Pandemia: How Coronavirus Hysteria Took Over Our Government, Rights, and Lives
Alex Berenson
Regnery Publishing, Washington, D.C., 2021
Pandemia is a detailed, somewhat technical history of the COVID pandemic and COVID response mostly in the United States strongly critiquing much of the mainstream news coverage, the lockdown and masking policies, and many claims and policies promoted by the US CDC, Anthony Fauci, and other “public health authorities.” Alex Berenson is a former New York Times investigative reporter who covered many pharmaceutical stories and scandals while working at the Times. I first encountered him through his 2004 book The Number about manipulation and outright fraud in reported quarterly corporate earnings.
The book is written in a breezy, easy to read style with short topical chapters in a roughly chronological order. It has numerous footnotes with a footnote section at the end of the book as well as an index, all to back up his many assertions that differ from most mainstream news coverage, statements by Fauci and other “experts,” and the supposed consensus of scientists. Readers who have been following non-mainstream coverage of the pandemic and pandemic response from sources such as Berenson will not be surprised or find much new. Overall it is a well written, informative book that conveys Berenson’s positions with references to supporting information.
Some Weak Spots
I am not a Conspiracy Theorist
Berenson is adamant that he is not a “conspiracy theorist,” the dread phrase used to shut down any discussion of possible criminal conspiracy or even incompetence by the powerful (such as the “conspiracy theory” that NIH funded “gain of function” research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology produced and then accidentally released SARS-COV-2). Consequently, while he documents baffling failures, claims, and outright contradictory statements by Anthony Fauci, the CDC, and other “public health authorities” such as the dramatic reversal on the effectiveness of masks from “useless” to “highly effective” in April 2020, he stops there and rains scorn on “conspiracy theorists.”
Twitter Warrior
Berenson was eventually banned by Twitter for alleged “COVID misinformation” following what Berenson argues is pressure by the Biden administration and other political figures. He describes many provocative and sometimes offensive tweets which drew a lot of attention to himself, undoubtedly boosting sales of his Unreported Truths booklets on Amazon and now his Pandemia book. He mentions some criticism by his wife Jackie of the aggressive, snarky tone and content of many of his tweets. His substack posts continue to show a similar aggressive, snarky tone today.
Long, Long COVID (Chapter 25)
Berenson is highly skeptical of alleged “Long COVID,” linking it to a range of murky diseases such as chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, chronic Lyme disease, and others with arguably similar symptoms which also tend to disproportionately affect women, suggesting a psychological/anxiety cause. He argues that scientists and medical doctors have so far been unable (he says) to find an underlying biological cause or correlate (more on this in a moment) whereas they supposedly found the cause of AIDS (the HIV virus) in only two years. Touting modern high tech molecular biology based science and medicine, he argues it could not be that hard to find a cause if these disease were “real.”
Blaming anxious hysterical women for phantom diseases that disproportionately affect women is not a new phenomenon. Multiple sclerosis (MS) was considered such as disease until a series of autopsies of patients showed lesions (damage) to the nerves. Today MS can be detected with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans which always or frequently show lesions on the nerves in the images.
Both MS and lupus, which disproportionately affect women, continue to be misdiagnosed as psychological problems without an MRI scan or the test for the anti-nuclear antibodies (ANA). About 90 percent of people with lupus (linked article from Lupus Foundation claims 97%) have the unusual anti-nuclear antibodies while only about 5 percent of health individuals have the antibodies. Note that anti-nuclear antibodies are highly correlated with lupus but not perfectly correlated, which raises some questions whether the auto-immune reaction is the true cause of lupus. Alleged auto-immune diseases such as MS, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis which disproportionately affect women remain mysterious.
MRI scans are unable to image damage to the critical myelin insulating sheath that enclosing nerves. Damage or loss of this sheath which occurs in carpal tunnel syndrome, ulnar and other nerve injuries can be confirmed in many but not all cases with nerve conduction tests. These tests have a several percent failure rate. Damage or loss of the myelin sheath frequently causes extreme levels of pain and in some cases atrophy of the muscles controlled by the nerve.
There are many diseases that have eluded detailed biological analysis. Berenson touts the sequencing of the human DNA as an illustration of the enormous power of modern medical biology without considering about 98% of the human DNA is purported junk DNA whose function is unknown. He extols modern molecular biology research without considering the dismal results of the “War on Cancer” nor the remarkably complex modern theory of cancer with hundreds of oncogenes, allegedly rapidly mutating cancer cells, extensive unpredictable chromosomal changes, and the mysterious anaerobic metabolism seen in many cancer cells.
Could COVID or other disease like Lyme disease occasionally produce some mysterious long lasting, possibly auto-immune syndrome disproportionately in women who disproportionately suffer from alleged auto-immune diseases such as MS, Lupus, and Rheumatoid Arthritis? Quite possibly.
Conclusion
Overall Pandemia is a well written, easy to read book, almost 400 pages of detailed discussion of the COVID pandemic and the lockdowns and other pandemic responses. Berenson makes a strong case that most of the responses have been ineffective at best and even quite harmful in some cases. He avoids speculation about possible conspiracies whether due to genuine skepticism or to avoid the dreaded “conspiracy theorist” label. He stays away from the safety and effectiveness of drugs such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin and says little about Vitamin D. He is highly critical of the approval process for the mRNA spike protein based vaccines and the actual real-world safety and effectiveness of the vaccines.
(C) 2022 by John F. McGowan, Ph.D.
About Me
John F. McGowan, Ph.D. solves problems using mathematics and mathematical software, including developing gesture recognition for touch devices, video compression and speech recognition technologies. He has extensive experience developing software in C, C++, MATLAB, Python, Visual Basic and many other programming languages. He has been a Visiting Scholar at HP Labs developing computer vision algorithms and software for mobile devices. He has worked as a contractor at NASA Ames Research Center involved in the research and development of image and video processing algorithms and technology. He has published articles on the origin and evolution of life, the exploration of Mars (anticipating the discovery of methane on Mars), and cheap access to space. He has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).