"The Downward Slide of America's Healthcare Apparatus" by A Midwestern Doctor

 

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The Downward Slide of America's Healthcare Apparatus Deborah Birx's disastrous tenure on the COVID-19 Task Force epitomizes the breakdown of our federal institutions. A MIDWESTERN DOCTOR MAR 26   SAVE ▷  LISTEN   I recently published a guest article discussing the evolution of pleas for COVID amnesty and Scott Atlas’s experience within the White House Coronavirus Task Force. I would highly encourage you to read it, as this article is the follow up to it. Pierre Kory’s Medical Musings The Media Is Finally Beginning to Come Clean about COVID-19 When I first learned of the Midwestern Doctor who authors The Forgotten Side of Medicine Substack, I was drawn to their deep understanding both of medical history and medical propaganda. Soon after we connected, I requested a discussion of the recent plea for COVID-19 amnesty, a request that has evolved into a series… Read more 3 days ago · 593 likes · 650 comments · Pierre Kory, MD, MPA Over the last two years, we have watched the public become progressively more upset with the COVID-19 response. I believe we have now reached the point the majority of the American population does not support what has been done and a significant portion of them have lost their trust within the medical system. In parallel to this increasing public rejection of the COVID narrative, the media which initially censored any claims dissenting from the narrative, has gradually been allowing dissent from it to enter the public discourse. I chose to highlight each sequential “apology” for the COVID response because of how well their successive publications illustrated the narrative collapsing in real time. When the previous one was released on 1/30/23, I stated that it still did not meet the bar for the apology the American public required, and predicted that the next admission we received would, by necessity, be much more candid. Simultaneously, I was curious to see if it would touch upon the elephant in the room, the mass deaths which have resulted from vaccination, but doubted we were there yet. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and if you have, please also consider pledging to support my work Pledge your support When the most recent one came out this month, I was a bit surprised as to who authored it—Scott Atlas. Scott Atlas was a highly acclaimed neuroradiologist and health policy scholar who chose to dissent against the narrative and eventually, in July of 2020, ended up in the White House and then on Coronavirus Task Force. Atlas chronicled what he observed and the profound consequences of those events for the nation in a memoir. In my eyes, there are three things that really stood out about what happened during his time at the White House. The first is that a relatively unknown figure, Deborah Birx, essentially commandeered the entire task force and was somehow able to pressure everyone to follow her nonsensical COVID-19 policy. This is important because most people believe Anthony Fauci was responsible for the national COVID-19 response, but reality both Fauci and the CDC Director Robert Redfield simply enabled Birx to do her damage to the country (e.g., they agreed with everything she proposed). The second was how tightly the national media worked in concert with these three doctors to push forward the test and lockdown policy—to the point anytime Atlas began to gain any traction with the task force, someone would “leak” his proposed policy to the national media. A dramatic caricature of Atlas’s proposal would be presented to American public alongside insinuations Trump was forcing the task force to follow his unscientific agenda (e.g., a common theme was that countless lives were being sacrificed for the economy), and before long, the task force would cave and reinstate the Birx’s policies. The final one is that many of the things Atlas observed on the task force were quite frankly surreal. Everyone deferred to the expertise of Fauci, Birx and Redfield, to the point that frequently, no amount of facts or logic could sway them from following the policies put forth by these three doctors. In many cases, Atlas recounted instances that quite literally reminded me of scenes out of Idiocracy, particularly this one: I hold the perspective that the hysteria and complete debasement of science we saw throughout the pandemic did not arise from nowhere. Rather, it represented an acceleration in the gradual decline of our institutions we have witnessed over the past decade (and potentially longer depending on one looks at this question). A year ago Elon Musk brought attention to one of my favorite political cartoons (which many of us can relate to) by tweeting it out: One of the interesting things about this meme is how accurate it has been for depicting the rapid institutional decline in science. In the same period this meme unfolded, much of “science” has shifted from using the scientific method to adopt relatively agreeable positions, to allowing experts (who are often being paid off by corporations to espouse their narrative) to dictate what is and is not a permissible scientific position. When I put the article together, I realized this meme also encapsulates exactly what we saw happen throughout COVID-19. I personally believe this trend is a result of both the media (which shares the same corporate sponsors as the experts) pushing this ideology onto society and the scientific profession being cowed into submission to the point most of them will not oppose nonsensical narratives they know are wrong. Control of Society Throughout history, there has always been a small number of people seeking to rule over and exploit the masses for their own benefit. Maintaining this control however has always been challenging. A variety of strategies attempted throughout history to prevent the masses from standing up. The fundamental challenge each immoral ruler faces is having sufficient resources available to address those who will predictably resist the leader. For example, if one percent of a country overtly turned against the ruler, the military would likely be large enough to suppress those dissidents and prevent further rebellion from spreading. However, if the majority of a country turned against its leader, the leader would not be able to do anything about it, because there is no possible way the leader could afford a large enough military and domestic police force to address that degree of dissent (this is also why foreign militaries frequently are often unable to maintain control over an occupied territory). For this reason, leaders throughout history have utilized a variety of tactics to control the population which are significantly more economical than maintaining a gigantic domestic police force or military. This for example was often done by making a harsh example out of political dissidents so others would be too scared to follow in the dissident’s footsteps or having a large social institution which naturally created societal compliance. When the age of enlightenment began in the 17th century, it became far more difficult for monarchs to continue to use the tools they had previously enslaved the masses with. In turn, Western culture gradually shifted towards a capitalistic democracy where our faith in society came down to three beliefs: •Leaders, who we elected by voting, represent our interests and are who we, through our own free will, chose to govern us. •Money is important and we should do our best to prioritize accumulating it. •If you are unhappy with anything in the system, you should address it by being financially or politically successful (in other words, you should work within the two previous beliefs rather than rejecting them entirely). By having these beliefs be shared by the entire society, the ruling class became able to effectively control the population, as (especially with the help of monopolies and propaganda) they can easily influence the political and economic process to suit their needs. Most importantly, unlike rulers of the past, this could be done without needing to fund a large standing army to enforce compliance. I have thought about it for a long time, I believe (in spite of its many shortcomings) the current system of governance we have, which revolves around those three beliefs (and a functional judicial system), represents the best option of governance available to our species and each member of society. The only alternative models I feel have merit (creating a society built around fostering the conscious evolution of each of its members or a benevolent dictatorship), have emerged periodically throughout history. Unfortunately these are by their nature extremely inconsistent (e.g., most dictators will not be both wise and benevolent, and the more idealistic societies often end up getting conquered by less compassionate outsiders). Economic Feudalism As American history has the move forward, they control the upper class has been able to maintain over the lower class has diminished due: •The immense wealth that became available to Americans (especially after World War II). •Increasing recognition by the public of their inherent rights. •The increased ability of ideas to rapidly disseminate across the society. When I was younger, I was told that the solution developed by a globalist group (which predated the World Economic Forum) to address this “problem” was to instill a system of governance similar to that seen during during the feudal era. This model has become a primary lens I interpret the world through because so much of what it predicted has since come to pass throughout my lifetime. In the feudal era, the majority of the population were impoverished serfs who were forced to work on their lord’s land to seek out a bare subsidence (most of their earnings went either to the lord or the monarch who oversaw the nation’s lords). In addition to managing their portion of the kingdom’s populace, lords also has large standing armies and often fought on behalf of their monarch. More could be said, but the most important thing to understand about the feudal model was just how bad life was for the serfs. In an economic feudalism (discussed in detail here), the following conditions need to be met: •Corporations assume the role of lords. This required a large number of laws to enacted which codified corporate power into law, and increasing corruption throughout the political system which allowed the corporate powers to both buy out the government and monopolize the market place. •Worsening economic conditions that took away the freedom in independence people previously had to dissent from the system. As a result, Americans more and more were forced to work under corporate jobs which treated them badly, but the workers were often left with no option except to comply with their employer. Note: although it did not exist when this system was originally conceived, I believe artificial intelligence is also playing a central role in the shift towards economic feudalism. This is because AI is gradually eliminating many of the jobs people could previously ensure their financial independence with, and because it makes it possible to micromanage and monitor each citizen, something that was previously impossible because at no point in time was there ever be enough personnel available to perform this task. Essentially, the relationship between the government and corporations in many ways resembles the balancing act previously seen between a king and one of his generals or lords. The king needed to utilize them to fulfill his domestic and international policies (e.g., conquering neighboring lands or controlling his subjects) so he could not afford to handicap or lose the leaders of his armies, but simultaneously, the king needed to keep them on a tight enough leash that they would not rebel against him and they work could be directed towards enacting the king’s national policy. This dynamic is why I believe the US government always will bail out a failing corporation, and puts many laws and regulations in place to direct the behavior of its corporations, but simultaneously rarely pursues criminal charges against them for their egregious behavior. If you step back and think about it, you should be able to think of many other illustrations of how corporations have become the lords of the modern era. The weight of this corporate lordship was best shown by the recent vaccination mandate for workers in America (which as you might guess was enacted in Q3 of 2021). When Biden’s illegal mandates were enacted, most of the establishment supported them, and in the time leading up to them I frequently heard many extol the merits of “using economic incentives to enforce compliance with vital public health policies.” I could not help but notice that, like the lockdown fanatics, none of them (even those I asked many directly) could see any potential issues with their position. Conversely, almost everyone I spoke to who had not vaccinated by the time the mandates were enacted felt very strongly about their position, but often nonetheless caved because they had to put food on the table for their family. Many in turn were seriously injured and told me their employer mandating a toxic injection them was one of the gravest violations they had experienced in their lifetimes. Many things could be sad about the sad state of affairs (e.g., why you cannot trust many people to appropriately exercise the power they have over you). I specifically wanted to highlight how it exemplifies the scenario sought by the proponents of economic feudalism, and why are you so important to structure your life in such a way that you do not become an economic serf. Economic Compliance Sadly, this problem is not unique to the general corporate workforce. In parallel to increasing wealth inequality (note: COVID-19 was the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in history) people in many other fields have also felt the pinch. For example, in the recent past scientists had much more economic freedom to pursue unorthodox hypotheses. Scientists now however are so dependent on receiving grant sponsorship for their research that they will not publish anything which dissents from the narrative as that can blacklist them from receiving future funding. On this point, Anthony Fauci through his position at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has played a pivotal role in reshaping the grant system to protect the narrative, a tactic he appears to have initially pioneered on Peter Deusberg, a renowned virologist who dissented against Fauci's narrative on HIV. Similarly, in medicine, physicians have gradually been forced out of private practice (due to onerous laws being passed) and into the corporate workforce. There, they are required to follow the treatment guidelines of their employers (which for instance led to physicians who wished to save lives rather than follow the narrative being severely reprimanded by their hospitals during the pandemic). This loss of treatment diversity severely affects the population. Consider for instance the remarkably identical experience one has when seeing a doctor working within a corporate healthcare system—the doctor will only profess the narrative and often fail to provide anything which actually helps the patient—and consider how difficult it is now to find doctors who work outside the system. No Misdeed Goes Unrewarded in Washington When Birx effectively directed the coronavirus task force, she demonstrated a profound degree of scientific ignorance and emotional immaturity that is so surreal I still have some difficulty believing it really happened. Because of the profound consequences we faced as a result of that malfeasance, I detailed this behavior throughout the previous article, however since there was so much of it, I could not cover everything. One of the things I find the most fascinating about Birx was that despite the fact she managed to upset almost everyone she worked with, and had some major skeletons in her closet, the media was incredibly supportive of her and her fanatical advocacy for the lockdown narrative. For example, compare this account from CNN to what Atlas showed actually occurred (my commentary is in italics): And she [Birx] disclosed that there was “parallel data” [compiled by leading researchers around the world] coming into the White House that Trump relied on. Birx said she suspected it came from Scott Atlas [Atlas directly provided the data on a regular basis to the task force], a neuroradiologist Trump put on the task force, who spent the pandemic spreading dangerous misinformation [all of which is now being admitted to be correct] about Covid-19. She said her own ideas for fighting the virus, which she developed based on deep data-dives [Birx repeatedly demonstrated a very poor understanding of her highly inaccurate data] and extensive research and planning, were disregarded [Birx’s ideas constituted the majority of the policies put forward by the task force]. I know it shouldn’t, but it still somewhat amazes me just how much they lie. To further illustrate the media’s bias, towards Birx, consider how hard they worked to protect her after she directly admitted she deliberately lied to the public about the vaccines: “I knew these vaccines were not going to protect against infection,” Birx told Fox News host Neil Cavuto. “And I think we overplayed the vaccines, and it made people then worry that it’s not going to protect against severe disease and hospitalization. It will. But let’s be very clear: 50% of the people who died from the Omicron surge were older, vaccinated.” Note: Birx and Redfield, previously worked on the Army’s HIV vaccine project. Their project was plagued by manipulation of data, inappropriate statistical analyses, and falsified data presentation and publication in order to receive congressional funding and to get a faulty vaccine approved by the FDA meant for treating HIV patients. Birx and Redfield were eventually investigated by the Department of Defense for this misconduct (Birx vouched for Redfield to the military and likely saved his career by doing so). Neither was sanctioned for what happened, they were allowed to continue their careers in Washington and promoted through the bureaucracy, which eventually culminated in the debacle we witnessed decades later during COVID-19. Corruption within CDC Because of the pressures economic feudalism and the continually proliferating corruption has placed on our country, many people who see things for what they are and want to do the right thing find themselves trapped within systems that force them to do many things they simply do not support. Throughout my medical training for example, quite a few doctors and administrators I worked under could tell we were on the same page. They in turn did what they could to allow me to explore unconventional subjects and I greatly owe them for going to bat for me when issues emerged. I mention this because when I looked into the backgrounds of many of the prominent physicians who decided to publicly stick their necks out to oppose the COVID-19 narrative, I realized they were cut from the same cloth as those who helped me long ago. Similarly, although I have serious objections to the conduct engaged in by many branches of the government, I simultaneously recognize that there are also a lot of good people within its bureaucracy (this includes the CDC). A few months ago (in response to their completely unjustifiable decision to add the COVID-19 vaccines to the childhood vaccine schedule), I wrote a detailed summary of the documented corruption within the CDC: The Forgotten Side of Medicine Who Owns the CDC? Many of you are understandably outraged at the CDC’s recent unanimous decision to add the COVID-19 vaccines to the pediatric schedule. The decision is completely indefensible, and will result in millions of children being forced to be vaccinated for no benefit and substantial risk. For those who have any doubts this will happen, Tucker Carlson eloquen… Read more 5 months ago · 364 likes · 202 comments · A Midwestern Doctor When I researched the article, I learned that just like many other facets of our society, the degree of corruption within the CDC has steadily increased with time (e.g., prior to COVID-19, the CDC was already bought out by all the same parties that profited handsomely off the dysfunctional pandemic response). Similarly, long before COVID-19, many members of the CDC had grave concerns about the direction the agency was going in due to that corruption, but for fear of their jobs and reputations could not speak out publicly against what was happening (e.g., consider this letter submitted by CDC scientists in 2016). Sadly, as has been the case in many areas of society, the rot within the CDC metastasized during COVID-19. One of the strongest proofs for this assertion came from an investigation by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) a year ago. It found that employees in numerous branches of the federal government that orchestrated for the COVID-19 response (e.g., the FDA and CDC) all reported that they observed instances where a political interference prevented making policy decisions that were guided by the available scientific evidence. However, in most cases, the employees did not report it because they: •Feared retaliation. •Were unsure how to report issues. •Believed agency leaders were already aware. Note: GAO investigators also found that leaders of these agencies denied any reportable issues had occurred, and when asked why they they did not have provisions in place for these issues to be reported, officials failed to provide an explanation. Not having a reporting system in place essentially prevents these complaints from ever being reported. This parallels the NIH repeatedly failing to require its employees to disclose their financial conflicts of interest despite being require to do so. Birx and the CDC Birx’s misconduct was so out of line that it eventually prompted an investigation by Science. This investigation looked into both her conduct throughout the pandemic, and her similar misconduct when she oversaw the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). I feel that investigation adds a very important dimension to this story, so if you have time to read it in full, please do. For those who do not, I will summarize it here as much of what is described perfectly mirrors what Atlas stated he observed Birx do throughout the pandemic. PEPFAR was created to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa, and to provide antiretroviral medications to those with the disease. In 2014, Birx was appointed as the head of PEPFAR. Once there, she sought to make it more effective by eliminating inefficiencies and being as data driven as possible. Unfortunately, Birx did not actually understand how to do this: But Glassman and Vermund also agree that Birx made constant, burdensome, urgent demands for data on HIV/AIDS cases, treatments, and other factors. Vermund says those demands sometimes disrupted services for patients. He describes some of Birx's data demands as "almost whimsical" and their purposes opaque, calling her leadership style "authoritarian." That description is backed by a blistering audit of PEPFAR's work in four African countries, issued in February by the Department of State's inspector general (IG). Most of the PEPFAR staff auditors interviewed in 2019 said their input was ignored and that program heads, led by Birx, set unachievable benchmarks. One PEPFAR staffer told auditors that a target for the number of people on antiretroviral therapy in one country "was actually greater than the number of people living with HIV." Some staff described PEPFAR management as "autocratic" or "dictatorial." One said high-level technical staff adopted an approach of "just obey and move on. … Working in fear and a space where nothing is negotiable." Note: Throughout COVID-19, Birx would constantly insist that she was "all about the data," but both demonstrated that she did not understand the data she was compiling and refused to look at any data which challenged her narrative. Because Birx made completely unreasonable demands for the African nations to follow (due to her fixation on the need for more data), and penalized them for failing to provide all of the data she requested, this inevitably invited fraud to occur: Programs that missed data quotas could have their funding cut off, a situation a third staffer described as "a recipe for cooking data." The data targets "put a lot of pressure on the [local] partners," a fourth staffer told the IG investigators. "Sometimes, you are not even sure that the numbers are true. Especially when you go to the field and look at the [patient] registers. You cannot verify that they are real patients." A CDC PEPFAR manager told Science that "Countries need the money," so program staff manipulated performance data. Vermund says his program never falsified data, but "we knew for a fact that others did not necessarily tell the truth, … [using] exaggerations to make themselves look better." He says some programs double-counted patients who entered treatment, dropped out, and then returned. "Perverse incentives were created based on the data-driven outcomes." Despite the pressure, the audit showed, Birx's data targets were often missed. One observation about her time at PEPFAR was particularly prescient for COVID-19: But Glassman concedes that despite good intentions, Birx's style was "a disaster" at PEPFAR. And tying data targets to funding without independent verification does invite misreporting, she says. "Her desire to get those results and show them to the world, I think, just overcame everything," Glassman says. Once Birx became the de-facto director of coronavirus task force, she committed herself to following her previous playbook: In a spring meeting, Birx seemed fixated on applying the lessons of HIV/AIDS in a small African nation to COVID-19 in the United States, says a CDC official who was present. "Birx was able to get data from every hospital on every case" in Malawi, the official says. "She couldn't understand why that wasn't happening in the United States" with COVID-19. Birx didn't seem to see the difference between a slow-moving HIV outbreak and a raging respiratory pandemic. "[CDC Principal Deputy Director] Anne Schuchat had to say, ‘Debbi, this is not HIV.' Birx got unhappy with that." After some thought, Birx decided that the existing system for hospitals to communicate their data to the CDC (the NHSN) which the CDC had worked for 15 years to create was the problem. This was because while it could provide most of the data Birx wanted (and it was possible for the rest to be reliably modeled), it could not provide all of it. More surprisingly, she was very vocal about these objections: CDC employees with whom Science spoke—who requested anonymity because they fear retaliation—along with other public health leaders, say Birx's actions, abetted by a chaotic White House command structure and weak leadership from CDC Director Robert Redfield [remember his previous history with Birx], have contributed to what amounts to an existential crisis for the agency. And her disrespect for CDC has sent morale plummeting, senior officials say. During a May task force meeting, The Washington Post reported, Birx said: "There is nothing from the CDC that I can trust." So on July 13, during a meeting where twenty COVID-19 experts had gathered to discuss the best way to gather key data for coordinating the pandemic response, Birx assigned her aide who chaired the meeting to deliver a bombshell to the group: Birx [who was not even present at the meeting] had pulled the plug on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) system for collecting hospital data and turned much of the responsibility over to a private contractor, Pittsburgh-based TeleTracking Technologies Inc., a hospital data management company. The reason: CDC had not met Birx's demand that hospitals report 100% of their COVID-19 data every day [which is for all practical purposes impossible]. The idea that a private contractor in a very short period of time could create a better system than the one the CDC had worked on for over a decade demonstrated a profound lack of knowledge and capacity for leadership that was instantly apparent to those present: According to two officials in the meeting, one CDC staffer left and immediately began to sob, saying, "I refuse to do this. I cannot work with people like this. It is so toxic." That person soon resigned from the pandemic data team, sources say. Other CDC staffers considered the decision arbitrary and destructive. "Anyone who knows the data supply chain in the U.S. knows [getting all the data daily] is impossible" during a pandemic, says one high-level expert at CDC. And they considered Birx's imperative unnecessary because staffers with decades of experience could confidently estimate missing numbers from partial data. "Why are they not listening to us?" a CDC official at the meeting recalls thinking. Several CDC staffers predicted the new data system would fail, with ominous implications. "Birx has been on a months long rampage against our data," one texted to a colleague shortly afterward. "Good f---ing luck getting the hospitals to clean up their data and update daily." The move to shut NHSN down for hospital COVID-19 data in July was protested by more than 100 public health and patient advocacy groups, along with numerous scientific and medical societies. However, the media did not choose to aggressively peruse this (which I suspect was due to its close collaboration with Birx). Not surprisingly, the data from TeleTracking was much worse than NHSN’s and suffered from a variety of other severe errors 4 months after its implementation: CDC staffers say the system has other problems; for example, [in the HHS datahub] many hospitals share ID numbers, making it difficult to differentiate between each one's needs. CDC critiques obtained by Science and data displayed on the HHS data hub also show the system has consistently reported nonsensical numbers. For example, it showed negative numbers and estimates of occupied hospital beds, as well as more than 15,000 beds for a single California hospital. In nearly 1500 cases, it showed more beds filled than total beds in a hospital. Since TeleHealth was a disaster, Birx decided to draw upon her previous experience at PEPFAR: But in that same briefing, Birx and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma announced a new and stringent requirement reminiscent of PEPFAR: Funding will be tied to reporting compliance. Hospitals will be disqualified from Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements if they fail to submit required data after being warned of lapses. The memo from Birx to Azar, marked "not releasable to the public," shows Birx pushed for the change. The move is "sledgehammer enforcement" that could needlessly divert time and money from patient care, Federation of American Hospitals President and CEO Charles "Chip" Kahn said in a statement after the announcement. As at PEPFAR, CDC officials say this requirement could create "perverse incentives" to supply false data. Medicare funding is a survival issue for hospitals, so many are likely to submit the requested numbers regardless of whether they are accurate, say three high-level CDC officials with personal knowledge of agency data systems. Amazingly, despite the many issues with TeleTracking, its contract was continually renewed, and the CDC only recently switched back to using their original system when the final contract expired at the end of 2022. Conclusion One of the lessons I have learned throughout life is that most people are not good leaders (or managers). So, not surprisingly, many unqualified people will end up occupying those positions (e.g., I’m sure you’ve all had a boss like that). Over the last decade, I have noted that there has been a general tendency for people in leadership roles to handle their job by seeking out data and basing their decisions off of the data they acquired. Frequently, in turn, I observe this appears to be occurring because they don't actually know what to do and they want to have a way to justify their actions that looks good to everyone else. This ends up being a major problem if that leader lacks critical thinking skills (which is often the case) and thus doesn't actually understand how to make sense of their data. While I have repeatedly observed this issue, I have never seen someone do it to the degree that Birx has throughout her career. This in turn touches upon a broader question; why on earth would someone like Birx allowed to advance so far through the government, and why could no one challenge her throughout her time on the task force? I would argue that her rise to power is simply a representation of corruption having entered our system and causing it to no longer follow the agreed-upon standards it was founded upon. One of my core moral values is a variant of the Golden Rule—treat others the way you would want to be treated and hold everyone to the same standards. This for example has shown me not to condone subpar behavior, even from friends I care about (I’ve learned the hard way how quickly minor transgressions can escalate if left unchecked and repeatedly seen how much people grow if they are held to a higher standard). Similarly, because of the Golden Rule, I often find myself advocating for people being mistreated whom I do not ideologically align with or even particularly like in the first place. Conversely, because of the pervasive political polarization in our society, we can frequently observe members of society (e.g., the “woke progressives”) encourage things being done to others they would not under any circumstances accept happening to them. The decline and increasing corruption throughout all of our societal institutions affects everyone, and the events of COVID-19 (which kicked this decay into overdrive) I believe may have been the push that makes it possible for the society to recognize the issues we are facing. Since this is something that transcends partisan distinctions, it is my sincere hope it will create the push for our dysfunctional institutions to begin rebuilding themselves. For those who are further interested in this subject, much more on its importance and Atlas’s proposals to address what happened were discussed in the previous article. Additionally Robert Malone wrote an excellent series on what can potentially be done to fix these issues within the Department of Health and Human Services (part one can be viewed here, part two here).