White House Photo by Erin Scott
Guy Ciarrocchi: The lesson from Covid — the “experts” hate our First Amendment
“Misinformation.”
“Disinformation.”
Twitter and Facebook officials banning people.
Hiding or “shadow banning” selective posts on social media.
The White House and federal agencies demanding that social media platforms and newspapers ban or “shadow ban” selective posters or selective comments, or add “community notes” to “correct misinformation.”
The deaths were heart-breaking — including senior citizens directed to move into nursing homes. Separated from family, from grandkids. A tragically bad, cruel idea. The gut-wrenching stories of the countless businesses that closed and never re-opened, or could never recover — and the thousands, if not millions, who lost jobs. The vacant storefronts on Main Street, in strip malls and mega malls stand as monuments to foolishness.
Many families and many communities will never be the same. That is tragic and scarring.
Yet in some ways, five years after Anthony Fauci’s “two weeks to flatten the curve,” the First Amendment may be the long-term victim of Covid policy.
It is a story of government overreach. Governing by “experts” and mandates. Crushing constitutional rights. Ignoring our “unalienable rights” — those endowed by our Creator. “Experts” and politicians making up standards, and angrily defending them — shouting at, shaming, and silencing anyone who questioned them.
“Experts” and bureaucrats that we never heard of, whom we did not elect, who were not accountable to voters, and were rarely challenged by legacy media, told many Americans that our jobs were “not essential.” We had to stay home. And so did our children.
“Experts,” bureaucrats and politicians removed basketball nets, wrapped playground slides in police tape, and blocked off bike paths and skateboard parks.
They closed schools, community centers, and daycares — yet many parents’ jobs were “essential,” so their children sat home alone for hours and hours.
They set up hotlines to encourage us to “rat out” our neighbors who dared to walk their dogs, invite neighbors to sit on their porch, or allow their kids to play with friends in their yard.
Five years later, I feel the anger as I recall it all — as more and more of the insanity comes back to me.
Yet, how they flagrantly, openly, and militantly ignored the First Amendment is still in a category all by itself.
What they did to our parents, our economy, our mental health — and our children — is unforgivable. Most still won’t apologize, or pledge never to do it again.
Others write circumspect columns, or publish “reports” now that the “evidence” shows that locking people up for months is bad; that keeping children away from school impedes and harms their mental and physical health and their academics; that the economy was unnecessarily harmed; that putting sick or immune-compromised people in the 80’s and 90’s into nursing homes was insane; that forcing healthy people — especially those under 40 — to get vaccines was wrong; that firing cops, nurses and soldiers for not getting vaccinated was cruel; and that mandating masks was ineffective at best, and harmful at worst.
Experts!
Yet, as you read this column and all the insanity imposed on us — often by bureaucrats and “experts” — and you think through how your life, your family’s life, your income; the stores that no longer exist in your community; your children’s mental or physical health or their academic struggles, or the countless emotions that come forward in your mind as you think about 2020, and 2021 and the mask mandates, and vaccine mandates that lasted into 2022 — as you recall all of that, never forget something else:
Fauci, the “experts” and the Biden White House — and countless governors and health directors — threatened and pressured Facebook, Twitter, the New York Times, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, etc., to silence us.
Literally. And almost every one of the major social and legacy media complied.
They canceled accounts of the famous — reporters, scientists, and doctors — and they “shadow banned” or suspended countless private citizens. Anyone who didn’t dutifully, faithfully and entirely echo the indoctrination being espoused by the “experts.”
Anyone suggesting that “herd immunity” should be an alternative approach — i.e., allowing healthy adults to have the option of interacting with one another to build up resistance — was silenced. Anyone suggesting that schools should re-open was shouted at and shamed. School board members yelled at moms: “Do you want your kids to die?!” (Never mind that by April or May, Catholic and Jewish Day Schools — among others — largely reopened, and ambulances were not rushing to those schools.)
Anyone suggesting that people should have the option to go back to work or that small businesses were being harmed was silenced or shamed, accused of wanting “blood money.” (Recall that Walmart was open, but your neighborhood clothes store or appliance shop wasn’t.)
This is not a debate about whether a private business — like CBS or Facebook — has a right to publish, broadcast or report whatever it chooses.
But when the White House and its minions in agencies — when the esteemed Dr. Anthony Fauci — pressure the media not to print stories questioning the lockdowns, mandates, masks and vaccines, and they all dutifully comply by canceling accounts and hiding posts; it’s a whole different story.
It’s called fascism.
The government was violating our First Amendment rights —to speak, to assemble, and “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” And they forced the major media outlets to do the same.
This was the launching of the Orwellian terms of “misinformation” and “disinformation.” Anyone questioning the scope or duration of any mandate, or writing about commonsense alternatives, about mental health, or small businesses, that maybe “six feet apart” had no scientific basis had their columns, posts and tweets struck down, hidden, or labeled as “misinformation!”
It was Orwell’s “1984” in real life. Soviet, dictatorial government.
The powerful demanded it. The media complied. And far, far too many Americans supported it or tolerated it. We must never forget. We must teach our children. We must never, ever be silenced.
Covid policies took lives, crushed businesses and set-back our children. Let’s throw away “misinformation” and “disinformation” like all those worthless masks.
The First Amendment must never be ignored again.
Guy Ciarrocchi — the former CEO of the Chester County Chamber for eight years, until he resigned to speak out against the madness and run for Congress — is a Senior Fellow with the Commonwealth Foundation. He writes for Broad + Liberty and RealClear Pennsylvania. Follow Guy @PASuburbsGuy.
Guy, good article. Eric Weinstein recently gave an ARC 2025 speech called “Why the West is waking up from a 70 year nap.” The theme is very similar to Thomas Sowell’s book “The Vision of the Anointed” …EXCEPT Eric Weinstein specifically hits upon the use of modern technology as a weapon against most humans without even their awareness of such, and he is less charitable towards the “anointed.” Narratives are carefully curated (The Atlantic, the New Yorker, The Economist, New York Post, WSJ, etc.)
Eric Weinstein, PhD, is a mathematical physicist, economist, public speaker, podcast host, and former managing director of Thiel Capital (we should be wary of anyone from Thiel.) He has held research positions in the mathematics, physics, and economics departments at MIT, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Harvard, and Oxford University. Eric is smart enough to get paid echoing what Jordan Peterson tapped into years ago, but his acknowledgment about new tactics in tech warfare and censorship should alarm us.
You can see by what was considered as “essential” the moral turpitude behind the idea of “misinformation” “disinformation” and outright lies as a way to strip the citizenry of any notion of right vs wrong or moral groundings. This was purposeful in that it allows decision-makers free reign to make any decisions they please, untrammeled by moral considerations. A prime example: Governor Cuomo’s decision to place the elderly, the most vulnerable of citizenry, into care facilities with those sick with Covid, we know how that worked out. The appalling excuse for this was an attempt to shift the blame by “just following the science,” mantra. This is the moral equivalent of Nazi officials at Nuremburg claiming they were “just relaying orders.”
If I recall correctly, that strategy did not work out well for them. PA guv Wolf with his virtue signaling hire, Twisted Sister Rachel Levine, also filled nursing homes with covid patients, except Levine moved her mother out of a nursing home instead. Fauci and WHO need to answer for this sham overreach as a lesson to never allow this to happen again.
“Twitter and Facebook officials banning people.” – Which they can do if you violate the Terms of Service agreement and the First Amendment only applies to the government.
“The White House and federal agencies demanding that social media platforms and newspapers ban or “shadow ban” selective posters or selective comments, or add “community notes” to “correct misinformation.” – These companies are under no legal requirement to meet the government requests and community notes were created to deal with alternative facts.
““Experts” and bureaucrats that we never heard of, whom we did not elect, who were not accountable to voters, and were rarely challenged by legacy media, told many Americans that our jobs were “not essential.” – I can’t agree with you more. Elon Musk and his DOGE team are doing the same thing now. Something should be done to make sure we don’t repeat what happened during Covid.
“They canceled accounts of the famous — reporters, scientists, and doctors” – Were any of them were Epidemiologists and Virologists?
” pressure the media not to print stories questioning the lockdowns, mandates, masks and vaccines”” – Are you claiming that the Covid vaccine which was developed and supported by Trump is ineffective? Because Trump only hires the best people.
You are suffering from TAS, Trump Agreement Syndrome, seek help.
Judah– you are why democrats have such low approval. The well documented efforts of the government to pressure — in a coordinated effort either governments and democrats– and silence messaging THAT HAS BEEN PROVEN TO BE TRUE are offensive and terrifying.
I hope you don’t break your back carrying the BS for your party that hates you. Enjoy your place in life until Dems repent. It’s going to be shameful. You’re disgusting.
Have you heard of Martin Kulldorff (Harvard), Sunetra Gupta (Oxford), and Jay Bhattacharya (Stanford) ?What are their disciplines? Back grounds? Were they ever deplatformed?
At least this time I don’t have to “Google it”. When a scientific/medical study is released it includes everything that was done to reach the results it states. Then other research facilities replicate those same results using the same methods as listed in the original study, it is commonly referred to as a peer review. Peer reviews were the reason the doctor who claimed that vaccines cause autism was proved not only to be wrong, it showed that he falsified everything.
Herd immunity through exposure is a myth. We’ve seen this in during the Plague in Europe, the Spanish Influenza pandemic during WWI, and currently in Texas with the measles outbreak. Even healthy people will have to deal with permanent side effects due to exposure and death. How many people would have to die for anyone to consider this method acceptable?
Not to mention that they have no problem with unelected President Musk banning people from X JUST LAST WEEK simply for criticizing him! “Free speech for me but not for thee” is the Republican rallying cry these days.
did you ever consider that this is happening BECAUSE of what happened in the last administration? There’s action and then there is reaction. I suspect a large # of Americans were sick and tired of having their rights and free speech squelched by their Democrat tyrant overlords.
they were under ‘no legal requirement’ to comply but dang, they did anyway and it’s since come out that they were receiving considerable pressure to do so from the Biden Administration. If one owns a large corporation subject to potential regulatory and legislative actions against said corporation, they tend to want to play ball with whoever is in power. You see it happening now with the bowing and scraping of these same large corporations to the Trump Administration.
Could you give me some examples of messages that have been silenced by Democrats that are offensive and terrifying?
I wonder if these people will ever face arrest for what they did as it was murderous, and some of it deliberately so. MANY people died because of these policies. We should have Nuremburg 2 Trials in this country with punishment. “I was just following orders.” didn’t work during the Nuremburg trials in Germany. It should not work now.
The people who were tried at Nuremberg were implementing a plan known as the Final Solution. It directly ordered them to kill jews and many others.
What laws did these people follow that ordered them to kill Covid patients?
The right really has jumped the shark on hypocricy. Truly astonishing to see that the same folks who continue to virtue signal their love of “free speech” and lecture us like this are: BANNING people from social media simply for criticizing its oligarch owner, ARRESTING legal residents and trying to deport them for having the “wrong” political beliefs (if they’ve actually committed a crime, why not charge them?), using their OLIGARCH money and power to wage FRIVILOUS lawsuits to bankrupt news outlets that provide unflattering coverage, BANNING other news outlets from official access for the “crime” of using internationally recognized geographic names, SHREDDING the constitution and ignoring congress by witholding federal funding from schools when they’re triggered by their curriculum, supporting media elites like the Sinclair network who buy up local outlets and force them to air scripted rightwing political rants… It goes on and on and on!!! But hey, g-d forbid that 5 YEARS AGO someone called out misinformation. THAT’S what the mob should focus on instead. Oh, and it’s also totally fine for the party that lectures us about “law and order” to pardon convicted felons and thugs who senselessly BEAT police officers and openly ignore court orders and impeach judges when their rulings are inconvenient. Trump’s America looks more and more like communist Russia every single day. Lenin, too, loved to virtue signal about free speech…. until the speech was critical of him.
It is interesting Guy has done two articles about COVID and his interpretation of the harm of the practices related to that. But nothing about the practices of the current president and how detrimental it is to the economy and the everyday person.
Is it because he’s afraid to speak out or is it because he’s in the pocket of the billionaires as well. As a former president of a chamber of commerce, you’d think he would have some comment about the economy now instead of pointing to the past.
Guy tell us how you feel about the current economic events. Tell us how you are supportive or not. Lets hit a relevant issue.