And Now for the Rest of the Story

There is so much political NOISE in the world today that one of my great fears is that the great majority of people in our State and country will just “turn it off”. What would happen if there was a day where there just wasn’t any news? Would all the news channels just sign off and go “dark”? Actually, what happens is the “crack” Columbia School of Journalism reporters go out and make up stories. And “stories” is a good word because what they are doing is creating a predicate for a political narrative. Think about all the major news stories that have proven to be untrue and yet the people promulgating these stories continue to tell new stories. Their veracity and their integrity are never challenged. What happened to Y2K, Global Cooling in the 1970s then Global Warming today? What about Malthusian theory and the exponential growth in population that never considered crop yields that have grown by 400%. Micro- chromosomal and new hybrid technologies and the targeted use of pesticides and high-grade nutrient-specific fertilizers have increased our food supplies faster than our population has grown.

In medicine, the contributions of chemistry and biochemistry, physics, and pharmacology have had a similar impact on our lives. What happened with the great “political pandemic” was the media and our politicians—the two headed monster of the modern apocalypse failed to distinguish for themselves the difference between science and scientism and an uninquisitive public followed the media and their political apologists and much of the academic medical community down the rabbit hole of mass confirmation bias.

More recently we have been spoon-fed the narrative of “Russian Collusion” based on a fake dossier and a fake story about a “pee-pee video” that was knowingly used as evidence in a FISA Court that ended up having the FBI and DOJ investigate a sitting President. We now know all along that they knew all along that the tape, the leaked story to the press, the FISA Warrant, and the trumped-up impeachment articles were fake. Even the 150 intelligent experts that signed off on the narrative knew they were fake when they signed off on them. Frank Church was so correct and prescient in his warnings about the intelligence establishment. We could sure use someone with his virtue today in Washington and in Boise.

But the Feds are coming clean on one count. After action reports, morbidity and mortality studies done by the (CDC) and (NIH) have been honest in their assessments of mitigation strategy during the political Covid pandemic. Independent analysis from Johns Hopkins School of Public health headed by Dr. Marty Makary and from Stanford University headed by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and from Oxford University in England have been constructively critical in their analysis and recommendations moving forward.

What is happening in Idaho? Rumor has it that a book will be published this spring written by one of the members of the Governor’s Covid Advisory group that will give a very favorable analysis of what Idaho did both in the public health arena and clinically in fighting Covid. What should happen in my opinion is that the Idaho Legislature should appropriate monies and name an independent panel to review our Covid response and help prepare our State government and Idaho citizens for another pandemic or mass casualty situation. One thing we can be assured of is that these events will always happen. Instead of creating a false history of the events, we should be brutally honest with ourselves for the sake and wellbeing of Idaho citizens in the future.

One other issue needs to be examined and that is how was all the Covid money—transfer payments laundered through the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, spent knowing that Idaho is at the top of the class for Medicaid fraud—fraudulent enrollments and fraudulent billings by providers who “up coded” or placed a Covid diagnosis as a primary diagnosis when patients in truth had a more significant underlying condition that was cause for a hospital admission or their death.

We have a group of talented journalists in our State who should investigate Idaho’s Covid response. Such a story may be enlightening to everyone, but it may come at a price—not being invited to this year’s Governor’s Cup. That’s the way I see things from Garden City.