“Americans were told one set of numbers in public and another in a classified room. Herd immunity was building fast, but the big pharma PR machine and product pipeline was building faster. Only a full investigation, with real consequences, will restore trust.” — Dr. Joseph Varon, IMA President and Chief Medical Officer
The Independent Medical Alliance (IMA), the nation’s largest coalition of independent physicians, researchers, and clinicians, today called for a formal investigation into newly released records from Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) showing that senior officials privately acknowledged, as early as May 2020, that COVID-19 had already spread far more widely than the public was told, thereby collapsing the fatality assumptions used to justify historic lockdowns, school closures, mask dictates, and later mRNA shot mandates.
The records also place a sitting Pfizer director inside the room briefing decision-makers.
“How much worse does this have to get before someone is held to account?” asked Dr. Joseph Varon, IMA President and Chief Medical Officer. “Officials had data showing the virus was already widely circulating and far less lethal than the models they released to the public. They buried that reality, kept the emergency machinery running, and cleared a path for a product that made pharmaceutical companies billions.”
“I can tell you that, on the ground we were seeing numbers far different than the ‘experts’ were spouting on cable news,” said Dr. Varon, who spent 715 consecutive days treating COVID patients at a hospital with one of the nation’s highest survival rates.
On May 7, 2020, CIA Chief Operating Officer Andy Makridis led a briefing with Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former FDA commissioner, member of the CIA’s External Advisory Board, and, by then, a director of Pfizer, which stood to gain billions of dollars with the mRNA shot.
The Agency’s summary of the meeting, classified for more than six years until Sen. Paul’s August 29, 2026 release, states that, on ‘herd immunity,’ Dr. Gottlieb discounted 2 early major studies from Los Angeles and Santa Clara counties, including one led by now NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, showing much higher early rates of seroprevalence and much lower risk of mortality.
But Gottlieb then says that he believes nationally, the seroprevalence is “about 20–25%” which, in his opinion, was “still insufficient for herd immunity at the R₀ (BRR) value of 3.” That private figure is four to five times higher than what Dr. Gottlieb was telling the public at the same time. On April 17, 2020, he estimated a national infection rate of about 5 percent. In an August 2020 CBS News appearance, he cited roughly 8 percent. The classified number was never shared with the families whose lives were being reordered by policy.
“If twenty-five percent of the country had already been infected by early May 2020, then official infection-fatality models used to lock down cities, empty classrooms, and later compel an mRNA product were dramatically overstated,” said Dr. Varon. “Herd immunity was building fast, but the big pharma PR machine and product pipeline was building faster.”
By the time the shots were rolled out in December 2020, months of additional spread had almost certainly pushed population immunity even higher.
The Santa Clara County study led by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, released in April 2020, had already shown local seroprevalence far above case counts and an infection fatality rate far below early official projections. A similar Los Angeles County finding pointed the same way. At a basic reproduction number of 3, classical herd-immunity thresholds sit near two-thirds of the population.
“Transparency and honest medicine took a back seat,” Dr. Varon said. “Congress should follow Sen. Paul’s record where it leads: who knew the infection-fatality picture was overstated, who decided the public would not hear it, and who stood to gain from keeping the country on a pharmaceutical footing.”
