‘The whole scientific review process on anything related to COVID-19 has become highly politicized and contaminated,’ Johns Hopkins professor Steve Hanke says.
COVID censorship appears to be making a comeback—if it ever left.
Numerous physicians and academicians say they have been attempting to publish studies that show that lockdowns had enormous costs and marginal benefits, but they have found many doors were closed.
“The whole scientific review process on anything related to COVID-19 has become highly politicized and contaminated,” Steve Hanke, professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University and former member of the Council of Economic Advisors under President Reagan, told The Epoch Times. Mr. Hanke says he has been among those who have experienced censorship for criticizing lockdowns.
While many people may look back on the pandemic shuttering of schools, businesses and churches as costly, intrusive and, in some cases, devastating failures of government, lockdowns are garnering increasingly favorable reviews within the medical community, as reports critical of lockdowns are being silenced.
This is occurring at a time of revelations that the Biden administration leaned on tech and media companies to silence voices that dissented from the official COVID narratives.
In September, a federal appeals court ruled that the White House, the U.S. surgeon general, the CDC and the FBI had “likely violated the First Amendment” in pressuring social media companies to censor the views of those critical to official government narratives on COVID. The court ordered agencies and individuals within the Biden administration not to “coerce or significantly encourage a platform’s content-moderation decisions,” or otherwise influence social media companies to block protected speech.
“The issue is not whether the ideas are wrong or right,” Dr. Bhattacharya said following the ruling. “The question is who gets to control what ideas are expressed in the public square.”
The Biden administration appealed the decision, which will likely ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court. The central question is the extent to which private companies infringe on Americans’ First Amendment rights if they censor at the behest of government officials.
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