Covid Cover-up: Secrecy, Censorship and Suppression during the Pandemic

"Abstract 

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, most health authorities, governments, and mass media organizations presented a single official view concerning lockdowns, masking, distancing, and vaccines. The methods used against contrary views can be classified into four types: flooding, ignoring, censoring, and attacking. The method of information flooding involves presenting dominant views in a unified front, overwhelming contrary views by volume and consistency. The method of ignoring includes the absence of research on alternative approaches, failure to report on research contrary to orthodoxy, and not mentioning challenging views. Censoring involves active measures to prevent the circulation of contrary information and views. Attacking includes steps taken to silence and penalize scientists, doctors and others with heterodox views and campaigns to discredit alternatives to recommended approaches. These four types of methods are interrelated, forming an ecology of information control...

Discussion

... The interconnections between the four methods are illustrated by the attack on the 'Disinformation Dozen'. Most obviously,
this was an attack on the credibility of the named individuals. It was simultaneously a call for tech companies to censor them, by closing down their accounts and removing their tweets, posts and videos. The attack was also an affirmation of vaccination, a contribution to flooding. When the targeted individuals responded, and when Facebook rejected claims in the CCDH study, this was unreported, namely ignored, by most of the media...

Conclusion

... [It] is worth repeating that just because a view is silenced or attacked does not mean it is correct. It does suggest, though, that it is a view unwelcome to some influential players in the information system, and for that reason giving extra attention to the processes involved is warranted when trying to assess whether people should have wider access to the view. Skepticism concerning orthodox views is likely to increase when people start asking, 'What are they trying to hide?'"

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