OPINION:
This past Monday, Jan. 24, 2022, Sen. Ron Johnson, Wisconsin Republican, conducted a hearing on the issue of COVID-19 interventions. More specifically, the senator invited testimony regarding our military’s new practice of requiring mRNA injections of all our nation’s soldiers. Mr. Johnson’s goal was quite simple and straightforward. He wanted to learn what the available data shows concerning this new drug’s efficacy and potential side effects.
Why is this important?
Well, it is pretty simple. We need to know if the men and women charged to defend our country are healthy enough to do so. In other words, a sick sailor, a downed pilot or a bedridden infantryman is of little value should we need to go to war.
It shouldn’t surprise you that the United States Department of Defense knows this. After all, the DOD has tracked every illness of our military members for decades and compiled and analyzed all the corresponding data. Their reason for doing so is to share this information with our government leaders in the White House, Congress, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention so they can have confidence that our national defense is strong and not sick.
In fact, an official database exists to facilitate all this. It is called the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database, and it is considered exceptionally accurate, complete and effective in the early detection of any compromised health trends in our military population.
Now you’d think that whether or not you’re a conservative or a liberal, a Democrat or a Republican, you would want to know if the numbers screamed of a problem. After all, politics shouldn’t matter when it comes to science, right?
For example, regardless of your party affiliation, wouldn’t you want to know if the United States Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corp were experiencing a near 300% increase in cancer cases during the first 11 months of 2021 compared to the previous five-year average?
And, wouldn’t you want to know if there were a similar increase (again, 300% greater than the previous five-year average) in miscarriages?
And, wouldn’t you think it was noteworthy if the same database showed a 1000% increase in neurological disorders?
And what if this same set of statistics showed 71% of all new COVID-19 cases in the military are fully vaccinated and that 60% of all hospitalizations are from the same group?
If you were genuinely pro-science and considered facts nonpartisan, wouldn’t you want to be aware of all of this?
And finally, if an attorney representing the people suffering all these maladies sat before you and shouted, under penalty of perjury, “This is corruption at the highest level. We need investigations. … Our soldiers are being experimented on, injured, and possibly killed,” wouldn’t you feel some obligation to attend to the matter?
As any good researcher does, I understand that correlation does not always mean causation, and just because the rooster crows every morning doesn’t mean he causes the sun to rise. But, as any good researcher does, I also know that when you see extreme statistical anomalies, it is a good idea to ask what caused them.
An honest person looks at a 300% to 1000% increase in miscarriages, cancer and neurological disease and asks, “Is there any mitigating variable that could have caused this?”
For example, have our frontline soldiers been exposed to Agent Orange? Have they taken part in nuclear experiments? How about inhalation of asbestos? Or maybe there was a disproportionate increase in the use of thalidomide?
Science encourages questions. It doesn’t stifle them. Science rewards critical thinking. It doesn’t punish it. Science doesn’t sidestep inconvenient data. Science doesn’t entertain hyperventilated power plays. Science is the exact opposite of censorship, shaming and silencing.
Science is the pursuit of truth. Science is the search for what is real. Science is about facts, not fear. It is rational and level-headed. It’s the antithesis of your smug virtue signaling about what you wear on your face or your evangelistic fervor of posting “we can do this” on your social media.
When you see disproportionate increases in disease, disorders and dysfunction, why not be open-minded and, at least, ask if there is a mitigating variable that might be causing all this? After all, if no one was drinking Kool-Aid before, and now 71% of those coming down with illness can be traced back to those who imbibed the red elixir, wouldn’t any good scientist want to ask if maybe, just maybe, the requirement that we all belly-up-to-the bar might be causing more harm than good?
When you hear cries of outrage because someone like Mr. Johnson and Sen. Rand Paul — or even Joe Rogan for that matter — simply asks good questions, it might be evidence that maybe it never was about science but rather compliance.
• Everett Piper (dreverettpiper.com, @dreverettpiper), a columnist for The Washington Times, is a former university president and radio host. He is the author of “Not a Daycare: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery) and, most recently, “Grow Up: Life Isn’t Safe, But It’s Good.”
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
