News ArticlesExcerpts of Key News Articles in Major Media
Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on dozens of engaging topics. And read excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.
Researchers who have fought for years to get full data on Roche's flu medicine Tamiflu said on Thursday that governments who stockpile it are wasting billions of dollars on a drug whose effectiveness is in doubt. In a review of trial data on Tamiflu, and on GlaxoSmithKline's flu drug Relenza, scientists from the respected research network the Cochrane Review said that the medicines had few if any beneficial effects, but did have adverse side effects. "Remember, the idea of a drug is that the benefits should exceed the harms," Heneghan said. "So if you can't find any benefits, that accentuates the harm." Tamiflu sales hit almost $3 billion in 2009 - mostly due to its use in the H1N1 flu pandemic. The drug, one of a class of medicines known as neuraminidase inhibitors, is approved by regulators worldwide and is stockpiled in preparation for a potential global flu outbreak. It is also on the World Health Organization's "essential medicines" list. The United States has spent more than $1.3 billion buying a strategic reserve of antivirals including Tamiflu, while the British government has spent almost 424 million pounds ($703 million) on a stockpile of some 40 million Tamiflu doses. There was no evidence of a reduction in hospitalizations or in flu complications ... and Tamiflu also increased the risk of nausea and vomiting in adults by around 4 percent and in children by 5 percent.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing health corruption news articles from reliable major media sources. For more along these lines, see the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Health Information Center.
This is your moment of zen today. Two adventurers set out in a canoe and happened upon a [flock of] starlings (collectively known as a murmuration) doing their amazing collective dance in the sky. Watch the video. Just take it in. The starlings' coordinated movements do not seem possible, but then, there they are, doing it. Scientists have been similarly fascinated by starling movement. Those synchronized dips and waves seem to hold secrets about perception and group dynamics. Last year, Italian theoretical physicist Giorgio Parisi took on the challenge of explaining the [phenomenon]. What he found ... is that the math equations that best describe starling movement are borrowed "from the literature of 'criticality,' of crystal formation and avalanches -- systems poised on the brink, capable of near-instantaneous transformation." They call it "scale-free correlation," and it means that no matter how big the flock, "If any one bird turned and changed speed, so would all the others." It's a beautiful phenomenon to behold. And neither biologists nor anyone else can yet explain how starlings seem to process information and act on it so quickly. It's precisely the lack of lag between the birds' movements that make the flocks so astonishing.
Note: Don't miss the hauntingly beautiful video at the link above. For more, click here. For a treasure trove of great news articles which will inspire you to make a difference, click here.
The first court award in a vaccine-autism claim is a big one. CBS News has learned the family of Hannah Poling will receive more than $1.5 million dollars for her life care, lost earnings, and pain and suffering for the first year alone. In addition to the first year, the family will receive more than $500,000 per year to pay for Hannah's care. Those familiar with the case believe the compensation could easily amount to $20 million over the child's lifetime. Hannah was described as normal, happy and precocious in her first 18 months. Then, in July 2000, she was vaccinated against nine diseases in one doctor's visit: measles, mumps, rubella, polio, varicella, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, and Haemophilus influenzae. Afterward, her health declined rapidly. She developed high fevers, stopped eating, didn't respond when spoken to, began showing signs of autism, and began having screaming fits. In acknowledging Hannah's injuries, the government said vaccines aggravated an unknown mitochondrial disorder Hannah had which didn't "cause" her autism, but "resulted" in it. It's unknown how many other children have similar undiagnosed mitochondrial disorder. All other autism "test cases" have been defeated at trial. Approximately 4,800 are awaiting disposition in federal vaccine court.
Note: A CBS affiliate reports that "since the late 1980s, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP) has paid money for 83 cases involving autism." The article also mentions this has been kept quiet. For a powerful report by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. showing blatant deception and cover up on the part of government and industry around a link between vaccines and autism, click here. For numerous revealing reports from major media sources on the link between vaccines and autism, click here.
Former NASA astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who was part of the 1971 Apollo 14 moon mission, asserted Monday that extraterrestrial life exists, and that the truth is being concealed by the U.S. and other governments. He delivered his remarks during an appearance at the National Press Club following the conclusion of the fifth annual X-Conference, a meeting of UFO activists and researchers studying the possibility of alien life forms. Mitchell grew up in Roswell, New Mexico, which some UFO believers maintain was the site of a UFO crash in 1947. He said residents of his hometown "had been hushed and told not to talk about their experience by military authorities. And being a local boy and having been to the moon, they considered me reliable enough to whisper in my ear their particular story." Roughly 10 years ago, Mitchell claimed, he was finally given an appointment at Pentagon to discuss what he had been told. An unnamed admiral working for the Joint Chiefs of Staff promised to uncover the truth behind the Roswell story, Mitchell said. The stories of a UFO crash "were confirmed," but the admiral was then denied access when he "tried to get into the inner workings of that process." The same admiral, Mitchell claimed, now denies the story. "I urge those who are doubtful: Read the books, read the lore, start to understand what has really been going on. Because there really is no doubt we are being visited," he said. "The universe that we live in is much more wondrous, exciting, complex and far-reaching than we were ever able to know up to this point in time."
Note: Astronaut Mitchell has spoken openly of this in the media numerous times in the past. For more on this, click here. For a concise summary of evidence for UFOs and extra-terrestrial visitors presented by many highly-respected and credible former government and military officials, click here.
Art graduate Victoria Khunapramot, 26, has brought [remarkable] paintings from Thailand, [including] "self-portraits" by Paya, who is said to be the only elephant to have mastered his own likeness. Paya is one of six elephants whose keepers have taught them how to hold a paintbrush in their trunks. They drop the brush when they want a new colour. Mrs Khunapramot, from Newington, said: "Many people cannot believe that an elephant is capable of producing any kind of artwork, never mind a self-portrait. But they are very intelligent animals and create the entire paintings with great gusto and concentration within just five or 10 minutes - the only thing they cannot do on their own is pick up a paintbrush, so it gets handed to them. They are trained by artists who fine-tune their skills, and they paint in front of an audience in their conservation village, leaving no one in any doubt that they are authentic elephant creations." Mrs Khunapramot, who set up the Thai Fine Art company after studying the history of art in St Andrews and business management at Edinburgh's Napier University, said it took about a month to train the animals to paint.
Note: For an amazing video clip of one of these elephants at work, click here. For more on this fascinating topic, click here and here.
George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany. Newly discovered files in the US National Archives [confirm] that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism. His business dealings ... continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act. There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war ... he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. Remarkably, little of Bush's dealings with Germany has received public scrutiny, partly because of the secret status of the documentation involving him. But now [a] multibillion dollar legal action for damages by two Holocaust survivors against the Bush family, and the imminent publication of three books on the subject are threatening to make Prescott Bush's business history an uncomfortable issue for his grandson. Three sets of archives spell out Prescott Bush's involvement. All three are readily available, thanks to the efficient US archive system. Like his son, George, and grandson, George W, he went to Yale where he was, again like his descendants, a member of the secretive and influential Skull and Bones student society.
In October 1995 ... the Scottish Office commissioned a research project from the Aberdeen-based Rowett Research Institute into the effect of GM crops on animal nutrition and the environment. This included, for the first time, feeding GM potatoes to rats to see if they had any harmful effects on their guts, bodies, metabolism and health. A former senior Scottish Office official involved in commissioning the project told the Guardian there was "little regard" at the time for research into the human nutritional and environmental consequences of GM foods. Dr Arpad Pusztai, a senior research scientist at the Rowett, beat off 28 other tenders to coordinate the project. The preliminary results of Dr Pusztai's work had begun to show unexpected and worrying changes in the size and weight of the rats' bodily organs. The team found liver and heart sizes were decreasing. Worse still, the brain was getting smaller. There were also indications of a weakening of the immune system. Granada TV's World in Action approached Dr Pusztai and ... with the institute's consent he gave an interview. Dr Pusztai told ITV viewers that he would not eat GM food. He found it "very, very unfair to use our fellow citizens as guinea pigs. We have to find [the results] in the laboratory," he insisted. Two days later Dr Pusztai was summarily suspended and forced to retire by the Rowett Institute's director, Professor Philip James, who had personally cleared the interview with Granada.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on GMOs from reliable major media sources.
The first time Mike Martin held an AK-47 was after the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut. "My faith tradition is rooted in peace and non-violence," he says. Martin took the AK-47 to a nearby blacksmith in Colorado Springs, dismantled it and forged the metal into a shovel and a rake. This moment sparked the beginning of RAWtools (War spelled backwards), a nonprofit Martin now runs full-time, and a movement spanning four states with affiliates in Buffalo, NY; Philadelphia, PA; and Asheville, North Carolina. Since its humble beginnings 14 years ago, RAWtools has destroyed and repurposed more than 6,000 guns, forging them into garden tools and art. Martin now carries the trigger of the first Kalashnikovs he destroyed on a keyring. For Martin, the physical act of destroying a gun can be healing, but often it's just the beginning of a bigger conversation. "The dominant culture often tells us that we can't escape the violence, so we should therefore join the violence," he says. "Instead, this counter-story of turning swords into plows insists that violence is the problem, not the solution." Anybody can fill out a form on the RAWtools website, or respond to the buyback program "Guns to Gardens," and arrange to donate their gun. Donors often want to be involved in transforming the weapon into a force for good. RAWtools regularly holds events, especially in front of churches and synagogues, not only to collect and transform guns, but to start conversations.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division and healing the war machine.
Scientists have just built working computer components out of shiitake mushrooms. As described in a paper published in PLOS One, using mycelium–the threadlike roots of fungi–researchers created memristors, the circuitry elements that remember past electrical states. You'd imagine such a feat would yield a memristor that performs terribly, but the researchers say its performance wasn't too far off from that inside your laptop. These organic circuits can store information, process signals, and maybe even help future computers behave more like organic brains, all while being low-cost, biodegradable, and probably compostable when you're done with them. The team grew nine batches of shiitake mycelium in petri dishes. They let them sprawl and stretch into mildly disturbing, gross, tangled networks of roots. Then, they dried them out in the sunlight until they were ready to handle electricity. Once wired up to a circuit, the fungal fibers responded to voltage like living synapses. They were firing off signals at about 5,850 hertz with 90 percent accuracy. The researchers found they could boost power by wiring more mushrooms together, creating an even larger fungal network that improved circuit stability and speed. It's still very early on, but the implications here are wild and potentially game-changing. Imagine being able to grow the components for, say, a new iPhone or the aforementioned high-end gaming rig, from just some dirt and a lot of humidity.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good and healing the Earth.
The federal investigation into the death of convicted sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was marred by significant lapses, experts told CBS News, including the failure by investigators to interview potential witnesses, properly preserve certain evidence and run basic forensic tests. Nearly two years passed before investigators interviewed the two key corrections officers on duty the night Epstein died. And details pulled from 90 photos of the cell and other evidence collected in the hours after Epstein's death – but before FBI agents arrived to process the scene – appear to show a succession of basic oversights, ranging from an absence of evidence markers to items being moved, experts told CBS News. "The FBI literally has all of the best tools. I mean, spared no expense. They have every tool you can imagine. And they used none of it as far as we can tell," forensic analyst Nick Barreiro said after reviewing the photos. "I do not believe he died by suicide, no," Epstein's co-defendant, Ghislaine Maxwell, said this summer during her interview in August with the Deputy U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche. Epstein's body was discovered at 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 10, 2019. The first FBI agents arrived at the cell more than seven hours later. When they arrived, photos show they found a disorganized, rifled-through clutter. Epstein's lifeless body had already been removed from the cell, eliminating a critical source of information investigators would need to determine how and when he died.
Note: Read our comprehensive Substack investigation covering the connection between Epstein's child sex trafficking ring and intelligence agency sexual blackmail operations. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's criminal enterprise.
"Dance is a language of the body," says Julia F. Christensen, a neuroscientist at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics and author of Dancing is the Best Medicine. "Our brain understands gestures that we may do as we dance like an expressive language." For centuries, communities have turned to dance not only for celebration but for ritual and healing. Long before scientists tracked brain waves or measured neurotransmitters, dancers had an intuitive understanding of the power of moving together. Now, the research is starting to catch up. A 2024 meta-analysis published in The BMJ reviewed 218 clinical trials and found that dance reduced symptoms of depression more than walking, yoga, strength training, and even standard antidepressants. While only 15 of the studies focused specifically on dance, the results were enough to grab the attention of researchers. Our brains are wired for rhythm–and dancing engages our entire nervous system. Some neuroscientists describe this full-body stimulation as a neurochemical symphony. Anticipating a melody can trigger the release of dopamine. Physical movement boosts endorphins. Dancing with others increases oxytocin. Studies have shown that this trifecta can enhance mood, increase social bonding, and reduce stress. Dance offers a unique way to reconnect with oneself. It can activate emotional, cognitive, and sensory pathways, reawakening a sense of connection within and beyond the self.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on the power of art and healing our bodies.
The aviary has a narrow duck pond in the back and a plywood square painted with the portrait of a coyote hanging on the front door. Inside, 71-year-old Willie H. uses plastic tweezers to feed moistened dog food pellets to juvenile robins through the bars of their cage. Like every day, he does this with his pet cockatiel, Bird, on his shoulder. The makeshift aviary he's spent the past 20 years working in is within the confines of the Marion Correctional Institution, where he's serving a potential life sentence. The Ohio Wildlife Center has been sending injured and orphaned wildlife to Marion for rehabilitation since the 1990s. According to Brittany Jordan, the center's wildlife rehabilitation operational director, these behind-bars rehab centers are now in five prisons across the state, and more institutions are joining the program as a way to help both the inmates and the animals. Willie ... was one of the first inmates to participate in the program, which has rehabilitated and released thousands of animals that required extra care after being treated at the Ohio Wildlife Center's hospital in Columbus. The inmates volunteer as caretakers and learn how to handle, feed and administer medication to a wide range of species–from barn swallows to opossums. While the Prison Program benefits wildlife ... it also rewards inmates with new skills, routine and purpose. They tend to stay out of trouble, away from substance abuse, and have an increased interest to learn more about the animals they care for.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on repairing criminal justice.
The Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food figured that veterans were perfectly cut out for farming, as the average vet is 45% more likely to start their own business, and aside from being physically fit, are used to enduring discomfort, waking up early, and being both self-reliant and a team player. Looking to connect their need to perform a service for their communities with the needs of thousands of retiring military who reenter society every year, Arcadia created the Veteran Farmers Training Program. Just a few miles from the Pentagon in Arlington, Arcadia trains veterans in the fundamentals of agriculture both in the field and in the class room. Ephesia Sutton was in the US Army for 20 years, and now trains veterans like herself how to grow nutritious produce for their families and communities. "I left the military with PTSD, depression, and anxiety, and I would rather be anywhere else when dealing with those symptoms. This is the place that relaxes me," said Sutton told Stars and Stripes from the fields of collard greens, cucumbers, bitter melon, peppers, spinach, kale, and tomatoes. "Knowing the work that I'm doing every time I put my hands in the soil is going to provide for a family, for somebody in this community, that just gives me the push to be out here," Sutton said. Military spouses ... often have to put their own lives on hold whilst their partners deploy. These too are finding new purpose and fulfillment among the rows of fruits and vegetables.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing our bodies and healing the war machine.
Kolle 37 is not your usual kind of kids' recreation space. This 4,000-square-meter, anarchic adventure playground in the heart of Berlin's central Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood is like the love child of a Wes Anderson set designer and a steampunk doorman at the city's infamous Berghain nightclub. Also known as the Adventurous Construction Playground Kolle 37, this unconventional educational space allows children to build – or, indeed, destroy – structures as they see fit. (Parents can enter only one day a week, on Saturdays.) Kolle 37, which started in 1990, is open to children between the ages of six and 16, and offers a rare space for unaccompanied play and so-called "free-range parenting" – moms and dads are asked to give a cell phone number and leave the site promptly. The playground, which receives funding from Berlin government authorities, also offers practical courses such as pottery, blacksmithery, archery and handicrafts, and has a space for music practice. Weekly meetings are held among the kids to discuss rules and problems, with a system of cards used for behavioral issues. Yellows serve as warnings and reds mean a child must leave for the day, for example if they hurt someone or stole something. "They run everything," says [social workert Marcus] Schmidt. "If the government or officials visit, the kids give the tour. There's an equal relationship between children and adults here. This is a really, really special place."
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on reimagining education.
As I approach India's first Garbage Cafe on a cloudy and foggy winter day in early 2025, the smell of hot samosas immediately makes the place feel cosy. Inside, people are sitting on wooden benches holding steel plates filled with steaming meals, some chatting, others eating quietly. Every day, hungry people arrive at this cafe in Ambikapur, a city in the state of Chhattisgarh in central India, in the hope of getting a hot meal. But they don't pay for their food with money – instead, they hand over bundles of plastic such as old carrier bags, food wrappers and water bottles. People can trade a kilogram (2.2lb) of plastic waste for a full meal that includes rice, two vegetable curries, dal, roti, salad and pickles, says Vinod Kumar Patel, who runs the cafe on behalf of the Ambikapur Municipal Corporation (AMC), the public body which manages the city's infrastructure. Every morning, [Rashmi Mondal] sets out early on the streets of Ambikapur in a search for discarded plastic – anything from old food wrappers to plastic bottles. For her, collecting such detritus is a means of survival. "I've been doing this work for years," Mondal says, looking at the small pile of plastic she has gathered. Previously, Mondal used to sell the plastic she collected to local scrap dealers for just 10 Indian rupees (Ł0.09/$0.12) per kilogram – barely enough to survive on. "But now, I can get food for my family in exchange for the plastic I collect. It makes all the difference in our lives."
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on reimagining the economy.
For more than 30 years, Frank Frost worked as a long-distance truck driver. He gained weight and was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in his 50s. His doctors put him on insulin injections and told him to lose weight and move more. "When l, like most people, failed, they made me feel weak and worthless," says Frost. Then, Frost met a doctor with a completely different approach – one that changed his life. The doctor ... asked Frost about things he enjoyed doing as a kid and discovered he used to love riding a bike. He gave him a prescription for a 10-week cycling course called Pedal Ready for adults getting back into cycling. "I hadn't been on a bike for almost 50 years until I started cycling again," says Frost. What Frost's doctor had done was give him a social prescription, says journalist Julia Hotz. It's the idea of health professionals "literally prescribing you a community activity or resource the same way they'd prescribe you pills or therapies," she explains. The prescriptions include exercise, art, music, exposure to nature and volunteering, which are known to have enormous benefits to physical and mental health. And it all starts with "flipping the script from what's the matter with you to focusing on what matters to you," Hotz says. "What are your activities that you love? What gets you out of bed?" Frost's prescription helped him make friends after years in a solitary profession. And it helped him lose 100 pounds, get his diabetes under control and go off insulin.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive healing our bodies and healing social division.
Dan Mancina has been a skateboarder since the age of seven, but when he was 13, he was diagnosed with rhinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye disease that rendered him almost completely blind by 22. He hit pause on his skateboarding for a couple of years in his early 20s, but decided to pick it back up again, now using a white cane to shred more confidently. Now almost 38, he's a professional skateboarder, relearning tricks, and even completing the course at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. About seven years ago, he started dreaming of creating the world's first adaptive skatepark right in his hometown of Detroit, Michigan. Finally, the park is a reality. Called "The Ranch," the 5,000-square-foot skatepark is completely accessible, allowing both seasoned low-vision boarders to take it for a spin and newcomers to the sport to feel welcome. In a recent video, blind content creator Anthony S. Ferraro, who reviews and documents his experiences in accessible environments ... on TikTok, showed off the park's features. Features include rollers, bank ramps, and ledges, with manual pads and platforms, all designed to be easier to navigate for people with vision impairments or in wheelchairs. Auditory cues are also placed throughout the park in the form of beepers, which warn a skater about a dangerous drop or guide them to a particular obstacle. "Thanks for building this park, Dan, [you're] a true pioneer." Next up, he plans to host workshops and camps for other visually impaired skaters who want to learn how to skate with a white cane. "It's been so inspiring to watch this come to reality. I've never had a place where I can skate with full confidence," Ferraro ends his video.
Note: Watch a deeply inspiring video about how Dan Mancina learned how to skateboard after losing his sight. Explore more positive stories like this on inspiring disabled persons.
In President Dwight D. Eisenhower's famous 1961 speech about the dangers of the military-industrial complex, he also cautioned Americans about the growing power of a "scientific, technological elite." "The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by federal employment project allocations and the power of money is ever present," warned Eisenhower. And he was right. Today, many of the people protesting the Trump administration's cuts to federal funding for scientific research are part of that scientific, technological elite. But there's a good chance that slashing federal spending will liberate science from the corrupting forces that Eisenhower warned us about. Thomas Edison's industrial lab produced huge breakthroughs in telecommunications and electrification. Alexander Graham Bell's lab produced modern telephony and sound recording, all without government money. The Wright Brothers–who ran a bicycle shop before revolutionizing aviation–launched the first successfully manned airplane flight in December 1903, beating out more experienced competitors like Samuel Langley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, who had received a grant from the War Department for his research. Of course, government funding has led to major breakthroughs both during and after World War II. In an influential 2005 paper, Stanford University professor John Ioannidis flatly concluded that "most published research findings are false." He argued that the current peer review model encourages groupthink. "You end up with a monolithic view, and so you crush what's so important in science, which is different ideas competing in a marketplace of ideas."
Note: "Trust the science" sounds noble–until you realize that even top editors of world-renowned journals have warned that much of published medical research is unreliable, distorted by fraud, corporate influence, and conflicts of interest. For more along these lines, read about how the US government turns a blind eye to the corporations fueling America's health crisis.
Researchers at ETH Zurich have designed a sustainable method to extract gold from electronic waste using a byproduct of cheese production. Electronic devices, from smartphones to laptops, contain small amounts of gold due to its excellent conductivity and resistance to corrosion. With the rapid turnover of electronic gadgets, e-waste has become the fastest-growing waste stream globally, reaching 62 million tonnes in 2022, and only 22.3 percent of this was formally collected and recycled, leaving vast amounts of valuable materials unused. Professor Raffaele Mezzenga and scientist Mohammad Peydayesh led the ETH Zurich team in developing a method that utilizes "whey", the liquid byproduct of cheese-making. By processing whey proteins into amyloid fibrils, they created a sponge-like aerogel capable of selectively absorbing gold ions from acidic solutions derived from e-waste. Professor Mezzenga stated, "The fact I love the most is that we're using a food industry byproduct to obtain gold from electronic waste. You can't get much more sustainable than that!" In laboratory tests, this aerogel successfully extracted gold from dissolved computer motherboards. The sponge drew out gold that was about 90.8 percent pure, yielding a 22-carat nugget weighing approximately 450 milligrams. The research team is also exploring the use of other food industry byproducts, like pea protein and fish collagen, to diversify the sources of the aerogel. The process is economically viable, with operational costs significantly lower than the market value of the recovered gold, unlike traditional gold extraction techniques that rely on toxic chemicals like cyanide.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing the Earth and technology for good.
In their peer-reviewed book, In Covid's Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us, [left-leaning political scientists] Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee argue that public health authorities, the mainstream media, and progressive elites often pushed pandemic measures without weighing their costs and benefits, and ostracized people who expressed good-faith disagreement. The book grew out of research Macedo was doing on the ways progressive discourse gets handicapped by a refusal to engage with conservative or outside arguments. "Covid is an amazing case study in groupthink and the effects of partisan bias," he said. At times, scientific and health authorities acted less like neutral experts and more like self-interested actors, engaging in PR efforts to downplay uncertainty, missteps or conflicts of interest. Reports by Johns Hopkins (2019), the World Health Organization (2019), the state of Illinois (2014) and the British government (2011) had all expressed ambivalence or caution about the kind of quarantine measures that were soon taken. The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security hosted a wargaming exercise in October 2019, shortly before the pandemic began, to simulate a deadly coronavirus pandemic; the findings explicitly urged that "[t]ravel and trade … be maintained even in the face of a pandemic." A WHO paper in 2019 said that some measures – such as border closures and contact tracing – were "not recommended in any circumstances". "In inflation-adjusted terms," Macedo and Lee write, "the United States spent more on pandemic aid in 2020 than it spent on the 2009 stimulus package and the New Deal combined." The economic strain on poor and minority Americans was particularly severe. Teachers' unions ... painted school re-openings as "rooted in sexism, racism, and misogyny" ... despite the fact that minority and poor students were most disadvantaged by remote learning.
Note: Pandemic policies led to one of the greatest wealth transfers in history. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on COVID corruption and media manipulation.
Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.