The Alt-Covid Community Begins Unraveling the Origins of Covid

via Unz.com

Although much of my research and writing over the last three years has been devoted to the global Covid epidemic, I’ve paradoxically paid very little attention to most of the various Covid-oriented websites.

That’s because I have narrowly concentrated on the origins of the epidemic while they have focused almost entirely upon the details of the disease and the controversial public health measures adopted to control it. I’ve had only slight interest in those latter topics, and partly for that reason most of my views have been vaguely mainstream, not too different from what I have regularly read in the pages of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, or the Economist.

However, the daily lives of billions of individuals around the world have been tremendously disrupted by these government-imposed policies, which included lockdowns, masking, and social distancing, mandates that were often tremendously unpopular and had enormous social and economic consequences. Moreover, faced with a life-and-death situation, substantial portions of the public together with some medical professionals claimed that various treatments for Covid such as the use of HCQ and IVM were safe and effective but wrongly suppressed, a position loudly attacked and denounced by the outraged medical and media establishments. These battles grew even fiercer once a massive Covid vaccination drive began at the end of 2020, with critics noting that the mRNA vaccines being employed were based upon an entirely new biotechnology and had required the use of emergency waivers to circumvent what would have otherwise been a long and cautious clinical trial process.

During this entire period, the establishment media provided nearly lockstep support to the governmental positions on all of these hugely controversial issues, and this naturally fostered the growth of what might be called the alt-Covid community, a network of websites, bloggers, and podcasters who argued that many of these official policies were completely incorrect, often based more upon propaganda than science.

One of the more prominent nodes in this dissenting ecosystem was founded in April 2020 by Toby Young, a longtime British journalist and public intellectual, conservative-leaning but generally well-regarded. He launched Lockdown Sceptics, an Internet newsletter critiquing what he considered an ill-conceived public health measure as well as other Covid-related issues. Over time, he gradually expanded and extended its coverage, also taking on board Will Jones and Noah Carl, a couple of younger Ph.D.’s, with the former eventually serving as editor. By the time the British lockdowns finally ended in July 2021, his readership and impact had expanded to the point that he decided to rechristen his publication the Daily Sceptic and keep it in operation, providing careful analysis of other public policy issues, especially those avoided or mishandled by the mainstream media, though still with a strong emphasis on Covid-related matters.

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