At long last, media censorship of the scientific debate during the covid-19 pandemic has become undeniable. Censoring portrayed an illusion of consensus and intimidated scientifically valid disagreement. Policymakers and citizens were deceived by those suffocating scientific data and perspectives on risk, mitigation effectiveness, biological immunity, lockdowns, and especially the impacts of covid and the policies themselves on children.
Perhaps censorship explains why the standard recommendations fifteen years prior to this pandemic remain unknown to the public. Henderson’s 2006 classic review clearly stated two related, but separate, conclusions: lockdowns were not effective, and lockdowns were extremely harmful, including: “Closing schools for longer periods (greater than ten to fourteen days at the beginning of an epidemic) in hopes of mitigating the epidemic by decreasing contacts among students is not warranted”; “There are no historical observations or scientific studies that support the confinement by quarantine of groups of possibly infected people for extended periods”; and “The negative consequences of large-scale quarantine are so extreme . . . that this mitigation measure should be eliminated from serious consideration.”
All honest leaders, all individuals with integrity, should acknowledge that people were directly damaged and even died from the censorship of truth.