obviously somewhere like Florida, they’re done, but, uh, in in DC and all these other areas, will we see a return to to the vaccine passports in the widespread mask mandates? If there's a new variant, or like you say it's 7th wave in the next couple of months,
Adam Creighton: Yeah, look, I mean, I just. It's hard to know. I mean, I don't think you'll ever see lockdowns in that sort of thing again, you might see mass come back, but even then. A lot of people are just so sick of it, I don't. It will depend on the polling, of course, because the midterms are approaching, and that's a particularly important time to be popular. So if people are over it, then I don't think they will come back in and then what's gonna be interesting is trying to see the justification on the democratic side of politics as to why they're not back in. Of course they're gonna have to say, oh, it's different science or whatever, but the cold hard reality is that it will be pure politics. And if that happens, if that occurs I mean it will be. Well, it'll be good for our side of the argument if you like. I mean not that that's you know, much of a savior of a society, but it will show you. It will illustrate very clearly that this whole thing, all the restrictions were really political, were really about politics, not about so-called science at all. But look, we don't know yet. You know, maybe they will come back in. Who knows? I mean, I certainly hope they don't. But yeah, we just have to wait and see. And it's a it's a crystal ball on that one. I don't know.
Ian Miller: Yeah, so so much of this is so performative. You kind of mentioned that a minute ago where you see the policy is you get on an airplane, you put a mask on, you land in Florida literally never wear a mask for a week that you're there on vacation. People that live in New York and New Jersey and DC. But then you put the mask back on for that. That two hour flight.
Adam Creighton: You know it's become like a virtue signaling someone called it a MAGA mask for sorry, MAGA hat for liberals. Yeah, I mean it's yeah, it's it's a bit like that and you know what's just just on the mask to dwell. I mean, what's extraordinary is even the doyens of public health like Leana Wen have said that their performative cloth masks are performative, but overwhelmingly, that's what people still wear. It just it's extraordinary, like why, anyway? Yeah I go on. Yeah, it's now. I've appreciate that it's it is crazy when he when he really sit down and think about it.
Ian Miller: I wanted to get your thoughts obviously right for a major media outlet in the Australian. That's that's significant paper and so have you felt any pressure writing for them to cover COVID in a particular way? Or have you been able to kind of say what you think or write about what you want?
Adam Creighton: Well, actually no, and this is a good opportunity for me to to kind of give a shout out to my employer a News Corp, which has been extremely supportive of. We actually throughout the whole thing. They've never said to write about this or or don't write about that. You know so. So no, I haven't. I mean, I, I haven't I come under pressure from from any editors on COVID. The only pressure is is probably from other journalists. Not not not just at News Corp, but throughout the Australian media industry. They've been very pro restriction, and so there's been a lot of vicious. You know vicious attacks on me. You know mainly from from outspoken members of the general public, but also from other journalists, which I found very, very depressing because I never liked to attack other journalists, even if I vehemently disagree with them. Personally I mean. Because, you know, there's a. There's a. There's a shrinking bunch of us. It's a hard job and you know I don't think that we should be attacking each other personally, but. So the pressure has come from, you know, from other journalists to conform and. And what's worried me is how so many journalists are? You know, basically became cheerleaders for the government through through this. And I I thought that that was very unusual given what the role of the fourth estate should be, and certainly not to to cheer on extraordinary restrictions on human rights, right? So that's so, yeah, so so the pressure has come from the groupthink, not from my employer, which has been very supportive.
Ian Miller: Yeah, that's that's great to hear, and I've I've literally have made that exact point many times about that. Journalism is as I understood it was supposed to be kind of speaking truth to power and and questioning authority. And it seems like a lot of people have not held up to that standard in the last couple years. So you wrote a piece back in December, basically saying that you caught COVID and it was no big deal. And if you're on Twitter, many of us have seen you know these these 20 plus long tweet threads from from Twitter doctors or. You know people with a blue check mark describing how they you know their their experience with COVID, and if they coughed 2 more times today than they before, or something equally absurd. So so why did they talk about COVID like that? Do you think is it? Is it just for the the likes and the retweets and the attention?
Adam Creighton: In the column I just kind of, you know, made a lot of it and just stressed the fact that. This is the experience for 99% of people at least who have COVID and. And you know, I was attacked by including by lots of other journalists for that column. You know, quite viciously. And you know, I, I really don't understand why. I guess it was the blue checks look. I think I think amongst the blue checks. You know who are largely journalists and there's. A disproportionate number of authoritarians and virtue, signallers and moralizers, and intellectuals. And you know, if you read Hayek, or any of those other serious thinkers, you know, that's what that's what. He argues, that those sorts of people. The authoritarians are hugely overrepresented in the intellectual class. And I think that's that's what you've seen. In the COVID experience, and I think it explains largely why so many journalists have barracked for more government control and have screamed and abused people who don't line up with what the mob want or think. And you know, it's it's extremely sad.
Ian Miller: So another column you recently wrote was about the state of the Union, which just happened here a few days ago, and so I had a few questions about it. First of all, and we kind of touched on this, but how convenient was the timing that all the masks in Congress were removed right before his speech? And also, what did you think of it and what did he get wrong? What was kind of what we're hoping to to express in that column? And more importantly, how well are the Iranian people holding up against Vladimir Putin?
Adam Creighton: That was. That was very funny. I must say the fact that Biden instead of Ukrainian and he said it quite clearly too like it wasn't like it was a you know it could have been one or the other. It it was definitely Iranian and but look I mean that was that was just a reflection of the bumbling and fumbling nature of the delivery. And you know, people say that that doesn't matter, but look I think it does. I mean he's the leader of the free world. He's been a politician for a senior politician for more than 40 years and he must have rehearsed that multiple times. And, uh. And he still you know it. It it you know he he gave it. Very poorly, I would argue and but but of course it's not just that it's the content too. I mean, it was, you know, it was a real opportunity. I thought for the Democrats to, you know, shift their political direction. And let's face it, their political direction has delivered him the lowest approval rating. Almost of any president in history. So clearly the political direction is not a success. You know whether you think it's right or wrong. It's not a success and I was just shocked by the fact that it was all the same talking points from last year. You know about build back. Better about infrastructure. There were no new announcements in the speech to, you know, to kind of take the media by surprise. The only new announcement was in the foreign policy part, which was which was actually quite a small part of the speech. I was surprised about that too where he banned Russian flights in and out of the US, but that's that's a tokenistic negligible policy. There was really nothing new on the foreign policy front or the domestic front and on COVID, which of course is what we're talking about here. I was particularly surprised because here was an opportunity to just say, look, let's say. We've we've beaten it. We've done it. It's over, you know. And and all our wonderful measures have worked. I mean, that's what I would have done. I would have said look, the measures have worked. We've done it. Rah rah, let's move on. But no, we talked about new variants. I mean, I couldn't believe it. He talked about new variants. He talked about masking. In fact, masking got more mention than China, which I thought was extraordinary and and testing. I thought, Oh my God, do people want to hear about that? I mean, I certainly don't. But as we discussed earlier, the polls suggest a lot of Americans don't want to hear that either. So I I thought that was very weird, so look. I mean, I gave it a five out of 10 at best. Uhm, I don't think it's gonna help him in a way I thought it might have helped him in the polls.
Ian Miller: Yeah. And Speaking of that, and it was kind of my last question I had for you. You know the conversation is definitely shifted over time in the United States, but a lot of other countries are still very much still in the throes of of mandates and and vaccine, passports and international travels is not the same as it was. You can't just hop on a plane and land in Paris without jumping through hoops and filling out paperwork and all this other stuff. So where do we think we go from here is that is that going to become a permanent feature now is that the new taking your shoes off at the airport? Or is that gonna
Adam Creighton: Hopefully not. In Paris I. I'm kind of itching to get over to Europe actually, and I I kind of have I keep putting it off because of just all of the administrative drama with going the testing on this side. The testing on that side, you know I'd be forced to get a booster, which I don't really want to get. I mean, I'll probably be compelled to because it'll be the rule. But you know, I've had COVID, so I figure I don't need the booster, at least for quite awhile. But I understand the French Government I think requires it. So yeah, so that's that's kind of. I've been on my mind but just just in general with all the lockdowns and interventions look, I mean again, you know we kind of discussed this earlier I. I hope people just get sick of it and kind of move on to the next issue, which may or may not be this tragedy in Ukraine which is dominating the media right now. I mean, I think I think one of the funny things is that a lot of the public health cheer squad. A public health cheer squad are feeling very lonely or ignored right now because the media is moved on to something else and so I hope that we do. Just move on and they don't come back. I mean lockdowns in particular I think, have been such a disaster that I expect the next two or three years there'll be more and more academic research coming out showing just what a disaster they were, and so I don't suspect that they'll be coming back. But As for vaccines in masks and that sort of thing because they're. So called relatively low cost restrictions. Supposedly, I think they're more likely to come back than the lockdowns so but look, you know, we've just had two years, which has been an extraordinary learning experience about ourselves, about our friends and colleagues and about governments. And you know it'll take years and years to to kind of assess what was good and bad out of it. And you know, frankly, from my point of view, most of it was bad, but there's certainly lots of assessing to do.
Ian MIller: Yeah, well I that was great. Thank you so much for all your answers. Thank you so much for your time. Yeah please everybody go follow Adam on Twitter. It's Adam under score, Creighton and and check out his work at the Australian. It's it's fantastic and he's always posting new interesting stories. So please go read those. And yeah thank you again for doing this.
Adam Creighton: No worries in and I hope the book is a bestseller.
Ian Miller: Appreciate it.

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Episode 13: Clifton Duncan on The Consequences of COVID Policy & Speaking Out Against Restrictions
1 mrt 2022· Unmasked
A fascinating conversation with Clifton Duncan, who gives his thoughts on what's happened to New York City during COVID, the politics of masks and the personal consequences of speaking out against the prevailing narrative.
You can find Clifton on Twitter, YouTube and through his Podcast.
The podcast is now available through Apple Podcasts and Spotify as well.

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Episode 12: Interview with Dr. Gary Sidley
23 feb 2022· Unmasked
Dr. Gary Sidley, retired NHS psychologist, writer and founder of the UK’s Smile Project to end mask mandates joins the podcast to discuss the impacts on mental health from lockdowns, masks and the government messaging on COVID policy.
Dr. Sidley is on Twitter, at Coronababble and has written for The Critic and The Spectator. He’s also one of the founders of the Smile Free campaign to permanently end mask mandates.
This episode touches on some really important subjects and questions that we’ll all be dealing with for a very long time — what happened early on, why, and what happens next.
With many restrictions coming to an end, can we be sure that they’ll be eliminated as a potential option down the road?
Why did mask mandates start?
What’s the justification for vaccine mandates and passports?
What was the UK’s “nudge” unit about?
It’s a fantastic conversation and I’m very appreciative to Dr. Sidley for taking the time to join.
This episode and all free episodes are also available through Apple Podcasts.
**I wasn’t able to get a usable transcript for this episode, unfortunately, but will hopefully be able to continue that with the next recording. Sorry for the inconvenience.**

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ianmsc.substack.com/subscribe
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Episode 11: Scott Morefield on Policy Failures, School Masking and The Media
17 feb 2022· Unmasked
Scott’s work for Townhall is available here and you can follow him on Twitter here.
His fantastic review of “Unmasked: The Global Failure of COVID Mask Mandates” can be found here, and the book is available through Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
The podcast is also available through the Apple Podcast platform.
Previous episodes of the show are listed below:
Episode 10
Episode 9
Episode 8
Episode 7
Episode 6
Episode 5
And an auto-generated transcript for the episode is below:
Ian Miller:
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Unmasked podcast. Today. We have a very special guest Scott Morefield from town hall. Well, first of all, thank you so much for doing this. Welcome to the show.
Scott Morefield:
Thanks for having me.
Ian Miller:
And I, before we kind of get into the questions, I just wanted to also say thank you for your, your excellent review of my book. You know, you really hit a lot of the important points I was trying to make with the data and kind of narrative of masking, and I'm really glad it came through and, and thank you for capturing it so well,
Scott Morefield:
Of course it was great. The book, it, it, it's just so important cuz we, we can see this stuff coming to an end. It seems like, but a lot of these assumptions are under the surface. So to have a book out there like this, that your work Barron's work I know Megan man mantel is coming out with a book. This stuff is just really important to hammer down the fact that it's just not, there's no science behind this nonsense and we can't let, 'em just get away with evading any sort of responsibility and pretending that their methods worked. And that's why they're now letting us free. So yeah, your book's really important to, to accomplish that.
Ian Miller:
Well, thank you. And I, I completely agree. That's the whole point is to try to destroy the kind of underlying arguments behind masking so that it, it can't ever be kind of brought back as some kind of semi permanent rolling measure down the road.
Scott Morefield:
Exactly.
Ian Miller:
So my first question for you just kind of early on, you know, what, what made you skeptical about the effectiveness of COVID policy? Was it something immediately you were skeptical of? Did it take some time? What was your kind of initial response to, to COVID
Scott Morefield:
Great question. My first town hall post critical of COVID measures to was released in March, 2020. It didn't take long to realize that all this, that they were just basically full of. And, and everything that they were trying to say. And the first thing that led me to that conclusion was the actual case fatality rate of the diamond princess outbreak initially. Because I, I remember following this some in January and February and you would see people you see these videos of people falling over and it was a little scary. I, I remember watching Tucker Carlson before the lockdowns, even before we knew that how, what this would be, he, he was saying, man, you know, there was, there may be no NCAA tournament. And I was like, you've gotta be kidding me, no NCAA tournament. Well, what is this?
Scott Morefield:
You know, and I was hoping maybe he was exaggerating and, and there were a lot of unknowns then, but just, just seeing the numbers come in and you could see if, if there were so even understanding the difference between case fatality rate and infection, fatality rate, and seeing that people who were logged as a case was a lot that that number was a lot lower than the amount of people actually getting infected. And they kept conflating that number early on and panicking people and making them think, man, I've got a 5% chance or a 3% chance of dying from this. And that's scary. I mean, regardless, I mean, we always knew the elderly were, were more susceptible when you start seeing these massive them using these high case, fatality rates and not even speaking to infection and the amount of people, the number of people who were actually infected it, it led me to think that there was more to this than what we were being told.
Scott Morefield:
So that's when I was like, this is, this is not why are they doing this? Because the best way, common sense logically the best way was always to protect the vulnerable and to let rib among the healthy population, because they were not gonna be susceptible. And it just seemed so common sensical. And this was obviously way for the great Barington declaration, but there were people saying this, even when I wrote that, I mean there were I remember seeing an interview from the Texas Lieutenant governor saying the same thing and he got a lot of flack for that, but yeah, it was pretty early. I could see through it pretty early.
Ian Miller:
Yeah. That's a great point. A lot of people forget that the initial numbers from like, like the world health organization, I think it was 3.4% or something was the fatality rate that they were, they were thrown out there.
Scott Morefield:
Terrifying. Yeah, exactly.
Ian Miller:
It's terrifying. It was totally incorrect, but it kind of set the tone for all the policies that came afterwards. Yeah.
Scott Morefield:
And now they'll admit that it's 0.2, what is it? Point oh two, you know, 0.2. They'll admit that now, but this is not what we were told at the beginning. Yeah. You know, that established this.
Ian Miller:
Exactly. so my next question is, is a little bit kind of going specifically into masks. At this point I think it's become pretty obvious to, to most people paying attention. We're, we're seeing that kind of more widely discussed. Now, there wasn't really any evidence or sign to suggest that mask wearing would work. And I've been asking a lot of people this, and I wanna get your opinion. What was it? Do you think that made them push it so hard? Why did they flip flop on this? Early on?
Scott Morefield:
Yeah, really the goal, I think, especially it, it may have been altruistic at the beginning. I think the goal was, people are panicking, really panicking, and we're gonna shut some things down. But as we open up, cuz this didn't have happened until may June that I, I never even thought that this would be an issue in March or April never even occurred to me. We were going in grocery stores with no masks. Everybody was, nobody was wearing a mask. It was not a concern. The virus goes down, they've gotta convince people to leave their basement. And, and so, all right, then I think the noble lie started that they call it, I would call it a noble. I, I wouldn't call it a noble lie, but in their minds, maybe that they, they say, oh, Fauci, the noble lie was, we were trying to save it for healthcare workers.
Scott Morefield:
No, the noble lie. He was telling the truth at the beginning. But the noble lie was, if you wear a mask, you'll be protected and you can come out. So I think that they were basically trying to get people to come out and engage in society and, and do conduct economic activity. And they knew they couldn't do that with out a security blanket. So I think that the mask were started as a security blanket to get economic activity going. And then they had to stick with that once they committed. So everything followed from that. So they had to ignore all the previous studies that you discussed in your book to ignore all that stuff and pretend this is something totally different, even though it's not, I mean, it is, but it's not, it's still a respiratory virus. It's still if it, if it doesn't work against the flu, it's not gonna work against, COVID never worked against the flu, doesn't work against COVID, but they had to convince. And then, and then I think as, as it went along, it became more and more about control about political politics, a political statement. So I think it it's morphed over the months and years, but, but I think it started off as kind of a noble lie.
Ian Miller:
Yeah. I, somebody asked me, but that, and mentioned noble I as like, I, I think it's better just to tell the truth there.
Scott Morefield:
Just tell the truth. That's a good, good strategy. Yeah,
Ian Miller:
Exactly. So early on, and it is kind of a political question in some ways, but do you think that if Donald Trump had come out and openly been kind of a, an advocate for masking had been really forcefully saying everybody should wear a mask, would the, the kind of mainstream media outlet's been doing, what you and I have been doing over the last year and a half? Like, what would they would, would the results have been different as far as media coverage? If Trump had been very openly supportive of masking,
Scott Morefield:
Probably it, it, whatever he said it, he messed up H hydrochloric one for everybody in inadvertently, cuz he, he says, oh, this could be great. And everybody's like, no, it, it can't. He could say, he could have said this sky, this is blue. And they would've said it was green. So but I'm not sure, honestly just thinking about that. I mean our governor here in Tennessee, bill Lee, he's pretty good. He's not as good as DeSantis or known during that era. He, he's not as good as some or Kim Reynolds. But I would rank him in the top five. I'd put him at, you know, at least between five and eight in terms of pretty solid governors during this pandemic. And he I remember I'll never forget just him going up there, face it, face mask work. You couldn't drive, you know, 30 minutes in Tennessee without seeing a billboard that had that. So they, they were really pushing it here early on. So I'm not necessarily convinced that that would've changed the narrative a whole lot. I mean, you, you can see how the react and how the reaction is to Trump now when he starts touting the vaccines. So, but yeah, they, they might, they might have it, it might have had some shift in it, but I, I don't know that it would've had a whole lot.
Ian Miller:
It's interesting. I, I have gone running around about that myself. I'm I'm not sure. I, I think that there would've maybe early on, especially there would've been more skepticism and that might've helped, it stopped spreading so widely as the most important thing to
Scott Morefield:
Do. You're saying, you're saying if he would've led from the start and been the one saying, wear a mask, wear a mask. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If the media would've been skeptical,
Ian Miller:
Cause early on, there were some articles from even the wall street journal saying like everybody wore masks in the 1918 flu and it was useless. So you know, that's true. Maybe there might have been a little change
Scott Morefield:
That's intriguing. Yeah. That's intriguing. I, I don't, I don't know. That's it feels like such a, at this point now, anyway, it feels like mandatory masking is such an, an evil, like it's become such a societal evil and a menace that it it's hard for me to imagine the media being against it.
Ian Miller:
Yeah, yeah.
Scott Morefield:
Even with Trump,
Ian Miller:
I know,
Scott Morefield:
I think eventually they probably to come around and jumped on board. I mean, they do it with the vaccines they're they love the VA. They know that he's responsible in some way or, or in a lot of ways for these quick, you know, rest vaccines, but they're still behind those. So maybe not.
Ian Miller:
It's good. That's a lot of interesting hypotheticals there. Yeah. And you, you kind of brought this up a second ago, but I wanted to get your sense of, you know, who do you think has done the best job in the us policy wise? Or what are the governors that have handled this best or, or local politicians you think?
Scott Morefield:
Yeah. So I would say Cameron Reynolds, probably number one, right there. Maybe DeSantis a close second. Kim Reynolds, I mean, what other state passed the law? Banning mass mandates, banning mass mandates a real law that doesn't have a sunset. So there's a law in Tennessee now and, and we managed to, to pass that, but it has a sunset and it also says that the governor can override the law. So that's interesting. I don't know why that's there. But yeah, I guess I do know why that's there, but it's, it's not all it's played out to be but has stuff on the books that actually protect their people from COVID fascism going forward. And I know DeSantis has that mentality too. And so it just, maybe their legislature is not as conservative as I is. So I think that if he had his druthers on everything, he would be every bit as good, but I would Kim Reynolds Ron DeSantis, Christie, no comes to mind.
Scott Morefield:
I, I know that there's issues that conservatives would disagree with her on lately non COVID related, but as, as far as COVID, she's been really solid. Billy, because honestly I've got issues with Billy of Tennessee, but he never did impose a statewide mass mandate and I've gotta give him credit for that. That's, that's a, that's a huge thing in my book, if you, I mean, obviously a governor has more authority to do that than a president would. But I still don't believe the governor, a governor should have that authority. I think that's, I don't think anybody should have that a but if anybody does, it would be a local, it should be a local county officials. But yeah, I'm trying to think. See, Alabama had a mass mad at Louisiana had one Tate Rees came along later. Greg Abbot came along later. So the, those guys in a second, I would put those guys in a second tier about who am I missing? Oh Rick, its Nebraska. He, he was solid, really solid him in top five for sure.
Ian Miller:
One other one that I, I, I think we all kind of his flies on the radar a bit was I think it was Henry MCMA masters in South Carolina.
Scott Morefield:
Mm that's true.
Ian Miller:
They, he did a really good job. It's just it's cuz South Carolina just doesn't get any attention seemingly that's
Scott Morefield:
Right. He did fantastic.
Ian Miller:
Yeah. It, it is. I, I mean, so this is kind of a related question. So, you know, I, I, it seems like from what we've seen in national elections, even local elections recently that the, the politicians that of came out there and, and allowed for more freedom and fought back against kind of these insane policies have benefited in elections and in polling and things like that. But you know, we're seeing some of these, these kind of blue state governors and maybe even some national change in terms of, of policy direction. So, you know, in the next couple of years, is that gonna be forgotten, are people, or will it benefit somebody like Ron DeSantis from winning the, you know, the 20, 24 presidential election, for example, or, or is it gonna be kind of have faded in memory by that point that it won't be as big of a, a benefit?
Scott Morefield:
I hope that the people don't forget. I, I really do. I, I think that's, I think political necessity has, is what has caused, like you said, it has caused some of the leaders to kind of gravitate over to what we would call team reality on this. The public is very susceptible to forgetting things, but this has been a two year ordeal. This has not just been a month, two weeks to flatten the curve, whatever this has been two years to flatten the curve. I don't think that people are gonna be quite as forgiving. I mean, there, there's gonna be a little bit of that fade, but I people are not gonna be as forgiving as they have been for issues in the past now, to what degree that holds true. I don't know, but if what we're gonna see a lot this year with Florida, if DeSantis can pull off the wind and when reasonably convincingly, I think that'll be a really good sign that people are remembering, especially in that state where you've got a lot of, you've got just a lot of, of division and a lot of, a lot of diversity and, and a lot of it's just, it's, it's kind of a swing state.
Scott Morefield:
That's been leaning Republican lately, but if he can win that says that'll say a lot about that. And I don't know, as far as 20, 24, it's really hard to predict, you know, we're gonna see, I, I feel like you, this may be a future question, but I don't know that we're done with COVID. So this may be an ongoing battle and on sleeve, it is, it's probably gonna be good for conservatives because our side, yeah, we're going, it's going slow, but our side keeps gaining ground. It's not like we're giving up any ground here. We keep gaining ground
Ian Miller:
Politically.
Scott Morefield:
So that's a good sign.
Ian Miller:
That actually was another question I had. So we'll, we'll go into that one right now. That's good timing. So, you know, I think my concern right now is that it's become more politically acceptable or even encouraged now for places to lift mask mandates or, or some remove some policies. But as soon as we get another new variant, which I'm sure will inevitably come, or, you know, we get the surges that we've seen seasonally in the summer when months, or, and especially in the winter months they'll go right back to it. And all of a sudden the science will change again. You know, is that too pessimistic? Do you agree with that? It seems like you agree, but what are your thoughts? Yeah.
Scott Morefield:
Yeah. I'm afraid of that in some areas, of course you see a little bit of a diminishing aspect to that, because if you interestingly like with the Delta wave, you, you would see some, you saw a, a decent amount of a decent number of places rolling back into mandates. And, but then with you saw a few less, so it's not like everybody just went right back, mass mandates all the GLP areas for the most part. I mean, I know you had ASA Hutchinson, Arkansas begging his legislature to overturn a law that he has signed banning mass mandates. Because you know, he's worthless, but, but in most red places lifeless normal mean I'm in Tennessee. Life was normal during Delta and onn for the vast majority of people for the large part, it was totally normal. Except a few times I had to fly and that was that's always hellish.
Scott Morefield:
But, but as far as just going into stores, there was no issues. Some people wear mask, some people don't and it's live and let live, which is really the way it's all. It should have been this whole time. But I don't know. I mean, it, it is, it's, it's hard to say what the as far as them going back into it, I will, I will say that they've backed themselves into the corner. That was my latest town hall actually on Monday. But because I know that some people don't like I'll bring up the fact that N 90 fives. Okay. So now they say that N 90 fives work as protection. Okay. So they've this whole time they've been saying that source control source control. So two people can be wearing a t-shirt material over their noses and it's source control, and then we're all protected.
Scott Morefield:
Right? Well, the more stuff that comes out, the more that's been deemed nonsense, but now you've got all these people, Leanna WY as east jaw the Washington post, the, the Atlantic saying that one way masking were works to protect you in a meaningful way. And so you would caveat that with wear it correctly, maybe double mask have it fit, tested, replace it regularly. Don't touch it. So you could, you could caveat with all these things, but theoretically, at least they're now claiming, well, they are claiming that one way masking works to protect the wearer. So what person would be, if someone, if anybody is going to wear a mask correctly, it's gonna be somebody who's themselves immunocompromised. So wear the mask. And I don't have to wear one because one may masking, according to them works. Right. So I don't know.
Scott Morefield:
Yeah, you would've, you, I know that you've done charts on N 95 mandates. We know they don't work the N 95 mandates. So we don't, there's reasons for that. One of the reasons that people don't wear 'em right. Whatever you could say, you know, it's not sustainable. You can't wear an N 95 for long, correctly, because you're not gonna be able to breathe. Yeah. but theoretically, right. They can protect themselves. So force masking should be over from a logical perspective. So like I had a tweet thread out the other other day, keep the receipts because I just put a link to in Avery tweet a link of all these articles where they're now saying that, because they're saying that to get their people on board with, Hey, we're gonna have to relax the Mendix for now. Sorry, but you guys are gonna have to come outta your basement. You know, we love ya. Yada, yada. So Leanna, WY, you know, the queen of the IANS, her self on CNN says this now, you know, she's the voice of reason now. So
Ian Miller:
You made a, a big money betting against that just six months ago.
Scott Morefield:
I would've never guessed that, you know, MIS lock the vaccinated in their homes exactly. Or the UN vaccinated, you know?
Ian Miller:
Yeah. so one of interesting thing you just brought up is kind of the protection of one way masking, but a lot of that same argument could be applied to like vaccination where people that have been vaccinated. Exactly. You're protected. Right. That's the whole thing, supposedly. So is it right? So you, you know, you should feel protected. You shouldn't be worried about what everybody else is doing around you because you're not gonna get seriously ill. Yeah. So kind of relatedly, you know, these politicians brought in vaccine passport policies in a lot of the country and in the world, which never made any sense by that logic, but there's still an effect in many areas, you know, France Italy's policy just got so much worse where they literally fired. I think it was over 500,000 people over 50 for not getting vaccinated. There's still an effect in, in LA, in San Francisco, New York are, are, you know, what are your think? Are these policies close enough to, is close to ending as well? Are they, you know, how is this remotely defensible at this point after this winter? You know, what, what do we do with this?
Scott Morefield:
That is mindboggling to me. I mean, you can see some, I I've seen trickles of different companies doing away with their vaccine mandates. So that's a good sign. Washington DC, a lot of pressure because you've Maryland to the north. You've got Virginia to the south. None of those have vaccine mandates. So it's absolutely crucifying DC restaurants. And I'm not sure that mayor Bowser even cares about any of that, but it is an interesting I love seeing the free market at work there because the more places that way, there's a, and that's what they've been trying to avoid, but they've not been able to avoid the fact that there's a control group. They hate that they hate control groups because it just shows their insanity for what exactly what it is. The vaccine mandates it. We're, we're talking about a vaccine that's two years, almost two years. It's not two years old, but it's, you know, it's been development for almost, you know, a year and a half. It's against the spike protein where three variants from that it's less and less efficacious for less and less time the longer time goes by. So they never explain that stuff. They never will say or explain why you need a vaccine against the spike protein of the is it the wild varying or the VE it's, you know, the, maybe the wild variant,
Ian Miller:
I think it's the wild. Yeah.
Scott Morefield:
Yeah. So why do we need a vaccine against the spike protein of the wild we're dealing with right now that evade it for the most part. And then if you're gonna have to get a new vaccine every three months, or even Reuters admitted six months that it loses most of its efficacy, whatever protection it, it got, which I'm not convinced there's any there, because you, you have a, for two weeks after getting the VA risk is greatly increased. So by the time you level that out, are you even getting any protection, but say you do get protection six months of you're gonna have to get this job again every six months. I mean, what kind of sense does that make? It is just not, it's not sustainable. So I don't wanna understand even the concept of fully vaccinated. Well, if they're, if they're gonna be intellectually honest with us, they would need to say that fully vaccinated is the same. They keep trying to make this different term and conflated with up to date. Well, what is that? Cuz if you were vaccinated a year ago, a I promise in any meaningful sense of the word, you're not fully vaccinated, you're only, you're not even, you're not even immune, but if you had it two years ago, we've got studies out. Now that say your antibody teachers are probably real similar to what they were when you first had it.
Scott Morefield:
Yeah. So it's astounding to me just ignoring the natural immunity. And then just the nonsense about the vaccine it's, it's, it's, it's become a God to them. I mean, vaccination and masking are basically the, I mean, this is their new God and they're gonna go down, swinging with it.
Ian Miller:
Yeah. kind of relatedly to that. Yeah. Have you been surprised by what people have been willing to put up with with these policies? I personally have been, but what have you been surprised? Yeah.
Scott Morefield:
Yeah. It's, it's, it's crazy. I remember walking into E even now in east Tennessee for me. I'm I'm for, I've been blessed, just living where I live. Where do you live by the way? I
Ian Miller:
I'm in Southern California.
Scott Morefield:
Okay. Oh my gosh.
Ian Miller:
Yeah.
Scott Morefield:
Yeah, you you've you've had it rough. So you probably don't. I mean, it, it, you know, you're you probably don't have the luxury that I've had, but even here we had a mass mandate from, I guess it was August of 2020 until March, 2021. So about seven to eight months, we had a county mass mandate in our county and it was imposed by the health department and, and the mayor. And there was no teeth to it. So you, you, you know, there was nobody going in and checking a business and saying, where's your mask? Nothing like that, but, but even then I was shocked at how many people went along with it, cuz I never did. You know, so we would walk into places without a mask and you know, I would, I would see maybe one or two other people in a grocery store that didn't have one. It's always nice just to see somebody with some sanity there. But, but it was a little bit unnerving to be honest to how many people were going along with this. It's, it's always that. And so, and then I, I would listen to accounts of people, cast and whatnot and, and people in places like Ohio or where you are especially, and you know, you, you don't, you try not wearing a mask in a store and you're gonna get kicked out even wearing it under your nose would probably get you kicked out.
Scott Morefield:
Yeah. so yeah, it's, it's the people's compliance, is it, was it very unnerving? It is nice to see more and more, cause you know, back then you would see the polls in 70 plus percent of people supported mass mandates and that's gradually coming down so you can see some of that stuff coming down. So I think people are getting, like I said, you know, we're, we're winning, but not as fast as I would like. But I think people are starting to wise to it, but the, the willingness of people to just put away critical thinking to me is just, it's, it's, it's amazing. I mean, all of us have lost friends over this. I've lost friends people that just, you know, they, they, our views can abide and there's no way to get past it. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's, it's sad.
Ian Miller:
Yeah, absolutely. It, I, I definitely have lost friends and it is, it's kind of hard to believe that it's come to that, but
Scott Morefield:
Made a lot of new friends too.
Ian Miller:
Exactly, exactly. So kinda switching gears for a second, you know, you write for, for town hall what are some of the challenges for you for writing, you know, writing for a news outlet? Have you felt any pressure to kind of self censor your opinions? So, you know, you're not offending people or is there, is there any of that or has it been totally fine?
Scott Morefield:
Yeah, that's a good question. It's I was at the daily Culver when the when I, this started and I, I had done a, I did a weekly call with town hall for a while done that since I guess, 2018. But, but as far as the news, we had to be really careful. I, I remember starting off, I would, I would just try to pick things to cover that I knew were we write straight at the daily, the call we, we wrote rate news. So I would just cover media hits that, you know, if Scott Atlas did a media hit on Fox news, that was gold. I would try to cover that stuff. Pretty, but I had to do it without bias in the writing part, but that's fine cuz he's saying what he needs to say. Well, everything that needs to be said, I don't need to say it.
Scott Morefield:
I just need to cover what he said. So it's, it's the, the, I would just try to pick things that, that further the truth in that regard, but it started as it got more and more political, it just got tougher and tougher to pick things that had to do. I know for a while the mask became, it was harder to get those kind of stories approved. And then, you know, at town hall, my column, I can cover what I want generally, but there's certain things you have to be careful about and it all revolves around and, and at daily caller too, it all revolves around not wanting to get kicked off Facebook and that's, that's where it all comes, what it all comes down to. So it's not that the people disagreed with me so much, it's just, Hey, we don't want to lose.
Scott Morefield:
We don't wanna get kicked off Facebook. And it's a, it's a, it sucks. I mean, that's why it is gonna, you know, truth socials coming out in a month and we've got alternate, finally, some alternate platforms that are workable, but they're still not Twitter and Facebook and you can't reach as many, nearly as many people. And, and if it's, if it's an echo chamber, what good is that? Yeah, in some ways. But I think that that covering stuff was, I, I, I had to choose my words. You can't just come out and say the things that I would say about the vaccine, if you and I were just talking in a bar somewhere you can't say the things that Alex Berenson says, even though I, I suspect that Alex Beren been correct almost a hundred percent of the time you couldn't come right out and say that stuff in a column, usually you just have to wait, you have to hide behind some bigger names saying it and then report that they said it, or just be really careful on how you write it. So yeah, if a column is different, obviously from a news coverage coverage. So, but I, I on the news coverage stuff, I had to be really careful with my words on a column. I could be a little stricter or a little looser with what I say, but even then I couldn't just be as open as I would like to be. And that's because they want, they don't want to get banned by Facebook.
Ian Miller:
They, that's interesting to bring that up. And I noticed you, you recently wrote a column about Joe Rogan which is, is obviously still a very hot topic of conversation and all the kind of going along with it, all the increased censorship calls from literally from the government, which is kind of scary. But so you know, what are your thoughts on this and what was important for you in your mind to take away from your article on Joe Rogan?
Scott Morefield:
Yeah, that, that was the, the fact that they're trying, that they were trying so hard and this was an op that there was no doubt that they came after him with both barrels. They purposely dug up just outta context, not defending the use of the N-word, but this was not even in their same planet as calling somebody that maliciously, you know, he's just uttering the syllables. Okay. That's not, it just it's non sense what they were going after him for, and they're doing it because he, he facilitates conversations. They don't like, and that's really scary because if the lift hates anything, they hate their worldview being challenged. And when you can convert back and forth and dialogue with people, maybe you can convince 'em that you might be right, or you can show them data. You can show them a chart, Hey, what's up with this chart?
Scott Morefield:
Explain this to me. It's a conversation. Joe Rogan has conversations and he has people on there that the left disagrees with. They hate that they would never do that. You're not gonna see one of us make it onto MSNBC for a conversation. You know, you're, you're not gonna, or a leftist podcast to, we're not gonna get invited to anything like that because we've got facts on our side and they don't want to hear that. So that's why they hate Joe Rogan. He he's kind of a, just himself, but he's just an open mind, go likes to talk and likes to he's open minded. And he likes to have conversations with people. So that's, it's, it's bone chilling. It's our well end. There's so much our well end about this age that we live in, but the attempts to silence this guy we're pretty blatant. I don't know. What's I don't think he'll, I mean, he, he probably won't lose his he's maybe too big right now, but they almost got him and yeah. And I think they'll still, they're probably still digging in the archives trying to find something that he said to try to get him.
Ian Miller:
Yeah.
Scott Morefield:
But it's not because they're, you know, they're not crying in a corner because the other, the magical syllables I can tell you that.
Ian Miller:
Yeah, absolutely. Intent matters, I think is, is a, exactly is a lesson that everybody needs to take to heart here. Yes. So I, I wanted to, I have just a couple, like two more questions for you, but the one of my, my senses has been that the media in a lot of ways has been responsible for a lot of these policies that we've seen by not covering them by not presenting any of the harms. I mean, you can see fact checks and they'll say like, oh, there's no harms for, for putting masks on kids, for example you know, by ignoring the data and not showing the impact of the policies, like basically just showing here's what we did. What was the result? Is there any hope to solve to them at this point? Are they totally gone? What can we do about the media?
Scott Morefield:
Yeah. It's, it's so polarized right now. There's no such thing as ma I guess the closest thing we might have the mainstream media is the wall street journal. Everything else is either a super right or, or, or they call 'em super right, because they're so they're, they're trying to report things as normal, but it's right by the left standards. And most outlets of course are, are super left leaning. So I don't know. I, I don't, I don't think there's any hope for 'em. I, I think that it, everybody is gonna go to their places to get the truth. I think Fox news does a good job of trying to be balanced as much as they can, and that comes across as right. Leaning just because these days being balanced is right leaning, but which is really crazy to, to think about. But and you know, they've got their opinion shows and stuff in the evenings, but as far as the website and their news division, that's as balanced as you can get. I think they do a good job with that, but I don't think there's any bringing back to left wing media. I think that they're too far gone and they're, they're, COVID co COVID cult members too. So you can't come back from that. You're, they're indoctrinated all the way.
Ian Miller:
I agree. It's it's painful to see some of the stuff that gets published and the comments that are made. And I mean, I, you know, I'm sure you see it. I do this all the time where it put these comments up from CNN and then they're immediately disproven shortly afterwards. Yes. so I, you wrote about this recently with the former CDC director. So is it important to you as we see the kind of conversation changing, you know, like Washington post saying mass mandates never worked, is it important to you that they, they just get it right now? Or is it, is it important that they kind of admit that they were always wrong from the beginning?
Scott Morefield:
Yeah. I'll, I'll settle for them just getting it right now, but it's, it's let's just, let's just take our wins, even Leanna win. Goodness gracious. I know that she's that she's been insane this whole time, but I'll take whatever she'll give us. And not just because that moves to the Overton window a little, it that's, the, the goal is to not let the, if our goal is to not let this happen again, that's the goal. So anytime they admit something, then they foster the goal of not having this happen again, I'll take that. It would be great if they would apologize. I don't think they ever will. Fcis definitely, you know, he'll probably never, never admit any of this stuff, but of course, yeah, the, the post about red Redfield, the former CDC director, he was, you know, talking about how they lot less, a lower opinion of mass than he wants had when he said they were as, as good as a vaccine, which that's an ironic statement in itself. It became one cause maybe he was right, but for different reasons. But yeah, we'll, we'll take what we can get from, from anybody that wants to come on board with some reality, always looking for those stories. I mean, when I'm clipping the headline or clipping news I do that on Twitter, like clip, clip you know, different, various talking heads saying things that's the stuff I look for the most for somebody on CNN that says something that may makes sense. I'll I'll put it up. Yeah. Cause they need to be watched.
Ian Miller:
Yeah. So my last question for you, and I think this was the case in Nashville. I'm, I'm not a hundred percent sure, but how can anybody look at the continuation of like school masking policies, where there's no mask mandate for anything else in life? Like, you know, you walk into the store and no problem, but the schools are, they're the only place that are masked. How can anybody look at that and, and say that this is based off of science or evidence at this point,
Scott Morefield:
None they're they're cult members there there's none. I mean, they, they they ignore and there's so much, there's so much evidence on this. And so many studies done and so many mainstream people coming out now and saying that this makes no sense. And you still have people hanging onto this. Thankfully they're a minority now. But that's the worst thing is, is the forcibly muzzling of children, the forcible muzzling of children. It it's horrifying that it's gone on this long. And just, just the fact at just the fact that there are still school districts allowing this to happen is beyond me. I, I, I, I don't understand it, but it's gonna take going and it's, it's gonna take running against school board members who vote for these things. I mean, we had a massive school board shift in San Francisco. I, I, I don't know how big a part mask played in that, but but interestingly, they were able to re they, they recalled three school board members just because of stupid COVID stuff.
Scott Morefield:
I mean, keeping the schools closed was a big factor. So it's gonna take just replacing school board members and going forward. Any, any school board candidate should be asked, Hey, if, if if there's a COVID resurgence, are you gonna forcibly muzzle our kids because, and what data are you gonna show that says, this has any effect? Cause like with your charts, if, if, if it, if it had any effect, we would it right, because Florida, Tennessee, a lot of states had counties that did mask in counties that did not mask, especially Florida. And there's no discernible difference at all.
Ian Miller:
Yep.
Scott Morefield:
And you would see that and they don't, I don't understand. It's just, it's so frustrating when you talk to people and they, they, I don't, it's, there's so much cognitive dissonance that they're willing to accept. And, and I, I still, I can only explain it by using terms like religion and cult, because that's the only way you can explain irrational behavior
Ian Miller:
And least. That's a great point about asking these potential school board, you know, politicians down the road and everybody's gonna have to pay a lot closer attention to this going forward. You know what absolutely. What's your position on this? Thank you so much, Scott, for doing this. I really appreciate you coming on the show. You can follow Scott on Twitter at SK Moorefield and then at obviously you [email protected]. There's tons of great columns you put up all the time. So go check it out and thank you again, Scott.
Scott Morefield:
Thank you Ian. It was great being here.

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Episode 9: Christina Pushaw on Florida, Misinformation and The Importance of Freedom
1 feb 2022· Unmasked
Florida has been a flashpoint for COVID policy discussions; as one of the best examples of evidence based thinking, Governor Ron DeSantis has attracted huge amounts of negative publicity and conspiracy theories. By not endlessly following the collective set of discredited “interventions” known as The Science™, DeSantis and Florida have been the control group for the country.
I thought it would be interesting to get the perspectives of one of the hardest working people in politics and COVID policy: Christina Pushaw, the governor’s Press Secretary.
We had a thorough, wide ranging discussion that touched on a number of subjects, so I hope you enjoy the interview and if you weren’t already considering it, it might make you want to move to Florida.
Previous episodes of the podcast are available below:
Episode 8
Episode 7
Episode 6
Episode 5
Episode 4
Episode 3
Episode 2
Episode 1
The most recent Substack post was a detailed examination of Israel, which has used the exact opposite of Florida policy with disastrous results.
And as I’m sure everyone’s sick of hearing about by now, the “Unmasked” book is available now at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
And the podcast is also available directly from Apple Podcasts.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ianmsc.substack.com/subscribe
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Episode 8: Jenin Younes Answers Some of the Most Important COVID Questions
27 jan 2022· Unmasked
Follow Jenin here, and find her recent Tablet Magazine article here.
The podcast will also now be available directly through Apple Podcasts if you prefer to listen and download through there. Link is available here.
**Unmasked: The Global Failure of Mask Mandates is now available at Amazon at Barnes and Noble**

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ianmsc.substack.com/subscribe
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Episode 5: Jordan Schachtel on The International Failure of COVID Policy and Where We Go From Here
10 jan 2022· Unmasked
One of the earliest and strongest voices against the insanity of COVID mandates joins me with fantastic insights on what’s happened so far and what happens next.
***Updated at 4:29pm Pacific Time with new audio recording***

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ianmsc.substack.com/subscribe
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Afleveringen

Episode 20: The Failure of Mask Mandates, Public Health and Central Planning with John Tierney, Former New York Times Science Writer, Author and Contributing Editor at City Journal

Episode 19: Laura Dodsworth, Substack Writer and Author of "A State of Fear"

Episode 18: David Zweig, Author and Frequent Contributor to New York Magazine, The Atlantic and The New York Times

Episode 16: Drew Holden, Commentary Writer and Maker of Threads on Media Hypocrisy and the COVID Policy Communication Failures

Episode 15: Phil Kerpen on School Masking, the CDC and Dr. Fauci

Episode 14: Adam Creighton, Washington Correspondent for The Australian

Episode 13: Clifton Duncan on The Consequences of COVID Policy & Speaking Out Against Restrictions

Episode 12: Interview with Dr. Gary Sidley

Episode 11: Scott Morefield on Policy Failures, School Masking and The Media

Episode 9: Christina Pushaw on Florida, Misinformation and The Importance of Freedom

Episode 8: Jenin Younes Answers Some of the Most Important COVID Questions

Episode 5: Jordan Schachtel on The International Failure of COVID Policy and Where We Go From Here