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This article originally appeared on The Defender and was republished with permission.

Guest post by Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

In August 2021, Dr. Anthony Fauci received a U.S. intelligence report suggesting the COVID-19 virus was developed in Chinese and U.S. labs as a bat vaccine, that it subsequently leaked from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, and that it contained characteristics that would make it resistant to mRNA vaccines.

The report, authored by Joseph Murphy, a major with the U.S. Marine Corps, and printed on Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) letterhead, was part of a tranche of documents Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) released Thursday as part of his ongoing congressional investigation into the origins of COVID-19.

The documents show that not only did Fauci receive the DARPA report, but that in an Aug. 25, 2021, email to National Institutes of Health (NIH) officials, he called it “important.” “Let us discuss my going down to the White House to review the report,” Fauci wrote.

The document tranche also contained evidence that Fauci cultivated ties with intelligence agencies at least as early as 2003, the same year he received a CIA report warning of the dangers of genetically manipulating coronaviruses.

Fauci later used these intelligence connections to sway the intelligence community to support the zoonotic theory of COVID-19’s origin, the documents show.

Rand Paul@RandPaul

We have further proof that Dr. Fauci had deep connections to the intelligence agencies. When COVID-19 came about, he leveraged those connections to steer the intelligence community away from the idea that a lab leak took place at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. We now know a lab

3:09 PM · Jun 12, 2026 · 149K Views

679 Replies · 2.54K Reposts · 10.1K Likes

The newly released information corroborates the testimony of CIA whistleblower James Erdman before the U.S. Senate last month. Erdman testified that Fauci led a multi-agency cover-up of COVID-19’s lab origins and that his role in the cover-up “was intentional.”

“These documents reveal a breathtaking level of manipulation — official narratives carefully engineered to shape high-level government policy,” said Stephanie Weidle, executive director of federal watchdog group Feds for Freedom. “This is corruption.”

Brian Hooker, Ph.D., chief scientific officer for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), said the revelations sound “more like a plan than a mistake or a ‘leak.’” He said:

“You can’t tell me that the scientists involved didn’t know what the outcome would be. The combination of the human recombinant virus … and a gene therapy ‘vaccine’ that was used to circumvent all other therapies that could have saved lives, created a monster of a virus, as SARS-CoV-2 mutated to stay beyond the reach of the shot.”

Paul released the documents just days after he revealed that he intends to interview Fauci in Congress later this month. In a letter to Paul dated June 9, Sen. Gary C. Peters (D-Mich.) referenced Paul’s “planned transcribed interview of Dr. Anthony Fauci later this month.”

No further information about this interview is publicly available as of press time. The Daily Caller first reported about the forthcoming interview on Tuesday. Sen. Paul’s office did not respond to The Defender’s request for comment.

According to the DARPA document (see page 70), dated Aug. 13, 2021, SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, “is an American-created recombinant bat vaccine, or its precursor virus.”

It was created at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, also known as the WIV, and U.S. institutions with the help of researchers from the EcoHealth Alliance. The virus then leaked from the Wuhan lab in August 2019.

“The details of this program have been concealed since the pandemic began,” the document states, noting, though, that the details match those contained in two research proposals, the DEFUSE proposal and the PREEMPT project.

The EcoHealth Alliance’s DEFUSE proposal involved altering bat viruses by inserting a spike protein with a furin cleavage site, to cause the virus to infect human lungs. PREEMPT involved the cultivation of Egyptian fruit bats.

University of North Carolina virologist Ralph Baric, Ph.D., and Wuhan Institute of Virology researcher Shi Zhengli, Ph.D., submitted the DEFUSE proposal to DARPA in 2017. Although DARPA rejected the proposal, scientists have suggested the rejection didn’t shut down the project.

After DARPA rejected the DEFUSE proposal, the Aug. 13, 2021, report states that DARPA then “settled with NIH/NIAID” — or the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, led at the time by Fauci. According to the report:

“DARPA rejected the proposal because the work was too close to violating the gain-of-function (GoF) moratorium, … despite what Peter Daszak says in the proposal (that the work would not … ).

“As is known, Dr. Fauci with NIAID did not reject the proposal. The work took place at the WIV and at several sites in the US, identified in detail in the proposal.”

Baric and Fauci also closely collaborated with Peter Daszak, Ph.D. — the former president of EcoHealth Alliance, who had financial ties to the Wuhan Lab and played a key role in promoting the zoonotic theory.

In 2024, HHS suspended funding for the EcoHealth Alliance for not monitoring the safety of its coronavirus experiments.

NIH virologist Vincent Munster, Ph.D., also listed as a partner in the DEFUSE proposal, has maintained ties with Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance — including a paper they co-authored in 2022 on Nipah Virus detection in bat roosts.

In April, Baric lost his NIH grants and the University of North Carolina placed him on leave.

Last week, Munster and NIH researcher Claude Kwe Yinda, Ph.D., were charged with conspiring to smuggle biological materials, including deactivated monkeypox virus samples, into the U.S. from Africa — and allegedly lied to authorities about what they were carrying.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus was likely intended to be used for a bat vaccine before it leaked from the Wuhan lab, according to the DARPA report. “The purpose of the EcoHealth program, called DEFUSE in the proposal … was to inoculate bats in the Yunnan, China caves where confirmed SARS-CoVs were found,” the report states.

However, the virus “leaked and spread rapidly because it was aerosolized so it could efficiently infect bats in caves, but it was not ready to infect bats yet, which is why it does not appear to infect bats.”

The report suggests that SARS-CoV-2 had characteristics that made it easily transmissible among human populations.

“The reason the disease is so confusing is because it is less a virus than it is engineered spike proteins hitch-hiking a ride on a SARSr-CoV quasispecies swarm. The closer it is to the final live attenuated vaccine form, the more likely that it has been deattenuating since initial escape in August 2019,” the report states.

“A year after DARPA denied this proposal to create chimeric bat viruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a novel bat virus with a furin cleavage site began infecting humans in Wuhan. No other closely related virus has this furin cleavage site,” RealClearInvestigations reported in April.

The documents Paul released contain emails showing that Fauci was aware of concerns about the SARS-CoV-2 furin cleavage site early during the pandemic.

In a January 2020 email thread, Fauci responded to concerns from virologist Kristian Andersen, Ph.D., and immunologist Jeremy Farrar, Ph.D., about the presence of the furin cleavage site.

In a Jan. 31, 2020, email, Fauci wrote, “I just got off the phone with Kristian Anderson and he related to me his concern about the Furine site mutation in the spike protein of the currently circulating 2019-nCoV.”

In a later email related to these concerns, Fauci wrote, “The story gets complicated.”

The virus also contained characteristics that made it difficult to treat or prevent with mRNA vaccines, the DARPA report suggested.

“The gene-encoded, or ‘mRNA,’ vaccines work poorly because they are synthetic replications of the already-synthetic SARSr-CoV-WIV spike proteins and possess no other epitopes” — or the part of an antigen that the immune system recognizes.

The report adds:

“The mRNA instructs the cells to produce synthetic copies of the SARSr-CoV-WIV synthetic spike protein directly into the bloodstream, wherein they spread and produce the same ACE2 immune storm that the recombinant vaccine does.

“Many doctors in the country have identified that the symptoms of vaccine reactions mirror the symptoms of the disease, which corroborates with the similar synthetic nature and function of the respective spike proteins.”

The DARPA report suggested that mass vaccination campaigns actually increased the risks from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, in a manner replicating that of gain-of-function research, which increases the virulence or transmissibility of viruses. It stated:

“The potential for SARSr-CoV-WIV to deattentuate requires immediate attention. Live vaccines have been found to deattentuate in the past.

“If this is the case with SARSr-CoV-WIV, then the mass vaccination campaign actually performs an accelerated gain-of-function for it. Since it is designed for bats off of a human-susceptible SARS-CoV, vaccinating humans against it actually gains its function back towards a more deattenuated human-susceptible form.”

For the same reasons, other pandemic-related interventions such as masks would be ineffective in stopping the spread of COVID-19, the report states.

“The reasons why nonpharmaceutical interventions like masks and medical countermeasures like the mRNA vaccines do not work well can be extrapolated from the details. Masks or mRNA vaccines would not work for this material,” said former pharmaceutical research and development executive Sasha Latypova. “It is a chemical aerosol poisoning agent. DARPA knows this well.”

Certain characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 made alternative treatment options, such as ivermectin, more effective in treating COVID-19, the report suggests.

“Many of the early treatment protocols ignored by the authorities work because they inhibit viral replication or modulate the immune response to the spike proteins.

“Some of these treatment protocols also inhibit the action of the engineered spike protein. For instance, Ivermectin (identified as curative in April 2020) works throughout all phases of illness because it both inhibits viral replication and modulates the immune response.

“Of note, chloroquine phosphate (Hydroxychloriquine, identified April 2020 as curative) is identified in the proposal as a SARSr-CoV inhibitor, as is interferon (identified May 2020 as curative).”

The documents Paul released this week also shed light on Fauci’s intelligence ties. In 2003, Fauci received a CIA report, “The Darker Bioweapons Future,” warning that “engineered biological agents” could lead to effects potentially “worse than any disease known to man.”

While the CIA report doesn’t mention gain-of-function research by name, it cites several examples of cases where viral transmissibility or virulence were enhanced.

The documents also contain an invitation for Fauci to participate in a July 2021 National Security Council briefing related to then-President Joe Biden’s inquiry regarding COVID’s origins — for which Fauci was exempted from a COVID-19 test.

According to Erdman’s Senate testimony last month, the Biden inquiry — and Fauci’s efforts to cover up the likely laboratory origins of COVID-19 — resulted in the White House publishing an August 2021 report that was inconclusive about the virus’s origins — even though intelligence agencies by then had evidence of a lab leak.

A March 6, 2020, email from then-NIH Director Francis Collins referenced the “Proximal Origin” paper published in the journal Nature Medicine, which found that COVID-19 emerged naturally. The paper was widely used to refute the lab-leak theory. Collins suggested that he and Fauci quietly contributed to that paper.

“FYI, this is work that Tony [Fauci], Jeremy [Farrar] … and I helped with, but are appropriately not mentioned explicitly in the paper,” Collins wrote.

“What came afterwards was information warfare,” said Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., CHD’s senior research scientist. “The world was convinced the virus had bat origins — yet it did not infect bats.”

“The censorship in the first two years was incredibly heavy,” Latypova said. “Everyone, including currently ‘awake’ outlets like Tucker Carlson, enthusiastically endorsed the narrative of natural origin, and anyone who questioned this as bogus (myself) was kicked off all social media platforms.”

Rutgers University molecular biologist Richard Ebright, Ph.D., a critic of gain-of-function research, said Fauci has a lot to potentially answer for in his congressional interview — and that Biden’s preemptive pardon of Fauci, issued last year, won’t protect Fauci if he lies before Congress. Ebright said:

“Because Fauci’s autopen pardon covers only federal crimes that Fauci committed before Jan. 21, 2025, it does not protect Fauci from prosecution for lying to Congress in a Congressional transcribed interview or public hearing in 2026. He will not even be able to repeat previous lies with impunity in a Congressional transcribed interview or public hearing in 2026.”

Ebright said Fauci has three options — responding truthfully and “confessing that he committed conspiracy to defraud, fraud, perjury, misuse of federal funds, destruction of federal records and obstruction.” Or he can provide false testimony and risk perjury charges, or feign mental incapacitation and inability to recall.

“Erdman testified before the Senate that Fauci actively worked through the intelligence community’s COVID origin task forces to advance his own agenda and steer … COVID-19 policy,” Weidle said. “These revelations should shock no one. Yet the question remains: will anything actually be done about it?”

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The following information is based on a report originally published by A Midwestern Doctor. Key details have been streamlined and editorialized for clarity and impact. Read the original report here.

It’s hard to believe this ever made TV news.

But a sleeping pill study found you are “almost FIVE TIMES more likely to die [prematurely] if you pop the pills.”

“And at a certain dosage, 35% likelier to get cancer.”

“I don’t think there’s any dose which is safe,” said Dr. Daniel Kripke, one of the study’s leading researchers.

The local news reporter noted: “This is not the first study to associate sleeping pills with a higher rate for mortality. Eighteen other studies have also established the link.”

Sleeping pills “stop our brain cells from firing” to get us to sleep.

And if they can increase our risk of death, what are the other risks that no one is talking about?

Jordan Peterson disappeared from public view last year.

When his daughter finally broke her silence, her video got 10 million views in a matter of days. What she revealed: he was experiencing a devastating relapse from a previous benzodiazepine injury—triggered by stress and mold exposure.

Most people watching had never heard of anything like this. And some refused to believe it was possible.

But it is.

What she described is far more common than medicine will ever admit.

Anxiety is now the defining condition of modern life.

Take a moment to let that really sink in.

In the early 2000s, roughly 1 in 5 American adults had a diagnosable anxiety disorder. By 2023, more than half of young adults aged 18 to 26 reported suffering from anxiety. Forty-three percent had experienced panic attacks. A third were already on anxiety medications.

Despite spending $36.8 billion on anxiety and mood disorder care in 2007 alone, the problem has gotten measurably worse with every passing year.

That’s not a treatment failure. That’s a business model.

This information comes from the work of medical researcher A Midwestern Doctor. For all the sources and details, read the full report below.

To understand why benzodiazepines are so dangerous, you have to understand what they do inside the brain.

The nervous system runs on a balance between stimulation and inhibition. The brain’s primary calming signal—its main inhibitory neurotransmitter—is called GABA. Alcohol, barbiturates, and benzodiazepines don’t directly activate GABA receptors. They amplify GABA’s effect on those receptors.

That distinction matters—a lot.

Here’s why. The brain constantly monitors its own receptor activity. When a receptor is being artificially overstimulated, the brain compensates by making it progressively harder to activate—a process called downregulation. This creates tolerance, which demands higher doses, which deepens the downregulation further.

When the drug is eventually stopped, those now-blunted GABA receptors can’t produce normal calming activity on their own no matter how much you want them to. What fills the void is called withdrawal.

And it can be catastrophic.

This is absolutely not a character flaw in the people that this happens to. It’s the predictable consequence of how the brain protects itself.

But that’s not how medicine responds to that consequence.

This isn’t the first time medicine has run this cycle.

The first barbiturate was discovered way back in 1903. Within a year, medical literature was documenting the “Veronal habit.” But it took until the 1950s for reliable evidence of addiction to accumulate, and until the 1970s for laws restricting their use. That’s a long time.

By 1962, Kennedy’s commission estimated 250,000 Americans were addicted to barbiturates. England had 135,000. Among the overdose deaths: Marilyn Monroe.

The barbiturates weren’t restricted because the evidence finally became undeniable. They were restricted when a replacement was ready.

A Midwestern Doctor traces the exact playbook used to bring benzodiazepines to market—including who ran the marketing campaign, how they kept the most addicted patients out of the FDA trial, and why they targeted general practitioners instead of psychiatrists.

When barbiturates became a liability, pharmaceutical companies went looking for a safer alternative. One Roche researcher pursued the problem for years—even after being ordered to stop. In 1956, he found what would become the first benzodiazepine.

Roche recognized immediately it would be a blockbuster.

To get FDA approval, they ran one of the largest clinical trials in history: roughly 20,000 patients. Then they selected 1,163 of them—specifically those who showed no signs of addiction or tolerance—and presented only those results to the FDA.

That cherry-picked dataset won the 1960 approval for Librium.

Roche then hired Arthur Sackler to run the marketing campaign. Sackler arranged for newspapers nationwide to publish favorable stories, placed those publications in doctors’ offices (bypassing advertising regulations), aggressively targeted women’s magazines, and deliberately went after general practitioners rather than psychiatrists—because GPs were far less likely to recognize the drug’s dangers. Psychiatrists already knew what sedatives could do.

Yikes.

By 1963, the follow-up campaign for Valium was underway. Both were, by any measure, extraordinarily successful.

In its first month on the market, Librium generated 1.5 million prescriptions.

It was dispensed for everything under the sun—anxiety, phobias, high blood pressure, ulcers, acne, muscle pain, and headaches.

Even John Kennedy—struggling with back pain from wartime injuries—took it.

By the mid-1970s, benzodiazepines topped every “most frequently prescribed” list in American medicine.

The campaign used to sell Librium and Valium—market a drug as safe and non-addictive, target doctors unlikely to recognize the danger, frame an almost unlimited condition as undertreated—became a template.

Arthur Sackler’s descendants used the same playbook with synthetic opioids. And we all know how that turned out.

Benzodiazepines are now losing their institutional defenders primarily because they’ve gone off-patent. With no financial incentive left to protect them, the consensus is finally beginning to shift.

And that tells you something about where the consensus came from in the first place.

Benzodiazepines cause harm in three distinct, well-documented categories.

Each one is serious on its own. Together, they explain how millions of people who never intended to become dependent ended up trapped for years—some for decades—by a drug their doctor prescribed for anxiety.

Here’s what they actually do:

The first harm is one almost no one is told about: benzodiazepines don’t put you to sleep. They sedate you.

Sedation is not restorative sleep. When benzos suppress the nervous system, they simultaneously block the deep stages of sleep your brain requires to function. Patients who believe they’re finally resting are, physiologically, experiencing all the consequences of chronic sleep deprivation.

Studies have found sleeping pill users are two to five times as likely to die as non-users. One estimate concluded that prescription sleeping pills may have been associated with 320,000 to 507,000 excess deaths in the United States in a single year.

That’s not a side effect. That’s a central feature of how these drugs work.

The second category of harm is what benzos do to the brain over time.

Long-term use creates measurable impairment in processing speed, working memory, sustained attention, and the formation of new memories. About 20.7% of long-term users show cognitive deficits across multiple domains.

Meta-analyses find that long-term use increases the risk of dementia by 51%. That’s huge.

One study documented that in the first three years of use, benzodiazepines create driving impairment exceeding the legal alcohol limit for a DUI. A large study of nursing home residents found benzos increase the risk of falls by 44%. Long-acting benzos increase car accident risk by 45% overall. Commercial drivers are actually legally prohibited from taking them.

There’s also the memory effect many long-term users describe: time moving strangely fast, a dreamlike flow state, an inability to recall what was happening during the years they were on the drug—a phenomenon called anterograde amnesia. Research from 1972 found that regular diazepam doses reduced recognition memory in 90% of women.

The people prescribing these drugs often meet the patient for 15 minutes.

One of the most dispiriting data points in A Midwestern Doctor’s article: a 1979 Senate hearing put the benzo problem on public record—44 million Valium prescriptions, documented dependence, a manufacturer insisting it was safe.

Wait until you see what happened to prescribing rates in the decades that followed.

Roughly half of all benzodiazepine users experience withdrawal symptoms when they stop or reduce their dose.

About 20 to 30 percent experience rebound—their original symptoms return worse than before they ever started the drug. Around 10 percent go through withdrawals severe enough to be “quite distressing,” and those individuals are 40% more likely to become suicidal during that period.

People who discontinued benzos in one study were found to be 60% more likely to die in the following year.

Tapering takes years.

Doing it too quickly, even slightly, can trigger a backlash that makes stopping even harder.

When benzodiazepines wear off, they don’t simply stop working. The GABA system has been progressively suppressed, and what rebounds mirrors alcohol withdrawal in severity.

Common symptoms include anxiety, insomnia, panic attacks, tremors, heart palpitations, and sweating. Psychological symptoms include confusion, memory problems, hallucinations, paranoia, and depression. Sensory symptoms include tinnitus and a dissociative detachment from reality—a feeling of not quite inhabiting your own life. In the most severe cases: seizures. Which without treatment can be fatal.

For 10 to 15 percent of users, post-acute withdrawal symptoms—anxiety, cognitive impairment, depression, sleep disruption—persist for months to years.

Typically one to two years.

In some cases, five to ten.

Using benzodiazepines for as little as three to six weeks can create the physical dependence that leads to all of this.

Most patients were never told that.

This was all documented publicly in 1979.

At a Senate subcommittee hearing chaired by Senator Edward Kennedy, a Navy psychiatrist testified that patients were becoming addicted to Valium in as little as six weeks. More than 44.6 million Valium prescriptions had been written that year. Kennedy called it a “nightmare of dependence.”

“None of these drugs solve our problems,” the psychiatrist testified. “They make people feel better because they make you feel dull and insensitive.”

The manufacturer of Valium—Hoffmann-La Roche—responded that addiction was “extremely rare” at recommended dosages.

That exchange happened 47 years ago.

After that Senate hearing, benzodiazepine use didn’t decline. It accelerated.

In 1996, 4.1% of American adults had a benzodiazepine prescription. By 2018, 12.6% reported benzo use in the past year. Emergency room visits involving benzo misuse rose 149% between 2004 and 2011.

Overdose deaths climbed from 1,135 in 1999 to 12,499 in 2021.

That’s a 917% increase in 22 years.

Michael Jackson. Heath Ledger. Tom Petty. Prince.

Each of these deaths involved benzodiazepines.

None are fringe cases.

They represent a fraction of the roughly 12,500 people who died from benzo overdoses in 2021 alone.

There’s a structural reason this crisis keeps escalating, and it’s built into the architecture of modern medicine itself.

Appropriate benzodiazepine prescribing requires understanding which specific type of anxiety a patient has, whether benzos are even indicated for that type, what the risks are given the patient’s age and other medications, how to taper appropriately, and how to monitor for dependence over time.

It’s clear as day that none of that is possible in a 15-minute insurance-reimbursed visit.

Many patients were never warned that dependence can develop in only three to six weeks—and that once it does, stopping may be impossible without a years-long tapering process. And many were never told that going even slightly too fast creates a backlash that makes quitting harder.

People end up on benzodiazepines for decades, for conditions the drugs are actively worsening.

A survey of 1,207 benzo users found that 95.3% of those originally prescribed for restlessness developed restlessness as a new drug-induced symptom. For anxiety: 55.6%. For insomnia: 57.5%.

The drug was creating the very problem it was prescribed to treat.

Here’s what almost never gets addressed: anxiety isn’t one disease.

Multiple distinct types exist, each with different root causes and different responses to treatment.

Giving the same medication to all of them makes about as much sense as treating every patient with chest pain identically.

In some cases, benzodiazepines are genuinely appropriate. In others, they make the underlying condition measurably worse.

15 minutes is not enough time to figure that out.

Generalized anxiety disorder often worsens with benzodiazepines, requiring progressively higher doses over time. Cognitive behavioral therapy is far more effective here—and the research supports it clearly.

But panic disorder is different. When panic attacks have a warning symptom before they begin, benzos taken at that moment can be genuinely useful. Without that warning symptom there is minimal benefit.

OCD doesn’t respond to CBT or benzodiazepines at all. It responds to a different therapeutic model entirely.

Social anxiety disorder typically responds best to low-dose beta-blockers rather than habit-forming sedatives.

The 15-minute visit treats all of these as one condition.

What’s driving the anxiety epidemic isn’t purely psychological.

Autonomic nervous system imbalances, reactive hypoglycemia, circadian disruption from artificial light, thyroid disorders, cardiovascular conditions—each of these can manifest as anxiety.

Research on the blood chemistry of 2,800 individuals identified five distinct metabolic patterns underlying depression and anxiety, each with its own treatment profile and its own response to benzodiazepines.

The underlying causes of anxiety are rarely identified in conventional care. When the root cause is left untreated and only the symptom is managed pharmacologically, the condition doesn’t resolve—it deepens.

And the drug prescribed to manage it often accelerates that process.

The subscriber-only section of A Midwestern Doctor’s article covers what actually works: specific supplements, natural therapies, appropriate non-benzo anxiety medications, psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, mind-body approaches, and detailed strategies for withdrawing from benzodiazepines.

If you or someone you know is on benzos, that section alone is worth subscribing.

There’s a pattern that runs through the entire history of pharmaceutical sedatives that’s worth spending some extra time on.

Barbiturates were documented as addictive within a year of hitting the market—but concerns were suppressed until a replacement was ready. Librium was marketed as safe while cherry-picked trial data won FDA approval and the same marketing family that would later fuel the opioid crisis ran the campaign. A Senate hearing documented a “nightmare of dependence” with 44 million prescriptions—and the manufacturer called addiction “extremely rare.” Prescriptions tripled over the following four decades.

More than 1 in 8 American adults took a benzodiazepine last year. 12,499 people died from benzo overdoses in 2021.

None of this persisted because of ignorance. The knowledge was there. The Senate hearing was on record. The mechanisms were understood. What kept the system in place was that anxious people are a reliable, renewable market—and the most reliable way to keep that market intact is to treat the symptom without ever touching the cause.

The most unsettling part isn’t that this happened. It’s that it’s still happening—and the same structural incentives that drove it are still in place.

When the most common response to human suffering is a drug that produces the very condition it was prescribed to treat, that isn’t medicine failing. That’s something else entirely—and we haven’t yet had an honest reckoning with what it is.

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Thanks for reading! This information was based on a report originally published by A Midwestern Doctor. Key details were streamlined and editorialized for clarity and impact. Read the original report here.

For a deeper dive into what modern medicine has overlooked—or intentionally buried—check out these other eye-opening reports by A Midwestern Doctor:

We Now Know How The Government Lied About the COVID Vaccines

The Hidden Dangers of Hospital Births & How to Protect Your Family

What’s The Healthiest Water To Drink?

While you’re at it, give A Midwestern Doctor a follow. No one brings more research, clinical insight, or historical context when it comes to exposing the health myths we’ve all been fed. This is easily one of the most valuable accounts you’ll ever follow.

If you haven’t subscribed to this Substack yet, take a moment to read what some of the most powerful voices in the medical freedom/truth movement have to say:

“The Vigilant Fox has been putting in a lot of work to create a news platform that shares the stories we want to hear about and brings attention to the most important things to know about. If you want a daily newsfeed in alignment with our …”

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“Excellent capture of key video presentations on evolving pandemic science.”

– Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH, FOCAL POINTS (Courageous Discourse)

This article originally appeared on ZeroHedge and was republished with permission.

Guest post by Tyler Durden

• Trump Says Hormuz Chokepoint Reopens Friday

• Pakistan PM Confirms Peace Deal, with a signing event in Switzerland next Friday

• Trump Confirms US-Iran Peace Deal “Now Complete” and says “Let The Oil Flow”

• Iran’s president issues pro-MoU signing statement as Tehran is boasting of great and solid results for its side. There are reports this includes a significant release of billions in its frozen assets in the West.

• White House still suggesting an electronic MoU deal to be signed with Iran on Sunday, which leaves nuclear negotiations to further date, only with commitment that Iran not pursue a nuke.

• Trump: new strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs “should not have happened” and given it was on “a special day when we are so close to a Peace Deal with Iran.

• “A draft of the US-Iran memorandum of understanding included diluting highly enriched uranium within Iran & the release of $25b of Iran’s frozen assets” (Reuters).

• Iranian statements characteristically cautious: Fars News Agency reported earlier that Iran has not made a final call on a potential MOU with the U.S. Iranian authorities are still reviewing the political, legal, and technical details.

* * *

“This Great Deal will bring Peace and Security to the whole Region. Many presidents have tried to make Peace with Iran, and all have failed before me. The Leaders of the Region have, for the first time, found a President who can help them achieve real Peace. With the opening of the Strait upon the signing of the Deal on Friday, for purposes of mine removal, oil will flow on both ends again for the Region, and the World!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The timing of the peace deal is critical. The world was approaching a dangerous energy cliff, with strategic petroleum reserves being quickly drained to offset lost Gulf production and stabilize physical markets. Still, even with a deal in place, energy flows through the strategic maritime chokepoint will not normalize overnight.

It will likely take several months, if not quarters, to clear the backlog, restore shipping confidence, de-risk insurance markets, and bring regional production and export flows back to pre-crisis levels. As for damaged energy assets such as those in Qatar, it’ll take years to get production back to pre-war levels.

Polymarket odds of a permanent US-Iran deal are surging.

Just 30 minutes before futures open in New York, President Trump announced on Truth Social that a “Deal” with Iran is now complete.

“Congratulations to all! I hereby fully authorize the toll-free opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and, simultaneously herewith, authorize the immediate removal of the United States Naval blockade. Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!” Trump said.

Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, also confirmed: “that the Peace Deal between the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran has been REACHED.”

Sharif said, “The official signing ceremony will be on Friday, 19 June in Switzerland.”

Shehbaz Sharif@CMShehbaz

Following intensive talks, we are pleased to announce that the Peace Deal between the United States of America and Islamic Republic of Iran has been REACHED. Both sides have declared the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in

9:15 PM · Jun 14, 2026 · 10.2M Views

5.7K Replies · 14.5K Reposts · 50K Likes

Israeli journalist and Iran affairs correspondent/analyst for Israel’s Channel 14 reports that hardliners in Iran, including IRGC forces, will not derail the peace deal.

דרור בלאזאדה | Dror Balazada@DBalazada

BREAKING | IRGC Commander Ahmad Vahidi Will Not Block the Deal

• According to my sources, IRGC Commander Ahmad Vahidi has agreed not to stand in the way of a deal, despite not supporting it

• The IRGC sees strategic value in a ceasefire: sanctions relief, increased oil and

6:34 PM · Jun 14, 2026 · 291K Views

43 Replies · 115 Reposts · 343 Likes

With futures in New York set to open momentarily, and with Brent and WTI contracts likely to panic-dump while S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures catch a bid, crypto is soaring to the moon.

S&P500 Futs up about 1%

WTI Futs tumbling to $81 a barrel level.

Earlier, Jefferies analyst David Zervos noted, “I remain hopeful on the Iran front and, when we see resolution, that oil will drop below $60 and we go back to pricing in cuts, with Fed balance sheet reduction in the spotlight. I am confident we will be bouncing around with 8 handles on SPOOs, and eying 9s in ‘27/’28.”

It seems like a deal will really happen this time… finally… given Tehran is boasting of great and solid results for its side. There are reports this includes a significant release of billions in its frozen assets in the West.

via Fars News:

• Recent diplomatic efforts have yielded positive results.

• Recent developments have shown that no country cares more about Iran’s interests than ourselves

• Even if my personal opinion differs, I consider myself obliged to follow the final decision of the system

• Resolution of the Supreme National Security Council is the basis of action, and whatever is approved and deemed appropriate by the Supreme Leader will be mandatory for all of us.

• I regret the neighboring countries being exposed to the consequences of military actions. Our operation targeted the US bases on the soil of these countries.

• Issues and misunderstandings with Gulf countries are being resolved

• Ties with Gulf region countries are on path to improvement.

• Talks do not mean abandoning principles. Iran won’t bow to any kind of bullying or illegal pressure.

• Media reports on war, negotiations do not necessarily reflect Supreme National Security Council views.

Fox News, citing President Trump, says deal could be signed in Next 2-3 Hours:

Trey Yingst@TreyYingst

Spoke with President Trump. He says the deal with Iran is expected to be signed in the next 2-3 hours.

President Trump said he asked Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu “what the fu*k are you doing?” on a call after the Israeli strikes against Beirut. He told Netanyahu not to

4:11 PM · Jun 14, 2026 · 1.35M Views

818 Replies · 659 Reposts · 3.48K Likes

President Trump on Truth Social has sought to brush back the Israeli Sunday strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs, saying this morning’s attack “should not have happened” and given it was on “a special day when we are so close to a Peace Deal with Iran.

He emphasized, “We are very close to a Deal that will bring peace to the region, including to Lebanon, and all sides should stand down.” He warned not just Israel against more attacks, but said Hezbollah must refrain, after the Iran-aligned Shia group sent more projectiles on northern Israel. “This could be the beginning of a long and beautiful peace” he said, and added “let’s not blow it.”

Lebanon’s civil defense agency has indicated that the new attacks on Beirut’s southern suburbs killed at least three people. “The bodies of three martyrs were recovered from under the rubble and six wounded,” the agency announced in a statement.

Bloomberg and Reuters are reporting Sunday some fresh details on Iran’s version of what the MoU to be signed – which President Trump says will happen today (albeit remotely) will inlcude.

“A draft of the US-Iran memorandum of understanding included diluting highly enriched uranium within Iran and the release of $25b of Iran’s frozen assets, Reuters reports citing a senior Iran official it didn’t identify,” writes Bloomberg in the latest. This includes:

• Final deal to be discussed in the 60 days following agreement by the two sides

• Also includes Iran immediately reopening Hormuz Strait to all commercial vessels and US lifting its naval blockade

• Tehran in draft agrees ⁠that will neither produce nor acquire nuclear weapons

• To maintain the nuclear status quo until final deal is ⁠reached, including by not enriching uranium and not expanding nuclear facilities

One potential major complication to the two sides actually signing is what’s happening in the Beirut suburbs, which the Israeli Air Force has just struck for the first time in about a week:

Faytuks Network@FaytuksNetwork

Israel has struck a building in Beirut’s southern suburbs in response to Hezbollah attacks on northern Israel, marking the first such strike since last Sunday.

10:41 AM · Jun 14, 2026 · 36K Views

16 Replies · 121 Reposts · 414 Likes

Provocative Israeli military actions previously effectively torpedoed prior Washington-Tehran attempts to get back to the negotiating table. Will the same hold-up happen again?

Pro-Israel supporters and lobbyists in the US have been raging against what they see as a ‘failure’ of a deal, and ‘capitulation’ to Iran on kicking the can on the nuclear issue… not least among them is on display in the following:

Mark Ames@MarkAmesExiled

Has to be about releasing the $20-24 billion in frozen assets to Iran, the most immediately damaging concession for Trump.
I took a plunge into Mark Levin’s show–the squealing about Trump selling out Israel for Iran is rather enjoyable ngl.

jeremy scahill @jeremyscahill

⚡️An Iranian official tells me there are still two outstanding issues on the proposed MOU and depending on the position the U.S. takes on these, an agreement could be signed swiftly. He declined to elaborate on specifics. Iran assesses Trump wants to sign before the G7 summit.

11:53 PM · Jun 13, 2026 · 26.5K Views

12 Replies · 69 Reposts · 520 Likes

The usual caveats which proved all prior ‘deal imminent’ headlines to be premature and wishful thinking still apply. Some latest from Iranian state media according to Al Jazeera:

Iran’s Fars news agency, citing a source close to the negotiating team, is reporting that Iranian officials were discussing the ceasefire points with the Qatari mediators in Tehran.

The report added that the deal is yet to be finalised and “no agreement will definitely be signed at the time Trump announced”.

The comments were made to the agency prior to Israel’s deadly attacks on Lebanon’s southern suburbs today.

President Trump said Saturday that an interim U.S.-Iran deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and wind down the four-month conflict could be signed as soon as Sunday. However, Tehran has pushed back on that timeline, signaling that no final decision has been made while Iranian officials continue to review the terms of a potential memorandum of understanding.

“The Deal is scheduled to get signed tomorrow, and immediately after it is signed, the Hormuz Strait is OPEN TO ALL,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Saturday, while claiming that Iran “no longer wants a Nuclear weapon.”

The president continued, “At the appropriate time, when all is calm, we will go in and get the Nuclear Dust, buried deep under the powerful sunken granite mountains, thanks to our beautiful B-2 Bombers and their brilliant pilots, and downblend and destroy it, whether in Iran, or the United States.”

Pakistan and Qatar are mediating, with technical talks expected to follow any signing and last up to 60 days. The MOU is structured as a step-by-step framework, meaning the Hormuz maritime chokepoint will reopen first, followed by economic rewards for Iran as conditions are met.

Pakistan, which has served as one of the mediators, is preparing to sign the peace deal electronically, followed by technical-level talks next week, according to Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. He said those talks would last two months and focus on Iran’s nuclear program.

Meanwhile, the Iranian media outlet Fars News Agency reported earlier that Iran has not made a final call on a potential MOU with the U.S. Iranian authorities are still reviewing the political, legal, and technical details, with no final decision announced as of Sunday morning.

The urgency behind securing an MOU to reopen the Hormuz chokepoint is clear: the world is drifting dangerously close toward an energy cliff. Strategic petroleum reserves are being drawn down rapidly around the world to offset the loss of Gulf production, while China’s weakening fuel demand is helping to offset some of the broader supply shock.

Related:

• What If The Strait Of Hormuz Never Fully Reopens

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi made clear Friday that Iran understands that terms related to its nuclear program will be finalized within 60 days of the initial agreement being signed. So in essence, this means Iran could get its wish of pushing nuclear negotiations back, only after the hot conflict has clearly ended. Iran has long sought to separate the issues of a final end to the war from consideration of its nuclear program.

Energy markets priced in de-escalation last week, with Brent crude futures sliding as much as 5.1% Friday and European gas dropped as much as 8.4% after Trump canceled planned new strikes on Iran.

IG’s weekend markets are pricing in a 50 bps decline in Brent crude when futures open on Sunday evening.

But throughput traffic through the Hormuz chokepoint remains far below pre-war levels, and a vessel was struck off Oman on Saturday. Normalization could take weeks, if not many months.

Bloomberg noted, “Roughly 140 ships passed through the narrow chokepoint each day before the conflict erupted.”

Here are the latest overnight headlines (courtesy of Bloomberg):

US-Iran Deal Progress

• Trump said on Saturday that a deal with Iran is scheduled to be signed on Sunday, claiming the Hormuz Strait will open immediately after signing and that Iran no longer wants nuclear weapons

• Iran contradicted Trump’s timeline, saying it is still reviewing the text and hasn’t announced a final decision, with authorities conducting a detailed assessment of political, legal, and technical dimensions

• Pakistan said on Saturday that an interim deal could be finalized within 24 hours and is preparing for electronic signing immediately after, followed by technical level talks next week

• A senior US official said on Friday there was an 80% or 85% chance an agreement gets signed soon, though some Iranian hardliners still want to kill any breakthrough

Draft Deal Terms

• According to a senior Iran official, the draft memorandum includes diluting highly enriched uranium within Iran and the release of $25 billion of Iran’s frozen assets

• The draft includes Iran immediately reopening the Hormuz Strait to all commercial vessels and the US lifting its naval blockade

• Tehran agrees in the draft that it will neither produce nor acquire nuclear weapons

• The draft includes a US oil sanctions waiver for Iran

• The final deal will be discussed in the 60 days following agreement by the two sides

• A central element is a step-by-step approach with the Strait of Hormuz reopened followed by Tehran getting economic rewards each time it meets US demands

Regional Tensions

• The Israeli military announced on Sunday it launched strikes on Beirut targeting Hezbollah infrastructure, with Netanyahu’s office saying the strikes were in response to Hezbollah attacks in northern Israel

• When Israel last struck the Beirut suburbs a week ago, Iran responded with attacks

• US Central Command said on Saturday it shot down Iranian drones near the Strait of Hormuz

• Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with India’s External Affairs Minister on Saturday after US strikes left three Indian mariners dead, stressing that all commercial vessels should immediately comply with orders from US forces

Nuclear Program Developments

• According to five sources familiar with US intelligence, Iran has sealed off its cache of near-bomb grade uranium and placed explosive mines near entrances to the site in recent weeks, making attempts to remove the uranium far riskier

Financial Arrangements

• The UAE has agreed to unlock billions of dollars for Iran, with four sources telling Reuters the total was $10 billion, more than $3 billion of which had already been delivered, though two other sources put the total at $20 billion

• The UAE denied reports on the Iran funds transfer, specifically denying allegations concerning $3 billion

Diplomatic Activity

• Trump will meet with leaders of France, Qatar, the UAE, Egypt and India at the G7 summit in France, underscoring the outsized role the war in Iran continues to play

Khamenei Burial Plans

• Ali Khamenei, Iran’s former supreme leader killed in US-Israeli air strikes on February 28, is set to be buried at the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad on July 9, with public funeral ceremonies in Tehran and Qom in preceding days

Saturday’s Iran Wrap

• President Trump Says Iran Peace Deal To Be Signed Sunday, Will Open Strait To All

“Any deal that kicks the can down the road on the most critical issues and is conditions-based would put the US and Iran exactly where they’ve been: a fragile ceasefire in name only that is routinely tested and prone to violence,” said Becca Wasser, defense lead for Bloomberg Economics.

One can only hope that an MOU, and eventually a credible path toward a real peace deal, is something Tehran actually follows. What was initially sold as a quick war by the Trump administration has now dragged on into its fourth month. Early in the conflict, the administration’s view was that the Hormuz chokepoint would not be sealed shut, yet that is exactly what happened. Since then, the conflict has turned into a giant game of Shahed drone whack-a-mole with the Iranians. The Trump team needs this conflict resolved quickly, not only to prevent another wave of inflationary pressure in energy markets and avert the world from sliding into an energy cliff, but also to repair the political optics ahead of the midterms.

Copyright 2026 ZeroHedge

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For more than 2 years now, both the integrity team and editors at BMJ public health have been investigating “issues” raised regarding the quality and messaging in the Mostert paper which showed excess deaths rose in 47 countries after the COVID vaccines rolled out.

After more than two years, the “issues” with the paper have not been revealed, nor has the outcome of the investigation.

The scientific community has literally been left in the dark on this important paper waiting to hear the result of the investigation.

Two years is a long time. For example, it took only about one year to develop a vaccine against a novel pathogen (COVID). This is now twice as long as that and there is no progress reported.

The Princess Maxima Centre isn’t even able to serve the web page on their investigation correctly. It now returns a broken link.

But thanks to the WayBack Machine, you can read what they actually wrote.

Neither the teams of integrity expert and editors BMJ nor the Princess Maxima Center have explained to the public what is incorrect in the paper and what caused the excess deaths which peaked worldwide right rollout of the so-called “safe and effective vaccine.”

The paper concluded that excess mortality remained high despite the rollout of mitigation measures. That’s not contestable.

“Government leaders and policymakers need to thoroughly investigate underlying causes of persistent excess mortality.”

That sounds like sound advice as well.

Is the Princess Maxima Centre saying that the paper is incorrect and that “government leaders should look the other way when excess deaths are occurring”?

Sadly, government leaders are avoiding the investigation for some reason.

BMJ’s policy is generally to wait for the home institution’s formal finding before retracting, so the journal effectively handed the decisive step to the Princess Máxima Center.

The Princess Maxima Centre owes the public an explanation, but no such explanation is forthcoming. All they did is remove the web page complaining about the paper.

The public deserves better. If the paper is wrong, the Princess Maxima Centre needs to tell us what they found, not keep it hidden from public view. Lives are at stake.

Here’s the key graph for 47 countries in the Western World. It went above the trendline only after the COVID vaccines were introduced (both primary shots and booster shots).

Results The total number of excess deaths in 47 countries of the Western World was 3 098 456 from 1 January 2020 until 31 December 2022. Excess mortality was documented in 41 countries (87%) in 2020, 42 countries (89%) in 2021 and 43 countries (91%) in 2022. In 2020, the year of the COVID-19 pandemic onset and implementation of containment measures, records present 1 033 122 excess deaths (P-score 11.4%). In 2021, the year in which both containment measures and COVID-19 vaccines were used to address virus spread and infection, the highest number of excess deaths was reported: 1 256 942 excess deaths (P-score 13.8%). In 2022, when most containment measures were lifted and COVID-19 vaccines were continued, preliminary data present 808 392 excess deaths (P-score 8.8%).

A P-score is a way of expressing excess mortality in relative (percentage) terms rather than raw counts. It’s the metric Karlinsky and Kobak introduced in their World Mortality Dataset work, which is the baseline model Mostert et al. used.

The formula is straightforward:

P-score = (observed deaths − expected deaths) / expected deaths × 100%

So it’s the percentage by which actual deaths exceeded (or fell short of) the number you’d expect under normal pre-pandemic conditions. A P-score of 0% means deaths landed exactly at the expected baseline. A P-score of 11.4% (the figure Mostert reported for 2020) means about 11.4% more people died than the model predicted would have died absent the pandemic. A negative P-score means fewer deaths than expected.

The “expected” number is the key modeling choice. It’s a projection of how many deaths there should have been in a given week or month, built from historical mortality in prior years and typically adjusted for trends like population aging and seasonality. Karlinsky and Kobak fit a regression on pre-2020 data to generate that counterfactual baseline.

Why use a P-score instead of raw excess death counts: it normalizes across populations of very different sizes. Saying “Country A had 50,000 excess deaths and Country B had 5,000” tells you little if A is ten times larger. The P-score puts everyone on a common percentage scale, so a 10% P-score in a small country is directly comparable to a 10% P-score in a large one. That’s what makes it useful for the kind of cross-country comparison Mostert was doing across 47 countries.

When you roll out mitigation measures such as vaccines and lock downs, excess deaths are supposed to go down after the roll out, not up.

The fact that after the mitigation measures, things got worse is what the paper is pointing out.

The Princess Maxima Centre is silent on what is wrong with the paper and the correct way to analyze the data.

It’s been two years.

They owe us an update, not removal of their webpage.

I have reached out to their press contact and will update you on their response.

Don’t hold your breath.

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This article originally appeared on The Gateway Pundit and was republished with permission.

Guest post by Mike LaChance

A young woman died tragically in Brazil this week when she was thrown off of a bridge in a sort of thrill-seeking activity, but the workers forgot to attach the rope to her.

This is apparently not bungee-jumping. When it goes right, the person ends up swinging on the end of a rope beneath the bridge.

We did some research beforehand, just to make sure this story was real and sure enough, it’s being reported in various media outlets.

This is from Yahoo News:

21-Year-Old Brazilian Woman Dead After Bungee Jump Workers Push Her Off Bridge Without Safety Cord

A 21-year-old woman reportedly died Saturday when staff at a bungee-jumping event pushed her from a bridge without her being strapped to a safety rope, dropping her about 130 feet into a ravine.

The incident occurred on the “Skeleton Bridge” in Limeira, in the state of São Paulo. Six people connected to the event have been taken into custody: five men and one woman.

Maria Eduarda Rodrigues de Freitas was carried onto the platform by two men, then shoved from the edge, according to a video of the fall that surfaced online, as bystanders yelled that she didn’t have a rope tied to her and plummeted some 40 meters into a canyon. Medics pronounced her dead at the scene.

Local reports of what happened say that witnesses told Military Police that workers apparently forgot to tie her to a safety cord before pushing her over, said The Sun.

This video has been viewed 17 million times after being shared on Twitter/X just today:

Rapid Report@RapidReport2025

JUST IN: 21-year-old dies after workers forget to attach safety rope and push her off 40-meter bridge in São Paulo’s Limeira, Brazil

6:21 PM · Jun 13, 2026 · 48.9M Views

4.66K Replies · 6.96K Reposts · 67K Likes

This is the accident from another angle.

Eric Boateng 🇬🇭🇩🇪@ericboatenggh

A 21-year-old woman died today after workers forgot to attach a bungee cord to her before throwing her off a 40-meter-high bridge in Limeira, Brazil 🇧🇷

9:42 PM · Jun 13, 2026 · 15.7K Views

33 Replies · 31 Reposts · 54 Likes

This video shows how it is supposed to work when things go right.

Lord Bebo@MyLordBebo

This is how successful jumps look from that bridge.

You can clearly see the security measures. How did they forgot and no one around told them?

9:10 PM · Jun 13, 2026 · 205K Views

31 Replies · 46 Reposts · 801 Likes

It’s so horrible that no one caught the fact that the rope wasn’t attached to her. What a horrible situation for this woman and her family and friends.

Copyright 2026 The Gateway Pundit

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This article originally appeared on Focal Points and was republished with permission.

Guest post by Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH

Kyle Busch was a two-time Cup champion and fierce competitor holding NASCAR’s all-time record of 234 national series victories. While the mainstream media brushed his unexpected death off to “pneumonia and sepsis” I wondered why there was no mention of the causative organism, use of ECMO, and how unusual it was for a 41 year old man to die of an illness where the average age is 77 years and after 4-6 days in the hospital ICU. I was relieved to get a call from NewsMax.

“Died of pneumonia” — that’s what the public was told. A 41-year-old elite athlete, wealthy, with access to top-tier medical care, dead within 24 hours of hospital admission. Coughing up blood. Hemorrhaging on a bathroom floor. And the media simply nodded along.

Rob Finnerty’s interview with Dr. Peter McCullough on NewsMax cuts through the polite fiction that has become standard operating procedure in medical journalism. The transcript reveals something far more troubling than a tragic death: it exposes a media apparatus that has abandoned its public health obligations entirely.

Kyle Busch was not a sedentary, chronically ill man. He was a NASCAR champion — a sport demanding extreme cardiovascular endurance, heat tolerance, and reaction speeds that degrade rapidly without elite fitness. He raced a truck event at Watkins Glen while symptomatic, meaning he was functional enough to compete. Eleven days later, he was dead.

McCullough, a cardiologist with four decades of clinical experience, states it plainly: “I’ve never had a man in his young 40s die in 24 hours of a hemorrhagic pneumonia.” This is not a marginal observation. It is a statistical near-impossibility in the absence of some underlying pathology.

The hospital reportedly never identified the causative organism. No test results for SARS-CoV-2, influenza, RSV, pneumococcus, hantavirus—presumably all tests were negative. The body was cremated before any meaningful investigation could occur — including the autopsy checklist McCullough and Hulscher published in their case report, which specifically tests for vaccine-derived spike protein and mRNA persistence in tissue. McCullough suggested this set of steps for the body of CNN contributor Alice Stewart in 2024—COVID-19 vaccinated and life ending in another mysterious death.

McCullough references the Hulscher-McCullough case report — a 47-year-old previously healthy male who died of fatal pulmonary hemorrhage 555 days after his second Pfizer dose. The parallels are striking: sudden onset, profuse oral bleeding, lungs massively congested with blood (right lung 1552g, left 1333g against a normal of ~250–300g each), negative pathogen panels, and a medical examiner who defaulted to “cardiovascular disease” despite no myocardial infarction, no thrombus, and no hypertension history.

That patient received batch EW0175 — ranked in the top 2.8% of all Pfizer batches for reported deaths, with a lethality rate of 1.69% among adverse event reports. The batch was associated with respiratory failure, thrombosis, myocarditis, and cardiac arrest in VAERS data.

Busch’s vaccination status remains publicly unconfirmed, but McCullough’s point is procedural, not speculative: NASCAR, like virtually all major sports organizations during the mandate era, required COVID vaccination. The question must be asked.

Finnerty asks the essential question: “Why are the mainstream medical community, why are they so hesitant to even mention maybe, hey, COVID and those vaccines?”

McCullough’s answer is damning: because asking that question “takes us all the way back to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where there was so much fraud and deception.” The entire edifice — gain-of-function research, emergency use authorization without long-term safety data, suppression of adverse event reporting, the 5–15 year FDA regulatory window of concern for novel genetic products — becomes unstable the moment anyone looks closely at a single anomalous death.

The media’s obligation is not to adjudicate causation. It is to ask the questions. When a 41-year-old athlete dies in a manner that a veteran cardiologist calls unprecedented in his career, the failure to investigate is not neutrality — it is complicity in a cover-up by omission.

Millions of Americans received these products. The FDA’s own CBER guidance acknowledges a 5–15 year window of concern. The CDC has now acknowledged that claims of no vaccine-autism link are not evidence-based. The ground is shifting beneath the institutional narrative.

If the media cannot ask hard questions about the death of a famous, healthy 41-year-old, what questions will they ask about the deaths of ordinary Americans who never made the evening news?

Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH

President, McCullough Foundation

Please subscribe to FOCAL POINTS as a paying ($5 monthly) or founder member so we can continue to bring you the truth. AlterAI may be used to assist in searches, synthesis, and review.

Copyright 2026 Focal Points

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This article originally appeared on m o d e r n i t y and was republished with permission.

Guest post by @ModernityNews

A secretive Home Office propaganda outfit founded by a former MI6 officer is actively working to control narratives around incidents involving migrants and rising tensions, a bombshell report reveals.

The Research, Information and Communications Unit, or RICU, has been exposed advising police on how to portray protesters and intervening in the aftermath of brutal attacks by migrants to prevent statements that might inflame public anger over mass immigration failures.

This comes as fresh confirmation of suspicions raised after the attack on vulnerable special needs man Stephen Ogilvie in Belfast. Sources now confirm the unit’s role in managing family liaison and messaging in such cases. The pattern fits a broader shift where government “nudge” operations once focused on enforcing COVID compliance have pivoted to shielding open borders policies from scrutiny — and are now being hardened into formal crisis powers.

Alex Armstrong@Alexarmstrong

What?! This is mental.

It has been claimed that a secretive UK govt unit intervenes to write statements by the families of victims of potentially racially linked incidents to stop them from inflaming tensions further with their remarks.

This is allegedly a secret unit called

11:10 AM · Jun 14, 2026 · 110K Views

465 Replies · 1.64K Reposts · 4.55K Likes

The Daily Mail reports that RICU was set up in 2007 by the late Charles Farr, a former MI6 officer, under the Prevent counter-terrorism banner. It operates from Home Office headquarters and draws on tactics from the old Information Research Department, the post-war propaganda unit used to counter communist influence.

Its methods include planting media stories, deploying undercover operatives, and shaping online conversations in targeted communities.

Recent operations show the unit extending far beyond its original remit. During unrest in Belfast following the stabbing attack on Stephen Ogilvie by Sudanese asylum seeker Hadi Alodid, RICU worked with the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s C3 intelligence unit.

RAW EGG NATIONALIST@Babygravy9

So we finally have confirmation, in the Daily Mail, that the British government has its own equivalent of the US Community Relations Service, to intimidate the families of victims of anti-white crimes, force them to make public statements and stage propaganda events like the

9:51 AM · Jun 14, 2026 · 141K Views

115 Replies · 2.08K Reposts · 9.33K Likes

A source described the effort: “They are working with the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s C3 intelligence unit to identify those posting the online ‘calls to protest’ in Belfast and other areas, as well as giving strategic messages to the police to ensure that the protesters were portrayed as unsympathetic thugs, rather than activists, and effecting behavioural change.”

The same source noted RICU’s involvement with family statements in volatile incidents. “RICU made sure that the liaison team dealing with the family were well briefed.” Another observation: “You can see their fingerprints all over the statements released by the families of victims in these volatile situations – they usually have a similar tone.”

This aligns with what was noted right after the Belfast incident. The family statement released in the wake of the attack on Stephen Ogilvie came across as oddly generic and scripted, using placeholder phrasing such as “our loved one” and quickly pivoting from shock to calls for calm plus emphasis on migrants’ contributions rather than raw, unfiltered grief or pointed questions about what had happened. It did not read like the spontaneous words of devastated relatives.

Katie Hopkins@KTHopkins

No shit Sherlock.

As if a family in deep shock would write this shite

10:58 AM · Jun 14, 2026 · 140K Views

265 Replies · 2.38K Reposts · 11.7K Likes

The Mail also notes that RICU was involved with the aftermath of the murder of Henry Nowak by Vickrum Digwa, again providing strategic input to police handling the family.

The interventions align with long-standing criticisms that RICU applies uneven standards. Sir William Shawcross, in his 2023 review of Prevent, observed: “The bar for what RICU includes on Islamism looks to be relatively high, whereas the bar for what is included on the extreme Right-wing is comparably low.”

The unit has flagged mainstream cultural consumption — watching Michael Portillo’s programmes, reading Shakespeare, Chaucer or Milton, or books documenting grooming gang scandals — as potential indicators of far-Right susceptibility. It even linked Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg to sympathetic audiences.

Professor Anthony Glees described the outfit’s position: “The unit that produced this report is called RICU. It’s based in the Home Office but it’s in that kind of shadowy area between what the Home Office does and what the security service MI5 ought to be doing.”

Leftwaffen-Watch ⬜️@LeftwaffenWatch

Do you want evidence of the work of the RICU ‘nudge unit’?

Here it is…

Organised protests to quell the legitimate fury after Southport with the MSM all under orders to devote their front pages to the psy-op the next day

All told to refer to concerned parents as ‘far right

12:35 PM · Jun 14, 2026 · 9.69K Views

18 Replies · 219 Reposts · 674 Likes

A Home Office spokesman offered the standard line: “RICU provides analysis on extremist use of propaganda and exploitation of the internet to inform the UK’s counter terrorism system. We cannot comment on its operations.”

The unit has pushed for expanded recording of non-crime hate incidents, measures later scrapped after public backlash over their chilling effect on ordinary speech. It has also claimed that discussion of grooming gangs in Pakistani communities is exploited by the far-Right to stir hatred.

This is not isolated activity. Government narrative management operations have multiplied. A 2025 examination detailed how teams such as the National Security and Online Information Team monitor “concerning narratives” on social media and flag material to platforms for removal, particularly content critical of migration policy during periods of unrest.

An elite police unit tracks anti-migrant posts. Officials stated they make “no apologies for flagging to platforms content which is contrary to their own terms of service and which can result in violent disorder on our streets.”

The same infrastructure that once deployed propagandistic fear tactics to drive mass compliance during the COVID period has been repurposed. What began as emergency messaging around a virus has evolved into tools for managing public reaction to the consequences of sustained high immigration and associated crime.

We have also seen the Prevent apparatus targeted firmly at British people, and even children, who have expressed concern about mass migration.

This apparatus is also now being formalised and expanded under the banner of “crisis response.” In the wake of the Belfast unrest sparked by the attack on Stephen Ogilvie, ministers have moved to give Ofcom sweeping new authority under the Online Safety Act to pressure platforms into rapid removal of content labelled “false information” or inciting disorder during declared crises.

Technology Secretary Liz Kendall announced the government will “lay in Parliament an update to the Online Safety Act requiring services to take quicker action to remove illegal content circulating during times of crisis.”

Ofcom has already issued open letters to platforms citing spikes in content tied to the Northern Ireland events and demanding enhanced, crisis-specific moderation measures — without requiring fresh parliamentary approval.

The definition of “crisis” is deliberately broad, drawing on the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 and covering threats to welfare, security or public order. This builds directly on the informal narrative-shaping RICU has conducted for years, now also augmented by a new £115 million PoliceAI centre equipped with live facial recognition, predictive analytics and automated real-time content flagging.

GB News@GBNEWS

‘People are concerned the government will stretch the definition of a crisis and remove content showing what is happening on our streets.’

@CarverEmily grills Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy MP on Labour’s plan to curb social media in ‘times of crisis’ after disorder in Belfast.

9:41 AM · Jun 14, 2026 · 16.5K Views

38 Replies · 34 Reposts · 154 Likes

Former Prime Minister Liz Truss directly addressed the underlying dynamic. She stated that mass migration “is being weaponised to undermine Western civilisation.” Truss continued: “They want to undermine the family. They want to undermine the nation state. And people in Britain are saying ‘we’ve had enough of this.’”

She added that institutions have been corrupted by a DEI mentality focused on group outcomes rather than equal treatment under law, with the response being suppression of discussion and attacks on those highlighting the role of mass migration.

The through-line is clear. Legitimate public concern over policy outcomes — crime rates, community cohesion, strained services — is reframed as dangerous extremism requiring state-managed behavioural change. Protesters become “thugs.” Family grief is shaped into generic calls for calm that emphasise migrant contributions.

Online speech is monitored and throttled. Cultural touchstones are recast as radicalisation risks when they appear on the “wrong” side of the narrative. Now “crisis” declarations provide the trigger to accelerate these controls with regulator muscle and AI tools.

This apparatus operates with minimal transparency and little accountability to elected representatives or the public whose taxes fund it. Critics inside Whitehall have described it as out of control. Its expansion from countering Al Qaeda propaganda into domestic speech management on immigration — and now into codified crisis powers — represents a fundamental shift toward treating British citizens’ unfiltered reactions as the primary threat.

Britain faces real pressures from decades of rapid demographic change and enforcement failures. Honest examination of those pressures does not equate to hatred. Suppressing that examination through coordinated narrative control only deepens distrust and guarantees that underlying problems fester.

Citizens retain the right to discuss the impacts of policy without state operatives scripting responses or directing police to rebrand dissent.

The revelations about RICU and the accelerating “Ministry of Truth” machinery confirm what many already sensed: the tools built for one set of emergencies have been turned inward to protect another set of political choices.

Restoring open debate and accountability requires dismantling these layers of managed perception and returning to straightforward governance that prioritises the security and cohesion of the existing population.

Copyright 2026 m o d e r n i t y

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