Thursday evening, in what should have been testimony in front of a legitimate Rhode Island House and Senate Oversight Committee hearing, speaker after speaker pointed out the abject absurdities of the Covid-19 response by state of Rhode Island and its hapless Department of Health.

The event at Cranston Public Library, organized by epidemiologist, Dr. Andrew Bostom, provided an ample evidence based re-examination of the state’s polices as well as stunning anecdotes.

By the end of the evening it became crystal clear that virtually every executive order, mandate, guideline, and policy recommendation by state officials has since been proven to be 100% in error or without any historical, research data, or scientific basis.

If there was even one iota of nonpartisan concern by General Assembly leaders to not repeat the same mistakes in the future, everyone of these speakers would be invited back to an honest oversight committee hearing.

But Rhode Island suffers from a one-party ruling class that will never have the courage to discuss the truth if it might mean exposing some of their own.

In what proved to be a prescient moment, one speaker displayed a quote from a department of health official who admitted that most of the state’s polices were not based on science, but were indeed an “experiment”.

A “human” experiment, as it turned out, that harmed hundreds of thousands of students, workers, ;families, and other Ocean Staters … whether it be suffering from dying alone; from the depressing isolation of quarantines; from the unhealthy wearing of masks and educational failures of distance learning for our children; to medical professionals, first-responders, and teachers losing their livelihoods; to small business owners who lost most or all of their revenues; to parents whose rights were arbitrarily infringed upon; to lawyers and plaintiffs whose Constitutional arguments fell on the deaf ears of compromised judges; to the mainstream media who not only exhibited zero intellectual curiosity and independent journalistic research, but a media who were nothing more than cheer-leaders for each new tyrannical dictate that was issued, breathlessly begging for the next one.

And state lawmakers did not care! They had the legal right to intercede, but they sat on their hands while the human suffering and the unconstitutional loss of freedoms amassed … and they just let it all be.

Dr. Andrew Bostom first laid out the mountains of actual data that flied in the face of virtually every decision made during the pandemic by Governors Raimondo and McKee; data that was largely available at the time, if the RI DOH or anyone else in the media other than my In The Dugout show bothered to look.

Next, there was a sobering discussion by Colleen Kelly, MD, who discussed the sad stories that she personally witnessed of so many senior citizens who were left alone and forced to die alone, without the comfort of anyone from their families. while others were forced into isolated in the same room for over a year.

Lead plaintiff in the school mask mandate lawsuit against Governor McKee, Rich Southwell, highlighted how ill-informed health officials, feckless school committee members, and teacher union bosses pro-actively twisted the former Lieutenant Governor McKees’ arm into re-imposing mask mandates and remote learning policies in K-12 school, and in doing so infringing parental rights, over-stepping the concept of local control, and destroying student learning.

Brittany DiOrio, a former Barrington special-ed teacher, next recounted how she was not allowed a religious exemption to her school district’s vaccine mandate and was summarily fired; her teacher union’s legal team refusing to represent her. The great irony and absurdity, of course, is that the vaccine regimen she was required to take … is now illegal to take, after the FDA rescinded its Emergency Use Authorization (EUA).

Then, a little levity was provided by entrepreneur, cafe shop owner, and former Cranston HS East classmate of mine, Malcom Najarian. Najarian recounted how he openly defied mandate, never closed his shop (despite suffering over a 50% loss of revenues), and had the Cranston Police called when he placed signs on his cafe door that cynically questioned the lockdown policies of the state. He encouraged Rhode Islanders to never again accept such abject and misguided tyranny from the state and to organize to fight back.

More to come … check back shortly.