The Alarming Trend in Core Mortality Since the Vaccine Rollout
BY NICK BOWLER | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | FEBRUARY 3, 2023
In a previous article I introduced the concept of looking at mortality from non-respiratory causes (i.e., not deaths from flu, Covid or other similar pathogens) as a better indicator of core mortality changes in the U.K. population than either excess deaths alone (or even excess non-Covid deaths). This is because most of the variation in the number of deaths between winter and summer and from year to year are due to respiratory causes; thus, take those out and you get a clearer picture of the underlying health of the population and whether people are generally getting sick and dying more or less than in recent years from causes such as cardiovascular problems, cancer, Alzheimer’s and so on.
I decided to go back and re-analyse the data in order to see how excess non-respiratory mortality has accumulated over the last few years. I discovered that this showed a total for 2021, 2022 and 2023 (thus far) of 49,696 deaths. When one takes into account the mortality displacement for this time period (owing to the pandemic bringing expected deaths forward; explained here), which I estimate as 23,650 deaths, the non-respiratory excess mortality reaches 73,346 deaths.
Comparing this to the number of deaths due to Covid (as underlying cause) over the same time period, which total 89,629 deaths, we see that the Covid figure is just 16,283 or 22% higher. Bearing in mind that it is widely acknowledged that there has been overcounting of Covid deaths (and thus conversely undercounting of non-respiratory deaths), the two tallies are now broadly similar, and thus an emergency situation at least as dangerous as the pandemic itself has arisen, which must surely now be addressed by the authorities.
To highlight the overcounting of Covid deaths, one only need compare the data for ‘deaths due to’ against ‘deaths with’ for COVID-19, and contrast it with the figures for other respiratory diseases. For Covid around 82% of deaths ‘with Covid’ are claimed to be ‘due to’ Covid over the course of the pandemic, yet with all other respiratory diseases only 34% of deaths ‘with’ the disease are claimed to be ‘due to’ it. The reason for the considerable discrepancy is unclear and suggests Covid is being significantly over-attributed as underlying cause.
For this article I calculated the number of excess non-respiratory deaths (relative to 2015-2019 pre-Covid averages) for each week of the year, and then calculated the cumulative values over the course of a full year. These charts confirm the suitability of the concept of non-respiratory mortality to serve as a stable core mortality rate that does not normally vary significantly from year to year. This is because there is a clear tendency (pre-Covid) for the cumulative non-respiratory mortality values to tend back to zero (i.e., the x-axis) if there has been a period of abnormal positive or negative values for an extended time. This indicates the role of mortality displacement in causing overall deaths to even out over time.
In fact, even in 2020 the shape of the curve (orange) looks very similar to the pre-Covid curves, excepting for the sudden spike at the beginning of the first wave of the pandemic when chaotic counting was arguably occurring. Without this the curve would hug the x-axis pretty much all through the year.
When we look at the curves for 2021, 2022 and 2023, however, the pattern changes radically. From week 18 in the spring of 2021 onwards the curve begins to point only upwards, and it further accelerates from the spring of 2022 and once again in the early part of 2023.
Please note all these curves are generated from the raw data from the ONS weekly reports for England and Wales. They are not adjusted for mortality displacement or anything else.
Putting all these curves together on one chart illustrates the changing pattern over the course of the pandemic, and in particular the striking upward turn in the spring of 2021.
Note that there appears to be little evidence of any need for an age-standardised adjustment to prevent an upward drift in death rates owing to an ageing population. Even after six years from the beginning of 2015 through to the end of 2020, the cumulative non-respiratory mortality is still around the zero mark, and even dips a little below in the first three months of 2021 (remember this is mortality with the respiratory deaths including Covid taken out).
Recent articles from Dr. Noah Carl have questioned whether mortality was unusually high in 2022 because, when the figures are adjusted for an ageing population using the age-standardised mortality rate (ASMR), excess deaths come out low. The ASMR is a hypothetical construct that is used to adjust crude mortality data for changes in the age structure of a population. It relies on a standardised population model that provides the weightings in the population of different age groups. This is a very useful model that can make sense of changing mortality rates over time when studying the demography of a population.
However, I would argue that it is not a useful model during times of exceptional change, as it relies on assumptions of weightings that change only incrementally over time and doesn’t take into account when a large number of deaths occur unexpectedly in older age groups. During the Covid pandemic there have been nearly 200,000 excess deaths (relative to the 2015-2019 average), and these are largely concentrated in the oldest age groups, i.e., the groups that provide the bulk of ‘normal’ mortality.
In particular, the over-80 age group comprises just 4.6% of the U.K. population yet delivers almost 60% of deaths in a normal year. As the U.K. population is roughly 67 million people, this puts the over-80s at about three million persons. The occurrence of 200,000 excess deaths in this age group implies a drop in the ‘weighting’ of this age group in the age make-up of the population of some 6.5%.
As the mortality in the U.K. in recent times has averaged about 600,000 deaths per year, a 6.5% adjustment in 60% of them would represent about 24,000 fewer deaths to be expected in 2022 than standardised models would predict, counteracting the ASMR expectation that the number of deaths should rise owing to an ageing population. 2022 has, however, seen something of a record year in overall mortality figures.
This is why, instead of looking at a misleading age-standardised mortality rate, we get a much better picture of what’s going on if we look at non-respiratory mortality as a measure of ‘core’ mortality, taking out the highly variable respiratory deaths. It’s worth noting here that it’s possible that the reason ‘core’ non-respiratory mortality has remained stable over recent years rather than rising as the age-standardised model would predict is because stronger winter flu seasons such as 2017-18 have naturally counteracted the effect of ageing on ‘core’ mortality.
The actuarial profession certainly seems to agree that there is a negative trend in underlying life expectancy based on what has been happening in 2022.
The upshot of this analysis of non-respiratory mortality is that something extraordinary has been occurring in the trends in core mortality since spring 2021, notably around the time of the Covid vaccination rollout. This worrying trend is currently accelerating and requires an urgent inquiry into whether the vaccinations themselves are playing a part or, if not, what is going on.
We rightly mourn the dead, but mustn’t forget the disabled
Worrying data from the USA and UK
Health Advisory & Recovery Group | February 1, 2023
Much of the analysis around Covid 19 vaccine harms revolves around counts of deaths, and excess mortality. This is perfectly understandable since “excess deaths” is a “hard” measure in that most countries are able to count the number of their citizens who have died quite accurately so this does allow for some reasonably informative inferences and international comparisons.
The same is of course not the case for “covid deaths” which even the strongest proponents of the establishment covid narrative have had to admit are affected by differences between countries in classification, testing rates, and policies.
However, as well as many countries experiencing excess deaths, there is currently a second huge problem: marked increases in the numbers registering as long-term disabled.
Because registering as disabled is usually done for the purposes of receiving financial assistance or other support from the state, there is a built-in gatekeeping function which limits spurious claims, so we can be reasonably confident that any significant increases represent genuine medical issues.
Looking at the USA first, a group called Phinance recently published an analysis of the proportion of the US civilian labor force who are registered as disabled.
This graph shows the % of workers aged 16 to 64 with a disability against the total number of Covid vaccinations administered in the same age group.
Phinance also published this graph which is a regression analysis showing a very strong correlation between the increase in the number disabled and the total number of doses given – something which actually is rather obvious from the above.
It is fair to point out that such a regression analysis should not in general be performed on cumulative series of data (ie total doses administered), but rather on discrete data (which in this case would be daily or weekly doses). If the measurements can only increase and not fall (as with cumulative data), this limits the significance of any correlation observed, as by default they will rise together.
This is less of a problem here in that only one of the 2 data points (vaccines) is cumulative (for the other axis they have used the increase in the number disabled). However, we wrote to the authors to ask why they didn’t use daily or weekly doses administered.
They responded with the not unreasonable point that because the adverse effects occur over a wide and variable period after dosing, a cumulative series is probably more informative. We agree. Just because fewer doses were given one week does not mean there were fewer people at risk of developing a post vaccination disability in that week.
The extremely experienced medical statistician who blogs as “John Dee” has performed further analysis on the US data above. The article is rather technical but in essence by applying a number of sophisticated statistical tools he concludes that using cumulative data may exaggerate but has not invalidated the findings, which should therefore be regarded as highly suggestive (though not in themselves proof of) a causal relationship.
However, the criticism of the statistical methodology was never really “on point” anyway. Science advances through testing hypotheses by questioning the available data.
The point of the analysis of the disability data was not to conclusively “prove” that the vaccines cause harm, but rather to answer the question: Is there a signal of potential concern which warrants further study? The answer to this appears to be “yes” and anyone finding excuses to not even look further should be regarded as willfully blind.
Of course, the link to vaccination could quite easily be further tested by ascertainment of the vaccination status of a representative sample of the disabled, with comparisons to disability rates in the unvaccinated. That this is not even being discussed must surely be regarded as a red flag.
When a potential signal of concern is replicated internationally, it increases the likelihood that we are dealing with a causal relationship. Not much quality data on disability rates is available from other countries, but one country which does publish some comparable data is the UK.
In the UK, if disabled, a state payment called a personal independence payment (PIP) can be claimed. An official UK government report states that there have been “unprecedented levels of new claims in recent quarters” (in England and Wales).
This has been reported by various news websites, including Yahoo’s article titled “The ‘astonishing’ rise in people claiming one key benefit”.
PIP data is actually downloadable from an official UK government website, and “John Dee” has performed some analysis on it which can be read here and here.
The new claims data plotted against cumulative doses administered looks like this (with thanks to John Dee for the graphs):
Clearly, this bears an uncanny resemblance to the US data above.
As he did with the US data, John has drilled deeper into the data, showing, for example that whilst claim rates in the pandemic period were similar to those in the pre-pandemic period, there is a huge uptick in the post-vaccine period, with the error bars (and statistical tests of significance) indicating that this is not just random variation.
Moreover, he has used a technique called “cross-correlation” which strongly suggests that “the increase in the month-on-month changes in total administered doses is followed three months later by a rise in month-on-month changes in new cleared claims.”
This would appear to add plausibility to the causation argument, in that three months is the period required by the government as a minimum qualifying period before an application for PIP can be filed.
Overall, these datasets surely raise huge concerns, which could be assuaged by further more detailed examination of the data, especially including vaccination status. We urge governments to carry out such an analysis, which need only be performed on a representative sample in order to generate reliable conclusions.
Acute Psychosis after COVID-19 Vaccination
Alarming Manuscripts Report Acute Neuropsychiatric Symptoms
By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse | January 30, 2023
Unvaccinated patients have mentioned half-jokingly that COVID-19 vaccination in friends and family makes some of them “crazy.” While I have always brushed this off as fear driven vaccine ideology taking over common sense in some zealots, the building literature on neuropsychiatric symptoms is alarming. There are now ~10 papers describing headache, fever, and a range of acute neuropsychiatric symptoms after both mRNA and adenoviral COVID-19 vaccination. The strong bias among editors and publishers has kept countless papers out of the mainstream medical media, hence one has to look far and wide to find information on the topic of vaccine safety. Borovina et al, from Croatia described three cases of acute headache followed by psychosis.
Borovina T, Popović J, Mastelić T, Sučević Ercegovac M, Kustura L, Uglešić B, Glavina T. First Episode of Psychosis Following the COVID-19 Vaccination – A Case Series. Psychiatr Danub. 2022 Summer;34(2):377-380. doi: 10.24869/psyd.2022.377. PMID: 35772162.
All three patients required hospitalization with exhaustive diagnostic testing and medical treatment. One of the cases progressed to attempted suicide with a knife stabbing to the abdomen requiring emergency abdominal surgery. As a doctor I am disturbed by medical evidence demonstrating gene coded SARS-CoV-2 Wuhan Institute of Virology Spike protein in the human brain after vaccination. I wonder how many subtle changes go clinically unrecognized. Even if a small number are affect, the massive numbers who came forward make any “rare” complication a common issue to face in clinical practice.
In conclusion, we should not downplay or attempt to normalize neuropsychiatric symptoms after COVID-19 shots. Every case should be taken seriously. Suicides after December 10, 2020 should be investigated and the brand, doses, and dates of vaccination should be recorded by healthcare personnel and noted by family members.
Joe Biden Says “Our Work Is Far from Over!”
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • JANUARY 31, 2023
I received an email ostensibly from President Joe Biden the other morning which scared the hell out of me. It was the usual plea for money but the headline read “Philip, our work is far from over!” suggesting to me that the White House is seeking to do even more damage to the country in the months to come! In it, Joe claimed that he had created millions of jobs and expanded access to healthcare among other lesser achievements in his two-plus years in office. I must have somehow missed those benefits and was left wondering about the millions of illegal immigrants who have been pouring across our southern border as well as the avoidable war in Ukraine that is on the verge of going nuclear and the soaring interest rates and energy costs here at home.
And also here on the domestic front there is the declaration of de facto war against the so-called white supremacists who apparently seeking to overthrow our democracy by putting their feet up on Nancy Pelosi’s desk, presumably because they are angry and confused due to the fact that they lack melanin. And then there is the question of our democracy itself with corruption rearing its ugly head from both leading parties and the clear weaponization and exploitation of the powers granted to our national security apparatus to seek to criminally influence national elections.
One might ask why I allow myself to be terrorized by emails from Joe and Kamala on a regular basis, but it is all part of my desire to keep an eye on both major parties and their antics. I also hear from the Republicans to include such dangerous creatures as Donald Trump himself and the execrable Senators Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.
So if Joe is able to raise tons of money from his freak show constituents, what do we have to look forward to in the months remaining before the 2024 election? Well, the foreign policy front is looking particularly bad. The recent unfortunate decision to send a company of high maintenance Abrams tanks to Ukraine will not alter the probable outcome of the war and invites reciprocity from Russia. What will Joe do if Vladimir Putin uses his superior missile capability to destroy the tanks one by one as they are delivered, possibly killing US military advisers who are training the Ukrainians on their intricacies?
The Ukraine war is not unlike recent commitments in places like Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Iraq where only essentially phony national security interests were contrived to support the military interventions against countries too weak to pose any real threat. The Taliban, Bashar al-Assad, Moammar Ghaddafi and Saddam Hussein did not actually threaten the United States or any vital interests and it required an airhead like Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to conjure up imagery of Iraqi nuclear devices delivered by huge transatlantic gliders and exploding over Washington to create a fiction to explain the raison d’etre for the war to the public. A couple of million lives and a few trillion dollars later the positive results obtained from all the interventions are somewhat hard to discern.
One might suggest that the problem with the United States stems from the belief that it is and should be the world’s hegemon based on some sort of manifest destiny that no one ever actually bothers to describe. The concept of a “rules based international order” governed by rules known only to Washington and special friends in places like London and Jerusalem has left much of the rest of the world scratching its collective head.
There is real danger that the United States, like the Bourbon Kings of France, never forgets anything but never learns anything either. Even though Americans gain absolutely nothing from their sacrifice, Joe Biden will no doubt continue as part of “our work is far from over” the extremely dangerous conflict in Ukraine “until Kiev wins” and Russia is presumably repulsed and weakened. If that does not take place by 2024, billions of dollars more will be dumped into the money hole and many more Ukrainians, Russians and quite likely also Americans will die.
But even more dangerous than continuation of the status quo in Ukraine is the possible series of disasters deriving from commitments made by the White House with other foreign regimes that will inevitably lead to more national security policy disasters. I am thinking particularly of China/Taiwan and Israel versus much of the Middle East. One might also add tension with North Korea over its nuclear program.
There are reports that new Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy is planning a trip to Taiwan to assure that country’s leadership of unlimited US support against hypothetical Chinese aggression. In so doing, he is duplicating a visit made by his predecessor Nancy Pelosi in July 2022, which produced precisely what was not desired, i.e. aggressive countermoves by Beijing. US ability to deter China is in any event problematical and China is a major trading partner which manufactures a large percentage of the products that are sold on the US and European markets. Taiwan for its part does not particularly welcome a more aggressive American defense of what are its own interests, as such moves will only guarantee problems with Beijing. So where will it all go? Tell us Joe.
And then there is Israel. Israel’s new government, again headed by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has shifted hard to the right, incorporating as it does the extremist settlers’ movement as well as parties that have spoken casually of forcing the Palestinians out and even of extermination if it comes to that. Half of Israelis are comfortable with the Arabs having minimal civil rights even if they are Israeli citizens and many accept the desirability of forced expatriation of the Palestinians to neighboring states like Jordan or Lebanon. Arab residents of Israel have only limited legal rights and, contrary to the Lobby’s constant assertion that Israel is a “democracy,” Israel in reality became an apartheid state by law when it in 2018 declared itself to be legally the nation state of the Jews with “exclusive right of self-determination.”
More recently Netanyahu has made clear exactly what his government stands for. In late December, he stated that “the Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel. The government will promote and develop the settlement of all parts of the Land of Israel.” He was explicitly including the West Bank and even Gaza, which have long been presumed to be the possible territory of a future Palestinian state.
The wag-the-dog support of the new Israeli government’s extreme nationalism and racism combined is not good for Americans and is a formula for trouble yet the United States government has, if anything, fully embraced it. Both Biden and his ambassador in Israel Thomas Nides have praised the new regime. Washington has also recently deepened military ties with the Jewish state by moving it to a new position in CENTCOM that has elevated the relationship to the status of “full military partner” in terms of strategizing and planning. That definition is close to a commitment to a “full military alliance” that obligates the US to come to Israel’s defense if a war begins in the region, even if Israel starts it. The Pentagon has also for the first time participated in a large-scale joint military exercise which included a simulated attack on Iran.
So if you get an email from Joe Biden saying “our work far from over,” be warned! The “work” sounds like a lot more bloodshed and war forever. If you can find a place where you will likely not be impacted by a nuclear war breaking out, it might be best to move there right now. Otherwise, there could be some rough skating ahead. As I reported in an earlier article, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is warning that there is a definite shortage of fallout shelters in the United States, so be prepared to hunker down in your basement, if you are lucky enough to have one. Follow the instructions in your “nuclear detonation planning guide” then “Get inside, stay inside, and stay tuned.” Sage advice if you still have electricity and the tv and radio stations haven’t also been nuked. Thank you Joe Biden!
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
The Censorship of Mercola — A Timeline
By Dr. Joseph Mercola | January 30, 2023
While the drug and chemical industries have attacked and tried to discredit me for years, blatant censorship didn’t begin until 2020, after the outbreak of the COVID pandemic.
For legal and historical purposes, I am sharing a timeline of events with you that document a chain of coordinated events and attacks against me and this website. My first article about the pandemic came out February 4, 2020, in which I predicted that it was a grossly exaggerated threat that would enrich pandemic vaccine makers.
March 8, 2020, I published an interview with bioweapons expert Francis Boyle, Ph.D., in which he warned that SARS-CoV-2 had all the hallmarks of a genetically engineered bioweapon. Boyle was among the first, if not the first, to suspect the outbreak was the result of a lab leak.
While every health authority on the planet insisted there was no treatment, and that patients simply go to the hospital to be placed on mechanical ventilation and die, I interviewed medical experts working on early treatment options and published articles detailing the potential benefits of vitamin D, zinc, quercetin and other nutraceuticals that boost immune function, as well as decades-old drugs like hydroxychloroquine.
I also published the testimony of whistleblowers such as Erin Marie Olszewski, a frontline nurse, who warned that patients were being intentionally killed on ventilators as it quickly proved to be a deadly intervention for COVID-19.
Summer of 2020 — The Suppression of Vitamin D Begins
Early on, it became apparent that vitamin D levels and spending time outdoors played an important role in the risk of infection and the ultimate outcomes. This has been true for all respiratory infections, so it should come as no surprise it is also true for coronavirus infections. Despite that, health authorities insisted vitamin D was useless.
The only way out of the pandemic, they said, would be a vaccine — and this despite the fact that no previous attempts at creating a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine had ever succeeded because of its rapid ability to mutate.
In June 2020, I launched an information campaign, StopCovidCold, about vitamin D. I released a downloadable scientific report detailing how and why optimizing vitamin D levels among the general population could minimize the impact of the next wave of COVID. Optimizing vitamin D is a rational, safe and inexpensive measure that no sane health official would object to. And yet, they all did.
July 21, 2020, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) issued a press release1 calling on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) “to bring enforcement proceedings against Mercola and his companies for their unlawful disease claims that falsely and misleadingly claim to treat, cure or prevent COVID-19 infections.”
CSPI accused me of falsely claiming “that at least 22 vitamins, supplements and other products available for sale on his web site can prevent, treat, or cure COVID-19 infection.” This despite the fact that their Appendix of Illegal Claims2 clearly show I made no COVID-19-related claims to any specific products and only referenced published studies and mainstream media articles to support my opinions.
In an August 12, 2020, email, CSPI president Dr. Peter Lurie — a former FDA associate commissioner — also made the spurious claim that I was “profiting from the pandemic” through “anti-vaccine fearmongering:” 3
“Mercola brazenly has claimed that many of his products are coronavirus treatments or cures, including vitamin C, vitamin D, zinc, selenium, ‘molecular hydrogen,’ licorice, and other substances.
Besides profiting from the pandemic, Mercola has seemingly advised people to contract COVID-19 after taking supposedly ‘immunity boosting’ supplements (which of course he sells). Making matters worse, Mercola is a leading proponent of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories — and has been fearmongering against prospective COVID-19 vaccines even before such vaccines are available!”
By mid-August, a comprehensive campaign to put an end to Mercola.com had been launched, with Laurie asking CSPI members to flood the FDA and FTC with prewritten Tweets, urging them to take action against us. He also urged “state attorneys general to investigate how they may further protect consumers from Mercola’s illegal marketing.”4
Not surprisingly, CSPI is funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Rockefeller Family Fund, Bloomberg Philanthropies and other billionaire-owned foundations. It’s also partnered with Bill Gates’ agrichemical PR group, the Cornell Alliance for Science. Greg Jaffe, who heads up CSPI’s Biotechnology Project, is also the associate director of legal affairs at Alliance for Science.
Winter of 2020 — Vitamin D Attacks Heat Up
The attacks against me really heated up though after I published a peer-reviewed scientific paper5 on the benefits of vitamin D at the end of October 2020. With that, I established my medical and scientific merit and my right to a professional opinion, which is something the U.S. Constitution absolutely provides for.
The paper, “Evidence Regarding Vitamin D and Risk of COVID-19 and Its Severity,” published in the journal Nutrients, was coauthored by William Grant, Ph.D., and Dr. Carol Wagner, both of whom are part of the GrassrootsHealth expert vitamin D panel.
As noted in that paper, dark skin color, increased age, pre-existing chronic conditions and vitamin D deficiency are all features of severe COVID disease, and of these, vitamin D deficiency is the only factor that is modifiable. As such, it would be foolish to ignore, especially since vitamin D supplements are readily available and low cost.
Christmas Eve 2020, attorney general Letitia James sent us a cease and desist notice, demanding we stop sharing information about how immune-boosting nutritional supplements might lower your risk of COVID, including vitamin D, zinc, NAC and vitamin C.
February 2021, FDA Tries to Silence Protected Speech
After the new presidential administration took over, on February 18, 2021, the Rockefeller-funded CSPI and AG James got their wish, as the FDA sent us a warning letter for “Unapproved and Misbranded Products Related to Coronavirus Disease 2019.”6 Laurie even publicly bragged7 about his ability to influence the FDA to take action against us.
The FDA’s letter highlighted statements in articles on my website that were fully referenced and supported by published science, and none of the articles cited had any commercial advertising linking the information to my products, as per the law. We had done nothing illegal or irregular in that regard, and my professional opinions are protected under the U.S. Constitution.
Needless to say, we fully addressed both James’ cease and desist notice and the FDA’s warning letter, putting them both on notice that they cannot censor protected speech simply because they don’t like what’s being said.
On a side note, William Correll, the director of the Office of Compliance at the FDA who signed the warning letter, sadly “passed away suddenly” just two months later, on April 18 “after a short battle with COVID-19.”8
Gates-Funded Front Group Gets on the Bandwagon
The agrochemical front group Cornell Alliance for Science (CAS),9 the primary funding for which comes from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,10 also jumped on the bandwagon, falsely stating11 that “pages advertising vitamin C and quercetin as having ‘synergistic effects that make them useful in the prevention and early at-home treatment of COVID-19′” were still available on my website nearly a month after the FDA’s warning letter.
To be clear, we had fully referenced scientific news articles. News articles are NOT “advertising,” as they do not link to any specific products, nor do they refer to or recommend any specific brands. In the case of the warning for vitamin C, the article discussed hospitals utilizing IV vitamin C for the treatment of COVID-19 and sepsis.
Such coordinated attacks are to be expected, though, considering Gates’ influence over the operation, and seeing how CAS and CSPI work closely together — a fact CAS admitted in its hit piece.12
March 2021, Booksellers Urged to Ban My Book
Around that same time (February 11, 2021), my book “The Truth About COVID-19” also went up for presale, and by early March, booksellers in the U.S., U.K. and Australia were being pressured not to sell it, or to add some sort of misinformation warning label to it. As reported by Sky News March 5, 2021:13
“In the UK, more than 20 million vaccine doses have been administered as part of efforts to defeat COVID-19, but worries continue that misinformation is stopping some people from having the jab. Shadow health minister Alex Norris told Sky News:
‘Getting our population vaccinated is a massive priority and it is very sad to see these things so freely available. We would hope that retailers would act responsibly and have a look at whether they want to be associated with such products and whether they want to be seen to be profiting off such products.'”
Shady ‘Anti-Hate’ Outfit Publishes Hit List
March 3, 2021, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) — a shady U.K.-based organization with anonymous funding led by Imran Ahmed — also got in on the action, publishing a hit list14 of the “Top 10 anti-vaxxers” it wanted permanently silenced and eradicated from public forums. The list showed, by way of crossing out names, which had already been successfully deplatformed, and from which social media.
While precious little was (and still is) know about the CCDH, some digging revealed Ahmed had been appointed to the steering committee of the U.K. government’s Commission on Countering Extremism Pilot Task Force in April 2020, just as fearmongering about the COVID-19 pandemic was ramping up. The CCDH is also linked to a number of technocratic centers within the globalist network through its board members.15
More Fabrications and Lies From the CCDH
A couple of weeks later (March 15), Ahmed somehow managed to get an article titled “Dismantling the Anti-Vaxx Industry”16 published in the journal Nature Medicine. In it, Ahmed lied, claiming he’d “recorded a private, three-day meeting of the world’s most prominent anti-vaxxers,” when in fact it was a public, international conference given online, attended by thousands around the world, all of whom had access to the recordings.
He could have done the normal, ethical and truly journalistic thing and admitted he simply attended a public virtual conference, but instead he twisted it into some risky undercover agent mission where he secretly recorded private discussions that revealed the inner workings of “the opposition.”
Then, March 21, 2021, the CCDH published the fabricated “Disinformation Dozen” report,17,18,19 in which Ahmed falsely claimed 12 people and/or organizations, including yours truly, were responsible for 65% of all anti-vaccine content on social media.
March 24, 2021 — AGs Try to Censor Protected Speech
March 24, 2021, 12 attorneys general sent a letter20 to the CEOs of Twitter and Facebook, seeking their “cooperation in curtailing the dissemination” of COVID jab “misinformation” — all based on the fabrications of the CCDH. According to the AGs:
“The people and groups spreading falsehoods and misleading Americans about the safety of coronavirus vaccines are threatening the health of our communities, slowing progress in getting our residents protected from the virus, and undermining economic recovery in our states.
As safe and effective vaccines become available, the end of this pandemic is in sight. This end, however, depends on the widespread acceptance of these vaccines as safe and effective. Unfortunately, misinformation disseminated via your platforms has increased vaccine hesitancy …
According to a recent report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, so-called ‘anti-vaxxer’ accounts on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter reach more than 59 million followers … Given ‘anti-vaxxers’ reliance on your platforms, you are uniquely positioned to prevent the spread of misinformation about coronavirus vaccines …”
Facebook Set the Record Straight
August 18, 2021, after conducting an internal investigation, Monika Bickert, vice president of Facebook content policy, publicly called out the falsehoods in “The Disinformation Dozen” report, stating:21
“In recent weeks, there has been a debate about whether the global problem of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation can be solved simply by removing 12 people from social media platforms. People who have advanced this narrative contend that these 12 people are responsible for 73% of online vaccine misinformation on Facebook.
There isn’t any evidence to support this claim … In fact, these 12 people are responsible for about just 0.05% of all views of vaccine-related content on Facebook. This includes all vaccine-related posts they’ve shared, whether true or false, as well as URLs associated with these people.”
Bickert highlighted the fact that Ahmed had preselected the 12 individuals listed in the report, and that his “faulty narrative” was based on nothing more than “a narrow set of 483 pieces of content over six weeks from only 30 groups, some of which are as small as 2,500 users.”
“Further, there is no explanation for how the organization behind the report identified the content they describe as ‘anti-vax’ or how they chose the 30 groups they included in their analysis,” Bickert noted. “There is no justification for their claim that their data constitute a ‘representative sample’ of the content shared across our apps.”
Apparently, no one in government was smart enough to see the flaws in the CCDH’s report though, and a long list of officials cited the CCDH’s fabricated claims throughout the remainder of 2021, even long after Facebook denounced its claims. What’s more, even though Facebook admitted the CCDH’s claims were bogus, they still took action against accounts by applying penalties and/or bans.
April 8, 2021 — AGs Call on Social Media to Ban ‘the 12’
April 8, 2021, attorneys general James and William Tong published an op-ed in The Washington Post,22 again calling on social media companies to ban the “disinformation dozen” identified by the CCDH. The lack of acceptance of novel gene therapy technology, they claimed, was all because a small group of individuals with a social media presence — myself included — were successfully misleading the public with lies about nonexistent vaccine risks.
April 27, 2021 — Dr. Hotez Calls for Cyberwarfare
April 27, 2021, Dr. Peter Hotez, president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute23 — which has received tens of millions of dollars from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,24,25 — escalated the threat even further in an article published in the journal Nature.
Citing the CCDH’s findings, Hotez called for cyberwarfare experts to be enlisted in the war against vaccine safety advocates and people who are “vaccine hesitant.” He wrote:26
“Accurate, targeted counter-messaging from the global health community is important but insufficient, as is public pressure on social-media companies. The United Nations and the highest levels of government must … move to dismantle anti-vaccine groups in the United States.
Efforts must expand into the realm of cyber security, law enforcement, public education and international relations. A high-level inter-agency task force reporting to the UN secretary-general could assess the full impact of anti-vaccine aggression, and propose tough, balanced measures.
The task force should include experts who have tackled complex global threats such as terrorism, cyber attacks and nuclear armament, because anti-science is now approaching similar levels of peril. It is becoming increasingly clear that advancing immunization requires a counteroffensive.”
In short, Hotez called for the use of warfare tactics on law abiding American citizens, and the Nature journal actually published this blatant threat. One day later, April 28, the CCDH published a second report, “Disinformation Dozen: The Sequel,”27 which focused on Big Tech’s failure to get rid of us “despite bipartisan calls from Congress.”
To understand the massive reach the CCDH gained, despite no one having heard of them before COVID, consider this: By the end of August 2021, there were 84,700 Google search results for CCDH’s defamatory phrase “disinformation dozen,” including 16,000 news stories in the international press, nearly all of which parroted the CCDH’s defamatory statements verbatim and reported them as fact.
May 2021 — Financial Warfare Led to Removal of COVID Articles
Shortly after the op-ed by AGs James and Tong appeared, our business bank accounts were abruptly shut down and our credit cards canceled. Our business partners also had their PayPal accounts shut down.
This new threat, which I could not defend against in a court of law, led to my May 4 decision to remove all articles related to vitamin D, vitamin C, zinc and COVID-19 from my website.
July 2021 — The White House Publicly Calls for Censorship
In mid-July 2021, the White House stepped in to pressure Facebook to purge “anti-vaxxers” from its platform. Then-press secretary Jen Psaki regurgitated the CCDH’s false claims, saying:28
“There’s about 12 people who are producing 65% of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms. All of them remain active on Facebook, despite some even being banned on other platforms, including ones that Facebook owns.
Facebook needs to move more quickly to remove harmful, violative posts. Posts that would be within their policy for removal often remain up for days, and that’s too long. The information spreads too quickly.”
In another mid-July press conference, President Joe Biden himself demanded social media take action against “the disinformation dozen,” claiming our “misinformation” was “killing people.”29,30 None of these officials ever questioned the authority of the CCDH. Facebook spokesperson Dani Lever responded to the White House’s demands, saying:
“We will not be distracted by accusations which aren’t supported by the facts. The fact is that more than 2 billion people have viewed authoritative information about COVID-19 and vaccines on Facebook, which is more than any other place on the internet … The facts show that Facebook is helping save lives. Period.”
Summer of 2021 — A Parade of Hit Pieces
July 24, 2021, the New York Times named me the No. 1 superspreader of COVID misinformation online.31 According to the NYT itself, this was the most-read article of the year up to that point. Penned by Sheera Frenkel, it was so littered with blatant lies, my attorneys sent her a retraction demand.32
For example, she claimed the FDA has levied multimillion-dollar fines against me. This is a complete fabrication, as I’ve never been fined by the FDA. She also implied that I misrepresented myself as a published author of a paper on vitamin D for COVID-19, stating she was “unable to verify” my claim. This despite being given a direct link to the paper! My paper can also be located on PubMed.gov in seconds by searching my name.
Frenkel boldly claimed that I am the No.1 spreader of misinformation online, but she didn’t even qualify what “misinformation” actually is. Without qualifying what it is you’re looking for, how can you quantify it? She also provided no proof that I in fact had the greatest reach of all the individuals reporting on COVID injections. My name didn’t even show up in the Top 15 in a Crowdtangle search for anti-vax Facebook posts.
Frenkel’s hit piece was followed up by CNN, which August 4 aired a segment show CNN reporter Randi Kaye stalking me across central Florida. And, of course, Kaye’s primary citation for her accusations against me was the CCDH.
August 4, 2021 — Mercola Deletes Articles After 48 Hours
August 4, 2021, I also implemented yet another change on my website. I had already removed all articles relating to COVID-19 and vitamin D. At this point, I deleted over 15,000 articles from the past 20-plus years from my website as the business and personal threats grew out of hand.
After 48 hours, articles were instead migrated over to Substack, where only paid members through a private membership agreement have access to them. This was a painful but necessary workaround, as the paid subscription provides a layer of protection against these threats.
September 7, 2021 — Senator Warren’s Book Burning Campaign
September 7, 2021, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren sent a letter33 to Andy Jassy, chief executive officer of Amazon.com, demanding an “immediate review” of Amazon’s algorithms to weed out books peddling “COVID misinformation.”34,35,36
While she didn’t spell out what laws Amazon might be breaking, she warned Jassy that the company may be held legally responsible for wrongful death and homicide by selling books that “misinform” readers about COVID-19, and she specifically singled out “The Truth About COVID-19” as a prime example of the kinds of books she wanted banned.
Warren again relied on the fabrications of the CCDH, even though Facebook had refuted the CCDH report as baseless three weeks before she sent that letter.
“Dr. Mercola has been described as ‘the most influential spreader of coronavirus misinformation online,'” Warren wrote, adding: “Not only was this book the top result when searching either ‘COVID-19’ or ‘vaccine’ in the categories of ‘All Departments’ and ‘Books’; it was tagged as a ‘Best Seller’ by Amazon and the ‘#1 Best Seller’ in the ‘Political Freedom’ category.
The book perpetuates dangerous conspiracies about COVID-19 and false and misleading information about vaccines. It asserts that vitamin C, vitamin D and quercetin … can prevent COVID-19 infection … And the book contends that vaccines cannot be trusted, when study after study has demonstrated the overwhelming effectiveness and safety of COVID-19 vaccines.
It should come as no surprise that the book is rife with misinformation. One of the authors, Dr. Mercola, is one of the ‘Disinformation Dozen,’ a group responsible for 65% of anti-vaccine content on Facebook and Twitter …”
YouTube Deplatforms Mercola in Breach of Contract
Warren’s attempt at getting Amazon to ban my book was swiftly followed up by YouTube, which deleted my account September 29, 2021, allegedly for violating community guidelines. The problem was, they’d published and implemented those new guidelines that very morning.
While I disagreed with YouTube’s censorship, when its “COVID-19 misinformation” policy was implemented back in April 2021, I carefully avoided posting any content on YouTube that might violate that guideline. At no point had I ever received a violation notice from YouTube.
On the morning of September 29, 2022, at 9 a.m. EDT, The Washington Post published an article titled “YouTube Is Banning Joseph Mercola and a Handful of Other Anti-Vaccine Activists.” According to the WaPo :37
“YouTube is taking down several video channels associated with high-profile anti-vaccine activists including Joseph Mercola … As part of a new set of policies aimed at cutting down on anti-vaccine content on the Google-owned site, YouTube will ban any videos that claim that commonly used vaccines approved by health authorities are ineffective or dangerous.
The company previously blocked videos that made those claims about coronavirus vaccines, but not ones for other vaccines like those for measles or chickenpox.”
In short, as of September 29, 2021, you could no longer post any video discussing or stating that any vaccine is dangerous or ineffective. Six minutes after the publication of that WaPo article, I received an email from YouTube informing me that my entire channel had been deplatformed, having been found in violation of this new policy.
October 2021 — CNN’s Second Hit Piece
October 4, 2021, two months to the day after their first attempted hit piece against my book, “The Truth About COVID-19,” CNN aired a follow-up in which they echoed Warren’s call for Amazon to ban the sale of my book.
Like something straight out of George Orwell’s “1984” newsspeak dictionary, CNN host Anderson Cooper said my book is loaded with “mistruths” about COVID. Yet he failed to present a single piece of evidence to back up that claim.
This is one of the oldest propaganda trick in the book. If you just spew out enough derogatory terms about your opponent, people will forget the fact that you provided zero proof to back up your position.
November 2021 — Mercola Sues Sen. Warren
November 7, 2021, two months after Warren tried to get my best-selling book “The Truth About COVID-19” banned from Amazon, I, my coauthor Ronnie Cummins, my publisher and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who wrote our foreword, sued Warren,38 both in her official and personal capacities, for violating our First Amendment rights and scaring book sellers into pulling and/or suppressing sales.
As a government official, it is illegal for her violate the U.S. Constitution, and pressuring private businesses to do it for her is not a legal workaround.
February 2022 — NIH Director Blames Mercola For Pandemic Continuation
In February 2022, former National Institutes of Health director Dr. Francis Collins blamed me personally for the government’s inability to bring the COVID pandemic to a close. This despite the fact that I was by then heavily censored just about everywhere. The only people, really, who could see my information were those who subscribed to my newsletter and received it by email.
August 2022 — NYT Airs Hit Piece Documentary
Fast-forward to August 2022, The New York Times published the documentary “Superspreader,” featuring yours truly, on FX and Hulu (both of which are owned by Disney). They clearly went through a lot of trouble, trying to dig up dirt from anyone they could find from my past — some going back 40 years, to my medical school days — who would be able to share some tidbit with which they could discredit me with.
But it seems they came up empty handed: After a year of investigation, they couldn’t come up with anything. Surprisingly, they even showed two people who claimed I’d saved their lives. All the other interviews were with people who don’t actually know me. One was with a Chicago journalist who interviewed me once — 13 years ago. Two classmates from med school, whom I haven’t seen in over 40 years, also described their impressions.
Ironically, yet again, just one week before the “Superspreader” program aired, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reversed all of its COVID-19 guidelines, thereby proving my position on COVID was correct all along. Of course, this was never mentioned in their program though.
September 23, 2022 — Mercola Website Taken Down in Cyberattack
Next up was a cyberattack that took down my entire website and destroyed our servers. Cyberattacks have been ongoing for the past six years, but the one that took place September 23, 2022, finally got through our defenses. By that time, my reach on social media had been throttled back to next to nothing, and my website was about the only place you could find my articles (with the exception of republications, which I allowed).
September 28, 2022 — Mercola Sues Google and YouTube
Warren isn’t the only one I’ve had to sue to protect my First Amendment right. In September 28, 2022, I also filed a lawsuit39 against Google, YouTube and Alphabet Inc. for breach of contract.40
As detailed in my complaint, YouTube unilaterally amended the contract without notice, which is a violation of its own terms of service, and then used this last-minute amendment to justify removing my content, which went back to 2005, the same year YouTube was founded. At the time YouTube deleted my content, I had more than 300,000 subscribers, and my videos had collectively garnered more than 50 million views.
The WaPo article was embargoed until the morning of September 29 in order to prevent me (and anyone else affected by this change) from reviewing the new policy, take steps to bring my channel into compliance, or move my content to another platform. Instead, they simply deleted 16 years’ worth of intellectual property, without warning.
This is a clear violation of its own terms of service, which state that YouTube “will provide reasonable advance notice” of any changes to the terms of service, and that users will have “the opportunity to review them” and to remove content if they do not agree to the new terms.
YouTube’s terms of service also include a “three strikes” policy, where users are given three warnings and opportunities to remove content that violates the guidelines before being banned. I had no “strikes” against my channel on the day I was deplatformed and deleted.
I’m also suing YouTube for unjust enrichment, as for the last 16 years, my video content, having generated in excess of 50 million views, has been of great financial benefit to YouTube, allowing them to increase advertising revenue on the site. Additionally, they’ve refused to allow me to retrieve any of this content, which they still have in their possession. So, YouTube has unjustly benefited at my expense.
January 2023 — Third Lawsuit Filed to Protect Free Speech
January 10, 2023, I, along with several other plaintiffs, also filed a lawsuit41 against The Washington Post, the BBC, the Associated Press and Reuters — also known as the Trusted News Initiative (TNI),42 a self-appointed Pharma and Big Tech industry partner that has spent the past couple years playing judge and jury of news.
It has been doing everything it can to censor what it doesn’t want the public to hear. As noted in the complaint, the TNI has not only censored free speech, it has also engaged in antitrust activity. Specifically, “Federal antitrust law has its own name for this kind of ‘industry partnership’: it’s called a ‘group boycott’ and is a per se violation of the Sherman Act.”
As evidence of this allegation, our complaint references multiple public statements by TNI partners, including a March 2022 statement by Jamie Angus, then-senior news controller for BBC News, who explained TNI’s “strategy to beat disinformation.”
The Fight for Truth and Freedom Continues
The globalist cabal is extremely coordinated, as you can see. What’s more, they play dirty. But we will not give up, nor give in. Our freedom is far too precious for that, and freedom depends on getting the truth out. So, I will continue doing my part. You can help by sharing articles you think are important with family and friends, in whatever ways are available.
Sources and References
- 1 CSPI July 21, 2020
- 2 Illegal Claims Pertaining to Mercola Group Products (PDF)
- 3 CSPI July 19, 2017
- 4, 7 SCPInet.org March 4, 2021
- 5 Nutrients October 31, 2020;12, 3361; doi:10.3390/nu12113361
- 6 FDA Mercola Warning Letter February 18, 2021
- 8 Sun Gazette April 24, 2021
- 9 USRTK September 23, 2020
- 10 Cornell Alliance for Science Our Funders
- 11, 12 Cornell Alliance for Science, March 2021, FDA Warns Mercola
- 13 Sky News March 5, 2021
- 14 Twitter CCDH March 3, 2021
- 15 In-this-together.com, CCDH The Center for Cancel Culture and Digital Hypocrisy Part 2
- 16 Nature Medicine March 15, 2021
- 17 Counterhate.com Disinformation Dozen March 21, 2021
- 18 The Disinformation Dozen
- 19 PR Newswwire March 24, 2021
- 20 Letter to Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg March 24, 2021
- 21 Facebook August 18, 2021
- 22 Washington Post April 8, 2021
- 23 Texas Children’s Hospital Peter Hotez
- 24 PND July 1, 2011
- 25 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
- 26 Nature April 27, 2021
- 27 CCHD Disinformation Dozen: The Sequel April 28, 2021
- 28 Reason July 15, 2021
- 29 CNN July 16, 2021
- 30 AP July 16, 2021
- 31 New York Times July 24, 2021 (Archived)
- 32 Twitter Dr. Joseph Mercola July 26, 2021
- 33 Warren’s letter to Andy Jassy September 7, 2021
- 34 National Interest September 12, 2021
- 35 The Guardian September 13, 2021
- 36 New York Times September 8, 2021
- 37 Washington Post September 29, 2021
- 38 US District Court Western District of Washington Case: 2:21-cv-01508
- 39 Complaint for Contract Breach Mercola vs Google, YouTube, Alphabet Inc. September 28, 2022
- 40 Reuters September 29, 2022
- 41 US District Court Northern District of Texas Case: 2:23-cv-00004-Z
- 42 The Defender January 10, 2023
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From the Archives
Major rabbi says non-Jews are donkeys, created to serve Jews
By Khalid Amayreh, in occupied East Jerusalem | The People’s Voice | October 18, 2010
A major Jewish religious figure in Israel has likened non-Jews to donkeys and beasts of burden, saying the main reason for their very existence is to serve Jews.
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual mentor of the religious fundamentalist party, Shas, which represents Middle Eastern Jews, reportedly said during a Sabbath homily earlier this week that “the sole purpose of non-Jews is to serve Jews.”
Yosef is considered a major religious leader in Israel who enjoys the allegiance of hundreds of thousands of followers. … continue
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