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Speaker 1: And we are back with another edition of the Federalist

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Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at the

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Federalist and your experience shirpa on today's quest for Knowledge.

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As always, you can email the show at radio at

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the Federalist dot com, follow us on exit FDR LST.

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Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and

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of course to the premium version of our website as well.

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Our guest today is historian Thomas Beckett Kine, author of

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the forthcoming book interesting deep dive look into the COVID era.

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It's called The Reckoning, A Definitive History of the COVID

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nineteen pandemic and other Absurdities. Thomas, thank you so much

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for joining us on this edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you so much for having me on.

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Speaker 1: I said as we were talking before we started broadcasting

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here that this is a timely book. And I mean

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that because while the COVID outbreak was more than five

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years ago, you know, this still resonates today and your

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book really delves into that the consequences of the mass hysteria,

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the lockdowns, you know, the government policies, the takeover by

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the bureaucratic health system within the government and without the

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ripple effects still resonate to this day.

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Speaker 2: Do they not exactly exactly?

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Speaker 3: And it's interesting because when someone sees that there's a

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book about COVID, they probably to themselves, well, I live

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through it, right, Why should I care? I understood what

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happened and all of that. But I see it in

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a much broader context. I see it as representing not

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only a turning point in our democracy, but really symptomatic

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of a broader downward trend into sort of this abandonment

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of rationality and logic and how we descended into the

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state of madness. I don't think it's a point of isolation.

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I think it proves that we're just as capable of

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acting in that way again, and that a lot of

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the horrors and atrocities of history are just as possible today.

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Speaker 1: As Ever, how did we descend into this? From your perspective,

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because you've done, like I said, a deep dive of

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dig into all of this. You've done the research, and again,

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I don't know if it's easier to do this kind

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of research relatively soon after the event, or if you're

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better to do that with more perspective of time, or

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if it's easier, I should say, obviously, this is an

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important topic of concern. But you know, we had people

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who are absolutely rational, including I must admit yours truly,

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when this thing started to hit, there were so many unknowns,

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and all of a sudden you had this fear being

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whipped up. And again that's what happens when you have unknowns.

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And at first I was very concerned for my family

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and for my friends and everyone around me. Oh my goodness,

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you know, we're seeing people die from this thing. We

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saw a significant number of people die from this thing.

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And then all of a sudden, I'm seeing the state

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of Wisconsin, for instance, because I was there at the time,

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the governor of the state trying to shut down places

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of worship, which really was the tipping point for me

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early on. That's when I said, well, wait a minute here,

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this is more than just a health crisis. This is

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a health crisis being used in the furtherance of particularly

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leftist causes. How did we get to this point. I'm

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sure fear played a significant factor in all.

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Speaker 3: Of this, absolutely, And you mentioned the places of worship,

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and of course, during the summer twenty twenty, Right, the

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places of worship were banned from congregating, but then you

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were allowed to go protest on the street. So a

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lot of contradictions during that whole period. We can dive

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into them. To go back to your earlier point. A

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history written as it's occurring is going to differ from

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one written five years later, and there'll be histories written

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about the COVID nineteen pandemic for years to come. And

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I'm sympathetic to some of those views at the time

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that I've heard actually in response to coming out with

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this book, Well, we didn't know, right, we didn't know

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how serious it was going to be. We had to

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react accordingly. And the problem with that is, of course

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that there were people at the time who were begging

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our leaders and even everyday people to pump the brakes

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right and to approach this in a more cautious and

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measured way. But of course they were ignored and we

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further went down the path that we did. How do

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we get here? It's obviously a confluence of a lot

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of different factors, right, something so complex and enormous as

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the COVID nineteen pandemic, There's going to be numerous factors

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at play. Fear is obviously, I think probably the biggest one,

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and for me, in doing my research, I came across

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the primary method of testing, which you might remember was rtPCR,

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which stands for real time polimerase chain reaction testing. And

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so this was a dramatic leap in terms of our

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testing capability compared to only seventeen years earlier when a

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very similar SARS virus was spreading throughout the globe, and

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that was.

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Speaker 2: SARS cove one.

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Speaker 3: It was just called SARS cove right, and then it

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was COVID nineteen came along, and now it's SARS cove one,

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COVID nineteen being stars cove two which emerged in Hong

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Kong in two thousand and three. And we don't need

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to get bogged down too much into the technical details

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of how they tested for sorrows back in two thousand

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and three, but in short, it was a much more complex,

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much more time and financially intensive process that was dependent

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on trained professionals, staffed and centralized laboratories. Basically, you had

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to really want to test someone for a respiratory virus,

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a novel coronavirus like SARS, and so what that did

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was it dramatically reduced the number of positive cases that

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we were able to accrue, right, And so if you

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fast forward to twenty twenty, you now have real time

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Polmearius chain reaction testing, where now you can have dozens,

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if not hundreds of tests done all at once at

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a fraction of the cost. And so what that created

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was this kind of super pipeline of data from the

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testing facilities to the public health agencies and then onto

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the media organizations so then broadcast in their telecasts, and

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so it just it created a pipeline of forty thousand

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new cases this week, eighty thousand new cases this week.

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And that doesn't necessarily mean that we should shut down

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the world and our economy and our society. And so

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it was this technological advancement in testing that actually created

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a doom loop in terms of panic and fear.

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Speaker 1: I remember researching this and investigating this in a series

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of investigative reports back in twenty twenty. And one of

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the things, of course, I know the prepositional work that

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was involved in the so called scientific expert community, but

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certainly in health departments and in County Morgues coroners offices,

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there was a prepositional battle that went on, and early

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on I started looking at that prepositional battle, and that

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was individuals dying of COVID, individuals dying with COVID comorbidities.

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That's a term that we kept hearing early on, and

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that's something that I think got lost along the way

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is in the shaping of this outbreak, who it really

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ultimately impacted and how we went way overboard on that

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prepositional battle. Can you talk a little bit more about that, right?

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Speaker 2: It's interesting, I like that phrase, prepositional battle. Right.

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Speaker 3: It's something where you had cases of people who died

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in a car crash, right, and they tested positive for

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COVID nineteen at the and then they were tallied into

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the overall death counts. Amazing, amazing, amazing, And if you

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take away comorbidities from the equation, you're looking at a

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death rate somewhere in line for those that are sixty

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years old of zero point zero seven percent. Right, So

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this was not all that serious of a concern. And

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so this goes yet to another facet of the madness

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that I talk about in the book, which is the

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manipulation of statistics. Right, And again it's par for the course.

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I don't know if we can expect anything less, but

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there's an incentive to obviously broadcast and report the most

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dire headlines possible.

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Speaker 2: Right, if something is going.

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Speaker 3: Well in a given place, you're not necessarily going to

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hear about it. And that's been a trait of journalism

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for centuries probably, right. But what it created in our

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environment when it came to COVID nineteen was that only

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the worst case is were reported. That's what the public herred,

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and it further drove that dissent in the fear and panic,

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which drove the lockdowns and the restriction of our freedoms.

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Speaker 1: Well, I talked about this recently with another guest in

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the Federalist Radio Hour, and that's in the political sphere,

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the ram manual statement, and he didn't invent it, but

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he certainly furthered it in the Obama administration when he said,

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never let a good crisis go to waste. Was that

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a defining mantra throughout particularly the first two years of

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the COVID era.

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Speaker 2: Hundred percent.

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Speaker 3: And again, what I'm about to say, it's again it's

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just one factor. I'm not going to reduce it to

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this one factor. But Obviously you had a sizeable contingent

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of the press and the left who did not like

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who was in the presidency at that moment. Right, we

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all know who I'm talking about, Donald Trump, right, And

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this was a prime opportunity to cast a blame on him,

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and Trump in many ways sort of stepped into the trap.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 3: These are nanoparticles that are traveling and circulating through the air,

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and they can't be stopped, right, no matter what you do.

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You can lock down populations for forever, right, but inevitably,

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once human beings begin to mingle again, you're going to

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have the transmission of this virus. So I think that

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Trump and we don't need to go down the rabbit

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hole too much on Trump, but that Trump sees the

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world in kind of a winner lose way, and I

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think that's effective in many respects. But he saw the

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COVID pandemic as yet another opportunity to kind of notch

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another victory.

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Speaker 2: And so the problem with.

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Speaker 3: That is that again it could not be stopped, and

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so by trying to take responsibility for stopping the pandemic,

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he opened the door for his opponents to say, oh, well,

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you want to take responsibility. Well, it's still spreading. We're

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going to cast the blame on you. And it ultimately

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resulted in his defeat because I think without COVID, you

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see Trump winning in twenty twenty and serving on a

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second term.

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Speaker 1: I agree one hundred percent. I agree one hundred percent

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with a lot of what you just said about Trump

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as well. I think he was listening to the so

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called experts. And remember Donald Trump, just like the rest

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of us, were repeatedly told to follow the science, trust

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the experts. In other words, shut up, turn off your

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mind of rational, reasonable thought, and let these people who

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we found out were manipulating the system tell you that

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if you stand six feet exactly six feet away from someone,

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you are likely not to get COVID. If you wear

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a paper mask about your face and somebody else does too,

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that will that will stop all transmission. That's what we

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heard over and over again. Do you think that you know,

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the faucies of the world really got into his year,

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got into the administration's year, and they said, President, you

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better do this one hundred percent.

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Speaker 3: And that's one of the ironies of the situation is

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that Trump was accused of not acting in a stringent

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enough way against the virus, and I think we're both

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in agreement. He took the he followed the expert's advice

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almost to a t, right, And I think that goes

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to his personal character, which he's a germ of phobe, right,

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And there's nothing wrong with that, per se right, it's

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going to be clean.

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Speaker 2: And protect yourself.

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Speaker 3: But I think the idea of a transmissive, transmissible bug,

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which has happened to many people across the country, they

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sort of abandon their principles, They abandon their capacity for

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logic and rationality. This idea of a bug infecting their body.

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Now suddenly any and all previously held values that you

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may have had, and how to respond to Christ He's

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kind of go out the window, right. And so for Trump,

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he allowed faut Cheap to come out and broadcast to

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the public exactly what he thought the world should do.

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In doing that and allowing him to take the stage

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in the in the White House press briefing room, you

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give credence to the public health establishment and you allow

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them to steer society as they deem appropriate. So yes,

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I do think they got in his ear. And again

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he felt like he could stop it, right, and that

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that would be another talking point to say, hey, you

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know isis defeated the stock market up nine thousand points

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and COVID eradicated right, but unfortunately it could not be

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stopped and it fell right into his trap.

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Speaker 4: How is September the worst month of the year for

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the taxpayer? Who watched Out on Wall Street podcast with

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Chris Markowski. Every day Chris helps unpack the connection between

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politics and the economy and how it affects your wallet.

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Government agencies have to spend every single time. By the

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end of September, plus take out more debt for another CEA.

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We are in the last forty eight days. The federal

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debt is up by a trillion. We have a severe

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debt problem. Whether it's happening in DC or down on

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Wall Street, it's affecting you financially.

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Speaker 1: Be informed.

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Speaker 4: Check out the Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with Chris

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Markowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 1: Trump's instincts, as he said before, often proved successful for

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him and by the result, in a lot of times

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successful for policy. That said he was trusting a guy

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who was deeply involved in something we would learn a

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lot more about. We'll get to the blackout on real

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honest reporters and real honest scientists who were trying to

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get the full story told to the American public. But

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Anthony Fauci was involved in something that feels quite nefarious

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now the following the COVID outbreak, gain of function experimentation,

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And where was that gain of function experimentation taking place

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many years ago? How much did the taxpayer funded gain

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of function in the world epidemiology and in China impact

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where we are today? And with that, I imagine you

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have some thoughts on the wet market theory that jumped

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out originally in the wake of the COVID outbreak.

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Speaker 3: Right, And part of the problem with discussing this, and

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it was the case at the time as well, is

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that it sounds kind of like a tinfoil had conspiracy

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theory right to suggest that viruses were made transmissible to

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human beings and laboratories and bar off places like Wuhan, China,

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And that filtered right into what the left did, what

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the lockdown enthusiast wanted to do, which was cast anyone

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who was skeptical of their prescriptions as sort of wacky

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Alex Jones kind of level conspiracy theorists.

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Speaker 1: Well, well, we watched a movie of it in the

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nineties with Dustin Hoffman, didn't we. I mean, it seems

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like it played out via the Hollywood script if you

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track all of the tentacles here.

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Speaker 2: It really did.

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Speaker 3: It really did and gain a function research, which, if

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your listeners don't already know, it means to literally add

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a function to a virus, right, And it had some

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grounds and legitimate scientific research in that. The idea was,

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if you were to make a virus that was previously

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not transiscible to humans and then make it transmissible to

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humans by altering its genome, then we are more readily

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able to assess its effects and develop potential treatments if

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that natural mutation occurs in the wild.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 3: Well, the obvious risk, and one that people had been

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warning about for two decades to twenty twenty, was that

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one of these viruses that was not transmissible to humans

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you've now taken to the lab made it transmissible to humans,

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and then now it could potentially escape and infect the population,

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right And so of course that's exactly what happened. And

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again another symptom of kind of the madness that we

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went through was this unwillingness to reckon with how a

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coronavirus emerged at the coronavirus lab in the same city

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in which the coronavirus started, right, sort of just a

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logical deduction that's not above the abilities of a third

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grader to do. Yet for whatever reason, our society seemed

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incapable of making that connection.

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Speaker 2: One thing to.

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Speaker 3: Note is that at the time when it was happening,

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obviously doctor Fauci and others realized it had leaked from

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the Wan Institute of Virology, but they had spent the

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past two decades defending the practice right against people who

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said this was incredibly risky, and so when it came

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time for the investigators to kind of follow the breadcrumbs

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back to Wuhan, they had to jump into overdrive and

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claim that anyone who was asserting this was racist or

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conspiracy theorist right. And so it was an understandable reaction,

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and it was only until things began to get extremely

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out of control that they finally had to sort of

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admit that, yes, this came from gata function of research.

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Speaker 1: It is the contemporary wisdom now pretty much settled on

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that fact. Because you had, you know, the usual suspects

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and including the accomplice media effectively saying no, no, no,

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it didn't come from a lab. It didn't come from

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a lab. Again, that's a conspiracy theorist. Then all of

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a sudden we had government agencies that deal in this

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kind of stuff saying, well, the chances are it probably

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came from a lab. But there was divided in the

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Biden administration, there was divided. There was disagreement, I should say,

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there was not consensus. Have we arrived that this is

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truly something that was doctored through gain of function in

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the Wuhan lab?

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Speaker 3: I think so if you look at the official channels

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from the US government, so the CIA and the Department

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of Energy, they haven't said conclusively, they haven't given that

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conclusive label to it, but they've concluded with with high

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probability that it did originate from the Wuan Institute of Virology.

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And I think it comes down to just regular people.

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If you were to ask them today, they almost uniformly

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would go, yes, the coronavirus emerged from the coronavirus lab.

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Speaker 2: You know it's funny.

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Speaker 3: It was John Stewart, right fame infamously said on Stephen

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Colbert that you know, if at an outbreak of chocolatey

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goodness were to emerge in Hershey, Pennsylvania, then we would

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probably look to the local chocolate factory as a likely culprit.

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So I think the the population's capacity for just basic

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rationality and logic has now reared its head, so to speak,

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and now we have all accepted that, Yes, it emerged

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from the Wuhan Institute Virology.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess. I mean, if you take a look

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at what they were trying to sell us at the time.

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If you know people Chinese patrons consumers were getting COVID

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from bats at a wet market, you think Ozzy Osbourne

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would have gotten COVID many many years ago in Des Moines, Iowa,

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when he bit the head off the bat at a concert.

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But here we are, we have to go through, I think,

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as always a lot of suffering until we get to

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the truth. Our guest today is historian Thomas Beckett Kane.

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He's author of the forthcoming book fascinating book The Reckoning,

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A Definitive History of the COVID nineteen pandemic and other absurdities.

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What did not help, obviously, was a complete and almost

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complete blackout of real, true science of real true reporting.

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I can tell you this. I'm very proud to work

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at a news organization that didn't stop looking and didn't

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accept the pad answer from the so called scientific experts.

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They were digging into this. There were some others as well,

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but mainly you had the corporate media buying into this

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whole thing, including the lockdowns, hook line, and sinker. Worse

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than that, you had social media where more and more

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people were getting their information. We're getting their news, block out,

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censor anything coming from the scientific community that did not

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follow the corporate line. I imagine that you too experienced

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that situation. What have we learned over the last five

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years about that kind of censorship and what it means

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in a democratic republic.

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Speaker 3: It's a great question and it still goes on today.

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Right in my initial promotions of my book here, I

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was promoting it on social media and anything that really matters,

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anything in terms of something of substance when it comes

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to this event. You want to talk about the leak

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from the want and suit of virology, you want to

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talk about the real death rate from COVID nineteen, it's

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all censored, right TikTok, Instagram, even x to a certain extent.

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Even though we like to think of X as a

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completely open form now, some things still don't aren't allowed

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to get through, and it's that and we need that

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free and open expression in order to have these honest

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discussions about what's going on and how.

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Speaker 2: To move forward.

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Speaker 3: I think with the media, you know, unfortunately there's a

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specific brand of person that tends to going to journalism.

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I'm happy to hear that you are not one of

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those people, but this sort of wanting to save the

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world mentality, and of course they have an extreme bias

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towards leftist organizations or the Democratic Party, and this vital.

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Speaker 2: Virlic hate of Donald.

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Speaker 3: Trump right, and so anything that can be lobbed in

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order to support those causes and damage the other side

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is reported. I think that the media going forward has

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obviously lost a lot of its credibility, and the COVID

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nineteen pandemic is not the only example of that, but

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certainly that was kind of the final nail in the

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coffin for many people. And going forward, we have to

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understand that there's an agenda and that there are very

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few neutral sources of information in the media, and luckily,

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I think the American public is turned onto that more

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than ever.

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Speaker 1: This trump hating corporate accomplice media, as I like to

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call it, nothing surprises us anymore. Of course, every day

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is a new revelation of what they are capable of doing.

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But you looking into this, the scientist, the scientific community,

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there were so many in the scientific community that put

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either put their blinders on or willfully did these kinds

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of things. And the people, the scientists who spoke out

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against what was happening and who stood up for science,

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among other basic rights, the First Amendment principally among them.

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They were blacklisted, they were fired from prominent universities, their

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reputations were dragged in the mud. Some of them were investigated,

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some prosecuted. This is unbelievable stuff for a country that

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has gone through purges in thest have we learned nothing,

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very little, very little apparently.

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Speaker 3: Of course, as you're probably familiar with, you've got the

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Great Barrington Declaration which was published during twenty twenty, and

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it was an attempt to say that the lockdowns were

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not an appropriate response to this respiratory virus. And as

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you know, doctor Fauci and others around him, they have

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the email records of this we're deliberately trying to smear

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those authors of that report in major media organizations, and

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of course they went along with it, right in step

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with whatever doctor Fauci recommended. In terms of that, it

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is sad. It is sad to see that true science

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conflicting opinions.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 3: You can see it on climate change, right, the whole

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ninety nine point seven percent consensus. Right, of course, any

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consensus in science means that likely that field of study

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is completely corrupted. Right, the whole idea of sciences. You

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have conflict, you have disagreement, and then we move towards

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the truth.

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Speaker 1: You have a scientific method that was completely divorced from

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all that was happening. Then, I mean, don't you find

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that astounding that even the basic principles of science were

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thrown out the window in some whatever the quest was.

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They say it was to save lives, But we're learning

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more and more that that was if it made the

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list at all at the end of the list.

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Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, so much for the scientific method. Right.

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Speaker 3: It's unfortunately it's because so many of these different fields

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of science has been politicized.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 3: You could see it in say transgenderism, Right, it used

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to be ten years ago that was considered a mental

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health disorder, right, gender dysphoria, right. And due to the

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political climate of today, that was changed to something that's natural, right,

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and something that it can be treated right, right, And

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so all these fields of study in science another way,

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you see it in climate science, you see it in

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gender theory.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 3: It's been politicized and it's being co opted to support

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different agendas. And I can only hope that they change

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their ways and we can begin to sort of return

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to normalcy when it comes to science and the progression

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of knowledge.

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Speaker 1: You've had to dig through a lot of documents this book,

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I am I'm sure required a look through a lot

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of email communications contemporaneously, some very troubling things. Obviously, the

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House started at least in twenty twenty three to really

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investigate what was happening behind the curtain. What are the

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emails that you have seen, the records you have seen

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most troubling to you about this corrupted movement in a

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portion of the scientific community.

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Speaker 3: I mentioned one, and that was the doctor Fauci email

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to his colleagues to begin to smear shows who were

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skeptical of his prescriptions. Another set of emails which was

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disturbing has to do with State Department officials who visited

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the Wuhanasuo Virology around twenty eighteen, and they began to

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report that there were serious safety concerns in terms of

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how the virus was being stored and protected at the laboratory. Right,

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you had ventilation systems that were malfunctioning and leaving particles

472
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suspended in the air, so that likely a lat technician

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could become infected. And then obviously he doesn't sleep and

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live at the laboratory, right, he goes home and mingles

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with the general public, And so that's very likely how

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the virus escaped from the laboratory. And so you had

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this acknowledgment that things were not being done safely at

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the laboratory. The National Institutes of Health was warned about this,

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about how this was ongoing, and yet nothing was done,

480
00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:03,319
and yet they continued to defend the practice of gain

481
00:30:03,359 --> 00:30:06,839
a function and ultimately it led to its escape in

482
00:30:06,880 --> 00:30:08,759
the pandemic and all its horrors.

483
00:30:08,880 --> 00:30:09,119
Speaker 2: Right.

484
00:30:10,519 --> 00:30:16,680
Speaker 1: Another area of information suppression I think that was and still,

485
00:30:16,720 --> 00:30:20,319
like most of the stuff still lingers today and is

486
00:30:20,440 --> 00:30:26,920
very concerning, is kind of the blackout on the COVID vaccine.

487
00:30:27,319 --> 00:30:31,359
The storyline that was told early on, and they kept

488
00:30:31,359 --> 00:30:35,119
trying to tell it, and then science, of course, reality

489
00:30:35,279 --> 00:30:39,240
got in the way of all that. I'm looking at

490
00:30:39,440 --> 00:30:43,240
a press release right now, and I remember this photo.

491
00:30:43,359 --> 00:30:45,559
You probably do too. I think a lot of our

492
00:30:45,559 --> 00:30:50,799
listeners will the press release. Doctor Francis Collins, doctor Tony Fauci,

493
00:30:50,799 --> 00:30:54,160
and several others, including frontline healthcare workers, received COVID nineteen

494
00:30:54,279 --> 00:30:59,240
vaccination at NIH Clinical Center. Here's a photo of Fauci

495
00:30:59,359 --> 00:31:02,400
with his arm rolled up. He's in that paper mask

496
00:31:02,559 --> 00:31:07,039
and he's getting the shot. We have learned a lot still,

497
00:31:07,240 --> 00:31:10,519
there is a lot to be learned from the consequences

498
00:31:10,599 --> 00:31:16,200
of this hastily produced vaccination. What have you found along

499
00:31:16,240 --> 00:31:17,319
the way on this front?

500
00:31:18,519 --> 00:31:22,359
Speaker 3: Right, It's tough because in some ways operation warp speed

501
00:31:22,640 --> 00:31:26,240
should be celebrated as kind of a technological miracle, right,

502
00:31:26,279 --> 00:31:30,359
a scientific miracle, and sure we want to applaud some

503
00:31:30,440 --> 00:31:33,319
of that to an extent, but of course the issue

504
00:31:33,359 --> 00:31:37,079
comes with how it was developed in such a quick

505
00:31:37,119 --> 00:31:41,000
amount of time, and it bypassed all the normal scientific

506
00:31:41,039 --> 00:31:43,400
safeguards that we put in place for the development of

507
00:31:43,400 --> 00:31:46,519
anything that goes into a human beings body. In that respect,

508
00:31:46,839 --> 00:31:49,079
as you know, is the first time that an m

509
00:31:49,319 --> 00:31:54,960
RNA vaccine was approved for widespread dissemination. And the obvious

510
00:31:54,960 --> 00:31:58,119
issues are that it hijacks the human genome in order

511
00:31:58,160 --> 00:32:02,079
to produce the virus so that the immune system can

512
00:32:02,160 --> 00:32:03,599
learn to defend against it.

513
00:32:03,680 --> 00:32:03,799
Speaker 2: Right.

514
00:32:03,799 --> 00:32:06,680
Speaker 3: This is contrary to how normal vaccines work, where you

515
00:32:06,759 --> 00:32:09,720
grow and develop the virus in a laboratory for ten

516
00:32:09,720 --> 00:32:12,559
to fifteen years and then you put that into the

517
00:32:12,599 --> 00:32:15,519
vaccine and so that the immune system can learn to

518
00:32:15,599 --> 00:32:18,319
respond to it more effectively. But this was the first

519
00:32:18,359 --> 00:32:19,799
time and it had ever been done in sort of

520
00:32:19,799 --> 00:32:23,720
this hijacking of the human genome way, and the effects

521
00:32:24,079 --> 00:32:27,400
that are well known are also myocarditis, right, especially in

522
00:32:27,480 --> 00:32:31,279
young men. You had young men keeling over randomly having

523
00:32:31,359 --> 00:32:34,640
sudden heart failure after getting the vaccine. Of course, the

524
00:32:34,680 --> 00:32:37,359
media was unwilling to really reckon with that and really

525
00:32:37,440 --> 00:32:40,039
deal with Hey, maybe we should be asking questions about

526
00:32:40,440 --> 00:32:44,160
about a vaccine that was developed in one tenth of

527
00:32:44,240 --> 00:32:47,440
the time that it normally takes to develop. It's tough

528
00:32:47,559 --> 00:32:51,640
because the vaccine in some respects was positive. It helps

529
00:32:51,640 --> 00:32:54,079
people with pre existing conditions and those who feel that

530
00:32:54,079 --> 00:32:57,359
they're very vulnerable. It gives them that added barrier, but

531
00:32:57,440 --> 00:33:00,640
we don't yet fully understand all of the side effects,

532
00:33:00,680 --> 00:33:03,119
and I think myocarditis is just a tip of the iceberg.

533
00:33:03,200 --> 00:33:08,039
Potentially luckily no sterilization. It looks like global population numbers

534
00:33:08,400 --> 00:33:11,680
have tended to stay steady since the pre pandemic days,

535
00:33:12,359 --> 00:33:16,440
but who knows. There could be serious, serious complications that

536
00:33:16,599 --> 00:33:17,759
emerge in the near future.

537
00:33:18,440 --> 00:33:20,720
Speaker 1: You know, we talk about all of those health consequences

538
00:33:20,759 --> 00:33:23,960
in their myriad, but we would be remiss if we

539
00:33:24,039 --> 00:33:32,160
didn't mention the societal, educational, community consequences of what it

540
00:33:32,319 --> 00:33:36,480
means to be locked down by your government, locked out

541
00:33:37,200 --> 00:33:43,200
of connecting with human beings, a basic social need that

542
00:33:43,359 --> 00:33:47,599
had significant damage. Look at the test scores of in

543
00:33:48,160 --> 00:33:52,319
our public schools in particular, particularly those schools that, through

544
00:33:52,359 --> 00:33:57,400
their teachers' unions, kept up and kept up locking kids

545
00:33:57,440 --> 00:34:02,079
out of schools a long after the consensus was don't

546
00:34:02,119 --> 00:34:05,279
do this. This is more damaging to them than this

547
00:34:05,519 --> 00:34:11,639
virus that has a very very limited mortality insignificant mortality

548
00:34:11,679 --> 00:34:17,519
rate among kids. We're still dealing with that years later.

549
00:34:19,039 --> 00:34:22,440
What have you seen and learned in terms of the

550
00:34:22,519 --> 00:34:27,440
people behind those lockdowns and will they ever be held accountable.

551
00:34:29,079 --> 00:34:31,840
Speaker 3: I don't think certainly not held do held do account

552
00:34:31,880 --> 00:34:34,039
I mean, you look at doctor Faucira and then President

553
00:34:34,039 --> 00:34:37,320
Biden as he was leaving office issued and outgoing pardon

554
00:34:37,719 --> 00:34:40,559
to the good doctor. So we'll never see him held

555
00:34:40,599 --> 00:34:44,159
to account. As for some of the effects that the

556
00:34:44,239 --> 00:34:50,039
lockdown inflicted on people, just apart from the skyrocketing suicide

557
00:34:50,119 --> 00:34:53,320
rates and drug and alcohol addiction that we saw during

558
00:34:53,360 --> 00:34:57,199
the pandemic, and of course medical care facilities and resources

559
00:34:57,199 --> 00:35:00,000
that were diverted away from people who were suffering from

560
00:35:00,199 --> 00:35:04,079
really serious problems like cancer. It was diverted to address

561
00:35:04,079 --> 00:35:07,320
the COVID issue, and those people suffered as a result.

562
00:35:07,320 --> 00:35:09,920
You know, you mentioned the children, and it reminds me

563
00:35:10,039 --> 00:35:14,639
of a statement that renowned philosopher Sam Harris once said.

564
00:35:14,639 --> 00:35:15,400
Speaker 2: You may have seen this.

565
00:35:15,400 --> 00:35:17,280
Speaker 3: But he said in an interview that it would have

566
00:35:17,280 --> 00:35:22,239
been preferable had more children died during COVID, as that

567
00:35:22,320 --> 00:35:25,239
would have basically made anyone who was skeptical of the

568
00:35:25,320 --> 00:35:29,400
lockdowns a non starter, right, and that if this disease

569
00:35:29,440 --> 00:35:32,360
had been killing children on a massive scale, then that

570
00:35:32,360 --> 00:35:34,920
would have been a positive development because then you could

571
00:35:35,039 --> 00:35:37,440
go to the skeptics about lockdowns and say, oh, well,

572
00:35:37,599 --> 00:35:39,119
you have nothing to say here, And I think he's

573
00:35:39,119 --> 00:35:41,800
probably right. Had the virus had a high death rate

574
00:35:42,079 --> 00:35:44,880
among children, there would have been no room to ask

575
00:35:44,960 --> 00:35:47,440
questions about any of this stuff. But as to those

576
00:35:47,519 --> 00:35:50,840
lasting effects, you can see it in speech disorders and

577
00:35:50,880 --> 00:35:55,679
some lasting learning disabilities that children still exhibit today and

578
00:35:55,719 --> 00:35:58,960
that teachers are noticing. And lastly, I'd say that there's

579
00:35:59,039 --> 00:36:01,920
I think, and you may be especially young, among young

580
00:36:01,960 --> 00:36:07,159
people that I've interacted with, there's sort of a nehalistic

581
00:36:07,239 --> 00:36:10,760
kind of haze kind of envelops us. Right now, where

582
00:36:10,760 --> 00:36:13,679
are we going? There's no real vision right And I

583
00:36:13,719 --> 00:36:15,239
think part of that has to do with the COVID

584
00:36:15,320 --> 00:36:18,760
nineteen pandemic. It was so startling, so sort of bewildering

585
00:36:19,480 --> 00:36:22,639
that many of us don't really see a vision for

586
00:36:22,679 --> 00:36:25,039
the future, and especially young people go, well, if the

587
00:36:25,079 --> 00:36:28,159
government can react this way, then why you even give

588
00:36:28,159 --> 00:36:29,000
it a shot, right?

589
00:36:29,760 --> 00:36:32,519
Speaker 1: I think they're dealing with fear shock to this day.

590
00:36:32,559 --> 00:36:35,400
I think a lot of us still do. I think

591
00:36:36,199 --> 00:36:39,559
many of us have awakened to the bad dream that

592
00:36:39,639 --> 00:36:44,840
it was not just people dying from this virus, but

593
00:36:45,119 --> 00:36:50,360
the consequences from the response to that, and all of

594
00:36:50,400 --> 00:36:55,079
those impacts are with us today and quite frankly, I

595
00:36:55,239 --> 00:36:58,800
think they will be with us for some time, including

596
00:36:58,840 --> 00:37:03,119
the economics that when you shut down an economy on

597
00:37:03,159 --> 00:37:07,320
a dime, what that does to the supply chain, for instance,

598
00:37:07,400 --> 00:37:11,000
And when you put people out of work, and then

599
00:37:11,599 --> 00:37:14,239
you decide, okay, since we put them out of work,

600
00:37:14,360 --> 00:37:17,840
then we're going to pump a lot of money into

601
00:37:17,960 --> 00:37:21,920
their accounts for not working. That has a deleterious effect,

602
00:37:21,960 --> 00:37:26,920
I think too. But real quick, I kept hearing and

603
00:37:26,960 --> 00:37:30,639
reading during the opening days of the pandemic. Why are

604
00:37:30,679 --> 00:37:35,039
these people objecting to these lockdowns? They did these same

605
00:37:35,119 --> 00:37:37,440
things during the Spanish Flu, which, of course you were

606
00:37:37,480 --> 00:37:39,519
told you couldn't call it the Spanish flu anymore because

607
00:37:39,559 --> 00:37:42,159
that was xenophobic. But that's what they called it in

608
00:37:42,800 --> 00:37:46,719
nineteen nineteen when folks returning home from World War One.

609
00:37:47,360 --> 00:37:51,039
But I've read a lot of historical accounts. I wasn't around.

610
00:37:51,360 --> 00:37:53,639
I feel like I was around. I feel old enough

611
00:37:53,639 --> 00:37:56,079
to have been around at that time. But there weren't

612
00:37:56,239 --> 00:38:02,320
these massive lockdowns of the entire country and business and

613
00:38:02,920 --> 00:38:05,280
commune there. I'm sure there were some communities. I've read that,

614
00:38:05,840 --> 00:38:08,360
but there wasn't a lockdown of the country. Why did

615
00:38:08,400 --> 00:38:12,880
this take root as a defense of this thing.

616
00:38:13,760 --> 00:38:17,480
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting, and that dovetails with the Spanish flu.

617
00:38:17,519 --> 00:38:21,199
Actually it begins under the Bush administration, and the story

618
00:38:21,280 --> 00:38:25,239
goes that I've read it's maybe apocryphal, but that George W.

619
00:38:25,320 --> 00:38:26,719
Speaker 2: Bush read a very good.

620
00:38:26,599 --> 00:38:31,159
Speaker 3: Book called the Basically the Spanish Epidemic by an author

621
00:38:31,239 --> 00:38:32,559
named John Berry. You have to get back to me

622
00:38:32,599 --> 00:38:34,880
on the name of the book, but it's a very

623
00:38:34,920 --> 00:38:37,840
well written book about the Spanish flu and President Bush

624
00:38:37,880 --> 00:38:39,679
read it at the time in two thousand and five

625
00:38:40,320 --> 00:38:44,880
and became transfixed on the issue of a respiratory virus

626
00:38:45,199 --> 00:38:48,320
killing millions in the United States and around the world,

627
00:38:48,639 --> 00:38:53,039
and he dispatched a task force to begin to devise

628
00:38:53,199 --> 00:38:55,079
methods of ways.

629
00:38:54,840 --> 00:38:55,400
Speaker 2: To combat it.

630
00:38:55,480 --> 00:38:57,679
Speaker 3: Right, And the problem with that is that actually doctor

631
00:38:57,679 --> 00:39:01,760
Fauci funded a study co a study on this, and

632
00:39:01,800 --> 00:39:05,320
that the number of deaths from respiratory illness has fallen

633
00:39:05,360 --> 00:39:09,559
by something like ninety eight percent since the Spanish fluid. Thankfully,

634
00:39:09,960 --> 00:39:13,960
modern medicine has progressed to such an extent where respiratory

635
00:39:14,000 --> 00:39:20,360
viruses are no longer the huge civilization threatening virus that

636
00:39:20,400 --> 00:39:23,159
they were in the early nineteen hundreds, And so it

637
00:39:23,199 --> 00:39:26,440
begins there, and this task force begins to see, instead

638
00:39:26,440 --> 00:39:30,840
of allowing people to take individual precautions, take responsibility for

639
00:39:30,960 --> 00:39:35,320
responding to an infection, we need to lock down entire populations,

640
00:39:35,679 --> 00:39:38,800
We need to restrict movement, we need to close down businesses.

641
00:39:39,079 --> 00:39:41,199
Speaker 2: And so these ideas begin.

642
00:39:41,000 --> 00:39:43,519
Speaker 3: To take root, and by the time twenty twenty happens,

643
00:39:43,599 --> 00:39:46,719
they install that playbook in terms of how this should

644
00:39:46,760 --> 00:39:51,039
be responded to, and you get the tyrannical lockdowns that

645
00:39:51,079 --> 00:39:52,519
we saw in twenty twenty.

646
00:39:53,119 --> 00:39:57,000
Speaker 1: With all that final question for you, with what you

647
00:39:57,320 --> 00:40:00,360
have found along the way in your research we have

648
00:40:00,440 --> 00:40:06,480
all lived through, do you see something like this happening again?

649
00:40:06,519 --> 00:40:09,159
And I don't mean a pandemic, I don't mean a

650
00:40:09,280 --> 00:40:15,239
virus that has deadly, sweeping, deadly effect. I mean how

651
00:40:15,960 --> 00:40:20,480
the United States, in particular the free world responds to it.

652
00:40:20,800 --> 00:40:24,639
Do you see what we experienced in twenty twenty, twenty

653
00:40:24,719 --> 00:40:26,880
twenty one in particular happening again?

654
00:40:28,320 --> 00:40:31,239
Speaker 3: I think, unfortunately yes, And like I said before, with

655
00:40:31,960 --> 00:40:35,000
despite all of these scientific and technological advancements that we

656
00:40:35,000 --> 00:40:38,000
should be thankful for in many respects, we're just as

657
00:40:38,039 --> 00:40:41,320
ill prepared as ever for responding to crises.

658
00:40:41,880 --> 00:40:43,239
Speaker 2: And for me, the lesson, the.

659
00:40:43,320 --> 00:40:45,239
Speaker 3: Ultimate lesson from all of this, and you can look

660
00:40:45,280 --> 00:40:48,920
back at history in any sort of tyrannical episode, is

661
00:40:48,960 --> 00:40:52,199
that they don't end by the subjugators sort of magically

662
00:40:52,239 --> 00:40:55,280
going hey, we're done right, We're going to stop doing

663
00:40:55,320 --> 00:40:58,800
what we're doing. They end with the collective refusal of

664
00:40:58,840 --> 00:41:02,119
the general population and to say enough. You know, we're

665
00:41:02,159 --> 00:41:05,440
tired of being subjugated. We're tired of what's going on.

666
00:41:05,480 --> 00:41:07,199
That's what happened with code right. There was never any

667
00:41:07,199 --> 00:41:10,360
sort of grand proclamation from above from FOUCH saying hey,

668
00:41:10,440 --> 00:41:11,960
let's stop the lockdowns, let's.

669
00:41:11,800 --> 00:41:13,679
Speaker 2: Get on with normal everyday life.

670
00:41:13,679 --> 00:41:17,400
Speaker 3: It was individuals standing up and saying we're tired of this,

671
00:41:17,559 --> 00:41:19,880
and they got back to their everyday life. So it's

672
00:41:19,920 --> 00:41:22,519
two fold answer there. Yes, I think it's possible, but

673
00:41:22,559 --> 00:41:25,760
the ultimate lesson is that they end by us saying

674
00:41:25,880 --> 00:41:27,400
enough and rising up.

675
00:41:28,440 --> 00:41:31,239
Speaker 1: I think you're absolutely right, and I saw it firsthand.

676
00:41:31,280 --> 00:41:35,800
I reported on the stories of so many, you know,

677
00:41:36,039 --> 00:41:39,800
courageous people who stood up early on and said no,

678
00:41:40,119 --> 00:41:44,960
this is not right, this is not America. This is

679
00:41:45,199 --> 00:41:47,840
not our country, and we want it back. And they

680
00:41:47,880 --> 00:41:54,360
stood up to you know, little Tyrant Karens in health

681
00:41:54,440 --> 00:41:58,639
agencies and county departments, and they stood up at county

682
00:41:58,679 --> 00:42:01,920
boards and school board and they stood up all the

683
00:42:01,920 --> 00:42:07,119
way to Congress. And that at least is the silver

684
00:42:07,239 --> 00:42:09,760
lining and all of this. I hope we have such

685
00:42:09,840 --> 00:42:13,800
courageous people the next time around. Thanks to my guest today,

686
00:42:14,719 --> 00:42:20,039
historian Thomas Beckett Kane, author of the forthcoming book The Reckoning,

687
00:42:20,360 --> 00:42:25,039
A Definitive History of the COVID nineteen pandemic and other Absurdities.

688
00:42:25,800 --> 00:42:28,719
You've been listening to another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour.

689
00:42:29,079 --> 00:42:32,760
I'm at Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at the Federalist. We'll

690
00:42:32,800 --> 00:42:36,320
be back soon with more. Until then, stay lovers of freedom.

691
00:42:36,760 --> 00:42:45,719
I'm anxious for the friend heard the fame by Serison

692
00:42:48,679 --> 00:42:48,800
Speaker 2: Then