Justin Hart - Gone Viral: How Covid Drove the World Insane : How Covid Drove the World Insane

Justin Hart lays out the truth about COVID and exposes the national response to the pandemic as a failure of logic and science. Dr. Scott W. Atlas

Gone Viral

How Covid Drove the World Insane

Justin Hart

To Jenny,

For standing with me on the pillars of life.

To Mom and Dad,

For the heritage, love, family, and faith that will live on for eternity.

I m not a health care expert. Normally I wouldnt insert myself into someone elses domain, but the powers that be seemed to have no problem inserting themselves into mine: they closed in on my business, my church, my kids education, my health, my grocery store, my gym, my coffee shop, my barberyou name it, and some government entity was there with strangling regulations or an order to shut the thing down entirely.

My business was simply killed outright. Im an executive consultant for a host of various industries in my day job. I help companies, nonprofits, and political campaigns visualize the way theyre performing through interactive dashboards, kick-butt charts, and the like. Plus, at the beginning of the pandemic, most of my income came from running companies that offered exclusive golf excursions for baby boomers, one-on-one consulting for college-bound kids, and a high-end vacation club for wealthy families. The pandemic killed that side of my business dead as a doornail. Within weeks of the pandemic hitting, I had no clients to speak of.

Im not one to sit around, so I threw myself into the thing that everyone was talking aboutcoronavirus. With my good friend and colleague Aaron Ginn, I formed a rag-tag bunch of analysts, chart-makers, and lay activists who were ready to be rid of our health overlords and get our lives back to normal. We called our group Rational Ground.

Eventually, Rational Ground started publishing on a daily basis with our Substack (covidreason.substack.com), our website (RationalGround.com), and our primary social media presence on Twitter. We would come to be one of the leading voices of reason in the fight against insane Covid policies.

Since the failure of PCR testing, we discussed the age-stratified risk of Covid and the death-certificate details on COVID-19 deaths. We made interactive charts that helped users visualize what the data actually meant in their lives. We brought up the sheer lunacy of the stay-at-home orders and pointed out the true low, low risk of the virus and its effects for children.

It was quality material people werent finding anywhere else, and we gained followers at a rapid rate. By fall 2020 one of those followers was Dr. Scott Atlas, who at the time was a key advisor to the Trump administration on its COVID-19 response. In fact, Atlas even asked us to produce charts for him, a project we gladly undertook. These charts were televised nationally and used as evidence against the one-size-fits-all approach that had characterized the White House response up until Dr. Atlass arrival.

But, like Saurons eye scanning Middle Earth for the Ring of Power, the powers that be were on the lookout for any who would question their authority. The attention we received caught their attention, and they were not amused. In the summer of 2021, my accounts on Twitter and Facebook were suspended for publishing some of the data that our Rational Ground colleagues produced. Indeed, many of our colleagues would have social media accounts suspended or altogether taken down over the course of the pandemic.

Our particular offense was posting an infographic produced by one of our pseudonymous Twitter friends entitled: Masking Children is Impractical and Not Backed by Research or Real World Data. In twelve squares on the graphic, we presented the facts. These notions were simply common-sense deductions based on evidence that many folks can agree upon. Each point was rigorously backed up with peer-reviewed or pre-print studies. Nothing was out-there or fringe about these ideas. The information included the facts that children are at very low risk from COVID-19, that teachers do not face an increased risk from childrena simple reality that the teachers unions have made verbotenalong with the obvious points that the effectiveness of masks is not conclusive, that masking children is unrealistic, and that improper masking is common and unsanitary and can cause a variety of health issues. Maybe the most telling point was that masks can hinder speech development in children and the effect on deaf and disabled kids is particularly devastating.

As with all things Twitter in those days, it was unclear why it and other social media platforms suspended our accounts for benign and well-supported posts like these. They never gave specifics but pointed to vague user agreements. But we all knew the why of it in the larger senseand where the real instigation to wipe us from the internet came fromalthough some were reluctant to admit it at first. The banning impulse came from the very top.

In July 2021, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said, Weve increased disinformation research and tracking within the Surgeon Generals office. Were flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation. Psaki also revealed that the White House effort to suppress free speech reaches all the way to the level of senior staff for President Biden. Although we didnt know about it at the time, plans were even underway to establish a Ministry of Truth in the Department of Homeland Security known as the Disinformation Governance Board, where it would have a dedicated law enforcement wing to back up its edicts. Pressuring social media platforms to kick people like us off was merely the tip of the new censorship spear the government was honing.

Did these suspensions and tactics scare us? Not a whit. Maybe we were nave. Maybe we were a bunch of data nerds in over our heads. But we were people for whom the truth mattered. We were the types who loved sifting that truth out of a mound of data. Most of all we wanted to regain our livesand the lives of our friends and families.

My wife Jenny and I have a Brady Bunchlike situation. We have eight kids between us. The three youngest are ours. Jenny has two daughters, eighteen and fourteen, and I have three older kids. So, at any given moment, at least four kids are usually traipsing about the halls getting ready for school. All of that changed after Thanksgiving 2021. Our fourteen-year-olds private school sent us a note that she would have to quarantine at home for the rest of 2021. Why? Was she even sick?

It turned out to have nothing to do with her. Because someone in the school musical had tested positive for Covid, and because our daughter is unvaccinated, she had no recourseshe would be forced to miss the rest of school in December including the Christmas concert. Her friends who were vaccinated could go on their merry way and back to school. Furthermore, the student who contracted Covid was vaccinated himself. School policy prohibited the test-to-stay option because the students werent masked at the play practice. No one was sick besides the fully vaccinated student who had tested positive for Covid. Our daughter had been singled out for exclusion because she was not vaccinated.

Of course, she was devastated.

I was lividand I still am. This is a private school here in San Diego and the only high school to remain open the entire 202021 school season. Jenny had sent her daughters there for years. Was there loyalty from the school to Jenny and the commitment and tuition shed poured into the school for over a decade? Not a whit. We had to conclude that the schools mission lacks courage as a component and is not aligned with our values. I had to fight with the school to keep my daughter in classes.