THE DEEP STATE GOES VIRAL

The author of this eye-opening book has worked as a science writer and visual artist for three decades, and has been studying the Covid crisis and its implications for the world and our future since 2022 under the auspices of the Brownstone Institute, set up to support the voluntary interaction of individuals and groups while minimising the use of violence and force, including that exercised by public authority. Lerman asks two key questions: what if the pandemic response was run by National Security agencies according to a biodefence/counterterrorism playbook, rather than by public health agencies according to public health guidelines? And why is it surprising that most countries responded in similar ways, quite different from existing pandemic guidelines where the public would have been told to remain calm and stay at home if sick?

The author documents in detail the transition between a normal public health response that was implemented up until the end of February 2020, and the abrupt pivoting to a global military style totalitarian lockdown-until-vaccine policy. It is very clear that the messaging also changed dramatically at that point, as communicated by the very same people. The first chapter explores the relationship between pandemics and the new world order, with the rise since the 2001 anthrax attacks (quite probably a false flag originating in US military installations) of the biodefence global public – private partnership (GPPP). In his foreword, Jeffrey Tucker explains his surprise when contacted out of the blue in April 2020 by Rajeev Venkayya - a primary author of A National Strategy Pandemic Influenza issued by the George W Bush administration in 2005 and mapping out a biosecurity path invoking totalitarian measures. Venkayya informs him that there will be a fast track vaccine, and puts down the phone.

9/11 instigated the war on terror, but also on bioterror with massively expanded budgets involving the merging of biodefence with pandemic preparedness (health security) and implementation of dual use research programmes – civilian and military ($100 billion invested over two decades). On the one hand, these involved gain of function research, and on the other, ‘medical countermeasures’ in the form of vaccines (pp. 102 ff.). Many tabletop exercises (p. 9) were held under the guise of pandemic preparedness, including Event 201 in October 2019, sponsored by intelligence agencies, the World Economic Forum, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and other corporate and academic players. These discussions, which you can look up on the Internet, form the template for how the Covid response was coordinated and implemented – including narrative control and censorship driven by sophisticated behavioural psychology techniques. The original research grants for the mRNA platform were the $25 million given by DARPA to Pfizer and Moderna in 2013 – why were these grants given by the military rather than health authorities? The corresponding new business model for medical countermeasures involved the manufacture and distribution of vaccines in an effort spearheaded by pharmaceutical companies, who stood to make a vast amount of money while benefiting from liability protection.

The conventional public health approach was initially implemented (pp. 26 ff.), with no whipping up of public panic, anxiety and fear. Chapter 3 explains how Deborah Birx was appointed as US Covid task force coordinator through the deputy National Security adviser. She herself had worked for the Department of Defence and the US military on AIDS research, and she effectively dictated policy to the entire Trump administration (pp. 58 ff.), as reported in detail by Dr Scott Atlas. It is now abundantly clear (pp. 79 ff.), but this was not at all apparent at the time, that the National Security Council was appointed to run the US government’s Covid policy as of March 13, 2020. And from March 18, 2020, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was officially in charge of the response as the lead federal agency (LFA).

This means that Health and Human Services (HHS) comprising the CDC, NIAID, NIH and other public health related agencies had no official leadership role in determining and implementing Covid policy. This meant that ‘the response to the Covid pandemic was led by groups and agencies that are in the business of responding to wars and terrorist threats, not public health crises or disease outbreaks. (p. 89) In other words, the US and other governments – especially the Five Eyes intelligence grouping – treated Covid as a bioterrorism attack, implying that the virus was classified as a bioweapon developed at a dual use laboratory, not a naturally occurring disease (pp. 91 ff., p. 108, p. 229) Psychologically, countries were on a war footing against the virus, which also justified suppression of dissent, with dissidents classified as domestic terrorists. Physicians like Dr Jay Bhattacharya (now director of NIH) were stigmatised and ostracised for proposing a scientifically grounded alternative approach in the Great Barrington Declaration.

Section 3.9 documents the abrupt pivot from public health to biosecurity in multiple countries in March 2020, citing corresponding public health messaging before and after. In the UK, the Department of Health and Social Care was replaced by the joint biosecurity centre (JBC) under the auspices of GCHQ, the U.K.’s intelligence, security and cyber agency. The new policy involved an unprecedented totalitarian lockdown-until-vaccine plan based on the logic of a bioterrorist attack (moreover, only defence related agencies – not the FDA – had the authority to implement emergency use authorisation (EUA) and issue the corresponding contracts for ‘medical countermeasures’ (p. 213 ff.). The pivot in Holland and Germany is also described, with Dutch health minister reporting that their pandemic policy was ‘under the direction of national coordinator for security and counterterrorism (NCTV), with corresponding NATO obligations (p. 123) involving widespread censorship and propaganda (pp. 135 ff.). Only Sweden implemented a different policy, and was widely condemned as a result. Moreover, the Covid vaccine approvals were to be delayed until after the US elections in November 2016.

Section 4.2 documents how the propaganda machine switches to lockdown on February 27, 2020, quoting private messaging from top officials. Such a major policy shift was announced on the same day in England, Australia, Japan, France, Germany, Holland, and the EU. It was also on this date that leadership of the US government pandemic response passed from HHS secretary Alex Azar to Deborah Birx (see above and diagram on p. 160). A corresponding tightening of control of coronavirus messaging was also implemented on the same day, while a New York Times op-ed by EcoHealth Alliance’s Dr Peter Daszak was also printed on February 27, identifying Covid-19 as the long-anticipated Disease X and likening it to a terrorist attack (p. 162). The author concludes with a number of questions for further consideration (pp. 254 ff.) in relation to the prospect of further pandemics and how they should be handled – surely as public health concerns rather than terrorist attacks justifying government secrecy and deception (pp. 260 ff.). If all this sounds implausible or even inconceivable to you as the reader, then I urge you to read this book for yourself, as its argument and findings are well documented, and it is sure to reframe your understanding of the Covid pandemic.