The Lockdowners Have Their Own Conspiracy Theories
By Phillip W. Magness | AIER | April 2, 2021
A bizarre Covid-19 conspiracy theory appears to have taken root among the epidemiologists and public health officials who still support lockdowns. According to their claims, the UK government’s pandemic response was secretly captured at some point in the fall of 2020 by lockdown critics including Great Barrington Declaration co-author Sunetra Gupta, her Oxford colleague Carl Heneghan, and Sweden’s state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell.
Seizing on an article in the Times of London, supporters of this theory allege that Gupta and her colleagues convinced UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Chancellor Rishi Sunak to abandon a so-called “circuit breaker” lockdown during an audience in late September. Had the UK gone back into lockdown around the beginning of October instead of a month later – proponents of this theory maintain – it would have avoided its disastrous second wave over the fall and winter months.
Even the basic narrative flies in the face of empirical reality. In November 2020 and again in January 2021, the UK went through two successive rounds of draconian lockdowns of the exact type that Gupta and her colleagues advised against. Championed by Johnson as a way to avert the second wave, these policies utterly failed at their stated purpose. On November 5th, the date the second lockdown took effect, the UK’s death toll stood at 48,000. Over the next four months, three of them spent under recurring lockdowns, the UK’s fatality numbers exploded to over 120,000.
Equally telling, the timing of the UK’s fall/winter wave almost perfectly matched that of Sweden, which remained open throughout the same period – except the UK’s results under lockdowns were visibly worse. As a growing body of scientific literature attests, lockdowns did practically nothing to contain the pandemic. Instead, the performance of this policy shows no discernible advantage over states and countries that opted against suspending the basic operations of daily life, and in many cases lockdown countries actually did worse than those that remained open.
Still, proponents of the newest UK conspiracy theory hold that something very different would have happened if only Johnson had enacted an earlier lockdown around the beginning of October instead of November 5th. Its underlying narrative has gained an unusually intense following among public health activists and pundits in the UK.
Deepti Gurdasani, an epidemiologist at Queen Mary University in London and a principal organizer of the pro-lockdown John Snow Memorandum, has aggressively promoted the alleged wresting of pandemic policy away from the lockdowners as an explanation for why the UK’s second and third lockdowns failed. As early as December, Gurdasani blasted Downing Street for supposedly listening to the “dangerous ideology” of Gupta, Heneghan, and Tegnell, which “has cost thousands of lives” and sought to replicate the “dangerous” Swedish strategy. Never mind that Sweden, without lockdowns, has a much lower deaths-per-million residents total (1,303 as of April 1st) than the UK (1,890) under three harsh lockdowns.
The same narrative has become a favorite of Devi Sridhar, an anthropologist and Snow Memorandum co-signer who frequently appears in the UK media to advocate the fringe “Zero Covid” strategy (the same one that claims we need more lockdowns to prevent future lockdowns, apparently unaware of the contradiction that entails). Attempting to explain why her own lockdown approach did not work, Sridhar wrote on January 5th that “Chancellor Sunak invited Heneghan, Gupta & Tegnell to advise on strategy. That says it all.”
Other variants of the same conspiracy theory permeate the UK’s pundit ranks. Far-left Guardian columnist Owen Jones repeated it in a December column targeting Sunak and the scientists for allegedly delaying the lockdowns until it was “too late to bring coronavirus rates down to anywhere near the level needed to suppress the virus.”
A little over a month later, Sam Bowman, a right-leaning self-described “neoliberal,” penned an almost identical argument to Jones in the same newspaper, writing “Sunak was reported as having been the decisive voice in government against an autumn lockdown that might have brought cases low enough to make things like test-and-trace viable,” all because of “Sunetra Gupta, Carl Heneghan and Anders Tegnell being invited to speak via Zoom at Downing Street.”
Note that none of these commentators are even willing to consider the possibility that lockdowns do not deliver on their promises, or that Britain’s dismal performance under the policies they advocated is a direct testament to their failure as public health measures. The validity of lockdowns has become an axiom to them, and the only conceivable reason they do not work must be some form of malfeasance preventing them from working the way the epidemiology models claim they should. Sunak and the three dissenting scientists accordingly became a natural scapegoat for Britain’s dismal public health performance over the winter months.
Is there even a kernel of truth behind the lockdowner’s UK conspiracy theory? Gupta, Heneghan, and Tegnell did meet with Downing Street via Zoom on September 20th to voice their opposition to lockdowns in general – a position they have consistently held throughout the pandemic. Unfortunately, as Gupta has explained and as the next four months repeatedly demonstrated, the Prime Minister largely ignored their advice.
The conspiracists’ alleged “smoking gun” is a series of minutes from the UK government’s SAGE advisory committee on September 21st, which included a “circuit-breaker lockdown” among a “short-list” of policies “that should be considered” in response to rising Covid-19 cases. Apparently in their minds, being “considered” equates to adoption, and the fact that Johnson did not lock down the very next day is proof that the dissenting scientists had wrested the reins of the UK’s pandemic policy from those who advocated lockdowns, delaying the necessary response until November 5th after which it was too late.
There are multiple immediate problems with this narrative. First off, Wales tried a “circuit breaker” lockdown that almost exactly followed the proposal being considered by the SAGE committee, announcing it on October 19 and implementing it a few days later. Although it had a lead of almost two weeks before the rest of Britain went into lockdown in November, Wales’s per capita case numbers followed the same trajectory as the rest of the country, including the sharp spike in late December and early January. Far from working as intended, Wales’s “circuit breaker” lockdown only slightly shifted the timing of this pattern. Its maximum daily peak of 87 cases per 100,000 residents nearly matched England’s peak of 96, and its curve for Covid-19 fatalities followed the same pattern as the rest of Britain.
Equally telling, a number of the conspiracy theory adherents themselves were singing a very different tune when these events were unfolding. Gurdasani, Sridhar, and other lockdown advocates of the John Snow Memorandum crowd want you to believe that they were patiently counseling the government to adopt an early lockdown between the end of September and mid-October, only to see their advice deflected by Downing Street due to the interference of Gupta and the other dissenting scientists. The record reveals a very different story.
On September 24, only three days after the SAGE meeting minutes, an interesting editorial appeared in the leading British medical journal. Written by Karl Friston, a frequent collaborator with Gurdasani and fellow John Snow Memorandum organizer, the editorial advocated a “third way beyond lockdown or herd immunity” premised on implementing a contact tracing regime over the next few weeks. Far from raising alarms about the immediate need for another lockdown, Friston attempted to assure calm.
“We have already developed a substantial population immunity (around 8% in the UK) and our physical distancing policies remain adaptive and effective,” he explained, arguing that a contact tracing regime could synergistically harness and augment their effectiveness. As far as the fall case surge went, he predicted a comparatively mild trajectory: “When one models what is likely to happen…in terms of viral spread and our responses to it—a plausible worst-case scenario is a peak in daily deaths in the tens (e.g., 50 to 60) not hundreds, in November.” As it happens, the UK topped 400 deaths per day during the November lockdown, and surged to 1,200 deaths per day at the peak of the January lockdown.
Just over two months later, Friston joined Gurdasani and several other Snow Memorandum signers in an letter to the Lancet that blamed the UK’s second wave on failing to heed pro-lockdown advice that they now claimed as their own, even as it conflicted with their public messaging from September that downplayed the very same recommendation. Writing in hindsight and with a liberal amount of revisionism, they recast themselves as proponents of an earlier lockdown all along: “On Sept 21, 2020, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) advised the UK Government to institute a circuit breaker in England to suppress the epidemic. Instead, the government opted for several weeks of ineffective local tiered restrictions, and cases continued to rise exponentially.”
A similar messaging came from the “Independent SAGE” group – a private organization of scientists who now generally support the lockdown approach, but also spent the early fall advocating less-restrictive measures that would supposedly avoid another lockdown. On September 20th, the same day that Gupta and the other scientists met with Downing Street, the Independent SAGE group (not to be confused with the official SAGE group despite their shared name) released a 10-point plan “to avoid a national lockdown.”
The scheme warned of a point “when the situation is so far out of control that the only possible response will be a second national lockdown,” but advised “we can only avoid it if we take urgent action” as recommended by the group. They sought a variety of restaurant restrictions limited to outdoor dining, plus the same testing and contact tracing programs espoused by Friston. Six months later, Independent SAGE member Kit Yates is now faulting the anti-lockdown scientists for Johnson’s failure to implement a policy last September that his own group purported to oppose and sought to forestall.
Indeed, what we see when we look to the words of these lockdowner scientists and pundits is nothing short of a conscious attempt to rewrite their own positions from the time period when the conspiracy theory that they’ve now adopted was allegedly playing out. As I documented last fall, the overwhelming media narrative from late September and early October explicitly deflected attention away from the prospect of a second lockdown. Scientists such as Gupta, Heneghan, and the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) signers, they vigorously maintained, were arguing with a “strawman” of renewed lockdowns that nobody was seriously proposing or considering anymore.
A typical version of this narrative appeared inWired UKon October 7th as part of a media attack on the GBD. “The kind of lockdown that the Great Barrington Declaration seems to be railing against hasn’t been in place in the UK since mid-June,” argued the magazine’s science editor Matt Reynolds. Even in UK cities that were under local restrictions, “pubs, restaurants and schools are still open and it’s hard to find people who are advocating for a return to the lockdown we saw in March.” Reynolds continued: “When the Great Barrington Declaration authors declare their opposition to lockdowns, they are quite literally arguing with the past.”
Similar messages appeared throughout the UK media at the time, each insisting that lockdowns were no longer on the table. On October 11th, Guardian columnist Sonia Sodha wrote “The [Great Barrington] declaration sets itself up against a straw proposal that nobody is arguing for – a full-scale national lockdown until a vaccine is made available.” By October 30th, Sodha was already contradicting herself and revising her own history, tweeting “Wish we’d had a circuit breaker lockdown when SAGE first recommended it.” By mid-December, she was touting the conspiracy theory about Gupta, Heneghan, and Tegnell’s Zoom meeting with Downing Street. More recently, she’s become an advocate of de-platforming the same scientists from British media channels for their anti-lockdown heresies.
Sridhar’s own navigation of the lockdown question followed a similar course. Although she now chastises opponents of the “circuit breaker” lockdown proposal from the events of September 20-21 and faults them for Britain’s second wave, Sridhar wrote a bizarre op-ed in the Guardian on October 10th purporting to oppose “continual lockdowns.” Much like the Zero Covid messaging she would later adopt, its argument is confused and self-contradictory, meandering from touting the model of Taiwan, which never locked down, to New Zealand, which continues to use aggressive lockdowns to suppress even the slightest outbreak. But it also sought to signal her opposition to the specter of renewed lockdowns, which could be avoided – she insisted – by adopting less-stringent localized restrictions and an extensive contact tracing regime.
Sridhar would doubtless insist that her own re-adoption of lockdown advocacy about a month later arose from a failure to heed her earlier advice, as opposed to a more fundamental error with the lockdown approach. Even then, it’s difficult to square her mid-October position with her newfound claim to have recognized the wisdom of a national lockdown some 2 to 3 weeks earlier than the October 10th op-ed, only to see it derailed by the scientists who spoke to Downing Street. Like the Independent SAGE group’s September 20th manifesto, Sridhar was either far less attached to a second lockdown at that point in time than she now insists, or she was engaging in deception about her intentions.
The most astounding attempt at revisionism, however, came from Gurdasani – the Snow Memorandum organizer who has since tried to scapegoat the UK’s Covid failures on Gupta, Heneghan, and Tegnell over the September Zoom conference. She now depicts herself as an early lockdown advocate whose advice from September was shoved aside and ignored. Yet as late as October 26, Gurdasani was still pushing the same “lockdowns are a strawman” line that had dominated the previous month of UK media coverage.
Writing for the Byline Times, a London-based blog that has pushed multiple unhinged conspiracy theories of its own about the Great Barrington Declaration, Gurdasani described lockdowns as “a strawman that the science is not only not advocating for, but very keen to avoid.”
Gurdasani was in the middle of a publicity campaign for the John Snow Memorandum at the time, its own language having been carefully crafted to present its recommendations as a strategy “to prevent future lockdowns” by relying on nondescript localized “restrictions” and a contact tracing regime. As Gurdasani and another Snow Memorandum signer told the Byline Times’ readership, “Unfortunately, the proponents of herd immunity have had a huge impact on responses to the pandemic, effectively creating the lockdown strawman,” insisting that this presented a “dangerous false dichotomy.”
With Gurdasani stressing that she was keen to avoid future lockdowns – a “strawman” in her own words – as late as October 26th, one begins to wonder how she could have supported the very same “strawman” over a month earlier on September 20th, the date on which the dissenting scientists allegedly wrested control of the UK’s pandemic response. Perhaps the lockdowners’ latest conspiracy theory has another as of yet undisclosed twist to it, this one involving a time machine.
Irish FOI Data-Release Proves Hospitals Were Never Under Strain In 2020
BY MICHAEL J SULLIVAN | FREEPRESS | MARCH 9, 2021
Update: Gript ran a piece on March 11 criticising the inferences of our article below, and here’s our recently published rebuttal. After reading the below ask yourself, why are Gript not going after St James’s hospital for what they did?
Freepress.ie can exclusively reveal that Irish hospitals were never under strain throughout 2020, based on newly released official health system hospital data arising from our freedom of information request. If you’re in a hurry, scroll to the section on St. James’s hospital.
The contradiction between the official data and representations that the health service has been under dangerous strain is obviously extremely important. The charts below will show you just how how busy Irish hospitals have been.
The new data directly contradicts the reporting and statements of Irish politicians, RTE and other Irish mainstream media, and the Irish Health Service Executive (HSE) covid-body NPHET. These Irish establishment bodies have consistently told the public that the hospital system was at breaking point since the Covid issue surfaced. Their own HSE data completely contradicts that contention.
We requested a specific dataset from the HSE on the 2nd of February. We asked for:
‘the full occupancy rates for all Irish hospitals under the direction of the HSE for the past four years broken down by month. Specifically, only people who were admitted to hospitals should be included and not outpatients who were on a waiting list: only people who were in the hospital for treatment should be included.’ – Our February 2nd FOI Request to HSE
It took five weeks, but we now have that data. It shows conclusively that hospitals were never at breaking point and they were operating far below capacity all year.
The idea of an extremely stressed health service is still one of the key pillars used to justify the Irish Government’s unscientific lockdowns and mask mandates, both of which have no basis in science and have been argued to be examples of crimes against humanity.
The HSE Hospital Bed Data – Available For You To Download
We have included both the FOI request letter from the HSE and the actual data release here for download to verify everything for yourself with the HSE if you need to.
We encourage everyone to examine and use it for your own content to spread awareness – a link back to this site at the top of your material is all we ask. Make a chart for your local hospital and share it in your area! If you can’t use excel hit the comments below and I will make one for you. Feel free to use anything in this report in your own material for free, including all chart images below. The spreadsheet data we received from the HSE breaks down hospital bed occupancy for the past four years, with tabs for each year from 2017 to 2020.
The figures are given for the entire country at the top of the list, and then each of the seven hospital groups are given, along with each individual hospital within each of those groups. In all, there are fifty-six lines of data per year, broken down by month. Each of the charts below have the corresponding data shown used to generate each chart.
For each chart we took the four consecutive years for that specific group or hospital and charted it to show the comparison between the year of the ‘pandemic’, and the three previous years.
The National Picture Is One Of Half Empty Hospitals
Let’s first take a look at the national picture. For the year of Covid-19 2020 in blue, the graph shows that National Hospital occupancy levels were starkly below those of the previous years. Click each image to enlarge and to see the yearly figures.
All Irish hospital bed occupancy by month, from 2017 (Yellow) to 2020 (Blue). Click each image to enlarge
It seems they flattened the curve alright – but maybe not the one we thought they meant. This data incorporates all hospital beds in the country (the first line of data on the excel sheet). As you can see, the system was never under strain.
To check if the National picture is reproduced in a subset of that data, the Ireland East Hospital Group (IEHG), is the largest and most complex of Ireland’s hospital groups. Comprising 11 hospitals (6 voluntary and 5 statutory), IEHG spans eight eastern counties and works with four Community Healthcare Organisation (CHO) partners. The Mater hospital and National Maternity Hospital are members of this group.
Ireland East Hospital group, 11 hospital on most populous East Coast of Ireland
Still the same picture. Remember: according to official government figures, between March 1 and May 6, a total of 534 sick elderly patients who had tested positive for Covid were discharged from hospitals in Ireland and moved to nursing homes, under instructions from the Irish Government and senior HSE & NPHET officials. This was ordered under the auspices of ‘protecting hospitals under strain’. We included this period in the graph above.
We have written extensively about the Nursing home actions of the the government and NPHET in Freepress.ie. These new hospital figures show conclusively that the hospitals were half empty. Those covid-positive elderly people should have been kept in hospital where sick people are normally treated, not sent back into vulnerable mortally ill nursing home populations to cause havoc. The HSE and Irish Government knew this at the time, and they knew the hospitals were the best place to treat these people.
We wrote about how certain US Governors are now being investigated for similar nursing home decrees by the FBI earlier this month. It has been argued that these actions were taken deliberately to boost Covid-death numbers, to help the pandemic program. Many new readers will find that notion hard to believe, but many of our readers believe this is exactly what happened. If someone can explain why this action was justified feel free to comment below, no registration is required.
Here’s Ireland’s largest hospital, St James’s hospital – which is not part of the previous Ireland East hospital group.
St James’s hospital, Ireland’s largest, and four years of bed occupancy levels. Never under strain in 2020.
Same picture. Indeed, you will see the same picture across all Irish hospitals if you chart them yourself in excel or give the numbers a brief examination across all four years. Fifty-four elderly sick Covid patients were transferred from St James’s hospital to understaffed nursing homes by decree.
Why were they discharged if St James’s was almost empty as their own figures show us (at 58%), when they could have received the best acute care in hospital for what the HSE & Government said at the time was a deadly life-threatening disease? This is proof positive of medical negligence resulting in death by St James’s hospital.
Let’s now take a look at a Cancer hospital, St Luke’s Oncology and radiation network. Remember, cancer diagnosis, treatment & detection services were shut down across the country on the basis that Covid was a bigger threat to life (despite the Irish Government and HSE having access to data from Italy in March 2020, whichshowed conclusively that Covid was not a major pandemic threat – we reported on that here.
St Lukes Cancer network, Ireland’s largest. Cancer rates did not half because of Covid.
I think we can all agree that Cancer in Ireland has probably not reduced because of covid, and you can see the steady levels of treatment in this cancer hospital for the previous three years. This shows that people with cancer (a real killer in Ireland, with real mortality figures) was not being treated in the usual numbers. This also means that those cancers will be much worse when eventually treated or detected.
The Irish government and HSE know that screenings for cancer and other killer diseases have been stopped, yet continue into 2021 to advocate for unscientific and devastating lockdowns, despite Covid having killed a relatively small number of people who were not already dying of underlying conditions like Cancer. This is not an insensitive declaration – we are advocating here for hospitals to fully open up so that people can get screened for diseases that are guaranteed to kill more people than Covid. All data shows that Covid has been massively overblown, is not the threat as presented, and the mitigation and protection measures like masks and isolation are total overkill.
Skeptics may say that this data is proof that lockdowns work, but given that global locations without lockdowns have had less mortality than those with lockdowns, their contention will not hold up to any kind of scientific scrutiny. Take Sweden, Florida & North Dakota – there were no lockdowns or mask mandates there and they had less Covid death than all other lockdown states. Like everything about Covid, the actual science proves the Irish Government got everything wrong. The only question is how deliberate it was.
The Covid hysteria pushed by Irish politicians and Government meant that regular hospital admissions were drastically reduced due to appointments being cancelled, and people being afraid to visit the hospitals they pay for via taxation. The Irish government and HSE deliberately withdrew healthcare from the population. What more do the quiet people need to see in order to voice their opposition to what the Irish Government are doing?
The Lasting Health Impact Of Closed Hospitals
No rocket science degree required to figure this one out – even the brainwashed know that stopping hospital treatment on such a wide scale is disastrous. Many people unfortunately still believe the government messaging on Covid, through the spell of Irish mainstream media repetition and paralysis by fear. They are still having trouble understanding the scale of what they have done.
We are facing the biggest existential crisis our people have ever faced due to lockdowns and the suspension of healthcare & democracy in Ireland.
As Per Dr Scott Atlas late last year, “The harms to children of suspending in-person schooling are dramatic, including poor learning, school dropouts, social isolation, and suicidal ideation, most of which are far worse for lower income groups. A recent study confirms that up to 78 percent of cancers were never detected due to missed screening over a three-month period. If one extrapolates to the entire country, 750,000 to over a million new cancer cases over a nine-month period will have gone undetected… Beyond hospital care, the CDC reported four-fold increases in depression, three-fold increases in anxiety symptoms, and a doubling of suicidal ideation, particularly among young adults after the first few months of lockdowns, echoing American Medical Association reports of drug overdoses and suicides… Finally, the unemployment shock from lockdowns, according to a recent National Bureau of Economic Research study, will generate a three percent increase in the mortality rate and a 0.5 percent drop in life expectancy over the next 15 years, disproportionately affecting African Americans and women. That translates into what the study refers to as a “staggering” 890,000 additional U.S. deaths.”
Ireland has roughly the same cancer & disease rates per capita as the United States, which has sixty-seven times the population of Ireland (328 million versus 4.9 million). Dividing Atlas’s 890,000 additional US excess deaths caused by lockdowns by 67 gives you 13,263 additional Irish deaths due to disastrous unscientific lockdowns and shuttering of our health service in Ireland. This doesn’t even take into account suicides because the Irish Government are hiding those figures from the public, or the bigger unemployment rate we face.
Compare these projected death numbers with the 369 people who died with Covid and no underlying conditions for the past 12 months according to HSE, numbers which came via an FOI request C150/71 in February 2020, linked here. You can immediately see that crimes against humanity are occurring, perpetrated by Irish politicians, the HSE, and a complicit media who are legally mandated to investigate these matters in Ireland yet refuse to do so.
The Irish Government have the statistics and are not acting on them by opening up society immediately. At this stage, things have gone well beyond political arse-covering. People are dying unnecessarily and politicians know it. And they’re not dying not from Covid.
There Never Was A Pandemic
Based on this official data there never was a pandemic. Our hospitals were never under strain – not once. Even by the now changed WHO definition of a Pandemic, as reported by the British Medical Journal, there never was one. We see now with certainty how so many doctors and nurses had so much time to make dance videos, while the elderly of the country were wrongly made to fear for their lives.
We see now how they could make those comedy sketches and movie parody videos in full PPE on hospital trolleys, while the lives of our children were so devastatingly impacted by masks that continue to cause fear, erode their sense of self, and cause incredible feelings of guilt and helplessness along with suicidal-ideation.
We showed you that the Government & RTE knew that Covid was not the killer they said it was as early as March of 2020, yet still embarked on this ruinous path deliberately. They really must pay for the death and suffering they have caused, or this wound will fester for decades. We must continue to push for accountability. It will not be easy: so many institutions are so heavily invested in the idea of a pandemic that they cannot let go because of status repercussions, loss of trust issues (for that segment of the population that still believes their lies), and real legal liabilities. Politicians & NPHET operatives know that if the public at large fully understood the scale of what they have done, many would be dangling from lamp posts.
Get out of your echo chambers and put material like this in front of people who are still under the spell of media and political repetition. Each one of you reading this is important. Create your own content, use the excel data we received to make your own comparisons and inferences. Share it.
Lockdowns, and the quarantining of healthy populations, and the deliberate withdrawal of healthcare for a fraudulent pandemic, are crimes against humanity.
These are crimes that the Irish Government, politicians, and various civil servants are clearly guilty of. The evidence is clear now for the currently complicit police to redeem themselves and prosecute this psychopathic Irish establishment.
Michael Martin, Leo Varadkar, Tony Holohan and Stephen Donnelly are the murderous ringleaders: we await their arrest and trial by jury.
© Freepress.ie 2021
The Vaccine Passport Propaganda Template
By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | March 30, 2021
With reports that President Joe Biden’s administration is planning for imposing a vaccine passport mandate in America, expect to see in the media a deluge of vaccine passport propaganda. What will that propaganda look like? A template illustrating several elements you can expect to see in the propaganda push was provided several weeks ago in a CNN interview.
In the first week of March, host Fareed Zakaria and his guest Arthur Caplan provided at CNN a textbook example of how to present vaccine passport propaganda to the American people. Let’s look at some of the major elements of the propaganda template as demonstrated by Zakaria and Caplan.
1) Include some short expression that the idea of vaccine passports can be troubling, but make sure to only bring this up superficially. This is accomplished in the CNN segment by starting with a clip from a short scene from the movie Casablanca. In the clip, a policeman asks to see a man’s “papers,” the man says he does not have them, and the policeman responds, “in that case we’ll have to ask you to come along.” Not shown is the remainder of the scene in which the accosted man, after presenting apparently expired papers, attempts to flee only to be gunned down. Not showing the full scene demonstrates the care demanded in the propaganda to not allow any depiction of potential dire consequences from imposing vaccine passports.
2) Frame the imposing of a vaccine passport mandate as something that is both inevitable and threatens only minimal, if any, harm. Zakaria accomplishes this task with the first sentence he utters to begin the media segment. Zakaria states: “From Casablanca to today, a demand to produce personal documents can be uncomfortable, but, post-pandemic, it’s something we’ll all likely have to get more and more comfortable with.” Masterfully, Zakaria, in addition to minimizing the problems with passports as just causing discomfort, asserts that even that discomfort with time will disappear, suggesting objecting to vaccine passports is just an irrational or silly reaction.
3) Bring on a guest who, despite his description making him sound like someone who would be looking out for the interests of people concerned about vaccine passports, pretty much says that vaccine passports are the best thing since sliced bread. In the CNN interview the guest performing this role is Arthur Caplan, who Zakaria introduces as a “medical ethicist” and “professor at NYU.” A medical ethicist will surely provide some warning about dangers from vaccine passports, right? Yes, in many cases. But, Caplan is not that sort of medical ethicists. He is the one picked to be interviewed in a media segment designed to promote acceptance of vaccine passports.
4) Reiterate that vaccine passports are inevitable, and that people should support them. Zakaria hits the nail on the head with this, presenting this first question to his guest: “So explain why you think, basically, that this is the future and we should be comfortable with it.”
5) Declare that vaccine passports must be imposed on the American people because of coronavirus. Caplan accomplishes this task in his first words in the media segment. He states: “Well, I’m sure that the future holds vaccine passports for us, partly to protect against the spread of Covid.” Of course, as coronavirus has turned out not to be a major danger to most people, imposing a vaccine passport mandate to counter it makes no more sense than doing it to counter any other of many diseases. But, this is not a topic to be brought up when selling people on vaccine passports. Fearmongering, no matter how ridiculously unjustified, is the name of the game. This is the fraudulent message people are encouraged to act on without much critical thought: Coronavirus is gonna kill us all unless we take the shots and show our papers!
6) Say that mandating vaccine passports is really no big deal because of some other supposedly very similar restriction to which some people are already subjected. Caplan states: “And, you know, it’s not a new idea, we have it for yellow fever; there are about more than a dozen countries that say you can’t come in if you haven’t been vaccinated against yellow fever, and many others require you to show proof of vaccination if you transit through those countries.” Are the yellow fever-related requirements justified? Caplan does not say more than that, because these somewhat similar restrictions exist someplace, the mandating of vaccine passports in America is fine. That’s medical ethicist reasoning? Anyway, the yellow fever stuff, because most Americans have no experience with or knowledge of it, is a fine example for the propaganda. Few watchers of the segment will have any basis for questioning the current practice that is used to justify the new desired mandate. One big difference, though, jumps out on further consideration. Caplan explains that the yellow fever requirements apply for just coming to several countries. In contrast, Zakaria early in the interview says the vaccine passports that will, he claims, inevitably be imposed on Americans will be required for people “to get on an airplane, to go to a concert, or to go back to work.” The vaccine passport mandate is, thus, much more troublesome for most Americans than yellow-fever-related requirements for entry into a few countries that most Americans never visit. But, the point is to quickly present the example as if it provides conclusive support no matter how far that representation is from the truth.
7) Dismiss as insignificant people’s concerns about being required, in order to go about their daily activities, to present a vaccine passport and to take a vaccine, or, really, an experimental coronavirus vaccine that is not even a vaccine under the normal meaning of the term. Assert instead that the only danger to freedom could be something theoretical that could be additionally required in the future. Here is how Zakaria puts it in a question to Caplan: “What about the concerns that many people have about privacy, about the privacy of their health data, that, you know, is there a slippery slope here — ‘OK, I’m comfortable telling you whether or not I have Covid, but does that mean it becomes OK to ask about other things?’” Of course, many people are justifiably wary of being pressured to take the shots and then having their mandated vaccine passport used to track them as they go about their daily activities. That is why this media segment and others like it are being presented, after all.
8) Dismiss any concern that vaccine passports can in fact harm freedom. Instead, describe people as benefiting from and gaining freedom by their being mandated to take experimental coronavirus vaccines and present vaccination passports in order to go about their daily activities. Oh yeah, and keep quiet about all the mass surveillance facilitated by a vaccine passport program, the vaccinations-based caste system resulting from the mandate that will make people who do not take the shots suffer, and how the vaccine passport program can be expanded to advance many additional types of control over people. Here is how Caplan puts it: “With a Covid certification, you’re going to gain freedom, you’re going to gain mobility, and I’m going to suggest that you’re probably going to be able to get certain jobs.” Talk about turning things on their head. The mandate really means that people who do not comply will be barred from the mobility they already have and fired from their jobs. Freedom is supported by rejecting the mandate, not by supporting it.
9) Insist that the vaccine passport mandate is fine because it will be applied equally to all people. This is something Zakaria and Caplan spend a long time talking about in the CNN segment. Come on guys, something bad does not become good because it is applied to the maximum number of people, irrespective of their race, sex, or whatever. We are dealing with a mandate here, not giving everyone a serving of his favorite dessert.
10) Declare that a vaccine passport mandate helps encourage people to take the shots. (Unlike the other nine elements of the vaccine passport mandate propaganda template, this one is likely true. Threats can yield compliance. Still, the threats could deter some people from taking the experimental coronavirus vaccine shots. It sure makes you wonder about shots’ supposed safety when an extreme, and unprecedented, act of force is employed to ensure people take the shots.) States Caplan in the interview: “It also gives you an incentive to overcome vaccine hesitancy. Some people are not sure still whether they want to do the vaccine, but if you promise them more mobility, more ability to get a job, more ability to get travel, that’s a very powerful incentive to actually achieve fuller vaccination.” What Caplan is really talking about is coercion. He is saying that people who would otherwise refuse taking the shots will be forced to do so by the vaccine passport mandate severely restricting their activities and even depriving them of the ability to earn an income so long as they do not give in to the demand they take the shots. All this authoritarianism is dressed up in deceptive language. “Vaccine hesitancy” is substituted for “vaccine refusal” to disguise that the vaccine passport mandate is about stopping people from exercising free choice. “Incentive” is substituted for “coercive technique.”
Watch Zakaria and Caplan’s interview here:
Hopefully, many people will see through the deception and be able to prevent the implementation of the vaccine passport mandate Zakaria, Caplan, and others are promoting in the media.
Copyright © 2021 by RonPaul Institute
Papers reveal US-backed Brazil’s role in installing and supporting Pinochet in Chile
By Kit Klarenberg | RT | April 1, 2021
Washington’s involvement in the violent overthrow of the democratically elected government of Chile in September 1973 is by this point well known. The pivotal role played by Brazil has not been as clear until now.
On the anniversary of the 1964 US-backed coup that led to Brazilian President Joao Goulart being replaced by a military junta, the National Security Archive has published a trove of previously classified documents showing the role that junta later played in subverting democracy in Chile, and its subsequent support of General Augusto Pinochet’s brutal repression of political opponents.
The file trail begins September 22, 1970, 18 days after Salvador Allende of the Popular Unity alliance narrowly won the Chilean presidency. A document, prepared for General Emilio Garrastazu Medici – then the third president of Brazil’s military dictatorship – summarizes a recent meeting between the US ambassador to Chile, Edward Korry, and his Brazilian counterpart.
Following Allende’s victory, Korry, a veteran diplomat during the administrations of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, vowed that “not a nut or bolt shall reach Chile” under the socialist’s rule, and if and when he took office in November that year, the US would “do all within our power to condemn Chile and the Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty.”
Accordingly, the summary makes clear US plans to undermine Allende were well underway by the time the two ambassadors met.
“Following direct orders from the White House,” Korry was said to be “insinuating to all relevant sectors” that Chile would have “difficulties” – including a shortage of foreign credit and military aid – should the country’s Congress confirm Allende as leader. He also noted the US Embassy was distributing written material warning of the dangers of an Allende government to Chilean military commanders, the very elements that would brutally take power three years later.
Korry’s message was clearly received loud and clear, for in March the next year – five months after Allende’s confirmation – Chilean ambassador to Brasilia Raul Rettig submitted a troubling report to his foreign ministry, titled ‘Brazilian Army possibly conducting studies on guerrillas being introduced into Chile’.
Rettig – who, two decades later, chaired the country’s first ‘truth commission’, which investigated human rights abuses during Pinochet’s rule – had heard from multiple sources that the Brazilian regime was extensively evaluating how to instigate violent insurrection in Chile and overthrow the Allende government via an “armed movement.”
Plans were well developed already, with the military having established a dedicated ‘war room’, with maps and models of the Andean mountain range along the Chilean border, to plan infiltration operations. A number of Brazilian secret agents had also reportedly “entered the country as tourists, with the intention of gathering more background on possible regions where a guerrilla movement might operate,” Rettig’s report revealed.
Brasilia was highly confident of success. In a November 1971 meeting at the White House, President Medici assured Richard Nixon that Allende “would be overthrown for very much the same reasons that Goulart had been,” and Chile’s military was up to the task. He added that Brazil had been “exchanging many officers with the Chileans, and made clear that Brazil was working towards this end.”
In return, the US president pledged “to be helpful in this area,” such as providing “discreet aid,” on the basis that “we must try and prevent new Allendes and Castros and try, where possible, to reverse these trends.” A contemporary CIA intelligence memorandum noted that, to Brazilian military top brass, Washington “obviously” wanted Brasilia to “do the dirty work” in Chile and elsewhere in Latin America.
By July the next year, Brazil had established back-channel communications with Chilean army officers, covertly flying them into the country to meet with high-ranking authorities and begin plotting the downfall of Allende. An August 1973 Brazilian intelligence report details a summit at an airbase in Santiago, at which high-level Chilean military officials were given extensive briefings on Brazil’s own military coup nine years earlier, in the process learning “useful” lessons for their own impending action.
So, it was that, on September 11, 1973, the Chilean military stormed the presidential palace and took power by force. Ground troops were assisted by British-made Hawker Hunter aircraft, which bombed the building and suppressed rooftop snipers. Allende also died in the fighting, and while investigators have ruled it was suicide, some still question that conclusion, arguing that he was in fact murdered.
In the process, Chile – hitherto an aberrant beacon of democracy and stability in a region typified by dictatorships – became a military junta, led by General Pinochet. Death squads immediately set about rounding up thousands of known or suspected Chilean leftists in the country, imprisoning up to 40,000 people in the country’s National Stadium.
The new files make it clear that Brazil moved very quickly to legitimize the new regime, racing to become the first country to officially recognize Pinochet’s despotism, and drafting speeches for the government’s representatives at the United Nations General Assembly to palliate the bloodshed unfolding in Santiago.
Plainclothes Brazilian intelligence agents also secretly assisted Chilean officials in conducting interrogations, torture, and executions at the National Stadium. Among those detained were US citizens, and Brazilians residing in Chile, at least three of whom were of such interest to Brasilia that officials were attempting to arrange their return home.
Comparable hands-on support persisted for many years thereafter. In August 1974, Colonel Manuel Contreras, chief of Chile’s Direccion de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA), requested official passports for 12 officers for a trip to Sao Paulo, in order that they might receive training from their Brazilian counterparts.
Humberto Gordon, who later headed DINA, is named among the officers, as are individuals later involved in the assassination of Orlando Letelier in Washington DC, which was directly ordered by Pinochet.
In the wake of the coup, Letelier – a Chilean economist, politician, and diplomat during Allende’s presidency – was held for 12 months in several concentration camps, along the way being severely tortured, being released only due to international diplomatic pressure. He fled the country and took refuge in the US, becoming Pinochet’s most prominent overseas critic.
On September 21, 1976, Letelier was killed via car bomb – much of his lower torso was blown away and his legs severed. Documents previously unearthed by the National Security Archive indicate that US officials had foreknowledge of the assassination, but transmission of a State Department communiqué warning the Chilean government against carrying it out was blocked by then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. … Full article
The AstraZeneca Jab IS Killing People & It’s Being Covered Up
By Richie Allen | March 31, 2021
Last night Germany suspended use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab for people under 60. The German medicines regulator found 31 cases of a type of rare blood clot among the nearly 2.7 million people who had received the vaccine. Let’s be clear, that’s 31 cases they know of.
Canada has withdrawn it for use in the under-55’s. This morning, AstraZeneca is insisting that the benefits of taking its vaccine far outweigh the risks. This is nonsense.
The great great majority of people will not get coronavirus and of those who do get it, the great great majority will have mild or no symptoms. To be blunt, you’d have to be nuts to take it. You might as well play Russian roulette.
Two weeks ago, Norway’s chief physician, Professor Pål Andre Holme concluded that three healthcare workers were killed by the AZ vaccine. He said a powerful immune response could only have been triggered by the jab.
“We have the reason. Nothing but the vaccine can explain why these individuals had this immune response”, he said.
Someone calling themselves Mr. Page, sent a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to Public Health Scotland on February 20th. Mr. Page wanted to know how many people died within 28 days of receiving a covid vaccine.
Here’s the response from Public Health Scotland:
Thank you for your information request of 20th February 2021. (entitled)“Could you please provide the total number of deaths for any reason within 28 days of having a covid vaccine from the start of the vaccination roll out to date.”
I confirm that Public Health Scotland holds the information you have requested and that this can be provided to you.
Using the latest mortality data available (up to 26th February), 2,207 people have died within 28 days of vaccination (number of days between vaccine and death is 0-27 where0 is the day of vaccination).
Please note that these deaths are due to any cause.
PHS is not currently aware of any deaths in Scotland that are considered conclusively linked to vaccination.
Public Health Scotland says that up until February 26th, 2,207 people have died within 28 days of having a vaccine, but says they are not aware of any death “conclusively linked to vaccination.”
Public Health England (PHE) has had dozens of FOI requests from citizens asking the same question, that is, how many have died within 28 days of having a jab? PHE has yet to respond to any of the requests.
Last week, two Conservative MP’s asked Health Secretary Matt Hancock the same question. He nearly had a heart attack. He had no information to hand.
The AstraZeneca vaccine is killing people. There’s no doubt about that. The coverup has already started. Share this information with everyone you know who is considering having a jab.
Covid Vaccine Nonsense
US-based human rights lawyer breaks down the contradictory claims of “effectiveness”, the incomplete studies and legal minefield of forced use of experimental vaccines
By P Jerome | OffGuardian | March 30, 2021
The efforts to require every American to be injected with an experimental vaccine for Covid-19 are based on the false notion that vaccination will protect recipients from becoming infected with SARS-Cov-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, or protect them from passing along the infection to other people
The FDA, the CDC, the NIH and the pharmaceutical companies involved have all stated very clearly that there is no evidence to support this idea.
None of the three experimental Covid-19 vaccines now being distributed in the United States have been demonstrated to protect against infection with or transmission of the virus believed to cause Covid-19 (SARS-CoV-2), or even prevent symptoms of Covid-19 disease from developing.
This fact is indisputable, yet media, medical providers, and politicians continue to repeat the lie that vaccination provides “immunity to Covid” and even sources like the Mayo Clinic make irresponsible and unsubstantiated claims that vaccination “might prevent you from getting” or “spreading” Covid-19. The same lies are the basis for President Biden’s hard press for mass vaccination to “make this Independence Day truly special.”
On February 27, 2021, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced it had “issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) for the third vaccine for the prevention of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19),” the Janssen (Johnson&Johnson) Covid-19 vaccine.
This announcement is virtually identical to the EUAs previously issued for Covid-19 vaccines produced by Pfizer-Biontech and Moderna.
In each of the EUAs, the FDA has been careful to avoid any claim that the vaccines provide protection against infection or transmission of the virus. Similarly, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have each publicly stated that the vaccines have NOT been shown to prevent infection or transmission.
All of their regulatory documents and commentary addressing the issue state clearly that there is no evidence that the vaccines affect either infection with or transmission of the virus, nor do they prevent symptoms of Covid-19 from appearing.
THE US GOVERNMENT POSITION
The FDA’s Briefing Document analyzing clinical trial data for the Pfizer vaccine, released the day before the FDA’s issuance of an EUA for that vaccine, noted (on page 47):
Data are limited to assess the effect of the vaccine against asymptomatic infection
And:
Data are limited to assess the effect of the vaccine against transmission of SARS-CoV-2 [virus] from individuals who are infected despite vaccination.”
The FDA Briefing Document on the Moderna vaccine stated the same fact, while also describing plans for a future clinical trial to measure infection prevention, but that will not be completed until December 31, 2023 (p.47). The FDA’s review of the Janssen vaccine noted the same “limited” data…
to assess the effect of the vaccine in preventing asymptomatic infection… and definitive conclusions cannot be drawn at this time.”
“Limited data” means there is in fact no evidence to support those conclusions.
The CDC Advisory Committee that recommended emergency use of the Moderna vaccine noted:
“the level of certainty for the benefits of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine was… type 4 (very low certainty) for the estimates of prevention of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection and all-cause death.”
The CDC guidance to Covid vaccine administrators (January 2, 2021) asks:
Can a person who has received a Covid-19 vaccine still spread COVID-19? At this time, we do not know if COVID-19 vaccination will have any effect on preventing transmission.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) on January 26, 2021 similarly admitted:
We do not know whether the vaccines will prevent infection and protect against onward transmission.”
This is all very confusing due to the language the FDA, NIH and other agencies use to describe the potential effectiveness of the vaccines. For example, in the NIH analysis of the Janssen vaccine data, the authors note the vaccine’s reported effectiveness in “preventing moderate and severe COVID-19 in adults.”
This deliberately blurs the distinction between infection with a virus (SARS-Cov-2) and the illness called Covid-19.
The NIH claims the Janssen vaccine prevents or lessens symptoms of the illness Covid-19, but is silent on whether the vaccine prevents infection or transmission of the virus said to cause Covid-19 (SARS-CoV-2). The similar analysis for the Moderna vaccine notes, however:
“[T]here is not yet enough available data to draw conclusions as to whether the [Moderna] vaccine can impact SARS-CoV-2 transmission.”
Unfortunately, we have seen many reports over the last few months of deaths attributed to Covid-19 days and weeks after vaccination (see here and here (video)), confirming that vaccinated people can and do become infected with the virus.
Health officials have avoided blaming these deaths on side effects from the vaccines themselves. Instead, they say these deaths are the result of infections with the virus (SARS-Cov-2) acquired after receiving the vaccines.
Particularly devastating reports from an isolated Kentucky monastery describe how two nuns died of Covid-19 after receiving Covid-19 vaccines, despite the complete absence of any cases of infection in the monastery during the ten months prior to vaccination.
Moderna’s chief science officer was quoted in the British Medical Journal about the clinical trials in 2020 that resulted in the FDA’s decision to grant a EUA to the Moderna shot:
Our trial will not demonstrate prevention of transmission,” Zaks said, “because in order to do that you have to swab people twice a week for very long periods, and that becomes operationally untenable.”
The most important questions about the experimental Covid-19 vaccines were not even asked during the clinical trials: Do these experimental vaccines prevent infection with the virus and do they prevent transmission of that virus? The short answer is No.
The FDA has stated clearly in each of the Covid vaccine Briefing Documents (see Moderna document here, Pfizer here, Janssen here) that the trials were not even designed prove or disprove a hypothesis that the vaccines prevent infection or transmission of the virus, or even prevent symptoms of Covid-19 from developing.
The FDA issued Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs) for the Pfizer, Moderna and Janssen vaccines on December 11 and December 18, 2020, and on February 27, 2021, respectively.
The EUAs indicate that the vaccines “prevent severe Covid-19,” that is, they don’t prevent infection or development of symptoms after infection, but they may make the illness less severe.
The EUAs explicitly deny any evidence that the Pfizer, Moderna or Janssen vaccines prevent infection, or prevent hospitalization or even death from Covid-19 after vaccination. The highly publicized “success rates” of the vaccines refer only their potential ability to lessen the severity of those symptoms, but there is “no data” that they prevent the infection that could cause those symptoms.
MANDATING VACCINATION UNDER EMERGENCY USE AUTHORIZATION IS IMPERMISSIBLE
An EUA is not “FDA Approval.”
An EUA indicates that a product has not been fully tested but, despite the obvious risks, distribution is permitted because the government declared a “public health emergency” in January 2020.
As the FDA notes in its Information Sheet for the Moderna shot:
The Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine has not undergone the same type of review as an FDA- approved or cleared product.”
The FDA granted EUAs for all three experimental vaccines after less than five months of clinical trials, with most of trial data still to be collected. All three vaccines will be in clinical trial status through January 31, 2023.
According to comments from vaccine scientists in September 2020 (prior to the Covid-19 EUA issuances), no vaccine had ever before been distributed on an EUA basis.
“We don’t do EUAs for vaccines,” [Dr. Peter] Hotez said, “It’s a lesser review, it’s a lower-quality review, and when you’re talking about vaccinating a large chunk of the American population, that’s not acceptable.”
Three months later, the FDA issued EUAs for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, but with explicit guidance that the vaccine “has not undergone the same type of review as an FDA- approved or cleared product.”
Indeed, the highly experimental nature of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine, in particular, is extraordinary as that vaccine is the first and only product the company has ever been allowed to distribute, and it was allegedly developed in only two days.
Any use of an experimental vaccine under an EUA must be voluntary and recipients must be informed “of the option to accept or refuse administration of the product, of the consequences, if any, of refusing administration of the product, and of the alternatives to the product that are available and of their benefits and risks.
This information is repeated in small print on each of the FDA Covid-19 vaccine Fact Sheets, but it is largely ignored.
Dr Amanda Cohn, the executive secretary of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, was asked in October 22, 2020, if the new Covid-19 vaccines could be legally required. She responded that, under a EUA:
Vaccines are not allowed to be mandatory. So, early in this vaccination phase, individuals will have to be consented and they won’t be able to be mandatory.”
Under EUA status, the government is not permitted to require Covid-19 vaccinations because the vaccines are not FDA-approved and recipients are clinical trial participants. This is why states cannot legally require vaccination, despite suggestions by some legislators to do just that.
Indeed, the US military is barred from mandating the vaccines. This ban on government vaccine mandates explains why some private companies are trying to require vaccination of employees, which makes the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) guidance on this issue potentially relevant.
THE EEOC GUIDANCE ON COVID-19 VACCINATION DOES NOT AUTHORIZE VACCINE MANDATES
The EEOC updated its guidance on the issue of Covid-19 vaccination on December 16, 2020.
This update appeared five days after the FDA issued an EUA for the Pfizer vaccine and two days prior to issuing the Moderna EUA. Based on this timing, we can safely assume that the EEOC was well-aware of the contents of the FDA briefing documents and Fact Sheets, specifically the FDA statements about the lack of proof that the vaccines prevent infection with or transmission of the virus (SARS-CoV-2).
The EEOC guidance evaluates the idea of employer Covid-19 vaccine mandates under the Americans with Disabilities Act’s (ADA) “direct threat” analysis:
The ADA allows an employer to have a qualification standard that includes ‘a requirement that an individual shall not pose a direct threat to the health or safety of individuals in the workplace.’“
But the EEOC’s analysis presupposes that vaccines protect against infection, which is false.
The “direct threat” doctrine is an employer’s potential defense to a claim of disability discrimination under the ADA. According to the EEOC, “A conclusion that there is a direct threat would include a determination that an unvaccinated individual will expose others to the virus at the worksite.”
The specific but theoretical “direct threat” described here is one allegedly posed by an unvaccinated person who might become infected with the virus (SARS-CoV-2) and then spread infection to the workplace.
But no “determination” of such a threat is possible. The EEOC was careful to state only that a direct threat defense “would include” such a “determination.” The EEOC took no position on this issue because officials there were likely aware there has been no determination that vaccination prevents infection or transmission, and none is possible with current data.
Aspirational claims that vaccination “might” [be eventually be shown to] prevent infection or that “some data tends to show” such an effect are insufficient bases for a direct threat defense.
The US Supreme Court ruled in Bragdon v Abbott (1988) that the assertion of a direct threat defense must be evaluated “in light of the available medical evidence,” noting that “the views of public health authorities, such as the U.S. Public Health Service, CDC, and the National Institutes of Health, are of special weight and authority.”
Overcoming the long-standing protections of the right to bodily integrity and informed, voluntary consent to medical treatment requires articulation of an actual and imminent, not theoretical, threat presented by an unvaccinated person in the workplace.
The CDC, the National Institutes of Health and numerous other “public health authorities” have all stated that there is no evidence to show that vaccination prevents viral infection or transmission, a fact the EEOC should have presented but did not.
The EEOC guidance does not provide any legal cover for employers to require vaccination. The guidance proposes that employers might be successful in proving a direct threat if they were able to prove facts which, it turns out, cannot be proven.
Even more importantly, according to the CDC, more than 29 million Americans (and likely many, many more) have already contracted the virus (SARS-CoV-2) and recovered from it.
A recent NIH study demonstrates that these millions of “recovered” people have long-lasting, and likely permanent protection from re-infection. They present no threat of infection or transmission of the virus. However, under a blanket employer vaccine requirement, these people who are already immune would still be required to get vaccinated. It makes no sense logically or legally to require the vaccination of people who already have more protection from the virus than people who get vaccinated.
WHAT IS THE THREAT PREVENTED BY MANDATORY VACCINATION?
Outside the employment context, companies are demanding proof of vaccination from travelers and even movie- and concert-goers, based on the same debunked idea that vaccination with one of the Covid-19 vaccines will prevent the theoretical spread of the virus in trains, planes, movie theaters and concert halls among low-risk populations. But the relevant government agencies have all stated clearly that the vaccines do not prevent infection or the spread of infection.
The benefit from any vaccination lies with the recipient of the vaccine. In the case of Covid-19 vaccines, vaccinated people may have fewer symptoms after becoming infected. While this is an important consideration for many people, this benefit has nothing to do with preventing the spread of the virus SARS-Cov-2.
A vaccinated person presents at least the same “risk” of infection and transmission of the virus (if not more risk) as a person who is not vaccinated. At best, vaccination might prevent a more serious case of Covid-19 illness from developing. The vaccines do not prevent infection or the spread of the virus that causes Covid-19. They can have little or no impact on stopping transmission.
Because no one has shown that vaccination prevents infection or transmission of the virus SARS-CoV-2, a fact undisputed by all official sources, this also means that vaccination cannot help to achieve the goal of herd immunity.
“Herd immunity” means that a population can be protected from a virus after enough of the population has become immune to infection, either through exposure to the virus and later recovery, or through vaccination.
But with Covid-19, there is no proof that vaccination makes anyone immune to the virus SARS-CoV-2. Covid-19 vaccination cannot play any meaningful role in the pursuit of herd immunity because the Covid-19 vaccines do not provide immunity from infection.
Oddly, the WHO contradicts itself in arguing that Covid-19 vaccination promotes herd immunity to the virus that causes Covid-19, claiming:
To safely achieve herd immunity against COVID-19, a substantial proportion of a population would need to be vaccinated, lowering the overall amount of virus able to spread in the whole population.”
This statement is simply false. It also contradicts the WHO’s prior admission that “We do not know whether the vaccines will prevent infection and protect against onward transmission.”
If the WHO has already acknowledged that it “does not know if” the Covid-19 vaccines protect people from becoming infected or transmitting the virus, it is a deliberate lie to claim that somehow these vaccines can lead to herd immunity.
A far more useful strategy than forcing people to accept an experimental vaccine that does not even protect them from infection would be to instead protect those most vulnerable to serious illness or death as a result of infection. Tens of thousands of renowned doctors and scientists in the U.S. and around the world proposed such a strategy in October 2020.
Unfortunately, the media and Silicon Valley tech monopolies attacked and effectively censored discussion of this common sense approach as “anti-science” and “right wing” by removing discussion of the proposal from nearly all media platforms.
Yet the fake “scientific” approach to herd immunity touted by the WHO, US government agencies and politicians, and media monopolists is blatantly dishonest, and has nothing to do with “science.” The push by private companies to require vaccination and “immunity passports” is similarly based on private financial interests, not scientific research.
Government scientists admit that the Covid-19 vaccines do not prevent infection or transmission of the virus they say causes Covid-19, but many of these same scientists also dishonestly claim the vaccines will somehow prevent the spread of the virus, leading to herd immunity.
Such an approach is not only unscientific and dishonest. It’s nonsense.
P Jerome is civil rights attorney based in Washington, D.C. He can be reached at jeromeinpassing@protonmail.com
US aid is tied to Palestinian acquiescence to the two-state illusion
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | March 30, 2021
The US has reversed one aspect of the Trump administration’s foreign policy in Palestine; humanitarian aid will be resumed with a $15 million grant for vulnerable Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. “Our engagements all have the same aim: to build support for a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” the US Representative to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, declared. Given that Washington used to give $350 million to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) before Trump stopped the support in 2018, this is a very limited “engagement”.
And it’s very selective support. Moreover, it comes as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is opposing the Palestinian Authority’s recourse to the International Criminal Court for justice over Israel’s war crimes. Such crimes, and the context of occupation in which they are carried out, contribute to humanitarian aid for the Palestinian being a necessity.
More importantly, humanitarian aid remains tied to the two-state compromise. Now that the US has returned to international consensus over the defunct paradigm, restoring humanitarian aid may be considered the next, logical step, only there is nothing logical about pursuing a strand of diplomacy that spells loss unless it results in a gain for Israel.
PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh welcomed the resumption of humanitarian aid as “an important step in the right direction.” However, Palestinians still have no political direction and the PA is merely speaking about its standing in the diplomatic arena. Following restored humanitarian aid, the next step will most likely be renewed diplomatic relations. The PA will then feed upon the illusion that it is an important negotiating partner. Perhaps it is, in terms of “negotiating” the sell-out of what remains of Palestine to the Zionist colonial project.
For ordinary Palestinians, of course, it is a different story. The resumption of humanitarian aid within the context of the two-state compromise only sustains Israeli colonialism, while allowing the Palestinian people the necessary means for daily survival. Resuming the two-state cycle of humanitarian aid in return for acquiescence to the two-state illusion is not a better option than the so-called “deal of the century”. Both have generated loss, and the PA is merely favouring one form of loss over another.
To what extent can such a move be welcomed? Humanitarian aid to promote peace is a recipe for failure, given its reinforcement of the power dynamic bolstered by the billions of dollars that Israel gets each year from the US. It would be understandable if the PA spoke of humanitarian aid in terms of alleviation, but not as an “important step in the right direction” when Israel is not facing any punitive measures for advancing its illegal settlement expansion, for example.
It is to be expected that the US selectively lauds its meager support for Palestine, especially when, in contrast to the Trump administration, US President Joe Biden is yet to face significant scrutiny. For the PA to emulate the US rhetoric, however, is a different story. It seems as if the Ramallah authority is far more interested in asserting its earlier and premature, overtures to Biden even before the new foreign policy was revealed, despite the fact that the politics of humanitarian aid are a mere convenience for the international community in its process of aiding Israel to colonise what is left of Palestine.
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The infinite list
The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | October 12, 2022
Almost three years ago science entered a new dark age.
Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, seems to agree. He has been compiling a list of the examples of anti-science we have unfortunately become used to.
I have listed his thoughts so far but the list is continually expanding... continue
Blog Roll
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- How the US-Israel Relationship Weakens America and Harms the World
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- As in Gaza, Israel is targeting rescue workers in South Lebanon, killing more than 100 since March
- Israel’s Obliteration Ecocide from Gaza to Lebanon and Beyond
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- New Member of Trump’s Iran Negotiating Team Comes From Notoriously Pro-Israel Think Tank
- Israeli army demolishes Christian monastery, nuns’ school in southern Lebanon
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- No Tricks Zone
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- Another Study Links Warming To Cloud Forcing, Shortwave Radiation, Natural Atmospheric Circulation
- Wind Energy Is Toxic, Hazardous To Human Health, Scientific Review Shows
- 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
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