The Hidden Agendas Behind COVID-19

Speakers: Dr. Kat Lindley, Debbie Lerman

“One of the most ingenious aspects of the global COVID operation is that it was so brazen, so extreme, and so inconceivable because it can actually hide behind its own implausibility.” — Debbie Lerman

Even five years later, the COVID-19 pandemic remains one of the most unexplainable sustained events in human history. When referring to past events, the distinction of “pre-COVID” says a lot. That was a time when people were more rational, more reasonable, and less afraid.

So here we are, now “post-COVID,” and finding ourselves very much “changed.” Though the world is different in so many ways, for many people, moving forward is all there is to do. But there are those of us who refuse to live in a world that defies explanation. Debbie Lerman is one such person.

She came from a background of science writing, an occupation grounded in the pursuit of truth—at least until the COVID calamity flipped the world of science on its head. At the outset of the pandemic, Debbie found herself wondering why she was seeing something different than her contemporaries:

“There just didn’t seem to be an emergency, and it seemed like the emergency was being fabricated. And it also seemed to me that the people who were falling for it were all the people who I previously identified with. And they were telling me that I wasn’t in their tribe anymore.”

Rather than change her mind or retreat into solitude, Debbie was compelled to look for answers.

“I started writing for Brownstone, and that’s when I started really digging into government documents to see what was happening. I thought, ‘Well, if we really have a pandemic and we have a response, there’s probably some documents that tell us what that response is supposed to be.’”

What she discovered was beyond eye-opening. It unraveled the threads of a global narrative most of us never thought to question. This narrative included elements of misinformation, hidden agendas, and the erosion of public trust.

Debbie Lerman’s Journey from Science Writer to COVID Historian

Debbie Lerman is a Brownstone Institute Fellow and a writer/researcher for the Brownstone Journal. She is a retired medical writer with a degree in English from Harvard. Her upcoming book, The Deep State Goes Viral, published by Brownstone, is expected in March 2025, marking the fifth anniversary of the COVID lockdowns.

But Debbie’s journey to understanding what she calls “the global COVID operation” is not one that can be summarized in a traditional bio. In her own words, as shared on Substack:

“I was a freelance medical/science writer for a long time. Then I retired and worked as a visual artist for 10+ years. And then March 2020 came along, and all the COVID insanity caused me to lose faith in pretty much every institution I used to trust, including the entire art world that capitulated to the authoritarianism not just without a peep, but with gusto.”

Her pursuit of the truth led her to uncover details that few others dared to investigate. “I discovered some things that nobody else in the world (as far as I know) had found—not because I have such great talents, but because journalism as a mainstream profession is dead, and nobody was looking into anything.”

For a deeper dive into her findings, Debbie’s two-part Substack series, The Catastrophic COVID Convergence – Revisited, offers a comprehensive story of how COVID-19 happened. In Part 1, she explores “The Lead-Up to COVID” and its context. In Part 2, she uncovers “The Global COVID Pandemic Response and Its Aftermath.”

The Global Censorship and Propaganda Campaign

“I thought we as a society had learned what it meant to be propagandized as a collective group,” Debbie remarked. But the response to COVID proved otherwise.

“The reason the COVID response could hide [the truth] at all was because the censorship and propaganda campaign waged upon the world’s population made a large portion of the population unaware of what was happening—not just unaware, but made them believe the opposite. And it made them believe the opposite in a very visceral, almost religious way.”

The campaign was fueled by the spread of misinformation, as well as conspiracy theories that clouded public understanding. Social media platforms played a pivotal role in amplifying these narratives, making fact-checking and critical analysis all the more important.

Debbie’s research revealed that this was not a traditional public health event but a convergence of public health and national security—a shift that began long before 2020.

Public Health Response or Biodefense?

In her meticulous review of government documents, Debbie identified two distinct streams that guided pandemic response:

The public health stream: Focused on naturally occurring outbreaks of disease.
The national security stream: Centered on bioweapons and biodefense.

“After 9/11 and the anthrax attacks in 2001, huge amounts of money started going into biodefense,” Debbie explained. This funding transformed biodefense into a multi-billion-dollar industry, fostering partnerships between governments and pharmaceutical companies to develop “countermeasures.”

Countermeasures, in the biodefense context, were not about mitigating naturally occurring diseases. They were about preparing for and responding to bioterror attacks. By contrast, the public health approach—focused on identifying cases, isolating the sick, and maintaining normalcy—was marginalized.

“The main goal of public health is to keep people calm and ensure that life can proceed as usual. Clearly, that wasn’t what was happening,” she said.

On February 27, 2020, the narrative shifted:

“The message switched from a public health message to a ‘lockdown until vaccine’ message. ‘Lockdown until vaccine’ is the biodefense response to a bioweapon or a bioterror attack.”

This shift paved the way for vaccine-centered solutions that emphasized rapid deployment rather than sticking to traditional safety and efficacy considerations.

The Biodefense Public-Private Partnership

“The civilian framework of public health disappeared. It just got swallowed up by the biodefense framework—and now they’re applying the biodefense framework to the entire world.”

Debbie’s research points to the emergence of global public-private partnerships as a driving force behind this shift. “It sounds boring, but that is the enemy.”

These partnerships blurred the lines between public institutions, tasked with protecting the public good, and private corporations, beholden to shareholders.

Put simply, Debbie explains that if the public and private sectors operate in lockstep, the usual checks and balances vanish, leaving the public vulnerable to a calamity like the COVID-19 response.

Under this framework, figures like Anthony Fauci acted as the public face of policies shaped by biodefense institutions like the National Security Council.

“The National Security Council has expanded to handle anything that requires national coordination, including, of course, pandemics.”

This expansion has raised concerns about preparedness and the role of global organizations like the World Health Organization in shaping pandemic policies.

From National to Global Control

As the pandemic response unfolded, Debbie uncovered evidence of international coordination led by organizations like the WHO and NATO.

“Why would all the countries follow what the WHO says?” Debbie asked. “Because they invoked intelligence and military mutual defense treaties.” Countries within NATO and the Five Eyes intelligence alliance (the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) adopted similar measures, often under military guidance.

“This global alignment revealed that public health had become a fiction. It’s now just a cover for a global biodefense framework.”

Sweden’s deviation from the global lockdown narrative was notable, and Debbie speculates it’s because Sweden was not part of NATO during the pandemic. “That’s why Sweden’s response was different,” she said.

A New Paradigm of Governance

Debbie’s findings raise troubling questions about the future of public health and governance. The melding of public and private interests, coupled with military frameworks, has created a “biosecurity state” that prioritizes control over traditional public health principles.

“COVID revealed how much the national has now been subsumed into the global. Public health is no longer about keeping people safe; it’s about maintaining control.”

The COVID-19 pandemic also highlighted the role of misinformation and conspiracy theories in shaping public perceptions, further complicating efforts to maintain transparency and accountability.

The Truth About COVID-19 is Out There

The COVID-19 pandemic was not just a health crisis but a window into a global transformation of governance. Debbie Lerman’s research shines a bright light on the hidden mechanisms that drove the response—a convergence of censorship, propaganda, and biodefense priorities that eclipsed traditional public health. As we move forward, the question remains: how do we rebuild systems of accountability in an era where public and private interests operate as one?