lewrockwell--2020-12-16--Epidemiologist at Yale Provides Testimony on Hydroxychloroquine for Treating Covid-19

We are living in a day in age where social media “ fact-checkers ” are patrolling the internet calling into question information , science , opinion and testimony from countless amounts of doctors and scientists , as well as independent media outlets who source this information , simply because it opposes the information that we are getting from the World Health Organization ( WHO ) for example , or other government health authorities .
One great example to illustrate this point is Hydroxychloroquine ( HCQ ) , a drug , according to many , that can help treat COVID-19 patients @ @ @ @ @ @ @ theme throughout the pandemic , which begs the question , if it ’ s true , why wasn ’ t the drug administered and made available for doctors to use and treat COVID patients during this pandemic ?
Why was it ridiculed by mainstream media and why did Facebook fact-checkers claim that Hydroxychloroquine was not useful , and possibly dangerous ?
Facebook fact checker Health Feedback , for example , states that there is no evidence that hydroxychloroquine can cure or prevent COVID-19 .
Recent testimony from Dr. Harvey Risch , MD , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Public Health is one of many , who in my opinion seem to represent a large majority , says otherwise .
He provided an evidence based presentation for safe early outpatient HCQ treatment for high-risk Covid-19 patients to reduce hospitalizations and mortality .
American West Sterling ... Buy New $ 63.20 Senators and colleagues : thank you for convening this hearing .
We all understand the endemic disease that we are facing , that we have to face it head-on and not hide from it hoping that it will go away .
I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In May of this year I observed that results of studies of a drug suggested to treat Covid , hydroxychloroquine , were being misrepresented by what I thought at the time was sloppy reporting .
We have heard from Dr. McCullough how Covid disease progresses in phases , from viral replication , to florid pneumonia to multi-organ attack .
Viral replication is an outpatient condition , but the pneumonia that fills the lungs with immune-system debris is hospitalizable and potentially life-threatening .
We have also heard how each phase , each pathologic aspect @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its own specific treatments that apply to its own biologic mechanisms .
Thus , I was frankly astounded that studies of hospital treatments were being represented as applying to outpatients , in violation of what I learned in medical school about how to treat patients .
We are now finally coming to address why over the last six months , our government research institutions have invested billions of dollars in expensive patent medication and vaccine development but almost nothing in early outpatient treatment , the first line of response to managing the pandemic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ candidate medications to study , we have had a number of promising agents .
But I believe that the early-on conflation of hospital with outpatient disease served to imply that treatment of outpatient disease had been studied and found ineffective .
This illogical premise motivated me to look at the evidence for outpatient treatment .
We are now finally coming to address why over the last six months , our government research institutions have invested billions of dollars in expensive patent medication and vaccine development but almost nothing in early outpatient treatment , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the pandemic .
It is not that we lacked candidate medications to study , we have had a number of promising agents .
But I believe that the early-on conflation of hospital with outpatient disease served to imply that treatment of outpatient disease had been studied and found ineffective .
This illogical premise motivated me to look at the evidence for outpatient treatment .
I reiterate : we are considering the evidence for early treatment of high-risk outpatients to prevent hospitalization and mortality .
That is it .
Treatment starting in the first @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of symptoms .
Treatment of older patients or patients with chronic conditions such as diabetes , obesity , heart diseases , lung diseases , kidney diseases , immune-system diseases , survivors of cancer etc .
These are the people most likely to die from Covid , and they are the people most needing protection .
I have sought to obtain reports of every study of every medication pertaining to early treatment of high-risk outpatients .
I monitor the literature daily .
And what I have found is actually quite remarkable .
What I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been positive reports about a number of drugs , every study of outpatient use of one drug , hydroxychloroquine , with or without accompanying agents , has shown substantial benefit in reducing risks of hospitalization and mortality .
American West Sterling ... Buy New $ 199.00 These studies break down into two major types .
The first is double-blinded , randomized controlled trials , and the second is non-randomized but still controlled trials .
You have heard from various government and scientific personalities that randomized controlled trials provide the strongest form of evidence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ claimed that randomized trials provide the only trustworthy form of evidence .
There is some truth in these assertions , but there is also lots of falsehood .
We know for example that the great majority of drugs used to treat heart diseases were established with non-randomized trials .
Cholesterol-lowering drugs were in widespread use before randomized trials were ever done .
Azithromycin , the most commonly used antibiotic in children , was not established by randomized trials .
The idea that only randomized trials provide trustworthy evidence is a simplistic notion that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the comparison between randomized and non-randomized trials is something that has actually been extensively studied in the medical literature .
I am an epidemiologist because even though I love biological theories , I develop them all the time to study how nature works , but it is from the human empirical data that we learn how indeed nature works .
And we have huge amounts of empirical data to show that randomized trials and their corresponding non-randomized trials give the same answers .
Dr. Tom Frieden , previously Director of the CDC , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the New England Journal of Medicine showing that non-randomized trials can provide fully compelling evidence , especially when they are done carefully to account for reasons why patients received the drugs , and importantly , when circumstances are such that the cost of waiting for randomized trials involves major sickness and mortality as we have been experiencing this year .
But Dr. Frieden ’ s essay , as authoritative as it is , provides only snapshots of the empirical evidence for his observations .
The real evidence comes from a meta-analysis of meta-analyses @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a British international organization formed to organize medical research findings to facilitate evidence-based choices about health interventions .
The Cochrane investigators examined what involve tens of thousands of comparisons between randomized trials and their non-randomized counterparts and found that the two types of studies arrived at virtually identical conclusions .
This is the real evidence about why good non-randomized trials comprise evidence every bit as important as randomized trials .
Large amounts of consistent empirical data are the evidence , not plausible but simplistic assumptions , no matter who says them .
So @ @ @ @ @ @ @ early use among high-risk outpatients ?
The first thing is that hydroxychloroquine is exceedingly safe .
Common sense tells us this , that a medication safely used for 65 years by hundreds of millions of people in tens of billions of doses worldwide , prescribed without routine screening EKGs , given to adults , children , pregnant women and nursing mothers , must be safe when used in the initial viral-replication phase of an illness that is similar at that point to colds or flu .
In fact , a study by researchers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in 14 large international medical-records databases of older rheumatoid arthritis patients , no significant differences were seen in all-cause mortality for patients who did or did not use hydroxychloroquine .
The Oxford investigators also looked at cardiac arrhythmias and found no increase for hydroxychloroquine users .
This was in more than 900,000 hydroxychloroquine users .
This is examined at length in my paper in the American Journal of Epidemiology in May .
Now , the FDA posted a warning on July 1 on its website about hydroxychloroquine used in outpatients , but we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has had no systematic evidence in outpatients and erroneously extrapolated from hospital inpatients to outpatients , what I said earlier was invalid .
American West Sterling ... Buy New $ 69.00 About studies of hydroxychloroquine early use in high-risk outpatients , every one of them , and there are now seven studies , has shown significant benefit : 636 outpatients in São Paulo , Brazil ; 199 clinic patients in Marseille , France ; 717 patients across a large HMO network in Brazil ; 226 nursing-home patients in Marseille ; 1,247 outpatients in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ patients in Andorra ( between France and Spain ) ; and 7,892 patients across Saudi Arabia .
All these studies pertain to the early treatment of high-risk outpatients—and all showed about 50 percent or greater reductions in hospitalization or death .
The Saudi study was a national study and showed 5-fold reduction in mortality for hydroxychloroquine plus zinc vs zinc alone .
Not a single fatal cardiac arrhythmia was reported among these thousands of patients attributable to the hydroxychloroquine .
These are the non-randomized but controlled trials that have been published .
Now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ outpatient randomized controlled trials this year also together show statistically significant benefit .
These six studies comprised generally much younger patients , only a fraction of whom were at high risk , so they individually had too few hospitalizations or deaths to be statistically significant .
But they all suggested lower risks with hydroxychloroquine use , and when they were analyzed together in meta-analysis as my colleagues and I found , this lower risk was statistically significant across the studies .
We have spent the last six months with formal government policies and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ large government investments in vaccines and expensive new treatments yet to be proven and almost no support of inexpensive but useful medications , and a quarter of a million Americans have died from this mismanaged approach .
Even with newly promising vaccines , we have almost no information about how they will perform in older and high-risk patients , in whom respiratory virus vaccines are known to have weak efficacy ; it will be a number of months before they become widely available ; and we don ’ t know how long vaccine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the vaccines will work for the newly increasing mutant strains of the virus .
As I have said on many occasions , the evidence for benefit of hydroxychloroquine used early in high-risk outpatients is extremely strong , and the evidence against harm is also equally strong .
This body of evidence dramatically outweighs the risk/benefit evidence for remdesivir , monoclonal antibodies or the difficult to use bamlanivimab that the FDA has approved for emergency use authorizations while denying the emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroquine .
This egregious double standard for hydroxychloroquine needs to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ authorization application approved .
This is how we will get on the road to early outpatient treatment and the major curtailment of mortality .
Thank you .
Why This Is Important : The thoughts shared above have been a common theme throughout this pandemic .
For example , Dr. Anthony Cardillo , an ER specialist and the CEO of Mend Urgent Care , has been prescribing the zinc and hydroxychloroquine combination on patients experiencing severe symptoms associated with COVID-19 .
In an interview with KABC-TV , Cardillo stated : American West Brass Re @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Cardillo , it ’ s the combination of zinc and hydroxychloroquine that does the job .
“ [ Hydroxychloroquine ] opens the zinc channel ” allowing the zinc to enter the cell , which then “ blocks the replication of cellular machinery.
” This was also hinted to by the testimony from the Yale professor .
Dr. Vladimir Zelenko , a board-certified family practitioner in New York , said in a video interview that a cocktail of Hydroxychloroquine , Zinc Sulfate and Azithromycin are showing phenomenal results with 900 coronavirus patients treated .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ few examples out of many .
The issue is that these opinions and this type of evidence and testimony was blocked and censored by various social media outlets , and deemed “ fake news.
” This has also recently been emphasized by Dr. Kamran Abbasi , executive editor of the prestigious British Medical Journal , editor of the Bulletin of the World Health Organization , and a consultant editor for PLOS Medicine .
He is editor of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine and JRSM Open .
He recently published a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Covid-19 : politicisation , “ corruption , ” and suppression of science.
” Science is being suppressed for political and financial gain .
Covid-19 has unleashed state corruption on a grand scale , and it is harmful to public health .
Politicians and industry are responsible for this opportunistic embezzlement .
So too are scientists and health experts .
The pandemic has revealed how the medical-political complex can be manipulated in an emergency—a time when it is even more important to safeguard science .
The UK ’ s pandemic response relies too heavily @ @ @ @ @ @ @ worrying competing interests , including shareholdings in companies that manufacture covid-19 diagnostic tests , treatments , and vaccines .
Government appointees are able to ignore or cherry pick science—another form of misuse—and indulge in anti-competitive practices that favour their own products and those of friends and associates .
The stakes are high for politicians , scientific advisers , and government appointees .
Their careers and bank balances may hinge on the decisions that they make .
But they have a higher responsibility and duty to the public .
Science is a public good @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be followed blindly , but it does need to be fairly considered .
Importantly , suppressing science , whether by delaying publication , cherry picking favourable research , or gagging scientists , is a danger to public health , causing deaths by exposing people to unsafe or ineffective interventions and preventing them from benefiting from better ones .
When entangled with commercial decisions it is also maladministration of taxpayers ’ money .
Politicisation of science was enthusiastically deployed by some of history ’ s worst autocrats and dictators , and it is now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ complex tends towards suppression of science to aggrandise and enrich those in power .
And , as the powerful become more successful , richer , and further intoxicated with power , the inconvenient truths of science are suppressed .
When good science is suppressed , people die .
Concluding Remarks : We are at a point in time where decisions made by the government , which are supposedly done in our best interests , are completely influenced by powerful corporations that seem to dictate government policy in some sort of way .
This @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time , and combined with big tech this ‘ medical industrial complex ’ is able to influence the thoughts , minds , perception and overall consciousness of the masses when it comes to COVID and various other topics .
Do governments really execute the will of the people ?
When will we draw the line ?
Is it really justifiable for people who don ’ t get vaccinated to lose their rights and freedoms they were accustomed to prior to the pandemic ?
Why are so many doctors and scientists who oppose these @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , just like 9/11 , is forcing more people to ask questions about how our world really operates and whether or not governments actually execute the will of the people .
At the end of the day we have to ask , why are controversial topics so poorly covered and ridiculed by mainstream media ?
Why do so many of us have so much trouble looking at new information , especially information that contradicts what we believe and have been made to believe ?
Why do polarizing sides trigger us so deeply ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ fight ?
Will our sense-making be much easier and effective if we are clam , centered within self , clearer of our own bias ’ and more open to communicating with empathy ?
Perhaps it ’ s time we do that ?

We are living in a day in age where social media “fact-checkers” are patrolling the internet calling into question information, science, opinion and testimony from countless amounts of doctors and scientists, as well as independent media outlets who source this information, simply because it opposes the information that we are getting from the World Health Organization(WHO) for example, or other government health authorities. One great example to illustrate this point is Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), a drug, according to many, that can help treat COVID-19 patients.
This idea has been a common theme throughout the pandemic, which begs the question, if it’s true, why wasn’t the drug administered and made available for doctors to use and treat COVID patients during this pandemic? Why was it ridiculed by mainstream media and why did Facebook fact-checkers claim that Hydroxychloroquine was not useful, and possibly dangerous? Facebook fact checker Health Feedback, for example, states that there is no evidence that hydroxychloroquine can cure or prevent COVID-19.
Recent testimony from Dr. Harvey Risch, MD, PhD, Yale Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health is one of many, who in my opinion seem to represent a large majority, says otherwise. He provided an evidence based presentation for safe early outpatient HCQ treatment for high-risk Covid-19 patients to reduce hospitalizations and mortality. American West Sterling... Buy New $63.20 (as of 06:26 UTC - Details)
Senators and colleagues: thank you for convening this hearing. We all understand the endemic disease that we are facing, that we have to face it head-on and not hide from it hoping that it will go away. I want to give you my perspective. In May of this year I observed that results of studies of a drug suggested to treat Covid, hydroxychloroquine, were being misrepresented by what I thought at the time was sloppy reporting. We have heard from Dr. McCullough how Covid disease progresses in phases, from viral replication, to florid pneumonia to multi-organ attack. Viral replication is an outpatient condition, but the pneumonia that fills the lungs with immune-system debris is hospitalizable and potentially life-threatening. We have also heard how each phase, each pathologic aspect of the disease, has to have its own specific treatments that apply to its own biologic mechanisms. Thus, I was frankly astounded that studies of hospital treatments were being represented as applying to outpatients, in violation of what I learned in medical school about how to treat patients. We are now finally coming to address why over the last six months, our government research institutions have invested billions of dollars in expensive patent medication and vaccine development but almost nothing in early outpatient treatment, the first line of response to managing the pandemic. It is not that we lacked candidate medications to study, we have had a number of promising agents. But I believe that the early-on conflation of hospital with outpatient disease served to imply that treatment of outpatient disease had been studied and found ineffective. This illogical premise motivated me to look at the evidence for outpatient treatment. We are now finally coming to address why over the last six months, our government research institutions have invested billions of dollars in expensive patent medication and vaccine development but almost nothing in early outpatient treatment, the first line of response to managing the pandemic. It is not that we lacked candidate medications to study, we have had a number of promising agents. But I believe that the early-on conflation of hospital with outpatient disease served to imply that treatment of outpatient disease had been studied and found ineffective. This illogical premise motivated me to look at the evidence for outpatient treatment. I reiterate: we are considering the evidence for early treatment of high-risk outpatients to prevent hospitalization and mortality. That is it. Treatment starting in the first five days or so after the onset of symptoms. Treatment of older patients or patients with chronic conditions such as diabetes, obesity, heart diseases, lung diseases, kidney diseases, immune-system diseases, survivors of cancer etc. These are the people most likely to die from Covid, and they are the people most needing protection. I have sought to obtain reports of every study of every medication pertaining to early treatment of high-risk outpatients. I monitor the literature daily. And what I have found is actually quite remarkable. What I have observed is that while there have been positive reports about a number of drugs, every study of outpatient use of one drug, hydroxychloroquine, with or without accompanying agents, has shown substantial benefit in reducing risks of hospitalization and mortality. American West Sterling... Buy New $199.00 (as of 06:26 UTC - Details) These studies break down into two major types. The first is double-blinded, randomized controlled trials, and the second is non-randomized but still controlled trials. You have heard from various government and scientific personalities that randomized controlled trials provide the strongest form of evidence. Many of these people have also claimed that randomized trials provide the only trustworthy form of evidence. There is some truth in these assertions, but there is also lots of falsehood. We know for example that the great majority of drugs used to treat heart diseases were established with non-randomized trials. Cholesterol-lowering drugs were in widespread use before randomized trials were ever done. Azithromycin, the most commonly used antibiotic in children, was not established by randomized trials. The idea that only randomized trials provide trustworthy evidence is a simplistic notion that may sound good in theory, but the comparison between randomized and non-randomized trials is something that has actually been extensively studied in the medical literature. I am an epidemiologist because even though I love biological theories, I develop them all the time to study how nature works, but it is from the human empirical data that we learn how indeed nature works. And we have huge amounts of empirical data to show that randomized trials and their corresponding non-randomized trials give the same answers. Dr. Tom Frieden, previously Director of the CDC, in 2017 wrote an extensive essay in the New England Journal of Medicine showing that non-randomized trials can provide fully compelling evidence, especially when they are done carefully to account for reasons why patients received the drugs, and importantly, when circumstances are such that the cost of waiting for randomized trials involves major sickness and mortality as we have been experiencing this year. But Dr. Frieden’s essay, as authoritative as it is, provides only snapshots of the empirical evidence for his observations. The real evidence comes from a meta-analysis of meta-analyses done by the Cochrane Library Consortium, a British international organization formed to organize medical research findings to facilitate evidence-based choices about health interventions. The Cochrane investigators examined what involve tens of thousands of comparisons between randomized trials and their non-randomized counterparts and found that the two types of studies arrived at virtually identical conclusions. This is the real evidence about why good non-randomized trials comprise evidence every bit as important as randomized trials. Large amounts of consistent empirical data are the evidence, not plausible but simplistic assumptions, no matter who says them. So what did I find about hydroxychloroquine in early use among high-risk outpatients? The first thing is that hydroxychloroquine is exceedingly safe. Common sense tells us this, that a medication safely used for 65 years by hundreds of millions of people in tens of billions of doses worldwide, prescribed without routine screening EKGs, given to adults, children, pregnant women and nursing mothers, must be safe when used in the initial viral-replication phase of an illness that is similar at that point to colds or flu. In fact, a study by researchers at the University of Oxford showed that in 14 large international medical-records databases of older rheumatoid arthritis patients, no significant differences were seen in all-cause mortality for patients who did or did not use hydroxychloroquine. The Oxford investigators also looked at cardiac arrhythmias and found no increase for hydroxychloroquine users. This was in more than 900,000 hydroxychloroquine users. This is examined at length in my paper in the American Journal of Epidemiology in May. Now, the FDA posted a warning on July 1 on its website about hydroxychloroquine used in outpatients, but we can discuss this later; the FDA has had no systematic evidence in outpatients and erroneously extrapolated from hospital inpatients to outpatients, what I said earlier was invalid. American West Sterling... Buy New $69.00 (as of 06:26 UTC - Details) About studies of hydroxychloroquine early use in high-risk outpatients, every one of them, and there are now seven studies, has shown significant benefit: 636 outpatients in São Paulo, Brazil; 199 clinic patients in Marseille, France; 717 patients across a large HMO network in Brazil; 226 nursing-home patients in Marseille; 1,247 outpatients in New Jersey; 100 long-term care institution patients in Andorra (between France and Spain); and 7,892 patients across Saudi Arabia. All these studies pertain to the early treatment of high-risk outpatients—and all showed about 50 percent or greater reductions in hospitalization or death. The Saudi study was a national study and showed 5-fold reduction in mortality for hydroxychloroquine plus zinc vs zinc alone. Not a single fatal cardiac arrhythmia was reported among these thousands of patients attributable to the hydroxychloroquine. These are the non-randomized but controlled trials that have been published. Now we also know that all of the outpatient randomized controlled trials this year also together show statistically significant benefit. These six studies comprised generally much younger patients, only a fraction of whom were at high risk, so they individually had too few hospitalizations or deaths to be statistically significant. But they all suggested lower risks with hydroxychloroquine use, and when they were analyzed together in meta-analysis as my colleagues and I found, this lower risk was statistically significant across the studies. We have spent the last six months with formal government policies and warnings against early outpatient treatment, with large government investments in vaccines and expensive new treatments yet to be proven and almost no support of inexpensive but useful medications, and a quarter of a million Americans have died from this mismanaged approach. Even with newly promising vaccines, we have almost no information about how they will perform in older and high-risk patients, in whom respiratory virus vaccines are known to have weak efficacy; it will be a number of months before they become widely available; and we don’t know how long vaccine immunity will last, or even if the vaccines will work for the newly increasing mutant strains of the virus. As I have said on many occasions, the evidence for benefit of hydroxychloroquine used early in high-risk outpatients is extremely strong, and the evidence against harm is also equally strong. This body of evidence dramatically outweighs the risk/benefit evidence for remdesivir, monoclonal antibodies or the difficult to use bamlanivimab that the FDA has approved for emergency use authorizations while denying the emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroquine. This egregious double standard for hydroxychloroquine needs to be overturned immediately and its emergency use authorization application approved. This is how we will get on the road to early outpatient treatment and the major curtailment of mortality. Thank you.
Why This Is Important: The thoughts shared above have been a common theme throughout this pandemic. For example, Dr. Anthony Cardillo, an ER specialist and the CEO of Mend Urgent Care, has been prescribing the zinc and hydroxychloroquine combination on patients experiencing severe symptoms associated with COVID-19. In an interview with KABC-TV, Cardillo stated:
Every patients I’ve prescribed it to has been very, very ill and within 8 to 12 hours, they were basically symptom-free…So, clinically I am seeing a resolution…We have to be cautious and mindful that we don’t prescribe it for patients who have COVID who are well, he said. “It should be reserved for people who are really sick, in hospital or at home very sick, who need that medication. Otherwise we’re going to blow through our supply for patients that take it regularly for other disease processes.”
American West Brass Re... Buy New $125.00 (as of 06:26 UTC - Details) According to Cardillo, it’s the combination of zinc and hydroxychloroquine that does the job. “[Hydroxychloroquine] opens the zinc channel” allowing the zinc to enter the cell, which then “blocks the replication of cellular machinery.”
This was also hinted to by the testimony from the Yale professor.
Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, a board-certified family practitioner in New York, said in a video interview that a cocktail of Hydroxychloroquine, Zinc Sulfate and Azithromycin are showing phenomenal results with 900 coronavirus patients treated.(source)
These are just a few examples out of many. The issue is that these opinions and this type of evidence and testimony was blocked and censored by various social media outlets, and deemed “fake news.”
Over the last few months, I have seen academic articles and op-eds by professors retracted or labeled “fake news” by social media platforms. Often, no explanation is provided. I am concerned about this heavy-handedness and, at times, outright censorship. – Vinay Prasad, MD, MPH
This has also recently been emphasized by Dr. Kamran Abbasi, executive editor of the prestigious British Medical Journal, editor of the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, and a consultant editor for PLOS Medicine. He is editor of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine and JRSM Open. He recently published a piece in the BMJ, titled “Covid-19: politicisation, “corruption,” and suppression of science.”
Science is being suppressed for political and financial gain. Covid-19 has unleashed state corruption on a grand scale, and it is harmful to public health. Politicians and industry are responsible for this opportunistic embezzlement. So too are scientists and health experts. The pandemic has revealed how the medical-political complex can be manipulated in an emergency—a time when it is even more important to safeguard science. The UK’s pandemic response relies too heavily on scientists and other government appointees with worrying competing interests, including shareholdings in companies that manufacture covid-19 diagnostic tests, treatments, and vaccines. Government appointees are able to ignore or cherry pick science—another form of misuse—and indulge in anti-competitive practices that favour their own products and those of friends and associates. The stakes are high for politicians, scientific advisers, and government appointees. Their careers and bank balances may hinge on the decisions that they make. But they have a higher responsibility and duty to the public. Science is a public good. It doesn’t need to be followed blindly, but it does need to be fairly considered. Importantly, suppressing science, whether by delaying publication, cherry picking favourable research, or gagging scientists, is a danger to public health, causing deaths by exposing people to unsafe or ineffective interventions and preventing them from benefiting from better ones. When entangled with commercial decisions it is also maladministration of taxpayers’ money. Politicisation of science was enthusiastically deployed by some of history’s worst autocrats and dictators, and it is now regrettably commonplace in democracies. The medical-political complex tends towards suppression of science to aggrandise and enrich those in power. And, as the powerful become more successful, richer, and further intoxicated with power, the inconvenient truths of science are suppressed. When good science is suppressed, people die.
Concluding Remarks: We are at a point in time where decisions made by the government, which are supposedly done in our best interests, are completely influenced by powerful corporations that seem to dictate government policy in some sort of way. This has been a problem for quite some time, and combined with big tech this ‘medical industrial complex’ is able to influence the thoughts, minds, perception and overall consciousness of the masses when it comes to COVID and various other topics.
Do governments really execute the will of the people? When will we draw the line? Is it really justifiable for people who don’t get vaccinated to lose their rights and freedoms they were accustomed to prior to the pandemic? Why are so many doctors and scientists who oppose these measures being censored and unacknowledged?
COVID-19, just like 9/11, is forcing more people to ask questions about how our world really operates and whether or not governments actually execute the will of the people.
At the end of the day we have to ask, why are controversial topics so poorly covered and ridiculed by mainstream media? Why do so many of us have so much trouble looking at new information, especially information that contradicts what we believe and have been made to believe? Why do polarizing sides trigger us so deeply? Why do we accept the invitation to fight? Will our sense-making be much easier and effective if we are clam, centered within self, clearer of our own bias’ and more open to communicating with empathy? Perhaps it’s time we do that?
Reprinted with permission from Collective Evolution.


lewrockwell--2020-12-16--Something Historic Happened With America’s Electors on Monday

It ’ s pretty easy to knock Republicans .
So often , they ’ re the types who go along to get along .
They don ’ t make waves .
They concede .
They willingly negotiate .
They back down .
If they ’ re really bad , they become NeverTrumps .
And sometimes they surprise us .
On Monday , seven states , in addition to having their apparently victorious Democrat electors cast their votes for president , also authorized Republican electors to cast their votes to make a record .
It was wonderful .
I ’ m @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will write about what happened on Monday , but here ’ s my say .
Monday was the day when the states designated their electors to cast the states ’ votes for president .
By day ’ s end , creepy , confused Joe Biden had 306 electoral votes .
ilishop Women ’ s ... Buy New $ 60.00 Democrats are ecstatic , believing they now have a signed , sealed , and delivered White House .
They don ’ t .
The Supreme Court currently appears to be a craven institution .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ message saying that if Democrat Senate candidates win in Georgia , giving both the White House and Congress to the Democrats , it will rubber-stamp everything the Democrats do .
In this way , the justices hope to prevent court-packing that will diminish their prestige and cachet .
Still , we might yet be surprised .
Additionally , more evidence keeps emerging about massive fraud .
The audit of the Antrim Dominion machines shows that they were programmed for fraud and almost certainly used as programmed .
There are also affidavits signed under @ @ @ @ @ @ @ witnesses across America about fraud and the indicia of fraud .
There ’ s the infamous video from Georgia ( and there may be more videos emerging , although that ’ s hopeful guessing on my part ) .
And there ’ s the redoubtable Sidney Powell , who says she has documentary evidence that votes were sent overseas and manipulated there .
This , she says , could trigger Trump ’ s 2018 executive order imposing sanctions if there was foreign interference in an election .
At the time , that E.O @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Russia collusion hoax , but Trump may have been looking ahead , not backward .

It’s pretty easy to knock Republicans. So often, they’re the types who go along to get along. They don’t make waves. They concede. They willingly negotiate. They back down. If they’re really bad, they become NeverTrumps.
And sometimes they surprise us.
On Monday, seven states, in addition to having their apparently victorious Democrat electors cast their votes for president, also authorized Republican electors to cast their votes to make a record. It was wonderful.
I’m sure other, better writers than I will write about what happened on Monday, but here’s my say. Monday was the day when the states designated their electors to cast the states’ votes for president. By day’s end, creepy, confused Joe Biden had 306 electoral votes. ilishop Women’s ... Buy New $60.00 (as of 06:26 UTC - Details)
Democrats are ecstatic, believing they now have a signed, sealed, and delivered White House. They don’t.
The Supreme Court currently appears to be a craven institution. Many think the Court is sending a message saying that if Democrat Senate candidates win in Georgia, giving both the White House and Congress to the Democrats, it will rubber-stamp everything the Democrats do. In this way, the justices hope to prevent court-packing that will diminish their prestige and cachet. Still, we might yet be surprised.
Additionally, more evidence keeps emerging about massive fraud. The audit of the Antrim Dominion machines shows that they were programmed for fraud and almost certainly used as programmed. There are also affidavits signed under penalty of perjury from eyewitnesses and expert witnesses across America about fraud and the indicia of fraud. There’s the infamous video from Georgia (and there may be more videos emerging, although that’s hopeful guessing on my part). And there’s the redoubtable Sidney Powell, who says she has documentary evidence that votes were sent overseas and manipulated there. This, she says, could trigger Trump’s 2018 executive order imposing sanctions if there was foreign interference in an election. At the time, that E.O. appeared to be a response to the Russia collusion hoax, but Trump may have been looking ahead, not backward.
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lewrockwell--2020-12-16--Big Brother in Disguise: The Rise of a New, Technological World Order

It had the potential for disaster .
Early in the morning of Monday , December 15 , 2020 , Google suffered a major worldwide outage in which all of its internet-connected services crashed , including Nest , Google Calendar , Gmail , Docs , Hangouts , Maps , Meet and YouTube .
The outage only lasted an hour , but it was a chilling reminder of how reliant the world has become on internet-connected technologies to do everything from unlocking doors and turning up the heat to accessing work files , sending emails and making phone calls .
The Ultimate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 19.80 Buy New $ 65.99 A year earlier , a Google outage resulted in Nest users being unable to access their Nest thermostats , Nest smart locks , and Nest cameras .
As Fast Company reports , “ This essentially meant that because of a cloud storage outage , people were prevented from getting inside their homes , using their AC , and monitoring their babies.
” Welcome to the Matrix .
Twenty-some years after the Wachowskis ’ iconic film , The Matrix , introduced us to a futuristic world in which humans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ authoritarian machines—a world where the choice between existing in a denial-ridden virtual dream-state or facing up to the harsh , difficult realities of life comes down to a blue pill or a red pill—we stand at the precipice of a technologically-dominated matrix of our own making .
We are living the prequel to The Matrix with each passing day , falling further under the spell of technologically-driven virtual communities , virtual realities and virtual conveniences managed by artificially intelligent machines that are on a fast track to replacing human beings and eventually dominating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Matrix , computer programmer Thomas Anderson a.k.a .
hacker Neo is wakened from a virtual slumber by Morpheus , a freedom fighter seeking to liberate humanity from a lifelong hibernation state imposed by hyper-advanced artificial intelligence machines that rely on humans as an organic power source .
With their minds plugged into a perfectly crafted virtual reality , few humans ever realize they are living in an artificial dream world .
Neo is given a choice : to take the red pill , wake up and join the resistance , or take @ @ @ @ @ @ @ serve as fodder for the powers-that-be .
Most people opt for the blue pill .
In our case , the blue pill—a one-way ticket to a life sentence in an electronic concentration camp—has been honey-coated to hide the bitter aftertaste , sold to us in the name of expediency and delivered by way of blazingly fast Internet , cell phone signals that never drop a call , thermostats that keep us at the perfect temperature without our having to raise a finger , and entertainment that can be simultaneously streamed to our TVs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we are not merely in thrall with these technologies that were intended to make our lives easier .
We have become enslaved by them .
Look around you .
Everywhere you turn , people are so addicted to their internet-connected screen devices—smart phones , tablets , computers , televisions—that they can go for hours at a time submerged in a virtual world where human interaction is filtered through the medium of technology .
This is not freedom .
This is not even progress .
This is technological tyranny and iron-fisted control delivered by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ giants such as Google and Facebook , and government spy agencies such as the National Security Agency .
So consumed are we with availing ourselves of all the latest technologies that we have spared barely a thought for the ramifications of our heedless , headlong stumble towards a world in which our abject reliance on internet-connected gadgets and gizmos is grooming us for a future in which freedom is an illusion .
Yet it ’ s not just freedom that hangs in the balance .
Humanity itself is on the line .
If @ @ @ @ @ @ @ technological tyrants , we will have only ourselves to blame for having forged the chains through our own lassitude , laziness and abject reliance on internet-connected gadgets and gizmos that render us wholly irrelevant .
Indeed , we ’ re fast approaching Philip K. Dick ’ s vision of the future as depicted in the film Minority Report .
There , police agencies apprehend criminals before they can commit a crime , driverless cars populate the highways , and a person ’ s biometrics are constantly scanned and used to track their movements @ @ @ @ @ @ @ keep them under perpetual surveillance .
Cue the dawning of the Age of the Internet of Things ( IoT ) , in which internet-connected “ things ” monitor your home , your health and your habits in order to keep your pantry stocked , your utilities regulated and your life under control and relatively worry-free .
The key word here , however , is control .
In the not-too-distant future , “ just about every device you have — and even products like chairs , that you don ’ t normally expect to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and talking to each other.
” By the end of 2018 , “ there were an estimated 22 billion internet of things connected devices in use around the world… Forecasts suggest that by 2030 around 50 billion of these IoT devices will be in use around the world , creating a massive web of interconnected devices spanning everything from smartphones to kitchen appliances.
” As the technologies powering these devices have become increasingly sophisticated , they have also become increasingly widespread , encompassing everything from toothbrushes and lightbulbs to cars , smart meters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that 127 new IoT devices are connected to the web every second .
This “ connected ” industry has become the next big societal transformation , right up there with the Industrial Revolution , a watershed moment in technology and culture .
Between driverless cars that completely lacking a steering wheel , accelerator , or brake pedal , and smart pills embedded with computer chips , sensors , cameras and robots , we are poised to outpace the imaginations of science fiction writers such as Philip K. Dick and Isaac Asimov .
( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ such thing as a driverless car .
Someone or something will be driving , but it won ’ t be you . )
These Internet-connected techno gadgets include smart light bulbs that discourage burglars by making your house look occupied , smart thermostats that regulate the temperature of your home based on your activities , and smart doorbells that let you see who is at your front door without leaving the comfort of your couch .
Nest , Google ’ s suite of smart home products , has been at the forefront of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ such technologically savvy conveniences as a smart lock that tells your thermostat who is home , what temperatures they like , and when your home is unoccupied ; a home phone service system that interacts with your connected devices to “ learn when you come and go ” and alert you if your kids don ’ t come home ; and a sleep system that will monitor when you fall asleep , when you wake up , and keep the house noises and temperature in a sleep-conducive state .
The aim of these @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is to make “ your house a more thoughtful and conscious home.
” For example , your car can signal ahead that you ’ re on your way home , while Hue lights can flash on and off to get your attention if Nest Protect senses something ’ s wrong .
Your coffeemaker , relying on data from fitness and sleep sensors , will brew a stronger pot of coffee for you if you ’ ve had a restless night .
Yet given the speed and trajectory at which these technologies are developing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ before these devices are operating entirely independent of their human creators , which poses a whole new set of worries .
As technology expert Nicholas Carr notes , “ As soon as you allow robots , or software programs , to act freely in the world , they ’ re going to run up against ethically fraught situations and face hard choices that can ’ t be resolved through statistical models .
That will be true of self-driving cars , self-flying drones , and battlefield robots , just as it ’ s already @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with automated vacuum cleaners and lawnmowers.
” For instance , just as the robotic vacuum , Roomba , “ makes no distinction between a dust bunny and an insect , ” weaponized drones—poised to take to the skies en masse this year—will be incapable of distinguishing between a fleeing criminal and someone merely jogging down a street .
For that matter , how do you defend yourself against a robotic cop—such as the Atlas android being developed by the Pentagon—that has been programmed to respond to any perceived threat with violence ?
Moreover @ @ @ @ @ @ @ homes and personal devices that are being reordered and reimagined in this connected age : it ’ s our workplaces , our health systems , our government , our bodies and our innermost thoughts that are being plugged into a matrix over which we have no real control .
Minority Report [ Blu-ray ] Best Price : $ 4.94 Buy New $ 9.99 Indeed , it is expected that by 2030 , we will all experience The Internet of Senses ( IoS ) , enabled by Artificial Intelligence ( AI ) , Virtual @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( AR ) , 5G , and automation .
The Internet of Senses relies on connected technology interacting with our senses of sight , sound , taste , smell , and touch by way of the brain as the user interface .
As journalist Susan Fourtane explains : In other words , the IoS will rely on technology being able to access and act on your thoughts .
Fourtane outlines several trends related to the IoS that are expected to become a reality by 2030 : Unfortunately , in our race to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what such dependence on technology might mean for our humanity , not to mention our freedoms .
Ingestible or implantable chips are a good example of how unprepared we are , morally and otherwise , to navigate this uncharted terrain .
Hailed as revolutionary for their ability to access , analyze and manipulate your body from the inside , these smart pills can remind you to take your medication , search for cancer , and even send an alert to your doctor warning of an impending heart attack .
Sure , the technology @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all we need to know ?
Have we done our due diligence in asking all the questions that need to be asked before unleashing such awesome technology on an unsuspecting populace ?
Let me put it another way .
If you were shocked by Edward Snowden ’ s revelations about how NSA agents have used surveillance to spy on Americans ’ phone calls , emails and text messages , can you imagine what unscrupulous government agents could do with access to your internet-connected car , home and medications ?
Imagine what a SWAT @ @ @ @ @ @ @ access , monitor and control your internet-connected home—locking you in , turning off the lights , activating alarms , etc .
While President Trump signed the Internet of Things Cybersecurity Improvement Act into law on Dec. 4 , 2020 , in order to establish a baseline for security protection for the billions of IoT devices flooding homes and businesses , the law does little to protect the American people against corporate and governmental surveillance .
In fact , the public response to concerns about government surveillance has amounted to a collective shrug .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ government can track your whereabouts on your GPS-enabled device so long as it helps you find the fastest route from Point A to Point B ?
Who cares if the NSA is listening in on your phone calls and downloading your emails so long as you can get your phone calls and emails on the go and get lightning fast Internet on the fly ?
Who cares if the government can monitor your activities in your home by tapping into your internet-connected devices—thermostat , water , lights—so long as you can control those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , whether you ’ re across the house or across the country ?
Control is the key here .
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America : The War on the American People , total control over every aspect of our lives , right down to our inner thoughts , is the objective of any totalitarian regime .
Orwell ’ s masterpiece , 1984 , portrays a global society of total control in which people are not allowed to have thoughts that in any way disagree with the corporate state .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ advanced technology has become the driving force behind a surveillance-driven society .
Snitches and cameras are everywhere .
And people are subject to the Thought Police , who deal with anyone guilty of thought crimes .
The government , or “ Party , ” is headed by Big Brother , who appears on posters everywhere with the words : “ Big Brother is watching you.
” Make no mistake : the Internet of Things and its twin , the Internet of Senses , is just Big Brother in disguise .
The Best of @ @ @

“You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”—George Orwell, 1984
It had the potential for disaster.
Early in the morning of Monday, December 15, 2020, Google suffered a major worldwide outage in which all of its internet-connected services crashed, including Nest, Google Calendar, Gmail, Docs, Hangouts, Maps, Meet and YouTube.
The outage only lasted an hour, but it was a chilling reminder of how reliant the world has become on internet-connected technologies to do everything from unlocking doors and turning up the heat to accessing work files, sending emails and making phone calls.
The Ultimate Matrix Co... Best Price: $19.80 Buy New $65.99 (as of 06:27 UTC - Details) A year earlier, a Google outage resulted in Nest users being unable to access their Nest thermostats, Nest smart locks, and Nest cameras. As Fast Company reports, “This essentially meant that because of a cloud storage outage, people were prevented from getting inside their homes, using their AC, and monitoring their babies.”
Welcome to the Matrix.
Twenty-some years after the Wachowskis’ iconic film, The Matrix, introduced us to a futuristic world in which humans exist in a computer-simulated non-reality powered by authoritarian machines—a world where the choice between existing in a denial-ridden virtual dream-state or facing up to the harsh, difficult realities of life comes down to a blue pill or a red pill—we stand at the precipice of a technologically-dominated matrix of our own making.
We are living the prequel to The Matrix with each passing day, falling further under the spell of technologically-driven virtual communities, virtual realities and virtual conveniences managed by artificially intelligent machines that are on a fast track to replacing human beings and eventually dominating every aspect of our lives.
Science fiction has become fact.
In The Matrix, computer programmer Thomas Anderson a.k.a. hacker Neo is wakened from a virtual slumber by Morpheus, a freedom fighter seeking to liberate humanity from a lifelong hibernation state imposed by hyper-advanced artificial intelligence machines that rely on humans as an organic power source. With their minds plugged into a perfectly crafted virtual reality, few humans ever realize they are living in an artificial dream world.
Neo is given a choice: to take the red pill, wake up and join the resistance, or take the blue pill, remain asleep and serve as fodder for the powers-that-be.
Most people opt for the blue pill.
In our case, the blue pill—a one-way ticket to a life sentence in an electronic concentration camp—has been honey-coated to hide the bitter aftertaste, sold to us in the name of expediency and delivered by way of blazingly fast Internet, cell phone signals that never drop a call, thermostats that keep us at the perfect temperature without our having to raise a finger, and entertainment that can be simultaneously streamed to our TVs, tablets and cell phones.
Yet we are not merely in thrall with these technologies that were intended to make our lives easier. We have become enslaved by them.
Look around you. Everywhere you turn, people are so addicted to their internet-connected screen devices—smart phones, tablets, computers, televisions—that they can go for hours at a time submerged in a virtual world where human interaction is filtered through the medium of technology.
This is not freedom.
This is not even progress.
This is technological tyranny and iron-fisted control delivered by way of the surveillance state, corporate giants such as Google and Facebook, and government spy agencies such as the National Security Agency.
So consumed are we with availing ourselves of all the latest technologies that we have spared barely a thought for the ramifications of our heedless, headlong stumble towards a world in which our abject reliance on internet-connected gadgets and gizmos is grooming us for a future in which freedom is an illusion.
Yet it’s not just freedom that hangs in the balance. Humanity itself is on the line.
If ever Americans find themselves in bondage to technological tyrants, we will have only ourselves to blame for having forged the chains through our own lassitude, laziness and abject reliance on internet-connected gadgets and gizmos that render us wholly irrelevant.
Indeed, we’re fast approaching Philip K. Dick’s vision of the future as depicted in the film Minority Report. There, police agencies apprehend criminals before they can commit a crime, driverless cars populate the highways, and a person’s biometrics are constantly scanned and used to track their movements, target them for advertising, and keep them under perpetual surveillance.
Cue the dawning of the Age of the Internet of Things (IoT), in which internet-connected “things” monitor your home, your health and your habits in order to keep your pantry stocked, your utilities regulated and your life under control and relatively worry-free.
The key word here, however, is control.
In the not-too-distant future, “just about every device you have — and even products like chairs, that you don’t normally expect to see technology in — will be connected and talking to each other.”
By the end of 2018, “there were an estimated 22 billion internet of things connected devices in use around the world… Forecasts suggest that by 2030 around 50 billion of these IoT devices will be in use around the world, creating a massive web of interconnected devices spanning everything from smartphones to kitchen appliances.”
As the technologies powering these devices have become increasingly sophisticated, they have also become increasingly widespread, encompassing everything from toothbrushes and lightbulbs to cars, smart meters and medical equipment.
It is estimated that 127 new IoT devices are connected to the web every second.
This “connected” industry has become the next big societal transformation, right up there with the Industrial Revolution, a watershed moment in technology and culture.
Between driverless cars that completely lacking a steering wheel, accelerator, or brake pedal, and smart pills embedded with computer chips, sensors, cameras and robots, we are poised to outpace the imaginations of science fiction writers such as Philip K. Dick and Isaac Asimov. (By the way, there is no such thing as a driverless car. Someone or something will be driving, but it won’t be you.)
These Internet-connected techno gadgets include smart light bulbs that discourage burglars by making your house look occupied, smart thermostats that regulate the temperature of your home based on your activities, and smart doorbells that let you see who is at your front door without leaving the comfort of your couch.
Nest, Google’s suite of smart home products, has been at the forefront of the “connected” industry, with such technologically savvy conveniences as a smart lock that tells your thermostat who is home, what temperatures they like, and when your home is unoccupied; a home phone service system that interacts with your connected devices to “learn when you come and go” and alert you if your kids don’t come home; and a sleep system that will monitor when you fall asleep, when you wake up, and keep the house noises and temperature in a sleep-conducive state.
The aim of these internet-connected devices, as Nest proclaims, is to make “your house a more thoughtful and conscious home.” For example, your car can signal ahead that you’re on your way home, while Hue lights can flash on and off to get your attention if Nest Protect senses something’s wrong. Your coffeemaker, relying on data from fitness and sleep sensors, will brew a stronger pot of coffee for you if you’ve had a restless night.
Yet given the speed and trajectory at which these technologies are developing, it won’t be long before these devices are operating entirely independent of their human creators, which poses a whole new set of worries. As technology expert Nicholas Carr notes, “As soon as you allow robots, or software programs, to act freely in the world, they’re going to run up against ethically fraught situations and face hard choices that can’t be resolved through statistical models. That will be true of self-driving cars, self-flying drones, and battlefield robots, just as it’s already true, on a lesser scale, with automated vacuum cleaners and lawnmowers.”
For instance, just as the robotic vacuum, Roomba, “makes no distinction between a dust bunny and an insect,” weaponized drones—poised to take to the skies en masse this year—will be incapable of distinguishing between a fleeing criminal and someone merely jogging down a street. For that matter, how do you defend yourself against a robotic cop—such as the Atlas android being developed by the Pentagon—that has been programmed to respond to any perceived threat with violence?
Moreover, it’s not just our homes and personal devices that are being reordered and reimagined in this connected age: it’s our workplaces, our health systems, our government, our bodies and our innermost thoughts that are being plugged into a matrix over which we have no real control. Minority Report [Blu-ray] Best Price: $4.94 Buy New $9.99 (as of 03:12 UTC - Details)
Indeed, it is expected that by 2030, we will all experience The Internet of Senses (IoS), enabled by Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), 5G, and automation. The Internet of Senses relies on connected technology interacting with our senses of sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch by way of the brain as the user interface. As journalist Susan Fourtane explains:
Many predict that by 2030, the lines between thinking and doing will blur. Fifty-nine percent of consumers believe that we will be able to see map routes on VR glasses by simply thinking of a destination… By 2030, technology is set to respond to our thoughts, and even share them with others… Using the brain as an interface could mean the end of keyboards, mice, game controllers, and ultimately user interfaces for any digital device. The user needs to only think about the commands, and they will just happen. Smartphones could even function without touch screens.
In other words, the IoS will rely on technology being able to access and act on your thoughts.
Fourtane outlines several trends related to the IoS that are expected to become a reality by 2030:
1: Thoughts become action: using the brain as the interface, for example, users will be able to see map routes on VR glasses by simply thinking of a destination. 2: Sounds will become an extension of the devised virtual reality: users could mimic anyone’s voice realistically enough to fool even family members. 3: Real food will become secondary to imagined tastes. A sensory device for your mouth could digitally enhance anything you eat, so that any food can taste like your favorite treat. 4: Smells will become a projection of this virtual reality so that virtual visits, to forests or the countryside for instance, would include experiencing all the natural smells of those places. 5: Total touch: Smartphones with screens will convey the shape and texture of the digital icons and buttons they are pressing. 6: Merged reality: VR game worlds will become indistinguishable from physical reality by 2030.
Unfortunately, in our race to the future, we have failed to consider what such dependence on technology might mean for our humanity, not to mention our freedoms.
Ingestible or implantable chips are a good example of how unprepared we are, morally and otherwise, to navigate this uncharted terrain. Hailed as revolutionary for their ability to access, analyze and manipulate your body from the inside, these smart pills can remind you to take your medication, search for cancer, and even send an alert to your doctor warning of an impending heart attack.
Sure, the technology could save lives, but is that all we need to know?
Have we done our due diligence in asking all the questions that need to be asked before unleashing such awesome technology on an unsuspecting populace?
For example, asks Washington Post reporter Ariana Eunjung Cha:
What kind of warnings should users receive about the risks of implanting chip technology inside a body, for instance? How will patients be assured that the technology won’t be used to compel them to take medications they don’t really want to take? Could law enforcement obtain data that would reveal which individuals abuse drugs or sell them on the black market? Could what started as a voluntary experiment be turned into a compulsory government identification program that could erode civil liberties?
Let me put it another way.
If you were shocked by Edward Snowden’s revelations about how NSA agents have used surveillance to spy on Americans’ phone calls, emails and text messages, can you imagine what unscrupulous government agents could do with access to your internet-connected car, home and medications? Imagine what a SWAT team could do with the ability to access, monitor and control your internet-connected home—locking you in, turning off the lights, activating alarms, etc.
While President Trump signed the Internet of Things Cybersecurity Improvement Act into law on Dec. 4, 2020, in order to establish a baseline for security protection for the billions of IoT devices flooding homes and businesses, the law does little to protect the American people against corporate and governmental surveillance.
In fact, the public response to concerns about government surveillance has amounted to a collective shrug.
After all, who cares if the government can track your whereabouts on your GPS-enabled device so long as it helps you find the fastest route from Point A to Point B? Who cares if the NSA is listening in on your phone calls and downloading your emails so long as you can get your phone calls and emails on the go and get lightning fast Internet on the fly? Who cares if the government can monitor your activities in your home by tapping into your internet-connected devices—thermostat, water, lights—so long as you can control those things with the flick of a finger, whether you’re across the house or across the country?
Control is the key here.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, total control over every aspect of our lives, right down to our inner thoughts, is the objective of any totalitarian regime.
George Orwell understood this.
Orwell’s masterpiece, 1984, portrays a global society of total control in which people are not allowed to have thoughts that in any way disagree with the corporate state. There is no personal freedom, and advanced technology has become the driving force behind a surveillance-driven society. Snitches and cameras are everywhere. And people are subject to the Thought Police, who deal with anyone guilty of thought crimes. The government, or “Party,” is headed by Big Brother, who appears on posters everywhere with the words: “Big Brother is watching you.”
Make no mistake: the Internet of Things and its twin, the Internet of Senses, is just Big Brother in disguise.
The Best of John W. Whitehead