colinnew
A Florida grand jury found that COVID-era lockdowns and mask mandates were unfounded, according to its recently released interim report.
At the request of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and authorized by the Florida Supreme Court in December 2022, the grand jury was tasked with determining whether pharmaceutical companies and other medical organizations “engaged in criminal activity or wrongdoing” in their participation in the rollout of COVID-19 “vaccines.”
“In a way, this Grand Jury has allowed us to do something that most Americans simply do not have the time, access, or wherewithal to do: Follow the science,” the interim report reads.
The grand jury’s investigation, which has yet to be completed, has so far pinpointed four major flaws in official government COVID policy, some of which have inflicted physical and psychological harm on human beings. These unfounded policies reach beyond the scope of the COVID injections.
The main findings of the interim report are the following:
- Lockdowns did more harm than good.
- Masks are ineffective.
- COVID was “statistically almost harmless” to children and most adults.
- It is “highly likely” that COVID hospitalization numbers were inflated.
Lockdowns did more harm than good
Remarkably, the grand jury found that jurisdictions with extended lockdowns saw higher “excess mortality.”
“This is especially evident when compared to jurisdictions that targeted their protective efforts towards the highest-risk groups instead of mandating large-scale, extended periods of quarantine for everyone,” the interim report stated.
The grand jury attributed this excess mortality to several “collateral consequences,” including missed routine healthcare checkups, lockdown-related “economic depression” and increased poverty, and a “precipitous” decline in mental health and related spike in drug-abuse deaths.
Moreover, the lockdowns were found to be ineffective at preventing COVID sickness. The investigators found that the fundamental flaw of lockdowns in today’s society is that “lockdowns leak.” That is, people must leave home for essential goods, and “essential workers” must leave home to deliver those goods.
The report also cited the World Health Organization’s (WHO) own admissions before COVID-19 that lockdowns are ineffective. For example, in 2006, the WHO noted that “[i]ll persons… should remain home when they first become symptomatic, but forced isolation and quarantine are ineffective and impractical.”
The grand jury observed that surgical and cloth masks have limited effectiveness against aerosol particles containing the COVID-19 virus, and that “well-fitted N95 masks will protect only the wearer, not anyone else, and only for as long as the filter remains viable and the mask remains dry.”
The report also pointed out that “humans are almost invariably imperfect mask wearers,” since we need to take off our mask to eat at a restaurant or to make a speech, and because of considerations like a mask’s fit or filter integrity.
The grand jury noted, in fact, that there has “never” been “sound evidence” of masks’ “effectiveness against SARS-CoV-2 transmission.”
COVID policymakers instead chose to “fill the discourse with flawed observational and laboratory studies,” the report found.
COVID ‘almost harmless to children and most adults’
Using an analysis of infection fatality rate (IFR), the grand jury found that “COVID-19 is statistically almost harmless to children and most adults,” since IFR estimates were “highly stratified by age, which was by far posed the biggest risk of death.
For example, while IFRs were only an estimated 0.029 percent for adults age 25, and 0.28 percent for adults age 45, this rose to 4.4 percent for adults age 75, and 12.9 percent for 85-year-olds.
‘Highly likely’ that COVID hospitalization numbers were inflated
The grand jury highlighted a common criticism of official COVID-19 hospitalization numbers, stemming from the fact that hospitals did not distinguish between patients admitted due to COVID and patients admitted for other reasons who happened to test positive for COVID.
This risk of inaccurate health stats was worsened by the fact that, as the grand jury noted, the CARES Act passed by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump “created financial subsidies for Medicare and Medicaid patients with COVID-19” who were admitted to health facilities and created “incentives to report more than just hospitalizations for COVID-19 disease.”
As The Federalist noted, the grand jury pointed out that errors in COVID public policy were made not due to lack of information but a lapse in judgment. This is because there was ample pre-existing research regarding the effectiveness of, for example, lockdowns and masks (or rather, lack thereof).
