Speaker 1: Live from vall Hartbeiner and the Crossroads of America. It's
Speaker 1: Tony Katz today. The vast majority of people in America
Speaker 1: know nothing about the Great Barrington Declaration. And the reason
Speaker 1: they don't know about it is because, well, it didn't
Speaker 1: get much play. Oh it was outrageously important. It was
Speaker 1: doctors and health professionals and scientists saying, you know what
Speaker 1: we're doing regarding COVID. This was in the middle of COVID,
Speaker 1: in the heat of COVID. This is not in any
Speaker 1: way smart or proper or good. This is a horrible
Speaker 1: way to go about things. We don't know what doctor
Speaker 1: Fauci or doctor Berks or any of these other people
Speaker 1: pretend that they are doing, but they're gonna hurt a
Speaker 1: lot of people. There's a better way to do this.
Speaker 1: And as you know, and I know, and we know,
Speaker 1: many of those messages got silenced, whether it be from
Speaker 1: some of the leading doctors and scientists and health professionals,
Speaker 1: or whether it be you asking a basi of question
Speaker 1: on social media. Tony Cats Tony Katz today, good to
Speaker 1: be with you. Well. In the treasure Trove of Things,
Speaker 1: the Senator Ran Paul released from the diary of Anthony Fauci,
Speaker 1: Doctor Anthony Fauci emails, etc. Was this notification? You can
Speaker 1: find it. I've got it over at tonykats dot com.
Speaker 1: This email that Fauci sent to doctor Deborah Burks, you know,
Speaker 1: the one who wears the scarves, asking her to come
Speaker 1: out against the Great Barrington Declaration. Phil Magnus joins me
Speaker 1: right now. His work is at the Independent Institute, where
Speaker 1: he is a Senior Fellow and the David J. Threau
Speaker 1: Chair in Political Economy. He also works with the American
Speaker 1: Institute for Economic Research, where he was formerly the fa
Speaker 1: Hiak Chair in Economics at Economic History, which means he
Speaker 1: knows a lot of things that we don't, which is
Speaker 1: good because this does have a lot of economic connotations
Speaker 1: to it. He is also the author of the sixteen
Speaker 1: nineteen project Myth and Cracks in the Ivory Tower The
Speaker 1: Moral Mess of Higher Education, both of which touch on
Speaker 1: the concept of what it is we are told versus
Speaker 1: what it is that is. Phil Magnus, thanks for taking
Speaker 1: the time. I appreciate it. You got a heck of
Speaker 1: a resume there. But I want to discuss the Great
Speaker 1: Barrington Declaration. Let's start where we start, which is what
Speaker 1: is the Great Barrington Declaration.
Speaker 2: Absolutely so, I was one of a very small number
Speaker 2: of people that was actually in the room when the
Speaker 2: thing was signed in October twenty twenty. And this was
Speaker 2: a document basically challenging the idea that lockdowns were the
Speaker 2: way to deal with the pandemic, that pointed out that
Speaker 2: lockdowns not only were on a very swim evidentiary basis
Speaker 2: they didn't work, but on top of that, they cost
Speaker 2: all sorts of social harms, economic harms. They put people
Speaker 2: out of work, caused mental health issues, kept kids out
Speaker 2: of schools. And this was a document that came together
Speaker 2: during the second wave of COVID. If you remember, in
Speaker 2: fall twenty twenty, the cases were ticking up again and
Speaker 2: all of the people who had locked us down back
Speaker 2: in the spring started revisiting those ideas, and in some
Speaker 2: cases many states and many countries are in the world,
Speaker 2: they did re enact lockdowns again in the fall of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty. But what happened is we got a group
Speaker 2: of scientists together, and this was Jay Bodicheria, who's now
Speaker 2: Fauci's replacement boss figure at the NIH. Donald Trump appointed
Speaker 2: him in part because of his reputation entered this Martin
Speaker 2: Koldorf of Harvard at the time, and sinetra gup To
Speaker 2: of Oxford. So three physicians came together, we held a
Speaker 2: conference on the case against lockdowns, and they articulated those
Speaker 2: principles in a short to sake summary statement to challenge
Speaker 2: the return of this policy that Sugi and Burks and
Speaker 2: some of the other figures in the so called public
Speaker 2: health establishment were pushing at the time.
Speaker 1: One of the things the Great Barrington Declaration states, and
Speaker 1: Great Barrington is where air is located. Correct, that's the
Speaker 1: specific town that it's in. It reads coming from both
Speaker 1: the left and right, and around the world. We have
Speaker 1: devoted our careers to protecting people. Current lockdown policies are
Speaker 1: producing devastating effects on short and long term public health.
Speaker 1: The result, to name a few, include lower childhood vaccination
Speaker 1: rates worse than cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings, and
Speaker 1: deteriorating mental health lead into greater excess mortality in years
Speaker 1: to come, with the working class in younger members of
Speaker 1: society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school
Speaker 1: is a grave injustice. When we think of the time
Speaker 1: October twenty twenty. As you're describing it, sir, this was
Speaker 1: a very near radical thing to say everything we're hearing
Speaker 1: from on high is wrong. It's a danger. Let us
Speaker 1: say so it gets signed. What was the reaction and
Speaker 1: the response to the Great Barrington Declaration.
Speaker 2: Initially it was very positive. It kind of went viral
Speaker 2: on the internet, got picked up in some major news
Speaker 2: media sources. I think the Wall Street Journal covered it.
Speaker 2: Fox News picked it up, and they pointed out that
Speaker 2: this says, finally somebody is challenging Anthony Fauci and this
Speaker 2: policy that he has been pushing for several months now
Speaker 2: that doesn't seem to be working, doesn't seem to be
Speaker 2: addressing the pandemic, and oh, by the way, it has
Speaker 2: all these other costs and consequences. So that was the
Speaker 2: initial reactions, generally positive, kind of recognizing, hey, we could
Speaker 2: finally have the scientific debate we were denied in the spring.
Speaker 2: And then all of a sudden, this is probably about
Speaker 2: three or four days after the decoration was signed, the
Speaker 2: media turned outright hostile against it, attacks on the authors,
Speaker 2: calling them frings epidemiologists. We got deboosted on the Google links,
Speaker 2: Google searches, from it. It used to appear on the
Speaker 2: top page along with news media coverage of it, and
Speaker 2: then suddenly, all of a sudden, it's on page four
Speaker 2: behind crazy conspiracy blogs announcing the Great bearings and declarations
Speaker 2: going to kill us. All so very rapid switch in
Speaker 2: the public discussion around it, and it was kind of
Speaker 2: mystifying at the time of why that had happened, because
Speaker 2: all we were asking for was a public debate over
Speaker 2: the science, a public debate over whether lockdowns actually did
Speaker 2: what they promised to do.
Speaker 1: Talking to Phil Magnus, Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute,
Speaker 1: David J. Throw Chair and Political Economy, and his work
Speaker 1: with Aier the American Institute for Economic Research, where he
Speaker 1: was formerly the Fa Hyak Chair in Economics and Economic History,
Speaker 1: and we can certainly tie in a lot of what
Speaker 1: we saw in the COVID days to what we have
Speaker 1: seen in economic reality today. But there's also an economic
Speaker 1: reality of what we have done to generations and what
Speaker 1: it is we were doing in trying to from other
Speaker 1: groups silencing this kind of talk you talk about, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden it was removed from search engines, etc.
Speaker 1: This brings us to this email that doctor Fauci sent
Speaker 1: out to Deborah Burks saying, so, just a heads up.
Speaker 1: Over the past week, I've come out very strongly publicly
Speaker 1: against the Great Barrington A declaration. This was from October sixteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, and asking her to do the same. To
Speaker 1: come out against this. In a world of so called
Speaker 1: science people can be hey, I disagree. What was it
Speaker 1: like for him to come out against it? How did
Speaker 1: that play out?
Speaker 2: Well, we found out after the fact. You know, all
Speaker 2: this sudden explosion of hate and demonization that was occurring
Speaker 2: around the Great Bearrington Declaration, it actually had a cause,
Speaker 2: and Anthony Fauci was a major player in that cause.
Speaker 2: I filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the
Speaker 2: NIH office where Fauci worked, way back in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: and it actually kind of opened the door to looking
Speaker 2: into this. So all the committee investigation that Ran Paul
Speaker 2: has pursued ever since then, a couple of the lawsuits
Speaker 2: around it. Kind of the starting point was the discovery
Speaker 2: of an email, and this is an email from Fauci's
Speaker 2: boss at the time, Francis Collins, to him saying, this
Speaker 2: Great Barrington Declaration things going around, has all these fringe
Speaker 2: epidemiologists that are challenging lockdowns and colins ordered Fauci said,
Speaker 2: I want you to write and publish a devastating published
Speaker 2: takedown of these authors, and basically as a directive to
Speaker 2: get this underway because we need to counter it. And Fauci,
Speaker 2: it turns out, is that new email we got from
Speaker 2: Rand Paul's committee and new foyas that have come true,
Speaker 2: he actually engages in a very el avert coordinated campaign
Speaker 2: to smear the Great Marrington Declaration in the media, in
Speaker 2: the press, behind the scenes in the White House. He
Speaker 2: is a consummate political actor, not a scientist, is what
Speaker 2: all these emails tend to confirm. He's not looking at
Speaker 2: the evidence on lockdowns or the arguments that were being made.
Speaker 2: He's circulating political editorials in favor of lockdowns and calling
Speaker 2: friends in the White House to try to suppress anti
Speaker 2: lockdown voices. So one of the members of the COVID
Speaker 2: task force that was a skeptic of lockdowns is doctor
Speaker 2: Scott Atlas, who's from Stanford University. He was brought in
Speaker 2: to kind of be a counter voice to Fauci, And
Speaker 2: it turns out, right around the time of the Great
Speaker 2: Bearrington declaration, Atlas, who had been favorable to it, gets
Speaker 2: on Fauci's bad side, and Fauci starts this campaign with
Speaker 2: Verks to try to get him fired and removed from
Speaker 2: the COVID Task Force. Because they don't want any dissent internally.
Speaker 2: That's pushing for a document like the Great Bearrington Declaration.
Speaker 2: They wanted to be able to call the shots on lockdowns.
Speaker 2: So rather than this being Fauci the science, as he
Speaker 2: often declared himself to be, it's actually Sauci the political
Speaker 2: operative who is trying to maintain control of the narrative
Speaker 2: and control over the policy and steer it toward lockdowns.
Speaker 1: So the reason I speak to you certainly your connection
Speaker 1: to the Great Barrington Declaration. But this view of this
Speaker 1: in terms of the economics, right, economics we think of
Speaker 1: his dollars and cents, But economics is taking a look
Speaker 1: at a situation and asking ourselves, how can we predict
Speaker 1: the consequences?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: This how Milton Friedman would describe economics. How do you
Speaker 1: predict the consequences of changes in circumstances? And I do
Speaker 1: find myself to be a Milton Friedman guy Thomas Sowell guy.
Speaker 1: I would be more of an fa hiat guy. But
Speaker 1: just the reading is so incredibly boring. It's so just
Speaker 1: if he could write the way he would think, I
Speaker 1: would be a happy man, but the writing was just tedious.
Speaker 1: Is I'll get out? But we talked about the economic consequences,
Speaker 1: to which there were none that came into the thinking.
Speaker 1: And it seemed to me that the Great Barrington Declaration
Speaker 1: dealt with all of the potential consequences, and doctor Fauci,
Speaker 1: doctor Burke's mainstream media cared not about consequences, but cared
Speaker 1: about fear for a purpose. Is that the correct assessment
Speaker 1: in your view?
Speaker 2: I think it is absolutely the case. You know, as
Speaker 2: you mentioned, incentives matter, secondary and tertiary effects of decisions
Speaker 2: we make. They matter. And one of the things that
Speaker 2: happened with the lockdowns, it's not just shutting society down
Speaker 2: to keep this disease supposedly contained, although we find out
Speaker 2: that doesn't work either under lockdowns, like the whole theory
Speaker 2: behind it was wrong. Shutting down society also means that
Speaker 2: people can't go to work. They also can't go out
Speaker 2: to the store unless they're wearing a mask and walking
Speaker 2: in the direction of the stickers on the floor hours.
Speaker 2: Non essential businesses are shut down, and you start thinking
Speaker 2: about this, what are some of the consequences of that.
Speaker 2: That means that if I'm living paycheck to paycheck and
Speaker 2: suddenly my job, my business, my restaurant that I work at,
Speaker 2: is no longer allowed to be open, that means I
Speaker 2: no longer have a paycheck coming in. And if you're
Speaker 2: sitting there in COVID and say you're a reporter for
Speaker 2: the New York Times, you can do your job at
Speaker 2: home on a laptop. You can watch Netflix, you can
Speaker 2: get Uber Eats or door Dash or something to deliver
Speaker 2: your meals, and life is actually pretty good. It's not disrupted.
Speaker 2: But if you're just working, you know, paycheck to paycheck
Speaker 2: and a service industry job, and you're basically being told
Speaker 2: you're no longer essential, you're out of work, and maybe
Speaker 2: you have a rent payment or a car payment due
Speaker 2: next month, well you're out of luck. This is a
Speaker 2: real economic strain, and we saw it early in the pandemic.
Speaker 2: The states that had the more ristrictive lockdown policies shot
Speaker 2: up in unemployment. You had very clear state level measures
Speaker 2: of this that the worst the lockdown state was, the
Speaker 2: higher the unemployment rate. And states that remained relatively open
Speaker 2: or that ended the lockdowns early on, like Florida, well,
Speaker 2: their economies rebounded and this has tangible effects on the
Speaker 2: quality of life and the ability to even get by
Speaker 2: for working class Americans, and those were completely disregarded by
Speaker 2: Fauci and people I would call the laptop class who
Speaker 2: could have the luxury of working from home and ordering
Speaker 2: Uber eats and sitting there on their laptops while the
Speaker 2: service industry suffered.
Speaker 1: Is there concrete data you can point to regarding we
Speaker 1: did this and here is the results we see it.
Speaker 1: We take a look at inflation right now, which certainly
Speaker 1: I could have with you the conversation regarding whether or
Speaker 1: not tariffs are still leading to that as an increase
Speaker 1: in cost and keeping too much cash in the system.
Speaker 1: We could take a look at specific job sectors and
Speaker 1: see whether or not they've recovered and whether or not
Speaker 1: it has been investment in AI that's actually been leading
Speaker 1: to certain issues as opposed to damage done. We could
Speaker 1: take a look at education outcomes as well. What can
Speaker 1: be pointed to as this is the result of this
Speaker 1: shutdown and here is the damage done, or maybe you
Speaker 1: can tell me the other way, Well, here's a surprising
Speaker 1: success that came from it, and if the damage is done,
Speaker 1: what does it take to get out of it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, So I guess there's two direct implications of COVID,
Speaker 2: and one was the immediate that sort of mentioned is
Speaker 2: like the shutting down of the economy caused people to
Speaker 2: lose their jobs. And yes, when we reopened those jobs
Speaker 2: came back, but we were more or less operating in
Speaker 2: an enforced recession for about a year during COVID. That
Speaker 2: means people are worse off regardless. That means that not
Speaker 2: only is it e arm to disruption to their everyday lives,
Speaker 2: and we saw that in the unemployment data. We saw
Speaker 2: that in the economy essentially crashed in early twenty twenty
Speaker 2: and it took a while to rebound. The second, the
Speaker 2: longer term effect is well, what did we do in response? Well,
Speaker 2: politicians of course panicked when the economy was shut down,
Speaker 2: when people were closed out of their job, says what
Speaker 2: we need to pass stimulus checks, We need to create
Speaker 2: all these government programs to hold people over. If we're
Speaker 2: going to lock them down, let's throw them a bone. Basically,
Speaker 2: So we had the succession of these stimulus checks that
Speaker 2: were payouts essentially done on debt from the US government.
Speaker 2: There wasn't any revenue to pay for it, but it
Speaker 2: was just to hold people over, and those stimulus checks
Speaker 2: basically get absorbed into the macroeconomic situation of the federal
Speaker 2: government and become one of the major emphasises in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two. So a couple of years later, in the
Speaker 2: inflationary crisis, we dumped a bunch of money in to
Speaker 2: the economy, and we pretended as if it was, you know,
Speaker 2: basically no big deal and it would take care of
Speaker 2: itself and work its way through the system. Well, Joe
Speaker 2: Biden mismanaged the inflationary crisis because it was all supposed
Speaker 2: to be transitory and passed through. And here we are,
Speaker 2: you know, four years later, still dealing with the repercussions
Speaker 2: of that, which traces back to the stimulus checks, traces
Speaker 2: back to policies that we had to enact during COVID
Speaker 2: as a result of the fact that we shut down
Speaker 2: the entire economy.
Speaker 1: Phil Magnus he is senior fellow at the Independent Institute
Speaker 1: David J. Throachair and Political Economy, and his work at
Speaker 1: AIRE The American Institute for Economic Research, where he was
Speaker 1: the fa Hiak Chair. I appreciate you taking the time
Speaker 1: to be with us, give us the breakdown. We'll talk
Speaker 1: economics in the future. I hope more to get to
Speaker 1: keep it here. This is Tony Kax today