Originally posted on theepochtimes.com by Jan Jekielek and Bill Pan September 08, 2023

With new variants of the COVID-19 virus on the rise and government officials pushing the return of public health mandates, Americans will be tested on whether they have learned anything about propaganda over the past three years, according to Dr. Robert Malone.

“We’ve heard all of this about how lethal this coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, is, and how we’re at such great risk for hospitalization or death associated with it. Most of that has turned out to be false,” the virologist said during a recent interview for EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders: NOW.”

The interview comes as two mutated COVID variants, which have unofficially been dubbed “Pirola” and “Eris,” compete to become the dominant strain in the United States heading into fall. In response, an immunization panel of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is scheduled to vote at a Sept. 12 meeting on new recommendations of vaccines.

On the advisory panel are vaccine makers such as Moderna, Novavax, and Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech. They have produced booster shots aimed at the highly transmissible XBB.1.5 variant, which Dr. Malone said had already mutated to the point where those vaccines have been rendered useless.

“[Pirola and Eris] have highly mutated spike protein sequences, which seemed to confer the ability to escape the immunologic surveillance that has been elicited by these spike-based vaccines: Novavax, Moderna, and Pfizer-BioNTech,” Dr. Malone said.

Vaccine-Induced Mutation

A leading hypothesis, according to the doctor, holds that the massive rollout of these vaccines actually generated a selective pressure that caused XBB.1.5, nicknamed “Kraken,” to mutate and become less deadly but better able to replicate and spread.

“If they’re partially effective in eliciting an immune response that’s not adequate to stop the virus from replicating and spreading, what it will do is select virus mutants that are able to evade the immune selection pressure elicited by the vaccines and also by natural infection,” said Dr. Malone, who helped create the messenger RNA technology used in some of the vaccines.

“And the key question is, who cares?” he continued. “There are lots of different variants. If we raised red flags about every single variant that we detected, we would be basically crying wolf 24/7, because this evolution is a constant ongoing process.”

When it comes to the lethality of Pirola and Eris, Dr. Malone said the latest data complied by the CDC only indicates a daily mortality “associated with,” rather than “caused by,” the new COVID strains.

“If they put a swab up your nose and came up with a positive signal by whatever test, that’s COVID associated,” he said, adding that COVID-associated deaths per day in the United States are running at about 40.

By comparison, the daily deaths associated with synthetic opioids like fentanyl are at about 200.

“Just like with the parent Omicron, what we see in general with both Pirola and Eris is that these viruses may be more infectious—certainly Eris is more infectious, because it’s out-competing Kraken and the others—but not particularly pathogenic,” the doctor added. “That’s the trajectory of viruses. Typically, when they enter a human body population, they evolve to become more infectious and less pathogenic.”

The narrative that was extensively pushed onto the American public over the past three years, however, was based on the premises that the COVID pathogen was lethal and the vaccines were safe and effective. Dr. Malone said these were false beliefs.

“All this information about COVID has been framed in that context, and framed in the logic that anything which would cause vaccine hesitancy should be suppressed and censored,” he explained.

“This is one of the big lies that were spread, and it was weaponized to a point where we had a variety of key opinion leaders making ethically obscene statements, such as that people who would not take the vaccine should be denied medical care, hospitalization, the ability to participate in society; that they shouldn’t be able to receive organ transplants. There was all of this jingoism promoted.”

Return of Propaganda

When asked if this hysteria over COVID mandate compliance would occur again with the latest wave, Dr. Malone said it’s “absolutely possible.”

“We’re already seeing early deployment of the same strategies in schools, universities, in places like the entertainment industry, and in some governmental sectors,” he said. “The key question is: Will the populace tolerate it?”

“We’re about to have a social experiment,” the doctor continued. “Has the American public learned over the last three years about propaganda, information manipulation, the lack of benefits associated with these measures, and the impact these measures have had on their children, their parents, their finances, and on their jobs? Are they going to be willing to comply in general? Are they going to stand up and just say, ‘No?’”

While there may be signs that people are waking up to the lies they have been fed, this coalition of governments, media, and pharmaceutical corporations have refined their propaganda techniques and won’t be held back from using them again, Dr. Malone said.

“I anticipate that we’re going to see wave after wave of this advanced technology continuing to be deployed against the American citizenry in more advanced and sophisticated ways, including using artificial intelligence, algorithmic artificial intelligence, manipulation of information sources.”