A small group of filmmakers and like-minded supporters gathered in a movie theater outside Orlando, Florida, on April 19 to dig into that question.
There, the SoundMind Creative Group and a team of filmmakers premiered the pilot of their new documentary series, “Follow the Science: Lockdowns Go Viral.”
The project aims to investigate the causes and effects of the world’s pandemic-justified lockdowns and mandates.
“We knew that a revisionist’s history was going to come along, kind of papering over all the mistakes that were made, as well as the human strife and suffering,” director and producer Hawk Jensen told the audience.
“And we wanted to capture that in real-time so that we could figure out what went right, what went wrong, where'd we get lucky, and really look at what went wrong so we don’t repeat it again.”
The film features outspoken critics of COVID policies, including Clifton Duncan, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Sydney Watson, Nick Hudson, and rapper Zuby.
‘Gross Wrongdoing’
The two-hour pilot is the first of what the director hopes will become a series of 10 crowdfunded episodes, each 30-45 minutes long.Crowdfunding is the increasingly popular practice of financing a project by raising money, usually over the internet, from a large group of people rather than a few investors with more significant interests in the venture.
“COVID-19 caused a global crisis, but the government’s response was worse—and if [the] culture doesn’t recognize this gross wrongdoing, it will happen again,” the team writes on the project website.
“Politics is downstream from culture, and if the culture doesn’t shift against lockdowns, tyranny, and authority, we could see a repeat of 2020.”
Helping promote “Follow the Science” is Tom Woods, a best-selling author, libertarian thought leader, and creator of “The Tom Woods Show.” He, Duncan, Jensen, and other cast and crew members attended the series premiere.
Free to Ask Questions
Woods, Jensen, and Duncan, wanted to create a calm, open approach to the topic. Before and after the screening, they spoke of the importance of freedom to question and search for answers that transcend all political party lines.“The idea of this film is for people of all degrees of readiness,” Woods said before the screening.
“Now is an opportunity to try and reach people who maybe have some doubts about this. But, since opinions seem to be overwhelmingly on the other side, they’re probably not really sure they can voice those doubts.
“We want them to feel free to ask some questions,” he added. “And so that’s the tone that you will see adopted here in this project.”
Duncan leads viewers in the investigation by following the scientific method. With the help of Hudson and Bhattacharya, they test the science, or lack thereof, behind the lockdowns.
They also examine the results of how different states and nations enforced restrictions of varying intensity.
The pilot includes testimonies from doctors, business owners, and professionals. And it hears from families who lost family members.
All share the economic and emotional side-effects of the lockdown measures.
The testimonies include some who initially supported lockdowns and mask mandates but had a change of heart during the ordeal.
“This is a truly worldwide experience,” Jensen told the premiere audience. “We realized we need[ed] to document this, as it happened.”
Discredited for Disagreeing
In the pilot, doctors and scientists who disagreed with Dr. Anthony Fauci over lockdowns recall how they were discredited. Fauci—then director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases—served as chief medical advisor to the President of the United States and became the face of the federal government’s response to COVID-19.A business owner recounts facing permanent closure as she watched an “essential” movie set start work right next door.
Mothers lament about the life moments their children lost, from birthday parties to full school years.
Two families share how lockdowns prevented physical and mental conditions from being treated, resulting in the deaths of loved ones. For one family, a grandfather’s diagnosis of COVID-19 disrupted his essential renal dialysis treatment.
For another family, a lack of access to psychiatric care ended in a teen’s suicide.
Those deaths didn’t have to happen, cast members assert.
“There’s no public health textbook that calls for locking a society down,” Woods said during questions after the screening.
“That was not recommended by anybody as part of pandemic preparation. That had never been contemplated.
“So you’re going to advocate a policy that has no precedent—not only no precedent [but] no one even suggested it? And then you’re going to enforce it and forbid anyone to dissent?
‘Everyone Deserves to Know the Truth’
But for these filmmakers, more is needed to explain what happened. They also seek to know why things happened the way they did.“Everyone deserves to know the truth about the decision making—or lack thereof—from our elected leaders when it came to COVID,” Duncan said in a press release issued before the premiere. “We’re not going to give up on exposing it until that’s the case.”
“Where was ‘The Manhattan Project’ of COVID?” Jensen asked during the question-and-answer session after the showing of the film.
Leaders should have set up a central base of operations where the best minds could gather to study the effects of the disease on a closed group of volunteers willing to get the disease.
Attempts to establish something like that were blocked, Jensen said. That meant information was only gathered from small studies around the world.
“We had doctors and scientists and concerned citizens of all stripes trying to figure it out on their own, and the centralized effort squashed that,” he said. “I think that each state has a story about their attempts that were stopped, and I want to get into that.”
“If I ever get a chance to interview Dr. Fauci for this series, I want to ask him, ‘Where was that grand central ’Camp David?'” he said.
“To me, that’s the biggest smoking gun of my suspicion—that they weren’t looking out for the best interests of this country and its citizens.”
Beginning with a focus on the lockdowns, the production team plans to continue investigating all aspects of the pandemic, including mask mandates, vaccine development, vaccine mandates, and vaccine injuries.
Though no distribution plans have been set, “Follow the Science: Lockdowns Go Viral” is expected to be released online by mid-summer.
The project comes at a time when many say they can’t rely on mainstream news outlets to provide the answers to lingering pandemic questions.
“Both political parties and their donors have reached consensus on what benefits them, and they actively collude to shut down any conversation about it,” he said in the two-minute video he posted to Twitter on April 26.
“But it won’t work.
“When honest people say what’s true, calmly and without embarrassment. They become powerful. At the same time, the liars who'd been trying to silence them shrink. They become weaker.
“That’s the iron law of the universe: True things prevail.”
