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Turkey: security cooperation with US government ‘has ended’

MEMO | May 24, 2021

Joint training and intelligence-sharing between Turkey and the US have reportedly been ended gradually since 2016, Middle East Eye has reported. The move was apparently part of a process initiated by Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu.

According to the London-based news outlet, which cited Turkish sources close to the prominent minister, he suspended a number of joint programmes and cooperation gradually due to the fallout between Ankara and Washington since he took office five years ago. The activities suspended include joint training by Turkish and US police forces, early access to intelligence on suspects, and other intelligence information usually shared between the two.

Despite those restrictions, the suspensions were largely limited to the early access to shared data and intelligence that the US had previously enjoyed. “It didn’t completely impede the cooperation with the American authorities, because they were able to receive the relevant information once the investigations have been completed and submitted to the courts,” one anonymous official is quoted as saying.

The increasingly strained relations between the US and Turkey over the past few years have long been known, but Soylu’s suspensions also apparently had a personal touch. He and other ministers were twice sanctioned temporarily by Washington, first in 2018 because of the detention of American Pastor Andrew Brunson, and then again the year after over the Turkish operation against Kurdish militants in northern Syria.

Furthermore, officials such as Soylu have long suspected the US of having a hand in the failed coup attempt by segments of the Turkish military in 2016, especially due to Washington’s refusal to extradite the suspected mastermind of the coup, Fethullah Gülen. On Wednesday last week, Soylu openly voiced those suspicions, stating that the coup attempt “happened with an order from them [the US].”

During a televised speech he also accused the United Arab Emirates of involvement. “The UAE and the US are the perpetrators of 15 July [the coup]. The UAE is the most important operational partner of the US.” In that same TV appearance, Soylu also revealed that he refused to grant a meeting with US Ambassador David Satterfield. “I won’t award him any appointment. I would only do it if they begin to show respect to this country,” he insisted.

May 24, 2021 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

WHO calls for global system of surveillance, more authority over nations, billions more in funding

LifeSiteNews – May 20, 2021 

The pro-abortion World Health Organization (WHO) has released a report calling for greater authority for itself in countries around the globe, a global surveillance system, as well as billions more dollars in financing for itself.

In a report released this month entitled, COVID-19: Make it the Last Pandemic, a group called the “Independent Panel” established by the WHO, analyzed the global response to the Wuhan Virus and delivered a strong message for international changes.

They state, “Our message is loud and clear: no more pandemics.  If we fail to take this goal seriously, we will condemn the world to successive catastrophes.”

“On the basis of its diagnosis of what went wrong at each stage of the COVID-19 response, the Panel makes […] seven recommendations directed to ensuring that a future outbreak does not become a pandemic. Each recommendation is linked directly back to evidence of what has gone wrong. To be successful they must be implemented in their entirety.”

The panel is co-chaired Rt Hon. Helen Clark, former Prime Minister of New Zealand and H.E. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, former President of Liberia and Nobel Laureate and includes eleven other professionals from around the world.

Patrick Wood, Editor in Chief of Technocracy News told LifeSiteNews that, were the recommendations of the report to be implemented, “the top political leaders of each nation would become the puppets of the WHO, whenever it decides to declare a pandemic.”

“The WHO is not and never has been independent,” Wood continued. “Rather, it is a key agency of the United Nations and subservient to its ideology. It seeks additional authority over nations and needs money to accomplish it. Nobody prevents a virus from spreading, so the call for more funding is spurious at best. After contributing to the current crisis, they want to prevent the next one?”

Wood told LifeSiteNews that “total surveillance” is  “the holy grail” of the “sustainable development” agenda, which he says can also be described as the “technocracy” agenda.

“This is a fast-track conduit/supply chain for Big Pharma to push its gene therapy shots and vaccines to a generally uninformed global citizenry,” Wood added.

Regarding the so-called “Independent Panel”, Wood said:

The panel of eleven is far from “independent”. Two are associated with the elitist Trilateral Commission, two with United Nations agencies, one member of the Communist Chinese Party who was a principal in the COVID outbreak in China and all are UN ideologues. To my knowledge and study, when the United Nations calls for “independent” or “high level” panels, they are signaling the exact opposite. Those elitist/ideologues who populate such panels always and only promote one thing: Sustainable Development in all its forms and control over society.

Working together since September 2020, the panel says that it has “examined the state of pandemic preparedness prior to COVID-19,” as well as the global responses to COVID-19.

They state:

The world cannot afford to focus only on COVID-19. It must learn from this crisis, and plan for the next one. Otherwise, precious time and momentum will be lost. That is why our recommendations focus on the future. COVID-19 has been a terrible wake-up call. So now the world needs to wake up, and commit to clear targets, additional resources, new measures and strong leadership to prepare for the future. We have been warned.

Global failure

In a 7-page summary document of the full report, the authors of the report state that “the initial outbreak became a pandemic as a result of gaps and failings at every critical juncture of preparedness for and response to COVID-19.”

According to the summary report these failings included “inadequate funding and stress testing of preparedness, despite the increasing rate at which zoonotic diseases are emerging.”

The authors of the report say that China was “quick to spot unusual clusters of pneumonia of unknown origin,” but that the procedures under the International Health Regulations were much too slow. Further, countries did not act quickly enough with an “aggressive containment strategy,” but rather took a “‘wait and see’ approach.”

As the virus spread, the WHO, trying to support the countries with advice and guidance, found that “Member States had underpowered the agency to do the job demanded of it.”

“Preparedness was underfunded and response funding was too slow,” they say. The result, they explain was “widening inequalities” in regards to the “impact on women and vulnerable and marginalized populations.”

Global recommendations

The summary report concludes with seven recommendations that, if acted upon immediately (by fall 2021) will change the course of how the world deals with virus outbreaks.  The strongly iterate that their recommendations be “fulfilled in their entirety.”

The recommendations focus mainly on increasing the authority and power of the WHO and vastly increasing the amount of money given annually to them.

The global recommendations are:

  1. “Elevate pandemic preparedness and response to the highest level of political leadership.” This would include setting up a “Global Health Threats Council.”
  2. “Strengthen the independence, authority and financing of WHO.” This would include increasing the fees of Member States to cover 2/3 of the WHO (in 2019, Member State fees made up 51% of the budget). Further, the authority and independence of the Director-General would be strengthened and include a “single term of office for seven years with no option for re-election” and that the WHO “be empowered to take a leading, convening, and coordinating role in operational aspects of an emergency response to a pandemic, without, in most circumstances, taking on responsibility for procurement and supplies.”
  3. “Invest in preparedness now to prevent the next crisis.” The Panel is calling governments to update their plans to meet the benchmarks set by the WHO, which include separate nations completing peer reviews of each other on their pandemic preparedness of “as a means of accountability and learning between countries.” The report also recommends that there be an annual assessment of each country by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) regarding their preparedness.
  4. “A new agile and rapid surveillance information and alert system.” The WHO needs to establish “a new global system for surveillance, based on full transparency by all parties, using state-of-the-art digital tools to connect information centers around the world and including animal and environmental health surveillance, with appropriate protections of people’s rights.”  This includes the “explicit authority to publish information about outbreaks with pandemic potential immediately without requiring the prior approval of national governments, and the power to investigate pathogens with pandemic potential…”Along with the global surveillance, the Panel is further recommending that the Director-General be given the authority to act out of precaution. “The bias of the current system of pandemic alert is towards inaction — steps may only be taken if the weight of evidence requires them. This bias should be reversed — precautionary action should be taken on a presumptive basis, unless evidence shows it is not necessary.”
  5. “Establish a pre-negotiated platform for tools and supplies.” 
  6. “Raise new international financing for pandemic preparedness and response.”  The Panel here is proposing that countries around the world, not only up their membership fees to the WHO, but work to raise an additional “US$5-10billion annually to finance preparedness” so that the WHO can distribute US$50-100 billion at a moment’s notice if needed.
  7. “National Pandemic Coordinators have a direct line to Head of State or Government.” Each state should have a national pandemic coordinator that will have the power to drive the coordination of the government response under the guidance of the WHO. As well, each state “should conduct multi-sectoral active simulation exercises on a yearly basis.” These simulations should be with various populations to make sure the people remain accountable and know how to respond as they are expected to.

The so-called “Independent Panel” offers a timetable for immediate action. By September 2021, the WHO wants to see countries with a “vaccination pipeline” to begin providing at least 1 billion doses to lower income countries. Immediately, they are recommending that the WHO take charge to develop the roadmap to guide the globe to end the Wuhan Virus pandemic and that testing for the virus be “scaled up urgently” in low and middle-income countries. Further, as there is $19 billion US needed to purchase and develop more vaccines in order to vaccinate all the middle and lower income countries, they are requesting an immediate $11.4 billion of this cost be incurred by the G7 countries.

Entirely absent from this report is any analysis of the impact on society that these recommendations will have.  Further, the clear implication from the document is that the WHO believes it has made no mistakes in its response to COVID-19 thus far.  The report contains no analysis of the impact of the global response to COVID-19 on small businesses, the middle-class, mental health, the education of children, health of citizens, infringement on personal rights, or the enormous debt incurred by governments through the investment of billions of dollars in vaccines and other COVID-related costs.

May 24, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Timeless or most popular | , | 1 Comment

The Myth of the ‘Asymptomatic Spreader’ Dealt Another Blow This Week

21st Century Wire | May 24, 2021

Since the pandemic crisis began in early 2020, government and public health officials have been adamant that any difficult measures taken were all being done in order to ‘control the spread of the virus’ or ‘stop the disease.’ Thus, a litany of so-called non-pharmaceutical interventions, and also pharmaceutical interventions – were deemed by the consensus to be essential measures in fighting the spread of what was being characterized as an asymptomatic disease.

Over a year later, a few industrious ‘public health’ mavens have summoned the courage to actually test this fundamental assumption. Recently in the UK, officials have staged and monitored nine large-scale events, including an FA Cup final football match, and the Brit Awards – both of which were exempt from the usual COVID rules. The results of this test should be hailed as good news, but for those heavily invested in the narrative, it’s nothing short of a meltdown: little to no coronavirus “cases” turned up.

Officials managed to scrape together just 15 alleged “cases” or “infections” (deemed as such merely from a single ‘positive test’) out of some 60,000 total attendees.

The result of this experiment has dealt a crushing blow to the central myth upon which the entire COVID-19 ‘global pandemic’ crisis has been built – namely the myth of the asymptomatic spread, and the much-maligned notorious “super-spreader” events.

Sky News UK reports…

Nine large-scale events were staged as part of the government’s plan to allow for the return of big crowds this summer. Those who attended were exempt from certain coronavirus rules, such as the rule-of-six.

The government confirmed to Sky News that 15 COVID cases had been recorded out of nearly 60,000 people who attended the events, which “is in line with the broader population”.

Latest figures show the rate of people testing positive for COVID in the UK is 22 infections per 100,000 people.

The pilot events included three football matches at Wembley Stadium – the FA Cup final which was attended by 21,000 supporters, an FA Cup semi-final and the Carabao Cup final.

IMAGE: Animated graphic from NPR’s debunked April 2020 propaganda article entitled, “What We Know About The Silent Spreaders Of COVID-19.”

Combine this latest UK admission with the recent backtracking by Dr. Anthony Fauci and the US Center for Disease Control CDC on masks and asymptomatic transmissions, and it’s clear that officials will have no choice now but to back-off supporting the nonscience-based myth of the asymptomatic spreader or “silent spreaders,” and it’s not difficult to see how problematic this widely held assumption is now becoming, with many media doctors and public health officials now facing challenges over what can only be described as a collective propaganda effort deployed by government, media and medical industry over the last 14 months.

The peer-reviewed literature is also clear, with large-scale studies conducted, including at the supposed epicenter of the pandemic in Wuhan, China – all of which showed no evidence of alleged asymptomatic spreading of the ‘novel’ coronavirus. See their results here, here, and here.

Of course, none of this should surprise any honest doctor or real scientist. We’ve always known that any disease requires symptoms first. But somehow, common sense has been completely abandoned during the Covid crisis.

Of all the widely-held assumptions and hysteria surrounding the COVID crisis, none has been more pivotal than the myth of the ‘asymptomatic spread’ in ballasting every single unprecedented ‘health intervention’ policy including:

  • Social Distancing
  • Mass Testing
  • Reliance on non-diagnostic PCR and Lateral Flow tests
  • Track and Trace bio surveillance
  • Lockdowns
  • Quarantining the healthy
  • Masks
  • Border Closures
  • Business Closures
  • School Closures
  • Mass Vaccinations
  • Vaccine Passports

It’s astonishing to consider that every single one of these emergency measures have been predicated on the widely-held, nonscientific myth of the asymptomatic spread.

Perhaps more shocking is the fact that no one in government, media or the legions of newly-crowned ‘public health experts’ – have bothered to challenge this key assumption, perhaps out of fear, or more likely because it was politically and economically expedient for stakeholders of the current crisis narrative.

It is not uncommon the see the bevy of experts and media anchors, all repeating ad nauseum presumptive statements like:

“A third of people infected with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus have no symptoms but are just as infectious as those with COVID-19.”

Unraveling the murky ontology of the myth of the asymptomatic spreader, we can point to an informative piece published recently in Lockdown Skeptics entitled, “How Did a Disease With no Symptoms Take Over the World?” A fair question, and indeed a necessary one too.

The article answers this question quite simply – it’s so obvious and still profound if one pauses to consider just how many of the so-called experts and health ministers have routinely avoided applying any real epistemology or scientific method to the wild ‘pandemic’ claims which have become so commonplace over the last 14 months:

“Given that this is all so blindingly obvious to anyone who has ever been near a biology textbook, the only reasonable conclusion we can draw about the creation of an asymptomatic disease is that it wasn’t done by a biologist but instead by individuals (probably on the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B)) whose agenda is not to convey accurate information to the public but something different: fear and uncertainty.”

It’s been 14 months, and the world has been turned upside-down, and the billionaire class have reached new heights in wealth and consolidation of power and influence, while everyone else has slid downwards.

Let there be a reckoning. It’s time to talk about the real science – which does not even remotely support the inflated ‘global pandemic’ narrative.

May 24, 2021 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

America’s Public Health System Is Utterly Corrupt

By Paul Craig Roberts • Institute for Political Economy • May 24, 2021

A sure sign of a country’s collapse is the open corruption of its public and private institutions. When corruption no longer has to be hidden but can be openly flouted, the values and standards that comprised the country’s soul have eroded away.

Try to find an American institution that is not corrupt. Even when presented with the Covid threat the US public health system could not rise above the greed for profit. Effective cures, such as HCQ and Ivermectin were demonized and in many states prohibited. Most Covid deaths are the result of non-treatment.

Throughout the alleged “Covid Pandemic” regulatory agencies, health bureaucracies, medical associations, state governors, media, and Big Pharma have acted to prevent any alternative to a vaccine.

From day one the emphasis was on the profits from a vaccine. To get people to submit to an experimental and untested vaccine required the absence of cures. To keep the road open only for a vaccine even supplements such as NAC, which has shown effectiveness as both preventative and treatment of Covid, has been challenged by the FDA in its use as a supplement. In response, amazon.com, a major online marketer of dietary supplements removed NAC from its offerings.

The generation of fear was essential to stampeeding people to line up to be vaccinated. The fear was supplemented by threats of inability to travel, to attend sports events, to resume working at one’s job.

A Covid test, known as PCR, was intentionally run at high cycles known to result in a very high percentage of false positives. These false positives guaranteed a high infection rate that scared people silly. Economic incentives were used for hospitals to report all deaths as Covid deaths, thus greatly exaggerating Covid’s mortality.

As you might have noticed, last winter had no reporting of flu cases as flu was added to the Covid statistics.

A number of reports have been published that the Covid vaccine does not prevent some vaccinated people from coming down with Covid. Other reports say that vaccinated people become spreaders of Covid. There are also reports of a large number of deaths and injuries from the Covid vaccine.

In order to suppress the facts and keep the Covid vaccine selling, the Center for Disease Control (CDC), which supported running the PCR test at high cycles in order to inflate the number of Covid cases, runs the PCR test at much lower cycles in the case of infected vaccinated people in order to minimize the number of vaccinated people who came down with Covid.

To further create an artificial picture of the vaccine’s effectiveness, asymptomatic and mild infections are excluded from the reporting of vaccinated people who catch Covid. Only vaccinated people who catch Covid who have to be hospitalized or die from Covid are counted among the people who caught Covid despite being vaccinated. However, unvaccinated people with only minor symptoms or false positives from a high cycle PCR test are added to the number of Covid cases.

See also: https://off-guardian.org/2021/05/18/how-the-cdc-is-manipulating-data-to-prop-up-vaccine-effectiveness/

This is obvious and blatant manipulation of statistics in order to scare people about Covid while reassuring them about the vaccine’s effectiveness. Overstating the number of cases among the unvaccinated while simultaneously understating the number of people who caught Covid despite being vaccinated is shameless and protects the contrived picture of the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine.

The falsification of statistics in order to produce massive public fear and the prevention of treatment with known safe and effective cures in order to maximize death rates produced billions of dollars in profits for Big Pharma and associated industries, with Moderna’s CEO topping the list of nine new billionaires made rich from the rollout of Covid vaccines. These billionaires rode to their riches on the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people who died from an enforced lack of treatment — mandated deaths to protect vaccine profits.

Will anything be done about this extraordinary corruption of the American public health system?

May 24, 2021 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , , , , | Leave a comment

COVID19 – the end of scientific discussion?

By Dr. Malcolm Kendrick | May 24, 2021

I haven’t written a blog for a while. Instead, I have been sorting out two complaints about my blog made to the General Medical Council. Also, a complaint from NHS England, and two irate phone calls from other doctors, informing me I shouldn’t make any negative comments about vaccines.

For those in other countries, who don’t know about such things, doctors in the UK are ruled by many different organisations, all of whom feel able to make judgement and hand down various sanctions. The deadliest of them, the ‘Spanish Inquisition’ if you like, is the General Medical Council (GMC) who can strike you off the medical register and stop you working as a doctor. They have great power, with no oversight.

Prior to this, I had been phoned by, and attacked by, two journalists and a couple of fact-checking organisations that have sprung up which can decide your guilt or innocence with regard to any information about COVID19. Of course, no-one can check the fact-checkers. They are the self-appointed guardians of ‘truth.’ quis custodiet ipsos custodes – indeed. (Who guards the guardians?)

In truth they have not scared me off, just greatly annoyed me. The problem is that if they really decide to hunt you down, then you are wiped from the system. Dr Mercola, for example, is having to remove information from his site in great haste. Once wiped from the internet, it becomes very difficult for anyone to read anything you write or listen to anything you say. A major problem if this is how one makes a living.

I was removed from Wikipedia a couple of years ago, but I do have a couple of insulting pages on Rational W (https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Malcolm_Kendrick) to take their place. Edited and controlled by – who knows?

I think it is the extreme wing of the Vegan party who decided to write my history, and thoughts, on rational Wikipedia. I say this because a large number of other people I know who are critical of the diet-heart hypothesis, those who dared to suggest that eating animal products is perfectly healthy, were also obliterated from Wikipedia at pretty much the same time.

I did rather like the idea of Wikipedia when it started, but it has been taken over by people, some may say zealots, with their own agendas. This is particularly true of a few scientific areas I am particularly interested in. Diet, heart disease and COVID19.

Frustratingly, there is nothing you can do if Wikipedia decides to wipe you out. There is no appeal. Those who have gained the power to edit Wikipedia are answerable to no-one. They rule their little empires with absolute power. They are, of course, exactly the sort of people who should have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with science. Their minds were made up years ago. They have agendas, they are the anti-science, anti-scientist brigade.

The main purpose of science is to question and attack. To subject ideas to the greatest scrutiny.  Those who decide to shut down and stifle debate … whatever they may believe themselves to be doing, they are in fact traitors to the cause of science. Stranglers of the enlightenment, assassins of progress.

They are not alone, and things have got far worse, in the last year or so. Science has taken a terrible battering with COVID19, I have always known that dissent against a widely held scientific hypothesis is difficult.

Just trying to get published is a nightmare. The peer-review system is one of the many weapons used against innovative thinking. ‘Let’s see what the current experts think of this new idea which threatens to overturn everything they have researched and taught over the last thirty years, and have built their reputations on… I wonder if they will like it, and approve it?’

Experts certainly create a formidable barrier to change. As described by David Sackett (a founding father of evidence-based medicine) in his article ‘The sins of expertness and a proposal for redemption.’

‘….I t then dawned on me that experts like me commit two sins that retard the advance of science and harm the young. Firstly, adding our prestige to our opinions gives the latter far greater persuasive power than they deserve on scientific grounds alone. Whether through deference, fear, or respect, others tend not to challenge them, and progress towards the truth is impaired in the presence of an expert.

The second sin of expertness is committed on grant applications and manuscripts that challenge the current expert consensus. Reviewers face the unavoidable temptation to accept or reject new evidence and ideas, not on the basis of their scientific merit, but on the extent to which they agree or disagree with the public positions taken by experts on these matters.’ 1

And his proposal:

‘But there are still far more experts around than is healthy for the advancement of science. Because their voluntary retirement does not seem to be any more frequent in 2000 than it was in 1980, I repeat my proposal that the retirement of experts be made compulsory at the point of their academic promotion and tenure.’

Expertise is great. ‘Experts’… well, that is a completely different matter. We certainly have a few formidable ones kicking about with COVID19. In the UK we have the great and good of the SAGE committee made up of – who knows? – chosen for whatever reasons. They wield enormous power, and never disagree on anything. In the US we have Fauci and the CDC. Ditto.

In the background we have the WHO … who can tell you what way the wind is blowing if nothing else. They remind me of Groucho Marx’s famous comment. ‘These are my principles. And you if you don’t like them…. I have others.’ However, we at the WHO would like to make it clear that nothing about COVID19 has anything to do with China, in any way. Can we have more money please?

Anyway, where are we with COVID19, and science?

In my opinion COVID19 succeeded in breaking my last vestiges of faith in medical scientific research. I cannot believe anything I read. I accept no mainstream facts or figures.

We are told such utter nonsense. For example, the ‘fact. that vaccination protects against COVID19 more effectively than having had the disease itself… This is just utter nonsense.

We were told that COVID19 was spread by touching contaminated surfaces… Really? We were told it spread though droplets, not aerosols. Which is the most complete garbage. We were told that everyone has to wear a mask. We were told it could easily be passed on by asymptomatic people. Based on nothing at all. I could go on.

Yet, no-one seems remotely bothered by any of this utter nonsense. The public seem to lap it up, and attack anyone who questions the current narrative. I feel that I am clinging onto a dying religion. The religion of Francis Bacon and the enlightenment.

‘Baconian method, methodical observation of facts as a means of studying and interpreting natural phenomena. This essentially empirical method was formulated early in the 17th century by Francis Bacon, an English philosopher, as a scientific substitute for the prevailing systems of thought, which, to his mind, relied all too often on fanciful guessing and the mere citing of authorities to establish truths of science.

After first dismissing all prejudices and preconceptions, Bacon’s method, as explained in Novum Organum (1620; “New Instrument”), consisted of three main steps: first, a description of facts; second, a tabulation, or classification, of those facts into three categories—instances of the presence of the characteristic under investigation, instances of its absence, or instances of its presence in varying degrees; third, the rejection of whatever appears, in the light of these tables, not to be connected with the phenomenon under investigation and the determination of what is connected with it.’ 2

This way of thinking it seems, lasted from 1620 to 2020. Four hundred years of immense scientific progress. The age of enlightenment. We are moving back to the prevailing systems of thought… on fanciful guessing and the mere citing of authorities to establish truths of science.

The Dark Ages are returning.

1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1118019/

2: https://www.britannica.com/science/Baconian-method

May 24, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Telegraph: UK Needs “Vaccine Force” To Produce Jabs “On Tap”

By Richie Allen | May 24, 2021

Yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph editorial focused on vaccine production. The newspaper claimed that the UK should set up a “Vaccine Force” in the same way that we maintain a standing army in peacetime.

According to the editorial:

One of the big lessons from this crisis is that vaccines are essential, one of modern civilisation’s greatest inventions and must be deployed far more efficiently and ruthlessly than Britain’s public health establishment had previously fathomed.

Ruthlessly? I’ll come back to that. The Telegraph claims that the country needs to be better prepared for pandemics and flu-seasons to come and that vaccine work and human challenge trials should begin immediately. The paper says:

We need to be much better prepared next time a new virus emerges. Like this time, vaccine work must begin straight away; but the difference must be that we need immediate human challenge trials.

It was a remarkable achievement that it took just 11 months for vaccines to start being injected; but next time the target should be closer to three.

We need massive production and distribution capacity on tap, at all times, just as we maintain a standing army even in peacetime. Never again should an epidemiological challenge lead to the country being locked down for months on end.

The Telegraph’s message is pretty clear. The paper wants the country to set up a vaccine army that will run mass-production facilities and human trials forever more. It wants this new army or “force” to be ruthless in its endeavours.

This, says the paper, is the only way to avoid lockdowns in future. Lockdowns are intolerable and devastating for the economy and health. The only answer, says The Telegraph, is to have vaccines “on-tap.”

By ruthless, the paper might mean that there should be little or no red-tape to prevent these vaccines reaching our arms. Maybe the paper means that the UK should be ruthless in dealing with refuseniks, because after all, refuseniks delay the end of restrictions.

I’m betting that The Telegraph didn’t come up with the idea of a “Vaccine Force” all by itself. But then again, what the hell do I know? I do know this. We really are here now.

May 24, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment