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Dec. 27, 2021 - Epoch Times
25:21
Manipulated Statistics? Senators Open Investigation into CDC and FDA Data Methodology | Facts Matter
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Good evening.
Over in Nebraska, the Attorney General out there has just issued this legal opinion statement saying that his office will not prosecute any doctors or any physicians who prescribe either hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin as off-label medicines for COVID. Meanwhile,
over in the state of Oregon, two state senators out there have just submitted this petition right here to the acting U.S. attorney for the state of Oregon, requesting that he investigate the alleged manipulation of COVID statistics that is being allegedly conducted by the CDC and the FDA. And then lastly, I had the opportunity to sit down with Mr.
Ryan Hartwick, who used to be a content moderator for Facebook, meaning that he was essentially the guy who was looking at your memes, laughing, and then deleting them.
However, he later became a whistleblower and he exposed what was happening behind the scenes.
And during our interview, he explained the inner workings of how big tech censorship actually works over at Facebook.
Let's go through it all together.
This is your daily Facts Matter update, and I'm your host, Roman, from the Epoch Times.
And now let's begin today's discussion over in Nebraska.
Five days ago, Nebraska's Attorney General, Mr.
Doug Peterson, he's a Republican, he issued a legal opinion, I have it right here in front of me, which said that his office will not seek disciplinary action against doctors who prescribe either hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin, And so, this legal opinion came as a formal response to a question that was asked of the Attorney General's office by Ms.
Daniette Smith, who is the head of Nebraska's Department of Health, and she is in charge of both licensing as well as disciplining doctors.
And she has the attorney general very simply, which is a very pertinent question because let's say her office decides to discipline a physician who prescribes ivermectin as a treatment for COVID. which is a very pertinent question because let's say her Well, she still needs the attorney general's office to prosecute that individual.
And as a response to her question, here's what the Attorney General wrote in his opinion statement.
Quote...
My office finds the available data does not justify filing disciplinary actions against physicians simply because they prescribe ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine to prevent or treat COVID-19.
He then added that his office is not specifically recommending any particular treatment for COVID, but he added that in regards to the two treatments that were mentioned above, his office, quote, concludes that the available evidence suggests that they might work for some people.
Furthermore, he says that it's best for the state to stay out of it, And to let the physician-patient relationship take its place.
Here's what he wrote.
And aside from the question of those two drugs, he then added a short list of reasons why a healthcare provider might be subject to disciplinary actions, none of which includes the prescribing of either of those two treatments.
Here's what he wrote.
Quote.
Healthcare providers in general may be subject to discipline if they neglect to obtain informed consent, deceive their patients, prescribe excessively high doses, Which is pretty much exactly in line with state law.
And so there you have it.
Over in the state of Nebraska, the Attorney General's office will no longer be pursuing cases of physicians who give their patients either hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin.
Now, I would love to get into the different studies that have been conducted on these two drugs and the different competing statements from different organizations, some of whom are against their use and some of whom are for their use.
But as you know, that is very likely stepping into a minefield here on YouTube.
Although I think in the very near future, I'll actually create a longer video that I'll put exclusively over on Epic TV talking exactly about this issue.
And if you'd like to see that, please leave your comment in the comment section below.
Telling me whether you would actually like to see a video like that, a long-form video on these two drugs that I'll put over on Epic TV. Let me know.
Otherwise, if you'd like to read this statement from the Attorney General's office over in Nebraska, I'll throw a link to the PDF version into the description box below this video for you to check out.
And I'll ask in return is that you take a quick second to smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
However, since we're on the topic of attorney generals, let's talk about the fact that many of them, many attorney generals around the country, have just come out and said that the federal vaccine mandate for private workers currently doesn't exist.
That's right.
Several Republican attorney generals from across the entire country, they have recently come out and they said that Joe Biden's federal vaccine mandate has not yet come into effect for private businesses.
And they added that when it does, they will file lawsuits against it.
And as an example of what they actually meant by that, well, Montana's Attorney General, Mr.
Austin Knudsen, he published a statement saying that last week, quote, the White House only submitted the text of its emergency rule regarding vaccinations to the Office of Management and Budget, meaning that it has not gone into effect yet.
And even though it's already been a month since Joe Biden made the announcement and there's been a lot of fanfare about it, the rule is still in draft form, as his statement mentions.
And it actually doesn't exist on the books.
And by the way, just as a super quick aside, after Joe Biden made that announcement about these vaccine mandates for all the businesses who have over 100 employees, and even though that rule has yet to go into effect, it seems like everyone is talking about it.
And almost nobody is talking about what happened over in Afghanistan.
It was kind of amazing to see that, how the national narrative just changed like that overnight.
Regardless, here's what Mr.
Knudsen, the attorney general over in Montana, here's what he added in his statement.
Likewise, Oklahoma's attorney general, Mr.
John O'Connor, he's also a Republican, he came out last Thursday and he clarified that there is no federal rule that Mandating employers to force their workers to get the shot, and as a result, he said that businesses in Oklahoma, they should just ignore Joe Biden's announcement until an actual rule is implemented.
Here's specifically what he said.
I urge Oklahoma employers to disregard the Biden administration's wishes to the contrary.
In the event federal emergency rules are issued that place such an unlawful demand upon employers, our office will be joined by other state attorneys general across the country to quickly sue and seek an injunction against any implementation or enforcement.
Furthermore, Mr.
John O'Connor added that Oklahomans, they have the right to make their own health decisions, including as to whether to get vaccinated or not.
Here's what he said.
Employers that are mandating vaccines are unfortunately doing so upon their own initiative.
Religious, medical, and personal exemptions should be uniformly approved by those employers at the very least.
Likewise, the Attorney General of Arizona, Mr. Mark.
Mark Branovich, he's also a Republican, he has taken things one step further, as he has already filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration's vaccine requirement, arguing that it would actually violate the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
And his argument, which is actually fairly interesting, is that since illegal immigrants are not being forced to get vaccinated, then this means that this mandate creates a situation where people are being treated unequally here in the United States of America.
That's because American workers would be treated differently than illegal immigrants who are crossing into the U.S. across the U.S.-Mexico border since they can decline the vaccine.
Here's specifically how he formulated his argument.
The Biden administration is targeting mandatory vaccination for American workers but does not require vaccination of those brought in after being caught crossing the southern U.S. border illegally.
And so we'll have to wait and see how these challenges by all these attorney generals will actually play out once this vaccine mandate actually goes into effect, which might actually be happening very soon.
That's because just last week, Joe Biden said that his vaccine mandate for the private sector will take effect soon.
Here's specifically what he said.
The Labor Department is going to soon be issuing an emergency rule for companies with 100 or more employees to implement vaccination requirements.
However, given the fact that the administration has been saying something of that sort for the past month, we here at the Epoch Times have been reaching out to the Department of Labor for comment on this specific vaccine mandate.
And earlier this month, earlier in October, one of their spokespeople got back to us and they said that OSHA, which is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, they have been working expeditiously to develop the rule, which in their email they described as an, quote, emergency temporary standard.
And so we'll have to wait and see what actually happens.
If you'd like to read more about what these attorney generals across the entire country are up to in their respective states, I'll throw a link to that into the description box below this video for you to check out.
And all I ask in return is that you take a quick moment to smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
And now let's move on over to Oregon and discuss how two senators out there are looking to investigate whether the federal COVID statistics that are being put together by the CDC and the FDA are being manipulated.
Sorry.
What's this?
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And now Roman in the studio, back to you.
And now let's move on over to Oregon.
Two state senators over in Oregon, they are currently petitioning their acting U.S. attorney to launch a grand jury investigation into the way that the CDC, as well as the FDA, measure their COVID statistics.
Now, specifically, these two state senators, who are Ms. Kim Thatcher, as well as Mr. Dennis Linthicum, both of whom are Republicans, they submitted this petition right here in the form of a letter after they were able to get over 1,700 signatures from Oregonians, as well as 53,000 signatures from Americans in general.
And in this petition, these two senators express their concerns over how the CDC, as well as the FDA, measure as well as report vaccine-related adverse reactions, including injuries as well as death.
Now, specifically, in this letter, the two state senators, they said that a whistleblower, under sworn testimony, they said that the data that's being reported under the VAERS system, which is the CDC's Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System, may be underreporting the true numbers by a factor of five.
Here's what they said as a part of their letter right here.
Quote, As elected Oregon state senators, representing nine Oregon counties, totaling at least 323,000 American citizens, We are extremely concerned regarding the 12,791 reported fatalities and 571,831 reported injuries in conjunction with the administration of the experimental emergency-use-authorized COVID vaccines, according to the August 3,
2021 published data sets from the CDC-hosted VAERS system, which a whistleblower under sworn testimony filed in U.S. District Court asserts may be underreported by a factor of five.
Furthermore, in this letter, while discussing the diagnosis of COVID through the PCR test, the senator said that the CDC, as well as the FDA setting of one particular test parameter, something called the cycle threshold, it generated, quote, false positives resulting in inflated numbers of COVID cases, hospitalizations, and deaths.
And the reason for this has to do with the way that this threshold is set.
If it's too broad, then a lot of potentially non-COVID-related things can get in.
Here's how they describe that, although it's a bit technical.
It has been proven that the current COVID RT-PCR tests, set to a cycle threshold of 40 by the FDA and CDC, generate false positive results due to the CT value being set to high.
To further complicate matters, the CDC has elected to set the CT value to 28 when testing samples from vaccinated Americans.
This creates two different standards of measurement.
Firstly, the higher threshold of measurement generates false positives resulting in inflated numbers of COVID cases, hospitalizations, and deaths.
Secondly, the lower threshold of measurement acts to eliminate false positive results and thereby reduces the number of vaccine breakthrough cases.
These facts make it virtually impossible for the public to trust the data that they are being presented and the public health policies based upon this data.
And then lastly, these two state senators, they said that they have consulted with large groups of doctors, epidemiologists, as well as virologists on the subject of the COVID statistical reporting.
And here's what they wrote on that front.
Quote...
We have taken it upon ourselves to regularly consult with and be advised by a large team of world-renowned doctors, epidemiologists, virologists, and attorneys who keep us up to date on a number of pertinent COVID topics and issues relevant to public health policy.
What we have learned is deeply disturbing.
What we have learned is worthy of independent state and or special federal grand jury investigation from our vantage point as elected state policymakers.
And therefore, they are asking the U.S. attorney for the District of Oregon to investigate this via a grand jury investigation.
Furthermore, Stand for Health Freedom, which is a non-profit organization which actually helped to conduct this petition, they said in a statement that the reason this petition was submitted one month before it was actually being released to the public was to protect those who were involved.
Furthermore, this organization cited this study here, which was published in March of 2020, and this study alleges that the CDC overemphasized COVID as the cause of death when compiling their statistics, and in that process, they, quote, circumvented multiple federal laws.
And so, to wrap it up to any YouTube censor that might be reviewing this video, I'll just mention up front that I have absolutely no opinion on this matter one way or the other.
However, this action by these two senators from Oregon is definitely newsworthy, and you should know about it.
Now, in terms of the next steps, these two state senators are now waiting to hear back from the acting U.S. attorney for the District of Oregon as to whether he will actually open up a grand jury investigation into this alleged statistical manipulation.
We'll just have to wait and see.
If you'd like to read more about it, including this letter right here from these two state senators, I'll throw all that, including the PDF version of this letter, into the description box below this video so you can read it at your own leisure.
And again, all I ask in return is that if you haven't already, smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
And now let's move on over and talk about Facebook censorship.
While I was down in Texas, I had the opportunity to sit down with Mr.
Ryan Hartwick, who used to be a content moderator for Facebook, meaning that he was the guy who would look at your memes, laugh, and then delete them.
However, he later became a whistleblower, and he actually exposed what was happening behind the scenes, even publishing a book called Behind the Mask of Facebook, a whistleblower's shocking story of big tech bias and censorship.
And during our interview, he explained the inner workings of this big tech censorship that is happening over at Facebook.
Take a look.
My name is Ryan Hartwig, and I, yeah, so I worked for Facebook as a content moderator.
I was subcontracted out, so I was working in Phoenix for Cognizant, and they had a three-year contract to do the content moderation, so I was a content censor, basically taking down your comments, posts, videos.
So that's what I did for two years.
But after I'd been there about a year, I noticed a lot of irregularities with how they enforced their policy and the policy itself.
It was biased against conservatives.
They were favoring leftist viewpoints.
So that's when I reached out to a few journalists, ended up with Project Veritas, and started filming with a hidden camera.
Oh, that's right.
Last night, you said that you're the guy who's laughing at the memes before taking them down, right?
That's right.
Can you tell somebody who might not be following this too closely, but maybe they're working, they come home, they scroll through Facebook a little bit, and they have a feeling they might be getting censored?
Can you tell them a little bit about the specifics of how that actually works?
Yeah.
So in my role, Facebook basically dumps, puts jobs in front of my screen one at a time.
So I'm sitting there and I get maybe an off-color meme or I get a video, maybe a conservative video.
So I look through the policy, which is very nuanced, and I try to determine if there's a violation.
So people get de-boosted in Shadow Man.
I wouldn't be able to see that directly, but I would get a job one at a time and say, do I allow this or do I delete it?
So I had, you know, the ability to delete posts and comments and that could result in, you know, someone getting banned for a week or a month.
So I directly interface with Facebook customers' accounts in that manner.
Let's say somebody's watching this and they might be okay with, you know, right-wing memes getting taken down.
They think, well, you know, those memes are oftentimes hate speech and they should be taken down.
They shouldn't be proliferated.
What would you tell those people?
So the answer to bad speech is more speech.
So when you start encroaching on the First Amendment, it's a slippery slope.
So for example, this is an extreme example, but there's a group called the Westboro Baptist Church, and they protest outside of funeral processions and attack homosexuals, which I think is abhorrent, right, personally.
But the question is, should they be allowed to be on that public sidewalk outside of the funeral, outside of the graveyard?
So, like I said, that's an extreme example, but it is a slippery slope because if you say, yes, we should ban them, okay, where do we stop?
And who defines what a meme is?
What's an offensive meme?
The policy language that Facebook has that I studied for two years was very, very complex.
How do you expect the average American to know what the policies are?
And then we also return to a philosophy by John Stuart Mills, the Mills Harm Principle, which was actually written into Facebook's policy, but it didn't seem like they used it.
But you think about, you know, okay, is my speech going to cause imminent physical harm?
If I say I'm going to go shoot someone today, okay, is that a violation?
So we really should look at what are the laws on the books, what's against the law in the United States to say, and try to follow those rules.
But Facebook clearly has their own agenda.
They have their own rule book.
And in a way, because they're acting under the authority of Congress, those community standards, those rules are under the penalty of law in a way.
Yeah.
So, yeah, so those people who are like, oh, kind of ambivalent, yeah, we shouldn't have offensive content.
Like, this is your public square.
Like, Facebook is your de facto public square.
So we should be allowing any kind of speech.
Once again, the answer to a bad speech is just more speech.
Do you think things have gotten better or worse at Facebook or in social media in general since you blew the whistle?
I think they've gotten a little bit worse.
So when I was there, they were fairly open.
There was a civic audit done by former Senator John Kyle from Arizona with a Covington law firm.
And so after that, I noticed that Facebook was – they tried to make some improvements, at least on the surface.
So they started tracking exceptions that they were giving for their policy.
But yeah, generally I think they're just, they're a little more blatant and obvious now.
I mean, we just saw that Facebook came out saying, yes, we do prioritize hate speech against one race over another.
So the fact that they're prioritizing one race at all to begin with is a scary thought.
And we have the Oversight Board, of course, and we know that Trump got banned in January.
The Oversight Board recently reaffirmed that decision six months after the election.
It's not, yeah, they're getting worse.
It's sort of a follow-up question.
So I started playing with Instagram a little bit prior to the election and then after the election.
And I noticed that, you know, with Instagram stories, right, you can swipe up and there's different stickers you can choose.
So I noticed that when you type the word Trump, about half of the stickers are against Trump and half of the stickers are pro-Trump, right?
Yeah.
Half of them make fun of him, half of them don't.
But when you type in Biden, they're 100% positive.
What leads to it?
Do you know from the inside, what leads to things like that happening?
Yeah, that's a good question.
And I did review content for Facebook and Instagram, so I was doing both groups, pages, messages, direct messages, comments.
So once again, it could be their algorithm.
I know that they do use artificial intelligence, so Facebook can choose what jobs I as a human moderator review.
So they can inject those into our queue.
But yeah, as far as searching a hashtag, we know from the Pinterest whistleblower they were labeling Bible verses as pornography.
So it's definitely an internal mechanism.
I really think we need more insiders to come forward at Facebook.
I mean, if you can imagine, I was an entry-level content moderator, not an engineer, and I uncovered so much.
So, yeah, your example of them, you know, the hashtag Trump versus Biden, I mean, it makes sense based on what they've done in the past, but the fact that it's so obvious is kind of a scary thought.
So can you tell us about the book that you're about to publish?
Yeah.
So I have a book.
It'll be out next month.
It's on Amazon for pre-order.
It's behind the mask of Facebook.
I filmed for nine months with a hidden camera.
As you can imagine, it was a lot of footage.
I went public last summer with Project Veritas, but you can't include all the examples in a 20-minute video.
I continued to document those and started last August documenting everything.
It's a really profound analysis of Facebook's internal policy documents, which are very different from their public community standards.
And it details all the exceptions they gave to their own policy, about 30 examples of bias, where they broke their own rules.
They admit to breaking their own rules.
So yeah, that's the book Behind the Mask of Facebook, and it's on Amazon.
So I'm really excited for it.
I just want the American public to know what it's about, and hopefully it can be used in future lawsuits against big tech.
Now if you'd like to read more about Facebook censorship, or if you'd like to read Mr.
Hartwick's new book, I'll throw all that into the description box below this video for you to check out.
And now lastly, since you've completed this episode of Facts Matter, I would highly recommend that you go on over to Epic TV and check out an awesome episode of Truth Over News, where Jeff Carlson, he dissects a newly released research proposal that was actually made all the way back in 2018, but that proposal shows amazing similarities to the outbreak of the COVID virus in the year 2020.
Take a look.
The remarkable similarities between a recently leaked 2018 proposal from EcoHealth Alliance head Peter Daszak and the defining characteristics of COVID-19 raise new questions regarding the origins of the pandemic.
Daszak's proposal detailed how he and collaborators from the Wuhan Institute of Virology plan to create entirely new coronaviruses through the synthetic combination of pre-existing virus backbones.
Creating entirely new viruses which would have no clear ancestor in nature.
Lack of ancestral lineage is a notable feature of COVID-19.
The proposal also detailed plans to genetically engineer a human-specific furin cleavage site, the defining feature of COVID-19 into coronaviruses.
If you'd like to check out that full episode or all the other phenomenal content over on Epic TV, the link to it will be right there.
I'll put it at the very top of the description box.
I hope you click on it.
I hope you check it out.
I hope you subscribe.
And I hope that you join us on this journey of exploring this beautiful, beautiful world through honors journalism that is based in truth and tradition.
Now lastly, if you haven't already, smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
Subscribe to this YouTube channel if you haven't already in order to get this type of honest news content delivered directly into your YouTube feed while YouTube still allows it.
Also, consider hitting that notification bell so you can actually be notified of any new videos as we release them.
And ironically, after we discussed Facebook censorship, if you have an Instagram account, consider following me at Epic Times Roman.
I publish behind-the-scenes research as well as spicy memes, and I will continue to do so until I am banned from that platform.
And so, until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epoch Times.
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