The Magical Thinking and Dangers of Masks
By Dr. Joseph Mercola | November 24, 2021
Are you prepared to wear masks forever? Some are, but their positive attitude toward masks is a likely result of deceptive and misleading information. The resulting magical thinking relating to masks has created one of the most polarized debates in U.S. history and led to anti-maskers being labeled as “grandma killers.”1
To be clear, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has blatantly lied about masks’ effectiveness. November 5, 2021, CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky tweeted, “Masks can help reduce your chance of #COVID19 infection by more than 80%.”2
But as Dr. Vinay Rasad, MPH, a hematologist-oncologist and associate professor in the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California San Francisco, put it in the Brownstone Institute, “I don’t know how to put this politely, but it is a lie, and a truly unbelievable one at that … The idea that masks could reduce the chance of infection by 80% is simply untrue, implausible and cannot be supported by any reliable data.”3
Masks Have Meager Effectiveness, if Any
Walensky didn’t give a reference for her claim that masks reduce COVID-19 infection by 80%, but a large study4 from researchers at Yale, Stanford and the University of California Berkeley found much less impressive results from masks.
The trial involved 342,183 people from 600 villages in rural Bangladesh from November 2020 to April 2021. In villages that received masks, the number of symptomatic COVID-19 infections were 9.3% lower compared to villages without masks, or 11% lower in villages that received surgical masks instead of cloth masks.5
Why, then, hasn’t Walensky’s tweet been flagged for misinformation and targeted by “fact checkers” calling out the blatant lie? Rasad featured a tweet6 by Carnegie Mellon University mathematician Wesley Pegden, who said:7
“The head of the agency responsible for providing Americans with accurate and trustworthy information about interventions (like vaccines) that we actually know are really effective should not also be making fabricated quantitative statements in support of poorly evidenced ones.”
Antibiotic-Resistant Pathogens Live on Face Masks
While face masks continue to be recommended or mandated, little has been said about the risks inherent to covering your mouth and nose with fabric or other materials. Both cotton and surgical masks collect pathogens that may increase your risk of infectious illness — a factor that’s rarely taken into account when discussing their merits.
When researchers from the University of Antwerp, Belgium, analyzed the microbial community on surgical and cotton face masks from 13 healthy volunteers after being worn for four hours, bacteria including Bacillus, Staphylococcus and Acinetobacter were found — 43% of which were antibiotic-resistant.8
In order to best clean masks to remove the bacteria, the study found boiling at 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees F), washing at 60 degrees Celsius (140 degrees F) with detergent or ironing with a steam iron worked best, but only 21% of survey respondents said they cleaned their cotton face masks daily.9 According to the researchers:
“Taken together, this study suggests that a considerable number of bacteria, including pathobionts and antibiotic resistant bacteria, accumulate on surgical and even more on cotton face masks after use. Based on our results, face masks should be properly disposed of or sterilized after intensive use. Clear guidelines for the general population are crucial to reduce the bacteria-related biosafety risk of face masks …”
Researchers from Germany similarly questioned whether a mask that covers your nose and mouth is “free from undesirable side effects” and potential hazards in everyday use.10 It turned out they were not and instead posed significant adverse effects and pathophysiological changes, including the following, which often occur in combination:11
- Increase in dead space volume
- Increase in breathing resistance
- Increase in blood carbon dioxide
- Decrease in blood oxygen saturation
- Increase in heart rate
- Decrease in cardiopulmonary capacity
- Feeling of exhaustion
- Increase in respiratory rate
- Difficulty breathing and shortness of breath
- Headache
- Dizziness
- Feeling of dampness and heat
- Drowsiness
- Decrease in empathy perception
- Impaired skin barrier function with acne, itching and skin lesions
Mask-Induced Exhaustion Syndrome Is Prevalent
The study referred to this cluster of symptoms as mask-induced exhaustion syndrome (MIES) and warned that children, pregnant women and those who are sick or suffering from certain chronic conditions may be particularly at risk from extended masking. While short-term effects include microbiological contamination, headaches, exhaustion, carbon dioxide retention and skin irritation, the long-term effects may lead to chronic issues:12
“Extended mask-wearing would have the potential, according to the facts and correlations we have found, to cause a chronic sympathetic stress response induced by blood gas modifications and controlled by brain centers. This in turn induces and triggers immune suppression and metabolic syndrome with cardiovascular and neurological diseases.”
Further, “it can be assumed,” they wrote, “that the potential adverse mask effects described for adults are all the more valid for children: … physiological internal, neurological, psychological, psychiatric, dermatological, ENT, dental, sociological, occupational and social medical, microbiological and epidemiological impairments …
The masks currently used for children are exclusively adult masks manufactured in smaller geometric dimensions and had neither been specially tested nor approved for this purpose.”13
Again, in taking on these unknown risks — both short- and long-term — to wear masks, the benefits are highly questionable and intended to thwart a pathogen with a low death rate for most populations:14
“[R]ecent studies on SARS-CoV-2 show both a significantly lower infectivity and a significantly lower case mortality than previously assumed, as it could be calculated that the median corrected infection fatality rate (IFR) was 0.10% in locations with a lower than average global COVID-19 population mortality rate.
In early October 2020, the WHO also publicly announced that projections show COVID-19 to be fatal for approximately 0.14% of those who become ill — compared to 0.10% for endemic influenza — again a figure far lower than expected. On the other hand, the side effects of masks are clinically relevant.”
‘The Mask of Your Enslavement’
It’s clear that the evidence in support of masks for physical protection against disease is lacking, while their potential for psychological harm is immense. Brownstone Institute highlighted the story of folk saint Escrava Anastácia, a slave of African descent who lived in Brazil during the 19th century.15
She was forced to wear a metal, muzzle-like mask during her lifetime in order to silence her from speaking out about the oppression and injustice she was facing. As written by Roberto Strongman, associate professor in the department of black studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara:16
“The apparition of Anastásia at anti-lockdown rallies represents an opportunity to understand the current medical tyranny as a form of enslavement and to forge links of solidarity between communities whose freedom is threatened across all racial groups. The claim of cooptation deserves to be unpacked for a valid claim of cultural usurpation could easily work towards severing important alliances in a divide-and-conquer model.
While there are clear specificities between the suffering of Africans under the system of chattel slavery and the deprivation of civil liberties endured by most citizens around the world during the current pandemic panic, Anastásia reminds us of certain transhistorical constants in the process of dehumanization and subjugation of populations through the gagging and muzzling of their bodies to quell their protestations.”
Strongman pointed out several undeniable reasons why face mask mandates “fashion the citizenry as slaves” and act as symbols of enslavement. Among them, they:17
- Lead to oxygen deprivation, promoting a state of physical and mental weakness
- Are symbols of submission and used as part of master-slave dynamics
- Enforce the creation of a carceral culture
- Erase personhood and homogenize the masses — “The collectivized wearing of masks results in an enforced uniformity in which the individual cedes way to the nameless collectivity as the neo-meta citizen.”18
- Are theatrical and act to conceal identities, rendering us alien to others and ourselves
- Delete facial expressions and inhibit nonverbal communication, including that necessary for social organization that can lead to revolution
- Reduce verbal output
- Are visible displays of allegiance to the “system of medicalizing technocratic control”
- Are part of preparing individuals for new societal roles — “However transitory the current regime of face masking might be, the population must face that we are beingforced to undergo a rite of passage, a process of resocialization into the new normal.”
- Promote a culture of fear
- Act as deterrents of solidarity by making your neighbor into a “nameless pathogenic vector instead of your ally”
Magical Thinking on Masks
In addition to flat-out lies, the CDC also makes nonsensical statements, like this: “Cloth masks will not protect you from wildfire smoke … They might not catch small, harmful particles in smoke that can harm your health.”19
But we are to believe that they will protect us from an aerosolized virus? “The virus is 25X smaller than a smoke particle,” wrote Steve Kirsch, executive director of the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation. “So it’s like trying to stop a mosquito with a chain link fence.”20
Yet magical thinking — the belief that you can influence outcomes by doing something that has no causal connection to them — persists. Robert Dingwall, a consulting sociologist, questioned why the U.K.’s Health Security Agency expert panel used only a second-class evidence base that failed to demonstrate clear benefits on which to base their conclusion that face masks in the community help reduce transmission. He wrote:21
“The state of the face mask debate is rather as if Galileo had published his account of the heliocentric universe and then included a paragraph at the end telling the reader to ignore all the evidence because the Church had declared that everything revolved around the Earth.
In the absence of better-quality work — and we must ask why that research has not been done — some of the claims for face masks look much more like magical thinking than anything that demonstrates the sort of casual connection that might be recognizable as science.”
As the pandemic stretches on, science continues to be ignored and recommendations are primarily pushed based on emotional justifications and triggers. If science were actually followed, universal mask wearing by healthy people would not — indeed could not — be recommended.
In the beginning, health officials did, in fact, advise against masks for healthy people,22 but somewhere along the way — early on — they flip-flopped. Why? According to Strongman:23
“Just as masks function as liminal artifacts in rites of passage and as part of animal training, these covid mask are harbingers of further intrusions to our integrity.
Wearing the masks is just one step away from receiving the shots, then accepting the vaccine passports and the implantable neural links until one’s original persona is buried by a cyborg. The masks function as an empirical compliance test for the projected acceptability of future corporeal technologies of control. Where will you draw the line?”
Sources and References
- 1, 20 Steve Kirsch Newsletter November 7, 2021
- 2 Twitter, Rochelle Walensky November 5, 2021
- 3, 6 Brownstone Institute November 7, 2021
- 4 The Impact of Community Masking on COVID-19: A Cluster-Randomized Trial in Bangladesh November 8, 2021
- 5 ABC Action News September 1, 2021
- 7 Twitter, Wes Pegden November 5, 2021
- 8, 9 Frontiers in Medicine September 3, 2021
- 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Apr; 18(8): 4344
- 15 History Collection December 13, 2018
- 16, 17, 18, 23 Brownstone Institute November 4, 2021
- 19 U.S. CDC, Wildfire Smoke and COVID-19
- 21 Social Science Space October 25, 2021
- 22 Life Site News July 31, 2020
Why another lockdown would be met with mass non-compliance
By Andrew Devine | TCW Defending Freedom | November 25, 2021
LIKE many people, I went along with the first lockdown. I wasn’t very keen, and I was somewhat critical of it, but I believed the lie that it would be a temporary one-off measure. From the time of the second lockdown, I have been vehemently opposed to the policy. While I have never denied that Covid can be a nasty life-threatening illness for some people, I am critical of the way that governments have manipulated data to exaggerate the extent of the threat.
When Covid 19 vaccines were first rolled out in the UK and around the world in late 2020, we were promised by Western governments and their teams of scientific ‘experts’ who wield enormous, unaccountable power, the media and Big Pharma that the vaccines were a game-changer and that mass vaccination would lead us back to some kind of normality. I was initially very resistant to take the vaccine because it is a new drug with no long-term data regarding side effects and risks. I also have two autoimmune conditions, and while they are easily treated, I am genetically predisposed to a third one that can be quite serious.
However, in the end, and with much hesitation due to the already known side effects and autoimmune risks, I took the Pfizer vaccine. I did so for several reasons. Firstly, I am around my elderly parents a lot, and I thought I would be protecting them as I believed the ‘experts’ that the vaccines would significantly reduce transmission.
This has turned out to be false.
Secondly, I was convinced by the data that seems to show that getting vaccinated almost entirely eradicates the chances of someone my age ending up in hospital with a severe case of Covid. Due to fitness and age, my risk of serious illness was already low, but as a neurotic who is sometimes prone to viewing the glass half empty, I admit to having moments when I worried that I might be one of those outliers for my age group cut down prematurely by Covid and so this was an added factor, but not the main one, in my capitulation. The final reason was because I currently reside in the Republic of Ireland where the government have been very keen to enforce some of the harshest lockdowns globally with draconian rules on both inward and outward travel as well as compulsory vaccine certificates for access to various sectors. Therefore, one of my main reasons for getting jabbed, while I still defended vehemently the rights of others not to do so, was that I thought I would be doing my bit to put an end to these hideous lockdowns and other excessive restrictions once and for all. Looking at what has happened in Austria and Holland and the refusal of both the UK and Irish governments to rule out more lockdowns, it is now clear how very wrong I was. Another way of putting it is that I’ve realised how easily I have been duped.
In recent weeks, I have become even more sceptical of everything that the UK and Irish governments and their appointed health experts tell me with regard to Covid-19. For a start, if they were wrong about the effectiveness of the vaccines with regards to transmission, why would I trust them with regards to how rarely serious side effects occur? There would be far more political and career capital at stake to motivate suppression of this data. I’m not accusing governments, scientific ‘experts’ or Big Pharma of doing so, merely noting that there is a much bigger price for them to pay if they didn’t.
With regards to coercive measures and the removal of rights from the unvaccinated, governments don’t even have recourse to the dubious argument that it’s for the greater good as we now know that the vaccinated can also transmit the virus. I keep making the argument to vaccine zealots that people can exercise their right to abstain from taking any medications due to the risks of side effects, but that many governments now believe this right should be removed solely with regard to Covid vaccines. There is no compelling moral argument for why Covid vaccines fall into an exceptional category that warrants the state using coercion whether it be direct (vaccine mandates) or indirect (segregation and removal of rights) to force its citizens to reluctantly take a medicine they would otherwise refuse.
The enthusiasm for vaccines and excessive restrictions are now articles of faith for their proponents. It has become an ideological stance that no amount of reasoned scrutiny can alter. Rational analysis of the extent of the threat from Covid and strategies to deal with it have been abandoned for the simplistic dogma of ‘vaccines good’ and ‘lockdowns and restrictions good’. The truth is much more nuanced than the doom-mongering analysis which permeates the mainstream media. Lockdown enthusiasts and vaccine zealots, like all ideologues, have opponents whom they despise and whom they seek to demonise. This is why only ‘far Right conspiracy theorists’ and ‘anti-vaxxers’ would have an issue with mandatory vaccines which can have serious side effects being given to children to protect them from a virus that rarely makes children very ill.
How have we reached a stage in Western liberal democracies when those of us questioning and disagreeing with extreme public health policies that strip individual citizens of their inalienable rights under false pretences are the ones deemed to be the extremists? Asking questions and being critical of government policy is now viewed by the obedient media class and the political elites and partisan scientific ‘experts’ they serve as being synonymous with the far Right. In truth, it is your democratic duty to question all government policies and especially more so those that would remove your fundamental freedoms. For any government to wish to suspend the rights of its citizenry on a temporary basis, it must first seek consent from the people after explaining the exceptional circumstances in which they seek to do so. There has been no public debate and little media scrutiny across the English-speaking world about whether the threat posed by Covid-19 meets the very high threshold that could justify temporary lockdowns and other extreme restrictions imposed on the citizenry.
If the UK or Irish government or any of the devolved administrations try to impose another lockdown, I predict there will be mass non-compliance. It is very likely that much of the population of these islands will conclude that if several lockdowns, mask mandates and ‘game changing’ vaccines have not eradicated transmission, why comply with another lockdown, possible financial ruin and separation from loved ones? What would be the purpose? As someone once said (it wasn’t actually Einstein): ‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.’
Family of Capitol rioter who died by ‘overdose’ demands autopsy review
RT | November 24, 2021
The family of a woman whose death during the pro-Trump riot on Capitol Hill was ruled a drug overdose is crowdfunding an autopsy review, after Washington, DC police refused to release body camera footage of her final moments.
Rosanne Boyland was 34 when she traveled in January from her home in Georgia to Washington, DC to protest the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory. After crowds of Trump supporters took their rowdy protest to the US Capitol, Boyland would later be found dead among them, with her death ruled an amphetamine overdose by the DC medical examiner’s office several months later.
Her family aren’t buying the story, and have launched a crowdfunding campaign to finance a review of her autopsy.
“There are still many questions about exactly what happened to her,” the family wrote on GiveSendGo this month. “Videos show her being beaten by a female officer after being crushed by protesters pushed by police. Yet the DC Medical Examiner said Rosanne’s body showed no signs of trauma, and attributed her death to the prescription medication she took every day for years.”
In an update to the campaign posted on Tuesday, they added that Boyland was not abusing amphetamines. Rather she was taking adderall, a prescription drug containing four kinds of amphetamine used to treat ADHD and narcolepsy. “The only drugs in Rosanne’s body were her prescription medications,” they wrote.
Thousands of hours of video footage – from both surveillance cameras and police body cameras – captured during the Capitol protest remain unreleased, with authorities citing the importance of this footage to ongoing criminal investigations. Boyland’s family filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the DC Metropolitan Police to obtain body camera footage from officers who handled her unconscious body, but their request was denied.
Some of this footage allegedly shows Boyland being carried into a space beneath the House majority leader’s office, where lawyers for other defendants claim that their clients were assaulted by Capitol Police officers. Conservative journalist Julie Kelly reported on the story last week, after seeing legal documents alleging a series of brutal beatings taking place in the tunnels under the Capitol.
Three other protesters died in the Capitol on January 6. Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt was shot dead by a Capitol Police officer. Two other Trump supporters in their 50s – Benjamin Philips and Kevin Greeson – died of medical emergencies.
Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, whose death was initially blamed on the pro-Trump mob, passed away of a stroke the day after the riot.
Commission cautions against “objectivity” in journalism and calls for censorship of “misinformation”
A chilling read
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | November 22, 2021
The Aspen Institute has released the results of its study on how to protect the public from “misinformation.” The 16-person Commission on Information Disorder recommended more censorship, warning misinformation propagated other issues such as social injustice.
Last week, the Aspen Institute published an 80-page report on how to fight misinformation and disinformation. The long-standing solution to misinformation is better information. However, the organization insisted that the best solution is censorship.
“The biggest lie of all, which this crisis thrives on, and which the beneficiaries of mis- and disinformation feed on, is that the crisis itself is uncontainable. One of the corollaries of that mythology is that, in order to fight bad information, all we need is more (and better distributed) good information. In reality, merely elevating truthful content is not nearly enough to change our current course,” the report read.
One issue raised by critics when it comes to misinformation and disinformation is the lack of proper definitions. They are a matter of “we know when we see it.” However, the report ignores the definition of the terms and focuses on the harm caused, such as inflaming existing issues.
“Disinformation inflames long-standing inequalities and undermines lived experiences for historically targeted communities, particularly Black/African American communities. False narratives can sow division, hamper public health initiatives, undermine elections, or deliver fresh marks to grifters and profiteers, and they capitalize on deep-rooted problems within American society. Disinformation pours lighter fluid on the sparks of discord that exist in every community.”
The report also endorses a growing movement against what it describes “objectivity and both sideism” in the media, some of the hallmarks of responsible journalism.
“Commissioners also discussed the need to adjust journalistic norms to avoid false equivalencies between lies and empirical fact in the pursuit of ‘both sides’ and ‘objectivity,’ particularly in areas of public health, civil rights, or election outcomes,” the report shockingly reads.
The Commission also recommended the involvement of the government in fighting misinformation, ignoring the First Amendment.
Ultimately, the commission’s solution to the “deep-rooted problems in American society” is the regulation of speech, not free speech.
NIH Director Calls For COVID Conspiracists to be “Brought to Justice”
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | November 20, 2021
National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins has angrily called for anyone who spreads “misinformation” about COVID-19 online to be “brought to justice.”
“Conspiracies are winning here. Truth is losing. That’s a really serious indictment of the way in which our society seems to be traveling,” Collins told the Washington Post.
Citing an onslaught of angry messages directed at Dr. Anthony Fauci, who Collins appears to believe is above criticism, the bureaucrat demanded that those responsible for such behavior should be identified and “brought to justice.”
The article cited one such example of “misinformation” being Fauci’s involvement in barbaric experiments conducted on dogs by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), despite the fact that such cruelty factually occurred under Fauci’s leadership.
While Collins didn’t specify precisely what he meant by “brought to justice,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla previously asserted that individuals who spread false information about COVID vaccines are “criminals” who “have literally cost millions of lives.”
That’s an interesting benchmark given that it was once considered false to claim that COVID vaccines didn’t stop the vaccinated spreading COVID, which is now an all too obvious fact.
Quite what constitutes “misinformation” about COVID-19 is anyone’s guess given that several things that turned out to be plausible or true, such as the origin of the virus behind the Wuhan lab, were once deemed to be “misinformation.”
It seems likely that whatever the National Institutes of Health, Anthony Fauci or Pfizer deem to be “misinformation” will become the standard.
As we previously highlighted, efforts to brand those who question the safety and efficacy of products manufactured by pharmaceutical corporations that have been plagued by a myriad of historical scandals are also underway in the UK.
The Online Safety Bill, described as “the flagship legislation to combat abuse and hatred on the internet,” will apparently include a provision that jails “antivaxers spreading false information that they know to be untrue” for a period of two years.
Just how rare are ‘rare’ vaccine injuries?
By Harry Dougherty | TCW Defending Freedom | November 19, 2021
‘ULTIMATELY, the mRNA vaccines are an example for that sort of gene therapy. I always like to say, if we had surveyed, two years ago, the public,“would you be willing to take gene or cell therapy and inject it into your body?” we probably would have had a 95 per cent refusal rate. I think this pandemic has opened many people’s eyes to innovation in a way that was maybe not possible before.’
The man who said this is called Stefan Oelrich. He said it publicly, in a speech to the World Health Summit. He is President of Pharmaceuticals at Bayer, one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world. That’s right, fact-checkers, Big Pharma just admitted that the Covid19 mRNA vaccines are gene therapy and that most people would not have agreed to be injected with them in normal circumstances.
We are just beginning to see how wise 95 per cent of the public would have been. Indeed, a worryingly higher number of teenagers have died since the vaccine was rolled out to their age group, as Dr Will Jones has noted. There were 351 deaths in teenagers aged between 15 and 19 between week 23 and week 43 2021, that’s 108 more than in the same period last year. Even Fullfact’s attempt to dismiss Dr Jones’s findings was half-hearted. Why wasn’t there a similar rise in age groups that are yet to be offered Covid vaccines? No explanation was suggested.
An Icelandic midfielder collapses on the pitch, a Barcelona striker is forced to consider retirement due to a sudden heart condition, a Slovak ice hockey player dies suddenly midgame, and a member of UB40 dies after a ‘short illness’, all within weeks. Yes, yes, some of these may be coincidences, perhaps all of them. But why would anyone be so quick to rule out the possibility that Covid-19 vaccines played a role in any of these incidents unless they had an agenda or an incentive not to establish a causal link? How many doctors would have the courage to admit that they helped to damage people unnecessarily, even if they had done so in good faith?
Most helpfully, Wikipedia has a page listing the deaths of all association footballers who died while playing, from 1889 to the present. Globally, there were four deaths on the pitch in 2018, two of which were caused by cardiac arrest. There were three deaths on the pitch in 2019 and three again in 2020, all caused by cardiac arrest. In 2021 there were 14. One footballer was killed in a collision, while in another case, that of 15-year-old FC An der Fahner Höhe goalkeeper Bruno Stein, the cause of death isn’t specified. The rest died from cardiac arrest. No other year on the list has had as many deaths on the pitch as 2021. As many footballers died on the pitch in September and October 2021 as died in the whole of 2019 and 2020.
One of the deaths this year was 29-year-old Parma player Guiseppe Perrino, who died in a memorial match for his brother, who also died of cardiac arrest while cycling in 2018. Obviously Guiseppe’s brother’s death could not have been linked to the vaccine, but it strongly suggests that some families are more prone to unexpected heart problems than others, which brings us to the tragic case of Italian siblings Vittoria and Allesandro Campo, both footballers who died from cardiac arrest within two months of each other, in a country where life for the unvaccinated is made as miserable as possible.
According to Italian media sources, Allesandro’s death came two days after he received his first dose of the Pfizer vaccine, and the coroners did not exclude the possibility that his untimely death was caused by the jab. It’s difficult to know what caused Vittoria’s death since some reports say her mother insisted that Vittoria was not vaccinated and that toxicology reports found drugs in her system, while others claim her father confirmed that both of his children had been vaccinated. But both of these sibling tragedies raise the question as to whether the vaccine triggers heart problems in families that are predisposed to heart conditions. This is the problem with difficult-to-obtain ‘genuine’ medical exemptions for Covid vaccines: you don’t always know if you’re ‘genuinely’ exempt until it’s too late.
Would it really be that surprising if it turned out that a vaccine linked to heart problems was causing heart problems? Just days before Boris Johnson threatened 16- to 17-year-olds with the prospect of another ruined Christmas if they didn’t get their second vaccine dose, Taiwan suspended giving 12- to 17-year-olds the second dose over fears of a link between the Pfizer vaccine and heart inflammation.
In Australia, the Herald Sun reports that dozens of teenagers have developed myocarditis after their first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. 10,000 Australians have filed for government compensation after being hospitalised by significant side effects from the Covid jabs. As per usual, these afflictions are dismissed as extremely rare, and minimised as mostly trivial. One account from Australian vaccine injury victim Dan Petrovic gives us a clue as to how difficult it is to get vaccine injuries acknowledged by medical professionals. Despite his vaccine-induced heart inflammation, which left him unable to work, walk or play with his daughter, Mr Petrovic says he does not regret having the vaccine.
Each to their own, I guess, but this makes him a reliable source who cannot be dismissed as an ‘anti-vaxxer’. According to Australia’s News.com, ‘neither his cardiologist nor his GP would submit an adverse event report to the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA)’. One doctor said ‘I’m too busy’ while a cardiologist said ‘I cannot make a medical diagnosis, I’m not a practitioner.’
If health professionals are going above and beyond to not link the vaccine with adverse events, how can we be expected to believe that serious adverse reactions are as ‘extremely rare’ as is claimed?
Thankfully, there are some good blokes left in Australia’s political swamp. One is Gerard Rennick, Liberal National Party Senator for Queensland, where unvaccinated citizens are now banned from doing just about anything that makes life worth living. If you try to message through a question to the Queensland Health authority’s Facebook page, their automated chatbot will suggest ‘Try saying something like . . . Can I visit my family?’
Rennick is no lightweight. He has spent the latter half of this year advocating for the ever-growing number of young Australians who have suffered severe, life-changing adverse reactions to medical procedures they took under the threat of living a ‘lonely and miserable‘ life, as the Queensland health chief Chris Perry put it.
There are many on Senator Rennick’s Facebook account. Look them in the eyes and tell them that their avoidable life-changing injuries are insignificant.
Here is one story he shared, from Candice:
‘Prior to the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine, I was a very healthy/fit 38-year-old female that ran and exercised 2-3 times per week and lived a healthy lifestyle. On the 28/8/2021, I had my 2nd Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine. The day after the vaccine, I developed a headache, neck pain, swollen lymph nodes under my arms and flu-like symptoms. On the 3rd day after the vaccine, I woke through the night with heart palpitations and sweating. Throughout that day I went for a walk and experienced a very sharp pain across the upper and the left-hand side of my chest. This lasted for approximately 20 minutes. That night I woke two times again with heart palpitations and sweating. I presented at the hospital the next day and they took blood tests. My bloods showed the Troponin enzyme that should be at ‘0’ as ‘2500’. This indicated damage to my heart.
‘After multiple tests, it was determined through an MRI that I had developed Myopericarditis due to the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine. I was discharged from hospital 4 days later with medication to reduce the inflammation around my heart and was told I would not be able to run or exercise for around 3-6 months and will be under the care of a cardiologist for this period.’
Another, from Andrew, who was hospitalised by the AstraZeneca vaccine:
‘If winning lotto was as easy as getting a so-called “rare” adverse reaction from these vaccines that are supposedly voluntary but if I don’t get it I can’t do my job, therefore, I can’t put food on the table or pay the rent/mortgage, I’d be a millionaire.’
From Matt:
‘It has now been 10 weeks in hospital and I am still not able to walk. I was admitted 4 days after receiving my AZ vaccine previously being a 30 year old with no medical history to speak of, which left me with loss of function and sensation on my right side.’
From Adam:
‘5 days in hospital after 2nd Pfizer shot, server chest pain, shortness of breath and pain running down arm. ecg was out and bloods were elevated. was diagnosed with pericarditis. With my stay in cardiac ward I was wired up to the heart monitor the whole time, countless blood tests, ecgs, X-rays, CT scan, ultrasound, plus taking 20 tablets a day . . . Now that I’m out of hospital was told to take certain meds for 3 months and take it easy. Doctors and cardiologist wouldn’t go into detail on results.’
This, from Kym, a 38-year-old mother with no prior health problems, is perhaps the most important, because it demonstrates the unwillingness of the medical profession to admit that they have needlessly harmed countless people who would likely not have had any major complications from Covid19. Please share these accounts with your MP.
‘Monday 25/10 discharge dr verbally confirmed that these symptoms are related to the Pfizer vaccine. When I asked for the diagnosis written down on my discharge papers, the tone in the room changed! When asking the doctor for this verbal diagnosis to be put into writing, the answer was: “No, there is no need, this is normal and are just symptoms of the vaccine.” I informed the dr that my “symptoms” were also called “an adverse event” and must be reported to the TGA or QLD Health. Again the response was, “These are just symptoms of your vaccine not an adverse event, they are two different things.” I continued to push the issue with reporting this “event”. I then asked what my prognosis was and when these tachycardia events would subside. The doctor responded, “We don’t know, we don’t have data”, to which I responded that this is why I was pushing the point to have this event documented and reported. Immediately after this question, the doctor stated to me that I was “just admitted for reassurance!” This doctor did not admit me, an Emergency Dr did, this doctor had only met me for 5 minutes, stood at the end of my bed, no physical exam conducted. I was discharged with my papers stating “confident to be vaccination Pfizer-related symptoms/ reported to QLD Health re: adverse following injection”.’
Sweden’s “Vaccine Passes” should teach us an important lesson.
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | November 18, 2021
The Swedish Public Health Agency (PHA) has announced that, starting next month, gatherings of more than 100 people will require “Covid passes” showing vaccination status.
Unlike similar schemes in other countries, a negative test will not be accepted as a substitute – either you’re vaccinated, or you can’t enter the venue.
There’s no talk yet of including restaurants, bars or cafes in this… but it is still early.
The PHA published a press release yesterday, detailing the plans. Quoted in The Local, Sweden’s culture minister Amanda Lind said:
Being able to use vaccination certificates is something the government has been preparing for a long time. You have previously heard me talk about vaccination certificates as a “plan B”. Now that situation is here,”
The vaccination pass comes on the heels of announcing the re-introduction of other “anti-COVID” measures, including limitations on mass indoor gatherings. The pass is being described as a way to get around these restrictions by “guaranteeing that participants are vaccinated”.
… and so Sweden falls.
From the beginning of the “pandemic” Sweden has been almost an outlier. Their refusal to lockdown was held up as an example of irresponsible laissez-faire libertarianism in the mainstream press, but made it an important touchstone for lockdown sceptics who viewed it as a bastion of common sense.
It turns out neither is true.
While Germany, Austria, New Zealand, Canada (and others) have gone full fascist brutally suddenly, Sweden is taking the scenic route. Rather than refusing to comply with the narrative, Sweden is simply using a looser net to catch the stragglers.
Those championing Sweden’s approach to Covid have just been caught in a supranational game of “good cop, bad cop”.
It shouldn’t really come as a surprise, the warning signs were all there.
For starters, the sheer amount of coverage given to the “Swedish approach” should have tipped people off.
Let’s take a moment to remind ourselves that the countries that have really rejected the Covid narrative in its entirety – such as Belarus – are never in the news.
In fact the governments that genuinely refused to play ball all had colour revolutions (or attempted ones at least), or saw their presidents die of sudden heart attacks.
Sweden suffered no such bad luck. Because it was playing its part.
For over a year and a half, Sweden has been portrayed as the calm voice in a room of panicking hysterics. They ‘refused’ to lockdown, and their “covid deaths” never reached the disastrous predictions of the modellers, whilst their economy suffered markedly less than the rest of Europe.
Playing that level-headed role has bought them credibility in Lockdown-sceptic circles, which can now be parlayed into an argument for vaccine passes: “Oh you hate vaccine passports? Well you love Sweden and they have them there!”
It’s all about manipulation – getting the doubters to concede to your narratives bit by bit without realizing they are doing so.
By supporting Sweden’s no lockdown approach, because it seems relatively sane, you concede, without fully realizing it, that there is a pandemic, and it does require some kind of intervention.
The same can be said for the “alternate therapies” and “pre-existing immunity” arguments.
Although both seem to have scientific evidence supporting them, the argument is built on a priori assumptions which concede the basic reality of the pandemic narrative.
And you will never win if you play by those rules. This is their pandemic and they can reinvent it in any way they choose.
Think promoting ivermectin is a good way of opposing the vaxx without alienating the believers? No!
You have to follow rules. They don’t. They can just invent a new “variant” out of wholecloth. One that is “resistant to ivermectin”.
And then what do you do?
It’s a simple and important lesson, hopefully, forced home by now:
Don’t part-accept irrationality in an effort to be reasonable. Don’t try and meet insanity in the middle. Deal only in what you can research and observe yourself.
Don’t attempt to compromise with the establishment, because they will never compromise back. There is no middle way.
Never, EVER, accept part of their narrative on trust.
Sweden should teach us never to pick sides in the Covid game, because it’s all rigged and the only way to win is not to play.
