In setback for Biden’s mandate policy, Florida appeals court allows governor to ban obligatory masks in schools
RT | September 10, 2021
A Florida appeals court has overruled a district judge who sought to block Governor Ron DeSantis from banning mask mandates in public schools, even as President Joe Biden vowed federal support for administrators who do so.
On Friday, the First District Court of Appeals in Tallahassee overruled Leon County Judge John Cooper’s decision to block the enforcement of the mandate ban, meaning schools that try to force children to wear masks can be punished by the governor.
“Upon our review of the trial’s court’s final judgment and the operative pleadings, we have serious doubts about standing, jurisdiction, and other threshold matters,” said the appeals court order, casting doubt on the case the mandate advocates made through a group of parents.
DeSantis is a Republican governor opposed to lockdowns and mask mandates, who has opted for encouraging vaccinations and antibody treatments for Covid-19 instead. He has argued that masking up ought to be voluntary, and that school mask mandates violate the rights of parents and children. Under the rules enacted by DeSantis last month, school administrators who impose mask mandates can be docked pay. Judge Cooper tried to block their enforcement.
Of the 67 school districts in Florida, 13 have adopted strict mask mandates in violation of the state order. So far, DeSantis has withheld the monthly salary of school board members in two counties, Broward and Alachua, while investigating others for non-compliance.
On Thursday, Biden said the federal government would reimburse anyone who defies the mask mandate ban, as part of his push to force some 80 million Americans to get vaccinated or submit to weekly tests under the threat of losing their jobs or paying massive fines. Biden blamed the “unvaccinated” for the surge in Covid-19 cases and said the vaccinated must be protected from them.
“This is not about freedom, or personal choice,” Biden said in a televised speech, later adding, “We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us.”
Biden also said state governors should require vaccinations of all school teachers and staff, imposed a vaccination requirement on 300,000 teachers in the federal Head Start program, and vowed to go after any governors “undermining” his measures.
“If these governors won’t help, I will use my powers as president and get them out of the way,” he said.
Last month, DeSantis vowed to “stand in the way” of Covid-19 mandates, lockdowns, and other restrictions, saying the US can “either have a free society or we can have a biomedical security state.”
Adam Schiff demands more data on Amazon’s policing of “misinformation” in books
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | September 10, 2021
Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat, has written to Amazon and Facebook, requesting more information on their efforts to combat the spread of “misinformation” on their platforms. The Democratic party has intensified its criticism of online platforms for their failure to address what they say is misinformation, which they blame for the stalling of the vaccination program.
“Despite some concrete and positive steps previously taken, these companies owe both the public and the Congress additional answers about the exponential and dangerous proliferation of misinformation,” said Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, in a statement.
In recent weeks more Democrats, including White House officials, have spoken out against online platforms for their failure to address health misinformation, blamed for the increased vaccine hesitancy in the country. Biden singled out Facebook, saying the company was killing people for allowing the spread of vaccine-skeptic content.
In a statement to Reuters, Facebook said that, since the beginning of the pandemic, it had “removed over 20 million pieces of COVID misinformation, labeled more than 190 million pieces of COVID content rated by our fact-checking partners, and connected over 2 billion people with reliable information through tools like our COVID information center.”
It added it had “removed over 3,000 accounts, pages, and groups for repeatedly violating our COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation policies and will continue to enforce our policies and offer tools and reminders for people who use our platform to get vaccinated.”
A spokesperson for Amazon said that it has been “constantly evaluating the books we list to ensure they comply with our content guidelines, and as an additional service to customers, at the top of relevant search results pages we link to the CDC advice on COVID and protection measures.”
Texas governor branded hypocrite after signing free speech bill, having cracked down on Israel critics
RT | September 10, 2021
Republican Governor Greg Abbott has been slammed as a hypocrite after he signed an anti-Big Tech censorship bill on Thursday, with critics pointing out that he’s cracked down on Texans who’ve protested against Israel’s actions.
In a video on Thursday, Abbott claimed “freedom of speech is under attack in Texas,” before revealing he would be signing a law that “prevents social media companies from banning users based upon the user’s political viewpoints.” He said it would allow Texans to file lawsuits against “dangerous” Big Tech platforms that wrongfully suspend their right to post.
“In Texas, we will always fight for your freedom of speech,” Abbott concluded, as he signed the bill.
Though many US conservatives praised Abbott online for signing the bill, journalist Glenn Greenwald pointed out that the same governor had previously used his power to crack down on pro-Palestine activists who protested against Israel.
“I’m happy seeing anyone take a stand against Big Tech censorship, but I also feel compelled to note that [Abbott] himself is one of the country’s most repressive censors,” Greenwald tweeted on Friday, noting that the governor had championed a law that “punishes American citizens who refuse to take an oath about Israel.”
“I can’t overstate how repressive is the censorship supported by Abbott and other mostly but not all red-state governors that punish citizens who advocate a boycott of Israel. Thankfully, the courts are declaring them unconstitutional, but Abbott is a fraud.”
In 2017, Abbott’s office announced that the governor had “proudly” signed a new law that “prohibits all state agencies from contracting with, and certain public funds from investing in, companies that boycott Israel.”
At the signing of the bill, Abbott declared that “any anti-Israel policy is an anti-Texas policy” and “any boycott of Israel is considered to be un-Texan,” ultimately disregarding citizens whose views on the matter didn’t align with his own.
“We will not tolerate such actions against an important ally,” he warned.
A Muslim speech pathologist at an elementary school in Austin, Texas was subsequently ousted from her job after she refused to take an oath swearing she would not engage in a boycott of Israeli products or other such anti-Israel actions.
In 2019, a federal court in Texas ruled Abbott’s bill to be an unconstitutional violation of citizens’ First Amendment rights.
In March, Abbott also took aim at the social network Gab, calling it an “anti-Semitic platform” and declaring, in a video in which he sat in front of an Israeli flag, that it had “no place in Texas.”
Abbott received heavy criticism from Republicans for his anti-Gab stance, including from several Jewish conservatives who served in President Donald Trump’s administration.
The governor’s statement was branded “despicable and false” by Gab CEO Andrew Torba, who pointed out that nearly 800,000 Texans had visited the network in the previous 24 hours and that even the Texas Republican Party had a verified account on the site.
Covid-19 – Fun With Figures, Food For Thought
By William Walter Kay BA JD | Principia Scientific | September 9, 2021
Contrast Covid’s impact on four East Asian countries (Taiwan, Singapore, Japan and South Korea) with its impact on four US Northeastern states (New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Connecticut).
All eight jurisdictions host high-tech societies with market-orientated economies and democratic constitutions.
All boast ultra-modern hospitals, medical colleges and public health programs.
Two differences: a) compared to the US Northeast, the East Asian countries engage in more trade and travel with Covid’s epicentre, China; and, b) Covid toured East Asia before debuting in the US Northeast.
New York state’s population (19.5 million) is slightly smaller than Taiwan’s (23.8 million). Covid has killed 837 Taiwanese, and 54,895 New Yorkers.
Massachusetts’ population (6.9 million) is comparable to Singapore’s (5.9 million). Covid fatalities in Massachusetts – 18,272. Covid fatalities in Singapore – 55.
The combined population of our four Northeastern states (38.7 million) is well below South Korea’s (51.3 million). Covid’s death toll in our Northeastern states is 108,480. Only 2,303 South Koreans have died from Covid.
Our four East Asian countries (207 million) register a total of 19,308 Covid deaths. New Jersey (8.9 million) claims 26,919 Covid deaths.
Per capita, Covid has proven 341 times deadlier to New Jersians than Singaporeans!
Regarding Covid testing rates, Singapore is East Asia’s outlier. By conducting 17.8 million tests Singaporeans have achieved 3 tests per citizen. This still falls short of New York’s 3.3 tests per citizen and Massachusetts’ 3.8 tests per citizen. (You’ve read correctly. Certain people get tested again and again.)
Most East Asian countries, following Japan’s lead, test only patients exhibiting pneumonia-like symptoms. Japan tests 174,000 per 1 million inhabitants. Our four East Asian countries cumulatively have conducted 58 million tests. New York has conducted 66 million.
Massachusettsans test for Covid at 22 times Japan’s rate!
Medical tyranny boosters attribute East Asia’s “success” to harsh public health regimes; but Northeastern states imposed notorious lockdowns, often more Draconian than those deployed in East Asia.
Testing strategies are key. Testing only symptomatic patients is sounder than mass testing.
Asymptomatic Sars-CoV-2 carriers are extremely unlikely to be contagious.
Most people who contract Sars-CoV-2 become neither sick nor contagious.
PCR tests detect: a) miniscule infections that will not take hold; b) dead viruses from infections defeated by natural immune responses; and c) random genetic flotsam resembling Sars-CoV-2.
Mass testing yields positive results from persons who are neither sick nor contagious, and who are unlikely to become so.
By inflating case counts, mass testing makes Covid appear worse than it is.
Likewise, declaring all those who die after testing positive to be “Covid fatalities” – co-morbidities be damned – inflates death tallies; again, making Covid appear worse than it is.
Testing-based legerdemain doesn’t fully explain the whopping discrepancy between Covid’s impact in East Asia and the US Northeast.
This discrepancy also arises from the fact that the US Northeast was one of several areas following Milan’s lead i.e., during the pandemic’s early months health authorities allowed the contagion to rage unchecked through long-term care facilities.
Senior’s homes became Sars-CoV-2 incubators.
Milan, Montreal, the US Northeast et al became continental super-spreaders evidenced by supersized body counts.
Covid-19 is one matter; government response to Covid-19 is quite another.
Sources
Covid fatality and testing stats were extracted from Worldmeter’s Covid database on September 2, 2021.
LAPD officers are collecting social media information from citizens they stop
By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | September 10, 2021
LAPD officers have been told to collect the social media information of all civilians they stop, whether or not they have been arrested or even accused of a crime. Critics have noted the social media information collected could be used for illegal surveillance.
A report on The Guardian revealed that the “field interview cards” LAPD officers use when interviewing civilians include a line for the collection of information on social media accounts, including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
A leaked internal memo revealed that Police Chief Michael Moore told officers that collecting the social media information was important for “investigations, arrests, and prosecutions.”
The police boss also warned that the cards would be reviewed to ensure that the social media information was collected. The collection of social media information started in 2015.
The Brennan Center for Justice, the civil rights non-profit that obtained the documents, warned that the collection of social media information by law enforcement agencies could be used for unjustified mass surveillance of civilians in the future.
“There are real dangers about police having all of this social media identifying information at their fingertips,” said Rachel Levinson-Waldman, a deputy director at the Brennan Center.
The organization reviewed another 40 police departments in the country but did not find evidence of the gathering of social media information.
The LAPD’s field interview cards have been the center of controversy in the past. Three officers were criminally charged for falsely accusing civilians of being gang members by checking a “gang member” box on the interview cards.
“The fact that a department under scrutiny for racial profiling was also engaged in broad scale social media account collection is troubling,” said Levinson-Waldman, speaking to The Guardian.
Hamid Khan, of the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, noted that the data collected by the LAPD is shared with federal agencies, which have previously been accused of using “predictive policing” based on data provided by police.
Khan described the social media information collection as “stop and frisk,” warning that the department was doing it “with the clear goal of surveillance.”
Sweden 1. Faith 0
As the UK prepares to convert 12 year old children into human shields for teachers and geriatrics, Swedes enjoy a coffee together in the sun.
By Richard Lyon | September 4, 2021
HERE’S AN ASTONISHING THING about Sweden: you can hardly tell, from looking at its government’s population statistics,1 that it has COVID-19.
It’s astonishing because the entire foundation of the claim underlying the world’s descent into COVID-19 madness and authoritarianism is predicated on two controversial claims: that COVID-19 is unusually deadly, and that coercion and authoritarianism are necessary and effective in controlling it.
And yet here is a country that hasn’t succumbed to madness and authoritarianism. And here is a country in which you can hardly tell that COVID-19 is present.
Discovering Sweden is like discovering intelligent life in the universe after being told there can’t be any. It falsifies COVID’s catastrophic claims, and reveals a great deal about the institutions driving them.
The number of people who die in Sweden, after making some adjustments for “good” and “bad” flu years, increases by about 1,200 every couple of years. That’s partly because the population is increasing, partly because the population is ageing, and partly because the population is changing through immigration. It would have been astonishing if the number of people who died in Sweden in 2020 hadn’t increased.
I say “after making some adjustment for good and bad flu years”, because it’s by obscuring this that COVID catastrophists have weaponised Sweden and, ironically, coerced it into being an element of their narrative.
Flu, like coronaviruses, is a winter seasonal infection. In every country, there are “bad” seasons when relatively many vulnerable people die, and “good” seasons when relatively few do. 2018/19 was a “good” flu season in Sweden.2 3
Figure 1. Recorded COVID-19 deaths in 2020 were exaggerated by the carryover of vulnerable people from the mild 2018/19 flu season (A), and by either the replacement in 2020 of flu by COVID or miscoding of flu as COVID (B)
Consequently, the cohort of people who were vulnerable to respiratory infection when COVID-19 arrived in 2020 was enlarged by those would have died in an average or bad 2018/19 flu season, but hadn’t (‘A’ in Figure 1 above). Then, after COVID-19 arrived, it replaced flu as the cause of death in the 2019/20 flu-vulnerable cohort (‘B’, above). So the people in groups ‘A’ and ‘B’ who in 2020 would most likely have died of flu, died instead of COVID-19, or were mis-coded as having died of COVID-19.
This is important to understand. The core claim that COVID-19 is especially deadly depends in turn on the implicit claim that its deaths are in addition to normal deaths. No: the majority of its victims die from it instead of flu, cancer, stroke, dementia, heart disease, falling downstairs, or any one of an extended list of things that kill us when we’ve lived longer than the average human lifespan.
This explains why, simultaneously, many people appear to have died from COVID, yet overall death rates are not catastrophic. Here in the UK, the Government advisors estimate that up to two thirds of the fatalities in its vastly inflated prediction of 2020 COVID-19 deaths would have died that year anyway.4 COVID-19 arrived in the UK after an extended period of unusually low mortality: it contributed to a mortality rate in 2020 that was lower than it used to be every single year prior to 2008. In Sweden, you can hardly see it, if at all.
It also partly explains why coercion and authoritarianism have no observable impact on fatal infection rates.5 It’s not the openness of society that kills vulnerable people. It’s their vulnerability to all the other things that still kill them while they are locked down, and that coercion and authoritarianism has no effect on.
Using the same models used to justify imposing mandatory school and business closures, domestic confinement orders, and compulsory masks on UK citizens, UK Government advisors estimated Sweden would suffer 30,000 to 60,000 deaths in 2020 if they didn’t impose the same restrictions. Sweden politely ignored the advice. It didn’t impose “masks”, it didn’t significantly close schools and businesses, and it didn’t impose domestic confinement. At the end of 2020, had recorded 8,800 COVID-19 deaths.
Here’s the impact of those deaths on overall deaths in Sweden, in numbers:
Table 1. When corrected for annual variation in flu deaths, the rise in deaths in 2019/20 was almost identical to the rise in deaths in 2015/6 and 2016/7.
The displacement of flu deaths from 2019 into 2020 is clearly visible. We’ve computed the two year average to accommodate the inter-year variation in flu deaths, and calculated the change in that.6 The overall increase in deaths COVID-19 contributed to, relative to the rising trend, is barely distinguishable from noise.
“Once your faith, sir, persuades you to believe what your intelligence declares to be absurd, beware lest you likewise sacrifice your reason in the conduct of your life…Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
— Voltaire, ‘Questions sur les Miracles’
Germans who keep refusing to quarantine could be put in detention centres under new Covid rules
— The Telegraph, 17 January 2021
Let’s remind ourselves of how one leading COVID catastrophists’ newspaper-of-record reports to its readers a death rate rise in Sweden that is barely distinguishable from noise, while inciting a McCarthyist witch-hunt against those who favoured Sweden’s approach:7
Their readers believe absurdities.
On the basis of absurdities like these, the UK Government is finalising plans to inject 12 year old children—without their parents’ consent—with unlicensed medical substances, designed to attack their immature immune systems in ways that are not yet fully understood, with observed but currently unquantified serious side effect risks, so that they can act as human shields for teachers and geriatrics.
It’s an atrocity.
There are no circumstances in a civilised society under which exposing children to harm to protect adults could be justified. But to the extent that it is, it is on the claim that this disease is unusually deadly, and therefore that such atrocities are warranted.
Sweden shows us it is not unusually deadly, and that they are not warranted. They represent for us the ending of “Lord Of The Flies”.8 As exhausted schoolboy Ralph lies on the beach, waiting to have his brains bashed out by the former Head Chorister (who comes to power by promising to slay an imaginary beast), he looks up to see a Naval Officer standing in the surf. Instantly, the children’s descent into madness and chaos is made shatteringly visible, even as the order of the adult world is restored. The spell is broken.
Sweden breaks the COVID-19 spell for us.
We should oppose COVID madness, coercion, and authoritarianism wherever we find it, and fight to rid ourselves of it until it has gone. It has no place in our world.
Statistics Sweden. “Population Statistics 2018-2021 (month) and 1998-2020 (year)” [link]
In the northern hemisphere, the winter seasonal respiratory infection season runs from July to June the following year, hence “2018/19”. Conflating the end of the 2019/20 season with the beginning of the 2020/21 season was one of many tricks that COVID catastrophism employs the UK to magnify the impression of COVID death in 2020.
The Public Health Agency of Sweden. “Influenza in Sweden – Season 2019–2020”, 2 October 2020 [link]
For references, see my essay “Look her in the eyes” [link]
For a discussion, see my essay “Christopher Snowdon’s smoking ruin” [link]
Is it a perfect measure? Of course not. But it doesn’t need to be. COVID catastrophism makes an extraordinary claim—that we should live permanently under emergency authoritarian rule because this is an especially deadly disease. That claim demands extraordinary evidence—evidence that should “hit you between the eyes”. It doesn’t.
Geoghegan, P. “Now the Swedish model has failed, it’s time to ask who was pushing it”. Guardian, 3 January 2021 [link]
People’s Party of Canada is the only federal election candidate that opposes vaccine passports
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | September 9, 2021
With the Canadian federal election less than two weeks away, only one of the top six parties has definitively opposed COVID vaccine passports and vowed to repeal them if elected; Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada.
The other parties – Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party of Canada, Erin O’Toole’s Conservative Party, Jagmeet Singh’s New Democrat Party, Yves-François Blanchet’s Bloc Québécois, Annamie Paul’s Green Party of Canada – have either expressed support for vaccine passports or not made a definitive statement on the issue.
The People’s Party’s COVID policy takes a strong stance against vaccine passports and includes a plan that details how the party intends to repeal and oppose vaccine passports and mandates if elected.
“Governments don’t want to admit that they were wrong and are imposing increasingly authoritarian measures on the population, including vaccine passports,” the People’s Party states in its COVID policy. “Both the vaccinated and the unvaccinated will suffer under a regime of segregation, constant control, and surveillance. It is illusory to believe that the virus can be eradicated. We have to learn to live with it, without destroying our way of life in the process.”
The People’s Party also notes that “both the vaccinated and the unvaccinated can get infected and transmit the virus, which negates the rationale for segregation and vaccine passports.”
If elected, the People’s Party has promised to:
- Repeal vaccine passports for travelers
- Repeal vaccine mandates and regular testing for federal civil servants and workers in federally regulated industries
- Oppose vaccine mandates and passports imposed by provincial governments and support individuals and groups that challenge such measures in court
In addition to this strong stance against vaccine passports and mandates, the People’s Party has also vowed to promote an approach to the pandemic that “guarantees the freedom of Canadians to make decisions based on informed consent, and rejects coercion and discrimination.”
The People’s Party also promises to not follow the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO) – a group whose recommendations have been used by Big Tech to justify the mass censorship of debate and dissent on a wide range of COVID-related topics.
To achieve this, the party vows to fire the Chief Public Health Officer of Canada Theresa Tam if elected and replace her with “someone who will work with provincial agencies to implement a rational approach to the pandemic, instead of following the recommendations of the World Health Organization.”
Bernier has consistently reiterated the People’s Party’s strong stance against vaccine passports by displaying banners with a “No Vax Passports” slogan during campaign stops, speaking out against vaccine passports, and attending vaccine passport protests.
“Vaccine passports are inefficient, unconstitutional and immoral,” Bernier told True North in August. “They will not prevent the spread of the virus because we now know that vaccinated people can also spread it. They would create two types of citizens with different rights. I don’t want to live in a ’show-me-your-papers’ society. If that happens, whether you are vaccinated or not will be irrelevant. Everyone will lose their freedoms and suffer in a surveillance and police state.”
By contrast, Trudeau’s Liberals have promised a $1 billion COVID-19 proof-of-vaccination fund to assist provinces in developing and implementing their own systems. Trudeau has described provincial vaccine passports as an “interim measure, that will perhaps last a year or so” before federal vaccine passports are promised to support businesses that are sued for forcing vaccine passports.
O’Toole’s Conservatives and Singh’s New Democrats have also expressed support for a federal vaccine passport while Blanchet’s Bloc Québécois supports vaccine passports for international travel.
Paul’s Green Party has yet to make a definitive statement on vaccine passports. In August, Paul questioned the Liberals’ motives in announcing a plan for mandatory vaccination two days before calling an election and called for information on “how the plan will accommodate people with legitimate reasons for not getting vaccinated.”
Local Green Party candidates have given conflicting answers on vaccine passports. Simcoe North Green Party candidate Krystal Brooks stated “I believe vaccine passports should be mandatory for essential workers to decrease the spread” while Kootenay-Columbia Green Party candidate Rana Nelson said “We, as in the Green Party, are not going to force vaccines.”
School Jabs are an Illegal Act of State Coercion, Despotic Quackery
By Tom Penn | TCW Defending Freedom | September 9, 2021
THE UK’s four chief medical officers seem likely to override the advice of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation not to vaccinate under-16s – simultaneously rejecting Public Health England’s stance that ‘children under 16, even if they are clinically extremely vulnerable, are at low risk of serious morbidity and mortality, and, given the absence of safety and efficacy data on the vaccine, are not recommended for vaccination’.
Terrifyingly, we are now officially following nothing but perverted political impulse. Chief medical officer for England Chris Whitty is acting in direct contravention of the Covid-19-specific guidance contained within chapter 14a of PHE’s Green Book – its guide to vaccines and vaccination protocol – as cited above.
In ruthlessly pursuing the vaccination of children against Covid-19 – not on health grounds but in an effort to avert disruption to education – whilst singularly failing to address safety concerns such as the 1,609 vaccination fatalities reported to the MHRA’s Yellow Card Scheme, Whitty has shamelessly twisted the law of ‘Gillick competence’. Not because he and his foot-soldiers have been granted unchallenged authority to overrule a withdrawal of consent to immunisation, but because they are corrupting the ability of both parents and children to make an informed choice on the matter in the first place.
Chapter 2 of the Green Book opens with the statement: ‘It is a legal and ethical principle that valid consent must be obtained before treatment’, followed shortly by: ‘For consent to immunisation to be valid, it must be given freely, voluntarily and without coercion’ (my emphases).
If children and parents are being informed that the purpose of vaccination is to protect educational stability, then by paying heed only to the potential socio-domestic consequences of vaccination refusal, the CMOs are committing an act of medical coercion; thus surely breaking the legal principles involved in obtaining valid consent.
As if such a threat wasn’t intimidating enough, there is left hanging the veiled warning that household income may likewise suffer, as inevitably many parents will have to take time off work to remain home with self-isolating children.
There is no provision in the Green Book that says any immunisation protocol or safety guidance may be bypassed during an epidemic, pandemic or any other type of public health emergency – let alone a supposed educational one.
In fact, the JCVI’s report published on August 4 clearly states that: ‘Delivery of a Covid-19 vaccine programme for children and young people is likely to be disruptive to education in the short term, particularly if school premises are used for vaccination. Adverse reactions to vaccination (such as fevers) may also lead to time away from education for some individuals.’
So why are the four chief medical officers actively seeking to precipitate the very educational disruption they purport to be averting by vaccinating a demographic who simply do not require it?
There is further weight behind the JCVI’s stance that children are not recommended for vaccination, evidenced in a blunder of their own that merely adds emphasis to the low risk to young people from the virus: ‘In England, between February 2020 and March 2021 inclusive, fewer than 30 persons aged less than 18 years died because of Covid-19, corresponding to a mortality rate of 2 deaths per million.’
They neglect to mention the more detailed findings of the non-peer-reviewed study referenced: ‘Our findings emphasise the importance of underlying comorbidities as the main risk factor for death, as 76 per cent had chronic conditions, 64 per cent had multiple comorbidities, and 60 per cent had life-limiting conditions.’
The study concludes with an admission that six of the 25 children and young people (CYP) had no underlying health condition, but that owing to their hospital data being available only for the past five years, they may have had a comorbidity that could not be identified in the study.
An inconclusive verdict on these six with no apparent comorbidities essentially equates to zero healthy children having died from Covid-19 during the period in question.
By comparison, there were 158 recorded suicides in the age group 10-19 in England in 2020, according to Office for National Statistics provisional figures.
Although hard to believe considering the havoc he has helped wreak upon us all, Chris Whitty, a qualified physician, is apparently a ‘healthcare professional’. And in Broken Britain – a nation still in the grip, it seems, of a fraudulent medical emergency whose government are seeking extension to the exaggerated powers that sustain the entire scandal – this appears to mean that Whitty has clearance to circumvent the usual codes involved in lawful assessment.
That is, by psychologically swaying the demographic in question and coercing them into a medical procedure under the pretext of non-medical threats in the form of blighted educations and potentially unhappy homes.
Our Chief Medical Officer is asking parents and children to project themselves into the future, imagine the social and economic fallout of a shattered education, and then immunise themselves biologically against that mental construct in the here and now.
This is national-scale emotional and psychological manipulation – aka state coercion – and constitutes the unauthorised re-working of the lawful procedures involved in allowing parents and children to make a fully informed decision about an already reprehensible medical procedure. That is called breaking the law, and is the behaviour of a despotic quack.
Whitty is on the very brink of sanctioning grievous bodily harm, even death in some cases, to be inflicted upon the nation’s children in exchange for access to education.
Likewise he is verging on condemning vaccine-refusing children to a gruelling academic year of harassment and shaming from their peers, and has cruelly designated them the latest face of a virus politicised. As the headlines inevitably begin screaming of the post school-return casedemic, they will be the mainstream media’s whipping-boys and girls this time.
The virus will pass through the majority of children without them even knowing: ‘Fewer than 5 per cent of Covid-19 cases are amongst children and in general they appear to exhibit mild disease . . . and so Covid-19 vaccines are not routinely recommended for children and young people under 16,’ says the Green Book.
So remind us again, Professor Whitty, was it the Hippocratic or the Hypocritical Oath to which you solemnly pledged adherence for the good of humankind?
Oxford Scientist “It’s Illogical & Unethical To Force Jab On NHS Staff”
By Richie Allen | September 9, 2021
Speaking to SKY News this morning, Professor Sunetra Gupta, a theoretical epidemiologist at Oxford University, said that it is illogical and unethical to “foist a vaccine upon people in the hope that you can reduce transmission of a disease.”
Speaking about the functionality of the jabs, Professor Gupta told Kay Burley:
“They were never meant to be used to stop transmission or to allow people in particular settings to make them risk free. So it is really not logical to use vaccines to protect other people. The vaccine protects you, which if you are vulnerable is a very valuable thing.”
Burley interrupted and asked Gupta to clarify that she does not believe that NHS staff should be forced to have the jab. Professor Gupta replied:
“I don’t think they should be forced to on the understanding simply because this vaccine does not prevent transmission. So if you just think of the logic of it, what is the point of requiring a vaccine to protect others if that vaccine does not durably prevent onward transmission of a virus?
Obviously there are all sorts of ethical and political issues surrounding this. It’s illogical to foist a vaccine upon people in the hope that you can reduce transmission of a disease.”
Burley asked her for her thoughts on jabbing 12 year-olds. Sunetra Gupta pulled no punches saying:
“I absolutely do not think that is logical at any level I mean leave alone the ethics of using 12 year-olds as barriers for infection for the community. The bottom line is that these vaccines do not prevent transmission.
In the case of the 12 year-old it benefits neither the individual who is not at risk of severe disease and death, nor does it benefit the community. To ask children to bear that risk is for me, simply unacceptable.”
No, Minister, Vaccine Passports Are Not Necessary to End the Pandemic
By Will Jones • The Daily Sceptic • September 9, 2021
Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi has insisted to MPs in the Commons that vaccine passports are necessary to end the pandemic. The evidence, however, suggests otherwise.
While the U.K. has seen a spike in reported ‘cases’ in recent days, much of it is driven by the increase in testing as schools have returned. The positive rate, by contrast, shows a gentle decline.
There’s no sign here of vaccine passports being needed to prevent unmanageable spread.
What about elsewhere? Israel is a highly vaccinated country which got in there early with vaccines, so that upwards of 55% of the population has been double vaccinated since early April, and it has made extensive use of vaccine passports.
India, by contrast, is a low vaccination country which only recently broke through 10% double vaccinated.
How are they faring? Israel is currently experiencing a big surge in Delta infections, at a time when over 62% of the population is double vaccinated.
India was the first place to have a Delta wave, back in March and April (the variant, of course, was first identified there). New reported infections entered sharp and sustained decline around May 9th. At that point, fewer than 2.5% of the population were double vaccinated.
Clearly, then, vaccines do not prevent Delta outbreaks, and neither are they necessary to end them.
If you’re wondering about the small recent rise in India, it’s entirely concentrated in two states (on opposite sides of the country), Kerala and Mizoram, which stand out as having had very different reported infection patterns than the rest of the country since late July. As can be seen below, Kerala is now declining again while Mizoram (the other anomalous line) is behaving more erratically. This is not (yet) a new nationwide surge in infections then, though is worth keeping an eye on.
Another country worth looking at is Sweden. Its Delta surge duly appeared, but then, unlike in Israel, quickly seems to be fizzling out. Is this a result of having more robust herd immunity from allowing the virus to spread more freely?
Excess mortality in the country continues to be through the floor, meaning that August 2020 to July 2021 may well turn out to be a year of very ordinary levels of mortality, just as August 2019 to July 2020 did.
If this is the outcome in a country that famously imposed no stay-at-home order, closed no businesses or schools for under-16s, imposed no mask mandate, and has no vaccine passport, then what exactly is everyone afraid of? And what is Nadhim Zahawi on about?
New South Wales Health Chief Invokes New World Order In News Briefing
By Richie Allen | September 9, 2021
At a press conference today, the Chief Health Officer of New South Wales Kerry Chant was asked about contact tracing as the region prepares to emerge from yet another brutal lockdown.
Chant said:
“We will be looking at what contact tracing looks like in The New World Order. Yes it will be pubs and clubs and other things if we have a positive case there.”
The New South Wales government also announced that stay at home orders will be lifted for double-vaccinated citizens. The jabbed will enjoy more freedoms, while refuseniks will be told to confine themselves to their homes.
The un-jabbed will only be allowed to leave for essential shopping, exercise and medical treatment. Presumably, selfish refuseniks will be kept under virtual house arrest until they see sense and roll up their sleeves.
Good God this is really happening.
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Book Review
Alarmist climate science as a textbook example of groupthink
By Paul MacRae | May 1, 2012
… Groupthink was extensively studied by Yale psychologist Irving L. Janis and described in his 1982 book Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes.
Janis was curious about how teams of highly intelligent and motivated people—the “best and the brightest” as David Halberstam called them in his 1972 book of the same name—could have come up with political policy disasters like the Vietnam War, Watergate, Pearl Harbor and the Bay of Pigs. Similarly, in 2008 and 2009, we saw the best and brightest in the world’s financial sphere crash thanks to some incredibly stupid decisions, such as allowing sub-prime mortgages to people on the verge of bankruptcy.
In other words, Janis studied why and how groups of highly intelligent professional bureaucrats and, yes, even scientists, screw up, sometimes disastrously and almost always unnecessarily. The reason, Janis believed, was “groupthink.” He quotes Nietzsche’s observation that “madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups,” and notes that groupthink occurs when “subtle constraints … prevent a [group] member from fully exercising his critical powers and from openly expressing doubts when most others in the group appear to have reached a consensus.”[2]
Janis found that even if the group leader expresses an openness to new ideas, group members value consensus more than critical thinking; groups are thus led astray by excessive “concurrence-seeking behavior.”[3] Therefore, Janis wrote, groupthink is “a model of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.”[4]
The groupthink syndrome
The result is what Janis calls “the groupthink syndrome.” This consists of three main categories of symptoms:
1. Overestimate of the group’s power and morality, including “an unquestioned belief in the group’s inherent morality, inclining the members to ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their actions.” [emphasis added]
2. Closed-mindedness, including a refusal to consider alternative explanations and stereotyped negative views of those who aren’t part of the group’s consensus. The group takes on a “win-lose fighting stance” toward alternative views.[5]
3. Pressure toward uniformity, including “a shared illusion of unanimity concerning judgments conforming to the majority view”; “direct pressure on any member who expresses strong arguments against any of the group’s stereotypes”; and “the emergence of self-appointed mind-guards … who protect the group from adverse information that might shatter their shared complacency about the effectiveness and morality of their decisions.”[6]
It’s obvious that alarmist climate science—as explicitly and extensively revealed in the Climatic Research Unit’s “Climategate” emails—shares all of these defects of groupthink, including a huge emphasis on maintaining consensus, a sense that because they are saving the world, alarmist climate scientists are beyond the normal moral constraints of scientific honesty (“overestimation of the group’s power and morality”), and vilification of those (“deniers”) who don’t share the consensus. … Read full article
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Iran unveils new control measures over Strait of Hormuz transit
- House Resolution Calls for Tech Companies to Censor Speech
- Ceasefire no longer viable after 200 days of Israeli violations: Hamas
- Israeli strikes intensify across southern Lebanon, casualties reported
- Left in Disbelief: Israel in Panic over Hezbollah FPV Drone Nightmare
- Trump Taps Israel Lobbyist From Mossad Cutout FDD To Join Iran Negotiations
- Trump’s Blockade Snatches Defeat from the Jaws of Victory
- Geopolitics and Geoeconomics of the Strait of Hormuz
- Mali: a new front in the Western war on multipolarism
- CHD Scientist: CDC, FDA COVID Vaccine Safety Monitoring ‘Insulting, and Many People Are Injured’
- If Americans Knew
- Israel’s New Ambassador to the ‘Christian World’ Served as Envoy to Azerbaijan During the Ethnic Cleansing of Christians from Nagorno-Karabakh
- US set to sell $1B “Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System” to Israel – Daily Update
- Israeli Strikes Kill at Least 32 Across S Lebanon, Including Children – Amid “Ceasefire”
- Israel to pour $730m into propaganda arm amid reputational crisis
- Real Cost of Iran War Likely Double the $25 Billion Figure the Pentagon Gave to Congress
- Israel conducts farthest-ever strike in long history of attacks on Gaza humanitarian aid flotillas
- In Gaza, Israel commits 10+ ceasefire violations a day – Daily Update
- US ships 6,500 tons of munitions, equipment to Israel in 24 hours
- A New Library in Gaza Rises From the Ashes of Destruction
- Israel’s top Jewish religious body ‘refuses to condemn’ smashing of Jesus statue
- No Tricks Zone
- Oversupply Of Volatile Solar Energy Leads To Record NEGATIVE Prices!
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
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