Gavin Newsom Lied to Chuck Todd on ‘Meet the Press’ Sunday

Sunday, Gavin Newsom lied to Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” saying that “we didn’t know what we didn’t know” when it came to the pandemic.

No, Gavin – you knew. 

You knew the low health risk of COVID to the general public and you knew the high risk of devastation and debasement to the general public your pandemic response would cause.

Sunday, Newsom also said he is worried because he’s “not convinced we learned the lessons,” yet from the response to COVID, but, still, he would have done unspecified things differently, possibly.

No, Gavin, you wouldn’t.

In October, 2021, on the same show with the same extremely chummy host, Newsom proudly spoke of how California had “leaned into the future” of the pandemic with its draconian masking, “vaccination” – in quotes because the shot was and is not a vaccine, mandates, closures, lockdowns, and such.

He also said then that the Democrats were united behind the “science, masking, and testing” effort – as opposed to fear and anxiety being spread by “Trump and Trumpism” and that Republican governors who expressed concern about possible future vaccine mandates were politicizing health and expressing “a political point-of-view that is getting in the way of progress to end this pandemic.”

Newsom also took credit for allowing local agencies to go further than state regulations and praised local government agencies (see the execrable Barbara Ferrer in Los Angeles County) and praised those that did.

In August, 2020, Trinity College (Hartford) Prof. Tom Harrington wrote this piece Are You Ready for the “No One Could Have Known” Routine?   Only five months into the pandemic, Harrington outlined the swath of destruction the response was causing.  Devastated childhoods.  The destruction of Main Street businesses.  The massive increase in surveillance and censorship. And on and on.

Harrington – 37 months ago – predicted exactly what Newsom would say on Sunday, and what many other hardcore pandemicists have been shyly saying over the past year (that is until a few weeks ago when, for whatever reason – well, every other reasons than scientific –  the fear of COVID and the idea of forcing masks and such was reinvigorated.)  Harrington went on to write “The Treason of Experts“:

“Privileged people, whose educational background putatively provided them with greater critical thinking skills than most, and hence an enhanced ability to see through the barrage of propaganda, fell immediately and massively into line.

Not only did we see them overwhelmingly accept the government’s repressive, unproven and often patently unscientific measures to contain the Covid virus, but watched many of them emerge online and in other public forums as semi-official enforcers of repressive Government policies and Big Pharma marketing pitches.

They mocked and ignored world-class doctors and scientists, and anyone else who expressed ideas that were at variance with official government policies. They told us, ridiculously, that science was not a continuous process of trial and error, but a fixed canon of immutable laws, while promoting, on that same absurd basis, the establishment and enforcement of medical apartheid within families and communities.

In the name of keeping their children safe from a virus that could do them virtually no harm, they greatly impeded their long-term social, physical and intellectual development through useless mask-wearing, social distancing and screen-based learning. And in the name of protecting the elderly, they promulgated medically useless rules that forced many older people to suffer and die alone, deprived of the comfort of their loved ones.”

And these are the people Newsom not only relied upon, but believes he is one of.

Newsom – and those around him and the coterie of national and international experts at every level of government everywhere – knew the truth of the matter. They knew the virus targeted the elderly and unhealthy.  They knew the fatality estimates were catastrophically false.  They knew the societal degradation the response was causing.

They didn’t just get it wrong, which would give them the moral allowance to ask for forgiveness, to ask to be able to move on and forget what happened as the now-infamous Brown University professor demanded last year. 

They knew exactly what they were doing because “the science” told them so very very early into the ordeal: COVID-like viruses are most deadly to the aged and unhealthy.  

The Santa Clara Study – conducted right here in April, 2020, only a month or so into the pandemic – showed conclusively that the model-projected fatality rate was absurdly wrong.  The study was badmouthed, shot down, shut down, the actual, real, non-political, and noted scientists who conducted it were vilified, the university itself turned on it, and the study was aggressively ignored.

It, of course, turned out to be correct. From the above article by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya:

It is impossible for me not to speculate about what might have happened had our research been met with a more typical scientific spirit. For anyone with an open mind, the study’s results implied that the lockdown-focused strategy of March 2020 had failed to suppress the spread of the disease. It also suggested that the disease had very likely been in circulation in California for longer than the late January 2020 official start date of the American pandemic. Finally, it suggested that fear-mongering about the fatality rate of the virus was irresponsible.

Of course, no single study– let alone the very first serosurvey in one county in the U.S. – should have been the sole guide to policy. However, as multiple independent sources replicated these results, the conclusion should have become common knowledge among public health officials: lockdowns had failed and likely harmed the well-being of children, the poor, and working-class people.

And the media picked up on the study as well; while almost all of the coverage was derogatory, this Associated Press piece from April 20, 2020 does have on rather interesting tidbit:

“For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia and death. The vast majority of people recover.”

That was the 23^rd paragraph in a 23 paragraph-long story. In April, 2020.

Gavin knew.

He knew when he went to French Laundry.

He knew in July, 2020 when he ordered Independence Day celebrations – and almost everything else –  cancelled. 

He knew when in the same month the state “removed or buried” COVID mortality rates on their websites.

He knew in August, 2020 when he announced fear of an upcoming “twindemic” and said testing regimens will continue to at least March, 2021 even though the CDC had just modified its directives to lessen testing requirements.

He knew in that same month when he announced a new statewide color-coded warning system and moved the goalposts of the “end” of the pandemic again.

He knew in November, 2020 when he said “compliance is not punitive” as he announced even harsher lockdown strictures, including curfews after his trip to the French Laundry became public knowledge.

He knew in June, 2021 when he said he was going to lift mask mandates but immediately deferred to Cal OSHA when they –  days later – said not so fast.

He knew in February, 2022 when he announced his SMARTER campaign to confront the COVID “endemic,” including a special dedicated team to combat “misinformation.”

He knew in September, 2022, when he signed a bill forcing employers to track potential COVID exposure.

He knew in October, 2022, when he signed a bill muzzling doctors from talking in a certain way to patients about COVID. 

He knew in March, 2023 when, after ending his emergency powers, he doubled down on the SMARTER plan, taking the COVID response blueprint far into the future to “fight” coming pandemics.

As a reminder, the Globe recently reported:

The SMARTER plan – which Newsom said “… is not just for COVID-19. We can use these strategies and systems for future emergencies. We’ll improve the SMARTER Plan as we learn what works” entails the following:

• • Shots – Vaccines are the most powerful weapon against hospitalization and serious illness.
  • Masks – Properly worn masks with good filtration help slow the spread of COVID-19 or other respiratory viruses.
  • Awareness – We will continue to stay aware of how COVID-19 is spreading, evolving variants, communicate clearly how people should protect themselves, and coordinate our state and local government response.
  • Readiness – COVID-19 is not going away and we need to be ready with the tools, resources and supplies we will need to quickly respond and keep public health and the healthcare system well prepared.
  • Testing – Getting the right type of tests—PCR or antigen—to where they are needed most. Testing will help California minimize the spread of COVID-19.
  • Education – California will continue to work to keep schools open and children safely in classrooms for in-person instruction.
  • Rx – Evolving and improving treatments will become increasingly available and critical as a tool to save lives.

This is not an example of learning lessons, and Newsom knows that, despite his mention Sunday of some sort of lessons learned summit of experts from all “sides” he held – he was not clear when, and no reference can be found about the meeting, though he did say a report was coming – at the Sunnylands estate in Rancho Mirage (the location is mentioned solely because Newsom said it was the “west coast” version of Camp David, an assertion that would come as a surprise to the foundation that actually owns it – Newsom, however, could not but help himself from making a presidential reference.)

Sunday, Newsom – again – would not go into specifics of what he would have done differently if he had “known,” though he said there would have been “iterations on the theme” of possibly softening certain stances.  Furthermore, he tempered his own responsibility by emphasizing the team of experts (see above) approach:  “…And it was hardly ‘I,’ it was ‘we’ collectively. I think all of us, in terms of our collective wisdom, we’ve evolved.”

Newsom knew and we know he knew, not just because of the vast amount of data available even early in the pandemic, but also because of how he acted. Going back to The French Laundry, as John Kobylt of KFI’s “The John and Ken Show” has noted numerous times, you can tell what a person really thinks and knows by the actions they take.  If Newsom and his coteries of friends – many in the health care industry that night – were as fearful as they wanted the public to be they would never have gathered like that.  But they knew the danger for them – healthy middle-aged people – was infinitesimal so they did.

It is obvious why Newsom is now disingenuously, disgustingly trying to palm off the entire pandemic as an “oops, nobody could have known, we tried really hard, we’ll do better next time” event.  

But why did it happen in the first place and why was the response so harsh in California?

Newsom is a very insecure person.  Smart enough to know he’s not as smart as the people around and growing up rich (very rich) -adjacent, he defaults into incomprehensible jargon to pretend he is part of the crowd of people that call themselves “experts” and Newsom could not go against his own crowd. 

And then there is the confluence of power, profit, and panic the pandemic wrought. By instilling panic, those in power could profit off of the pandemic in ways they never thought imaginable.  From the health care/pharmaceutical industry to the world of on-line shopping to the flood of government money, the response to the pandemic – not COVID itself – was the perfect opportunity for those with power to create profit.

And when you have power, profit, and panic as the three main dynamics of any situation, you rarely end up with a positive outcome for the people outside of the charmed circle of friends who got no-bid contracts, officials that got dictatorial power, and a media that was able to turn clicks into crack the panicked public could not stop smoking.

Yes, Gavin – you knew.