If there is one thing that people should have learned from the pandemic, it is that the more control government takes over our day-to-day lives, the less we have of everything that makes life worth living.
The list of questions about our dystopian Covid-19 response will be analyzed and investigated for years to come. It’s essential we continue the work of uncovering the lies and manipulation we’ve all experienced, and bring those responsible to account. Some things may never be adequately uncovered or explained, but we can’t get caught up in the many aspects of the pandemic response at the expense of the bigger picture.
The following examines two key realizations about the pandemic on which we need to focus, regardless of what else we discover and what actions are taken:
The Covid-19 pandemic response was not based on sound medicine or science, and was not commensurate with the actual threat of the illness. Even if Covid-19 had proved to be as lethal as it’s falsely claimed to be, violating human rights and depriving individuals of personal autonomy are never the appropriate response to a pandemic. We must never let this happen again.
The Covid-19 pandemic revealed movements, led by globalists and wealthy technocrats, but also supported by many of our government and public leaders, to grasp power in ways that have the potential to destroy the foundations of Western civilization. There is a push toward global governance, in which all citizens are tracked and controlled in every aspect of their lives through digital identification, under the guise of preserving and distributing Earth’s resources in a more “equitable” manner.
Some kind, or naïve, souls will still try to say that our Covid response was a result of the government and public health authorities trying to do the best they could, to handle a brand new virus that no one could predict. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Here are 10 facts we knew about Covid-19 in March 2020, which should have informed our pandemic response, but did not:
Data from China and Spain informed us that Covid-19 was a disease that mostly impacted the elderly and those with chronic health problems. An early study from China confirmed that children could contract Covid, but with less severe symptoms than adults. From the petri dish Diamond Princess Cruise Ship, we knew that the virus spread rapidly in close quarters, but that most people who tested positive were either asymptomatic, or not seriously ill.
We knew that SARS-CoV-2 was similar in structure and pathogenicity to the SARS virus of 2002, was likely spread through airborne transmission, and was made up of 29 proteins, of which spike protein was one. We knew that similarities in human and viral proteins could lead to vaccine-induced autoimmunity (when the body attacks itself), and that this had occurred when using spike protein in-vivo to elicit immune response in rodents during the first SARS outbreak. We knew that the spike protein has similarities to human DNA, and that instructing the body to make spike protein could possibly cause autoimmune illnesses or pathogenic priming, which is when the body overreacts to the virus, leading to systemic inflammation. Only one immunogenic (producing an immune response) epitope in SARS-CoV-2 had no homology to human proteins. For this reason it was recommended that the spike protein not be the basis of any vaccine developed to treat SARS-CoV-2.
We still remembered what every medical student was taught: the purpose of a surgical face mask is to prevent dropping saliva or other contaminants into your patient while conducting surgery. (And in fact, studies that had been conducted on the benefit of masking in surgery found no difference in infection outcome, whether the surgery group was masked or not.)
We knew that face masks were not effective at preventing the spread of respiratory diseases. In analyzing the Spanish flu of 1918, doctors and scientists had concluded that, “Masks have not been proved efficient enough to warrant compulsory application for the checking of epidemics.” This was also the conclusion of a meta-analysis of studies from different countries and settings that was published by the CDC in May of 2020. A study of 6,000 people, early in the Covid-19 pandemic in Denmark, found a less than one tenth of one percent difference in contracting Covid between those who wore masks while going about daily activities, and those who were unmasked.
We were aware of six coronaviruses that infect humans, including four that regularly circulate and cause the common cold, and knew the basic pattern and treatment of the symptoms of coronavirus infections. We knew that coronaviruses mutate rapidly, and that all attempts to develop a vaccine for them in the past had failed, partly for that reason. In March 2020 we already knew that.
We knew the mantra “early treatment saves lives.” No one considered it good medical practice to send an ill person home to tough it out, without any treatment other than to go to the ER if breathing was so labored your lips were turning blue.
We knew that chloroquine, an antimalarial medication, was shown in vitro to be effective against SARS in the outbreak of 2002. We knew that hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), a slightly altered version of chloroquine, had been in routine use for decades, with so few side effects it was considered safe for pregnant women and children. Other antivirals, including ivermectin, were also being tested by doctors and found to be effective in treating Covid-19. (see Peter McCullough; Pierre Kory – Dept of Homeland Security; Pierre Kory U.S. Senate; Zev Zelenko)
Pandemic planning scenarios prior to March 2020 had unequivocally determined that lockdowns of the general population were not a proper pandemic response because of the extreme damage they would cause the poor, the vulnerable, and the overall structure of society.
We knew that influenza and other respiratory viruses are seasonal, hence the term “flu season,” and that some years are worse than others. For example in the severe 2017-2018 flu season, hospital resources were strained enough that they put patients in hallways, and even erected outdoor tents to make space for more patients, without creating fear and panic in the general population.
It was accepted that hypothesis and experimentation, and the discussion and challenge of different ideas and methods are what lead to advances in science and medicine. If anyone had said in March 2020, “I represent science… Attacks on me are quite frankly attacks on science,” as Dr. Anthony Fauci did in November 2021 (see here and here), they would have been fodder for Saturday Night Live, not the object of sycophantic consideration on every mainstream media platform.
In looking back, March 11, 2020, when the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic, will be remembered as the day we threw our knowledge of science, medicine, good governance, and healthy society right out the window of a speeding train that was carrying democracies toward medical tyranny.
We slapped face masks on toddlers and children. We closed businesses, public schools, universities, and churches. We put little circles on the floor six feet apart, and directional arrows in the grocery store aisles, maintaining that 6-feet of distance that former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb said was an arbitrary number without scientific or medical basis. We shut down movie theatres, concert halls, and Broadway. We canceled trips, family gatherings, funerals, weddings, holiday celebrations, commencement exercises, and sporting and community events.
All this panic for a disease with an infection fatality rate similar to the flu (even lower than the flu, for children) as was established early on by John Ioannidis of Stanford University.
But no one seemed to want to draw on prior knowledge and maintain calm and perspective. Instead, the “dangerous nature” of this new Covid-19 disease was constantly outlined for us by our public health and government leaders. Mainstream media outlets reported case counts and death counts in serious tones of dismay every day, without any context or comparison to standard death rates and the impact of respiratory diseases in years past. Emotional abuse of the public was rampant, with the authorities blaming the natural rise and fall of Covid cases on people not properly complying with the pandemic mandates. Even as the public was driven to a panic, government leaders hypocritically violated the masking and lockdown rules that they imposed on everyone else.
Illogical fear, driven by a hyperactive media, and by cowardly and controlling government leaders and public health authorities ruled the day. One of the most insidious results of our descent into ignorance about medicine, and our discarding of social contracts and human rights, was the rise of self-righteous intolerance for, and censorship of, anyone who questioned what was happening.
The Covid-19 response revealed that there is a movement, being pushed by wealthy ideologues, to control people through medical mandates and digital identification. In January 2019, Bill Gates boasted a 20-to-1 return on vaccine investments in an interview at a World Economic Forum Davos meeting, having turned $10 billion into $200 billion over a 10-year period. Gates, who labeled the 2010’s the “decade of vaccines,” can’t get enough of pandemic simulation games in which every aspect of a future calamity is addressed.
In March 2020, while the rest of us were coming to terms with the idea that there was a pandemic, Gates was already talking about the need for a Covid mRNA vaccine (a product in which Gates had conveniently invested $20 million in 2016). Gates also happily opined that everyone would need digital proof of immunity in order to open the world back up and allow travel between nations. In March 2020, Gates, who had predicted a pandemic in a 2015 TED talk where he said “we’re not ready,” was talking enthusiastically about being better prepared for the next epidemic (having already invested heavily in vaccines, testing, and surveillance).
The requirement to show proof of Covid vaccination in order to participate in public life was brutally adopted in places such as New York City, Austria, and New Zealand, and in varying degrees in many other states and countries. The so-called “vaccine passport” was a trial run for a digital ID for every human being on the planet. Digital ID was already in process in Canada when the peaceful Freedom Convoy protestors, and their supporters, had their bank accounts digitally frozen and their truck licenses and ability to do business in certain provinces revoked. The complete control of citizens through digital ID is already in place in China where protestors recently saw their green Covid pass turn to red overnight, causing them to lose access to public transport and essential services, and removing the right to travel.
Digital identification for the whole world was a topic at the World Economic Forum Davos conference this year. “Our future is digital. If you’re not part of it, you’re out of it,” said a UN representative to the WEF Conference, as the group discussed “digital inclusion.” The UN’s International Telecommunication Union focused on the “world’s digital transformation” at their summit in Bucharest, Romania in September 2022.
The digital ID is touted as a convenient and uniform way for assuring medical “safety” for ourselves and others, but Brett Solomon, an expert on human rights in the digital age, states,”[D]igital ID, writ large, poses one of the gravest risks to human rights of any technology that we have encountered.” Journalist and author Naomi Wolf, who has for years studied the factors that destroy democracies, is adamant that vaccine passports are a foot in the door that leads to fascism. Wolf states, “Vaccine passports sound like a fine thing if you don’t know what those platforms can do. I’m CEO of a tech company; I understand what this platform does… It’s not about the vaccine, it’s not about the virus, it’s about data. And once this rolls out you don’t have a choice about being part of the system. What people have to understand is that any other functionality can be loaded onto that [digital] platform with no problem at all.”
Control of people through digital ID is the goal of the UN, of Bill Gates, the WEF, the WHO, and many government leaders worldwide. Covid-19 was just a vehicle for trying out what they could get away with. Now it’s climate change. In a Project Veritas undercover interview, CNN Technical Director Charlie Chester acknowledged that people were experiencing Covid fatigue, so “once the public would be open to it,” CNN would be focusing on climate change, “constantly showing videos of decline, and ice, and weather warming up, and, like the effects it’s having on the economy.” Chester stated, “There’s a definitive ending to the pandemic, you know it will taper off to a point that it’s not a problem anymore. The climate thing is gonna take years, so they’ll probably be able to milk that for quite a bit,” because, “Fear sells.”
Now in the name of “preserving the planet,” the same technocrats and billionaires who have orchestrated much of the pandemic response are pushing the green agenda at the expense of food and warmth, freedom, and life itself. While the globalist elites fly around in their private jets telling everyone else how to live and what they need to go without, government lackeys sucked into the globalists’ agenda are closing down farms and limiting the use of fertilizers and fuels, creating food insecurity and misery.
The globalists, oh so concerned about our planet, are coming up with lovely plans for innovations such as The Line, a glass-enclosed 105-mile long building that will house 9 million residents, rectifying the problem of “dysfunctional and polluted cities that ignore nature.” (Walk it in 20 minutes! No need for a car! Everything you need in one spot!) They’ve also designed the 15-minute-city, another “innovation” designed to corral and control the peoples of the world. (Check out the movie In Time if you want a feel for the concept of the 15-minute-city.)
Whether foisting Covid restrictions on humanity, or overturning our lives for the green agenda, the end goal is the same. Klaus Schwab’s right-hand man, Yuval Noah Harari, said at the ironically named Athens Democracy Forum in September 2020 that, “Covid is critical because this is what convinces people, to accept, to legitimize total biometric surveillance.” Harari said, “We want to stop this epidemic? We need not just to monitor people; we need to monitor what is happening under their skin… And Covid is important because Covid legitimizes some of the crucial steps [toward biometric surveillance] even in democratic countries.”
The marriage of Big Pharma and government in the pursuit of the Covid-19 vaccines was one of the most dangerous of all developments during the pandemic. A vaccine development process that normally takes 5-10 years was shortened to 9 months. As explained by Dr. Tess Lawrie of The World Council for Health, the randomized control trials shortened Phase I, merged Phase II and III together, and then the control group was given the vaccine, meaning there is no control group to follow long-term. A Pfizer spokesperson acknowledged that they did not test the vaccines for preventing transmission, yet multiple health and government officials continuously claimed they were 95% effective. No pregnant women were included in the trials, but our health officials recommended that pregnant women take the Covid shot.
The vaccines were proclaimed “safe and effective” ad nauseam, and the vaccination of millions began. The CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) accumulated thousands of reports of injuries and deaths associated with the Covid shots – more for the Covid shots than for all other vaccines combined in the previous 30 years – but the mantra of “safe and effective” was just proclaimed louder. On December 13, 2022 a documentary about people who have been injured by the Covid shots was released. Within 24 hours, YouTube took it down, labeling it “medical misinformation” because, “YouTube doesn’t allow claims about Covid-19 vaccinations that contradict expert consensus from local health authorities or the World Health Organization.” I guess if you’re injured by the Covid shots you have to call the WHO to confirm it happened? You can view the documentary here: “Anecdotals.”
The Covid-19 bivalent booster was tested on eight mice, and zero humans, but the FDA and CDC deemed these shots safe for everyone age 6 months and up as well. When the FDA gave full approval for Pfizer’s Comirnaty on August 23, 2021, two main points were made: Comirnaty and the Pfizer/BioNTech emergency authorized vaccine are the same formula, and can be used interchangeably, but are “legally distinct.” As in, you can’t sue a drug company for vaccine harms resulting from an EUA-only vaccine, but you can sue if you’re injured by a vaccine that has full FDA approval. Interestingly, Pfizer has not distributed Comirnaty to be used by the public, and has stated that it won’t. To date, all the available Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and boosters for Covid are only authorized for emergency use.
Every person who has received a Covid shot is participating in the largest long-term clinical trial in the history of the world. We will not know the full impact for years, but what we’ve seen so far is alarming and heartbreaking. How long will people ignore the evidence all around them of vaccine injury?
From dozens of performers dropping on the stage, or cancelling shows “due to illness” or the sudden death of a band mate, to people developing sudden chronic illnesses and cancers, to menstrual problems and an increase in miscarriages and stillborn babies, to athletes dropping dead on the field and young people dying in their sleep, to children having heart attacks, journalists keeling over mid broadcast, to the emergence of Sudden Adult Death Syndrome, the evidence is all around us. What we’re seeing is not normal, and the attempt of authorities to explain it all away as being caused by “stress,” or “dehydration,” or “just one of those unfortunate medical events,” is not going to be able to cover the vaccine damage forever.
The world was played during the pandemic. The pharmaceutical industry saw the rise of multiple new billionaires; government leaders flexed their emergency-powers muscles; the mainstream media promulgated lies; and people took their government-funded hush money and did what they were told.
Meanwhile fundamental human rights were taken from us, and dangerous precedents were set. Every freedom-loving person needs to step up, become informed, and be ready to speak out and push back, because the people who gained power and money during the pandemic want to keep the gravy train rolling.
A repeat of the medical tyranny we were subjected to during the pandemic, and the fulfillment of a vision of a “digital transformation of the world,” will only happen if we comply.
The frequency and impact of pandemic-prone pathogens are increasing. Modest investments in PPR capacities can prevent and contain disease outbreaks, thereby drastically reducing the cost of response”
So begins a recent joint paper from the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), written for the 2022 meeting of the G20. The paper is seeking to justify a request for unprecedented international public health funding directed to the burgeoning pandemic preparedness and response (PPR) industry. The modest investments they refer to includes $10 billion in new funding; three times the WHO’s current annual budget.
In the century prior to the Covid debacle pandemics were not increasing and their impact was steadily diminishing, as noted in WHO’s 2019 pandemic guidelines. The cost of the Covid response would also have been far lower if these abandoned but evidence-based 2019 guidelines were followed. The WHO guidelines note that the approaches that comprised Covid lockdowns would be costly, especially to lower-income people.
However, the joint statement is not intended to reflect reality; rather it is intended to paint a picture through which the public will perceive a false reality. By triggering fear and deference, the wealth-concentrating response used against Covid can be normalized and then repeated. False assertions stated as accepted fact have proven very effective in increasing the industry’s share of the global financial cake. International agencies have no advertising standards to comply with.
When an industry absorbs material value to produce mostly unquantifiable products, perceptions are vital. Growth in the public health industry can only occur in two ways. Firstly, the industry and the public can jointly identify mutually beneficent areas of work that the public considers worth funding. Secondly, the industry can mislead, coerce or force the public, with the assistance of cooperative governments, to provide support that is not in the public’s interest. The latter is what parasites do.
As a disclaimer, I have spent the bulk of my working life employed by governments or on aid budgets, living off money taken from taxpayers so that I could have it. It can be a great lifestyle, as global health salaries and benefits are generally very attractive, offer travel to exotic locations, and commonly offer generous health and education benefits. It can still work for the public if the relationship is symbiotic, increasing their general health and well-being and improving the functioning of a moral decent society. Sometimes that outcome can occur.
For public health to work for the public, the public must remain in control of this relationship. Oxpeckers, the birds that hitch a ride on rhinoceroses, have a useful symbiotic relationship with their host. They remove skin parasites from awkward crevices, providing the rhinoceros with a healthier skin and fewer irritating itches. If they pecked out the eyes of the host, they would cease to be of benefit, and become a marauding parasite.
For a while, the oxpecker may gain more for themselves, feasting on the rhino’s softer parts. Eventually their host will succumb as a blind rhinoceros, unless confined to a zoo, cannot sustain its being. But the oxpecker, if overcome by greed, may not have thought that far ahead.
To remain in charge and manage public health for mutual benefit, the public must be told the truth. But in a problem-solving industry where solved problems no longer require work, truth-telling risks job security.
This is where the symbiotic relationship of public health is prone to become parasitic. If one is paid to address a particular health issue, and the issue is resolved through good management or a changing risk environment, there is a clear and urgent need to justify continuation of salary.
On a larger scale, whole public health bureaucracies have an incentive to find more issues that ‘must’ be addressed, make new rules that must then be enforced, and identify more risks to investigate. New international public health bodies keep emerging and growing, but they don’t close down. People rarely choose redundancy and unemployment.
This is where the public health industry has a real advantage. In nature, parasites usually must concentrate on just one host to survive, adapting to maximize their gains. A hookworm is designed specifically to survive in its host’s gut. The host, however, has a whole variety of parasites, illnesses, and other pressing concerns to deal with. A host must therefore ignore the hookworm as long as it does not pose an obvious immediate threat. The worm needs to milk the host of blood whilst seeming relatively innocuous.
A really smart hookworm would find a way to trick the host into thinking it beneficial – perhaps by promoting the benefits of Medieval practices such as bloodletting, as we have seen with masks and curfews through the recent Covid response. The global health industry can use this approach by building a story that will benefit them, plausible enough to the public to pass rudimentary scrutiny. If it sounds sufficiently specialized, it will dissuade deeper examination.
In the current rendering of this ploy, the public faces an ever-growing threat of pandemics that will devastate society if we in the public health industry are not given more money. They are given a story of urgency, and shielded from the historical and scientific realities that would undermine it.
International public health organizations solely concentrated on addressing pandemics already exist, such as CEPI, inaugurated by the Gates Foundation, Norway and Wellcome Trust at the World Economic Forum in 2017, and the new Financial Intermediary Fund for pandemics of the World Bank. Others such as Gavi, and increasingly the WHO and Unicef, focus heavily on this area. Many of their sponsors, including large pharmaceutical companies and their investors, stand to gain very large profits off the back of this gravy train.
The average taxpayer, dealing with inflation, family life, jobs and myriad other priorities can hardly be expected to delve into the veracity of what ‘experts’ say in some far distant place. They must trust that a symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationship is still in place. They hope that the public health industry will do the right thing; that it is still on their side. Sadly, it is not.
White papers on pandemic preparedness don’t have detailed cost-benefit analyses, just as these were not provided for Covid lockdowns, school closures or mass vaccination. Cursory calculations suggest poor overall benefit, so they have been avoided. We now see this playing out through declining economies, rising poverty and inequality. Diverting billions of dollars annually to hypothetical pandemics will add to this burden. Yet this is being done, and the public is acquiescing to this use of their increasingly hard-earned taxes.
A dead rhinoceros will not support many oxpeckers, and a hookworm will not survive bleeding its host to death. A public health industry that impoverishes its funding base and harms society through ill-advised policies will eventually be caught up in the outcome. But the short-term gains from parasitism are attractive and humans don’t seem to have the instincts (or intelligence) that keep the oxpecker in healthy symbiosis.
Thus, the public health industry will probably continue its current trajectory, increasing inequality and poverty, comfortably on the receiving end of the wealth redistribution it promotes. The money requested for pandemic preparedness will be paid, because the people deciding whether to use your taxes are essentially the same people asking for them.
They run the international financial and health sector and they all meet at their private club called the World Economic Forum. Their sponsors now have more than enough spare cash swirling around to keep needy politicians and media on board.
Those working within the industry know what they are doing – at least those who pause long enough to think. This abuse will continue until the host, the parasitized, realizes that the symbiotic relationship they had been banking on is a fallacy, and they have been duped.
There are ways to deal with parasites that are not good for the parasite. A really smart public health industry would adopt a more measured approach and ensure their policies benefit the public more than themselves. But that would also require a moral code and some courage.
David Bell, Senior Scholar at Brownstone Institute, is a public health physician and biotech consultant in global health. He is a former medical officer and scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO), Programme Head for malaria and febrile diseases at the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) in Geneva, Switzerland, and Director of Global Health Technologies at Intellectual Ventures Global Good Fund in Bellevue, WA, USA.
The U.K. Net Zero Carbon policy (UK NZC) is a Government policy offered as a solution to a problem that involves a range of academic disciplines. As well as being complex, the science of anthropogenic carbon-based global warming is controversial. Although some climate scientists insist that it is ‘settled’, there are many dissenters, as an internet search or a trip to a good bookshop will confirm.
The multi-disciplinary nature of climate science coupled with differing views among experts makes it almost impossible for a layman to follow the arguments, let alone assess the evidence and come to an informed opinion.Despite these apparent difficulties, I’ll argue that it is possible to establish a simple framework that can clarify complex questions – in this case, “How likely is it that UK NZC will be an effective response to global warming? – without requiring specialist knowledge. I also show how the approach can be used to identify, measure and illustrate differences of opinion.
Start from a small number of statements that make up the Net Zero commitment.
The Earth must actually be warming.
The warming must pose a genuine and serious threat to life on Earth.
The warming must be man-made. Specifically, it must be caused by excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere arising from human activity.
The U.K.’s NZC policy must bring about a meaningful global reduction of atmospheric carbon. That is, it must either make a significant reduction in its own right, or it must set an example that persuades other countries to reduce their own carbon emissions, to a degree sufficient to stop the warming.
For UK NZC to be effective, statements 1-4 must all be correct. If any one of them is false, the policy will fail, either because it doesn’t lead to sufficient carbon reduction, or because the policy wasn’t necessary in the first place.
The next step is to define a view (with respect to statements 1-4) as a set of probabilities p1, p2, p3, p4, which represent the respective degrees of belief placed in those statements. For example, the view of a particular climate scientist, Expert A, might be expressed as:
(p1, p2, p3, p4)= (0.8, 0.5, 0.2, 0.2), which means that Expert A is:
80% sure that statement 1 – the Earth is warming – is true;
50% sure that the warming is life-threatening (statement 2);
20% sure that statement 3 is correct – warming is the result of human activity;
20% sure that UK NZC will bring about a meaningful global reduction of atmospheric carbon one way or another.
Expert A rates the likelihood of all four statements being correct, i.e., UK NZC being effective, as:
If the view of a second expert, Expert B, with respect to statements 1-4, is:
(q1, q2, q3, q4) = (0.9, 0.5, 0.8, 0.3)
then a comparison with Expert A’s view shows that:
Expert B has a stronger overall belief than Expert A that UK NZC will be effective (Q=q1 × q2 × q3 × q4 = 0.9 × 0.5 × 0.8 × 0.2 = 0.108, versus P=0.016;
Both A and B agree that the Earth is warming (p1=0.8; q1=0.9);
Both of them are equally unsure whether that poses a significant threat to life on Earth (p2=0.5; q2=0.5);
They differ on the cause of the warming. Expert A doubts that it is man-made, whereas Expert B believes strongly that it is (p3=0.2; q3=0.8);
Both experts are fairly sceptical that UK NZC will lead to a significant reduction in global atmospheric carbon (p4=0.2; q4=0.3).
Neither expert is all that confident that UK NZC will achieve its aims, with Expert A being particularly pessimistic, seeing the likelihood as just 1.6% compared to 10.8% for Expert B. The main reason is that both of them are doubtful that unilateral U.K. action will have much influence on the choices of other countries.
The chart below represents the view of each expert on each requirement, and highlights statement 3, the one area of significant disagreement.
Summary:
Defining a viewwith respect to a set of statements in terms of the respective degrees of confidence associated with each individual statement provides a convenient means of summarising, comparing and illustrating a variety of opinions on the subject to which the statements refer. It also serves as a natural starting point for a cost-benefit analysis of any proposed action.
It isn’t necessary to be an expert (in this case on climate science) to make a reasonable assessment of the conditions that must apply if an argument or an assertion (such as “There is no alternative to UK NZC”) is to be persuasive.
It isn’t too much to expect someone – expert or otherwise – who advocates a particular course of action to be able to give rough estimates of the likelihood that the conditions essential to the success of that action will be met.
Long chains of necessary conditions lead quickly to low probabilities of overall success. The longer the set of plausible conditions that must hold if an assertion is to be true, the less likely the truth of that assertion. With 15 independent requirements, each of which has a 95% probability of success, for example, the probability of overall success is less than 50%. Complex policy issues like those associated with climate change typically have many requirements and much uncertainty.
As I sat down to write a report of Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen’s remarkable speech in Parliament this week to an all-but-empty chamber, I lighted upon this email from TCW reader Michael Carr:
‘It’s not often (never these days) that you can put the words “brave” and “UK MP” in the same sentence. But have we just witnessed one brave MP speaking out about the unprecedented human harm done by the mRNA Covid vaccine, and his call to have it halted immediately? It seems that MP Andrew Bridgen is just such a guy.
‘Notice the virtually empty chamber when he brings this subject up. Cowardly MPs decided they didn’t even want to be present when Andrew delivered his scathing attack on what the political, medical and mainstream media establishment had pushed (or kept silent) over the last two and a half years.’
I couldn’t have expressed it better. But what was the response? Despite the empty chamber did this remarkable speech prompt the MSM into reporting him and the great unspoken issue of the year, vaccine injury? The tragedy is that it did not. Bridgen’s calls for an immediate halt to the Covid vaccines have been, to date, ignored by all newspapers bar the Express. And their report, couched in terms of Bridgen’s ‘use of’ Parliamentary privilege to make ‘a bombshell allegation’ that a senior member of the British Heart Foundation had covered up a report showing ‘the mRNA Covid vaccine increases inflammation of the heart arteries’, was not exactly on point.
It shifted the focus from the main thrust of his adjournment debate which he intended to highlight the important issue of Covid vaccine harms, and his belief, unlike that of most of his colleagues, that the debate about vaccine harms should be based on data rather than fear.
It was in anticipation of media queries that Bridgen, the Conservative member for North West Leicestershire, forwarded in advance a comprehensive list of the data on which his speech is drawn to the mainstream media. No one can say he had not done his homework. It is just a crying shame – a disgrace, in fact – that no journalists bothered to do theirs. I know because I was sent by his office an extensive and comprehensive list of references. These included the government’s own evidence of serious adverse reactions affecting nearly half a million people; evidence showing that in the past vaccines have been completely withdrawn from use for a much lower incidence of serious harm – for example, the swine flu vaccine was withdrawn in 1976 for causing Guillain Barré syndrome in 1 in 100,000 adults and in 1999 the rotavirus vaccine was withdrawn for causing a form of bowel obstruction in children affecting 1 in 10,000; reference to the 25 per cent increase in heart attack and cardiac arrest calls in 16-to-39-year-olds in Israel associated with the first and second doses of vaccine and not associated with Covid infection, findings replicated in Florida; and to UK reports of an extra 14,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in 2021 compared with 2020 following the vaccine rollout.
In conclusion he said: ‘As the data clearly shows to anyone who wants to look at it, the mRNA vaccines are not safe, not effective and not necessary. I implore the Government to halt their use immediately. As I have demonstrated and as the data clearly shows, the Government’s current policy on the mRNA vaccines is on the wrong side of medical ethics, it is on the wrong side of scientific data, and ultimately it will be on the wrong side of history.’
His speech was remarkable, not because his oratory was remarkable but because his bravery and independence of mind was. He is one of those rare amongst men and even rarer amongst MPs, a man with moral courage. To stand out as one man against the crowd, in defiance of received wisdom and judgment, is the most difficult thing any human being is called on to do. Andrew Bridgen did it.
You can watch the full speech or the snippet below. Please note the supportive intervention by one of the two other MPs to have clearly stuck his head above the parapet on this all-important issue, Danny Kruger (Conservative, Devizes); the other being that great warrior for truth Sir Christopher Chope (Conservative, Christchurch).
What is behind the rise in sudden fatalities among young, healthy Americans? According to Edward Dowd’s book, “‘Cause Unknown’ – The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 and 2022,” there was an increase in deaths in America in 2020, though it was less severe than you might expect during a pandemic. Some of these deaths were linked to COVID-19 and ineffective initial treatment methods.
However, in 2021, the statistics that many had anticipated went in an unexpected direction. The CEO of OneAmerica, Scott Davison, publicly disclosed that during the third and fourth quarters of 2021, death in people of working age (18–64) was 40 percent higher than it was before the pandemic — and the majority of the deaths were not attributed to COVID-19.
A 40-percent increase in deaths is earth-shattering. Even a 10-percent increase in excess deaths would have been a “1-in-200-year flood.” An increase that high, Davison said, “is just unheard of.”
And therein lies a story with obvious questions:
What has caused this historic spike in deaths among younger people?
What has caused the shift from old people, who are expected to die, to younger people, who are expected to keep living?
What accounts for the astounding 84-percent increase in excess mortality among millennials between the ages of 25 and 44 in the second half of 2021?
What is causing an ominous pattern of media stories reporting sudden deaths of fit young athletes?
Why would healthy, young athletes be dying suddenly, often on the playing field, despite having on-site EMTs trained in resuscitation?
Why have there been hundreds of cardiac deaths in athletes since June 2021, when a Swiss study documented an average of 29 per year prior to that?
Were the sudden deaths related to the known risk of myocarditis (heart inflammation) associated with mRNA COVID-19 vaccinations?
Why did the term “sudden adult death syndrome (SADS)” start appearing often in the media in 2022 to describe the rise in cardiac occurrences among young people, causing them to be advised to “go and get their hearts checked?”
Since young people are not dying from COVID-19, could the excess deaths be caused by the COVID-19 vaccines?
Dowd presents a compelling argument for his catastrophic thesis in his short yet shocking crucial book: Young individuals in the best health who were, for the most part, never at risk from COVID-19 itself, were tragically affected by a wave of death and disability as a result of COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
“‘Cause Unknown’ – The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 and 2022,” by Edward Dowd, was released Dec. 13 by Children’s Health Defense Publishing/Skyhorse Publishing. Foreword written by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr and afterword written by Gavin De Becker.
In 1967, Haley obtained an M.S. degree from the University of Idaho. He then entered a doctoral program at Washington State University, where he worked to make chemical modifications on ATP to try to identify how and exactly where ATP binds to cause muscle movement. In 1971, WSU granted him his Ph.D. degree in chemistry-biochemistry. https://emeramed.com/about/
Early during lockdowns in 2020, when the whole of the media marched in lockstep with the most appalling reach of public policy in our lifetimes, two doctors from Bakersfield, California went out on a limb and objected.
Their names: Dan Erikson and Artin Massihi from Accelerated Urgent Care. They held a press conference in which they claimed that lockdowns would only delay but not finally control the virus. Moreover, they predicted, at the end of this, we would also be sicker than ever because of our lack of exposure to endemic pathogens.
You could say they were brave but why should it require bravery simply to share conventional wisdom that is part of every medical background? Indeed, the idea that reducing exposure to pathogens creates more vulnerability to disease is a point every generation in the last hundred years has learned in school.
How well I can recall the outrage! They were treated like seditious cranks and news media blasted their comments as somehow radically heterodox, even though they said nothing I had not learned in 9th-grade biology class. It was utterly bizarre how quickly lockdowns became an orthodoxy, enforced, as we are now learning, by media and tech platforms working closely with government agencies to warp public perceptions of science.
Among those warpings was an incredible blackout concerning the basics of natural immunity. My goodness, why did this happen? It’s not conspiracy to draw an obvious reason: they wanted to sell a vaccine. And they wanted to push the idea that Covid was universally deadly for everyone so that they could justify their “whole-of-society” approach to lockdowns.
Here we are three years later and the headlines are all over the place.
Meanwhile, it’s time we get clear on some basics. There is no one better to lay it out other than the greatest living theoretical epidemiologist, Sunetra Gupta. I think one way to understand her contribution is to see her as the Voltaire or the Adam Smith of infectious disease. The very essence of liberal political economy and liberal theory generally from the Age of Enlightenment to the present is the observation that society manages itself. It does not need a top-down plan and the attempt to centrally plan the economy or culture always produces unintended consequences.
So too for the issue of infectious disease. Dr. Gupta’s observation is that we evolved with pathogens in a delicate dance in which we share the same ecosphere, both suffering and benefiting from our entanglement with them. Disturbing that balance can wreck the immune system and leave us more vulnerable and sicker than ever before.
Writing in the Telegraph, she says “I am used to viewing infectious disease from an ecological perspective. Therefore, it did not come as much of a surprise to me that some non-Covid seasonal respiratory diseases almost immediately started to take a knock on the head during lockdown. Many took this to be an indication that lockdowns were working to stop the spread of disease, forgetting that the impact of lockdowns on already established or ‘endemic’ diseases is completely different to the impact on a new disease in its ‘epidemic’ phase.”
She explains that society-wide pathogenic avoidance creates an “immunity debt,” a gap in the level of protection that you have developed from previous exposure. There is a “threshold of immunity in the population at which rates of new infections start to decline — known as the herd immunity threshold. If we are below this threshold, we are in immunity debt; if we are above it, we are in credit — at least for a while.”
With normal diseases, we experience immunity debt in winter and so the herd immunity threshold rises. That’s when we experience more infection. As Fr. Naugle points out, this reality is reflected in our liturgical calendar during the winter months when the message is to look out for danger, stay healthy, be with friends and family, and intensify your concern for issues of life and death.
However, this period of conventional sicknesses gives rise to an immunity surplus as we move into spring and we can go about our lives with more confidence and a carefree attitude, and hence the symbolism of Easter as the beginning of new life. And yet the months of sun and exercise and party time gradually contribute to building up another immunity debt in the population which will be paid again in the winter months.
Notice that this pattern repeats itself in every year and every generation, all without the help of government public health agencies. However, writes Gupta, “disturbing this order can have a profound impact on an individual’s ability to resist disease. More than anything, it is clear that we are experiencing an entirely predictable perturbation in our finely balanced ecological relationship with the organisms which are capable of causing serious disease.”
Lockdowns changed nothing about these seasonal and natural processes except to make our immunity debt deeper and scarier than ever. To be sure, lockdowns in the end did not stop the pathogen that causes Covid. Instead, they only forced one group to be exposed earlier and more often than other groups, and this allocation of exposure took place entirely based on a politically scripted model.
As we saw, the working classes experienced exposure first and the ruling classes experienced exposure later. The policies entrenched a grim and medieval-style political hierarchy of infection. Rather than encouraging the vulnerable populations to shelter and everyone else to gain immunities through living normal life, lockdown policies pushed the working classes in front of the pathogen as a protection scheme for ruling classes.
And yet now, the results are in. Those who delayed infection for as long as possible, or otherwise tried to game the careful ecological balance with newly invented shots, not only eventually got Covid but made themselves even more vulnerable to diseases that are already endemic in the population.
What Gupta has explained with such erudition was actually the common understanding of previous generations. And nothing about the dangerous innovation of lockdown ideology has changed these natural processes. They only ended up making us sicker than ever. So there is some irony in reading stories of alarm in the high-end media. The right response to such alarm is simply to say: what else did you expect?
The Bakersfield doctors were right all along. So was my mother, her mother, and her mother before her. Together they had far more wisdom about infectious disease than Anthony Fauci and all his cohorts.
Jeffrey A. Tucker, Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute, is an economist and author. He has written 10 books, including Liberty or Lockdown, and thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought us a panoply of lies and evidence-light declarations that were less intended to inform Americans than to consolidate power and buy time. Among these were Anthony Fauci’s famous shift from arguing against wearing masks, to recommending wearing one, and, finally, to wearing two.
Fauci also tried to convince us that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was not manipulated in a lab even though his inner circle had emailed him about “unusual features” of the virus that looked “potentially engineered.”And, of course, we had “fifteen days to stop the spread,” an evergreen concept that dragged on for two years. Lest readers fault us for forgetting, there was also the “gain of function” controversy, the focused protection battle, school closures, lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and vaccine misrepresentations.
These topics have received much public attention. The one pandemic topic that hasn’t, and is nonetheless important, is the maligned ivermectin. It’s time to set the record straight.
If you’ve followed the news closely over the last two years, you’ve probably heard a few things about ivermectin. First, that it’s a veterinary medicine intended for horses and cows. Second, that the FDA and other government regulatory agencies recommended against its use for COVID-19. Third, that even the inventor and manufacturer of ivermectin, Merck & Co., came out against it. Fourth, that one of the largest studies showing that ivermectin worked for COVID-19 was retracted for data fraud. And, finally, that the largest and best study of ivermectin, the TOGETHER trial, showed that ivermectin didn’t work.
Let’s consider the evidence.
Ivermectin has a distinguished history, and it may have benefits comparable to those of penicillin.The anti-parasitic’s discovery led to a Nobel Prize and subsequent billions of safe administrations around the world, even among children and pregnant women. “Ivermectin is widely available worldwide, inexpensive, and one of the safest drugs in modern medicine.”
The FDA put out a special warning against using ivermectin for COVID-19. The FDA’s warning, which included language such as, “serious harm,” “hospitalized,” “dangerous,” “very dangerous,” “seizures,” “coma and even death,” and “highly toxic,” might suggest that the FDA was warning against pills laced with poison, not a drug the FDA had already approved as safe.Why did it become dangerous when used for COVID-19? The FDA didn’t say.
Because of the FDA’s rules, if it were to make any statement on ivermectin, it was obliged to attack it. The FDA prohibits the promotion of drugs for unapproved uses. Since fighting SARS-CoV-2 was an unapproved use of ivermectin, the FDA couldn’t have advocated use without obvious hypocrisy. Ivermectin’s discoverer, Merck & Co., had multiple reasons to disparage its own drug.
Merck, too, couldn’t have legally “promoted” ivermectin for COVID-19 without a full FDA approval, something that would have taken years and many millions of dollars. Plus, Merck doesn’t make much money from cheap, generic ivermectin but was hoping to find success with its new, expensive drug, Lagevrio (molnupiravir).
A large study of ivermectin for COVID-19 by Elgazzar et al. was withdrawn over charges of plagiarism and faked data. Many media reports seem fixated on this one dubious study, but it was one of many clinical studies. After the withdrawn studies have been removed from consideration, there are 15 trials that suggest that ivermectin doesn’t work for COVID-19 and 78 that do.
The TOGETHER trial received significant positive press. The New York Times quoted two experts who had seen the results. One stated, “There’s really no sign of any benefit [from ivermectin],” while the other said, “At some point it will become a waste of resources to continue studying an unpromising approach.”
While the Elgazzar paper was quickly dismissed, the TOGETHER trial was acclaimed. It shouldn’t have been. Researchers who have analyzed it have found 31 critical problems (impossible data; extreme conflicts of interest; blinding failure), 22 serious problems (results were delayed six months; conflicting data), and 21 major problems (multiple, conflicting randomization protocols) with it.
While the popular narrative is that the TOGETHER trial showed that ivermectin didn’t work for COVID-19, the actual results belie that conclusion: ivermectin was associated with a 12 percent lower risk of death, a 23 percent lower risk of mechanical ventilation, a 17 percent lower risk of hospitalization, and a 10 percent lower risk of extended ER observation or hospitalization. We have calculated that the probability that ivermectin helped the patients in the TOGETHER trial ranged from 26 percent for the median number of days to clinical recovery to 91 percent for preventing hospitalization. The TOGETHER trial’s results should be reported accurately.
Based on the clinical evidence from the 93 trials that ivermectin reduced mortality by an average of 51 percent,and on the estimated infection fatality rate of COVID-19, about 400 infected Americans aged 60-69 would need to be treated with ivermectin to statistically prevent one death in that group.The total cost of the ivermectin to prevent that one death: $40,000. (Based on the GoodRx website, a generic prescription for ivermectin is priced at approximately $40. Roughly 2.5 prescriptions would be needed per person to receive the average dose of 150 mg per patient.)
How much is your life worth? We’re betting it’s worth far more than $40,000.
When the next pandemic strikes, by necessity we’ll rely on older drugs because newer ones require years of development. Ivermectin is a repurposed drug that helps, and could have helped so much more. It deserves recognition, not disparagement. What we really need, however, is a way to inoculate ourselves against the lies and misrepresentations of powerful public figures, organizations, and drug companies. Sadly, there are no such vaccines for that contagion.
David R. Henderson is a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and a professor of economics at the Graduate School of Business and Public Policy, Naval Postgraduate School, in Monterey, California.
Charles L. Hooper is President and co-founder of Objective Insights, Inc. Prior to forming Objective Insights in 1994, Charley worked at Merck & Co., Syntex Labs, and NASA. Charley’s experience is in decision analysis, economics, product pricing, forecasting, and modeling. He is passionate about helping pharmaceutical companies think clearly about their business opportunities.
If you’ve read my energy storage report, or just the summaries of parts of it that have appeared on this blog, you have probably thought: this stuff is kind of obvious. Surely the powers that be must have thought of at least some of these issues, and there must be some kind of official position on the responses out there somewhere.
What is NREL? The Report identifies it as a private lab “operated by Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC, for the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract.” In other words, it’s an explicit advocacy group for “renewable” energy that gets infinite oodles of taxpayer money to put out advocacy pieces making it seem like the organization’s preferred schemes will work.
Make no mistake, this Report is a big piece of work. The Report identifies some 5 “lead authors,” 6 “contributing authors,” and 56 editors, contributors, commenters and others. Undoubtedly millions of your taxpayer dollars were spent producing the Report and the underlying models (which compares to the zero dollars and zero cents that the Manhattan Contrarian was paid for his energy storage report). The end product is an excellent illustration of why central planning does not work and can never work.
So now that our President has supposedly committed the country to this “100% clean electricity” thing by 2035, surely these geniuses are going to tell us exactly how that is going to be done and how much it will cost. Good luck finding that in here. From the press release:
The study . . . is an initial exploration of the transition to a 100% clean electricity power system by 2035—and helps to advance understanding of both the opportunities and challenges of achieving the ambitious goal. Overall, NREL finds multiple pathways to 100% clean electricity by 2035 that would produce significant benefits, but the exact technology mix and costs will be determined by research and development (R&D), manufacturing, and infrastructure investment decisions over the next decade.
It’s an “initial exploration.” With the country already supposedly committed to this multi-trillion dollar project on which all of our lives depend, they’re just starting to think about how to do it. “The exact technology mix and costs” — in other words, everything important — “will be determined by research and development” — in other words, remain to be invented. But don’t worry, that will all be done over the next ten years, with plenty of time then remaining to get everything deployed at scale in the three years from then to 2035.
You won’t be surprised that there is a lot of wind and solar generation in this future. How much?
To achieve those levels would require an additional 40–90 gigawatts of solar on the grid per year and 70–150 gigawatts of wind per year by the end of this decade under this modeled scenario. That’s more than four times the current annual deployment levels for each technology.
So there will be an immediate ramp-up of solar and wind deployment to four times current annual levels. No problem! But what if somebody out there objects to having tens of thousands of square miles covered with these things?
If there are challenges with siting and land use to be able to deploy this new generation capacity and associated transmission, nuclear capacity helps make up the difference and more than doubles today’s installed capacity by 2035.
Oh, we’re going to double installed nuclear capacity by 2035. Did anybody tell these people that it takes more than 13 years lead time to build a nuclear plant? At present there are exactly two nuclear plants under construction in the U.S., both at the same site in Georgia. One of them started construction in 2009, and is supposed to enter service next year. That’s 14 years from when the first shovel went in the ground, and there are no other plants anywhere near putting a shovel in the ground.
Well, let’s get to the heart of things, namely the problem of energy storage. From page xii of the Report:
The main uncertainty in reaching 100% clean electricity is the mix of technologies that achieves this target at least cost — particularly considering the need to meet peak demand periods or during periods of low wind and solar output. The analysis demonstrates the potentially important role of several technologies that have not yet been deployed at scale, including seasonal storage and several CCS-related technologies. The mix of these technologies varies significantly across the scenarios evaluated depending on technology cost and performance assumptions.
Aha! This all requires some “seasonal storage” technology that “has not yet been deployed at scale.” (There’s an understatement!). Do they even have an idea of how that might be done?
Seasonal storage is represented in the modeling by clean hydrogen-fueled combustion turbines but could also include a variety of technologies under various stages of development assuming they achieve similar costs and performance. There is significant uncertainty about seasonal storage fuel pathways, which could include synthetic natural gas and ammonia, and the use of alternative conversion technologies such as fuel cells. Other technology pathways are also discussed in the report. Regardless of technology, achieving seasonal storage on the scale envisioned in these results requires substantial development of infrastructure, including fuel storage, transportation and pipeline networks, and additional generation capacity needed to produce clean fuels.
In other words, they have no clue. They’re wildly tossing out ideas of things that have never been tried or demonstrated, let alone costed — and supposedly we’re going to have our whole energy system transitioned to this in 13 years. No surprise that the best idea they have is hydrogen — which, as I describe thoroughly in my report, is a terrible idea. And all that infrastructure they talk about for the hydrogen — none of that currently exists, or is under construction, or is even in a planning stage.
Back to the press release:
A growing body of research has demonstrated that cost-effective high-renewable power systems are possible, but costs increase as systems approach 100% carbon-free electricity, also known as the “last 10% challenge.” The increase in costs is driven largely by the seasonal mismatch between variable renewable energy generation and consumption.
I’ve got news for them: they’re going to hit the wall long before getting to 90% from renewables. Just look at Germany or El Hierro Island to see how that happens. But assume they’re right, and the wall doesn’t come until renewable penetration hits 90%. They fully admit they have no answer at that point. Again from the press release:
Still, getting from a 90% clean grid to full decarbonization could be accelerated by developing large-scale, commercialized deployment solutions for clean hydrogen and other low-carbon fuels, advanced nuclear, price-responsive demand response, carbon capture and storage, direct air capture, and advanced grid controls. These areas are ripe for continued R&D.
Notice how this “demand response” thing gets suddenly slipped in there quietly, without any definition of what it means. Here’s what it means: if the system they create doesn’t work, they reserve the right to turn off your electricity any time they want. Or to jack up the price so high that you can’t afford to use your electricity.
The Report has a big section on cost/benefit analysis, where it is confidently concluded that the benefits far outweigh the costs under any of many scenarios. This is without the storage problem being solved or a solution demonstrated, or costs remotely known.
If you have the time and inclination, you can find the full Report at the link above. I would not really recommend wasting your valuable time on this, but readers who want to add further critiques have the opportunity to do so.
Newsflash from China: the world’s last bastion of Zero Covid has finally given up the pretence. “Covid China cracks”… this is a message that seems to have penetrated even the mainstream media’s coverage.
What is not, however, entirely clear is how brave BBC reporters can travel around the world to capture footage in the Far East, but were blind to peaceful protests closer to home. Those voices of reason who have been ignored for almost three years have found the cognitive dissonance more than a little unnerving. How can it simultaneously be true that lockdown sceptic protests and protestors in UK are bad, selfish and unscientific, while lockdown sceptic protests and protestors in China are brave and pushing back against regime oppression?
Even in their dissonant apostasy, the media cheerleaders still struggle with fundamental misconceptions due to their alignment with the crumbling narrative and blindness to the obvious: “the main challenge is ensuring the inevitable uptick in infections does not lead to mass deaths” claims the BBC. Really? With almost three years of data now to hand, is it now not blindingly obvious that the UK’s Chief Scientific Officer Patrick Vallance was absolutely correct when he stated on 16 March 2020 that “this is a mild disease in most people”? If these brave reporters want to investigate ‘mass deaths’, how about some hard-hitting investigative reporting on iatrogenesis instead?
This unpalatable (and hard to ignore) charade aside, can we at least hope that this is the end of an era? Can the Zero Covid chapter be closed for good?
Let us hope so. Humanity may – finally – have rid itself of Zero Covid policies, but what of its erstwhile supporters – what new hair-brained schemes are they now supporting? Whether the chaos they were involved in creating was by accident or design is arguably immaterial: how can society protect itself against future periods of collective self-harm?
The precautionary principle “emphasises caution, pausing and review before leaping into new innovations that may prove disastrous”.
Winding back the clock almost three years, it was for this reason that many of us had a principled objection to draconian non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs, i.e. lockdowns) from before they were enacted. While this view is now fashionable, many supported these policies at the time and then did not want to back down from this shibboleth. But why was it ever acceptable to deploy this combination of hand grenades to crack a nut? Why did society go along with a perverse inversion of the anti-precautionary principle: “panic; shout ‘fire’, abandon detailed disaster planning and then implement the precise opposite, botch the implementation, shut down constructive debate and then vilify those that challenge the new orthodoxy”?
It is instructive to observe the flailing attempts by vocal proponents of Zero Covid and its associated policies (school closures, rules of six, masks, vaccine mandates) to post-rationalise and excuse their mistakes. This is where lessons will be learned (and not, incidentally, from the preposterous attempts by those who piloted the ship onto the rocks to shift blame onto others or to claim that the right decisions were made “based on all the informationavailable at the time”).
We have previously outlined clear evidence of what was common knowledge by mid-March 2020. Chief Scientific Advisor Vallance, quoted above, went on to state: “Epidemics are like a pole vaulter taking flight: the outbreak starts slowly, takes off rapidly, reaches a peak and then comes back down to earth”. No different to what had happened in previous months on the Diamond Princess, in Wuhan and in Bergamo. This was a known quantity well before the UK launched itself, lemming-like, off the cliffs on 23 March 2020.
From hereon in it was one-way traffic for much of the next two years. Dissent was essentially criminalised, and the full force of far-from-benign authoritarian state machinery was turned against its citizens. Rational discourse was squashed (why would authorities collude with the media to stifle calm voices of reason such as Professor Jay Bhattacharya and instead promote shrill panic-mongers?); the media controlled via carrot (advertising) and stick (OFCOM diktat); dissenters were made an example of. None of this was necessary, and a normally-functioning society and fourth estate could have led us quickly back to balanced rationality, avoiding much of the human cost and unnecessarily-wrought collateral damage of the Coronapanic debacle.
They might prefer us to forget, but we must not. Thankfully, public records exist that will serve as a salutary reminder to future generations of what our own home-grown Zero Covid zealots wanted to perpetrate. For example, in the dark days of February 2021, 47 MPs from Opposition parties tabled an Early Day Motion promoting Net Zero. This Motion – as well as its stated (and implicit) underlying assumptions – has not aged well, the most egregious claim being that harsher draconian measures might avoid “putting huge additional strain on the NHS” – tell that to those on the now-gargantuan waiting lists for essential treatment. Most of the 47 signatories on this Motion are Labour MPs… Labour is currently riding high in the polls. They might well now criticise the UK Government’s handling of the last few years, but it was Labour – and their union paymasters – who were consistently pushing for more and more restrictions. Voters should be careful what they wish for.
So good riddance to Zero Covid, but have we learned any lessons? Unfortunately, there is as yet little evidence to show that society has the strength to resist the siren calls of the next Zero Policy fiasco… for example, could it be that Net Zero is an unholy hysteria rather than a holy grail? We would do well to look a bit more closely before we leap into deindustrialised pauperisation.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and in the interests of protecting all that we hold dear, we can only encourage everyone to keep constructively challenging and critiquing the official narrative.
In December 1945 and January 1946, the British Mandate authorities carried out an extensive survey of Palestine, in support of the work of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine. The results were published in the Survey of Palestine, which has been scanned and made available online by Palestine Remembered; all 1300 pages can be read here.
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