This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

There's a real danger coming for Americans should there be another pandemic, which in all probability will happen at some time.

And it's not necessarily from the actual health danger, it stems from the censorship and misinformation campaigns that the American government launched during the COVID-19 threat.

That's according to Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University.

Long considered a constitutional expert, he's testified before Congress on a variety of constitutional disputes and even represented members in court.

He cited the misinformation delivered by the government during COVID, its crackdown on alternative views about treatments, the mandatory shots, the masks, and much, much more.

That all has produced in the American public a distrust of government, as many of the views mandated by the government have since proven wrong, and many of the perspectives censored for being wrong have been documented as being right.

"The loss of public confidence in both the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) and the media could prove disastrous if we face another pandemic," he explained. "The years of barring and throttling opposing views (including many later vindicated by the science) has left many Americans deeply distrustful of both the government and the media.

"That is the real potential danger. If we want to prepare for the next pandemic, we need to repair that trust," he warned.

His comments were prompted by a federal judge's decision to hit out at the CDC for withholding data on adverse vaccine reports.

"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) continues to resist disclosing information on claimed side effects and problems with its COVID-19 vaccines, including from healthcare workers," he explained.

"Due to a January order by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in a Freedom of Information Act case, the CDC is being forced to turn over hundreds of thousands of 'free text' entries from V-safe. The court has scolded the CDC for its continuing efforts to withhold information on these complaints."

He said the dispute reminds us that "we still need to address the conduct of the government – and the reporting of the media – from the last pandemic. Once agency officials were told that they could censor those with opposing views, a culture of speech controls took hold at the CDC, and the government narrative was then amplified by the media."

He pointed out that the two entities, government, and media, combined to make even questioning their adopted talking points "a public health threat."

Turley added, "A lawsuit was filed by Missouri and Louisiana and joined by leading experts, including Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya (Stanford University) and Martin Kulldorff (Harvard University). Bhattacharya previously objected to the suspension of Dr. Clare Craig after she raised concerns about Pfizer trial documents. Those doctors were the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated for a more focused COVID response that targeted the most vulnerable population rather than widespread lockdowns and mandates. Many are now questioning the efficacy and cost of the massive lockdown as well as the real value of masks or the rejection of natural immunities as an alternative to vaccination. Yet, these experts and others were attacked for such views just a year ago. Some found themselves censored on social media for challenging claims of Dr. Fauci and others."

He noted that even those who suggested the virus came out of a Chinese lab that was experimenting on those very diseases, which now is widely accepted as the source, "was denounced as a conspiracy theory."

California even tried to strip doctors of their medical licenses "for spreading dissenting views."

He said much remains to be done to create a culture of transparency at the CDC.

"The surest way to combat this culture of censorship is to pass legislation barring a single dime of taxpayer funds from being used to fund censorship efforts, including third-party groups on removing 'misinformation, disinformation, and misinformation,'" he said.

"We should get the government out of the business of controlling the speech of citizens and groups. It can rebut critics on its ample platforms without using third parties to silence them as surrogates."