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The Biden-Harris regime used social media to overstate COVID vaccine effectiveness

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I had a funny conversation with my doctor at my last annual check-up. He said that the Biden-Harris regime’s COVID views came from “evidence”, and opposition to the Biden-Harris regime’s views came from “social media”. Well, we are finding out a lot of new things now that the Republicans are in charge. Let’s find out below which side was spreading their views with social media.

Here’s the article from Daily Signal:

Based on extensive investigations and sworn testimony, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight exposed how the Biden-Harris administration used a $900 million public relations campaign to influence how Americans understood and responded to the administration’s COVID-19 policies.

The public relations campaign became a tool for flawed narratives. Despite the administration’s promises to “follow the science,” the evidence clearly showed that the administration prioritized managing people’s perceptions over public transparency.

Big Tech social media and search engines were involved:

The October 2024 subcommittee report also unveiled a textbook example of how federal officials used taxpayer dollars to engage platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Google to advance their policy agenda. The report proved that these public officials relied upon selective data to shape public opinion that was not, in fact, supported by the existing scientific evidence.

The key point is the assertion that the COVD vaccine prevents a person from being infected by another person. The FDA was not convinced that it could prevent transmission:

The administration pursued this aggressive PR campaign despite the Food and Drug Administration’s own determination on COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness. When the FDA issued an emergency use authorization for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on Dec. 11, 2020, it explicitly stated that it could not affirm that the vaccine could prevent COVID-19 transmission: “At this time, data are not available to make a determination about how long the vaccine will provide protection, nor is there evidence that the vaccine prevents transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from person to person.”

The FDA repeated this message in issuing its emergency use authorizations for the Moderna vaccine on Dec. 18, 2020, and the Janssen vaccine on Feb. 27, 2021.

This information should have been given to people, but what we actually heard from the Biden-Harris was something else. But that’s not the approach that the Biden-Harris regime took.

Instead, they said this:

Nonetheless, in March 2021, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky declared that vaccinated persons “do not carry” the virus. In September 2021, falsely insisting that the pandemic was a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” President Joe Biden announced a series of unprecedented federal vaccine mandates that would have affected an estimated 100 million Americans.

Remarkably, in the teeth of mounting evidence, including the personal experiences of millions of Americans, the administration’s continuous messaging overstated vaccine effectiveness. It was not until January 2022 that the United States Supreme Court halted most of the mandates.

And they spread this message of “overstating vaccine effectiveness” on social media, which was very convincing to many people who formed their opinions from social media, and not from evidence:

Big Tech actively censored views critical of administration policy from private citizens and even other public officials. This became clear when, on July 4, 2023, in Missouri v. Biden, a federal court held that the Biden administration colluded with and coerced social media platforms to censor dissenting viewpoints on COVID-19—“a massive attack” in an apparent violation of the First Amendment.

This was later confirmed when, on Aug. 26, 2024, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote a letter to Congress in which he stated: “In 2021, senior officials from the Biden administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration when we didn’t agree.”

I think there is a good lesson here about whether we should form our views based on what we see in the culture. It’s possible for powerful people to harness mainstream news media, social media, Big Tech search engines, etc. and give us claims that are not supported by scientific evidence. The problem with the government doing it is that they do it with our money. They don’t have any money of their own. And remember, secular leftists don’t have any rational grounding for human rights in their accidental universe. So don’t expect them to allow free speech that is critical of their views.

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New study: Transgender surgeries linked to suicidal ideation, depression

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I love to debate controversial issues, so I gather every study that can help me win on my little blog. If you like to fight and win, you can come here and steal them all! Today, I have a new peer-reviewed study published in the Oxford Academic Journal of Sexual Medicine. I checked and they really are linked to Oxford University. So read on and we give you a new arrow for your quiver.

Here is the new study on the Oxford Academic web site.

And I found a new article about the study, from The Post Millennnial.

And they write:

A study of over 107,000 patients with gender dysphoria over the age of 18 has concluded that those who undergo transgender surgeries, are at greater risk for mental health problems, including depression, suicidal ideation, anxiety, and others.

The paper, published in the Oxford Academic Journal of Sexual Medicine, stated in conclusion that bottom and top surgeries are “associated with increased risk of mental health issues.” The results section stated that “from 107 583 patients, matched cohorts demonstrated that those undergoing surgery were at significantly higher risk for depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and substance use disorders than those without surgery.”

It said of those who got surgery, “Our analysis reveals a significantly elevated risk of mental health disorders-including depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and substance use disorder-post-surgery among individuals with a prior diagnosis of gender dysphoria.”

Males and females who underwent surgery had a higher risk of depression, according to the study.

Now, whenever I get into these discussions, one of the first things that people say is that all of these negative consequences would just disappear if the culture were 100% affirming of LGBT. That is, it’s only social disapproval that makes these bad consequences.

On the weekend, I posted a new episode of Knight and Rose Show, in which Rose and I spoke to famous Christian author Natasha Crain. At one point, we were talking about how best to defend the Bible’s teachings on gender from the secular left view. I brought up a previous blog post, where I collected several studies that show that even in LGBT-affirming countries like Sweden and Denmark, these same behavioral issues are found.

Here’s is what I wrote last time:

First, I want to note that in this NBC News article, the following countries are listed in the “15 Best Countries for LGBTQ Expats“:

  • Denmark
  • Iceland
  • Sweden

I say this, because these are the countries measured in the studies below.

So, here is one study from November 2019, published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, entitled “Suicide among persons who entered same-sex and opposite-sex marriage in Denmark and Sweden, 1989–2016: a binational, register-based cohort study“.

The abstract says:

This large register-based study found higher suicide rates among individuals who entered an SSM, compared with those who entered an OSM. A lower suicide rate was noted for individuals in SSMs in recent years. More research is needed to identify the unique suicide risk and protective factors for sexual minority people.

SSM means same-sex “marriage” and OSM means opposite-sex marriage.

Here’s another study from Sweden about same-sex “married” LGBT people, published May 2016, in the European Journal of Epidemiology. The title is the “Suicide in married couples in Sweden: Is the risk greater in same-sex couples?”

The abstract says:

Even in a country with a comparatively tolerant climate regarding homosexuality such as Sweden, same-sex married individuals evidence a higher risk for suicide than other married individuals.

Here’s another study from Sweden about LGBT individuals, published in March 2016 in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, entitled “Self-reported suicide ideation and attempts, and medical care for intentional self-harm in lesbians, gays and bisexuals in Sweden“.

The abstract says:

Positive histories of suicidal ideation, attempts and medical care for intentional self-harm, including higher levels of recurrence, are more prevalent among LGB individuals in contrast to heterosexuals. Lesbian/bisexual women evidence an earlier age of onset of treatment.

Here’s another study from Sweden about people who underwent sex-reassignment surgery, published in February 2011, PLoS One, entitled “Long-Term Follow-Up of Transsexual Persons Undergoing Sex Reassignment Surgery: Cohort Study in Sweden“.

The abstract says:

Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population.

Here’s a study from Iceland about LGBT adolescents, published in May 2015, and entitled “Suicidal risk and sexual orientation in adolescence: A population-based study in Iceland“.

The abstract says:

The LGB girls were six times more likely to have had frequent suicide attempts, whilst the LGB boys were 17 times more likely to have attempted suicide that often.

So, there are some studies I found, and if anyone asks me about this, I’ll explain that although I am not a social science researcher, the studies of people in LGBT-friendly countries show that there is a higher risk of suicidal thoughts and attempted suicide for LGBT individuals and couples than there is for heterosexual individuals and couples. And if they ask which countries, I’ll say Sweden, Iceland and Denmark. I’ll say that these are countries where same-sex “marriage” is legal.

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Two black economists explain how to end poverty in America

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These days, everyone seems to think that being good to the poor means looking around to see what people are saying is good to the poor, then loudly shouting your agreement with it. People want to look good to others more than they want to help others. Besides, looking good by loud virtue signaling is free. If we really wanted to help people, though, we should tell them to do what will work.

So let’s talk about poverty in America, with help from famous black economist Walter Williams.

First, he says real poverty is not common in America:

There is no material poverty in the U.S. Here are a few facts about people whom the Census Bureau labels as poor. Dr. Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield, in their study “Understanding Poverty in the United States: Surprising Facts About America’s Poor”, report that 80 percent of poor households have air conditioning; nearly three-quarters have a car or truck, and 31 percent have two or more. Two-thirds have cable or satellite TV. Half have one or more computers. Forty-two percent own their homes. Poor Americans have more living space than the typical non-poor person in Sweden, France or the U.K. What we have in our nation are dependency and poverty of the spirit, with people making unwise choices and leading pathological lives aided and abetted by the welfare state.

Second, the “poverty” is not caused by racism, but by poor choices:

The Census Bureau pegs the poverty rate among blacks at 35 percent and among whites at 13 percent. The illegitimacy rate among blacks is 72 percent, and among whites it’s 30 percent. A statistic that one doesn’t hear much about is that the poverty rate among black married families has been in the single digits for more than two decades, currently at 8 percent. For married white families, it’s 5 percent. Now the politically incorrect questions: Whose fault is it to have children without the benefit of marriage and risk a life of dependency? Do people have free will, or are they governed by instincts?

There may be some pinhead sociologists who blame the weak black family structure on racial discrimination. But why was the black illegitimacy rate only 14 percent in 1940, and why, as Dr. Thomas Sowell reports, do we find that census data “going back a hundred years, when blacks were just one generation out of slavery … showed that a slightly higher percentage of black adults had married than white adults. This fact remained true in every census from 1890 to 1940”? Is anyone willing to advance the argument that the reason the illegitimacy rate among blacks was lower and marriage rates higher in earlier periods was there was less racial discrimination and greater opportunity?

Third, avoiding poverty is the result of good choices:

No one can blame a person if he starts out in life poor, because how one starts out is not his fault.

If he stays poor, he is to blame because it is his fault. Avoiding long-term poverty is not rocket science. First, graduate from high school. Second, get married before you have children, and stay married. Third, work at any kind of job, even one that starts out paying the minimum wage. And finally, avoid engaging in criminal behavior. It turns out that a married couple, each earning the minimum wage, would earn an annual combined income of $30,000. The Census Bureau poverty line for a family of two is $15,500, and for a family of four, it’s $23,000. By the way, no adult who starts out earning the minimum wage does so for very long.

Fourth, what stops people from making good choices is big government:

Since President Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty, the nation has spent about $18 trillion at the federal, state and local levels of government on programs justified by the “need” to deal with some aspect of poverty. In a column of mine in 1995, I pointed out that at that time, the nation had spent $5.4 trillion on the War on Poverty, and with that princely sum, “you could purchase every U.S. factory, all manufacturing equipment, and every office building. With what’s left over, one could buy every airline, trucking company and our commercial maritime fleet. If you’re still in the shopping mood, you could also buy every television, radio and power company, plus every retail and wholesale store in the entire nation”. Today’s total of $18 trillion spent on poverty means you could purchase everything produced in our country each year and then some.

Regarding those last two points, here is another famous black economist, Thomas Sowell:

Economist Thomas Sowell blames welfare for killing the black family
Economist Thomas Sowell blames welfare for killing the black family

To illustrate this point, here’s a graph with some helpful data taken from the U. S. Census.

In fact, there is a whole video featuring Thomas Sowell to go with this graph:

Black women were more likely to be married before welfare programs
Black women were more likely to be married before welfare programs

And an article to go with it:

If we wanted to be serious about evidence, we might compare where blacks stood a hundred years after the end of slavery with where they stood after 30 years of the liberal welfare state. In other words, we could compare hard evidence on “the legacy of slavery” with hard evidence on the legacy of liberals.

Despite the grand myth that black economic progress began or accelerated with the passage of the civil rights laws and “war on poverty” programs of the 1960s, the cold fact is that the poverty rate among blacks fell from 87 percent in 1940 to 47 percent by 1960. This was before any of those programs began.

Over the next 20 years, the poverty rate among blacks fell another 18 percentage points, compared to the 40-point drop in the previous 20 years. This was the continuation of a previous economic trend, at a slower rate of progress, not the economic grand deliverance proclaimed by liberals and self-serving black “leaders.”

Ending the Jim Crow laws was a landmark achievement. But, despite the great proliferation of black political and other “leaders” that resulted from the laws and policies of the 1960s, nothing comparable happened economically. And there were serious retrogressions socially.

Nearly a hundred years of the supposed “legacy of slavery” found most black children being raised in two-parent families in 1960. But thirty years after the liberal welfare state found the great majority of black children being raised by a single parent.

The rest of the article points out how even crime rates among blacks were caused by the implementation of soft law enforcement policies by progressives. Just look at the big cities if you want to know what it is like for blacks to be ruled by Democrats. It sucks!

If everybody started to read more Thomas Sowell books, we would be much better off as a country! Only good things happen when people stop watching TV and listening to music and watching movies, and instead settle down in a chair with a Thomas Sowell book. I recommended a bunch of them in a previous post.