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Richard Katz founded the Flower Essence Society in 1979 to research and teach the principles and practices of flower essence therapy, inspired by the pioneering work of Dr. Edward Bach in the 1930s. After early training in mathematics and science, Richard went on to study widely in several different apprenticeship programs in the fields of herbology, plant science, and meditation. He is a student of the spiritual science of Rudolf Steiner. With his wife and partner Patricia Kaminski, he has extended the repertoire of flower essences through a "living science of Nature," requiring an accurate understanding of subtle qualities of plants, and their correspondence with the mental and emotional realms within the human being. Richard and Patricia also manage Flower Essence Services, which produces flower essences and herbal products at Terra Flora, their 27-acre Biodynamic garden and wildlife sanctuary in the northern Sierra Nevada foothills near Nevada City, California.

A personal response to the "Plandemic" Claim

Richard Katz

Some people who share my dedication to natural health and to the spiritual quest have promoted the Plandemic videos and related posts. Because I posted last Spring about Dr. Tom Cowan's claims related to COVID-19 and 5G, I have been asked for my response to the “Plandemic” claim that this is a planned or fake pandemic.

Considering Covid-19 and 5G

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic I was seeking to understand what seemed to be an exaggerated fear of disease. As various severe outbreaks occurred, I became persuaded that there was an infectious epidemic occurring.

Several people in my community sent me links to Dr. Tom Cowan's video [March 2020], claiming that the new coronavirus (and viruses in general) are not infectious, and the illness known as COVID-19 is caused by exposure to 5G radiation, citing various research as well as Rudolf Steiner. You can read my response here.

The reaction of the major web platforms and media pundits was to “fact check” Cowan by claiming that there is nothing to worry about with 5G. In fact, there is a lot of legitimate concerns about the effects of electromagnetic fields (EMF) and especially 5G. I also appreciated many of the suggestions Dr. Cowan and his associates make about healthy diet and living habits that are typically ignored or downplayed by conventional medicine. Furthermore, my own life's journey has been very much enriched by the insights of Rudolf Steiner.

That is why it was particularly upsetting for me to find Cowan misquoting Steiner, misinterpreting scientific studies and using faulty logic to promote a simplistic point of view about COVID-19.

The conventional medical approach to disease is deeply flawed. I get that. The emphasis is all on fighting the pathogen (bacteria, virus, etc.), ignoring the conditions (within ourselves and in our environment) that allow the pathogen to flourish. Cowan goes to the other extreme, denying that there is any such phenomenon as infection. This is just the mirror-image of the narrow binary thinking of conventional medicine that he and others criticize. I prefer a more alchemical approach that integrates opposites into a new understanding, one that recognizes nuance rather than binary choices.

I appreciate questions being raised about “conventional wisdom.” I am wary of sweeping conclusions being presented as fact when there is scant evidence to support such conclusions.

The Plandemic claim

Now, a half year later [September 2020], I am finding a similar situation to the “plandemic” claims.

I am attracted by the idealism and truth-seeking impulses of Mikki Willis, the producer of the Plandemic videos, as well as the principle protagonists, July Mikovits in the first video and David Martin in the second. A number of natural health proponents that I follow and respect, such as Dr. Joseph Mercola, seem to be on board with some of the claims.

There are many points in the Plandemic videos and related material with which I agree.

1. Pharma is corrupt and seeks monopoly power over medicine, starting with Rockefeller and the Flexner Report, which targeted natural therapies.
2. Government, international organizations and charitable foundations are often enablers of Big Pharma's monopolistic practices
3. CDC has made a lot of “mistakes” and dishonest practices. The 1976 mass vaccination campaign was a good example. (I would add that this was an example of how political pressure from Ford facing an election skewed medical judgement. Trump was attempting a similar rush with “Operation Warp Speed” for a vaccine program on an accelerated schedule that had even the pharma promoters of vaccines voicing skepticism.)
4. The origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus are questionable. It could be related to “gain of function” research, which appears to be quite dangerous.
5. Large corporations control much of media and skew the information the public receives. Search engines and social media censor and discriminate against non-orthodox views (Even if I disagree with something, I should have the right to view it and not have it hidden as “dangerous.” I do want to social media to label manipulated videos and fake sites that hide their origins, such as Russians posing as Black Lives Matters activists.)
6. Pharma patents are questionable legally (and I would add morally, as the profit motive is misplaced in the arena of public health)
7. The pandemic reaction has given license to authoritarian measures that have the danger of eroding freedom. (However, I don't see the same concern for how Trump is commandeering the CDC, the Justice Department, and “Homeland Security” to enhance authoritarian power.)
8. Fact checkers often work from secondary sources, PR or spin, rather than source documents. (Thus, I have examined primary sources, or articles that reference primary sources, as much as I could in what follows. Many of these are indicated with hyperlinks.)
9. We need to get back to real food and medicines from nature
10. Human beings are resilient. Humanity is not a disease. (However, the view that “humanity is a disease” is not the dominant one of those who are concerned about climate change and ecological crises.)

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.”

This truism, popularized by Carl Sagan, seems particularly applicable to the “plandemic” claims.

The Plandemic videos and related claims make the case, directly stated or implied, that the COVID-19 pandemic was deliberately planned and executed for nefarious reasons of profit and control. In effect, the accusation is that our governments and private parties are conducting biological warfare on the human race.

Conventional wisdom dismisses this as a “conspiracy theory.” Since the world is full of real conspiracies (such as the opioid crisis), that label doesn't tell us anything. On the other hand, not all claims of conspiracies are credible. When events are troubling and confusing, it is tempting to look for villains to blame.

So, with an open mind, I looked at the major claims being made, and the evidence that is cited, and what I could find that would support, refute, or call into question the claims. I am not a medical expert or a lawyer, and I am not claiming certainty for these conclusions. I hope to encourage more critical thinking.

Here are some highlights of what I found. (A more exhaustive discussion would require me to abandon my full-time work.)

Claim #1: The Pandemic was predicted; thus, it was a planned pandemic, a “plandemic.”

Let's look at what “proof” is provided.

1. The Pandemic video ends (at 22 minutes) with Dr. Fauci's talk at Georgetown University in February 2017 in which he says, “There is no question that there will be a surprise outbreak. The thing that we are extraordinary confident about is that we are going to see this in the next few years.” The subject of the talk was “Pandemic Preparedness in the Next Administration.”
2. The Pandemic Video 2 prominently features the October 2019 Event 201, a pandemic simulation exercise meant to test out preparedness for a future pandemic, based on the recent experience with epidemics, looking at how easily disease can spread with international travel, and anticipating weaknesses in the public health systems. The Event 201 simulation scenario involved a novel SARS-like coronavirus, although different than SARS-CoV-2. The Plandemic 2 video points out how the simulation anticipated such 2020 experiences as the shortage of masks and other PPE, attempts to deal with vaccine skepticism, control of information and so on.
3. David Martin quotes the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board 2019 annual report as stating “the United Nations (including WHO) conducts at least two system-wide training and simulation exercises, including one for covering the deliberate release of a lethal respiratory pathogen” as part of his lawsuit claiming a pandemic conspiracy.

There is so much emotional charge and hyperbole around this, that I will make a simple rebuttal. Anticipating the likelihood of a future disaster, planning the response to the disaster, and looking at the potential challenges that may arise, is not the same thing as creating the disaster. It is what anyone responsible for public health and safety should be doing. People can reasonably disagree with the response strategy, but that is not the same as accusing the planners of crimes against humanity.

The logical fallacy of these accusations is best illustrated by a recent experience in our local community. Because of increasing incidents of wildfires in rural California, including the near total destruction of a nearby town in 2018, our local county Office of Emergency Services and local fire departments planned a wildfire simulation last year, with Code Red alerts for evacuation. Then, recently (August 2020) when there was a local lightning-caused wildfire, these same people put out Code Red Alerts and issued real evacuation orders, quite similar to those that were planned and described in their literature and web sites. Should I then conclude that the Office of Emergency Services and the fire departments set the fire so they could get increased funding, or as a plot to control the lives of the county residents?

With regard to David Martin's “conspiratorial” evidence in the GPMB report that the world should prepare for a possible deliberate pathogenic release, the report highlights three possible scenarios for which the world should prepare, “A rapidly spreading pandemic due to a lethal respiratory pathogen (whether naturally emergent or accidentally or deliberately released) poses additional preparedness requirements.”

Using my analogy with fire preparedness, we should prepare for a wildfire whether it is caused by lightning, accident (equipment failure, for example) or arson. Anticipating each of those possibilities is not evidence of a crime by those making recommendations for preparedness.

Claim #2: The SARS-CoV-2 virus (identified as the cause of COVID-19) was engineered in a laboratory, with the implication that it was deliberately released.

1. The CDC patented coronavirus (SARS-CoV related to the 2003 SARS outbreak. According to a request for investigation of anti-trust violations, posted by David Martin, this shows that the CDC is claiming they invented the coronavirus or that they are illegally patenting a product of nature, with the intention of profiting from it.
2. “Gain of Function” research at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, was outsourced to the Wuhan Virology Institute, and was involved in creating infectious coronaviruses, with the implication that this is the source of the SARS-CoV-2 associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, as further charged by Martin and others.
3. Patents are a complex topic, deeply involved with the for-profit medical industry in the USA. I applaud David Martin and others who show the corruption of Big Pharma, often enabled by government and private foundations.

Martin points to a 2013 Supreme Court decision ruled that part of a CDC patent was illegal under 35 U.S.C. § 101, which has been interpreted as prohibiting the patenting of naturally occurring phenomena. The case was not about a coronavirus patent, but rather it concerned patents by Myriad to isolated two genes associated with breast cancer and to synthesize related cDNA. The court struck down the first claim to isolate the genes but upheld the second claim to synthesize related cDNA.

From the opinion:

It is important to note what is not implicated by this decision. First, there are no method claims before this Court. Had Myriad created an innovative method of manipulating genes while searching for the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, it could possibly have sought a method patent. But the processes used by Myriad to isolate DNA were well understood by geneticists at the time of Myriad's patents “were well understood, widely used, and fairly uniform insofar as any scientist engaged in the search for a gene would likely have utilized a similar approach”…

There are two patents mentioned in David Martin's anti-trust claim related to the SARS-CoV virus (not the current SARS-COV-2 virus), both entitled “Coronavirus isolated from humans.”

US Patent 7,776,521 makes seven claims, three are for methods of detecting the virus, and four are for variations of a kit for detecting the virus. There is no claim of having “invented” the virus, nor is there any claim of creating new viruses. These claims appear to this lay observer not to fit under the Supreme Court's criteria for illegal patents for products of nature.

US Patent 7,220,852 makes a single claim for “An isolated nucleic acid molecule…” so it appears to me likely to fall under the Supreme Court's ruling that merely isolating a genetic sequence is not a patentable “invention.”

David Martin has done extensive research into the collusion between government and Pharma companies, and the enabling of Pharma companies to monopolize and profit from questionable patents. I do not see that he has made the case that this illegal activity includes deliberately creating a pandemic. The patents cited do not prove that the CDC or others engineered either the SARS-CoV virus responsible for the 2003 outbreak or the SARS-CoV-2 virus associated with the current pandemic. Despite people telling me breathlessly that “CDC patented the coronavirus” with the implication they are referring to this pandemic, there is no patent associated with SARS-CoV-2.

Furthermore, the CDC claimed that the patent was done to preserve public access research, as a way of preventing other companies from making proprietary patents to restrict access. Can we take the CDC at its word? Of course not. Martin claims that “the commercial exploitation of any research or commercial activity in the United States involving SARS-CoV would constitute an infringement of CDC's illegal patent.” However, he did not present any evidence of, nor did I find any record, of any claim of infringement on the part of CDC with regard to this patent. But even if the government is battling with Pharma companies over patents (as they apparently are doing now with Gilead over the HIV drug Truveda), this is not evidence of a conspiracy to create a pandemic virus.

The deeper issue here is the for-profit nature of our health care industry.

“Gain of Function” (GOF) is a controversial process by which pathogens such as viruses are manipulated to create new versions, possibly more transmissible or more pathogenic, in order to understand disease transmission, prepare for future epidemics, develop potential vaccines. One obvious danger is that these new pathogens might accidently escape. Another danger is that such programs could be a cover for secret (and illegal) bioterrorism research.

The US paused research grants for GOF studies in 2014 for a re-evaluation. As David Martin points out, ongoing programs were allowed to continue, so it was not really a change in policy. In fact, the pause was lifted in 2017 on the basis that new safety procedures were supposedly put in place.

I think GOF research is problematic, but it is still not proof that SARS-CoV-2 was deliberately engineered. Research that is repeated cited by Martin and others is that of Dr. Robert Baric of the University of North Carolina. A study in 2015 A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence is cited as proving the lab origin of SARS-CoV-2.

Researchers were concerned that a coronavirus in bats might have the potential to become a human pathogen. They studied the SHC014-CoV virus and made some modifications to create a virus that was able to infect lung cells. However, this was not the SARS-CoV-2 virus. It was done to show a potential danger that turned out to be real. This local news story takes on some of the accusations, as well as this medical article.

David Martin points to this research with the chimeric SHC014-CoV as the smoking gun evidence that SARS-COV-2 was engineered. The article cited above points out the very significant differences in the two viruses. The research admittedly showed the potential of a coronavirus to infect lung tissue. But it is an unproven leap of inference to conclude that proves that an infectious coronavirus that emerged more than four years after this work was the result (deliberate or accidental) of Baric's work at the University of North Carolina. At most it is an unproven hypothesis that warrants further investigation.

I think the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is still an open question. There are several hypotheses offered:

1. The virus jumped from bats directly to humans as a zoonotic disease, a transmission route that is becoming more common due to habitat disruption of many species. This is the Chinese official explanation, and is accepted by most, but not all, researchers. The Chinese initially claimed that this happened in the Wuhan wet (live animal) market, although that theory has since been discounted.
2. The virus accidently escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) as a natural bat virus that had been collected in the wild. The WIV had been collecting many coronavirus specimens from bats. Although the Chinese Wuhan virologist Shi Zhengli (“bat woman”) claims the SARS-CoV virus doesn't match any of the samples WIV collected, perhaps that is incorrect.
3. The SARS-CoV-2 virus was the result of modifying natural viruses in the gain of function research program and accidently escaped from the Wuhan lab. If so, there is culpability for negligence, but that is not the same as deliberately creating a bioweapon.
4. The SARS-CoV-2 virus was deliberately engineered as part of a conspiracy to create a pandemic.

While I do not accept that the first hypothesis is definitely proven, there is no evidence that has been presented to prove the fourth conspiracy hypothesis which cannot be explained by one of the other hypotheses. To present the conspiracy hypothesis as proven fact is irresponsible and weakens the case to examine some of the important open questions about the pandemic, its origins, and the response to it.

Claim #3: COVID-19 is caused by EMF or Vaccines.

Skyhorse (September 29, 2020)

1. Tom Cowan, Arthur Firstenberg, Andrew Kaufman, Sally Fallon and others claim the disease is caused by EMF, and it is not communicable. I dealt with these ideas in my earlier post. Cowan and Fallon have a new book expanding on these claims.
2. Judy Mikovits claims in the Pandemic interview and elsewhere that infection known as COVID-19 is due to coronaviruses in flu vaccines grown in animal cell lines. She gives the example of a flu vaccine given in 2019 in Italy because it was created in a line of cells from dogs and “Dogs have lots of coronaviruses.”
3. Judy Mikovits claimed in the Pandemic interview that a Defense Department study proved that “Flu vaccines increase the odds of getting COVID-19 by 36%.”

To restate a basic point from my earlier post, we can agree that there are multiple factors in our environment that create susceptibility to disease, but that does not disprove that diseases are contagious.

Concerning Dr. Mikovits' claim of vaccines containing coronaviruses, I am surprised that an experienced researcher and scientist is advancing this claim. Yes, dogs have coronaviruses. So do other animals. So do humans. There are many kinds of coronaviruses, including one associated with the common cold. There is no evidence presented by Dr. Mikovits or anyone else that flu vaccines contain SARS-CoV-2, or that other coronaviruses cause COVID-19.

The Defense Department study cited concerned the 2017-2018 flu season, long before COVID-19. It was a study to show how taking an influenza vaccine affected susceptibility to various respiratory viruses. Among the findings were indications that susceptibility to various coronaviruses was greater among those who receive the vaccine.

At best, this presents a hypothesis for further study, to see if influenza vaccines create greater susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2. It is premature and irresponsible to cite that study as offering proof of susceptibility to infection that causes COVID-19.

Claim #4: The Pandemic is a hoax or exaggerated.

1. Testing is unreliable or meaningless, giving false positives
2. Reports of COVID-19 deaths are manipulated by financial incentives to be exaggerated.
3. Only deaths where there are no co-morbidities (no diagnoses other than COVID-19) should count, which means that 94% of the reported COVID-19 deaths are a lie.

My first comment about the hoax claim is that it contradicts the conspiracy claim. Is the pandemic an engineered virus meant to infect the world, or a hoax that really is not a pandemic at all? This reminds me of the FDA cracking down on homeopathy, claiming that it is so dilute that it can't be effective, but homeopathic remedies such as Belladonna are toxic. I don't accept either claim, but both can't be true.

How do we sort out the claims that the reported numbers of cases and numbers of death are fabrications? Is asymptomatic transmission simply an artifact of false positives? If someone has more than one condition when they die, is it misleading to include COVID-19 as a cause of death and count that in the statistics? Are the lump sum payments for COVID-19 a bribe to inflate the numbers, or an appropriate response to increased costs for COVID-19 treatment? What about the claims that cases and deaths from COVID-19 are undercounted, because of lack of availability of testing, or people choosing not to deal with the medical system, or who cannot afford to do so?

The clearest way to see if there is really a pandemic is to look at what is called “excess mortality,” comparing the number of people dying during a particular time period, with the average number of deaths in a similar time period in the same region. If we do this for the regions that experience spikes in reported COVID-19 cases and COVID-19 deaths, we see that the curve of excessive deaths closely tracks the COVID-19 statistics. These statistics support the anecdotal evidence of over-crowded hospitals and morgues during the worst spikes of the disease. There are so many real-life human stories of people losing loved ones, and people who survived, but have chronic problems, that I find it rather heartless to dismiss it all as a hoax. Even if one believes it was deliberately created, there is still real suffering that needs to be addressed.

Claim #5: Public health measures (mandating masks, distancing, business closures or restrictions) are unnecessary, harmful, illegal and a threat to freedom.

1. David Martin claims that California Governor Gavin Newsom's Executive Order of March 4, 2020 violates California law because it is based on the “threat of Covid-19” rather than an actual threat “confirmed by serology or confirmed immunologic evidence.”
2. David Martin, Judy Mikovits, Denis Rancourt and others claim that studies show that mask-wearing is useless and even detrimental.
3. Judy Mikovits in the Plandemic interview claims that “we can forget our freedom and our humanity, because we will be killed by this agenda”

As a resident of California, I am familiar with Governor Newsom's actions. The California Emergency Services Act states that a “'State of emergency' means the duly proclaimed existence of conditions of disaster or of extreme peril to the safety of persons and property within the state caused by such conditions as air pollution, fire, flood, storm, epidemic, riot, drought, sudden and severe energy shortage, plant or animal infestation or disease, the Governor's warning of an earthquake or volcanic prediction, or an earthquake, or other conditions, other than conditions resulting from a labor controversy or conditions causing a “state of war emergency,” which, by reason of their magnitude, are or are likely to be beyond the control of the services, personnel, equipment, and facilities of any single county, city and county, or city and require the combined forces of a mutual aid region or regions to combat…”

Serology and immunologic evidence of an infection is available after the infection has occurred and detectible antibodies have developed. It is evidence of a past infection, not a test for a current infection or the possibility of a future infection.

It is routine practice for governors to declare an anticipatory state of emergency, for example, when a hurricane is predicted, which would fit the criteria of “extreme peril.” The predicted disaster may not be a certainty, and the emergency measures might not be needed. However, it is better to order the evacuations and stage first-responders and relief supplies before the peak of the disaster, rather than wait for proof that towns are submerged in storm surges and inaccessible.

Governor Newsom and other officials, observing what was happening in other parts of the world, and knowing the potential for an epidemic, had every reason to believe that there was “extreme peril to the safety of persons” in California by the emerging pandemic.

Emergency powers can be abused, and a good argument can be made that after the initial action, when the pandemic appears to be an ongoing problem, decision-making should be more collaborative. Certainly, the extreme measures taken in Victoria state in Australia seem unnecessarily draconian. However, I do question people who resist a mask-wearing mandate as tyranny but have no problem with federal secret police snatching demonstrators off the street in unmarked cars, threats to jail political opponents, or attempts to undermine elections.

Concerning the mask debate, the studies cited are about protecting against being infected by influenza or comparing different kinds of masks. Mask-wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic is primarily being promoted to reduce the spread of respiratory droplets to others.

We have to rely on anecdotal evidence, as it would be unethical and probably impossible to conduct a randomized controlled study of community spread for masked and unmasked populations. How could such a test be blinded? Is there such a thing as a “placebo” mask? Since you are measuring community spread, you would need to have whole communities participating and not interacting with each other.

I am surprised that natural health experts such as Dr. Mercola are insisting on controlled studies for mask-wearing when such standards are often not used for natural medicines. In fact, that is one of the ways that Big Pharma attacks natural remedies that have a long history of traditional use. Another name for anecdotal evidence is “empirical” evidence, the evidence of experience.

We can see that countries and regions that have practice of mask wearing, such as Japan, have had less spread of the disease than areas where that is not the case. We also see that “mass spreader” events, such as Trump's Tulsa rally or the motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota, where participants did not practice social distancing or mask-wearing, resulted in spikes of Covid-19.

There were similar situations during the 1918 flu pandemic, such as the September, 1918 parade in Philadelphia that led to thousands of deaths. And protests against masks are nothing new. Protests against the mask requirements in San Francisco in 1918-1919 led to the formation of the Anti-Mask League.

No one claims that masks prevent all infection for oneself or others. However, given that the likelihood that they help mitigate the spread of infection, it seems such a small sacrifice of personal comfort to make for the common good.

As for the quote by Mikovits that they are going to “kill us all,” I noted how at the end of the Plandemic 2 video producer Mikki Willis shows climate change activists warning we have only a few year left to change, a woman who says she is afraid to have children. He then states that “fear shuts down the brain and we look to others to guide us.”

I agree that fear can be detrimental to our health on all levels. For the climate emergency, we do need a wake-up call, but let's focus on hopeful solutions, such as regenerative agriculture and more sustainable lifestyles. So, why is Willis promoting someone stoking fear of a dark conspiracy that will “kill us all?” More generally, why are those advocates for natural health, who rightly criticize Big Pharma for its stoking of fear of disease, promoting such a fear-based approach?

Claim #6: The pandemic is part of a conspiracy by Fauci, Gates, CDC, WHO and Pharma to depopulate the earth, while personally profiting from the pandemic and vaccines.

1. Judy Mikovits presents experiences of arrest and withdrawal of her Chronic Fatigue Syndrome study as the result of a conspiracy by Dr. Anthony Fauci to suppress her questioning the “party line.” She accuses Fauci of causing millions of deaths due to his handling of AIDS / HIV research.
2. Bill Gates and Anthony Fauci in particular are accused of promoting the “plandemic” in order to reap huge financial rewards in the development of vaccines.
3. Bill Gates and his foundation are accused of fostering a human depopulation program through vaccines and contraceptive programs, especially in India and Africa.

Dr. Judy Mikovits has a complex story, and I will focus on the aspect that relates to the “plandemic” claims. She presents herself as a victim of persecution by Dr. Fauci and the CDC. When I examine the details of her arrest and the withdrawal of her research study on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, I don't see any evidence of a Fauci / CDC plot. The arrest was for stealing materials from her former employer Whittemore Petersen Institute (WPI) in Reno, Nevada. Some claim the arrest was invalid because the warrant wasn't signed. The charges were dropped after the Whitemores got into legal trouble themselves. This seems to be an employer/employee dispute about who owns the research materials that Dr. Mikovits worked with while employed by WPI. One could argue that WPI was overzealous in pursuing her with an extradition order to California. They had a lot of political connections in Nevada. However, Mikovits gives the impression that she was being jailed and gagged for telling the truth by a conspiracy of Fauci and the CDC, for which I have seen no evidence.

Judy Mikovits

Mikovits claims that she was given a “gag” order, but there seems to be no evidence of this either. When questioned by Mikki Willis as a follow-up to his Plandemic interview, she said she was told that if she said anything to disparage the Whitemores, they would find new charges to arrest her. If true, that is a potential illegal threat by her unsavory ex-employer. But she creates the false impression that the CDC and Fauci were conspiring to keep her from “telling the truth” about her research.

Her 2009 study that purported to show the mice retroviruses caused Chronic Fatigue Syndrome was retracted because it was shown that the results were due to contamination of the cells being studied. I don't condemn her for making a mistake, but I do question her cultivating her image as a truth-telling martyr to the Pharma conspiracy. Her virology colleagues have some pointed comments to make. Science magazine, which published her original research paper, and the retraction, did a review of her claims in the Plandemic video.

I imagine that some will claim that the retraction was due to the political influence of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), publishers of Science, as they receive funding from government and private foundations who can be considered as guardians of medical orthodoxy. So, it is likely they rejected any argument questioning vaccine safety. However, unless someone has evidence that the retraction was politically based, rather than based on the criteria cited in the follow-up studies, the charge is unsupported speculation.

I am not in a position to evaluate all the claims made in Mikovits' books, Plague or Plague of Corruption, which she co-wrote with Kent Heckenlively, or whether her claims about vaccines being contaminated with animal viruses is credible. In Plague of Corruption (pages 78, 79, 86, 92) she rehashes the charges that Vince Foster's 1993 death was not a suicide, possibly arranged by the Clintons and related to an affair Foster was having with Hillary Clinton. For me, this calls into question her objectivity, and is an example of making accusations by inuendo. After all that particular claim was debunked by none other than Kenneth Star, the Whitewater prosecutor, hardly a friend of the Clintons .

Frequently in the Plandemic videos Bill Gates and Dr. Anthony Fauci are accused of promoting the pandemic and an eventual vaccine as a way to reap huge profits for themselves. Dr. Fauci's name (and other researchers) are on patents held by US government agencies for government work. An article in the British Medical Journal stated, “Dr Anthony Fauci told the BMJ that as a government employee he was required by law to put his name on the patent for the development of interleukin 2 and was also required by law to receive part of the payment the government received for use of the patent. He said that he felt it was inappropriate to receive payment and donated the entire amount to charity.” Fauci makes a good salary, so he might not be motivated by personal greed in his actions.

With his wealth and worldwide activities in support of vaccines and other public health initiatives, Bill Gates has been depicted as the embodiment of evil, the one who planned the pandemic to profit from the vaccines, and perhaps to depopulate the world. The latter charge comes from Gate's support of family planning initiatives and has been promoted by groups that consider contraception the equivalent of abortion.

The Gates foundation has funded many vaccine programs and is funding current research on a vaccine for the current pandemic. One supposedly damning quote from a 2011 talk by Gates is that vaccines are “one of the best investments we can make.” The point that Gates was making is that the patent system of intellectual property rights allows vaccine makers to invest their profits into research and making vaccines available at low cost to poorer countries. It's not clear that he or his foundation were making profits from the vaccines. He seems more focused on giving away money than making it for himself.

So, I do not buy the charge that Fauci and Gates are evil men sacrificing lives so they can enrich themselves. While I do not have personal knowledge of either of them, I see them as people who believe they are helping the world by working through the current economic and political systems based on the profit motive. Perhaps they are sincere; perhaps they are rationalizing corruption for a supposed greater good. I do agree with critics of the patent and intellectual property rights systems that they foster corruption, and use taxpayer money to enable greed by Pharma companies, despite protestations otherwise.

However, I believe we make a mistake to personalize this corruption by making villains of people like Fauci and Gates, when then problems in health care are much deeper and more systemic. These problems are not only ones of financing, profit-motive, and inequality of access to care, all of which are important, but also issues of restricting freedom of choice of methods of health care, restricting holistic and natural practices that don't fit the paradigm of medical science, and which don't contribute to profits. I appreciated Mikki Willis's reference in Plandemic 2 to the Flexner Report promoted by JD Rockefeller, as it set the stage for the pharmaceutical industry and American Medical Association to suppress homeopathic and botanical medicine for many decades. We really have a sickness care industry, not so much a health care service, which is part of a predatory economic structure based on greed, rather than the common good.

That is the problem with the “plandemic” charges. There are real questions that should be addressed about dangerous bio-tech research, vaccine safety, patents and Pharma profits, restrictions on health freedom and authoritarian tendencies in politics, finance and technology. Speculation and inuendo leading to extreme accusations undermine the credibility of those raising these questions. We become polarized into warring camps, each with their own version of reality.

Another example of how unsubstantiated claims distract from real problems, is the issue of child sex abuse. It's a real problem, but the QAnon charges are hurting, not helping the legitimate efforts to address this problem. I also question how plandemic followers can give credence to Sasha Stone who, like the Q-followers, thinks that Donald Trump is a champion against child abuse because of a photo-op held earlier this year. Trump is credibly accused of sexual assault and rape and his policies have locked up refugee children in detention centers, separated from their families. #SaveTheChildren, indeed. When I see anti-mask demonstrators holding up Trump signs as they warn of unsafe vaccinations, I wonder if they ever heard of Operation Warp Speed.

Claim #7: Media platforms are censoring contrarian points of view, in collaboration with government agencies.

1. Google/YouTube, Facebook and other media platforms are removing or restricting content that they deem “misinformation” in violation of First Amendment rights.
2. The US government has long had policies of covertly influencing public opinion and is using these techniques during the current pandemic.
3. Big Pharma has undue influence on public opinion and government policies through its financial strength.

I think these claims are credible, although I would say that we still have quite a bit of freedom of expression in this country and attempts to silence alternative points of view have largely failed.

I don't agree with videos and posts being removed from media platforms because someone deems them to be “misinformation.” Who is to be the arbitrator of truth, Mark Zuckerberg and his algorithms? There is a place for sanctioning misrepresentation, either with notices or removal, such as Russian trolls posing as US-based activists, or “deep-fake” videos that distort what someone has said. But I am all for a robust exchange of ideas.

Conclusion

As a student of Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy, I work with his idea that evil has two faces. There is a “dark” side that represents the mechanization of humanity, driven by power, greed and a narrow materialism that denies transcendent human values. Then there is a “light” side, which can take us into hubris, inflation and self-deception, mistaking the brilliance of our projections for truth. I believe the plandemic promoters, in their zeal to counter the dark evil of our medical, economic and social systems, are promoting the opposite distortion, with exaggerated claims and emotional hyperbole that clouds true perception and right action.

We have something to learn from each “side” of the debate, while maintaining our equilibrium centered in heart-felt and clear thinking.