This article was originally published by Brandon Smith at Alt-Market.us. 

I suspect a large portion of the public is at least partially aware when they are being pushed or lured into a specific way of thinking. We have certainly had enough experience with institutions trying to manage our thoughts over the years.  Governments and mainstream media outlets in particular have made the manufacture of public consent their top priority. This is what they spend most of their time, money, and energy on. All other issues are secondary.

The media does not objectively report facts and evidence, it spins information to plant an engineered narrative in the minds of its viewers. But the public is not as stupid as they seem to think. This is probably why trust in the media has plunged by 46% in the past ten years, hitting an all-time low this year of 27%.

Except for pre-election season spikes, mainstream outlets from CNN to Fox to CBS to MSNBC are facing dismal audience numbers, with only around 2 million to 3 million prime time viewers. There are numerous YouTube commentators with bigger audiences than this. And, if you sift through the debris of MSM videos on YouTube, you’ll find low hits and a majority of people that are visiting their channels just to make fun of them.

The MSM is now scrambling to explain their crumbling empire, as well as debating on ways to save it from oblivion. The power of the “Fourth Estate” is a facade, an illusion given form by smoke and mirrors. Bottom line: Nobody (except perhaps extreme leftists) likes the corporate media or activist journalists and propagandists.

One would think that media moguls and journos would have realized this by now. I mean, if they accepted this reality, they would not be struggling so much with the notion that no one is listening to them when it comes to pandemic mandates and the covid vaccines. Yet, journalists complain about it incessantly lately.

In fact, half the media reports I see these days are not fact-based analysis of events, but corporate journalists interviewing OTHER corporate journalists and bitching to each other about how Americans are “too ignorant” or “too conspiratorial” to grasp that journos are the anointed high priests of information.

I actually find this situation fascinating as an observer of oligarchy and being well versed in the mechanics of propaganda. The fundamental narrative of control-culture is that there are “experts” that the establishment chooses, and then there is everyone else. The “experts” are supposed to pontificate and dictate while everyone else is supposed to shut up, listen and obey.

Media elitists see themselves in the role of “the experts” and the public as devout acolytes; a faithful flock of sheep. But what happens when everyone starts ignoring the sheepherders?

The other day I came across this revealing interview on CBS news about a poll of Americans showing at least 30% will refuse to take the covid vaccine outright. The interview is, for some reason, with another journalist from The Atlantic with no apparent medical credentials and no insight into the data surrounding covid.

One thing to note right away is that the discussion itself never addresses any actual facts about the virus, the pandemic, the lockdowns, the mandates, or the vaccines. The establishment keeps telling us to “listen to the science”, but then they dismiss the science when it doesn’t agree with their agenda. When is the mainstream going to finally acknowledge facts like these:

1) According to multiple official studies, including a study from the American College of Physicians, the Infection Fatality Ratio (or death rate) of Covid-19 is only 0.26% for anyone outside of a nursing home. This means that 99.7% of people not in nursing homes will survive the virus if they contract it.

2) Nursing home patients account for over 40% of all Covid deaths across the US. These are mostly people who were already sick with multiple preexisting conditions when they contracted covid.

3) The Federal Government’s own hospital data from the Department of Health and Human Services indicates that capacity for hospital beds is ample in the US and that this has been the case for the past year. Covid patients at their peak only took up around 13% of inpatient beds nationally. The stories in the media of hospitals at overcapacity due to covid are therefore inaccurate or they are outright lies.

4) International studies including a Danish study published by the American College of Physicians have proven that wearing masks makes NO significant difference in the spread of infection rate of Covid-19. Interestingly, the states in the US with the most heavily enforced mask mandates have also had the highest infection rates.

5) In March of 2020, the head of the NIAID Dr. Anthony Fauci had this to say about mask-wearing when being interviewed on 60 Minutes:

“Right now, in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks….there’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better, and it might even block a droplet but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is, and often there are unintended consequences – people keep fiddling with the masks and they’re touching their face.”

6) On Twitter in February of 2020, the US Surgeon General had this to say about mask-wearing:

“Seriously people – STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing the general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!”

Both the Surgeon General and Fauci later reversed their stance on mask-wearing when it no longer suited the control narrative, and are now fervent supporters of enforcing mask mandates. Scientific data continues to show that mask-wearing does nothing to stop the spread of Covid.

7) The Pfizer and Moderna Covid vaccines are made with a brand new technology that has had limited testing. The NIAID used minimal animal testing on mice, but these mice were NOT a type that is normally susceptible to contracting covid the way humans are. These tests were completely inadequate, yet the mRNA vaccines were released for human use anyway.

8) The new vaccines do not contain the virus that triggers COVID-19, as a conventional vaccine might. Instead, Moderna and Pfizer researchers used a new technique to make messenger RNA (mRNA), which is similar to mRNA found in SARS-CoV-2. In theory, the artificial mRNA will act as instructions that prompt human cells to build a protein found on the surface of the virus. That protein would theoretically trigger a protective immune response. The entire Covid vaccine effort was essentially a giant shortcut. This is not an advantage, as the long-term effects of any vaccine from 1 year to 5 years to 10 years should be understood before it is injected into human beings.

9) Multiple medical industry professionals including the former VP of Pfizer have signed a petition warning about the new mRNA vaccinations. They say far more testing is needed before humans are exposed, and they warned that the vaccines may cause severe autoimmune responses or even infertility.

10) Numerous polls also show that at least 30% to 50% of medical professionals including nurses and doctors plan to refuse the vaccines as well. These people are facing the risk of losing their jobs, but they are still not going to accept the shot. That is how potentially volatile the mRNA vaccines could be; long-term health is more important than the short-term risk.

When all of these facts are taken into account, along with numerous others that I do not have space to mention here, it is not so outlandish for millions of Americans to be skeptical of medical mandates and vaccination over covid.

Why should we worry about getting vaccinated over a virus that 99.7% of the population will survive without difficulty? Why should we allow economic shutdowns, medical passports, or invasive contact tracing at all, let alone over a pandemic that less than 0.3% of the population is susceptible to? Beyond that, why should we volunteer to be guinea pigs for a new vaccine technology without knowing what the long-term consequences might be?

Even if covid was a legitimate danger, no crisis justifies handing over our civil liberties in response.

The basic establishment narrative is this: “Covid is an existential threat to the public, therefore, we are justified in taking away people’s freedoms, their economy and their privacy. It is for the “greater good of the greater number”. Vaccination is infallible and cannot be questioned. The “experts” are infallible and cannot be questioned. It’s not your body and it is not your choice. Your body is property of the government and if you do not voluntarily take injections of whatever experimental cocktail we give you, then we will continue to erode your freedoms until you give in and submit. Then, once you have submitted, your freedoms will still never be given back.”

It’s not really a persuasive argument for a lot of people.

Media outlets like CBS will rarely mention the overall issue of control and oppression tied to the pandemic response, just as they will never address any facts that run contrary to their message. What they will do is misrepresent the situation in order to gain compliance. The Atlantic journo basically admits this in the interview above, arguing that the media in particular needs to change the message to better attach an incentive to vaccine compliance. In other words, people are easier to manipulate when they are tricked into thinking there is more to gain by submission rather than rebellion.

The medical passport system is the personification of false incentives. The media presents the notion that no one will be “forced” to take the vaccines, but what they don’t mention is that without the vaccine they will not get a medical passport, and without a medical passport they will be cut off from the normal economy. You can be vax-free, but you will be punished through poverty and zero access until you give in.

My question is, why do they care so much if people don’t want or trust the vaccine? Why are they so obsessed? If the mRNA cocktail actually works and is not a health hazard, then they should be perfectly safe from infection. The idea that people who refuse are a danger to others is nonsense.

If we are going to start talking about potential “mutations” that bypass vaccine protections, then why take any vaccine? If mutations are really a threat and are not obstructed by current vaccines, then taking a vaccine now is useless.

And, why the constant attempts at public division? CBS and The Atlantic use an obvious ploy to assert that black and brown Americans have different reasons for refusing to comply when compared to apparently white conservatives. Why do they assume that black and brown people are not conservative or that we do not have ample reasons in common? This is never explained or supported.

Finally, as always the media seeks to gaslight anyone that disagrees with the prevailing agenda as “conspiracy nuts”, presenting strawman arguments while ignoring all legitimate arguments on the side of liberty. There is such a thing as conspiracy REALITY, and none of these journos would survive a debate on a level playing field against those of us in the alternative media when it comes to covid and the vaccines.

The media and the government’s stalker mentality when it comes to people skeptical of covid restrictions and vaccines is unsettling. They act more like jilted psychopathic ex-girlfriends rather than people concerned with saving lives. This tells me they are afraid. Their agenda is uncertain, and they have doubts. This is a good thing.

At the bottom, covid is a non-issue that has been inflated into a crisis of epic proportions through storytelling and selective fact-checking. Millions of people around the world die every year from a myriad of illnesses, some of them as infectious as covid. We don’t shut down our lives, wear diapers on our faces, inject ourselves with untested cell-altering cocktails or sacrifice our freedoms because of this. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness continue. Those who wish to take away our self-determination in these matters are the real threat; covid is not.