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Formal Testimony: Early Data Versus Draconian Fear

Day 1 · 0:44:44 · Ron Johnson

  • 📊 Johnson cites Ioannidis and Oxford estimates placing COVID’s infection fatality rate near seasonal flu levels by March 2020.
  • 📓 He contrasts Fauci’s private 0.2–0.3% CFR note with public 2–3% testimony used to justify lockdowns.
  • 🏪 Shutdowns bankrupted Main Street while big-box and tech firms thrived and billionaires gained trillions.

Johnson begins prepared remarks on the failed, fear-driven COVID response.

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Transcript

Ron Johnson · 0:44:44

Uh, distinguished Members of Parliament, Mr. Allison, Mr. Buckley, first of all, thanks, thank, thank you for this opportunity to testify, but thank you for having the courage to hold this inquiry. I, you know, thank all the witnesses for coming and testifying. It's truly an honor. Although the coronavirus pandemic has had a tragic and lasting impact on global society, I fully understand why so many people want to forget what happened and simply move on. But we can't. Not if you want to ensure that the mistakes made in our miserably failed response to COVID aren't repeated the next time. And right now it just seems like some people are hoping and praying for next time. It's sick. It was hard not to believe that. Without dispute, the early news and images coming out of China, Italy, and New York City as they were coping with SARS-CoV-2 were alarming.

Ron Johnson · 0:45:44

Images of responders and health officials in moon suits and reports of COVID hotspots and deaths dominated news cycles. We didn't know if this new virus would be as deadly as Ebola, with an infection fatality rate of 40%. MERS at 30%, or SARS-CoV-1, an 8 to 10% infection fatality rate. But by March 17th, 2020, in an article published in Stat News, Professor Stanford, Professor John Ioannidis analyzed the data from the Diamond Princess cruise ship that had been quarantined due to a COVID outbreak. From that data, Professor Ioannidis projected an infection fatality rate for SARS-CoV-2 of 0.125%. Point.

Speaker I · 0:46:33

125%.

Ron Johnson · 0:46:34

The predicted rate is somewhere between 0.05% to 1%. Now, per perspective, an average flu season has an infection fatality rate of approximately 0.1%. By April of 2020, Oxford's Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine was also predicting an IFI are ranging somewhere between 0.1% and 0.35%, probably no worse than a bad flu season. Again, this, this is in March of 2020, as the rest of the world is freaking out. We're starting to get data that, okay, this, this could be a deadly disease, particularly for elderly, particularly if you have certain comorbidities. But for the rest of us, if you have a good immune system, it might be pretty bad a flu. Don't freak out. I certainly wasn't immune to the early justifiable fear caused by the unknown, but those two predictions provided valuable perspective, eased my concerns, and made me highly skeptical of the scaremongering and draconian response measures being proposed and implemented.

Ron Johnson · 0:47:39

But fear was exactly what those in charge wanted to joke so they can use that fear to increase their power and control over our lives. Even though on February 8th, 2020— February 8th— Anthony Fauci privately confided to his diary a similar case fatality rate for COVID, quote, more likely 0.2 to 0.3% rather than 2%. That's a quote in his with transmissibility, quote, like a bad influenza, unquote. Publicly, in his March 2020 testimony to the House Oversight Committee, he predicted overall mortality around 2 to 3%, 10 times higher. It's about 10 times higher than the flu. He uses scaremongering to push mandates and societal lockdowns that devastated— and I mean devastated— people's lives and global economies.

Ron Johnson · 0:48:45

In March 2020, I publicly stated that we tragically lose 39,000 people in traffic fatalities each year, but we don't shut down our highways. From the White House podium, Anthony Fauci said that comment was, quote, way out. Actually, my comment was highly appropriate analogy. There's no— there was no way we shut down our economy to slow the spread. We had to continue on with our lives. Now, federal workers could work from home, as could other white-collar office workers, teachers. But blue-collar workers, that the people who actually make our lives livable available, make and deliver our food, other products that are necessities. They had to go to work to keep our economy operating, and they did. The inequity of shutdowns didn't end with the disparity between blue and white-collar workers. Small Main Street businesses were shut down by government edict and went bankrupt, wiping out the lifetime savings of their owners.

Ron Johnson · 0:49:53

But the Box stores, big tech giants not only stayed opened, they thrived as their smaller competitors were destroyed. Using Forbes World Billionaires list, Oxfam reported that the 2,357 billionaires on the global list increased their wealth by $3.9 trillion $1,000 from March 30th to December 30th, 2020, due to the pandemic.