by Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., Childrens Health Defense:
RealClear Health this month published an op-ed by Dr. Pierre Kory, president and chief medical officer of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, and journalist Mary Beth Pfeiffer that raised questions about COVID-19 vaccines and rising cancer rates. Is it a sign that mainstream media is finally ready to allow debate on the vaccines?
Are mainstream media and the public becoming more open to news and perspectives contradicting the establishment narrative on COVID-19, the vaccines and the prevailing public health policies of the past four years?
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If so, can such incremental change eventually lead to a transformation in public attitudes?
At least one medical expert thinks so. Writing on Substack, Dr. Pierre Kory, president and chief medical officer of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, cited the April 25 publication of a RealClear Health op-ed he co-wrote with journalist Mary Beth Pfeiffer as an example of how the public narrative may be changing.
The op-ed analyzed evidence finding that mRNA vaccines are the cause of a significant spike in cancer among young people.
Kory wrote that this is the fifth op-ed he and Pfeiffer have published in mainstream, widely read news outlets since August 2023 on related topics.
“It appears the public’s appetite for objective, independent analysis of vaccine harm is increasing,” Kory wrote on Substack.
Widening the ‘Overton Window’
Kory suggested the willingness of media outlets like RealClear Health to publish articles critical of COVID-19 policies and vaccines suggests a widening of the “Overton Window,” a concept that “refers specifically to the kind of policies politicians can ‘legitimately’ support over time without risking electoral support.”
Writing for the Brownstone Institute on April 17, Jeffrey Tucker said the Overton Window concept — named for researcher Joseph Overton, who worked at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy — “grows out of think tank culture, which puts a premium on effectiveness and metrics as a means of institutional funding.”
According to Tucker, Overton “found that it was useless in his work to advocate for positions that he could not recruit politicians to say from the legislative floor or on the campaign trail.” Instead, Overton found greater success when “crafting policy ideas that fit within the prevailing media and political culture.”
Other scholars later further developed Overton’s concept. Today, the Overton Window includes five stages that ideas pass through before becoming policy, moving from “unthinkable” to “radical” to “acceptable” to “sensible” to “popular.”
According to the Mackinac Center, Kory wrote, the range of acceptable ideas within the Overton Window can change over time, as it “can both shift and expand, either increasing or shrinking the number of ideas politicians can support without unduly risking their electoral support.”
Speaking to The Defender, Kory applied the concept to COVID-19 narratives. “We are seeing an acceptance to raise questions and discuss the unusual rise in death and disability rates among populations that include some of the healthiest and most productive people,” Kory said, citing the August 2023 op-ed he co-wrote for USA Today.
Kory said the USA Today op-ed, which presented insurance company data showing a dramatic increase in excess deaths in the fall of 2021 — deaths that cannot be fully attributed to COVID-19 infections — represented “the first time [that] someone from our ‘side’ crossed over into the mainstream media to raise these types of questions.”
“The acceptance to have a conversation like this in USA Today would have seemed impossible in 2022,” Kory said. The subsequent publication of his latest op-ed, in RealClear Health, “shows just how far we have come,” he said.
“If you keep your eye on the Window … you might succeed in expanding it a bit here and there and thereby achieve your goals eventually,” Tucker wrote.
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