Issues & Insights
U.S. State Department

How About Some COVID-19 Data Transparency?

Since the early days of the pandemic, the public has been misled and misinformed, the goalposts pulled down and taken out of the stadium, and the data too often puzzling. Much of the country has lost confidence in politicians and public health officials. It’s important to know if those doubts are legitimate or misplaced.

One route to the truth would be a federal grand jury probe that would determine if the case and death counts have been inflated and not reflective of reality.

Would it be a witch hunt? A political sideshow? No. It would be a sober and justifiable inquiry. The nation deserves to know if a crisis was manufactured or real. If the numbers are accurate, then a probe will go a long way toward restoring confidence in our public health officials. If they’re not, then someone needs to be held accountable for the errors, negligence, or intentional deception that hurt so many and divided a country.

“​​Public health policy must be based upon accurate and independently verifiable data to optimize outcomes and strengthen the public’s trust in the people leading them through this crisis,” say a couple of Republican legislators in Oregon who are asking the U.S. attorney there for an “independent state and/or special federal grand jury investigation” of the data.

“The ability to definitively diagnose who is infectious,” they continue, “and distinguish them from who is not is paramount in assessing the situation and ensuring the people in immediate need receive the skilled care they deserve.”

More than 1,700 Oregonians and 53,000 in total have signed the lawmakers’ petition.

The pair, state Sens. Kim Thatcher and Dennis Linthicum, don’t appear to be deniers. That they regular consult with, and are advised by, “a large team of world renowned doctors, epidemiologists, virologists, and attorneys who keep us up to date on a number of pertinent COVID topics and issues relevant to public health policy” leads us to believe they are merely seeking clarity in a fog of war.

An effort to uncover unvarnished facts is not madness. Far from it. It’s a search for the truth. We know that government provided incentives for hospitals to overcount the number of COVID-19 cases. We also know that at least one county overstated coronavirus deaths by 25%. What more is there that’s never been made public?

Transparency is a hallmark of a representative government that know its primary duty is to protect liberty. Politicians and bureaucratic health officials all across the U.S. shut down state and local economies, trapped people in their homes, and are now pushing ahead with vaccine mandates and passports. It’s not asking too much to insist that the authorities show us these radical actions were and are warranted.

We make no apology to be among those who believe the lockdowns were the worst public policy decisions of our lifetimes. But we are willing to be proved wrong. Can the same be said about the forces behind lockdowns, mandates, and fear?

We hope so, though we are not confident. We expect them to resist a reasonable examination of the facts, which is what always happens when some has something to hide.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board

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I & I Editorial Board

The Issues and Insights Editorial Board has decades of experience in journalism, commentary and public policy.

3 comments

  • Reading your suggestion all I could think of was the old saying about “indicting a ham sandwich”. After the FBI pulled the wool over the SCOTUS FISA court’s eyes, without repercussion, how can there be any trust in the legal system.
    I’m afraid the scientific community is going to have to clean its own house.

  • When the Dots are Connected for the various USA realms (e.g. COVID numbers, inflated hospital billings, election jiggering), the USA exhibits an almost pathological pattern of “audit-phobia”. Meanwhile, attention is diverted by pointing fingers at China (e.g. for low COVID numbers; corporate accounting audits). The vampires behind the USA Tyranny abhor audit lights, whether it be shone on numbers whipping up COVID hysteria (justification for seizing Bolshevik-style Dictatorial Powers) or election numbers from Democrat-controlled urban counties tilting national presidential elections (e.g. Phoenix, Arizona; Atlanta, Georgia; Philly, PA; Milwaukee, WI; Detroit, MI). Don’t expect those enjoying the fruits of absolute power (mandates and executive orders in place of legislative debate and laws) to expose themselves willing to audit lights. That would be like asking a vampire to willing accept a stake through its heart.

    As Arizona & Georgia demonstrate, the power elite feel immune from turning over election materials such as routers for examination. With respect to COVID numbers, the story is the same. For example, New York state and Michigan have effectively avoided accountability for seeding nursing homes with COVID patients (an “age-group genocide” reminiscent of dosing Native Americans with small pox-infected blankets a few generations ago).

    Transparency is now a rhetorical political term meaning opaqueness. The USA is now a Tyranny where one political party and their corporate, tech and media allies have effectively stabbed a stake through the heart of the First Amendment and replaced Freedom with Mandates. Even discussing COVID or election numbers deviating from the Democrat party narrative results in financial cancellation and banning from the marketplace of ideas (e.g. via the Dem-aligned tech, social media and banking alliances). Ditto, questioning so-called vaccines and efficacy (3 doses/year should make alternatives like ivermectin and HCQ a hot topic, not a banned topic). In this totalitarian climate reminiscent of the old Soviet Bolsheviks, discussion of audits may itself be banned. The quest for absolute power equal to that of a Roman dictator or emperor is alive and thriving in the USA today. The only audits likely to be accepted by the ruling party are those against Trump and his allies.

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