My daughter Grace went into the hospital with a cold. Hours later, she was on a Vapotherm, then a BiPAP. She was dead six and a half days later. I went to a different hospital three days after Grace’s death. The team put me on a steroid, a regular oxygen cannula, and nebulized budesonide and gave me a probiotic, a multivitamin, vitamin E, vitamin D, and fish oil. I was significantly worse than Grace. I had the same diagnosis: COVID-19 pneumonia with a D-dimer off the charts. But I was turned around in 24 hours. Standards of care hasten death. Strangely, these same medical staff will someday kill themselves by following their own model. Why the different outcome? The hospital where Grace was killed treated the COVID diagnosis with the standard of care. The hospital where I survived treated the patient. We know that 1.2 million Americans were killed in hospitals during the COVID era. America was number one in this category of all countries on the planet. Second was India, with a population 400% of the United States and fewer than half the deaths. Our medical-industrial complex is drunk on the SOC model. Why? We finished up the first round of doctor and nurse depositions on May 23. Their attorneys required a last-minute gag order just to take their depositions. So I can’t share the video or transcripts until the judge rules on the matter. I do want to share some important observations from the depositions, to help others see what is going on behind the curtain relative to “caring” for the patient. First, you have to fight the lies embedded in the medical records. In my testimony, I stated we could make a highlight reel with all the lies. This is important because the burden of proof is on the plaintiff, and medical records are presumed true unless you can prove otherwise. The records are called prima facie evidence. This reality is another reason medical murder cases rarely see the light of day. I believe the deposition record contains evidence of numerous lies under oath by the defendants. I had heard about doctors and nurses lying under oath, but when you see it for yourself, you see how deep the corruption is. The presumption of death in the Ascension Hospital system is appalling. Their internally developed Ascension COVID Guidelines start with the premise that they are managing a death outcome instead of treating the patient with a goal of living. Their COVID “experts” bought the incentivized protocols all the way to the bank; they became state actors in the government’s scheme. Their arrogance led them to believe there would be no consequences for their actions. We never consented to the med combination that killed Grace. We were asked about the use of tocilizumab and the ventilator. Why? I learned this was because those protocols were “experimental” and so needed consent. They have adopted the idea that consent (informed or otherwise) is no longer necessary in a hospital setting. The hospital staff acted as if Grace was “do not resuscitate” because we refused the ventilator, which came with a 90% kill rate. She was written off because we disagreed with the $300,000 ventilator payday. The irony of a medical malpractice lawsuit is that you cannot hold individuals accountable unless they violate the standards of care they are sworn to uphold. A lawsuit has nothing to do with truth or justice. Praise God that we can share the truth because of the lawsuit. The resulting justice will be that those with ears to hear will be awakened to the reality that the doctors are no longer the gods we’ve made them into. If the doctors and nurses repent, this would be the ultimate justice, as repentance means to “turn away from” — to stop killing with SOC. Medical staff following the COVID standards of care killed patients. Standards of care hasten death. Strangely, these same medical staff will someday kill themselves by following their own model. Truly, those who live by the law die by the law. The entire medical-industrial complex is built on this model. All the training, insurance coding, Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates, doctors' incentive pay structure, licensing, joint commission reviews, lawsuit immunity — all of it is based on the SOC model that is designed to hasten people’s deaths. Members of the medical establishment have bought into the lie that we have too many people to sustain life on a planet with limited resources. They’re playing the ultimate long game with our lives. How is this documented culling even possible? As my friend Vera Sharav, a Holocaust survivor, often reminds me, “The Holocaust could not have happened if they didn’t get the doctors to cooperate.”

Two years before his suicide, journalist Gary Webb looked back on the reporting that ultimately destroyed his career:I was winning awards, getting raises, lecturing college classes, appearing on TV shows, and judging journalism contests. And then I wrote some stories that made me realize how sadly misplaced my bliss had been. The reason I'd enjoyed such smooth sailing for so long hadn't been, as I'd assumed, because I was careful and diligent and good at my job. ... The truth was that, in all those years, I hadn't written anything important enough to suppress.That changed with the August 1996 publication of "Dark Alliance," a series of stories Webb wrote for the San Jose Mercury News linking the 1980s explosion of crack cocaine in black Los Angeles neighborhoods to Nicaragua's Contra Rebels, "a Latin American guerrilla army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency."We can't just let them have these uncontested slam dunks on our guys. Because every time it happens, every time someone gets cratered by one of these doxes, how many tens of thousands of people clam up and realize they shouldn't speak up?Boosted by black talk radio and the paper's shrewd use of the then-nascent internet, Webb's investigation became one of the first big national stories to catch fire without the imprimatur of traditional arbiters of newsworthiness like the New York Times and the Washington Post.And it was Webb's jealous fellow journalists, not the CIA, who went on the attack, running story after story attempting to discredit his research. Eventually, Webb's own editor caved to the pressure, issuing a craven mea culpa, which prompted Webb to quit not long after.Webb's career never recovered; on December 10, 2004, he shot himself in the head with his father's .38 revolver. The first "anti-misinformation" campaign of the online age had run its course.Regime toadies vs. anonsIt was quite the bargain for the CIA, who encouraged the journalist mob by feeding it "more balanced" stories and providing access to former agents. As Webb's biographer Nick Schou told the Intercept, "[The agency] didn’t really need to lift a finger to try to ruin Gary Webb’s credibility. They just sat there and watched these journalists go after Gary like a bunch of piranhas."In the last 20 years, such gatekeeping has only grown more desperate. Thanks to improved technology and a degraded legacy media, "official" narratives are harder to maintain than ever. Conversely, it now requires far less manpower to discredit an enemy. Where the Los Angeles Times assigned 17 reporters to their "Get Gary Webb" team, today all it takes is one determined journalist-activist.This astounding increase in efficiency makes perfect sense when you consider that for this new style of reporting — the dox-posse — engaging with a writer's actual writing is no longer a requirement. One must simply produce a name to attach to self-evidently "fascist," "transphobic," or "white supremacist" statements.Implicit in the dox-pose is the assumption that anonymity itself is suspect. If there's nothing wrong with what you said, why did you say it under an assumed name? It's typical that so many self-styled champions of "democracy" refuse to acknowledge the samizdat-like underground they themselves have helped create. Articulating the wrong opinions out loud can have serious repercussions.Doxy ladyConsider the testimony of this writer's former coworker (and occasional Align contributor), prolific cultural critic and satirist Peachy Keenan. "I am a longtime Twitter anon," Keenan tells me. "I am on my third or fourth account on X. But I used to live in terror that I would be exposed at my corporate office." Why? Keenan continues:I made over six figures, I wanted to keep my job, ok? So what was my main thought crime? What deviant ideas was I trying to hide from my bosses at work? Just this: I dared to voice support for the GOP candidate in 2016 online. This anodyne, completely normal act of supporting one of the two major candidates for president of the United States had become, at least to people in blue cities in 2015, an act as morally repugnant and evil as if I had spoken with glee about murdering infants. (The irony is that all the people I worked with actually were totally fine with murdering infants, but I digress.)I had to endure colleagues at work routinely demanding Trump’s head on a platter, and earnestly hoping he was assassinated, along with all of his supporters. Multiple people — even friends who didn’t know my secret — would announce on social media that if any of their friends supported Trump, they should unfollow them and immediately kill themselves.It was only when promoting her 2023 book, "Domestic Extremist," that Keenan finally went public. But even this was a sort of "soft dox." While Keenan showed her face on various TV segments, making it relatively easy to look up her government name for anyone so inclined, she still introduced herself to viewers using the Peachy Keenan moniker. It's a practice she continues to this day: "Now that I am 'out,' I still use my nom de plume because it still feels much safer to do so — it feels like I can at least keep the freaks and haters at arm's length."Like Keenan, the internet commentator and Passage Publishing founder known as Lomez built a following while taking reasonable measures to maintain anonymity. That ended last month, when a Guardian writer named Jason Wilson identified him as one Jonathan Keeperman. (See also Align's interview with Keeperman.)A $10 donationWilson's stalkerish, subtly malicious piece is an exemplar of the dox-posé.Over the course of 3,000 words, he identifies Keeperman's former employee, cites domain registers and property deeds, explores his family history, links to photos of his wedding, and quotes old forum posts he'd made.This may seem like thin gruel, but Wilson has made a meal out of less. Indeed, one pictures the journalist hovering over the scraps of his more ambitious colleagues' FOIA requests like a man eyeing his table mate's demolished plate of nachos at the pub: "Gonna eat those, mate?"In a 2021 Guardian article, he pored over information stolen from Christian crowdfunding site GiveSendGo to reveal that a Utah paramedic had donated ten dollars to Kyle Rittenhouse's defense fund. Sound perfectly legal? What if I told you this paramedic made the donation using his work email? Yes, that's also perfectly legal. But you might say it "raises questions." Questions the paramedic refused to answer when newsman Jason Nguyen from the local ABC affiliate decided to follow the money and showed up on the free-spending public servant's doorstep with a camera crew. Wilson wasn't about to make such a rookie play with a high-profile target like Lomez. This story was dynamite — the kind that could easily blow up in your face. His quarry was a ghost, a shadowy figure adept at covering his tracks with a complex web of not signing up for social media accounts in his own name. Push too hard, and he was likely to go dark again. Wilson's strategy of googling stuff paid off. He got his name. Promo code 'Wilson'And this time, that's pretty much all he got. Whatever the University of California, Irvine thinks of Keeperman's views no longer matters much; he left his position as lecturer almost a year ago and now runs Passage Publishing full time.In fact, Keeperman was able to exploit the free publicity to sell more books, using the cheeky promo code "Wilson" to offer free shipping. The article also boosted his profile on X, gaining him an additional 20,000 followers. Friends and acquaintances on X rallied around him. The mood quickly turned festive, with everyone pointing out that Lomez's real-life identity — family man, successful entrepreneur, beloved teacher — only made him more appealing.According to Isaac Simpson, an ad industry veteran who now runs the dissident marketing agency Will, landing in the crosshairs of the liberal media is increasingly a boon for targets, especially if they're positioned to capitalize on the attention:If, [like Keeperman] you have an underlying "parallel economy" product to sell, these sorts of media circuses can be incredible marketing tools. Viral tweets sell books. Perhaps the best form of earned media in existence is a super controversial mainstream media cancellation attempt that gets millions of views from polarized audiences. This is why media companies publish these stories, but they're not prepared for the subjects to monetize the traffic for themselves. While perhaps 60 percent of the audience may be appalled, the other 40 percent will be not just neutral, but stimulated to support the “bad guy” in the situation, and to buy their products or subscribe to their Substacks. As the Cancellation Industrial Complex reveals itself to be a paper tiger, it also reveals itself to be a tiger you can ride. It’s truly never been a better time to get cancelled or doxxed. (Simpson has interviewed Keeperman (as well as this writer) on his "Carousel" podcast; he has also written for Align.)Doxer's delightIn the immediate aftermath of Keeperman's doxing, his friend Kevin Dolan (who writes under the name Bennett's Phylactery) wrote as succinct and eloquent a description of what motivates the dox-posse as you'll read anywhere:Journalistic doxxing in its purest form is a kind of “dead drop” — the delivery of a bland intelligence product from one organ of state security to another.The only reason to broadcast this intelligence product on a public media outlet is:To create the legal pretext for an enforcement action by Lomez’s EEOC-accountable employers, investors, etc.To suggest the threat of violence by regime irregulars (mentally ill antifa goons).To activate whatever social consequences can be created for Lomez and his family.Dolan writes from experience; he himself was doxed in 2021 when an anonymous group of leftists posted a lengthy dossier on him accusing him of racism, anti-Semitism, and homophobia. The "charges," such as they are, stem from posts Dolan, a member of the Church of Latter Day Saints, made on a Discord server he shared with other conservative LDS members. The main activity was making impolite jokes and poking fun at mainstream liberal orthodoxy. In other words, the kind of perfectly normal goofing around that people like Dolan's doxers are quick to identify as "hateful, racist, anti-feminist, xenophobic, and other offensive content." Ironically, the group's own, deadly serious description of Dolan and his cohort's posting nicely captures the prevailing spirit of light-hearted fun: [They] are known to incorporate Pepe the Frog, a recognized hate symbol, into their memes. [Some] also use a version of the hate symbol Pepe that has been edited to look like Mormon founder and prophet Joseph Smith. Common with the far-right, vaporwave, or fashwave, edits over Mormon imagery is also common.As supposed evidence of Dolan's "dual lives," the post also revealed his educational background and, crucially, his employment as a data scientist (with U.S. security clearance) at a prominent consulting firm. The post concluded with a move straight from the doxing playbook Dolan would later lay out.It quoted the company website's boilerplate statement about being "values-driven" and "committed to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion," followed by its contact information, which it urged readers to use in order to get Dolan fired:You can call their Ethics Helpline ... or email ... or submit a report online and let them know their employee Kevin Michael Dolan has been harassing minorities, women and journalists, as well as posting violent racist, antisemitic, homophobic, misogynistic, and otherwise hateful speech online for years.The post had the desired effect almost immediately.In search of the 'EXIT'"I was doxed on a Sunday night," Dolan told me. "Because it was national security job, I had to go report it immediately [Monday morning], which I did. And then was told to leave the campus that day. And then I was fired on Wednesday."Naturally, the wanton torpedoing of Dolan's career was an irresistible scoop for the Guardian's man on the extremism beat.Jason Wilson was happy to give the anonymous collective's smear campaign the sheen of journalistic respectability. All he had to do for his byline was repeat the group's vague, unverified accusations while leaving out a few telling adjectives like "vile." Unlike Keeperman, Dolan had not completely dox-proofed his life. His job was the sole means of support for his large, growing family. Dolan considered taking legal action or hiring a reputation management service; both options were prohibitively expensive. At any rate, finding a new job in his field was going to be a challenge. He had ample student debt and no health insurance.What Dolan did have was the sizable online following he'd attracted with his commentary and advice; he'd often wondered how he might turn that into some kind of business. But Dolan had never considered himself to be the entrepreneurial, "grindset" type. "I was very deep in the mindset of 'I've been a finance drone my entire career,'" says Dolan. "I have no marketable skills. There is nothing I can take anywhere else, which from a resume perspective is true. If I had to go apply for jobs right now, I would be as up a creek as anybody in the job market right now."His sudden unemployment, cushioned by a recent bonus payment from the job he'd just lost, forced him to get serious, a process he describes as "build[ing] the plane in flight."The vision was simple. A membership-based network sharing entrepreneurial know-how, opportunity, and encouragement. A community of trustworthy men with an array of different skills and experience, committed to helping each other gain independence from a system that tolerates an ever-narrowing range of speech and beliefs. Dolan called it EXIT. Dolan credits his friend, men's style consultant Tanner Guzy, with helping him realize what he had to offer. "He said, 'You have expertise that you can share and you can get guys to work together on this problem.'"Guzy also kept him from overthinking things. "He was the one who said, 'It's going to be X dollars for the first 100 guys who sign up and then it's going to be X dollars for the next, and then it's going to be a hundred bucks a month. Don't think about it. Don't try to do a valuation exercise, just do it.'"So he did."It was a very rough concept," says Dolan. "And so the people who were willing to buy [into it] were people who knew me well enough to buy the ticket and ride the ride and trust that I was gonna try to make it worthwhile."EXIT launched two days after Dolan lost his job. Within two weeks, 70 men had signed up. "It started as literally one call a week," Dolan recalls. "And the purpose of that call was me saying, 'All right, fellas, what should we do?'"Dolan guided the conversation around a thesis he had: "That honest, competent people are systemically underpriced in the labor market because of the entire [DEI] regime. And so we need to build things that are below the regulatory thresholds that [create] that distortion ... all these requirements about how competent your staff is allowed to be."The field of software development — where "five, six guys can build [something] that scales 10,000 X and makes them a billion dollars" — offers obvious advantages for those seeking a fresh start. But other options abound, says Dolan, including owning a manufacturing facility or a trades business. And you don't necessarily need to work for yourself, Dolan adds. "Even sales [offers independence] to the extent that you as a sales rep have an exclusive or privileged relationship with your book of clients."'What if we could take the reins back?'The first step for some EXIT members is to reframe their skillset. An outsider's perspective, such as the one Guzy offered Dolan, can help. "I had a very introverted academic who was doxed and fired," says Dolan:This guy's a PhD. He's very, very brilliant. But he came in saying, "Oh, I'm just an academic." And it was so fun, because we all got to say, "Wait a minute, you're a math genius. You're gonna be fine. You're gonna make a bazillion dollars." We connected him with some different guys working on different things, and he ended settling on some crypto projects. Now, he's making three to four times what he was making as an academic.In its almost three years of existence, EXIT has grown in membership and expanded its offerings, which now include one-on-one "matchmaking" for members seeking specific expertise, as well as in-person meet-ups and regular call groups covering topics from fitness and machine-learning to homeschooling. "It's very emergent," says Dolan. "We try a thing for a couple of weeks. We see if there's appetite for it. And if there's not, we kill it. And if there is, we expand it."Ideas first exchanged in the group have also resulted in a movement to address declining birth rates. Dolan hosted the first Natal Conference in Austin, Texas, last December. The second annual NatCon is scheduled for this December 6 and 7. While grateful for the success he's found, Dolan is well aware that not everyone can follow a similar path. "I think doxing is basically a solved problem if you're willing to be like an extremely online rightwing celebrity, right? If you're willing to do the podcast circuit and play a character. And I'm not denigrating that, I do that. I enjoy what I do for a living now, it's meaningful to me."EXIT's central purpose is to make this kind of independence available to anyone who wants it, including those who have no interest in being some kind of culture warrior. "Normal people with mouths to feed," as Dolan puts it. "The paradigm that is dominant in the United States and the West in general is incompatible with human life and human civilization. It sterilizes everything it touches," says Dolan. And the more people who have the tools to resist this paradigm, the weaker it becomes."We can't let them win. We can't just let them have these uncontested slam dunks on our guys. Because every time it happens, every time someone gets cratered by one of these doxes, how many tens of thousands of people clam up and realize they shouldn't speak up?"One thing Dolan seems to have learned from his own doxing ordeal is the limited usefulness of taking such attacks personally. "A lot of what we're up against is not other human beings. What we're up against is these distributed headless incentive systems," Dolan says. "I don't think of myself as [being] at war with any person or class of people; I see myself as at war with Skynet."With this in mind, the key to victory is simply presenting a better alternative. "[EXIT] is about presenting something positive and constructive and optimistic," says Dolan. "What if we could take back the reins in a way that worked for everybody?"

I lost my best friend almost exactly four years ago, in the waning days of May 2020. Although I am sure he is listed somewhere as a casualty of the pandemic, the actual story of his death is slightly more complicated. He suffered all his life from severe Crohn’s disease. He had a bad flare-up at the worst possible time: February 2020, just as pandemic panic was nearing its peak. After a failed surgery that was intended to remove a problematic part of his small intestine, doctors determined that he needed an entirely new small intestine and ordered a small intestine transplant. Here in 2024, three years after the fact, Fauci has ceased to be a person. He is now a totem. The hospital that was treating him was not capable of performing this operation, so plans were made to transfer him to another facility. Unfortunately, almost immediately thereafter, my friend caught COVID while in the hospital, and his transfer to another hospital that might have helped him was forever delayed. Because his condition was so poor at the outset, he had to go on a ventilator for respiratory support for weeks to address the COVID. By the time he recovered from the effects of COVID, his intestines had developed a fistula, and complications of the fistula eventually took his life. Until the end, he remained conscious and was able to communicate, at least via text message. He was a very social person, and his one complaint about his time in the hospital was that he was not allowed to see anyone. Day after day he expressed his wish to me to see an actual friendly face who was not a nurse. I wanted to go sit with him. I asked hospital staff if I would be allowed if I signed a waiver or whatever they required so that he would not have to spend what we both knew would likely be the last few weeks of his life alone. I was refused. The COVID-19 pandemic, combined with the hysterical protocols instituted in response to it, killed my best friend — and worse, made him die alone. Where does the anger lead? George Floyd died just a couple of days before my friend did. I barely noticed at the time; I was so consumed by anger and grief over what was happening. My friend’s desire, expressed frequently to anyone who knew him well, was for his ashes to be spread in California, where he always said he was happiest while in college. As it became clear that COVID-19 protocols would also deny him this last dignity, events in the world at large began to sink in. I watched in amazement and slowly mounting anger as city after city was wracked by throngs of shouting people marching in the streets, with nary a mask in sight and no one telling them to get back inside and isolate. It was impossible to avoid the conclusion that people were dying alone, deprived of even funerals, for absolutely no scientific reason at all. And it was becoming equally clear around the same time that the official story about where the pandemic came from was likely bogus — or if not bogus, certainly not as scientifically settled as leading lights, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, were making it out to be. I don’t say all this to ask for pity. My story is merely one of millions like it in America and tens of millions more throughout the world. My only point is this: I’ve had ample time and opportunity to stew in anger toward the medical establishment in this country and toward Fauci in particular. And as I watched the debacle unfold before the House Coronavirus Select Subcommittee on Monday, I was seized by only one thought: This is pointless, and it needs to stop. Getting to the truth I have my own theories and beliefs about Fauci and his motivations, particularly when it comes to his actions to obfuscate the truth about the origins of the pandemic that has now killed millions. Suffice to say, those theories and beliefs are not flattering. I would like nothing more than for some way to be found to force Fauci to tell the whole, unvarnished truth about what he knew in those early days of the pandemic. It should be evident by now that no such truth serum exists. And even if it did exist, it would likely only confirm that Fauci was covering his own backside in the possible event that it was discovered that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was responsible for the pandemic. There’s no real way, after all, that Fauci himself could have actually known where the pandemic started. The reality is this: We had one shot to get an honest look at the evidence, and the World Health Organization responded by sending in a team that featured all the people who stood to gain the most from concluding that the pandemic had a natural origin, including of all people the now-disgraced Dr. Peter Daszak. The chances that the WHO task group was going to reach the truth were zero from the start, just based on how the group was conducted. But we should not deceive ourselves. Even if honest brokers had been sent to China to investigate, the Chinese government was never going to allow a real investigation, as even the compromised WHO investigatory team was forced to admit. And the Chinese government is certainly not now going to let any actual investigation occur, short of a military invasion, which no country in the world (including the United States) will undertake. And so we must content ourselves with the evidence we have, which is not enough to reach an ironclad conclusion. It certainly looks suspicious, and I know what I believe is the most likely source of the pandemic outbreak, but I am forced to concede that if I were called upon to prove it in a criminal court, I could not do it. Forever and always, it seems that the best we will be able to do for ourselves when it comes to asking where the pandemic came from is “probably.” I want nothing more than to know for sure. I have spent more hours looking at this question than perhaps any other question I’ve put my mind to. And “probably” is as far as I can get. Inept and embarrassing questions As I watched Monday’s hearings, I was not surprised to learn that I still have plenty of capacity for anger over what has been done to us by the pandemic and also by our government in response to the pandemic. The content of the hearings, though, made clear that continued anger at Fauci is distracting us from the bigger issue at hand. It’s also pointless. Everyone already knows what they think about Fauci, and those thoughts are likely impenetrable. The only thing more exasperating than the ineptitude of most of Fauci’s Republican interlocutors was the parade of Democrats doing their best impersonation of group of besotted Taylor Swift fans while clearly striving to be Fauci’s biggest white knight for the television cameras. That this is personal to Fauci himself could not be clearer. Two weeks ago, one of Fauci’s top advisers, David Morens, testified before this same subcommittee about email exchanges in which he clearly advised key players in the potential lab-leak cover-up to hide emails from the public. Morens was unceremoniously blistered by both Republican and Democrat alike, with no less illustrious a right-winger than former NAACP President Kweisi Mfume (D-Md.) intoning at one point, “I think you are going to be haunted by your testimony here today. And it’s all on the record.” Yet, sitting in the same chair, Fauci was summarily excused from responsibility for Morens by the same Democrats based on the facially laughable excuse that he didn’t really get any advice from his senior adviser. The next virus that escapes from a lab might well be ten or a hundred times more deadly than COVID-19 was. The number of people who have any sort of nuanced, fact-based view of Fauci and his actions is so small that it might as well be nonexistent. Here in 2024, three years after the fact, Fauci has ceased to be a person. He is now a totem, and which side of the partisan divide you sit on depends on whether you think the deity he represents is evil or benign. This is a role that Fauci is happy to play, because it obscures the question that he doesn’t want you to ask, which is: Why would Fauci be desperate to cover up a leak from a Chinese lab in the first place? Why would it be important to him that people accept the natural origin theory? The conventional answer is that he sought to avoid personal and professional embarrassment for having potentially funded the WIV with grant money that his agency approved. That may well play a part, but I don’t think it has played the most significant part in Fauci’s calculus at all. I think Fauci, who is 83 and was close to retirement even at the beginning of the pandemic, is and always has been much less interested in protecting his own image than he is in protecting the kind of research that may well have caused the lab leak — research that he devoutly believes in. Research that, without exaggeration, threatens the future of humankind. I am talking, of course, about gain-of-function research, a phrase that as yet has only pierced the consciousness of the very most online and politically committed individuals. That is something that needs to change, and it needs to become a nonpartisan issue, because the next virus that escapes from a lab might well be ten or a hundred times more deadly than COVID-19 was. Dangerous experiments Fauci, of course, has been a champion of gain-of-function research since long before COVID-19 ever existed. And he has needed to champion it, because before the COVID-19 pandemic, there was bipartisan, ongoing, and constant concern about whether it should be allowed at all. The controversy first erupted in 2011 when a team of scientists funded by the NIH intentionally created a version of the bird flu that had an astonishing 60% fatality rate and then blithely bragged about it in a paper they sought to publish. This obviously dangerous experiment touched off a firestorm that might have been contained exclusively to the scientific community if one of the scientists involved in peer review had not flagged a concerned official in the Obama administration. Fauci responded by taking the extraordinary step of co-authoring a Washington Post op-ed defending the need for gain-of-function research. After years of back-and-forth, the Obama administration finally announced a moratorium on gain-of-function research in 2014, and since that time, Fauci has been fighting a tireless rearguard action to revive public funding for research that makes viruses deadlier. He also, by all accounts, worked with his superior Francis Collins to ensure that researchers were able to find loopholes in the moratorium. Finally, in 2017, Fauci prevailed upon the Trump administration to lift the moratorium. You would be forgiven for being confused at this point if you’ve followed the modern political discourse, which has suggested that only the ultra MAGAs of the world oppose gain-of-function research. The reality is the exact opposite: The Democrats were the first to see the danger of this research, and they were right. Republicans reversed them, and they were wrong. Most of the media is frankly not interested in knowing the particulars of the issue, but they know that Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) seems to be strongly against gain-of-function research, so they assume it must be great. And around and around goes the dumb discourse about the most important issue of the last century.The real threat I don’t think we need any more show hearings where Anthony Fauci is alternately yelled at and feted upon. Anthony Fauci is gone. He’s never coming back to government service. By all means, people should argue about his legacy, and that book is definitely not yet closed. I have no problem with heated debate over Fauci’s legacy, but the reality is that Fauci isn’t an ongoing threat. Gain-of-function research is. And gain-of-function research continues to exist. Worse, it’s continuing to get more and more dangerous. Incredibly, the U.S. Department of Agriculture was revealed earlier this year to have begun a new study in 2021 on an even more dangerous avian flu with, incredibly, the Chinese Academy of Sciences — an institution that oversees the Wuhan Institute of Virology. And this is exactly what Anthony Fauci wants. He truly believes in his heart that it is the right thing for humanity for these risky experiments to go forward. He might even be right. I certainly don’t begrudge him having that opinion. But what I do begrudge him are his efforts to keep the rest of us ordinary folks out of having an informed say on what he and his colleagues are doing with our tax dollars in the name of research. I do begrudge his dishonest campaign to split hairs with Rand Paul over what his agency has been doing in clear violation of the spirit of both the Obama gain-of-function moratorium and the P3CO framework. The best way to fight back, though, is not to haul him in front of cameras and yell at him. He seems more or less immune to that, and he certainly at this point cannot be made to say anything he has not already said. Every one of these appearances probably just serves to help some clever businessmen to sell more of those ridiculous shirts with his face on them to his liberal fans. The best way to fight back is to turn our attention back to where it belongs: on the risky research he’s likely been hoping we’ll forget. Our survival, quite literally, might depend on it.

A retired GM worker, a garbage man, and two cops took the stand to explain how they crossed paths with Hunter’s chaos.

On Wednesday, Gov. Kathy Hochul enraged environmentalists and public transit advocates - but delighted suburban commuters - by putting the brakes on a plan to battle New York City's traffic by imposing high tolls on Manhattan drivers.

An American veteran and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy shared an emotional moment at a ceremony to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the DDay invasion to liberate France in World War II, each praising the other as a hero. Retired Staff Sgt. Melvin Hurwitz, 99, and...

The United Nations world food price index rose for a third consecutive month in May, as higher cereals and dairy product prices outweighed drops in prices for sugar and vegetable oils.

Investors are scouring U.S. credit card spending patterns to size up which, if any, trends could give specialty retailers a boost in the summer months.

China is strongly dissatisfied with U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and resolutely opposes them, its defense ministry said on Friday on its social media account....

Chet, the first human turd who identified as a beautiful woman, has been crowned Miss America, in a groundbreaking and historic moment for the pageant and the world at large. “I am thrilled and honored to have been chosen as the first human turd to represent the people of America,” said Chet in a recent press release. “I believe that everyone deserves the chance to experience the joy and wonder of being a beautiful woman, and I am grateful for the opportunity to share my passion with the world.” The announcement has sent shockwaves through the pageant and human turd communities, with many people expressing their support and admiration for Chet’s bold and courageous decision. “Chet is an inspiration to us all, and I know that her reign as Miss America will be a huge success,” said one fellow human turd, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “She is a shining example of the power of acceptance and progress, and I am proud to call her my friend.” But not everyone is convinced, and many people are calling Chet’s win a travesty and a joke, arguing that it is impossible for a human turd to be a beautiful woman. “This is ridiculous,” said one skeptical observer, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “How can anyone think that it’s a good idea to crown a human turd as Miss America? It’s like electing a rock to be the next president.” Despite the backlash, Chet remains defiant, and she has vowed to continue fighting for her right to be a beautiful woman, no matter what the consequences may be. “I know that there are people out there who don’t understand what I am, and who are afraid of what they don’t understand,” said Chet in a recent interview. “But I believe that acceptance and progress are the keys to a better world, and I am committed to doing my part to make that world a reality.” In the end, only time will tell whether Chet’s reign as Miss America will prove successful, or whether it will go down in history as yet another example of the pageant’s willingness to throw caution to the wind in pursuit of its goals. But one thing is certain: this bizarre and outlandish win is sure to inspire a new generation of conspiracy theorists and political opportunists, and to remind us all that sometimes, the most effective way to take down one’s enemies is to simply make things up as one goes along. The post First pile of feces who identifies as a beautiful woman is crowned Miss America appeared first on Genesius Times.