We’re deeply mired in a serious crisis that is touching all of us and growing worse. It is virtually ignored by most our elected officials and popular media — but for their efforts to bury it.

It’s a health crisis that encompasses an epidemic of chronic and acute diseases, an explosion in disorders related to COVID-19 and COVID vaccines, historic levels of mental illness and more young people than ever afflicted by brand-new diseases or those previously unheard-of in children.

We could fix these emergencies, but they are nowhere to be found on the national agenda set by our health agencies and major political figures. They’re too busy spending your tax dollars on their own priorities.

Their priorities include deflecting from the crisis by feeding us a steady stream of propaganda and misinformation. Creating a market for, selling, and defending medicine. And smearing anyone who stands in the way.

It’s not as if we haven’t tried to get a grasp on our own health. But for every safety measure enacted on our behalf, there are well-funded and powerful interests working to undermine it.

We exist largely in an artificial reality brought to you by the makers of the latest pill or injection. The hard truth is that every emerging disorder we suffer opens up new opportunities for pharmaceutical companies to earn millions or billions. Drug companies and their government partners fund the majority of scientific studies with the goal of promoting a product. Studies that could stand to truly solve our most consequential health problems aren’t done if they don’t ultimately advance a profitable pill or injection.

The government subsidizes food that’s bad for us; allows known neurotoxins, cancer-causing chemicals and hormone disruptors to be in the food we feed our children every day and the water we drink; and restricts practices that could make us healthier.

It incentivizes the practice of medicine in a way that reduces us to a series of target numbers to be achieved through expensive pharmaceuticals and treatments and punishes doctors who color outside the lines and practice independent patient care. Why?

In this artificial reality, success isn’t measured by the good health of the population. Quite the opposite. It’s measured by how many people are taking expensive drugs or getting vaccinated. It’s not about preventing illnesses; it’s about treating them indefinitely.

Our sick and broken system is the fault of politicians, federal agencies, the medical establishment and the media. They have a far different responsibility than private drug companies. But they’ve allowed themselves to be so captured by commercial interests that they function as little more than an advertising arm of the pharmaceutical industry.

There may be a silver lining.

With COVID, the disinformation, intolerance for dissent, shutdowns, mandates, forced or withheld medical treatment, mass firings and attacks upon tens of thousands of scientists sparked the formation of a diverse coalition. This coalition includes a mix of liberals, conservatives and nonpartisans. It’s made up of freethinking parents, students, doctors, nurses, researchers, elected officials and celebrities.

Many had never before questioned public health narratives or their doctors. Most had blindly supported them. But today, members of this new coalition find themselves probing widely pushed orthodoxy on COVID and beyond, rightly asking what else the media and top public health officials have misled us on.

Now, redemption from the grasp of those who seek to control our health and our lives may come through a collective awakening that’s already begun.

Sharyl Attkisson is an investigative journalist and television correspondent for Sinclair, whose executive chairman is The Baltimore Sun’s principal owner David Smith. This article is adapted from an excerpt from Attkisson’s latest book, “Follow the Science: How Big Pharma Misleads, Obscures, and Prevails” (Harper Collins).