How Much Risk Will Governments Take?

Prudence and assessments of risk-benefit are no longer part of calculus. Last night at dinner, Dr. McCullough told me of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s “unequivocal” declaration in Parliament yesterday that the “COVID-19 vaccines are safe.” This morning I woke up to the news (reported in the Telegraph) that US to station nuclear weapons in UK to counter threat from Russia. How much risk (to their citizenries) are politicians willing to take in order to advance their agendas that in no way benefit their citizenries? Judging by the way Lindsay Graham talks, I sense he would gladly risk nuclear war in pursuit of his forever war agenda. John Quincy Adams famously remarked that America ‘Goes Not Abroad in Search of Monsters to Destroy.’ Nowadays it’s just the opposite. Instead of tending to the security and prosperity of the American homeland for the benefit of the American people, the U.S. government is on a constant search abroad for monsters—real, perceived, exaggerated, and fabricated—to destroy. It was hotheads from South Carolina who fired the first shots of the American Civil War. Pretty much everyone in the country (except William Sherman) underestimated the catastrophe that would likely ensue if cooler heads didn’t prevail to avert war. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if our political class winds up getting us all killed. Upgrade to paid Share Invite your friends and earn rewards If you enjoy Courageous Discourse™ with Dr. Peter McCullough & John Leake, share it with your friends and earn rewards when they subscribe. © 2024 Peter McCullough MD MPH 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

White House Cyber Guy Dumbest On Planet

Insider blabs away to barely disguised James O'Keefe One of the most remarkable features of our times is the paradox that that those who occupy positions of great power are apparently imbeciles. At about this time last year, Project Veritas pulled off its legendary undercover sting against Jordon Trishton Walker, Pfizer Director of Research and Development, who blabbed away about “accelerated evolution” of pathogenic viruses. Yesterday, James O’Keefe posted an undercover video of his conversation with Charlie Kraiger, a Cybersecurity policy analyst and Foreign affairs Desk Officer in the Executive Office at the White House. Among other gems, Kraiger stated that “Biden is definitely slowing down” and that the White House “want to replace Kamala Harris.” To be sure, every adult of middling intelligence understands the preposterousness of having senile Joe Biden in office during a time of elevated tension and multiple military conflicts across the globe. We already know that Biden’s candidacy for another four years is a charade. Nevertheless, the spectacle of a White House “Cybersecurity police analyst” plainly stating this to James O’Keefe in a D.C. restaurant is so outlandishly absurd as to defy believe if it weren’t captured on video. During the Cold War, the Soviets were adept at using Honey Traps against American officials abroad, but most of the young women who worked as Honey Traps were very convincing in their guise of being pretty young girls working at ordinary civilian jobs. O’Keefe’s disguise consisted of wearing spectacles. How could Charlie Kraiger be so stupid? Where does the Biden Administration find these people? Courageous Discourse™ with Dr. Peter McCullough & John Leake. © 2024 Peter McCullough MD MPH 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

SARS2 Fingerprint Found In 2018 Proposal Synthetic assembly method posited in 2022 paper found in DEFUSE draft.

There’s a great scene in the 1986 film Manhunter in which the protagonist—an FBI behavioral sciences profiler named Will Graham—correctly postulates that the fingerprints of a remarkably twisted serial killer will be found on the corneas of his female victim. The Bureau and the guys in the latent print lab are skeptical and think that Will is himself being a weirdo, and are then astonished to discover that he is right. To put Will Graham’s character in Jungian terms: he is an excellent detective because he possesses a keen understanding of the Shadow—that is, the archaic, aggressive, lustful, power-hungry side of human nature that lurks in all of us. All humans are capable of evil, above all those who walk around with the smug, unexamined belief that they never would be. I was reminded of this scene today as I read an extraordinary report by “Right to Know” investigative reporter, Emily Kopp, who obtained early drafts of the DEFUSE grant proposal, authored by EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak et al., and submitted to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 2018. I highly recommend reading Kopp’s report, titled US scientists proposed to make viruses with unique features of SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan. The following passage goes to the heart of the matter: The documents reveal for the first time that a virologist working with the Wuhan lab planned to engineer new spike proteins – in contrast with the collaboration’s public work to insert whole spike proteins into viral backbones. Language in the proposal indicates this work may have involved unpublished viruses, generating unpublished engineered spike proteins. This American virologist, University of North Carolina Prof. Ralph Baric, was set to engineer twenty or more “chimeric” SARS-related viral spike proteins per year of the proposal, and two to five full-length engineered SARS-related viruses. Documents previously reported by U.S. Right to Know show that some of the experimentation could secretly occur in Wuhan at a lower biosafety level than specified in the grant, apparently to save costs. The proposal for Professor Baric to perform Dr. Frankenstein work on SARS-related viruses will come as no surprise to those who are familiar with his seminal papers on creating chimeric SARS-related viruses using gain-of-function procedures. The real fireworks revelation in an early draft of the DEFUSE proposal is the following passage: The passage highlighted in blue is PRECISELY the assembly procedure posited by Valentin Bruttel, Alex Washburne, and Antonius VanDongen in their 2022 paper titled Endonuclease fingerprint indicates a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV-2. Daszak et al. even propose purchasing the same restriction enzyme that Valentin et al. hypothesized was used in the lab synthesis of SARS-CoV-2. (Valentin’s Twitter commentary on the draft proposal fascinating and entertaining). At the time Bruttel et al. published their paper, it was met with ridicule by prominent virologists Edward Holmes and Kristian Anderson, who called it “confected nonsense” and “kindergarten molecular biology.” Holmes and Anderson would say this, wouldn’t they? With stunning criminal energy, they have been key players in concealing the lab origin of SARS-CoV-2 since February 2020. At the risk of tooting my own horn, I was not all surprised to read about this development. As a true crime author, I’ve spent the last twenty-five years studying criminal behavior, conspiracies, and criminal investigations. For years, Peter Daszak and his virologist compadres have obviously been in the business of modifying and enhancing bat coronaviruses in order to make them infectious and pathogenic to humans. I suspect the the creation of SARS-CoV-2 and its accidental or deliberate release from a lab will eventually be regarded as the greatest true crime story in history. It’s going to take a while for our dummy politicians and knucklehead mainstream media journalists to recognize it, “but at the length, truth will out.” Upgrade to paid Share You're currently a free subscriber to Courageous Discourse™ with Dr. Peter McCullough & John Leake. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription. Upgrade to paid SHARE LIKE COMMENT RESTACK © 2024 Peter McCullough MD MPH 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

Ralph Baric: JS Bach of Viral Genetic Engineering SARS-CoV-2 is the culmination of UNC professor's lifetime of study and work.

Ralph Baric: JS Bach of Viral Genetic Engineering SARS-CoV-2 is the culmination of UNC professor's lifetime of study and work. JOHN LEAKE JAN 27 Between 1723 and his death in 1750, Johann Sebastian Bach was cantor of the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, Germany. His primary duty was composing music for Sunday services, and he did not disappoint. During this period he composed 265 cantatas, the St. Matthew Passion, and Mass in B Minor. Over the years I’ve known a few professional (classical) musicians, and they all expressed the opinion that, within the western classical tradition, Bach remains the most important and influential composer. Much of his understanding and creativity naturally followed from his extraordinary diligence. He was an extremely focused and hardworking man, even though he also managed to father 20 children with two different wives (though only 10 grew to adulthood). This morning, while perusing the papers and recorded lectures of Ralph Baric— UNC Professor of Epidemiology, Microbiology, and Immunology at UNC Chapel Hill. For over thirty years, Baric has been studying and tinkering with coronaviruses in his lab, seeking ways to make them infectious and pathogenic to humans with the purported goal of ALSO developing vaccines to counter them. I suspect there are very few people in the world who can sustain such laser focus on a subject over such a long period of time. Just one sample of his work is the following lecture that he apparently gave in 2007 titled The Synthetic Creation & Genetic Engineering of SARS. I found it fascinating, and I’d love to hear what people who have trained in virology think about it. If you enjoy Courageous Discourse™ with Dr. Peter McCullough & John Leake, share it with your friends and earn rewards when they subscribe. Invite Friends © 2024 Peter McCullough MD MPH 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

"The Situation is Hopeless but not Serious" A bit of Friday levity

The Viennese have an old saying: “Die Lage ist hoffnungslos aber nicht ernst.” This translates as “The situation is hopeless but not serious.” The origin of this saying has apparently been lost in the mists of time. I’ve heard it originated in the late spring of 1945, when the American and British armies were closing in from the west, the Soviet army was closing in from the east, and the city was bombed to smithereens. The government in Berlin sent a cable to a government office in Vienna, asking for a report on the situation (Lage). “Die Lage ist hoffnungslos aber nicht ernst,” came the droll reply. Bombing of Schönbrunn Palace, which had no military value. I was reminded of this old saying this morning after I posted an essay on the subject of RFK, Jr.’s 70th birthday celebration in Los Angeles. I proposed that Kennedy offered the prospect of moving forward, out of the dark chasm of partisan rancor in which our country has been stuck for many years. Judging by the reader comments, the political culture of the American Republic is now largely shaped by hot button issues. These are the following: 1). Gun control. 2). Abortion. 3). Israel Palestine conflict. 4). Environmentalism. 5). Hatred and desire for revenge against political opposition. The battle lines over these issues have been drawn, and there doesn’t seem to be much space for compromise or even civil discussion. The situation is hopeless but not serious. Share Upgrade to paid Courageous Discourse™ with Dr. Peter McCullough & John Leake. © 2024 Peter McCullough MD MPH 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

"To Seek a Newer World”

RFK Jr.’s 70th Birthday a Celebration of Strength to Blaze a Fresh Trail for America Last Sunday evening my mother hosted a dinner party. The subject of politics arose, at which point she observed: “I don’t know if I can endure a Trump-Biden rematch, with all of the craziness and quarreling. It’s so dispiriting.” All the women at the table agreed. I tried to console them that at least a possible Trump victory offered the prospect of entertainment, but they didn’t find this persuasive. “I’m sick of both men and wish they would retire instead of tormenting us all,” my mother said. During Trump’s presidency I was a steadfast defender and was frequently ostracized for it. I still believe he is an infinitely better candidate than President Biden. However, it seems to me Trump is encumbered with several problems that make him ill-suited to lead the country forward and to heal its dreadful divide. First among them is the inescapable fact that a huge swath of the country has been programmed to hate him. Anything he says – even if it’s truthful and sage – will be automatically rejected by this large cohort. It’s doesn’t matter that their loathing is largely irrational. Humanity has always been governed more by feelings than by rational considerations. Likewise, there is no sense in saying (as many of my friends do): “To hell with these emotionally dysregulated fools.” The collective malaise and neurosis with respect to Trump runs too deep and it won’t be resolved. We Americans must find a way to live together and find common ground. If Trump is elected, the country is going to spend another four years in a loony bin of rancor and strife. My assessment of candidate Trump will make me extremely unpopular among his supporters. They can take consolation that my opinion of Biden is even grimmer. Biden was never popular among Democrats when he was young and strong and had the gift of gab. According to a long report published in Politico on August 14, 2020, President Obama remarked to a fellow Democrat during the 2020 primary campaign, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f--- things up.” Given that the average retirement age for most professions in the United States is 65, why has the Democratic Party chosen as its candidate an obviously senile man who will turn 82 on November 20, 2024? To me, this strongly suggests that President Biden is not the chief executive of the United States, but the puppet of unelected interests. To use a variation of the old saying “the Emperor has no clothes,” I declare that “the President has no higher-level cognition.” On Monday I flew to Los Angeles to attend Robert Kennedy Jr.’s 70th birthday celebration in West Hollywood. Sitting next to me on the flight was a fellow Dallas resident going to LA to attend a trade show. We fell into a discussion about current affairs, and she confessed that, although she has long identified herself as a Republican and Trump supporter, her heart sank at the prospect of a Biden-Trump rematch. About 230 guests attended Kennedy’s 70th birthday party, but it still had an air of intimacy, with none of the the bombastic and garish spectacle of most political events. Del Bigtree gave a talk in which he pointed out that if we get another four years of Biden, about half the country will reject all of his policies and pronouncements out of hand. Likewise, if we get another four years of Trump, the other half of the country will do the same. As he put it, Bobby Kennedy Jr. lights the way forward, out of this dark chasm. Kennedy’s confidante and security chief, Gavin de Becker, gave a touching tribute in which he talked about the presidential candidate’s love of nature, abiding curiosity about the reality of the world, and steadfast willingness to listen to other points of view, even if they challenge his own. “Even if you don’t agree with all of his positions about everything, you can rest assured that Bobby will always strive to ascertain and tell the truth of any matter.” Though I disagree with many of the positions Kennedy has stated over the years, I know from various reliable sources that he does indeed have a rare ability to consider new information and opinions. This is clearly evidenced by the fact that – alone among major public figures – he took the time and effort to consider the indications that vaccines (so long a Sacred Cow) may in fact be harmful to some people. Kennedy’s speech was a model of classy understatement in which he thanked his friends and his wife, and briefly reviewed the lessons he has learned over seven decades of life. I was most impressed by his statement – clearly spoken with heartfelt conviction – that his best and most satisfying moments were those in the service of truth and goodness. “Every time I did something in the pursuit of my own advantage or to indulge my selfish desires, the results were vile,” he said. For me, the highlight of the evening was a speech delivered by Tony Lyons, cofounder of the American Values 2024 PAC and president of Skyhorse Publishing. As I have long been a poetry lover, I was thrilled to hear Lyons recite the latter half of the final stanza of Tennyson’s “Ulysses,” which has long been one of Kennedy’s favorite poems. Come, my friends, ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’ We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. I’ve always preferred Tennyson’s poem to Yeats’s rather gloomy “Sailing to Byzantium,” in which he too addressed the question of what is left for a man entering old age. I suspect that when my fellow Texan, Larry McMurtry, sat down to write his masterpiece, Lonesome Dove, he thought about Tennyson’s poem. ’Tis not too late for this tired and beleaguered republic to seek a newer world. In recent years we’ve been made weak by time and fate, but we can still muster the strength of will to strive, to seek, and to find a better country for ourselves and our children and grandchildren. I believe that RFK Jr. is now our country’s best hope for embarking on this formidably difficult endeavor. Besides, he has not been made weak by time and fate. Even at the age of 70, he can still bust out 24 pull-ups (I’ve seen him do it). Author’s Note: This post was originally published on the Kennedy Beacon, which presents essays and reports about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s policies and ideas. Share Courageous Discourse™ with Dr. Peter McCullough & John Leake. © 2024 Peter McCullough MD MPH 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

"Blowup" Postscript Reader feedback to my question: Where are the illegal immigrants?

Last night I wrote a post in which I posed the question: Where are these 6-8 million illegal immigrants who have apparently entered the country over the last few years and are now living amongst us? Judging by the reader commentary this morning, my question produced very little reader satisfaction, and a great deal of consternation. One reader mentioned the desperate pleas of New York City Mayor Adams. Reading the literature about the situation in New York, I see that an estimated 67,000 illegal immigrants are now being housed in the city of 8 million with public resources. 67,000 strikes me as a staggering number of people to house and feed in New York City, which has a tight housing market. I can imagine this causes a huge burden on public resources. Another reader in Chicago mentioned that he sees increasing numbers of illegals in the Windy City. Another reader near the border region of Texas assured me she sees loads of illegals heading northward. A journalist friend in San Diego recently told me they are being housed all over the city. A reader in Florida replied that he sees them everywhere in the Sunshine State. Another reader told me that the majority of these recent immigrants are living with family members who’d already established themselves and acquired housing in the United States. I appreciate all of the above testimonials, and I thank you for your feedback. When I wrote my post, I was thinking primarily about the issue of housing. I have lived in the Bay Area and in Honolulu, and the experience taught me that just a few thousand people living on streets, parks, and beaches can create an enormous public burden. 100 homeless men sleeping in pavilions on Waikiki Beach completely changes the entire complexion of the popular vacation destination. Judging by my reader feedback, it seems that the majority of these 6-8 million people are NOT living on streets, sidewalks, parks, and beaches, but are being housed in cities and towns all over the country. I didn’t realize we had that much surplus housing capacity—that is, approximately the housing equivalent of New York City. Share Courageous Discourse™ with Dr. Peter McCullough & John Leake © 2024 Peter McCullough MD MPH 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

Courageous Discourse™ with Dr. Peter McCullough & John Leake

Courageous Discourse™ with Dr. Peter McCullough & John Leake cross-posted a post from Reverse engineering the origins of SARS-CoV-2 Peter McCullough, MD Jan 19 · Courageous Discourse™ with Dr. Peter McCullough & John Leake Colleagues Please keep your focus on Baric, Daszak, and Bat Lady Shi Zhengli as the key collaboration who created SARS-CoV-2. The US House Select Committee is skating around this conspiracy as the US government continues to cover-up agency involvement in the genesis of the virus. Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH SARS2 was in a UNC freezer back in 2018 But this story is much bigger than Ralph Baric JIM HASLAM JAN 19 If you closely read what I tried to write, you are probably shocked at this one line from a recent 1,400 page FOIA. Dr Ralph Baric (RB) in 2018 “has already generated SARS-like chimeras…of bat viruses…which are 20% different than epidemic strains.” SARS2 was 22% different than epidemic strains. To put it bluntly, a bat virus ~2% different from SARS2 was in a UNC freezer, in early 2018. The parameter was always on Baric’s mind starting in 2015: A coronavirus expert, Baric said if the viruses were too distantly related to SARS — more than 25% different — they would not be able to make a hybrid that would infect human cells. “Not all SARS-like coronaviruses have the inherent potential to replicate in mammalian cells and replicate in human cells.” Baric was always looking for a Chinese bat sample no “more than 25 percent different” than pandemic strains like SARS1. The RaTG13 sample, collected by the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2013, had a spike that was exactly 24.6% off SARS1. We discussed this in Part 6 and Part 7, but if you need a reminder: Just six months earlier, in the summer of 2019, Daszak and Baric’s “hypothesis” was submitted for NIAID’s CREID project. They were seeking viruses less than 25% different from SARS1. The circulating SARS2 was 22% different from SARS1, so mission accomplished, because they found what they had created! To put Baric’s freezer in perspective, the nearest known sample to SARS2 was RaTG13 at 4% different. But Baric had a bat virus called “293” and “HK3” that was even closer! 2nd bombshell Dr Danielle Anderson’s role in the DARPA Defuse document was not clear, but Duke was responsible for the bat vaccine trials in Wuhan. The DARPA Defuse draft was much more explicit, Dani “will lead the animal studies.” In 2019, Dani was a full time bat immunologist inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In 2021, she told Bloomberg she was working on Ebola at the BSL4, but she never studied Ebola. In November 2019, Dani left Wuhan without reason and never disclosed her central role in the DARPA Defuse proposal. On Jan 10, 2020, her boss Dr Linfa Wang resigned as Duke’s EID director. 3rd bombshell Dr. Valentin Bruttel led a restriction enzyme crusade that was covered by the Economist. The preprint shows that restriction sites for two popular restriction enzymes—bsaI and bsmbI—are strikingly evenly spaced in SARS2’s genome. In fact, the authors say, the spacing of these sites is so unusual that it suggests the work of human hands. In other words, they are claiming that SARS2 is a product of laboratory engineering. Those human hands were Dr Baric’s. Inside SARS2 are six neatly spaced “cDNA pieces linked by unique restriction endonuclease (biological welds) for full length genome assembly.” He also used UNC’s exclusive human airway epithelial cells to create SARS2, in Chapel Hill, NC. Notice RaTG13 & Banal are <5% off SARS2 and the exclusive HAE The Bruttel preprint referenced the UNC reverse genetic system (cDNA), but not the Chinese junk used in Wuhan (BAC). In 2017, Baric published a reverse genetic system outlining a ”seamless assembly of all (six) fragments” into a full length genome like SARS2. Baric gave a presentation on the assembly process and said it was like playing with “tinker toys.” Fellow German scientists have not approved Bruttel’s preprint, but the latest FOIA proved his scientific point. In the DARPA Defuse draft, UNC planned to order BsmBI to assemble SARS2, in 2018! The same BsmBI sites are found in SARS2 at the same location. Page 672 of FOIA Congratulations to Dr Richard H. Ebright for reading my hit piece, then blocking everyone on Twitter, while calling this evidence the smoking gun for a lab construct! Image via Ebright SARS2 required a $186M lab to create a novel coronavirus. There were nearly 50 UNC scientists listed on a typical reverse genetic paper. A lot of lab leak ‘scientist’ conflate the ease of assembling a genome already circulating in humans, versus the creation of a novel coronavirus never seen in nature. In other words, no other lab could mail order SARS2 in 2019, but any lab could isolate the human virus in 2020. In 2020, Baric covered his biological tracks by using very different restriction sites to assemble the SARS2 genome. Remember when the US military asked Baric, “are there any restriction sites in this strain…suggesting it is engineered?” Baric replied, “no, there is absolutely no evidence that this virus is bioengineered.” 4th bombshell Baric must have been blinded by the beauty of his own creation, because he missed those obvious restriction sites, along with the infamous furin cleavage site! It was the same SARS2 furin cleavage site that he proposed to insert at the S1/S2 border (R667) of a novel coronavirus like SARS2. The highlighted parts were deleted from the Defuse draft This was the same furin cleavage site that Baric forgot to mention, during a one hour presentation to Congressional staff in Washington D.C. 5th bombshell Dr Tim Sheahan probably created SARS2 in his Chapel Hill, NC office. He described a division of labor at the UNC lab, with a large team dedicated to each part of the complicated assembly process. Tim was Baric Jr and anointed a “genetics expert.” On Dec 11, 2019, he shared a screenshot of his monitor. BatSRBD was the UNC consensus sequence paper from 2008. “We designed a consensus Bat-SCoV genome and replaced the Bat-SCoV Spike receptor-binding domain (RBD) with the SARS-CoV RBD (Bat-SRBD).” My Part 1 title was a brilliant play on words that nobody understood? SARS2 was a consensus sequence of various genomes collected over the past decade. These included RaTG13, Laos Banal, Thailand, Cambodia, etc. In 2018, Baric bragged about “several” bat samples “with pandemic potential” stored in his Chapel Hill, NC freezer. Two of those 2018 viruses were called “293” and “HK3.” They will both become the second most debated genome in human history, behind SARS2. In Baric’s last interview, before DARPA Defuse leaked in September 2021, he claimed to have never sent “chimeric virus sequence, clones, or viruses” to Wuhan. Fauci then gave him $65M to shut up, because this story is much bigger than Dr Ralph Baric. Postscript Many thanks to Gumby for releasing the FOIA, since USRTK was sitting on this explosive information for one month. To their credit, it was a ninja FOIA move to get the DARPA Defuse draft from USGS emails, since UNC was stonewalling for good reason. Originally posted on Reverse engineering the origins of SARS-CoV-2 ...

Judging a Message By Its Messenger America's Partisan Cognitive Catastrophe

As I noted in our book, The Courage to Face COVID-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex: Long before Covid arrived, I’d joked with friends that if the ever boasting and self-promoting President Trump discovered the cure for cancer, his detractors would rather forgo the treatment than acknowledge he’d done something of value for humanity. It’s probably an inevitable outcome of America’s two-party system that any president may become the object of hyperbolic loathing. In the nineties, Republicans obsessed about President Clinton’s faults, real and perceived. In 2003, the columnist and psychiatrist Charles Krauthammer coined the expression Bush Derangement Syndrome as “the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency—nay—the very existence of George W. Bush.” During the presidency of Donald J. Trump this syndrome became so virulent that it created a strangely binary posture in public affairs. If Trump expressed even mild enthusiasm for a policy, person, or thing, his opposition automatically rejected it. To be sure, Trump often threw gasoline on the fire with his vices, his bombastic personal style, and occasional buffoonery. The qualities that had once been viewed as showman’s schtick were widely deemed unacceptable in a US President. The court jester had become king, and it drove the lords and ladies at court mad. As anthropologists and psychologists have long understood, humans are hyper-social and tribal. Stanford Professor Rene Girard has pointed out that during times of stress and rivalry, we are inclined to ascribe blame not to a complex state of affairs, but to a particular person or group. Persistent problems and misfortunes build up negative psychic energy, which generates a collective yearning to destroy the person or persons on whom the blame is heaped. This process of scapegoating is amplified by what Professor Girard called mimesis—that is, imitation—the tendency to embrace an opinion or sentiment because everyone in a preferred group is embracing it. In trying to make sense of the world, we often look to those around us for cues to guide us in our perceptions and opinions. When presented with information, we all have a tendency to evaluate it in accordance with the identity of the messenger. People who identify themselves as conservatives tend to be automatically skeptical of any representation made by a messenger who is associated with the political Left. Likewise, people who identify themselves as liberals or leftists tend to be automatically skeptical of any representation made by a messenger who is associated with the political Right. I thought of this cognitive bias this morning when I stumbled across a 2017 study published by the Steve Hicks School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin titled More than 300,000 estimated victims of human trafficking in Texas. The report states: Approximately 79,000 minors and youths are victims of sex trafficking in Texas. Upon reading this, I was instantly reminded of the film Sound of Freedom, starring Jim Caviezel, that was released on July 4, 2003. Apparently because the the producers and cast are widely associated with right-wing Christian circles, pretty much every legacy media film review panned it as a “QAnon Fever Dream” or a film “linked to QAnon” or a film championed by “supporters of QAnon.” In other words, instead of applauding the filmmakers for telling a dramatic story about an enormous organized crime (79,000 minors sex trafficked in the State of Texas alone), the MSM critics all panned it in the same programmatic and robotic way. Now we are seeing a similar cognitive bias happening with respect to the Israel Gaza conflict among many people who identify themselves as conservatives. After an estimated 1000 armed men identified as Hamas fighters committed mass murder and other atrocities against an estimated 1200 Israeli civilians, the Israeli Defense Forces launched a military offensive into Gaza. Most criticism of this military response has come from people, institutions, and outlets that we associate with the political Left. The Wall Street Journal was something of an exception with its report on December 30, 2023: The war in the Gaza Strip is generating destruction comparable in scale to the most devastating urban warfare in the modern record. By mid-December, Israel had dropped 29,000 bombs, munitions and shells on the strip. Nearly 70% of Gaza’s 439,000 homes and about half of its buildings have been damaged or destroyed. The bombing has damaged Byzantine churches and ancient mosques, factories and apartment buildings, shopping malls and luxury hotels, theaters and schools. Much of the water, electrical, communications and healthcare infrastructure that made Gaza function is beyond repair. It seems to me that the proper response to the mass murder—whether conducted by terrorists of Saudi Arabian nationality on September 11, 2001 or by terrorists who reside in Gaza—is to treat it primarily as a matter for law enforcement. I understand that mass murder committed by foreign nationals presents a major challenge to conventional law enforcement procedures. Nevertheless, at least trying to determine the identity of the culprits, their co-conspirators, and the their directors, and to bring these perpetrators to justice, strikes me as the more appropriate legal and moral response than blowing a densely populated urban area to smithereens. The military response in Gaza amounts to punishing 2 million people for the actions of 1000 murderers. Justifications for the military response range from “Israel has a right to defend itself” to the notion that the people of Gaza are suffering as a result of their allegiance to Hamas since an election in 2006. While it’s certainly true that Israel has a right to defend itself, the assertion makes me wonder why the IDF didn’t defend the country on October 7, 2023. The intelligence and military failure of October 7, 2023 strikes as unfathomably strange. As for the 2 million people of Gaza being accountable for the 2006 election: If it comes to war with nuclear-armed Russia, I hope the same reasoning isn’t applied to the millions of Americans who did NOT vote for Joe Biden. Courageous Discourse™ with Dr. Peter McCullough & John Leake. © 2024 Peter McCullough MD MPH 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

Casualties Mount to ~600K American, ~17M Globally Grim Statistics Emerge from the Mass, Indiscriminate, and Deadly COVID-19 Vaccine Campaign PETER MCCULLOUGH, MD JAN 19

By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH As more people fall ill and die after accepting one or more COVID-19 vaccine injections, news anchors are struggling to get a grip on the magnitude of the disaster. As of November 3, 2023, the CDC VAERS System has tallied 18,382 confirmed dead American/domestic territory recipients with the majority of reports coming in from healthcare workers who believe the vaccine was implicated with 1150 deaths occurring on the same day as the shot. Unrelated deaths are not typically reported. Using an accepted under-reporting factor of 30, that places the estimate of Americans who have probably lost their lives to the vaccine at 551,460. Globally, Dr. Denis Rancourt, et al, have placed the global casualty count at 17 million lives lost. As I told Steve Gruber, these numbers are catastrophic. Please listen to the brief report and see who besides myself has been calling for a global recall of the COVID-19 vaccines and an investigation into why things backfired for the highly touted global campaign. Courageous Discourse™ with Dr. Peter McCullough & John Leake is a reader-supported publication. Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH President, McCullough Foundation www.mcculloughfnd.org Rancourt, Baudin, Marine & Hickey, Joseph & Mercier, Jérémie. (2023). COVID-19 vaccine-associated mortality in the Southern Hemisphere. 10.13140/RG.2.2.24720.79366. Courageous Discourse™ with Dr. Peter McCullough & John Leake. © 2024 Peter McCullough MD MPH 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 Unsubscribe