Peter Schweizer: ‘Vested Commercial Interests’ and ‘Bad Science’ Drove Government Pandemic Response

BREITBART

Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute (GAI), Breitbart News senior editor, and author of Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win, observed on Monday that governmental responses to the COVID-19 pandemic were partially driven by “vested commercial interests” and a corrupt fusion of industry with the state.

Schweizer was joined by his GAI colleague Eric Eggers in co-hosting Sean Hannity’s eponymous radio program.

They interviewed John Leake, co-author of

Partial transcript below.

PETER SCHWEIZER: Dr. Tyson, tell me, how do you think decisions are being made at the highest level in government today? You heard what John was talking about — this sort of ‘biomedical industrial complex’ — I know certainly you’ve been critical of how the response has happened. This is kind of a systematic problem, right?

We have leaders in Washington, they’re making decisions based on vested commercial interests, in part, maybe another part is based on bad science, but what’s your take on what is driving so much of this bad policy in Washington?

BRIAN TYSON: I think part of the problem — number one — is you have people making  decisions who aren’t taking care of patients, first and foremost. To this day, nobody from Washington or even the public health department wants to sit down and have a conversation with me, who’s been taking care of COVID-19 patients for three years now, and we have a substantial amount of data.

We have a great track record, We’ve been using effective early treatments from monoclonal antibodies to repurposed drugs, and nobody wants to seem to have a conversation, but those who are making the decisions tend to be making it on a financial incentive and [for] control issues rather than actual science.

We’ve looked at the data. We’ve seen the data, and we all know that what they did didn’t work, so why are we repeating those same steps? Makes no sense.

Leake described the “biomedical industrial complex” as a “monster” on a path of continuous growth. He noted liability protection extended to pharmaceutical companies within the framework of federal legislation marketed as a tool for emergency governmental responses to crises.

“We’ve seen this monster just grow and grow,” he said. “It really took off in 2005, with the PREP Act — the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act — which granted blanket liability protection to pharmaceutical companies making any kind of so-called pandemic ‘countermeasure.’ The thing that these guys really have erected a religion of are vaccines, but any countermeasure could fall under the PREP Act, and it provides blanket liability.”

Leake explained, “[The [PREP Act] provides the Department of Health and Human Services with the legal authority to declare an emergency, and once that emergency is declared, then you have tens of billions — if not hundreds of billions — in public funds flowing to the beneficiary of this ‘countermeasure’ concept.”

The PREP Act’s fusion of industry and government is too much of a risk of corruption, Leake held. He said it provided “too much of a temptation” for parasitism “when you get that kind of money flowing from public coffers, combined with liability protection, combined with the government assuming all responsibility for marketing.”

“Hence we have this constant lurching from one emergency to the next even when it’s just laughably not an emergency,” he concluded.