First: Thanks so much for all the feedback. You blew up my inbox (more correctly, I blew it up)!

Two interesting points: The vast majority of you wrote that you are happy to receive several emails a day. Obviously, there’s some potential selection bias – the most enthusiastic people may be more likely to write me. But I have to go with what I hear. So I will not hold back. (I apologize to those folks who want less. The Substack format doesn’t allow for partial lists at this time.) That said, I will try to limit the snark – that format seems to work better on Twitter.

Second: the topic that generated the LEAST interest was the origins of the virus. At first I was a bit surprised – as an investigative reporter, I think it needs to be explored deeply. But of course nothing else compares to the fight over whether we – or our kids – will be mandated to be vaccinated. And other people are doing good work on the questions of the lab leak. I’ll probably put it aside.

(A quick correction from the prior email, btw – the number of Twitter impressions I received in August was 182 million, not 210 million. If Twitter hadn’t banned me on the 28th, I would likely have reached the latter figure.)

—

Now – onto this email, from a reader in Australia. The extent of the news blackout and open propaganda is stunning. It is no exaggeration that the United States might be in the same situation if not for Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, and a handful of other conservative or independent voices.

But here’s the part I hadn’t thought through. Older people tend to lean right. (As the old joke goes, a 20-year-old conservative has no heart, a 70-year-old liberal has no brain.) And they vote. Frighten even a small number of those folks into voting for the forever lockdowns and you can make a huge difference electorally.

Obviously, this is not just an issue for Australia, but for the US and Europe too – European populations are even older.

I’ll let him speak for himself, unedited. Just a few redactions of identifying information.

—

Hi Alex,

I have been reading your emails about Australia and being an Australian myself i thought i would offer you some thoughts on what is happening here and why nobody is standing up to all this.

I was born and grew up here and usually spend a couple of months of the year here and the rest of the year in XXX. But i came back here early in the Pandemic for the sake of my Dad is who has XXX and is in ill health generally and have not been allowed to leave since.

And can i first thank you for the Twitter feed you were running. It was one of only a handful of things keeping me sane during this period. Everybody else around me is buying into all the lies and i have felt as though i was losing my mind at times. It was so comforting to see that there were other people just as sceptical of all this as i was and have been.

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