Orthodox Reflections

It happens on a regular basis. A potential inquirer, or a visiting Orthodox Christian from another parish, sidles up to one of us members and asks, “What happened here during COVID?” Most of those asking had been “locked out” of church during COVID, were interested in joining our community, but only if they were assured our parish considered Christian worship an “essential service”. On behalf of our parish, we can happily assure everyone that we were open the whole time, with masks optional and the icons were never put away or protected from veneration.

When they hear this from us, there is often an audible sigh of relief. A young lady recently, small children in tow, actually cried when told that we had been open the whole time. Her former Episcopal Church had been closed, so her father had been buried in a civil service conducted graveside by a Protestant pastor on-call at the funeral home. With a limit of 10 attendees. The fact that our parish would never do that to her family brought tears to her eyes. Understandably so.

Sometimes Orthodox Reflections gets questions about the COVID era of lockdowns and mandated jabs from inquirers via email. Below is one we received in April, 2024:

I’m an inquirer into Orthodoxy and was considering becoming a catechumen. I come from a protestant background and recently began attending Greek Orthodox Church. I’m learning that orthodox Churches forced vaccine mandates on people 2 years ago and even the Russian Church told them to repent until the day they die for not taking it. (Editorial Note: This was not the position of the Russian Church, but only one bishop’s personal opinion which caused significant reaction against him. See here for more.) I battled this mandate heavily with my work and was willing to lose my career over my anathema towards taking such a thing. How do I approach this church or others I may be looking into to find out if they are going to kick me out at the next plandemic? Is there a respectful way to ask this? I don’t worship at the alter of big pharma nor do I wish to take their biological weapon sacraments. With all do respect it causes me to question what else church leaders may be deceived by, including anti Christ himself. Thank you for your time. Your website sort of gave me hope that there may still be a place in orthodox for a person like me who was strongly against what happened. After learning what went on I began having massive doubts about my interest in the Orthodox Church.

As we look back on COVID, and forward to “Disease X“, now is the perfect time to address such questions. With that, let’s first examine the things Orthodoxy did right during COVID. Because there was a lot of them. There were also weak spots. We will look at all of it, the good and the bad.

Orthodox Parishes Stayed Open

According to two surveys conducted by Orthodoxyreality.org, somewhere between 17-22% of Orthodox parishes never closed during the “Pandemic”.  On the one hand, that seems bad. After all, that means over 80% of Orthodox parishes closed at some point because of nothing more than irrational fear. That record looks better when you consider that the average of “never closing” churches, among all Christian (loosely defined) denominations, was actually around 7%. At the height of the craziness in many areas, a mere 7% of Evangelical, Episcopal, Roman Catholic, etc. churches were open on Sunday. In comparison, the Orthodox numbers loom large. Suddenly, we can understand why one OCA priest, asked why his parish has more than tripled in size in the last 2 years, replied, “When they needed us, we were right here.”  His parish’s experience is not an isolated incident. From that same survey:

“When compared to pre-pandemic, they were much more likely to have grown in worship attendance, in overall involvement of members in the life of the parish beyond worship services, and in participation of children and teenagers in parish-based religious education.  Also, more members in such congregations feel that they have grown significantly in their personal faith through the pandemic.”

Staying open was always the right call, for everyone. If you are visiting a parish as a potential inquirer (or an Orthodox Christian needing a new parish home), feel free to ask about how the parish dealt with the lockdowns and the jabs. It is perfectly okay to ask whether the parish closed, for how long, whether masks were required, whether and to what extent social distancing was enforced, and whether there was any pressure to take the mRNA jabs. Anyone considering joining a parish has the right to know these things. In Orthodoxy we are all about the truth. Nothing should be ever be hidden.

Now, if you get answers to those questions you don’t like, it is also perfectly acceptable to ask if the parish leadership has now learned their lesson. We know a lot more now than we did then, and more than a few people have changed their opinions about complying with government health edicts. You have a right to all the facts – good and bad.

Orthodox Christians Pushed Back on the Lockdown Craziness

Multiple communion spoons were one example of craziness that popped up during the “Pandemic”. Among the most egregious proponents of multiple communion spoons was Archbishop Sotirios in Canada. His actions provoked at least one protest march, multiple confrontations in Canadian Greek parishes, and multiple online petitions. Not to mention being a catalyst in the founding and growth of Orthodox Reflections. The Greeks in Canada are not to be trifled with. Defections from the Greek Archdiocese led to financial crisis, with the Georgian Church being a popular destination for Greeks seeking authentic Orthodox worship.

In the US, Archbishop Elpidophoros pushed the heresy of multiple spoons, only to provoke pushback from other hierarchs, including Metropolitan Alexios of Atlanta. Sadly, while he kept the faith on the one spoon, Metropolitan Alexios was otherwise an enthusiastic lockdowner. Many others, however, were not. Online, Orthodox Reflections was only one Orthodox source that opposed the lockdowns and the attendant liturgical mutilations. Around the world, major opponents of closing churches, limiting attendance, and changing worship practices included: Metropolitan Neophytos, Fr. Peter Heers, Fr. Josiah Trenham, Fr. Patrick Reardon, Abbot Tryphon, Metropolitan Makarios of Kenya, Bishop George of Canberra Auxiliary, Bishop Siluan of the Metropolitante of Australia and New Zealand of the The Serbian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan of Kalavrita and Egialia Ieronymos, multiple monastic elders , Metropolitan Jonah of ROCOR, Archpriest Geoffrey Korz, many hierarchs of the Serbian Church in the US (who frequently took in those who were asked to leave their lockdown parishes, among them medical personnel), priests of the Burning Bush Brotherhood who stood up for the Orthodox Faith, a group of OCA clergy that provided a devastating critique of their bishops’ leadership during 2021, Archpriest Alexander Webster (who edited a book called Let No One Fear Death, wrote a general support letter for vax exemptions, and appeared on our webinar about COVID), Archpriest Seraphim Holland (also a COVID Webinar panelist). and so many, many more.

Further, we know of more than a few priests who humbly, prayerfully, and quietly went against their own bishops, the CDC, and local governments to support and commune their communities. We even know of more than one bishop that quietly facilitated the continuation of the Eucharist at their parishes, even if doing so violated lockdown orders. Their service is known to their parishioners and to God, Who is the main One that counts! Could we have used more heroes among the clergy? Surely, but having learned their lesson, we think even more will stand strong in the face of whatever “Disease X” turns out to be.

Among lay Orthodox Christians (in addition to writers you will find on Orthodox Reflections), we would love to praise Dissident Mama, Monomakhos, Michael Sisco, the lay members of our Covid Webinar (James George Jatras, Dr. Paisios Robles, Dragos Boscoianu, JD), and so many more that we are currently overlooking. It was a battle fought on many fronts by a small army of Orthodox Christians, doing whatever they could to resist the mainstream COVID narrative and all of its ramifications. Next time, God willing, we will do even better.

Orthodox Christians Resisted the Jabs

Robert Williams, MD, PhD published an article on Orthodox Reflections as early as May 2021 questioning the efficacy of the mRNA vaccines. As a trained medical researcher and doctor, he was already aware by early 2021 that the efficacy claims for the mRNA jabs were wildly inflated. His local medical board eventually tried to take his medical license because we published that article for him.  Dr. Irene Polidoulis MD published an article discussing the link between the COVID jabs and aborted fetal cell lines in March 2021. Based on their work, and the contributions of several nurses (here, here, and here), other physicians, medical educators, educated laity, and Orthodox hierarchs / clergy – Orthodox Reflections was able to compile a comprehensive guide to getting a religious exemption from the dangerous, untested, and morally compromised “vaccines”. These resources helped hundreds of thousands of Orthodox and non-Orthodox Christians get a much needed reprieve from the “clot” shots.

We got thousands of thanks via emails, comments, and social media posts. Many of them were from non-Orthodox Christians who said we were the only ones there to help them. Some even mentioned that this was their first exposure to Orthodoxy. Below is a typical response to us from an Orthodox Christian whose wife used our resources for her exemption:

Besides those mentioned above, other Orthodox Christians contributed articles on various aspects of the mRNA jabs, including their threats to health and their demonic links. Brave Orthodox priests and deacons quietly wrote exemption letters (when needed), counseled their people against being morally “stampeded” into taking the abortion-tainted jabs, and provided reliable information on the true risks and the complete lack of benefits. Often against the opposition of their own bishops. These men are true Orthodox heroes.

The Orthodox Collaborators

Did all Orthodox Christians and clergy stand strong for the faith against the lockdowns and jabs? No, and that is unfortunate. However, no group of humans in a crisis is ever going to be perfect. Regretfully, there were Orthodox clergy, academics, and media outlets that fully embraced COVIDIANism.

There was Fordham, of course, pushing the Vax along with representatives of the Orthodox Theological Society:

When a future historian writes the history of American Orthodoxy’s response to COVID, it will include a long list of missed opportunities. Thanks to Public Orthodoxy and the Orthodox Theological Society in America, we can now add an article titled Which Vaccine Should I Receive? to that list. The article introduces an FAQ document on COVID vaccines prepared by three Orthodox Christian health experts – Drs. Hermina Nedelescu, Catherine Creticos, and Gayle Woloschak. The piece is very pro-vaccination, which is unfortunate as a balanced-treatment of this topic would have better served the Orthodox community.

Ancient Faith Radio put Dr. Ryan Sampson Nash on their program not once, but three times (here and here are responses from Orthodox medical professionals) to convince everyone to “get the vaccine”. We are not sure exactly why AFR felt the need to do this, but the fact that one of their trustees at the time, Mr. Mark Yniguez, was a former 19-year employee of Pfizer might have had something to do with it. Orthodox Reflections published a letter sent by a concerned Orthodox Christian seeking answers on this apparent “conflict of interest”, but AFR chose to never respond. One wonders if this same potential conflict of interest played into AFR blacklisting Abbot Tryphon from their platforms?

Too many bishops excused the links to aborted fetal cells using the following reasons:

• The cell lines were harvested in 1973 and cultured in a lab ever since. The link to abortion is remote.
• The cell lines have been used in many medicines that we commonly take, so it would be hypocritical to get upset over this now.
• The good of the mRNA vaccines outweighed any possible moral taint.

Needless to say, the previously listed bishops, priests, theologians, and Orthodox medical professionals who opposed the jabs, and the lockdowns, did not agree with those points. We made sure their voices were heard, and that their witness was there to assist those needing exemptions. How many of our collaborationist academics, theologians, bishops and priests still worship at that altar of COVIDIANism? That is difficult to tell, but given how things have gone, we would pray that a good number of them have learned from having been conned.

As noted above, we have more than a few heroic bishops in Orthodoxy who stood strong.  But not all of them, and, frankly, far too many Orthodox bishops did not. Some directly encouraged or demanded jab compliance, while others merely posed for “propaganda” photos of them getting the shots.

Of course, given what we know now, it is actually a wonder that so many of our bishops and clergy either refused to encourage the jabs, or even stood in active opposition to them. The full power of the government was deployed during the Pandemic to convince Christian leaders to promote the jabs. The US Government went so far as to lie to faith leaders about the safety and efficacy of the jabs, while couching everything in faith-based language, and even offering bribes:

What if I told you powerful U.S. government officials – such as former NIH Director Francis Collins and U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy – used religion in an attempt to convince faith leaders around the country to push the COVID-19 injections? A deep dive into the organization Faiths4Vaccines – a founding member of the HHS’ vaccine-propaganda machine COVID-19 Community Corps1 – has revealed just that.

 

That the HHS was tapping faith leaders in the spring of 2021 to push the uptake of COVID-19 vaccines was not a surprise. We uncovered this in our previous article that we broke on the COVID-19 Community Corps at the end of 2022.2 But what did surprise us as we dug deeper for this article was the extent to which faith leaders were pursued to push the COVID-19 vaccines and the inappropriate – if not unconstitutional – manner in which government officials persuaded these faith leaders to push the shots.

 

With 86 founding members, the “faith leaders” category of the COVID-19 Community Corps was the most numerous.3 These founding members included both individual faith leaders and faith organizations from a variety of religions – including the American Baptist Church, Catholic Charities USA, the Episcopal Church, the National Association of Evangelicals, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, and the New York Jewish Agenda, just to name a few.4

 

Not surprisingly, many faith organizations received federal money during the pandemic. For example, an entity called “American Baptist Churches in the USA” reportedly received $1.5 million in COVID-19 relief bailout money – in the form of two forgivable “loans” that spanned 2020 and 2021.5 In their defense, the country was shut down for much of 2020, which left faith organizations, some of whom rely on member donations to pay day-to-day costs, facing financial disaster.

 

Many have tried to comprehend how 80% of the U.S. population would be convinced to submit to a novel and experimental biomedical injection therapy, with zero long-term safety data, to combat an illness that posed little risk to much of the population. We have previously shown how billions in financial incentives were funneled to influential private sectors – such as hospital systems and physicians – greasing the wheels for vaccine mandates and resulting in a lack of patient informed consent. We have also shown how federal grants, like those awarded through HHS Cooperative Agreements, have influenced physician standardizing organizations – such as ACOG – resulting in risky and unprecedented COVID-19 pro-vaccine recommendations in pregnancy.

 

In our opinion, this is precisely what happened. As demonstrated at the Faiths4Vaccines National Summit, powerful government officials resorted to the use of religious doctrine to coerce faith leaders across the country to use their own spiritual influence, positions of trust, and sacred spaces to push the vaccines on their congregants. Government officials claimed to know God’s position on the issue of the COVID-19 vaccines, failing to consider other perspectives or engage in open debate. In claiming that their vaccine “theology” was the correct interpretation, our government leaders implied that any faith leaders with a different view opposed God or had an incorrect understanding of God. For those who dared question the government’s vaccine “theology,” Collins and Murthy use words that echoed pejorative tones – implying that faith leaders who had hesitancy about recommending the vaccine were inferior and/or uneducated –thus susceptible to believing in “conspiracy theories” (Collins) or “misinformation and myths” (Murthy).

 

Collins literally tells the faith leaders attending the National Summit what to say to their congregants. He urges them to reassure their “flocks” that the COVID-19 vaccines are completely safe and assures them that big pharma – one of the most corrupt industries on the planet – didn’t cut any corners:

 

“But mostly I wanted to just say as somebody who’s been in the middle of this effort to develop these vaccines over the last 16 months, that I really would want you to be able to say to all of the people in your various flocks that these vaccines were developed with incredible care and scrupulous attention to safety and efficacy, yes, they were done quicker than has ever been possible. But that wasn’t by cutting corners. That was basically by figuring out how to utilize this new technology called messenger RNA to make some of the steps go a lot faster than they could have.”25

There were lies, financial incentives, and promises to end the lockdowns if jab compliance was high enough. These incentives were combined with the dramatic overstatement of the risk COVID posed for most people. This was quite a lot for religious leaders to stand up to, and an awful lot of data to sort out. Should they have all known better? Of course, because the evidence was there very early on that these were not only immoral drugs linked to abortion, but they were also the riskiest drugs to ever be rolled out. That so few collaborationist Orthodox bishops, and other Christian leaders, have since publicly acknowledged their mistaken participation is troubling.  However, at least some of our bishops should get the benefit of at least a little doubt, given the overall situation. God sees the heart, when we cannot. We sincerely pray that more than a few of these bishops have since learned the error of their previous ways.

However, one Orthodox bishop and one Orthodox Patriarch cannot be let “off the hook” under any conditions. That would be Archbishop Elpidophoros of the Greek Archdiocese and Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople. Those two are irredeemable. While untold thousands of Orthodox Christians were struggling to get medical exemptions, Archbishop Elpidophoros tried to cut their legs out from under them by declaring the Orthodox Faith could not be used as the basis for an exemption. A position we, among many others, roundly rebuked him for:

Archbishop Elpidophoros was also involved in the decision to mandate the vaccine at Holy Cross, the Greek Archdiocese Seminary, even though there was no legal requirement to do so. In not just that decision, but in so many other ways such as his embrace of lockdowns and masking in church, Archbishop Elpidophoros enthusiastically went above and beyond what any government or agency was demanding. In one of the historic low points for the Greek Archdiocese, Patriarch Bartholomew and Archbishop Elpidophoros actually gave Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla the Athenagoras Human Rights Award in 2021, at a time when experts were already loudly highlighting the manifold dangers of the Pfizer injection.

Dr. Albert Bourla, DVM, Ph.D., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Pfizer; Dr. Ugur Sahin, M.D., Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of BioNTech; and Dr. George D. Yancopoulos, MD, Ph.D., Founding Scientist, President and Chief Scientific Officer of Regeneron, being honored for their organizations’ efforts in developing Covid-19 vaccines by Archbishop Elpidophoros and Patriarch Bartholomew.

Has Archbishop Elpidophoros, or his boss in Constantinople, learned anything since the end of the Pandemic? Of course not. He continues to “double down” on previous positions in interviews.  The prohibition on Orthodox Christians getting medical exemptions is still up on the Greek Archdiocese Website:

Although some may be exempt from the vaccination for clear medical reasons, there is no exemption in the Orthodox Church for Her faithful from any vaccination for religious reasons, including the coronavirus vaccine. For this reason, letters of exemption for the vaccination against the coronavirus for religious purposes issued by priests of the Archdiocese of America have no validity, and furthermore, no clergy are to issue such religious exemption letters for any reason.

Overall, we agree that there could have been a much better response to COVID and the jabs by our hierarchs, our clergy, Orthodox medical professionals, and our academics. However, as we just detailed above, there was a robust resistance to the lockdowns, the immoral jab mandates and the morally tainted jabs themselves. Based on our conversations with bishops and priests since COVID, we believe that at least a good number of former collaborationists have learned that their compliance with government dictates was a grave mistake.

Even in the Greek Archdiocese, there are signs that the clergy and laity are increasingly unwilling to just “go along” with whatever the top hierarchs say. A development driven, at least in part, by continued conversions to the Greek Archdiocese (despite their poor overall record during COVID). While the top of GOARCH is more “Globalist” than ever, Archbishop Elpidophoros may find himself with a rude awakening should he try to repeat his COVID performance during “Disease X”.

There is substantial reason to hope for a better future, not only because Orthodox parishes have grown in the United States by seemingly attracting more people resistant to the lockdown / jab narratives, but also because we have continued to learn more about how deceptive our government really was.

What We Have Learned Since the Pandemic Makes Greater Resistance to “Disease X” Inevitable

Prior to 2020, Orthodox Christians, by and large, tended to trust their government, the official “experts”, and the Mainstream Media. Orthodox Christians tend to be good citizens, good neighbors, and good employees. In other words, many of us were primed to follow the “guidance” on the lockdowns and the jabs. With what we have learned during, and since, the Pandemic, that trust and willingness to follow have been obliterated. A complete list of everything we have learned about the COVID lies is not possible in a blog post. Rather, the list below contains some important things (gleaned from multiple sources) that Orthodox Christians are talking about in terms of “lessons learned” from the lockdowns and jabs.

The Lockdowns, Masks, and Other Nonpharmaceutical Interventions Did More Harm Than Good 

At Orthodox Reflections, we were questioning closing churches, closing the economy, the masks, the multiple spoons, and bans on kissing icons right from the beginning. We got a fair amount of pushback from fellow Orthodox Christians over our opposition to these measures. But, also a lot of support. At the time, reliable data one way or the other was hard to come by, as these large scale interventions had never been tried before. Which, of course, was one of the major problems with them. Without any evidence, nonpharmaceutical interventions were simply assumed to be effective, necessary, and worth the toll they would inevitably take on society.

Years into the aftermath, the studies continue to pour in that indicate the lockdowns and other measures were not just useless against COVID, but also extremely costly. People have noticed the new information, especially Orthodox Christians who missed Divine Liturgies, Pascha, weddings, funerals, and baptisms. When they did get to attend Church in many places, they had to put nasty cloth masks on toddlers and could not venerate any of the icons or even light candles. Increasingly, even the most uninformed are learning that they were lied to on a massive scale.

Below are some data from over 400 studies:

The great body of evidence (comparative research studies and high-quality pieces of evidence and reporting judged to be relevant to this analysis) shows that COVID-19 lockdowns, shelter-in-place policies, masks, school closures, and mask mandates have failed in their purpose of curbing transmission or reducing deaths. These restrictive policies were ineffective and devastating failures, causing immense harm especially to the poorer and vulnerable within societies.

 

The benefits of the societal lockdowns and restrictions have been totally exaggerated and the harms to our societies and children have been severe: the harms to children, the undiagnosed illness that will result in excess mortality in years to come, depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation in our young people, drug overdoses and suicides due to the lockdown policies, the crushing isolation due to the lockdowns, psychological harms, domestic and child abuse, sexual abuse of children, loss of jobs and businesses and the devastating impact, and the massive numbers of deaths resulting from the lockdowns that will impact heavily on women and minorities.

High Deaths and Loss of Fertility from the mRNA Jabs with Greece Hardest Hit

Americans of Greek ethnicity are the most numerous Orthodox Christians in the United States. What happens in Greece, matters in America. Naturally, then, many Orthodox Christians in the US are greatly alarmed that Greece, as a result of the jabs, is facing population collapse:

Heart failure, strokes, blood clots, and rapid onset cancers among otherwise healthy young people have caused the mortality rates to skyrocket in Greece, while the fertility levels in young males and females are causing the birth rate to fall through the floor, recording the lowest number of births in almost a century.

 

The prospect of population collapse in Greece is a “ticking time bomb” and a “national threat” according to Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

We’ve seen signals all over the world that the mRNA jabs reduce fertility, at least for some period after the injections. The effects may be permanent. We also got indications early on, even in the Pfizer “trial”, that mRNA was linked to increased risk of death and potentially severe side effects. The “experts” have done a lot of work trying to cover up all the damage and excess deaths over the past few years. Unfortunately, in the case of Greece, the situation has spun so far out of control, that covering it up has become impossible. The news of Greece’s post-jab troubles has hit the Greek Orthodox community in America like a bombshell. Hundreds of years of striving to preserve the Greek identity, only to allow demographic collapse caused by experimental jabs to destroy it?

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While the Greek government refuses to even discuss the mRNA jabs as a cause, the chart below illustrates excess deaths per million. Note when it accelerates. The Greek population may never recover. Eventually, responsibility for this will land on the jabs, where it belongs. Greek Americans didn’t become as successful as they are by being stupid. We are only beginning to see the fall out from this.

Of course, the damage is not limited to Greece. There is so much much more that we could cover, but we’ll suffice just to publish this list of facts addressing mRNA side effects from the State of Florida Department of Health:

The findings in Florida are consistent with various studies that continue to uncover such risks. To further evaluate this, the Surgeon General wrote a letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) illustrating the risk factors associated with the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and emphasizing the need for additional transparency.

According to a study, Fraiman J et al, Vaccine. 2022, mRNA COVID-19 vaccines were associated with an excess risk of serious adverse events, including coagulation disorders, acute cardiac injuries, Bell’s palsy, and encephalitis. This risk was 1 in 550 individuals, which is much higher than other vaccines.

A second study, Sun CLF et al, Sci Rep. 2022, found increased acute cardiac arrests and other acute cardiac events following mRNA COVID-19 vaccination.

Additionally, Dag Berild J et al, JAMA Netw Open. 2022, assessed the risk of thromboembolic and thrombocytopenic events related to COVID-19 vaccines and found preliminary evidence of increased risk of both coronary disease and cardiovascular disease.

While the CDC has identified safety signals for stroke among individuals 65 and older following the bivalent booster administration, there is a need for additional assessments and research regarding safety of all mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.

To support transparency, the State of Florida reminds health care providers to accurately communicate the risks and benefits of all clinical interventions to their patients, including those associated with the COVID-19 vaccine as additional risks continue to be identified and disclosed to the public.

It is reasonable to ask why the general public, and Orthodox Christians in particular, would be willing to believe the stories about the horrible effects of the mRNA jabs. Greece is one reason. The effects are simply too big to ignore. Increased warnings from state governments, and many foreign governments, are another. The multiplying studies showing horrific side effects are now everywhere. A key reason that is often overlooked, however, is that many of us have vaccine-injured people in our lives. Our little parish has 4 vaccine injuries (two among nurses) in less than 100 people. There are whole Websites devoted to the vaccine injured. Victims who the “main stream” media and the medical / pharma complex continue to stubbornly pretend do not exist.

When the next “Pandemic” shows up with a new “miracle cure”, who is going to want to sign up as a lab rat?

The COVID Backstory is the Stuff of Conspiracy Novels

The US Government was preparing for COVID long before 2020. The Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP) is a federal law from December 2005 that has been found by courts to provide absolute immunity to everyone involved (governments, health care providers, pharma, etc.) in “countermeasures“:

[T]he immunity provided by the Act is extremely broad. The PREP Act provides immunity “with respect to all claims for loss caused by, arising out of, relating to, or resulting from the administration to or the use by an individual of a covered countermeasure” if [an emergency] declaration has been issued… [emphasis added]

Wait, what are “countermeasures”? The mRNA jabs are “countermeasures”. Confused? You should be. We are only going to provide a small amount of information here that is slowly making its way into the mainstream. The explanation below is from Sasha Latypova, pharma and medical device R&D executive:

Pandemic Preparedness is a federal quasi-government racketeering enterprise (here, here and here), and a mass murder/mass injury campaign orchestrated by the CIA/DOD/HHS and several other federal agencies. The purpose is to establish a global government regime of control and enslavement that will allow to replace already fake currencies with even more fake digital tokens CBDCs. This objective goes hand-in-hand with other globalist objectives. These objectives include reduction of the population in the name of “saving the planet”, asset transfer to cronies away from independent private sector (whatever is left of it), looting of public money, creation of government-dependent and therefore highly compliant slave class (dependent on extremely expensive “health” care, dependent on welfare, mentally ill, having to care for vaccine-disabled children, brainwashed into depraved self-destructive ideologies, including but not limited to DEI, addicted to propaganda and fear, addicted to drugs, etc.)

Private pharma corporations are used by the PHEMCE cartel as front to launder the poison made by the CIA/DOD controlled bio-manufacturing assets such as Resilience, Moderna, Emergent Biosolutions, and many other “biodefense” contractors. Pharmas are co-conspirators in the mass murder, however they are corporate shells used to both fool the public with brand names, illusion of regulated, compliant manufacturing (not at all in reality, see above), and launder massive profits resulting from no-risk “investment” of $billions of public money. Prosecution of pharmas for fraud under the EUA Countermeasures laws and PREP Act is mostly a fool’s errand, designed to fail.

Pandemics do not exist naturally. It is not possible for a natural infectious disease to spread all over the world simultaneously. Any local communicable diseases self extinguish. The vast majority to what is presented to the public as historical pandemics are diseases related to lack of water sanitation from human and animal waste, crowding and infestation with rats, fleas, etc. These include diseases that are attributable to bacteria – e.g. cholera and the plague. Spanish Flu was severely misrepresented as a “pandemic”, decades after the fact. It wasn’t considered one by the International Sanitary Convention (predecessor to WHO, 1850 – 1949), also here.

Pandemics do not exist, they are faked by the governments with prohibited bio-chemical agents manufactured utilizing “infectious disease research” loophole of the International Bioweapons Convention, and massive amounts of engineered virus fear porn, fake PCR and hospital murder protocols. US Government has a long, well-documented history of deploying chemical, biological and psychological weapons on unsuspecting targets, and on human subjects without proper consent. “Pandemic preparedness” is a murderous government scam, from which a huge parasitic, militaristic industry is deriving profits and power. This Cartel is managed by DARPA/DTRA and DOD-affiliated “defense” consortia which include all federal agencies acting as “One Government” and biopharmaceutical companies, academia, healthcare providers and many other entities.

Pandemics in the modern age are impossible, according to Lapytova, because of increased water sanitation and hygiene. That is why to “prove” there was a “pandemic”, it was necessary to rely on flawed, non-diagnostic PCR tests and massive hype.  The US activated pre-existing plans for the Pandemic, including already established contracts for “vaccine” development, when there were only 11 cases in the US, all based on PCR tests. The whole thing felt fake, because it was fake.

Yes, you read all that correctly. There is a lot of evidence that a unique illness named Covid-19 actually did not exist. Please click on the links above, do your own research, and then decide if you find the information persuasive. Regardless of whether Covid-19 leaked out of a lab where gain-of-function research was ongoing, was intentionally released as a bio-weapon, or never existed at all but was made up by re-labeling other diseases – the truth is that there is way more here than just “heroic” public health officials trying to protect people from a dangerous illness.

During the Pandemic, multiple Orthodox bishops and priests warned us all not to fall prey to “conspiracy theories”. The conspiracy facts we are steadily uncovering are way worse than even the most outlandish “theories”. When bishops and clergy talked during the Pandemic, Orthodox Christians as a whole were keen to listen. But next time? If our clergy preach unquestioning compliance with lockdowns and new jabs? Will we comply because our Faith leaders told us to?

Doubtful. Not with all this information already in the public domain.

Especially since the fraud is not even limited to just the United States. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. posted this about the World Health Organization (WHO):

The WHO has been taken over by global elites and foreign powers that don’t share America’s best interests and values. That’s why we have to stop President Biden from signing the WHO pandemic preparedness treaty. The WHO says it cares about national sovereignty, but the way it responded to the Covid-19 pandemic proved the opposite.

 

We can’t let international bureaucrats and their bosses at the Billionaire Boys Club in Davos just erase our Constitution.

Lots of Americans have heard about WHO’s globalist pandemic treaty that strips national sovereignty to protect us from the “next Pandemic” which will be “Disease X”.

Whenever they get around to springing Disease X, it will also be harder to sell the narrative. There are substantial, known “Pandemic preparedness” links between the US National Security agencies and media, social media, and search engine companies. The National Security State’s influence is everywhere, particularly in the most important search engine and social media platforms for Americans:

The cumulative number of former Intelligence Community personnel hired by Meta & Google since 2018 is staggering. Before 2018, there were only a handful. Here are the combined hires by both companies:
CIA-36
FBI-68
NSA-44
DHS/CISA-68
State Dept-86
DOD-121

Combine everything we just talked about, with the growing revelations as to how controlled all sources of media really are, and you are getting set for massive noncompliance in the future.

Loss of Confidence in Vaccines Generally

A perfectly normal family in our parish recently welcomed a new baby. While talking to the beaming new parents at coffee hour, the dad volunteered that the baby was completely unvaccinated. Nothing. Not one injection. Vaccines have been a mainstay of pediatric medicine for decades. After COVID, however, parents are taking a long, hard look at what pediatricians want to inject into their kids.

Vaccines are touted as “safe and effective” by the medical industry. Unfortunately, however, for vaccine partisans, the industry admitted that vaccines are inherently unsafe when asking President Reagan for legal immunity. RFJ Jr. tells the basic facts here:

“Pfizer was losing $20 for every $1 they made off vaccines. So, they told President Reagan that they were getting OUT of the Vaccine business. Reagan asked : Why don’t you just make the vaccines SAFE? Pfizer : Because ‘vaccines are unavoidably UNSAFE!!’ That phrase is in the statute and it’s also in the Bruesewitz case, which is the SUPREME COURT decision upholding that statute. This is when Reagan and congress decided to give them immunity from liability”

Dr. Peter McCullough explains the harms that the vaccine schedule has wrought in terms of autism, and that 1/3 of young mothers and fathers are now refusing vaccines altogether:

This childhood vaccine schedule is not what we thought… I’m telling you, in total, it doesn’t look good.” The 1986 Vaccine Injury Act even admits vaccines come with “unavoidable harms.” Five separate studies now show that “if children go natural, no vaccines whatsoever, they have the best outcomes.” “When I was a kid, the rate of autism was one in 10,000. Now it’s one in 36,” Dr. McCullough explained. “And there’s about 200 published manuscripts showing it’s immune system dysregulation.”

 

And the vignettes, the mothers tell us that the child was fine up until the time they took multiple rounds of vaccines, and then they developed autism. Those vignettes are almost certainly correct. We can’t pin it down to any single vaccine. But I’m telling you, in total, it doesn’t look good. This epidemic of autism is a tsunami. And you know how many, many mothers now — [a] recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey shows about a third of mothers and young fathers going natural.”

Trust in vaccines, Big Pharma, and medicine is completely broken. It is not coming back any time soon. In fact, it is likely to get worse because the medical establishment is not handling rejection well.

Reigning in the Power of Bishops

There is one important change in Orthodoxy, since the start of COVID, that will make a huge difference “next time”. That is the recognition that the powers vested in bishops have limits. We have covered this topic on Orthodox Reflections many times, but this article entitled Obedience to Bishops and Imposition of Penance During the 2020 Covid-19 Pandemic is one everyone should read. The article outlines the proper authority of a bishop, and then concludes that natural obedience to a bishop does not extend to allowing him to surrender control of the Church to civil authority:

By quoting extensively from these directives of the bishops addressing the Covid crisis, three points become key.  One, the bishops issued mandates suspending the normal eucharistic activity of the Church based on the reason that this crisis was so dangerous that it necessitated unprecedented, that is, extraordinary (emergency) use of authority.  Two, subordination to the bishops’ directives was identified with subordination to the directives of the civil authorities, effectively making obedience to the bishops compliance with civil authority despite the ecclesiastical consequences.  Three, the bishops imposed measures prohibiting the faithful from receiving the mysteries under penalty of strict canonical sanction, thereby modifying the penitential system of the Church away from its essential design.

This article, and the many like it on Orthodox Reflections and elsewhere, has done much to dispel the notion that bishops are unaccountable “princes of the Church” whose word is law. We are all mutually accountable to each other, and to Christ. The bishop is only due obedience when he is operating within the limitations of the canonical Tradition of the Church – which does not extend to shutting the Church down, requiring a vaccine to attend Liturgy, or changing the practices of the Orthodox Faith.

Conclusion

What I would say to everyone considering the Orthodox Church is that she is the Pearl of Great Price. She is the Church founded by Christ. Around 1/5 of her parishes stayed open, when most other Christians meekly obeyed civil authority. She had many heroes during COVID. She was not perfect, but I think that intervening events mean that, should “Disease X” appear, we will see an entirely different response from the Orthodox, and maybe even from society as a whole.

Please visit your local Orthodox parish. Welcome home.

Nicholas – member of the Western Rite Vicariate, a part of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese in America