Pf1zered! How Side Effects from the You-Know-What Took my Life Away, and How I Got it Back by Defying the Medical-Governmental Complex

Part 3—The Lies that Sold the Lockdowns

Facebook post, March 26, 2020: “Got my lunch at Dairy Queen today. The owner was manning the drive-through himself, smiling while his heart was breaking.”

“Heart was breaking” was an understatement. He was positively shell-shocked.

Thanks to Covid lockdowns, he was required to close the dining room and lay off the counter staff, many of whom had worked for him for years. The business he had put his heart and soul into was in shambles.

The real tragedy is it was unnecessary. The lockdowns were based on lies.

This is Part 3 in my memoir about diet, the pandemic, how Covid vaccine side-effects took my life away, and how I got it back by defying the Medical-Governmental Complex (MGC). You can read it from the beginning starting here.

In this installment I’ll talk about the heavy-handed and harmful response that governments took to the Covid pandemic during its first months, and the exaggerations and lies that were used to get the public to comply. In future posts I’ll address the effectiveness of the lockdowns, the damage they did, and the alternatives.

But first, my standing disclaimer: I’m not a physician. I’m not anything in the medical profession except a patient. I have no opinion whether what worked for me will work for anyone else, and nothing I say should be construed as advice. It’s just the story of what happened to me; make of it what you will.

The lockdown story began on an unlucky day, Friday the Thirteenth.

March 13, 2020.

Worldwide, Covid cases were growing exponentially. In the United States, they had multiplied ten-fold, from 108 in the previous week to 1,119 during the current one.¹² Panicked Americans had stripped store shelves of hand sanitizer, cleaning supplies, and toilet paper.

Against that backdrop, President Trump held a press conference in the Rose Garden during which he declared a national emergency.³ He was accompanied by the Coronavirus Task Force, led by a couple people who were new to most of us, but who would assume increasingly prominent and authoritarian roles in the months ahead: White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx and Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Three days later, on the sixteenth, the president held a second press conference. The skies were overcast and it was a bit cool; he met the press indoors in the Briefing Room this time. “This afternoon,” he said in his opening statement, “We’re announcing new guidelines for every American to follow over the next 15 days.”⁴

Thus “15 Days to Slow the Spread” was born.

The guidelines included:

• Work or engage in schooling from home whenever possible…

• Avoid social gatherings in groups of more than 10 people.

• Avoid eating or drinking in bars, restaurants, and food courts — use drive-thru, pick-up or delivery options.

• Avoid discretionary travel, shopping trips and social visits.

• Do not visit nursing homes or retirement or long-term care facilities unless to provide critical assistance.⁵

All of which seemed reasonable enough. Based on science. We all knew that elderly people were most at risk of dying from Covid. We’re good people. None of us wanted to literally kill grandma.

But then the MGC pulled a bait and switch on us. Within a matter of days, these voluntary guidelines somehow morphed into mandates. A draconian nationwide lockdown, enforced by arrests and fines, was imposed on us. Fifteen days came and went, but the lockdowns dragged on, inflicting unprecedented personal and economic damage on the American people.

In my home state of Massachusetts, for example, Governor Charlie Baker issued “Covid-19 Order No. 13” on March 23.⁶ It decreed, “All businesses and other organizations that do not provide COVID-19 Essential Services shall close their physical workplaces and facilities (“brick-and-mortar premises”) to workers, customers, and the public” for a period of two weeks. A nine-page appendix spelled out what was and was not “essential.”⁷ School buildings were open only “for purposes of facilitating distance learning” and a couple other functions. “Restaurants, bars, or other establishments that offer food or beverages to the public shall not permit on-premises consumption of food or beverages.” Further, “gatherings of more than 10 people are prohibited throughout the Commonwealth.”

The edict was to be enforced by a fine of $300 per violation.

That was just the beginning. Order No. 13 would be extended three times, and not lifted until June 6. It was followed in the months and years ahead by travel quarantines,⁸ curfews,⁹ insane reopening protocols,¹⁰ mandates for masks¹¹ and vaccines,¹² and permanently moving goalposts. You can find the complete set of Governor Baker's Covid-19 orders here. There were a staggering sixty-nine of them—and that doesn’t include the hundreds more from the Department of Public Health and the individual Massachusetts cities and towns.

The United States was now a continent-wide prison. No one actually had to lock us in our homes. All they had to do was take away any place for us to go. And most of us meekly complied without a peep of protest (at least at first—more about that in a future installment).

The bait and switch wasn’t an accident. It was the end result of a deliberate campaign of stealth, deception, and incrementalism, led by Deborah Birx.

Dr. Birx is surprisingly frank about this in her pandemic memoir, Silent Invasion.¹³ From the moment she joined the White House Task Force, she started working toward lockdowns, of the type then being imposed on Italy.

I got to give her credit for being a genius at office politics (at least at first. As we will see, her tenure would not end so well). Within a week of joining the Trump Administration, she had grasped exactly who she needed to win over to get what she wanted and how to manipulate them. She immediately put that knowledge to work.

She recognized there was no appetite in the White House to shut down the country. And even if it were politically palatable, it was constitutionally questionable. Under our federal system, that power is in the hands of state and local officials like governors. None of which deterred Dr. Birx. She viewed the job of making lockdowns happen as a chess game in which President Trump and Vice President Pence were "opponents."¹⁴ She was so convinced of her own virtue that, over and over, she boasts about her duplicity and machinations:

I was trying to formulate a case for a shutdown by any other name.¹⁵

I couldn’t do anything that would reveal my true intention—to use the travel ban as one brick in the construction of a larger wall of protective measures we needed to enact very soon.¹⁶

We had to make these palatable to the administration by avoiding the obvious appearance of a full Italian lockdown. At the same time, we needed the measures to be effective at slowing the spread, which meant matching as closely as possible what Italy had done—a tall order.¹⁷

I believed in that moment that we had obscured the larger truth—that the White House was essentially recommending a flattening-the-curve “shutdown” to states with significant viral spread and extreme reductions in mobility and gatherings in other states to prevent surges there.¹⁸

She relied on four claims to sell the lockdowns, first to President Trump, and then to the public at large. All of which, of course, were allegedly based on science and data:

• The virus could be spread “silently,” i.e. by infected people with no symptoms.

• It was therefore not sufficient merely to quarantine sick people; even healthy people had to socially distance by, among other things, avoiding gatherings of more than ten people.

• The recommendations were guidelines only; completely voluntary.

• If we followed the recommendations, life could get back to normal in two weeks.

Trouble was, none of these were altogether true. The first two claims had some scientific rationale, which was greatly exaggerated. The last two claims were no-good, dirty, stinking lies.

Asymptomatic and Pre-Symptomatic Spread

Dr. Birx prided herself on her data-driven approach to health care.

While making the right policy decisions mattered deeply to me, using the right data to arrive at the right conclusions mattered just as much. In my mind, the two were inextricable. I operated not on gut checks, but fact-checks.¹⁹

In this respect, she considered herself to be morally superior to those who disagreed with her, such as White House officials who were concerned about the effects of lockdowns on the economy:

Much like the CDC, they’d find or create models to back up their previously drawn conclusions. Like the CDC, they were working backward from a premise. I was looking forward, using data to clarify what the future held. I’d asked where their data was. I wouldn’t ever get it, but I would eventually receive a lot of analyses of the data I had presented—much of it distorted or inaccurate, but it had the appearance of being factual. These distortions would become part of their standard operating procedure: Find some way, any way, to use figures, no matter how inaccurate, to support their conclusion.²⁰

Talk about projection. In numerous places in her book, Dr. Birx talks about doing the exact same thing she accuses her opponents of—setting out to find data she could retrofit to what she already believed.

Before she even arrived at the White House—and had access to the full data resources of the federal government—she had already made up her mind about symptom-free transmission. “I wanted to prove that silent spread was at work in this outbreak. The cruise ship the Diamond Princess would provide the evidence.”

There was no scientific consensus on how significant silent spread was. She "felt" that it accounted for 50% of Covid cases; the CDC believed it was more like 17%.

“The reason we’re taking these strong and bold steps,” she said at the March 16 presser, “is because we know there is virus spread before you develop symptoms, and then we know that there’s a large group—we don’t know the precise percent yet — that actually is asymptomatic or has such mild cases that they continue to spread the virus.”

She’s actually claiming three different types of “silent spread” in that statement, and since there is a great deal of confusion about them, let me break them down:

• Asymptomatic—the virus is spread by infected individuals who do not have symptoms and never will.

• Pre-symptomatic—the virus is spread by infected individuals who do not have symptoms but will within a short time, typically a few days.

• Mildly Symptomatic—okay, that one’s self-explanatory.

Of the three, Dr. Birx’s biggest concern was the first. The word “asymptomatic” appears 114 times in Silent Invasion compared to eleven occurrences of “presymptomatic.” A similar pattern can be found in her interviews and press conferences. And unlike many in the media, she understood the difference.

By fall, the picture had firmed up a bit. One of the larger study-of-studies, from November 2020, concluded:

We found significantly higher secondary attack rates from symptomatic index cases than asymptomatic or presymptomatic index cases, although less data were available on the latter. The lack of substantial transmission from observed asymptomatic index cases is notable. However, presymptomatic transmission does occur, with some studies reporting the timing of peak infectiousness at approximately the period of symptom onset.²¹

In other words, for all practical purposes, asymptomatic transmission—which Dr. Birx was so worried about—was not a thing. Pre-symptomatic transmission did occur; the available data, such as it was, showed that it was far less common than symptomatic transmission, but more study was needed.

Despite her protestations to the contrary, Dr. Birx did not base her views about silent spread in March of 2020 on data. The data didn’t exist yet. And when it did come into existence, it showed reports of silent spread were greatly exaggerated.

Ten People

In March of 2020, there was no scientific consensus behind the maximum safe gathering size either. The CDC at the time believed that limiting gatherings to fifty people would be sufficient. Dr. Birx, agreed to ten because she believed it was the lowest number she could realistically get. The number she actually wanted was zero.

Ultimately, cross-household gatherings needed to be stopped entirely, households isolated from other households to prevent further spread. Limiting gatherings to ten had been a first step and was consistent with my spoonful-of-sugar approach. Starting at fifty, as the CDC was advising, would require many more moves to get to zero.²²

When she was called out, during the March 16 press conference, on the discrepancy between her and the CDC, she waved her hands and spoke in general terms about “models” and the benefits of social distancing before veering off into a tangent about AIDS.

Dr. Birx continued to beat the drum on cross-household gatherings. By fall, there was a third wave of cases on the rise, and there was concern about a “superspreader” Thanksgiving holiday. Dr. Birx's histrionics echoed a famous horror movie trope: "The risk was no longer so great in public places; the most dangerous infection zones were in our own homes.”²³ At a Task Force press conference on November 19, she urged Americans “in this moment of bringing people together to really limit interactions in doors, to immediate households.”²⁴

She then left Washington to host a Thanksgiving weekend gathering for two different households at her Delaware vacation home.²⁵

In her defense she, explained, “My daughter hasn't left that house in ten months, my parents have been isolated for 10 months. They've become deeply depressed as I'm sure many elderly have as they've not been able to see their sons, their granddaughters…These are all very difficult things."²⁶

Well, yes, they are very difficult things. The lockdowns were depressing for all of us. But rules for thee, but not for me, I guess.

Amid the ensuing scandal, Dr. Birx announced her “retirement.”

“Guidelines”

Here we go from the realm of shaky science to out and out lies. The very title of the White House recommendations, “The President’s Coronavirus Guidelines for Americans,” was deceptive, since “guidelines,” by their very nature, are voluntary. And the way they were worded bore that out. “Avoid” this, do that “whenever possible.”

But they were never intended to remain “guidelines.” It was always the goal for the nation’s governors to turn the guidelines into mandates—which as we saw they proceeded to do with a vengeance.

There were hints of this in the recommendations themselves, for those who were paying attention. Indeed, the very first “guideline” was “Listen to and follow the directions of your state and local authorities.” And buried at the bottom, were recommendations to close schools and businesses:

• School operations can accelerate the spread of the coronavirus. Governors of states with evidence of community transmission should close schools in affected and surrounding areas…

• In states with evidence of community transmission, bars, restaurants, food courts, gyms, and other indoor and outdoor venues where groups of people congregate should be closed.

It is not clear whether President Trump was in on the bait and switch. In the March 16 press conference, when asked whether the country should “take that extra step” of shutting down bars and restaurants, he turned the question over to Dr. Birx. Dr. Birx started to mutter something about “data” and “how long the virus lives on hard surfaces” (which we knew from her book she didn’t believe in). Then Dr. Fauci interrupted to point out the language at the bottom of the graphic, “It’s really small print,” he said. The president wrapped up the subject with, “We’re recommending things…we haven’t gone to that step yet.”

So a shutdown didn’t seem to be President Trump’s intent. There was no doubt about Dr. Birx’s intent, however:

Following President Trump’s announcement of the guidelines—almost on cue—the recommendations served as the basis for governors to mandate the flattening-the-curve shutdowns. The White House had handed down guidance, and the governors took that ball and ran with it. Based on the weekly governors’ call and my other interactions with them, I could tell they’d been looking for the White House to take the lead in letting the American public know how serious the situation was. With the White House’s “this is serious” message, governors now had “permission” to mount a proportionate response and, one by one, other states followed suit.²⁷

15 Days to Slow the Spread

Just as the title of the White House recommendations was a lie, so was the subtitle, “15 Days to Slow the Spread.” As with the ten-person limit on social gatherings, Dr. Birx agreed to the best number she could get, while scheming to take it to the number she really wanted incrementally. And once again we see her making up her mind what she wanted to do, and then trying to find the data to justify it.

No sooner had we convinced the Trump administration to implement our version of a two-week shutdown than I was trying to figure out how to extend it. Fifteen Days to Slow the Spread was a start, but I knew it would be just that. I didn’t have the numbers in front of me yet to make the case for extending it longer, but I had two weeks to get them.²⁸

Dr. Birx got her 30 days and then some. In most places, "non-essential" businesses were forced to remain closed for roughly ninety days. Schools shuttered their buildings and subjected teachers and students to the torture of "distance learning" much longer; the nation's largest school district, for example, New York City, didn't completely re-open it's schools for a year and half.²⁹

Milton Friedman once said, “Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.”³⁰ This was certainly true of the Covid emergency. It was sold to us as very temporary—fifteen days—and instead went on for years. Most states didn't fully lift their various Covid mandates until the Spring of 2022. In fact, the official emergency only ended a few days ago, on April 10, when President Biden signed a joint resolution to that effect.³¹ Fifteen days to slow the spread turned into 1,123. Yes, I get that I'm indulging in some hyperbole here. Strictly speaking, 1,123 days wasn't "permanent," and the number was just a technicality anyway, since almost all restrictions and mandates had already been lifted. But I think you get my point: Always, always, always beware of governments bearing "guidelines." No matter how reasonable and temporary they appear on the surface.

There was, of course, one other argument made in favor of the lockdowns. It wasn’t mentioned by President Trump or any of the task force members at the March 16 press conference.³² But it was definitely on everybody's minds. And that was the danger of overrunning the hospitals. Which will be the subject of my next installment.

Next Up—Pf1zered! Part 4: Deadly Threat or Big Lie? How serious was the risk of overrunning hospitals during the Covid pandemic?

Bonus Post for Paid Subscribers—The Dumbest Covid Lockdown Measure Ever

---

Michael Isenberg eats meat, drinks bourbon, and writes historical novels set in the medieval Muslim world. Please check out his latest, The Thread of Reason, at http://amazon.com/dp/0985329750.

1. “Trends in Number of COVID-19 Cases and Deaths in the US Reported to CDC, by State/Territory,” Centers for Disease Control, updated March 31, 2023, downloaded April 3, 2023, https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_weeklycases_select_00.

2. “Proclamation on Declaring a National Emergency Concerning the Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Outbreak,” issued March 13, 2020, downloaded April 13, 2023, https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation-declaring-national-emergency-concerning-novel-coronavirus-disease-covid-19-outbreak/.

3. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Conference,” National Archives, March 13, 2020, downloaded April 3, 2023, https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-conference-3/.

4. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing,” National Archives, March 16, 2020, downloaded April 10, 2023, https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-briefing-3/.

5. Dan Mangan, “Trump issues ‘Coronavirus Guidelines’ for next 15 days to slow pandemic,” CNBC, updated March 16, 2020, downloaded April 3, 2023, https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/16/trumps-coronavirus-guidelines-for-next-15-days-to-slow-pandemic.html

6. “Order Assuring Continued Operation of Essential Services in the Commonwealth, Closing Certain Workplaces, and Prohibiting Gatherings of More than 10 People,” Covid-19 Order No. 13, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, March 23, 2020, downloaded April 3, 2023, https://www.mass.gov/doc/march-23-2020-essential-services-and-revised-gatherings-order/download.

7. “Covid-19 Essential Services, Appendix A of the Order Assuring Continued Operation of Essential Services in the Commonwealth, Closing Certain Workplaces, and Prohibiting Gatherings of More than 10 People,” Commonwealth of Massachusetts, March 23, 2020, downloaded April 3, 2023, https://www.mass.gov/doc/covid-19-essential-services/download.

8. “Order Initiating a Mandatory 14-Day Quarantine Requirement for Travelers Arriving in Massachusetts,” Covid-19 Order No. 45, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Jul 24, 2020, downloaded April 10, 2023, https://www.mass.gov/doc/july-24-2020-travel-order-pdf/download.

9. Julia Jacobo and Arielle Mitropoulos, “Massachusetts governor issues overnight stay-at-home advisory amid rise in COVID-19 cases,” ABC News, November 2, 2020, downloaded April 10, 2023, https://abcnews.go.com/US/massachusetts-governor-issues-overnight-stay-home-advisory-amid/story?id=73978472.

10. “How the new Massachusetts restaurant reopening rules will change the dining experience,” Boston.com, May 29, 2020, downloaded April 10, 2023, https://www.boston.com/news/coronavirus/2020/05/29/massachusetts-restaurant-reopening-rules/.

11. “Order Requiring Face Coverings in Public Places Where Social Distancing is not Possible,” Covid-19 Order No. 31, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, May 1, 2020, downloaded April 10, 2023, https://www.mass.gov/doc/may-1-2020-masks-and-face-coverings/download.

12. Katie Lannan, “Baker Orders Vaccine Mandate For 42,000 State Employees,” WBUR, August 19, 2021, downloaded April 10, 2023, https://www.wbur.org/news/2021/08/19/baker-vaccine-mandate-state-employees.

13. Birx, Deborah, Silent Invasion: The Untold Story of the Trump Administration, Covid-19, and Preventing the Next Pandemic Before it’s Too Late (HarperCollins), Kindle Edition.

14. Ibid, p. 124.

15. Ibid, p. 104.

16. Ibid, p. 113.

17. Ibid, p. 117.

18. Ibid, p. 124.

19. Ibid, p. 115.

20. Ibid.

21. Zachary J. Madewell, Yang Yang, Ira M. Longini Jr., et al., “Household Transmission of SARS-CoV-2: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis,” JAMA Network, December 14, 2020, downloaded April 13, 2023, https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2774102.

22. Birx, Op. Cit., p. 125.

23. Ibid, p. 397.

24. “Press Briefing by Vice President Pence and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force,” National Archives, issued November 19, 2020, downloaded April 13, 2023, https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/press-briefing-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-november-19-2020/.

25. Aamer Madhani & Brian Slodysko, “Birx travels, family visits highlight pandemic safety perils,” Associated Press, December 20, 2020, downloaded April 13, 2023, https://apnews.com/article/travel-pandemics-only-on-ap-delaware-thanksgiving-52810c22488fff7e6bb70746bdc9bc61.

26. “Dr Deborah Birx: White House virus expert quits over holiday travel,” BBC, December 23, 2020, downloaded April 13, 2023, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55419954.

27. Birx, Op. Cit., p. 128.

28. Birx, Op. Cit., p. 129.

29. Eliza Shapiro, “Schools in New York City fully reopen after 18 months of pandemic restrictions,” updated September 17, 2021, downloaded April 13, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/13/nyregion/nyc-schools-reopening.html.

30. Friedman, Milton & Rose, The Tyranny of the Status Quo (San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich Publishers, 1984), p. 115.

31. H.J.Res 7, “Relating to a national emergency declared by the President on March 13, 2020,” https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-joint-resolution/7.

32. It was mentioned briefly by one of the reporters.