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Hard To Overstate How Bad Birx Was
Two Weeks to Flatten the Curve ™ was always just “marketing.” Deborah Birx, in her memoir, admits that she needed to make sweeping open-ended lockdowns “palatable” to the Trump administration, that she always intended to expand that into longer-lasting “Italian-style” (Remember, Italy was then in the headlines for draconian measures), and that she knew such a program would be rejected if she were honest about her intentions. “Two Weeks to Flatten the Curve” ™ was always explicitly (proudly!) misleading. But don’t take my word for it.
In August 2022, our own @susanquinn wrote that Birx, not Fauci, was the real COVID ringleader. Alrighty, I believe. I believe so much that I didn’t even comment there. Turns out there was a lively discussion and I missed out.
Susan was writing in the wake of Dr. Scott Atlas’ memoir. What I have not seen treated on these pages (blessed search function) is a reaction to Birx’s own memoir, which came out in April 2022.
I have some research to do. I’m going to listen to Birx’s book and then Atlas’s. Meanwhile,@markalexander kicked off my recent interest with a Twitter quote:
To back that up, here’s an article at The Brownstone Institute (whatever that is) digging into just how bad Birx was:
[Italics is original copy from the Brownstone article; quotes are Brownstone quoting Birx’ memoir – bdb]
Birx proudly recalls using “flatten-the-curve guidance” to manipulate the President’s administration into consenting to lockdowns that were stricter than they realized.
On Monday and Tuesday, while sorting through the CDC data issues, we worked simultaneously to develop the flatten-the-curve guidance I hoped to present to the vice president at week’s end. Getting buy-in on the simple mitigation measures every American could take was just the first step leading to longer and more aggressive interventions. 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. We were playing a game of chess in which the success of each move was predicated on the one before it.
Birx divulges her strategy of using federal advisories to give cover to state governors to impose mandates and restrictions.
The White House would “encourage,” but the states could “recommend” or, if needed, “mandate.” In short, we were handing governors and their public health officials a template, a state-level permission slip they could use to enact a specific response that was appropriate for the people under their jurisdiction. The fact that the guidelines would be coming from a Republican White House gave political cover to any Republican governors skeptical of federal overreach
Then, Birx recalls with delight as her strategy led the states to shut down one by one.
[T]he 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…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. California was first, doing so on March 18. New York followed on March 20. Illinois, which had declared its own state of emergency on March 9, issued shelter-in-place orders on March 21. Louisiana did so on the twenty-second. In relatively short order by the end of March and the first week of April, there were few holdouts. The circuit-breaking, flattening-the-curve shutdown had begun.
All that’s missing is the maniacal laugh.
In what may be the most damning quote of the entire US response to Covid, in one paragraph, Birx tells us that she’d always intended “two weeks to slow the spread” as a lie and immediately wanted those two weeks extended, despite having no data to show why that was necessary.
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. However hard it had been to get the fifteen-day shutdown approved, getting another one would be more difficult by many orders of magnitude.
This whole thing smells like the Time magazine admission that a secretive bipartisan cabal conspired to throw the 2020 election: https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/
I’d like to quote particularly juicy passages, but the whole damned thing is just jaw-dropping. They stole it, they admit it, they’re proud of it, and nothing is going to happen to them.
I’ve always felt that this COVID thing was a bunch of garbage, and I know that there has been good reporting. Well, it seems that the reporting has been better than I thought, so I should dig in and take a closer look. Not like I have to dig real far or look real hard — they’re proud of it.
So let’s re-convene after reading up a bit. I’ll start with Birx’ (evil) and Atlas’ (good) books.
Caution — it looks like the crazies were right.
Published in General
Crucial point.
I thought Trump wasn’t a politician.
It looks like Kevin McCarthy wants to lock in the Covid spending levels for eternity.
I’m still seeing face-masks.
Which are useless. But pumping people full of fear did the trick.
That’s odd considering that a lot of the spending already stopped.
I might wear a mask under the right circumstances. Or, I might virtue signal and say, “God, I thank thee that I am not as others are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this mask wearer.”
As for letting fear drive my decisions, I intend to do just that. Fear of government power grabs will drive my decision to push for clawing back the vast emergency powers that have been given to presidents and governors.
Really? Unspent federal money disappears into what are called “unfunded requirements” at the end of the year. If you’re certain that the actual spending of the amounts has stopped, great — I haven’t looked so I’m not arguing that it isn’t so. Just pointing out that they don’t have to spend it “on COVID” no matter what the budget said it was for.
I once knew a guy got a prestigious award for spending 103% of our (I mean his) allocated funds.
At least for preventing the spread of viruses. But there may be a few folks wearing them for other reasons. I know I have to wear them in the winter when I’m outside and it’s below a certain temperature. No idea if it would help with these air quality alert days. Maybe I should try it.
Stone them wot wear a mask.
What if it’s this kind?
I meant that stuff like federal unemployment assistance to states and the additional EBT/SNAP (aka “food stamps”) funding stopped a few months ago, or even earlier in some states.
The mask is the least gay thing in that picture.
The hat needs an ostrich plume. Black, of course.
If you look carefully, it has it, but both black and white.
It inspired me to go and watch That Very Munchausen again.
Subtitle timing on this one isn’t very good.
Hieronymus Karl Friedrich, Freiherr von Münchhausen fought in the Russian army in the Russo-Turkish War.
In this one he goes to war against England, but then it’s called off.
McCullough was already being a $hit stirrer by May 2020.
He was dubious about the lethality of COVID. Possibly he was aware of John Ionnadis’ study showing that since many COV cases were so mild that the infected persons did not seek out medical help or even know that they had experienced COV, the fatality rate was much less than stated. (Here on Ricochet, and early on, Peter Robinson brought forth Ionnadis’ most important study.)
By May of 2021, McCullough was already stating how it had never been about COVID, but about getting the public to be so fearful of COV that they would eagerly submit to a basically untested, ADE-inflicting injection.
16 min video: https://ncrenegade.com/massive-world-renowned-doctor-blows-lid-off-of-covid-vaccine/
(My first link might have been wrong.)
Plus with the media serving the interests of Bill Gates and Pharma, our CIA, and Soros-supported Woke ideology, Americans are massaged into holding the public opinion that the PTB desire them to hold.
It is also true that many of the most important issues facing the USA are never mentioned in any media broadcasts.
Mention to the average consumer that this month, The WHO officials will be politely asking Biden to surrender all emergency powers related to health matters over to their org, and that consumer’s eyes will glaze over.
Trump completely botched the COVID response. Elevating Fauci and Birx was insane. DeSantis 2024.
There are days when I do envy those who can dull the operation of the human mind down far enough to allow for whatever reading of events can keep them smugly comfortable in a very shallow world view. Current events now have those days coming quite often…
BDB, you mentioned a Feb 2021 Time magazine article.
Just now I got around to reading that article as it commented on the way Trump refused to concede and no horrendous outbreak of protests took place to help him.
At least that was the consensus of the piece.
But how could Time magazine state in Feb 2021 that there were no protests? Wasn’t there an insurrection?
So which is it Time? Protests so overwhelmingly upsetting on the behalf of Trump that some protesters who on Jan 6th 2021 merely stood outside on the street in front of the US Capital Building now will serve years of a prison term?
Or no protests?
And then there was this Orwellian double speak paragraph: “There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans. The pact was formalized in a terse, little-noticed joint statement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO published on Election Day. Both sides would come to see it as a sort of implicit bargain–inspired by the summer’s massive, sometimes destructive racial-justice protests–in which the forces of labor came together with the forces of capital to keep the peace and oppose Trump’s assault on democracy.”
This is basically why I never read Time magazine. I’d probably find Mein Kampf easier to handle as at least its author is safely dead and buried, while those writing for Time still live on to inflict more psychic and actual damage on the country I love.