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A group of Dutch medical researchers are igniting a firestorm by calling for an investigation of the deaths caused by vaccine mandates and lockdowns imposed on the public during the COVID-19 pandemic. What's wrong with that?

Everything, if you're part of the global public health mafia and want to avoid questions about the mistakes you made and the lies you told.

We all saw Dr. Anthony Fauci squirming last week when he was forced to admit to the House Oversight and Accountability Committee that the social distancing rules -- like standing 6 feet apart -- on which the lockdowns were based were pulled out of thin air.

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The Dutch researchers want answers. They insist "every death needs to be acknowledged and accounted for," including deaths caused by policy mistakes. The collateral damage from heavy-handed public health edicts.

One conclusion is already crystal clear: Don't entrust your life or health to the government.

The Dutch researchers examined data from 47 western countries, including the U.S., and find that many months after the lockdowns began and vaccines were rolled out, the death rates stayed higher than in pre-pandemic years. The lockdowns and vaccines weren't stopping the virus but were apparently causing other deaths. A classic case of the cure being worse than the disease.

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Zeroing in on the U.S., they cited double-digit increases in alcohol-caused fatalities and drug overdose fatalities.

Researchers Rob Arnott and Chicago economics professor Casey Mulligan found the same. During the pandemic, deaths from alcoholism, drug addiction, car accidents, hypertension, heart disease and diabetes soared, exceeding by 100,000 a year what would ordinarily occur in the U.S. They pinned those "excess deaths" on government COVID policies that drove people to addiction, overeating and other acts of despair.

Even more tragic, those deaths of despair skewed younger, so many more years of potential life were lost than by COVID deaths, which mostly affected older adults. Young and middle-aged adults succumbed to alcoholism or drug addiction as they were laid off or watched their business and their savings disappear because of the lockdowns.

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What's worse, even when it became obvious lockdowns were failing, government health officials stayed their deadly course. They put their egos over the public's welfare.

The Dutch researchers' stunning data show that for children the virus posed a miniscule 0.0003% risk of death, probably less risk than crossing the street to get to the playground.

Doctors like the Hoover Institution's Scott Atlas urged policymakers to target the high-risk elderly, but he was demonized for questioning the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention orthodoxy. Had the public-health-industrial complex listened, children would have been in school learning instead of home suffering learning losses.

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Even now, as Dr. Joel Zinberg of City Journal points out, children ages 5 to 17 account for less than one-tenth of 1% of COVID deaths, but officials are still recommending vaccines for all schoolchildren. Crazy.

The Dutch researchers touched off a firestorm with their suggestion that more needs to be investigated about whether the vaccines caused some pandemic-era deaths.

In all likelihood, the vaccine is helpful for most adults, especially the elderly. But there are exceptions. Research in Human Vaccine and Immunotherapeutics shows men can incur a higher risk of cardiac-related deaths.

In a hospital setting, common conditions such as ischemic stroke and acute coronary syndrome might not be readily identified and reported as possibly caused by a vaccine.

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The Dutch researchers never showed a causal connection between vaccines and higher deaths. But just suggesting further research on that issue provoked a nasty backlash. That's the public-health-industrial complex closing ranks.

No surprise. In Aug. 2023, the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association published an attack smearing 52 physicians for disseminating "misinformation." The offending scientists disagreed with the CDC, which now has been proven wrong on almost every COVID issue.

The global public health establishment, including many journal editors and government advisers -- the Faucis and Dr. Deborah Birxes of the world - don't want us to look back.

Kudos to the Dutch researchers for raising questions and challenging public health orthodoxy. That is what scientists are supposed to do.

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The status quo be damned.

With bird flu and other threats looming, we need the truth about what saved lives and what actually ended up killing our loved ones and neighbors.

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