Includes clip from August 2022 interview between Michael Shellenberger and Bret Weinstein
This archived Twitter/X thread from 6 January 2024 is being posted to WH76 on 22 March 2026, but will be moved to the original date of the reaction.
My summary of the problems with Bret Weinstein’s views, as articulated to Tucker Carlson on today’s show, after a first listen:
- He [Weinstein] believes there was an emergency.
- He believes there was a sudden-spreading risk-additive pathogen.
- He believes there was a pandemic (and doesn’t define what that is).
- He believes new (repurposed) treatments were needed for the sudden-spreading thing.
- He’s far more critical of Pharma than of government.
- He expresses concerns about the WHO pandemic treaty without expressing doubts about pandemics as a Thing – and without recognizing the harms exacted by the U.S. govt in spring 2020.
- He presents himself as a truth teller, yet is not telling or seeking the full truth.
And This Guy [Tucker Carlson] basically gave a disclaimer upfront, stating the Core Lie outright:
- No doubts about virus from Wuhan
- No doubts about sudden spread
- And (curiously) refers to COVID as the virus
Narrative protected, interview proceeds accordingly.
As long as the “right” people praise the interview, it’s all good.
Who cares about the whole truth when half-truths will do?
The show MUST go on, darn it!
Here are some reminders about the role Tucker Carlson played in advancing the government’s “deadly coronavirus spreading” story.1
When will Tucker be interviewed by someone else about what he was told/thought?
Bret Weinstein DID NOT get lockdowns right.
“Lockdowns” are never right.
They are fundamentally wrong and at-odds with the Constitution.
As late as August 2022, Bret did not seem to grasp this. Someone in his position needs to confront what he said.
Bret Weinstein & Michael Shellenberger
Weinstein: “Lockdowns I think I got right, which was there was a place for lockdowns but they needed to be more intense than they were, they needed to be short duration, and they needed to be paired with excellent quality testing which, frankly, we still don’t have.”
Shellenberger: “Right”
Weinstein: “- which, I don’t know. I still can’t imagine why we don’t have it. I think it’s a problem money would solve, and the fact that we haven’t dedicated enough money to have tests that are worth anything is conspicuous to me.”
Shellenberger: “Yep.”
Weinstein: “I would have had, let’s say (yes, painful) a six-week very intense lockdown. And the reason for that is that that gives it enough time – most of the transmission was at home – so six weeks gives it enough time to burn through places where we are corralled together, such that at the point you lift that six-week mandate you have a small number of places where active COVID still exists and you had good testing, you could apply some very local solutions. The rest of us could have gone back to life. Given that we never had good tests, I would not favor that plan. But were I in charge I would have invested -“
Shellenberger: “A very Asian, East Asian approach. Korea, Hong Kong…”
Weinstein: “Right. Well, yes and no. Good tests would be key, and then an epidemiologically sensible lockdown in which the virus was given a chance to be not contagious in any given group, so that, you know, you would have hot spots but you could find them, and the rest of us wouldn’t be infecting each other. So I think I had that right but we don’t know because we didn’t do that.”
Shellenberger: “Okay. Okay.”
Full transcript of Carlson/Weinstein interview: https://woodhouse76.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/transcript-weinstein-carlson.pdf (Also now available via Apple Podcasts)
- Portions of threads posted in this tweet unretrievable as of 22 March 2026. ↩︎
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