3 Major Findings in Grand Jury Report on Covid 'Mistakes'

A Florida grand jury released its second interim report last week on its investigation into possible “wrongdoing” by manufacturers and entities that promoted them.

requested by Governor Ron DeSantis and authorized by the Florida Supreme Court in December 2022, the grand jury was in charge with the determination of whether “pharmaceutical manufacturers (and their executive officers) and other medical associations or organizations” engaged in “criminal activities or wrongful acts” with respect to “their participation in the development, approval or marketing of vaccines against COVID-19”. The jury announced it first interim report in February, in which members confirmed the accuracy of many claims that health “experts” and the media dismissed as “misinformation.”

Filed in the Florida Supreme Court on May 21, the grand jury's second interim report details several issues not addressed in the first, including the prevalence of natural immunity among those infected with Covid and the drugs used to treat infected patients. Like the first report, this one new analysis it contains damning information about how the “expert” class did not, in fact, “follow science.”

1. Covid patients gain natural immunity through infection

Infection-induced immunity (IDI), or “natural immunity,” is not a new phenomenon. As the grand jury noted, the human body acquiring natural protection from harmful antigens through infection is a concept that has existed for “thousands of years.”

Although no humans had been previously infected with Covid-19 prior to the outbreak in late 2019 and early 2020, it became clear in the months and years that followed that those who were infected and recovered from the virus had a greater natural protection against reinfection. According to the report, “[m]Many studies show that, on average, IDI reduced the chances of re-infection from the ancestral, alpha and delta variants of SARS-CoV-2 by about 80% in unvaccinated people, with this “generalized immunity”. [starting] to decrease around 40 weeks after infection, but level[ing] reached what appeared to be about a stable 50% that lasted 60 to 80 weeks after infection.”

“These promising IDI numbers did not suddenly appear in 2024. They were echoed in numerous studies produced at different times over the past four years,” the report says.

A 2021 Israeli study cited by the grand jury, for example, found that “people with unvaccinated IDIs had an overall effective protection rate of approximately 86% against the Delta variant.” Meanwhile, a 2021 study of patients in New York and California “showed that infections per 1,000 unvaccinated people were about 129 for those without IDIs, and only 5 among IDIs, a rate of relative risk reduction of 96%.

The grand jury noted how “[n]one of these statistics should have come as a surprise to anyone in health care” and that this basic science “is so well understood that its broad outlines can be found in virtually any high school textbook” .The panelists further highlighted how “people with IDIs in 2020 and 2021 had little or nothing to gain” from non-pharmaceutical interventions such as masking and blocking, two policies. first interim report documented had little or no scientific benefit. They also admonished government health agencies for ignoring biological reality and for inconsistent public policy prescriptions.

“Given that there were testing modalities available that could easily confirm whether a person had IDI, this Grand Jury believes it was irresponsible of government agencies not to advise adapting their mitigation measures to divide those at reduced risk from IDI in the same way they would later divide the vaccinated.especially those younger with fewer comorbidities who were already at reduced risk,” the report says. “… When officials have concerns about certain behaviors, they should absolutely communicate them and discourage those behaviors, but not at the expense of to suppress or ignore 'science'”.

2. Government “experts” attacked potential Covid treatments

While the grand jury noted the difficulty of finding effective treatments for a new virus amid a global outbreak, it lamented how some government health officials made “avoidable mistakes” when it came to “messaging and communicating” with the American public about possible early treatment options. . Among the most prominent was the war against the “expert” class. hydroxychloroquinea commonly used drug often prescribed to treat malaria.

The panel noted how some “well-credentialed scientists and physicians” were “dissatisfied” with the data the Food and Drug Administration used to justify its decision to revoke hydroxychloroquine's “emergency use authorization” for treat patients with Covid, and they chose to prescribe the drug to patients based on the data they were examining. Defenders of the drug argued that the data cited by the FDA “focused on the use of the drug in inpatients rather than outpatients, contained a large number of low-risk individuals” and had other problems that undermined the its reliability.

The grand jury said it “doesn't think it was unreasonable [for doctors] include hydroxychloroquine in an early outpatient treatment regimen for Covid-19” given the drug’s “long history” of relatively safe use and the ever-changing nature of “the science”.

While the grand jury found the drug's use by doctors to treat Covid patients reasonable, government agencies and their media allies did not. The grand jury described how “[p]Government public health officials, of course, disagreed, widely stigmatizing the drug, vilifying the doctors who prescribed it, the researchers who championed it, and the people who took it.”

“In April 2020, just two days after the guidelines were initially published with an “emergency recommendation” for hydroxychloroquine, a prominent newspaper characterized interviews with hydroxychloroquine advocates as “a heavy dose of silly”.[,]'and noting that'[c]Claims about hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19 have gained traction despite a lack of scientific evidence,” the report says. “From there the information war began. Even after the guidelines changed status of hydroxychloroquine to “Not Recommended,” news agencies continued to criticize those who researched the drug, calling hydroxychloroquine “the most disappointing and disapproved drug that researchers continue to study for Covid-19.”

Similarly, the grand jury examined the “strange” information war against ivermectin, a Nobel Prize-winning antiparasitic drug approved for human use in 1987. While researchers published studies supporting and refuting the effectiveness of the drug against Covid, government and media figures themselves were compromised. in a “useless and ugly war of words over a proven safe drug with questionable efficacy.”

The grand jury criticized public health officials for issuing disparaging and childish messages, specifically for an August 2021 tweet about the FDA's ivermectin that read: “You're not a horse. You're not a cow. Really , everyone. Stop it.” Similarly, the jury criticized the media for referring to the drug as “horseshit” and noted how some state licensing boards “began to threaten the livelihoods of doctors who prescribed Ivermectin to their patients for Covid-19”.

“However, none of these opponents was able to effectively articulate a good reason for their disdain for ivermectin,” the report says.

3. Lies by “experts” and the media put lives at risk

Above all, the grand jury highlighted how government health “experts” and legacy media efforts to squash debate about the effectiveness of drugs like ivermectin created an avoidable scenario in which individuals who they felt he was lying to them to take matters into their own hands.

“Some people became so desperate to get their hands on this supposed miracle drug, so sure they were being lied to, that they resorted to animal doses and formulations of the drug, resulting in a series of well-publicized ivermectin overdoses.” the report is read. “Once again the opponents looked on at the folly of these desperate and misguided fools. The afternoon comedians made jokes at their expense and everyone who knew how to 'follow the science' laughed. This Grand Jury is not laughing.”

“This was a profound failure of public health messaging. We lay all the overdoses that occurred at the feet of the perpetrators of this smear campaign,” added the grand jury.

Shawn Fleetwood is a writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for the State Action Convention, and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood