Debbie Lerman
speaker
75 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Debbie Lerman’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
That's brilliant. And thank you, Drew.
Hi, thanks, Dr. Drew. I'm so excited to be here.
Yeah. I don't know if I was suited for that. I kind of feel like the circumstances chose me because when COVID happened in March 2020, when the response started, the lockdowns and stuff, I was lucky enough to be someone who doesn't get too panicky about things. And also because of my background as a medical writer, I'm familiar. I'm not afraid to read medical documents, studies, and statistics.
And in addition to that, my husband is a doctor, so he's a good reference for me. So when everything started, I just started looking at the scientific literature and the numbers. I'm not on social media and I don't watch any news. So I get my news. I used to get my news from the New York Times and NPR. And now I get it from Substack.
Yeah, thanks. I'm really, thank you very much. I'm really excited about that. I'm not on X. I feel like for me, social media is counterproductive in terms of attention sucking. I also think it's not necessarily a constructive way to have dialogue. but I completely appreciate the reach and the audience. So I was not going on that.
First source material. And so it was clear from the very beginning that there was no big emergency and that everything that was happening was wrong. medically and scientifically, and in terms of public health. Because the first rule of public health is calm people down. That just makes sense. That's the absolute first rule in any person in public health before COVID will have told you that.
Now only the ethical people will tell you that. So first you calm people down, then you figure out what's going on, and then you find the least disruptive way to deal with the outbreak. And as we know, none of those things were done.
Do no harm. Yes, correct. And so, unfortunately, what happened was mass panic occurred. And I realized pretty quickly because I was listening to the NPR and reading the New York Times that the media was playing a very large role in that.
And that was very scary to me because sources that I had relied on to be neutral and to be, you know, to do their research and to be scientifically reliable were not.
And then the other thing that scared me a lot was that all my friends and family were panicking and not just panicking, but losing their minds as far as I was concerned in terms of accepting every edict that came down, not questioning anything like the masks and the social distancing and the lockdowns and later the vaccine mandates.
And when I tried to question these things, because I used to be a very liberal Democrat type, the answers that I would get, which would be maybe more than anything, would be, I would say, can you believe these mask mandates? You know that in medical school, my husband in his first year learned that masks don't help against respiratory viruses. And they would say to me, are you a Trumpist?
So they were responding to my medical and scientific questioning with some kind of political rejoinder. And having known me all my life and knowing that I was a liberal Democrat, they were asking me absurd questions that also had nothing to do with the situation. And so that's what really sent me into a tailspin.
And so for a while, I just was following the numbers and following a few scientists online and looking at studies. And eventually that led me to the Great Barrington Declaration and to Brownstone, which is one of the only platforms where people could publish true information about COVID. And then I started writing for Brownstone.
And that's when I started going down those rabbit holes that you mentioned.
I feel like I haven't changed my points of view at all. The only thing that I've changed is the groups that I identify with because the group I used to identify with does not share those values. So my values and my points of view are the same, which are science-based, fact-based, free speech-based, bodily autonomy-based, all the things that I've always believed in as a liberal Democrat.
But when all the liberal Democrats started believing...
It's extremely disorienting. And for me, it was very destabilizing in my life. I really felt like I was losing my mind. But as I found a new community of people coming from all sides of the political spectrum who really were just trying to find the truth, I felt that's what's been supporting me and sustaining me and trying to reach people.
on all sides and try to get the truth out because the other thing that was extremely frightening and still is, is the level of propaganda and censorship that we are being subjected to, which is very coordinated
So I guess I'll start with a document that I wrote about and that I think that was the article that Sasha sent to you about the government's pandemic planning. Because when I tried to figure out what was happening and why it was happening, I said, well, there must be a plan. And I wonder if they're following it because it sure doesn't seem like they're following a public health plan.
So what is the plan? And so then I started just researching documents and looking at all the government pandemic plans starting, you know, 20, 30 years ago. And I encountered a parallel planning sort of channel, which was the biodefense planning. And biodefense is... planning for a biological terror attack or for bio warfare.
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