By Christopher Dreisbach at Brownstone dot org.

Five years is a significant milestone in any chronic illness. People can endure extraordinary physical pain, financial hardship, and emotional suffering if they that believe recovery is just around the corner. Hope often carries them through.

But after five years, hope itself begins to erode.

Savings have been exhausted. Careers have been interrupted or lost. Retirement plans have disappeared. Marriages have been strained by the relentless burden of chronic illness and caregiving. Medical appointments that once promised answers begin to feel repetitive and futile.

Gradually, the realization sets in that life may never return to what it once was. Temporary hardship becomes permanent reality. When physical suffering is compounded by financial ruin, social isolation, and the loss of future expectations, despair can become overwhelming.

For thousands of Americans permanently harmed during the Covid-19 vaccine rollout, that five-year milestone is arriving now.

Over the past several months, a disturbing number of Covid-19 vaccine-injured individuals have either taken their own lives or survived suicide attempts. As a board member of React19, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting those injured by the Covid-19 vaccines, I have come to know many of these stories personally. These are not statistics. They are husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters who believed that if they persevered long enough, help would eventually arrive.

For many, it never did.

What made their suffering especially devastating was not only the physical injury itself, but years spent feeling invisible. Many lost careers, homes, and financial security. Others depleted retirement savings or accumulated overwhelming medical debt. Almost all experienced some combination of disbelief, dismissal, and isolation. After years of being told their injuries were unlikely, unrelated, or simply impossible, many began to question whether anyone in authority would ever acknowledge what had happened.

Against that backdrop, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations' recent interim report, Failure to Warn: How Federal Health Agencies Downplayed and Hid Myocarditis and Other Adverse Events Associated with the Covid-19 Vaccines, represents an important turning point.

Drawing on internal government records and documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, the report concludes that federal health officials delayed acknowledging vaccine safety signals, withheld important information from the public, failed to respond fully to Congressional oversight, and repeatedly placed concerns about preserving public confidence above full transparency.

For the vaccine-injured community, that public acknowledgment matters. For the first time, many who were dismissed for years can point to official government findings confirming that safety concerns existed, were recognized internally, and were not fully communicated to the public.

Yet transparency alone is not enough.

A report that documents misconduct but produces no consequences may satisfy historians, but it offers little comfort to those whose lives were permanently altered by the conduct it describes. Facts matter. Investigations matter. But they matter most when they lead to accountability.

Fortunately, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), the chairman of the Subcommittee, has made clear that this report is not the end of his work—it is the beginning.

Throughout the pandemic and the years that followed, Senator Johnson has courageously pressed federal agencies for answers, demanded documents, convened hearings, and, perhaps most importantly, gave Covid-19 vaccine-injured Americans an opportunity to tell their stories publicly. His message has remained remarkably consistent: transparency is essential, but transparency must ultimately be followed by accountability.

That accountability cannot stop with institutions.

Too often, government failures are blamed on agencies, dep...

By Wendy McElroy at Brownstone dot org.

The future of the United Nations (UN) is in play, largely because of its refusal to censure Iran—a member nation. In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio reprimanded the UN: "If you're telling me that the international community and hundreds of countries cannot rally behind that, then I don't know what the utility of the UN system is."

Severing all ties to the UN could require an act of Congress, but the US is moving in this direction. On February 4, 2025, Executive Order 14199 directed the US to withdraw from 31 UN organisations. A great deal hinges on how highly Rubio still prizes America's permanent seat on the UN Security Council which comes with a veto.

The UN is often viewed as an ineffectual bureaucracy that occasionally does some good. It is nothing so benevolent. Its origins may have been well-meaning, but the current UN has become what it claims to oppose. The US should leave the UN altogether and immediately, especially since its unjust policies are likely to get worse…and soon.

The UN Charter (1945) opens,

WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED…to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women…

The Preamble of its Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) states,

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

Article 2 of the Declaration provides,

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex…

'All human beings are equal' is the basis of Western justice, whether the equality is under nature, God, or law. Instead of pursuing equality, however, the UN is now a woke and corrupt actor that creates inequality and division. The UN's financial malfeasance, the sexual abuse by field personnel, its demonization of the West…are well documented in the 104-page report From Watchdogs to Ideologues: How Politicized UN Rapporteurs Are Subverting Human Rights by the Geneva-based NGO UN Watch.

The UN's demonstrated commitment is to social justice or a wokeness rooted in equity, not equality. Equity seeks the redistribution of wealth and power to those who are considered oppressed from those who are considered oppressors. Equity is the opposite of equality under the law.

Consider its treatment of men who clearly are not viewed as equal to women, as the UN's mission claims. An obvious example is the prominent presence of the UN Women commission that claims to be "the global champion for gender equality." The commission identifies its goal as ensuring "every woman and girl lives up to her full potential." No mention of men or boys. No comparable UN Men agency, although males are included peripherally by recognizing a need to train them to oppose patriarchy. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) explains,

UNFPA works with men and boys around the world to advance gender equality and end violence. These programmes are encouraging men and boys to abandon harmful stereotypes, embrace respectful, healthy relationships, and support the human rights of all people, everywhere.

Men face many of the same global problems as women, however, including poverty, lack of education, violence, disease and harmful stereotypes. Men also face unique problems, including male-only conscription, paternity fraud, false rape accusations, and longer sentences for the same crimes. Nevertheless, compared to the UN's emphasis on women, men are virtually ignored. And deliberately so.

The UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) is considered by many to be the international bill of rights for women. Again, no comparable agency exists for men. The FAQ of one CEDAW branch speaks of substantive justice for women.

Substantive justice judges fairness by results rath...

By Maryanne Demasi at Brownstone dot org.

A cache of internal emails obtained from within the US National Institutes of Health has exposed years of strategic planning for future pandemics involving governments, foundations, international organisations, and pharmaceutical companies.

The documents, stretching back to at least 2016, show that Dr Francis Collins, Director of the NIH from 2009 to 2021, was at the centre of these efforts.

In that role, he oversaw the allocation of the agency's substantial research budget, which ran into tens of billions of dollars annually.

The emails reveal Collins working closely with the Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, World Bank, World Economic Forum, the African Academy of Sciences, and major pharmaceutical companies to strengthen research infrastructure, regulatory readiness, and international coordination well before Covid appeared.

For the public, the Covid response was presented as an unexpected crisis. Governments appeared to be making difficult decisions while navigating profound uncertainty.

But these emails tell a different story.

Many of the same organisations that later shaped the Covid response had already spent years building capacity, influence, and institutional power under Collins' leadership.

Billions of dollars flowed through the sprawling network. Careers were built around it, reputations depended on it, and political and financial interests became invested in its success.

By the time Covid arrived, much of the framework was already in place.

The planning gained momentum after the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak highlighted gaps in global preparedness. Vaccines took too long to develop, trials were hard to organise, and funding was fragmented.

The response, according to the emails, was to build permanent capacity in advance rather than react after the fact.

One major outcome was the launch of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) in 2017 at the World Economic Forum (WEF), which hosts an annual gathering of globalist elites in Davos, Switzerland.

CEPI focused on vaccines against emerging infectious diseases and became a key part of pandemic planning alongside the NIH and major foundations.

During Covid, CEPI became one of the major funders of vaccine development, investing hundreds of millions of dollars in multiple vaccine platforms that eventually led to vaccines from companies such as Moderna.

The internal documents show there was particular focus on expanding research capacity in Africa, a region long criticised for weak regulatory oversight and less stringent enforcement of clinical trial standards.

Collins chaired a 2017 WEF meeting on building a sustainable biomedical research enterprise in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The call brought together senior figures from the Wellcome Trust and other partners to advance plans for major new investment, including a proposed $10 billion African science, technology and innovation fund.

Collins appeared keen to ensure there was no confusion about who was in charge. After one teleconference with the WEF he wrote to his NIH colleagues:

"In the last call there was a bit of confusion about who was leading (NIH or WEF). I think this time it should be me. Agree?"

By 2018, senior pharmaceutical executives were discussing long-term investments in infrastructure designed to endure well beyond any single outbreak.

One project focused on SMART Vaccines, a decision-support tool designed to help governments and funders systematically prioritise vaccine candidates and guide investment decisions ahead of future outbreaks.

Workshops for the project brought together a who's who of global health institutions, government agencies, philanthropic foundations, vaccine manufacturers, and international organisations.

The language of the initiative emphasised "consensus-building" and "public-private partnerships," to keep major organisations and stakeholders in lockstep—many of whom would later play influential roles during Covid.

By 2019, the cor...

By David Gortler, Pharm. D at Brownstone dot org.

Americans assume that when they pick up a prescription from their pharmacy, an FDA quality control professional has verified that the contents are manufactured to rigorous agency standards. Unfortunately, that assumption is becoming harder to defend.

For decades, the FDA's drug oversight model has depended on in-person inspections of the manufacturing practice and independent verification of product quality. While no regulatory system is perfect, the underlying principle was straightforward: companies seeking to profit from selling medicine to the American people would be held to strict and independently assessed FDA-enforced standards. However, that principle has recently been eroded with a newly enacted FDA policy.

During Covid, the FDA sharply curtailed – then mostly eliminated – routine in-person inspections as part of its five-year-plus "work at home" policy. The repercussions of that poorly thought-through initiative are still being felt by patients and consumers today. Manufacturers now know that no FDA inspector is going to knock on their doors for an unannounced in-person inspection as they once did. Today, approximately 90% of FDA overseas inspections are announced in advance through State Department travel communication requests initiated by the FDA.

Beginning in January 2021, almost immediately following Biden's presidential inauguration, FDA career employees quickly and quietly proposed an agency-wide "remote" inspection system for almost everything it regulated.

Both the significance and folly of that misguided FDA policy implementation cannot be overstated.

What began as an emergency, temporary Covid-era "work at home" accommodation solidified into a permanent FDA policy. And the result has been a striking failure. Recalls soared and continued to do so even after the FDA ended its "work from home" policy in March 2025, illustrating that underlying remote/announced inspection methodology isn't as effective as live inspections.

Even with remote testing, right before Trump was elected president in September 2024, the FDA had an inspection backlog numbering in the thousands—and that was just in the US alone. Fast-forward to 2026, and that FDA inspection backlog persists, placing Americans in perpetual danger from unsafe pharmaceuticals and medical devices.

It's to the point that even the US Government Accountability Office publicly scolded the FDA in February 2026 about not effectively inspecting manufacturing plants.

Today, hardly a weekday goes by at the FDA where they don't announce at least one recall. This means that the limited number of "remote" drug inspections conducted by the FDA apparently aren't being conducted effectively.

Recalls may be caused by things such as: contamination issues, falsified records, manipulated testing data, and questionable manufacturing practices that should otherwise have prompted immediate, regulatorily punitive consequences above and beyond just the recall itself.

A vast majority of America's pharmaceutical supply chain has moved overseas, with Chinese and Indian manufacturers now producing anywhere from 80 to 90% of active pharmaceutical ingredients. The remaining percentage tends to be brand-name drugs, narcotic, or controlled substances which China isn't allowed to manufacture by their government, having definitively learned their lesson from the Opium War of the 1800s.

American consumers and patients rely heavily on overseas Indian and Chinese manufacturers, where quality control is widely known to have not only serious shortcomings, but in some cases, deliberate product manipulation, adulteration, and/or fraud. This creates obvious dangers for American patients, particularly when regulators fail to independently or proactively verify quality before products reach America's pharmacies, hospitals, and patients.

Over the past couple of years, a growing drumbeat of reports has detailed increasingly worrisome findings about ...

By Josh Stylman at Brownstone dot org.

This morning the New York Times published an essay by an immunologist who wasn't vaccinated as a child, found science, got her shots, and now wants to help other parents see the light. It's got that signature NYT sheen, is well written and emotionally compelling. And yet, if you've been paying attention to the media machine you can see that this piece is merely emotional blackmail. It's sophisticated and speaks in the language of maternal love. The fact that it's dressed in a lab coat is the tell.

The essay's argument is simple: the author's mother didn't vaccinate her out of love. The author now vaccinates her own children out of love. The only difference is information and emotional support. The moral of the story? Parents who don't vaccinate aren't bad people – they just haven't been guided to the correct conclusion yet.

Anyone not asleep through the last few years may recognize the game.

In 2021, New York's Governor Kathy Hochul stood before a congregation and told them the vaccinated were "the smart ones," that those who refused were "not listening to God," and that the faithful needed to go out as "apostles" and convert the unbelievers. It was cheap, crude, and disgraceful on so many layers.

And then there was Bill de Blasio. In the middle of the city's vaccine push, the mayor of New York went on camera dangling a plate of burger and fries, moaning "Mmm, vaccination" like he was filming a McDonalds commercial.

I've never been more ashamed to be a New Yorker than watching those two represent my hometown during that period.

The Times essay is precisely the same sermon for a different congregation. Three pitches for the exact same product. De Blasio dangled fries at people who couldn't afford to say no. Hochul played to the soul. The Times aims square at the laptop class. The approach may look different but the reveal is obvious: there is only one correct answer and the institutions hold it. These are all merely tactics to get the holdouts to convert.

Interestingly, the Times piece never mentions that the United States has the most aggressive childhood vaccine schedule in the developed world. It never mentions that in 1986, Congress passed a law shielding vaccine manufacturers from traditional liability – we were told that wasn't because the products were dangerous but rather because manufacturers were threatening to leave the market without protection from lawsuits. Perhaps most tellingly, it never asks the obvious common-sense question: why did Congress decide that the only way to keep vaccines flowing was to remove the legal accountability that applies to virtually every other product you put in your body? And what has that tradeoff cost in public trust?

It never mentions the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, which has paid out over $4 billion to families over the decades – a federal court that exists for the sole purpose of acknowledging that these injuries are real. You'd think that would make conversations about risk perfectly reasonable. Apparently not. Instead, raising the topic at all gets you labeled dangerous.

It never mentions the work of researchers like Toby Rogers or organizations like Children's Health Defense who've spent years digging into the actual data on adverse events, pushing back on the accepted risk-benefit math, and demanding that manufacturers and regulators show their work. For what it's worth, agreeing with everything they publish isn't the point. These people don't exist in any mainstream conversation about vaccines. They're not debated. They're not refuted. Just absent. If I didn't know better I'd call that a guardrail, not a mere oversight.

I would argue that absence is doing more to erode public trust than anything those researchers have ever published. When parents go looking for answers and find a whole world of data the New York Times pretends doesn't exist, they may conclude the Times is handling its readers, not informing them.

You don't hav...

By Mollie Engelhart at Brownstone dot org.

I was reading an academic paper recently that made me pause. It was discussing something called the "third space" or "third place" and its quiet disappearance from modern life.

I had never encountered the term before, but the more I read, the more I realized it was describing something many of us are feeling without having language for it. The paper was not simply sociological. It focused on the brain, on neurological health, and on how the loss of these spaces is affecting our sense of connection, safety, and belonging.

As someone who is deeply interested in community and real human connection, this immediately captured my attention. I wanted to understand what the paper was actually talking about, especially for those who may not be familiar with the concept.

The idea is simple. The first space is home. It is where our domestic identity lives. Family, rest, intimacy, and routine. The second space is work. It is where we contribute, produce, and create value. The third space exists in between. It is the neutral, shared place where people gather informally, without obligation or performance. Historically, these were cafés, churches, town squares, barber shops, libraries, local diners, pubs, and markets. Places where you could show up, be recognized, and belong without needing to achieve or prove anything.

What struck me most in reading this research was how essential these spaces are for neurological health. The brain depends on low-stakes, embodied social interaction. Eye contact. Familiar faces. Casual conversation. Shared laughter. These interactions activate the part of the nervous system associated with safety and connection. They help regulate stress. They pull us out of constant vigilance and threat detection.

Third spaces also offer something many of us are now missing: identity flexibility. They are places where we are not reduced to our roles. Not just a parent. Not just a worker. We are simply human among other humans. Without that middle space, identity collapses inward. Life becomes dominated by home and work alone. The brain narrows. Thinking becomes more rigid. Anxiety and loneliness increase, even when we are constantly connected online.

As I sat with this, I realized something uncomfortable. Many of us, myself included, no longer have a third space. And in many cases, we have also lost the second space entirely.

I work from home. I live where I work. I host where I live. My domestic identity, my work identity, and my social identity are all compressed into the ranch. There is very little physical or neurological separation. The nervous system never fully resets. Home is no longer purely restorative, and work never truly ends.

In some ways, public speaking, conferences, and book signings have become my second space. When I travel, when I step outside the land, I feel that shift. But that realization led me to a deeper question. If I am missing a third space, how many others are as well?

And more importantly, can we intentionally create one?

I have always believed that land, food, and shared meals are powerful connectors. We have a ranch. We have a restaurant. We have a place where people come to eat, to gather, to feel welcomed. But this research pushed me to think more carefully. Is it enough to simply have a space? Or do we need to create containers within the container?

A true third space rarely happens accidentally anymore. It has to be designed with intention. It needs rhythm and consistency. It needs repetition without rigidity. Something that draws people out of their homes and into relationship. Something that says, this happens here, regularly, and you belong.

That is when the idea of monthly gatherings began to take shape. Regular events that build familiarity and trust. Spaces where people can show up, be seen, be heard, and engage in real conversations in the physical world.

I am deeply honored that the first of these gatherings is launching in partnersh...

By Joseph Varon at Brownstone dot org.

Medicine is fundamentally oriented toward healing. Physicians have cured diseases, alleviated pain, extended life expectancy, and expanded collective self-understanding beyond what was conceivable a century ago. Few professions have contributed more to human well-being. However, medicine also confers significant power. Physicians influence individual behavior, shape public policy, direct scientific research, and, particularly during crises, wield considerable authority within society. This power can be beneficial, yet it also risks transforming confidence into unwarranted certainty and rendering authority resistant to challenge.

Power itself is not inherently dangerous; the greater risk lies in excessive certainty.

The most significant ethical failures in medicine rarely stem from malicious intent. More commonly, they arise from overconfidence, hasty decision-making, and the belief that challenging circumstances necessitate drastic measures. The transition from beneficence to harm is seldom abrupt; it typically unfolds gradually, propelled by good intentions and increasing confidence in one's own judgment. Numerous troubling episodes in medical history were initiated by individuals who sincerely believed they were acting appropriately.

The authority of medicine is grounded in general trust. Patients disclose their most profound concerns to physicians, trusting that truth, compassion, and respect will be prioritized. Society grants physicians special privileges, with the expectation that their expertise will be exercised judiciously and with humility. Perfection is not expected; rather, honesty, acknowledgment of uncertainty, and a commitment to continual reassessment are essential. These responsibilities are foundational to contemporary medical ethics and research regulations.¹⁻⁵ Yet, uncertainty is uncomfortable.

Uncertainty is broadly uncomfortable for patients, governments, the public, and physicians alike. During crises, this discomfort intensifies. Emergencies such as pandemics or wars generate a collective demand for definitive answers, even in the absence of sufficient information. Leaders may feel compelled to project confidence, while experts experience pressure to alleviate public anxiety. The inherent uncertainty of scientific inquiry can, under these conditions, become particularly difficult to tolerate.

In these situations, medicine faces a big risk: mistaking confidence for real knowledge.

Scientific progress is driven not by consensus, but by the continual questioning of established ideas, the challenging of prevailing norms, and the willingness to adapt in response to new evidence. Experienced physicians have witnessed the abandonment of once-celebrated treatments. Medical paradigms have shifted repeatedly; interventions once embraced have been discarded, and regulations once considered immutable have been revised. These changes do not signify failure; rather, they demonstrate the ongoing vitality of scientific inquiry.⁶⁻⁸

Science moves forward because of doubt, not because everyone agrees.

Throughout medical history, episodes abound in which certainty yielded to humility. Bloodletting persisted for centuries under the mistaken belief that its rationale was sound. Frontal lobotomy, initially regarded as a breakthrough and recognized with a Nobel Prize, was later discredited due to its harmful consequences. Hormone therapy for postmenopausal women was widely adopted until large-scale studies raised concerns about its safety and efficacy. Certain antiarrhythmic drugs, intended to prevent sudden cardiac death, were subsequently found to increase risk in some populations. Numerous critical care practices once deemed reasonable have since been revised or abandoned.

These stories do not mean science is incompetent. Instead, they remind us to stay humble. They show that our knowledge can change, and we should remember that we might not see the whole picture. Being willing to q...

By Jeffrey A. Tucker at Brownstone dot org.

The closest thing we have in this country to a pandemic plan is called the Pandemic Action Crisis Plan or PanCap. It remains the prevailing unclassified document. It posits stay-at-home orders, school closures, business shutdowns, office closures, travel restrictions, testing, track-and-trace, and the creation and distribution of countermeasures called vaccines.

So far as anyone knows, it is still the prevailing document. It's one of many. Nothing has changed about any of them in light of what we learned from Covid. The CDC currently hosts all these documents:

National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza

National Strategy Implementation Plan

MMWR: Updated Preparedness and Response Framework for Influenza Pandemics

2017 HHS Pandemic Influenza Plan Update

2009 HHS Pandemic Influenza Plan Update

2006 HHS Pandemic Influenza Plan Update

2006 HHS Pandemic Influenza Plan Update

Allocating & Targeting Pandemic Influenza Vaccine Guidance

This approach has no precedent in the long history of public health. The old way was to keep calm, understand the illness, treat those affected, and use rational approaches to mitigate the impacts. The new way invented in 2005 is about command and control, pretending to manage the microbial kingdom like an engineering project.

This is still the operational manual. If a pathogen should leak and the machine clicks into gear, this is what will happen. It will be profoundly disturbing to civil society. Like last time, the results will not be good. The medicine will be worse than the disease. We can say this based on the experience from 2020 to 2023. And yet the plan survives.

The existing plan is PanCap-Adapted. It is still not posted on any government website. It was leaked to the New York Times and, again, so far as anyone knows, this remains the architecture of control. Why the latest is not posted is unclear. Don't the American people deserve to know what their government plans for them?

It is supplemented by dozens of other documents that pertain to nearly every federal government agency and are expected to be followed by downstream agencies in states, counties, cities, and towns. This is what is called an all-of-government response.

This is not some conspiracy theory. We need only look at one related document, the Biological Incident Annex to the Response and Recovery Federal, Interagency Operational Plan as produced by FEMA. It is out of classification and available for anyone to observe. It comes into operation with any pathogen that is new, perhaps manufactured in a lab as many of them are.

Halfway through this document you find a presumption of business closures, transportation restrictions and disruptions, widespread commodities hoarding by the public, stay-at-home orders, workforce shift to virtual environment, school and childcare closures, restaurant closures, hotel closures, reduced workforce, and plant closures.

This plan is still out there, waiting to be implemented under the right circumstances. The US Constitution does not pertain. American expectations of liberty do not pertain. Law does not pertain. Even now, the idea that an emergency requires the end of all normal expectations for freedom is baked into all pandemic protocols.

At this point, you might already be asking the very obvious question. How could this be true in light of the last experience? The answer points to the core problem. We've never had a reckoning for the Covid period. There has been no commission, no push for changes in underlying protocols, no fundamental shifts at the top other than new political appointees, and no real national statement that what happened was wrong and destructive.

In short, nothing has changed other than public opinion. That too is extremely malleable. People these days routinely say that they won't comply. What they mean is that under similar circumstances, they won't comply. But the circumstances will not be similar. A strain of Ebola, for example, ...

By Michael Tomlinson at Brownstone dot org.

If there is one thing we have learned since 2020 it is the power of confirmation bias. The public health establishment has presented a mass of data and analysis to show that it was right all along about the Covid-19 pandemic and saved millions of lives. This finding has been accepted at face value and incorporated into policy, but rests on shaky foundations.

We need to look at the big picture. Apologists for vaccination generally use point-to-point comparisons – they pick an arbitrary date near the peak of the epidemic curve and compare it to a later date to show that an intervention is correlated with a reduction in infections or mortality. This is open to case-counting window bias and immortal time bias – another selection of dates could yield an entirely different result.

To counteract this, we need to look at the epidemic curve as a whole and see whether the intervention changed its trajectory.

What we see in the Euromomo statistics of European all-cause mortality below, is a series of declining peaks and broadening curves after the anomalous peak in April 2020. All-cause mortality is crucial, as it avoids distortion due to misclassification of deaths between Covid-19, vaccine adverse effects, and other causes of death.

There was a gradual return to a more normal pattern, usually attributed to a combination of increasing natural immunity and the effects of vaccination. This falls far short of the exaggerated claims made for vaccination when the first clinical trial results were released. We were told by political and public health leaders that vaccination gave 95% protection, a figure that was based on the rate of Covid-19 symptoms paired with positive PCR tests in the vaccine group, compared with the placebo group. It was not based on improved mortality.

Vaccination may have contributed to the improving trend, but there is no basis for finding that it was solely responsible for returning to a more normal seasonal pattern of mortality. And hidden in the count of all-cause excess mortality may be deaths caused by Covid-19 vaccination. There is no way of excluding this possibility.

For example, vaccine-related deaths could be driven through cardiac adverse events. The Cohort study of cardiovascular safety of different Covid-19 vaccination doses among 46 million adults in England by Ip et al showed that incidence rates of cardiovascular events were substantially higher (nearly double for arterial events) after the first dose of the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines, compared to no vaccination (Table 2).

The authors then concluded the opposite by adjusting the figures. But they selectively only employ adjustment factors that place downward pressure on vaccine hazard ratios, and ignore factors that might exert upward pressure, such as the well-known healthy vaccinee bias.

Chemaitelly et al corrected for this by assessing the association between Covid-19 vaccination and non-Covid-19 mortality as a control. They found that 'A pronounced healthy vaccinee effect was observed during the first 6 months following vaccination, despite meticulous cohort matching,' possibly due to seriously ill individuals not being suitable candidates for vaccination and so being underrepresented in the vaccinated group.

Some studies adjust for case-counting window bias or immortal time bias, but healthy vaccinee bias is too problematic to correct, so the full range of confounding effects is not brought to bear on the results, leaving the field to partially corrected studies which may be more misleading than uncorrected results.

Finding our way through this maze is difficult and the mass of observational studies are not a reliable basis for public health policy.

Have pandemics ever been defeated by vaccination? The greatest case study of them all is said to be polio vaccination. Everyone knows that the world was saved from polio by vaccination – and yet in fact it made no difference to the trajectory of poli...

By Wendy McElroy at Brownstone dot org.

Democrats cannot answer "What is a Woman?" so it is not surprising that they struggle to answer "What is a Man?" But answer they must because the 'young male vote' could mean winning or losing the midterms. And, if Democrats persist in treating men in an insulting manner, they will lose and should lose..

The question of how to connect with men arose in the 2024 Presidential election because Democrats were desperate to draw on the 'young male vote,' which was skewing strongly toward Trump. Moreover, in 2024, only 58.3% of 18 to 24 year-olds were registered to vote compared to 80.5% of those 65 to 74; unregistered young men were an untapped demographic, but only if they could be reached.

About 9 weeks before the 2024 election, culture columnist Claire Cain Miller warned Democrats in a New York Times article entitled "Many Gen Z Men Feel Left Behind." Miller explained, "Some see Trump as an answer" to the demonization of men by identity politics. "Men under 30 are much more likely to support Donald Trump than women their age. It's a far bigger gender gap than in older generations." The Democrats tried but badly failed to bridge this gap.

And after the election? The post-analysis confirmed the rightward shift of young voters, especially young Black and Latino men. The Harvard Kennedy Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation explains why. "I think the Democratic Party's vision for men has been to be more like women. That's really been the cultural message: you are not really supposed to embrace masculinity." Instead, the post-analysis suggests sending men the political message "that you have control over your own circumstances and with enough work, you can rise above and lead your family."

But Democrats chose to double down on their defining issues, such as identity politics, transgender rights, abortion, hating Trump, and mandating wokeness—issues that were likely to alienate many if not most young men.

Now it's 2026, and it is ballot season again; Democrats are desperate for the male vote again. This is especially true after the 192-page Democratic National Committee autopsy of the bungled 2024 Presidential campaign was finally released in May 2026. The report states, "Harris saw dramatic drops in support among young Latino men and young Black men compared to Biden's 2020 performance." Again, the recommendation is to shift from identity politics to directly engaging male voters on the basis of their concerns.

But the DNC autopsy has a curious omission in its recommendation to engage with male voters: it says nothing about the best issues to discuss. Nothing. Perhaps they should have consulted the International Council for Men and Boys (ICMB) that lists 12 issues that are paramount for many men. Consider a representative sampling of 4 issues from the ICMB list; compare ICMB's findings in 2024 with my own research on the same issues in 2026.

Health. 2024: According to (2021) World Data, the average US male lives 74.8 years; the average female, 80.2. 2026: According to Worldometer, males live 77.39 years; females 82.23. The ratio is the same and, yet, women's health is consistently better funded.

Partner Abuse. Little seems to have changed. 2024 and 2026 both report 1 in 4 men are victims of domestic violence. Yet, compared to women, next to no shelters or services exist for men.

Homelessness. 2024: Of the nations that keep sex-specific data on homelessness, ICMB Research finds 76% of the homeless are men. 2026: Stats vary but recent estimates for the US place homeless males at 60% of this population. Nevertheless, males are less likely to have access to shelters and services.

Reproduction. 2024 and 2026 are identical. Men must legally support a biological child with no right to refuse the responsibility. Women can often terminate their pregnancies at will but men have no legal say in this matter either.

The 12-item list is an opportunity for Democrats to gain male votes because—...