State Climatologist Falsely Claims Climate Change Causing More Severe Weather
By H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D. | ClimateRealism | December 21, 2021
Near the top of the results of Google new search of the phrase climate change today is a post from KPTM Fox 42 in Omaha, Nebraska claiming climate change is contributing to an increase in extreme weather events. This is false. Real-world data and the most recent report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicate the incidences of extreme weather events are not increasing, nor are the duration or severity of such events worsening.
For the article, titled “State Climatologist says climate change is contributing to severe weather,” KPTM Omaha interviews Martha Shulski, Nebraska’s state climatologist concerning recent severe weather events which hit the state.
Shulski linked these events to climate change.
“‘Climate change is something that it is real and here now,’” Shulski told KPTM, continuing, “‘It really impacts everything, the question is not did climate change cause it, the question is more how much worse was it made with climate change. There is a climate change signature on all of these events we experience, its really just a matter of how strong of a signature.’”
Nobody disputes climate change is occurring. Climate has changed on local, regional, continental, and global scales across the course of history. However, available data does not show ongoing climate change is making instances of extreme weather more common or more severe.
The KPTM article discusses a recent spate of tornadoes which struck Iowa and Nebraska in mid-December. Concerning tornadoes, the IPCC states, “There is low confidence in observed trends in small spatial-scale phenomena such as tornadoes.”
As discussed in Climate at a Glance: Tornadoes, data conclusively shows the number of tornadoes has been declining for the past 50 years, and, as shown in the figure below, the number of strong tornadoes, F3 or higher, has been dramatically declining for the past 50 years.
From 2017 through 2018, the U.S. set a record for the longest period in history without a tornado death. Also in 2017 and 2018, the U.S. set a record for the longest period in history without an F3 or stronger tornado. The two record-low years for number of tornadoes both occurred this past decade, in 2014 and 2018, a decade which climate alarmists have regularly described as the warmest on record. Even counting the recent December tornadoes, the number of tornados recorded in 2021 has been below average.
Concerning flooding, another extreme weather event Shulski links to climate change in the KPTM story, there has been no increase flooding frequency or severity as the climate modestly warms. The IPCC admits having “low confidence” in any climate change impact regarding the frequency or severity of floods. Although the IPCC states in its recent 6th Assessment Report, “the frequency and intensity of heavy precipitation have likely increased at the global scale over a majority of land regions with good observational coverage,” it explicitly states “heavier rainfall does not always lead to greater flooding.”
In addition, the IPCC writes, “Confidence about peak flow trends over past decades on the global scale is low, … [and] there is low confidence in the human influence on the changes in high river flows on the global scale.”
The best available evidence shows extreme weather is neither more frequent, nor more severe than it has been historically. Shulski was wrong to say otherwise, and KPTM was wrong to report her claims without checking the facts.
Shameless BBC hosts Big Pharma’s drive to get Africa hooked on Covid vaccine
By Rusere Shoniwa | TCW Defending Freedom | December 23, 2021
AT the end of November, a piece of BBC agitprop to stoke up fervour for vaccinating Africa went viral. As a British citizen of African descent living in London, I was disgusted by it.
I am concerned that people in Africa may ‘get it’ even less than the average Westerner and I really want to try to reach a few Africans who might be wondering what Covid could mean for them.
So let’s start by imagining if Big Pharma were to run a modestly honest advertisement to recruit dealers for pushing Covid ‘vaccines’ in Africa.
It might read something like this: ‘International drug cartel requires Western-educated Black face to front our public campaign to push experimental and unnecessary Covid vaccines on the impoverished African continent.
‘This is a tough market, highly suspicious of the product and not without good reason. Smile and dial merchants need not apply, as you must bypass the consumer to target the decision-maker.
‘Successful applicants must display the ability to rail melodramatically at the “racist vaccine-hoarding” injustices perpetrated by the West against Africa, appealing to the woke sensibilities of those in positions of power within key Western institutions. African leaders will then be expected to do as they’re told.’
I must confess that I reverse-engineered that ad after watching the successful applicant going through the motions like a performing seal on a BBC World News slot set aside for just such agitprop.
Following the latest Covid variant hype, the co-chair of the African Union’s Vaccine Delivery Alliance, Dr Ayoade Alakija, announced on the UK’s flagship propaganda organ: ‘What is going on right now (the emergence of the Omicron Variant) is inevitable.
‘It’s a result of the world’s failure to vaccinate in an equitable, urgent and speedy manner. It is a result of hoarding by high-income countries of the world and quite frankly it is unacceptable. These travel bans are based in politics and not science. It is wrong.’
Abandoning any pretence at journalism, the BBC presenter, Philippa Thomas, played the role of therapist by responding: ‘I hear your anger about the immediate reaction and the lack of action beforehand.’
The stage direction becomes even more obvious and cringeworthy as Thomas then pauses, providing a cue for the good doctor to glance at her script and resume the televised amateur dramatics: ‘So this is hopefully a dress rehearsal because until everyone is vaccinated no-one is safe … why are the Africans unvaccinated? It’s an outrage because we knew we were going to get here.
‘We knew this is where the hoarding, the lack of IP (intellectual property rights) waivers, the lack of co-operation on sharing tech and sharing know-how, we knew this was the crossroads it was going to bring us to. To a more dangerous variant.’
The only valid question she raises concerns the swift travel bans placed on Southern African countries: ‘Why are we locking away Africa when this virus is already on three continents? Nobody is locking away Belgium, nobody is locking away Israel.’
This is an emotional ploy to gain the trust of the small handful of privileged Africans watching this drivel. She is saying to them: ‘I am right-on, woke, one of you.’ She quickly jumps back on board the Covid cult train with a policy ‘nudge’ that must have African leaders reaching for their sickbags.
‘Something needs to be done to everywhere. My recommendation is to have a co-ordinated global shutdown of travel, for the next month if you want, but don’t single out Africa.’
And then back to the greedy, vaccine-hoarding West: ‘The Botswana government ordered 500,000 doses of vaccines at 29 dollars per dose, much higher than the rest of the world paid. They did not get those vaccines because other people jumped ahead in the queue. Moderna supplied to other countries … and so now we have a variant.’
Not a single grain of this guerrilla marketing campaign was challenged by the BBC journalist.
The obvious starting point for a presenter with half an ounce of journalistic integrity would be to explore whether the ‘vaccines’ are working and whether they would indeed have prevented a variant. After all, the fact that they do not halt transmission and infection is no longer controversial.
No sales pitch involving an illness would be complete without recourse to fear-based marketing tactics. Enter the Omicron narrative.
Despite Dr Alakija’s claim that we now have ‘a more dangerous variant’, there was no evidence that this variant would make any difference to disease severity at the time she was invited by the BBC to make her vaccine sales pitch for Africa. (Nor is there proof that vaccination prevents variants from arising in the first place).
Since then, the evidence emerging is that Omicron is less severe than previous variants and more contagious – the ideal combination for hastening herd immunity with minimal population health impact.
Telling medium-sized lies and half-truths with a straight face has always been the minimum qualification for political office, but Covid has raised the bar to a new height – the ability to swim in a pool of one’s own metaphorical vomit without flinching.
The BBC ‘discussion’ might have turned to safety, to tease out how much personal risk Africans will be expected to bear in submitting to a vaccine that doesn’t perform the primary function of a vaccine.
The word ‘safety’, however, was not permitted to impinge in any way on the protestations of the injustice of depriving Africans of the wondrous medical treatments emanating from the hallowed laboratories of Western science.
The reticence about safety is understandable from a marketing perspective since, by any objective measure, these ‘vaccines’ are the most dangerous mass medications rolled out in modern history.
Perhaps Dr Alakija should have been quizzed about how Africans might react to the drug manufacturers’ lack of confidence in the safety of their own products in light of their refusal to distribute it to countries who refuse to provide blanket immunity from liability for injury.
Not a single word of safety information was explored, even in the vaguest terms, in the BBC report. Nothing. Juxtapose studies highlighting the risk of dangerous heart inflammation for young males following Covid vaccination against Africa’s far younger population, with a median age of around 20.
You’d think this safety risk might get a passing mention. Yet neither of the two stooges saw fit to broach the prospect that many young Africans – whose risk of dying from Covid is so small that it is hard to measure – may die following vaccination.
The callousness of this omission is standard operating procedure in Western liberal discourse, a key function of which is to drape a ‘humanitarian’ cloak over policies that enrich corporate interests in the West while harming and exploiting the poor.
Unveiling the farce of the BBC plug for Africa’s vaccination allows us to consider a game in which we imagine what other doctors might say if the BBC were to air credible dissenting voices – a practice that was once regarded as the bread and butter of journalism, but which would now be a radical act of rebellion.
It’s not a difficult game to play. In fact, no imagination is required, because the actual statements of credible dissenting doctors are available on other independent media news channels, as reported in TCW Defending Freedom on December 8.
A new channel based in Austria, AUF1, gives a platform to those medical professionals who refuse to go along with the official narrative.
Typical is Dr Heiko Schöning, who says: ‘The corona panic is a stage-managed production. It’s a confidence trick. It is now urgent that we understand we are now in the grip of a worldwide Mafioso-style criminal enterprise. We can see we are dealing here with organised crime. So what do we do? We don’t play along any longer. Here and now we have to draw the red line.’
Had Dr Schöning just finished watching the two stooges on BBC World News when he described ‘the corona panic’ as ‘a stage-managed production’?
Whether these doctors are right or wrong is irrelevant to the journalistic duty to present credible dissenting voices to the public. The failure to do so goes a long way to meeting the criteria for propaganda.
The question in relation to Dr Alakija’s BBC guerrilla marketing campaign is: Do enough Africans know that there are alternative credible narratives to challenge the mainstream BBC vaccine narrative and how would they respond if these competing narratives were presented?
Does Africa, or anywhere else for that matter, need mass vaccination? Almost two years into this global nightmare, with evidence showing that up to 80% of South Africans (how similar for other African nations?) may have already been exposed to the virus, less than 6% of Africa vaccinated, and a death toll a fraction of that in the ageing populations of the West (Africa’s Covid deaths are 3% of the global total), it is clear that Africa has already learnt to live with the virus.
Had Africans succeeded in applying the same level of rigorous lockdown stupidity that was achieved in the West, it would not have made the slightest difference, as real science is conclusively demonstrating not just the futility of lockdowns but their positive destructiveness.
Despite looser lockdowns (perhaps partly because of this) Africa fared much better than the illiberal West in health outcomes.
No doubt there are other variables at play, but cheap, effective early treatments in some parts of Africa were used to good effect and should continue to be the focus of attention.
Africa and the entire planet would get far more bang for their buck from policies addressing human health holistically rather than with expensive experimental ‘vaccines’ which will continue for as long as human beings are prepared to, or more likely forced to, surrender their bodies to Big Pharma and authoritarian governments.
It must be patently obvious to African leaders that the Covid crisis is a manufactured one, but that does not make it any less of a crisis.
Western liberal democracy is being dismantled at breakneck speed under the cover of Covid containment policies.
The criminality, coercion, censorship, propaganda and blatant negligence all signal the logical conclusion to a brutal colonial mindset – the attempted colonisation of the entire globe to serve the interests of a global elite which has successfully captured Western governments and supranational organisations.
The psychopaths whose aim is to introduce a technocratic global system of human control understand only too well that shutting off travel for economies that rely on tourism is a far bigger killer of economies, and therefore lives, than this virus has ever been.
The message being sent by the sadistic controllers to Africa’s leaders is a simple one: Get serious about imposing vaccines and the technocratic population control measures for which which vaccines are the delivery system … or else.
Covid containment policies represent a desperate authoritarian response to permanent decline. This cannot end well for the West and if the West is a sinking ship, then Africa must not blindly tether itself to this Titanic disaster.
Sen. Johnson Requests Records From Top Medical Journals on Retracted Studies, Including Flawed HCQ Study
The Defender | December 21, 2021
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has written to The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine seeking records on two retracted studies from mid-2020. Johnson particularly called out The Lancet study, which suggested hydroxychloroquine could boost the risk of death in COVID patients.
“Although this fraudulent study was ultimately retracted, it is concerning and shameful that, in the midst of a pandemic, The Lancet published such a misleading paper on a potential early treatment for COVID-19,” said Johnson, the ranking member on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, in a letter dated Dec. 14.
Johnson seeks all records of the journals’ communication on the two studies, including communication with the papers’ authors; U.S. government employees; individuals who encouraged the studies’ publication; and the supplier of the two studies’ datasets, Surgisphere, a healthcare analytics company.
Despite The Lancet paper’s retraction, its initial publication halted trials on hydroxychloroquine’s use and sullied its reputation more broadly. The Washington Post and other major media headlined the increased risk of death, and health authorities took action globally within days of the paper’s publication.
The World Health Organization and the UK’s drug regulator halted trials of the drug in COVID settings. France reversed an earlier decision to allow hydroxychloroquine’s use in COVID patients.
Readers of The Lancet quickly noted the study cited implausibly high numbers of COVID cases in 2020, and journalists failed to find any hospitals that had contributed data, despite the study’s claim that more than 96,000 hospital patients participated.
The Lancet retracted the study two weeks after publication.
Sen. Johnson also requested information from The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) on another study retracted in June 2020.
Johnson explained in his letter, the NEJM paper reportedly found that “taking certain blood pressure drugs, including angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors, didn’t appear to increase the risk of death among COVID-19 patients, as some researchers had suggested.”
However, the study’s authors wrote to the NEJM a few weeks after the study was published, acknowledging they could not validate the primary data supporting the study and apologized “to the editors and to readers of the Journal for the difficulties that this has caused.”
Johnson has requested all records by Jan. 4, 2022.
© 2021 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.
Fear mongering and stupidity from The New York Times
By Joel S Hirschhorn | December 21, 2021
This was said today:
“But Omicron may cause such a large increase in cases that it will nonetheless overwhelm hospitals, many of which are already near capacity.”
Every part of this statement is an intentional lie designed to instill fear and make the public accepting of increasing authoritarian, intrusive government actions that have no basis in medical science. It is all about controlling lives, not saving lives.
Here are my critical views:
1. Every bit of real-world evidence shows that omicron variant does NOT pose a serious health threat. Some of the smartest pandemic experts correctly see omicron more as a sign of the end of the pandemic than a worsening of it.
2. Looking at case data is sheer stupidity. The fear mongering already has compelled more people to get tested even though they have no symptoms of concern. Then they get PCR testing, most of which is run at too high a number of cycles and, therefore, produces false positives.
3. There are no good data showing hospitals being overwhelmed; they should not be because omicron does not produce really serious health impacts requiring hospitalization. That is another scare tactic.
4. Meanwhile, the government has totally failed to get large and free supplies of fast, home antigen test kits out to the public. This is the best way to quell fears and control need to go to hospitals because they will show that the vast majority of people have enough innate or natural immunity to keep them infection free.
5. Of course the government still does not tell the public about early home treatments that could quickly fix infection, and also that can be used as a prophylactic to prevent infection. Latest research showed that ivermectin is very effective.
6. Most importantly, all available, enormous information from all over the planet shows that COVID vaccines do not stop people from getting infected, even after booster shots. [Have you noticed all the top politicians fully vaccinated and with booster shots getting breakthrough infections?] So, real world evidence shows vaccine ineffectiveness, but the government keeps pushing vaccine shots and ignoring the great many harmful health vaccine impacts, including deaths. Even worse, governments increasingly PUNISH those who intelligently chose not to get vaccine shots or boosters. Treat them as second-class citizens, ignore the two-thirds of the population with natural immunity from prior infection; do not credit them with better immunity than vaccine immunity. What a corrupt, stupid government and public health system we have!
I now see President Biden as the new near-dead and utterly stupid captain of the Titantic circling around the toilet water, working successfully to flush our society down into the sewer system operated by an army of incompetent and corrupt idiots.
I am still waiting for the much-needed revolution. For that we need more people with working critical thinking skills.
Whilst you were distracted by a Christmas Party the UK Gov. released a report confirming the Fully Vaccinated account for 4 in every 5 Covid-19 Deaths in England since August
THE EXPOSÉ | DECEMBER 11, 2021
Serious questions need to be answered as to why Boris Johnson’s Government have decided to restrict the freedoms of the unvaccinated population through the introduction of Vaccine Passports, when the latest official data shows that the vaccinated population have accounted for 3 in every 5 Covid-19 cases, 3 in every 5 Covid-19 hospitalisations, and 4 in every 5 Covid-19 deaths, in England since August 16th 2021.
During a national Covid-19 briefing that took place on Tuesday December 8th, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom announced that ‘Plan B’ would be implemented in England from Wednesday December 15th, which would entail ‘working from home’ (if you can) orders, and the introduction of Vaccine Passports.
The reason given for the commencement of ‘Plan B’ is that it has to be done to protect the public from the alleged new Omicron variant of the Covid-19 virus. A variant which as of December 11th, has failed to cause a single fatality in the UK, with just several hundred cases allegedly being confirmed.
A new law will come into effect from Wednesday December 15th, which will state that Vaccine Passports will become mandatory for entry to nightclubs and other large venues, including Premier League football matches and concerts. We’re told they will be required for indoor settings of 500 people or more, outdoor settings of 4,000 people or more, and any setting with 10,000 attendees or more.
There will be many in England who believe Vaccine Passports are the answer to their prayers. Two years of misinformation, and disinformation mixed with propaganda published by the mainstream media can do that to people. But unfortunately the official data published by the UK Government proves that they are far from it, and suggests Vaccine Passports have absolutely nothing to do with protecting public health, and instead everything to do with controlling the nation.

The UK Health Security Agency (PHE) is an executive agency of the Department of Health and Social Care and recently replaced Public Health England. The Chief Executive of the agency is Dr Jenny Harries OBE, who you may recognise from the television as she has served as Deputy Chief Medical Officer for England throughout the pandemic.
The UKHSA publish a weekly ‘Vaccine Surveillance’ report which contains data on Covid-19 cases, hospitalisations, and deaths by vaccination status over a period of four weeks, and unfortunately for the vaccinated population, the official data shows that they have accounted for the majority of Covid-19 cases, hospitalisations, and deaths for at least the past four months.
We have used the following official reports for our analysis –
- COVID-19 vaccine surveillance report – Week 37 (Covers Week 33-36)
- COVID-19 vaccine surveillance report – Week 41 (Covers Week 37-40)
- COVID-19 vaccine surveillance report – Week 45 (Covers Week 41-44)
- COVID-19 vaccine surveillance report – Week 49 (Covers Week 45-48)
Covid-19 Cases
Table 8 of the latest report shows the number of Covid-19 cases by vaccination status in England. The table may have been attributed a different number in previous reports published by the UKHSA, but the following chart shows cases by vaccination status over a period of 16 weeks from 16 Aug 21 to 05 Dec 21.

The chart shows that between August and early September, the vaccinated population accounted for the majority of Covid-19 cases. However, between the middle of September and early October this switched to the not-vaccinated population accounting for the majority of cases. This is most likely due to children returning to school in September and being “encouraged” to test on a regular basis.
But between October 11th and December 5th the roles reversed again, and it is the fully vaccinated population that have accounted for the majority of Covid-19 cases in England.
This data alone puts an end to the myth that it is selfish to not be vaccinated, because it’s quite clear the jabs do not prevent infection or transmission. Which begs the question as to why Boris Johnson has decided to implement Vaccine Passports in England?

The above chart shows the cumulative number of cases by vaccination status between 16 Aug 21 and 05 Dec 21, and illustrates quite clearly that the fully vaccinated have accounted for the majority of cases since August.
What we can see from the above is that the unvaccinated had accounted for the majority of cases up to October 10th, however since this date there has been a switch with the fully vaccinated taking the lead, hitting a cumulative total of 1.5 million confirmed cases by Dec 5th.
When including the 258,387 confirmed cases among the partly vaccinated during this period, the total cases among the vaccinated population rises to 1,757,444. Whilst the number of cases among the unvaccinated population during this period of 16 weeks has amounted to 1,403,100.
Covid-19 Hospitalisations
Table 9 of the latest report shows the number of Covid-19 hospitalisations by vaccination status in England. The table may have been attributed a different number in previous reports published by the UKHSA, but the following chart shows cases by vaccination status over a period of 16 weeks from 16 Aug 21 to 05 Dec 21.

You may have heard several times this week on national television from people such as Dr Hilary, Lorraine Kelly, and Martin Kemp that “90% of the people currently in hospital with Covid-19 have not been vaccinated”.
Well it looks like they have been lying to you because the official UK Government data the fully vaccinated population have accounted for the majority of Covid-19 hospitalisation every month since at least August.

The above chart shows the cumulative number of hospitalisations by vaccination status between 16 Aug 21 and 05Dec 21, and shows just how bad things have actually been for the vaccinated population compared to the unvaccinated.
Between Aug 16 and Dec 05, the unvaccinated population accounted for 11,767 Covid-19 hospitalisations. But the vaccinated population have accounted for nearly double the amount, recording 19,730 hospitalisations, with 18,406 of those being among the 2/3 dose vaccinated population. This means the vaccinated population have accounted for 63% of Covid-19 hospitalisations since August 2021.
Covid-19 Deaths
Table 10 (b) of the latest report shows the number of Covid-19 hospitalisations by vaccination status in England. The table may have been attributed a different number in previous reports published by the UKHSA, but the following chart shows cases by vaccination status over a period of 16 weeks from 16 Aug 21 to 05 Dec 21.

The above chart proves that the fully vaccinated population have accounted for the majority of Covid-19 deaths every single month since August 2021, with things really taking a turn for the worse in October.
The highest number of Covid-19 deaths in single four week period among the fully vaccinated population has been 3,284, whereas the highest number of Covid-19 deaths among the unvaccinated population in a four week period has been just 850. That’s a 286% difference.

The above chart shows the cumulative number of deaths by vaccination status between 16 Aug 21 and 05 Dec 21, and illustrates quite clearly that this is very much a pandemic of the fully vaccinated.
Between 16 Aug 21 and 05 Dec 21 there were 3,070 Covid-19 deaths among the unvaccinated population in England, compared to 12,058 deaths among the vaccinated population during the same time frame. That is a 293% difference.
Covid-19 Fatality Rates by Vaccination Status
The official data shows the the vaccinated population have accounted for 56% of Covid-19 cases, 63% of hospitalisations, and 80% of deaths over the past 16 weeks in England.

It’s quite clear that the jabs do not prevent infection or transmission, but they are alleged to reduce the risk of hospitalisation and death. However, if this were the case then should we not be seeing a graph that looks more like this?

So why aren’t we?
It could have something to do witht he fact that the data suggests the Covid-19 injections are actually increasing the risk of death due to Covid-19 rather than reducing it by the claimed 95%.
The following graph shows the case-fatality rate among the not-vaccinated population, and the case-fatality rate among the 2/3 dose vaccinated population over the past 16 weeks.

The case-fatality rate is calculated by dividing the number of known deaths by the number of known cases among the population. As we can see from the above the case-fatality rate among the not-vaccinated population is just 0.2%, which is what is in line with the average case-fatality rate in 2020 before a Covid-19 injection was introduced to the masses.
However, the case-fatality rate among the fully vaccinated population is much higher, equating to 0.8%. Therefore the fully vaccinated are 4 times / 300% more likely to die if exposed to the Covid-19 virus based on official UK Government figures.
The following graph shows the hospitalisation-fatality rate among the not-vaccinated population, and the hospitalisation-fatality rate among the 2/3 dose vaccinated population over the past 16 weeks.

The hospitalisation-fatality rate is calculated by dividing the number of known deaths by the number of known hospitalisations among the population. As we can see from the above the hospitalsiation-fatality rate among the not-vaccinated population is 26%.
But the hospitalisation-fatality rate among the fully vaccinated population is frighteningly higher equating to a shocking 63%. This means the fully vaccinated population are 2.4 / 142% more likely to die once hospitalised with Covid-19.
So now that you know that the double / triple jabbed population have accounted for 3 in every 5 cases, 3 in every 5 hospitalisations, and 4 in every 5 Deaths over the past 4 months in England, and that the UK Government has been laughing at you since at least Christmas 2020 through their alleged Christmas parties, are you going to allow them to take away your freedom yet again in response to an alleged variant that has so far caused zero fatalities, or are you going to stand up, carry on living, and say “no” this time around?
Because this will not end until we all say it does.
Latest Modelling on Omicron Ignores All Evidence of Lower Severity, Among Numerous Other Problems
By Mike Hearn | The Daily Sceptic | December 11, 2021
Today the Telegraph reported that:
Experts from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) predict that a wave of infection caused by Omicron – if no additional restrictions are introduced – could lead to hospital admissions being around twice as high as the previous peak seen in January 2021.
Dr Rosanna Barnard, from LSHTM’s Centre for the Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases, who co-led the research, said the modellers’ most pessimistic scenario suggests that “we may have to endure more stringent restrictions to ensure the NHS is not overwhelmed”.
As we’ve come to expect from LSHTM and epidemiology in general, the model forming the basis for this ‘expert’ claim is unscientific and contains severe problems, making its predictions worthless. Equally expected, the press ignores these issues and indeed gives the impression that they haven’t actually read the underlying paper at all.
The ‘paper’ was uploaded an hour ago as of writing, but I put the word paper in quotes because not only is this document not peer reviewed in any way, it’s not even a single document. Instead, it’s a file that claims it will be continually updated, yet which has no version numbers. This might make it tricky to talk about, as by the time you read this it’s possible the document will have changed. Fortunately, they’re uploading files via GitHub, meaning we can follow any future revisions that are uploaded here.
Errors
The first shortcoming of the ‘paper’ becomes apparent on page 1:
Due to a lack of data, we assume Omicron has the same severity as Delta.
In reality, there is data and so far it indicates that Omicron is much milder than Delta:
Early data from the Steve Biko and Tshwane District Hospital Complex in South Africa’s capital Pretoria, which is at the centre of the outbreak, showed that on December 2nd only nine of the 42 patients on the Covid ward, all of whom were unvaccinated, were being treated for the virus and were in need of oxygen. The remainder of the patients had tested positive but were asymptomatic and being treated for other conditions.
The pattern of milder disease in Pretoria is corroborated by data for the whole of Gauteng province. Eight per cent of Covid-positive hospital patients are being treated in intensive care units, down from 23% throughout the Delta wave, and just 2% are on ventilators, down from 11%.
Financial Times, December 7th
The LSHTM document claims to be accurate as of today, but just ignores the data available so far and replaces it with an assumption; one that lets them argue for more restrictions.
What kind of restrictions? The LSHTM modellers are big fans of mask wearing:
All scenarios considered assume a 7.5% reduction in transmission following the introduction of limited mask-wearing measures by the U.K. Government on November 30th 2021, which we assume lasts until April 30th 2022. This is in keeping with our previous estimates for the impact of increased mask-wearing on transmission.
I was curious how they arrived at this number given the abundant evidence that mask mandates have no impact at all (example one, example two). But no such luck – a reference at the end of the above paragraph points to this document, which doesn’t contain the word “mask” anywhere and “7.5%” likewise cannot be found. I wondered if maybe this was a typo but the claim that the relevant reference supports mask wearing appears several times and the word “mask” isn’t mentioned in references before or after either.
There are many other assumptions of dubious validity in this paper. I don’t have time today to try and list all of them, although maybe someone else wants to have a go. A few that jumped out on a quick read through are:
- An assumption that S gene drop-outs, i.e. cases where a PCR test doesn’t detect the spike protein gene at all, are always Omicron. That doesn’t follow logically given the very high number of mutations and given that theoretically PCR testing is very precise, meaning a missing S gene should be interpreted as “not Covid”. Of course, in reality – as is by now well known – PCR results are routinely presented in a have-cake-and-eat-it way, in which they’re claimed to be both highly precise but also capable of detecting viruses with near arbitrary levels of mutation, depending on what argument the user wishes to support.
- “We use the relationship between mean neutralisation titre and protective efficacy from Khoury et al. (7) to arrive at assumptions for vaccine efficacy against infection with Omicron” – The cited paper was published in May and has nothing to say on the topic of vaccine effectiveness against Omicron, which is advertised as being heavily mutated. Despite not citing any actual measured data on real-world vaccine effectiveness, the modelling team proceeds to make arguments for widespread boosting with a vaccine targeted at the original 2019 Wuhan version of SARS-CoV-2.
- They make scenarios that vary based on unmeasurable variables like “rate of introduction of Omicron”, making their predictions effectively unfalsifiable. Regardless of what happens, they can claim that they projected a scenario that anticipated it, and because such a rate is unknowable, nobody can prove otherwise. Predictions have to be falsifiable to be scientific, but these are not.
- Their conclusion says “These results suggest that the introduction of the Omicron B.1.1.529 variant in England will lead to a substantial increase in SARS-CoV-2 transmission” even though earlier in the ‘paper’ they say they assume anywhere between a 5%-10% lower transmissibility than Delta to 30%-50% higher (page 7), or in other words, they have no idea what the underlying difference in transmissibility is – and that’s assuming this is actually something that can be summed up in a single number to begin with.
Analysis
If you’re new to adversarial reviews of epidemiology papers some of the above points may seem nit-picky, or even made in bad faith. Take the problem of the citation error – does it really matter? Surely, it’s just some sort of obscure copy/paste error or typo? Unfortunately, we cannot simply overlook such failures. The phenomenon of apparently random or outright deceptive citations is one I’ve written about previously. This problem is astoundingly widespread in academia. Most people will assume that a numerical claim by researchers that has a citation must have at least some level of truth to it, but in fact, meta-scientific study has indicated the error rate in citations is as high as 25%. A full quarter of scientific claims pointing to ‘evidence’ turn out when checked to be citing something that doesn’t support their point! This error rate feels roughly in line with my own experiences and that’s why it’s always worth verifying citations for dubious claims.
The reality is that academic output, especially in anything that involves statistical modelling, frequently turns out to not merely be unreliable but leaves the reader with the impression that the authors must have started with a desired conclusion and then worked backwards to try and find sciencey-sounding points to support it. Inconvenient data is claimed not to exist, convenient data is cherry picked, and where no convenient data can be found it’s just conjured into existence. Claims are made and cited but the citations don’t contain supporting evidence, or turn out to be just more assumptions. Every possible outcome is modelled and all but the most alarming are discarded. The scientific method is inconsistently used, at best, and instead scientism rules the day; meanwhile, universities applaud and defend this behaviour to the bitter end. Academia is in serious trouble: huge numbers of researchers just have no standards whatsoever and there are no institutional incentives to care.
Some readers will undoubtably wonder why we’re still bothering to do this kind of analysis given that there’s nothing really new here. On the Daily Sceptic alone we’ve covered these sorts of errors here, here, here, here, here and here – and that’s not even a comprehensive list. So why bother? I think it’s worth continuing to do this kind of work for a couple of reasons:
- Many people who didn’t doubt the science last year have developed newfound doubts this year, but won’t search through the archives to read old articles.
- The continued publication of these sorts of ‘papers’ is itself useful information. It shows that academia doesn’t seem to be capable of self-improvement and despite a long run of prediction failures, nobody within the institutions cares about the collective reputation of professors. The appearance of being scientific is what matters. Actually being scientific, not so much.
Majority of Covid ICU Patients in October and November Were Vaccinated
By Will Jones – The Daily Sceptic – December 11, 2021
Contrary to the claims made by Dr Rachel Clarke and Professor Stephen Powis last month and used to blame the unvaccinated for the mounting troubles of the NHS, new data out this week shows that the majority of Covid ICU admissions in October and November were among the vaccinated, not the unvaccinated.
The latest report from ICNARC shows that of Covid ICU patients in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, 50.5% in October and 50.7% in November were double vaccinated. Add to that the 2.8% in October and 1.8% in November who were single-vaccinated and you get overall vaccinated proportions of 53.3% in October and 52.5% in November. That compares to 46.7% unvaccinated in October and 47.5% in November. Note that the unvaccinated here includes people who received a vaccine less than 14 days prior to the positive Covid test, so includes some (an unknown number) who are actually single vaccinated.

This is not what the public has been led to believe by some prominent medics and newspapers.
Two weeks ago, Professor Stephen Powis, the National Medical Director of NHS England, was quoted in the Sunday Times saying: “Data shows that the overwhelming majority of people admitted to intensive care with Covid are not fully vaccinated.” A source was not provided for this claim but the article implied that it meant right now, with an opening paragraph stating: “Hundreds of intensive care beds that could be used for life-saving surgery are instead occupied by unvaccinated Covid patients, one of NHS England’s top officials has said.”
The same day the Sunday Times also printed an article by Dr. Rachel Clarke with the subheading: “Some 75% of those suffocating in intensive care with the coronavirus are unvaccinated.” In it she states: “Of the Covid patients treated in intensive care in recent months, the majority – nearly 75% according to the latest data – have chosen not to be vaccinated.”
The Guardian published a piece in November headlined “ICU is full of the unvaccinated – my patience with them is wearing thin”, written by an anonymous medic who claimed that the ICU patient population “consists of a few vulnerable people with severe underlying health problems and a majority of fit, healthy, younger people unvaccinated by choice”.
Now that the data has been released it’s clear that the claim that ICUs are “full of” the unvaccinated is highly misleading. While the unvaccinated do currently appear to be over-represented (depending how many of them are misclassified), no one now can claim that ICUs are “full of” the unvaccinated or that the unvaccinated constitute the “overwhelming majority” of Covid ICU admissions. If you spot any newspapers still peddling this misinformation, particularly it if is being used to stigmatise and pressure the unvaccinated, you can complain to IPSO here.
Andrew Neil: “It’s Time To PUNISH Vaccine Refuseniks”
By Richie Allen | December 10, 2021
The establishment has never had a greater gatekeeper than Andrew Neil. He’s edited the Sunday Times, been the chairman of SKY TV, chaired Press Holdings Media Group and spent a quarter of a century fronting flagship news shows for the BBC.
Neil was head cheerleader for Britain’s involvement in Afghanistan. He described opponents of military intervention there as; “wimps, with no will to fight.”
He used his columns and tv programmes to champion the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Writing for Scotland on Sunday in September 2002 Neil said that Saddam Hussein had:
“embarked on a worldwide shopping spree to buy the technology and material needed to construct weapons of mass destruction and the missile systems needed to deliver them across great distances…. the suburbs of Baghdad are now dotted with secret installations, often posing as hospitals or schools, developing missile fuel, bodies and guidance systems, chemical and biological warheads and, most sinister of all, a renewed attempt to develop nuclear weapons.”
Neil KNEW that this was undiluted bullshit, but he printed it anyway.
During that time he referred to The Guardian as “The Daily Terrorist.” In short, Andrew Neil is a rancid, rotten scumbag. Writing in today’s Daily Mail, he called for the punishment of the unjabbed.
Last night I took a friend out to dinner near my home in the South of France. At the restaurant door we were politely asked for our vaccine passports, the QR codes on our smartphones were scanned and we were ushered to our table.
The check had taken seconds — a very minor inconvenience when a new wave of the coronavirus pandemic is sweeping across the Continent.
There was a sense of safety in knowing that all the other diners had proved themselves to be fully vaccinated, or had very recently tested negative, or had contracted the virus and recovered.
Cheerleading illegal wars that killed millions of people earned him a home in the South of France. How nice for him. He goes on:
There are still 5 million unvaccinated British adults, who through fear, ignorance, irresponsibility or sheer stupidity refuse to be jabbed. In doing so they endanger not just themselves but the rest of us.
If they contract Covid, it is they who will put the biggest strain on the NHS, denying the rest of us with serious non-Covid ailments the treatment that is our right. We are all paying a heavy price for this hard core of the unvaccinated.
As long as they can be numbered in the millions, the nation will remain unnecessarily vulnerable to the latest variant, meaning more lockdowns, more restrictions on our lives, more lost jobs, more failing business, less economic growth — all of which will follow the Government’s introduction of its so-called Plan B of enhanced restrictions this week.
Of course, there is a small number of people who, for medical reasons, cannot be vaccinated. Those in that category can be identified and helped with regular testing to make sure they’re Covid-free.
But for the rest it is simply selfish not to be vaccinated. We all have a responsibility to act in ways that don’t just protect our own health but also that of others.
Neil went on to say that he’s not in favour of mandatory vaccination, but:
As it stands, the unvaccinated are making more restrictions on our lives inevitable. It is time we imposed some on them.
In a free society the unvaccinated have a right not be jabbed. But they need to realise that right comes with consequences, which will inhibit their freedoms as they constrain ours.
One final thought. Singapore has decided that the unvaccinated who end up in hospital with Covid will have to foot their own medical bills.
I doubt we’d ever go that far. But you can see the logic — even the morality — of it.
By all means exercise your rights. But beware of the consequences.
Andrew Neil remains a worthless, warmongering whore.
NY Times Claims Brazil Is Turning Into Desert, As Foliage Growth Surges
By James Taylor | ClimateRealism | December 6, 2021
The New York Times published an article Friday titled, “A Slow-Motion Climate Disaster: The Spread of Barren Land.” The article claims global warming is causing drought in northeastern Brazil, turning the region into a desert. Objective satellite measurements of vegetation, however, show increasing vegetation in northeast Brazil and throughout Brazil as a whole, not the other way around. The Times article is merely another example of agenda-driven fake climate news.
In its subtitle, the article claims, “Brazil’s northeast, long a victim of droughts, is now effectively turning into desert. The cause? Climate change and the landowners who are most affected.” The article adds, “Climate change is intensifying droughts in Brazil’s northeast, leaving the land barren. The phenomenon, called desertification, is happening across the planet.”
NASA satellite instruments have precisely measured the amount of vegetation throughout the Earth since the early 1980s. NASA reported its findings in an article titled “Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth, Study Finds.” According to NASA, “From a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.” Most of the rest of the land shows little change one way or the other, while a very small amount of land shows a decline in vegetation.
As a whole, “The greening represents an increase in leaves on plants and trees equivalent in area to two times the continental United States,” NASA reports.
In the chart below, provided by NASA, you can see that nearly all of Brazil, including nearly all of northeast Brazil, is enjoying a significant increase in vegetation. Only a few, very small areas of Brazil and northeast Brazil are seeing a decline in vegetation.

The Times is right that where farmers or ranchers are deliberately removing rainforest and replacing it with farms or rangeland, vegetation declines. But that is not due to climate change, and those are about the only places in Brazil where vegetation is not increasing as the Earth modestly warms.
The simple, undeniable truth is that vegetation is increasing virtually everywhere in Brazil. The New York Times, in order to promote a fictitious climate crisis, is telling provably wrong lies to sell newspapers and to sell alarm.
As Predicted, They’re Coming For The Unvaccinated
By Richie Allen | December 9, 2021
Yesterday, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that his government would move to Plan B covid measures as a precaution against the emergence of the omicron variant. He was lying. What else is new, I hear you say.
In my opinion there is no omicron variant. It is a fantasy. Johnson’s government moved to Plan B for one reason only, to turn the jabbed against the unjabbed.
In recent weeks, regular listeners to my radio show will have heard me play dozens of soundbites from UK TV and radio news shows, where the public is invited to call in and opine on what should be done about the anti-vaxxers.
I said that we were being primed or conditioned for a day of reckoning next year, when the government will announce “enough is enough, we can’t keep shutting down society, we must mandate the jabs.”
Nothing that has happened since, has changed my mind. UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid said this morning that mandatory jabs will not be pursued by his government. He said that such a thing would be “unethical.” He was lying too.
Today, the public are quite rightly enraged at the announcement of new covid measures and the prospect that they will be tightened further still on December 18th.
However, the great majority of people are not demanding an end to this charade at once. No, they’re raging at the Tories for holding Christmas party’s last year while they were locked down and obeying the rules.
And predictably, they’re turning their ire on the unjabbed.
Take a look at this outtake from this morning’s Jeremy Vine Show on Channel 5. The guests call for the unjabbed to be blamed for the tyrannical covid restrictions. They even suggest that we should be exiled.
Instead of challenging them, the impotent host egged them on.
We’re in the fight of our lives now.








