With the resignation of Jacinda Ardern, my thoughts were dragged back to Covid once more. Jacinda, as Prime Minster of New Zealand was the ultimate lockdown enforcer. She was feted round the world for her iron will, but I was not a fan, to put it mildly. Whenever I heard her speak, it brought to mind one of my most favourite quotes:
‘Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.’ C.S. Lewis
At one point she actually said the following:
“We will continue to be your single source of truth” “Unless you hear it from us, it is not the truth.’
If I ruled the world, anyone who said, that, or anything remotely like that, would be taken as far as possible from any position of power, never to be allowed anywhere near it again. Ever.
Yet, there are still many who believe her to have been a great and caring leader. She certainly hugged a lot of people with that well rehearsed pained/caring expression on her face.
Enough of that particular woman. But it got me thinking about lockdowns again and the whole worldwide madness of Covid. This was a time of such blundering idiocy that I find increasingly difficult to believe it ever happened. A bad dream.
‘The sky is falling, the sky is falling…’ Cue, everyone running about in panic. People, allegedly, dropping dead on the streets. Mortuaries, allegedly, overflowing. Freezer lorries, allegedly, stacked with dead bodies. Bring out your dead!
I worked with doctors who strode around the wards in positive pressure protective gear. There were GPs who simply refused to visit elderly residents in nursing homes. On my patch this was all GPs and all nursing homes. Meanwhile I happily visited away with a mask stuck to the top of my head.
During the Covid pandemic I travelled far past angry, to reach a point of utter weariness. Instead of becoming outraged by the latest rubbish that was being pronounced, I very nearly washed my hands of it. However, after learning of Jacinda’s resignation I roused myself to have another look at what actually did happen. Or to be more specific, what was the impact of Covid on overall mortality. The only outcome that really matters.
Rid your mind of the numbers claimed to have died of Covid. The, never to be clarified distinction between those who died ‘of’ or ‘with’ Covid. Or those who read an article on Covid and then, overwhelmed with fear, stepped out in front of a bus. Thus, becoming a Covid related… associated, something, anything to do with Covid, death.
Over time the Covid figures became so ridiculous and unreliable as to become meaningless. I should know, I wrote some of the death certificates myself. Let me think… ‘She died of COVID, she died of COVID not. Eeny, meeny, miney mo…’
I am not saying that Covid did not kill a large number of people. But the fact that deaths from influenza disappeared completely for two years tells me all I need to know. ‘Roll up, roll up, Ladies and Gentlemen, to see the amazing lady influenza disappear before your very eyes.’ An astonishing trick, all the way from La La Land. ‘You expect me to believe that? Ho, ho, ho, very funny…. Oh, sorry, you actually do.’
Anyway, to clear my internal database of horribly unreliable figures, I went back to look at my favourite graphs on EuroMOMO. This website looks at overall mortality, and only overall mortality. Their data comes from countries who do know how to record deaths, honestly. Unlike some others, who shall be nameless … China.
However, the main reason to focus on EuroMOMO is that overall mortality is something you cannot fake. About the only thing you can do to manipulate the figures is hold back data for a month or two – which has been done, but not to any great degree. So, without further ado, let us move onto EuroMOMO. Below is a recent graph. I have deliberately removed most of the information you need to know what it is showing. I wanted people to avoid jumping to conclusions … that they might then find it difficult row back from.
I found myself examining this graph idly and thought. Imagine if you had no idea what you were looking at here. What would you think? It’s a squiggly line, yes. Very good, gold star. What else?
To give you a bit more detail. This is a graph of overall mortality, across a large number of European countries. All of those who provide data to the EuroMOMO database anyway. Norway, the ultimate European lockdown champion, has mysteriously disappeared from the database. Maybe they shall return …. I have begun to see everything as a conspiracy nowadays.
The graph itself begins in January 2017 and finishes in January 2023. As you can see (if not terribly clearly) there are two wavy dotted lines. These lines rise up in the winter, and then fall back down in the summer. Something seen every year. This is because, every year, more people die in the winter than in the summer.
Everyone thinks they know the reason for this winter summer effect, but I am not so sure they do. But that is an enormously complicated topic for another time.
The lower, dotted lines represent the ‘average’ mortality you would expect to see [with upper and lower ‘normal’ limits] year on year. Above those wavy dotted lines sits a solid spikey line. This represents the actual number of deaths that occurred. Not just from Covid, but from everything.
This does raise an immediate question. If we keep seeing more deaths than we would expect in the winter, year on year, then the ‘average’ number of deaths should rise? Thus, the wavy dotted lines ought to be going up and up, in the winter. But they don’t.
I am not entirely sure why this is not the case. But it is a statistical question of such mind-boggling complexity that I am, frankly, unable to answer it. I have looked into it, but I was scared off by the sheer scale and difficulty of the mathematics involved. Too many equations for my poor wee brain.
Anyway, this graph starts in the winter of 2017 and ends about now. The vertical lines are drawn at midnight on Dec 31st each year. Which means that we have almost exactly six years of data. Excellent data, not manipulated in any way. I say this because, whilst the diagnosis of ‘Covid death’ may be disputed, the diagnosis of death cannot.
What stands out? Well, there was a very sharp peak of deaths in early 2020. This, as you have probably worked out, was when Covid first hit. I find it fascinating that it was so transient. It came, it went… gone. For a bit anyway.
Was the precipitous fall due to strict lockdowns? Some will doubtless argue this. However, we all locked down again in autumn 2020 and the death rate went up, and stayed up, for about six months. Until, that is, January came along, and it all settled down again. Which follows pretty much the pattern of 2017, 2108 and 2019. And the pattern of all pandemics. They come, and they go. Some a little earlier, some a little later.
What else do you see – now that we are all pretty much fully vaccinated? I think another thing that stands out is the sudden and sharp rise in mortality in November 2022. Which is virtually identical to the spike in 2020. Strange?
However, to my mind, the thing that shouts most loudly about this graph is that the years of Covid pandemic panic really do not look that much different from the previous three years. Half close your eyes, and there is almost nothing to see. The Covid peaks were a little higher, and a little longer – maybe.
If you knew nothing about the Covid pandemic I don’t think you would exclaim. ‘My God, look at these vast waves of death in 2020, 2021. What amazing, never seen before thing, happened here?’ Yes, first spike of early 2020 was certainly sharp, and unusual, but it was short. And very little different to the spike at the end of 2022. As for the rest?
Now, I would like to turn your attention to Germany. The most populous country in Europe. Here it is even more clear that the years of the Covid pandemic are not remotely unusual. If I had removed the calendar years off this graph, you would be hard pressed to spot the Covid pandemic. In truth, you would be more than hard pressed. You couldn’t.
The 2018 influenza spike was equally dramatic to Covid peak of 2021, if not more so. [You may have noticed that there was no peak in 2020] In addition, at the end of 2022, we have the highest peak of all. Future historians might well look at this graph and ask. ‘Tell me, why did the world go mad in 2020, and remain mad through 2021? Why did everyone lockdown in March 2020, and then do nothing whatsoever in December 2022?’
It almost goes without saying that, had we locked down again in November 2022, it would have been claimed that lockdown saved us all. Look at how quickly it came, then went. Well, they could have claimed it. But we didn’t lock down again, did we? In direct contrast to Germany. What of the people living in Luxembourg?
Luxembourg is surrounded by Belgium France and Germany. People move freely from one to the other, always have done, and still do. The ‘deadly’ Covid pandemic raged all around them. Here, absolutely nothing happened. Mind you, they also seem to have been unaffected by influenza.
Whilst the Germans were dying in large numbers in 2018, the Luxembourgians carried on serenely, not an extra death to be seen. Why? Discuss. [It seems that most/all countries unaffected by Covid, were also unaffected by earlier flu epidemics].
I know some of you may be thinking that Germany is much bigger than Luxembourg so … so what? If you are going to see an effect on mortality, you are more likely to see it happen, more dramatically, and rapidly, in a country with fewer people.
I should explain that the figures on the left axis, on the German and Luxembourg graphs (unlike the first one), do not represent total deaths, they are the ‘Z score’. That is, the deviation from the mean.
The upper dotted line represents a Z score of five. That means, five standard deviations above the mean. It has been decreed that if you hit more than five standard deviations above the mean, for any length of time, this is a signal that ‘something bad’ is happening. The alarm starts goes off, and epidemiologists run around bumping into each other. ‘The sky is falling… etc.’
If you use the Z score it makes no difference how large the population is. It has been specifically designed to make it possible to compare changes in overall mortality, in populations of very different sizes. I feel the need here to make it clear that Luxembourg is not that small. It has more than twice the population of Iceland, for example.
Enough of the maths already.
So, deep breath, and trying to bring all these random thoughts together. What does EuroMOMO tell us? It tells us that Covid was a bit worse than a bad flu season, with 2018 being a good reference point. [There have been far worse flu epidemics than 2018, and I am not talking about 1918/19].
What EuroMOMO makes most clear, at least to me, is that Covid was not, repeat not, a pandemic of unique power, and destructiveness. It could have never remotely justified the drastic actions that were taken to combat it.
Belatedly, this is becoming recognised, as has the damage associated with lockdowns. Here is the abstract of an article from 2022. A bit dry, but worth a read. ‘Are Lockdowns Effective in Managing Pandemics?’
‘The present coronavirus crisis caused a major worldwide disruption which has not been experienced for decades. The lockdown-based crisis management was implemented by nearly all the countries, and studies confirming lockdown effectiveness can be found alongside the studies questioning it.
In this work, we performed a narrative review of the works studying the above effectiveness, as well as the historic experience of previous pandemics and risk-benefit analysis based on the connection of health and wealth. Our aim was to learn lessons and analyze ways to improve the management of similar events in the future.
The comparative analysis of different countries showed that the assumption of lockdowns’ effectiveness cannot be supported by evidence—neither regarding the present COVID-19 pandemic, nor regarding the 1918–1920 Spanish Flu and other less-severe pandemics in the past.
The price tag of lockdowns in terms of public health is high: by using the known connection between health and wealth, we estimate that lockdowns may claim 20 times more life years than they save. It is suggested therefore that a thorough cost-benefit analysis should be performed before imposing any lockdown for either COVID-19 or any future pandemic.’ 1
In the face of such evidence, the argument for lockdown seems to be transforming into a somewhat pathetic whinge. ‘We didn’t know. It’s all very well people saying we shouldn’t have locked down now. We didn’t hear you saying it at the time. We were just following The Science, don’t blame us. Better safe than sorry. Don’t blame us … I think you’re being very nasty to us.’
This, of course, is nonsense. There were plenty of scientists arguing against lockdown at the time. However, they were all ruthlessly censored, attacked, and silenced. Experts such as Prof. John Ioannidis, Prof. Karol Sikora, Prof. Sunetra Gupta, Prof. Carl Heneghan. These last two UK professors argued very strenuously against lockdowns. They were ignored, then vilified. Here from an article written in January 2021:
‘… Sunetra Gupta. She’s been getting flak from the mob for months but it reached a crescendo yesterday when she was on the Today programme. Why is the BBC giving space to a nutter, people asked? She isn’t a nutter, of course. She’s an infectious disease epidemiologist at Oxford University. But she bristles against the COVID consensus and that makes her a bad person, virtually a witch, in the eyes of the zealous protectors of COVID orthodoxy. Professor Gupta has written about the barrage of abuse she receives via email. ‘Evil’, they call her.’
‘… her chief crime, judging from the hysterical commentary about her, is that she is critical of harsh lockdowns. She is a founder of the Great Barrington Declaration, which proposes that instead of locking down the whole of society we should shield the elderly and the vulnerable while allowing other people to carry on pretty much as normal. It is this perfectly legitimate discussion of a social and political question — the question of lockdown — that has earned Gupta the most ire.’ 2
I would like to point out that I was arguing against lockdown, right from the very beginning. Yes, I do enjoy saying, ‘I told you so’ from time to time. It is one of the few satisfactions I get in life nowadays. Here is a section from a blog I wrote in March 2020. Once again, right from the start:
‘… However, there is also a health downside associated with our current approach. Many people are also going to suffer and die, because of the actions we are currently taking. On the BBC, a man with cancer was being interviewed. Due to the shutdown, his operation is being put back by several months – at least. Others with cancer will not be getting treatment. The level of worry and anxiety will be massive.
Hip replacements are also being postponed and other, hugely beneficial interventions are not being done. Those with heart disease and diabetes will not be treated. Elderly people, with no support, may simply die of starvation in their own homes. Jobs will be lost, companies are going bust, suicides will go up. Psychosocial stress will be immense.
In my role, working in Out of Hours, we are being asked to watch out for abuse in the home. Because we know that children will now be more at risk, trapped in their houses. Also, partners will suffer greater physical abuse, stuck in the home, unable to get out. Not much fun.
Which means that we are certainly not looking at a zero-sum game here, where every case of COVID prevented, or treated, is one less death. There is a health cost.
There is also the impact of economic damage, which can be immense. I studied what happened in Russia, following the breakup of the Soviet Union, and the economic and social chaos that ensued. There was a massive spike in premature deaths.
In men, life expectancy fell by almost seven years, over a two to three-year period. A seven-year loss of life expectancy in seventy million men, is forty-nine million QALYs worth. It is certainly a far greater health disaster than COVID can possibly create…’ 3
And lo, the damage is coming to pass. Maybe not so many people dying of starvation as I predicted, at least not in the West. In poorer countries, however …
Another terrible thing that happened during lockdown was the vilification of anyone who dared question the official narrative. Yet almost everything they predicted has come true. Have the likes of Professor Gupta been forgiven and welcomed back into the fold? Have a wild guess on that one.
What of those who deliberately whipped up the panic and led the dreadful behavioural psychology teams. They quite deliberately frothed the population into a state of terror. What of those, whose ridiculous models kicked the whole damned thing off? The Professor Neil Fergusons of this land? Yes, you.
These people are all still comfortably ensconced, advising away. Their positions fully secure. In the UK they were mostly given knighthoods, damehoods, and other shiny gongs to impress their friends with. This, I find hard to swallow.
More worrying is that there will never be an honest review on the pandemic. Why, because so many people in positions of power would be seriously threatened by it. Which means that any such review will end up as a completely bland whitewash. ‘In general the actions taken were reasonable, and in a situation where so much was unknown, it was better to try and protect the public … blah, blah.’ Case closed.
The reality is that these lockdowns were a complete disaster. A complete disaster. The fact that we will never have a proper debate about them, means that we will learn nothing from what happened. This, in turn, means that another disaster is on the way. Those who should be listened to will be attacked, silenced and censored, again.
Those who got it all horribly wrong last time will be handed even greater powers … next time. The reason why lockdowns did not work, they will argue, is because they were not strict enough, or long enough. We need proper lockdowns next time. You have been warned. Cast your eyes over China.
I will leave you with the conclusion of the paper ‘Are lockdowns effective in managing pandemics?’
Neither previous pandemics nor COVID19 provide clear evidence that lockdowns help to prevent death in pandemic
Lockdowns are associated with a considerable human cost. Even if somewhat effective in preventing COVID19 death, they probably cause far more extensive (an order of magnitude or more) loss of life
A thorough risk-benefit analysis must be performed before imposing any lockdown in future.
Which can probably be summed in in the words: Primum non nocere. First, do no harm.
The central guiding principle of medicine that was hurled out of the window in March 2020 by people who seem not to exhibit a scrap of humility, or humanity. Nor apology.
Mark Kerry was a healthy 48 year-old from Worcestershire, a father of three, grandfather of two and a loving husband to his wife Melanie. Together with Melanie, Mark loved life and lived it to the full, they socialised with friends every weekend, loved to travel and loved holidays.
Mark and Melanie run mobile home parks and were heavily impacted in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. With the mobile home business being a mixture of residential and holidays, the holiday side was halted when lockdown and heavy restrictions were enforced. As with millions of people worldwide, they found themselves spending most of their time at home.
Like most of us, Mark was eager to get life back to some form of normality and, knowing the business was suffering and being self-employed, the quicker the better.
In late 2020, nine months into the COVID-19 pandemic, it was announced that a Covid vaccine had been approved and was being rolled out to stop the spread of the virus and save lives, ready for use in December 2020.
This was exciting news for Mark and Melanie. Their lives and their business had been placed on hold for far too long and they were ready and eager to resume their lives as they were pre-pandemic; the vaccine was the way out. Mark waited patiently for his turn to have his first jab. While waiting, the media was full of stories of how wonderful these vaccines were and that everyone absolutely must get this vaccine. It was suggested if you don’t get the vaccine you are being selfish. The Prime Minister and Cabinet ministers were telling the public daily on TV that everyone must have it, as well as every news channel and road signs everywhere saying the same. GPs were sending letters, flyers were coming through the door, doctors were all over the TV, with some doctors even suggesting the AstraZeneca vaccine was 100% safe and effective. This of course was what we were all hoping for and most of the population believed.
Finally it was Marks turn to have his vaccine. On March 2nd 2021 Mark had his first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Initially everything was fine and Mark seemed to escape the mild flu-like side-effects and aching arm that people were talking about. That was until the evening of March 15th 2021 when Mark had a headache and noticed blood in his urine. Melanie called 111 and they sent them to Worcester hospital. When the doctor examined Mark he noticed that Mark had a rash on his legs and admitted him straight away. Over the next day Mark’s headache got worse and, following some blood tests, it was revealed that Mark’s platelet count was at a very low rate of 14; normal levels would read between 150 and 450, so this in itself was alarming. On top of that results from a brain scan revealed a blood clot on Marks brain known as Cerebral Venous Sinus Thrombosis (CVST).
CVST is a type of rare blood clot that forms in the venous sinuses in your brain. This is a system of veins found between the layers of the dura mater – the tough outer layer of your brain that lies directly under your skull.
The clot can block the blood in your brain from draining out toward your heart. When this happens, blood cells may break from the pressure, cross the blood-brain barrier and seep into nearby brain tissue. This can cause a haemorrhage, a type of stroke that stems from internal bleeding. CVST can be life-threatening. You need immediate medical attention.
Very quickly the doctors informed Mark and Melanie that they thought it was a reaction to the vaccine. The next day, on March 17th 2021, Mark was getting worse and lost some of the use in his left leg and arm. Another scan was ordered and this revealed the clot was growing. Melanie realised how poorly Mark was. This was extremely distressing as due to the COVID-19 restrictions Melanie was unable to be on the ward with Mark. The nurses brought Mark into the corridor of the hospital in a wheelchair to see her. They told each other how much they loved each other and Mark told Melanie to tell their children how much he loved them. The nurses told Melanie they would get a side room ready for when Melanie came back in the evening so she could stay the night by Mark’s side.
That evening, before Melanie got back to the hospital, the hospital rang to say Mark had deteriorated and was now having seizures. He had also gone into cardiac arrest, and they made the decision to put Mark in an induced coma and on a ventilator. Melanie rushed to the hospital along with family members. They let her and their three children, Mark, Robert and Nicole wait in the corridor to say goodbye to Mark before they moved him to Birmingham Queen Elizabeth hospital. He was in an induced coma and they were told to expect the worst. On March 18th 2021, the hospital told the family that scans were showing Mark had a bleed on the brain and even if he survived there would likely be significant damage and not to expect Mark to walk out of the hospital. Mark’s family couldn’t just leave him and go home so they stayed in their cars outside the hospital all week, but still unable to see Mark due to the COVID-19 restrictions.
The hospital called the family in the afternoon and told them they couldn’t control the seizures and they wouldn’t stop so they needed to perform a thrombectomy to remove the clot. Melanie and the family were devastated and were desperate to see Mark. Melanie was told she could see him before they did the procedure but sadly when she got to the intensive care unit doors, despite Melanie crying and begging, the doctors wouldn’t let her in and she was just told to wait to hear from them.
Fortunately, the thrombectomy went well and Mark survived the procedure. He was then left to rest for a few days. After a few days the medical team couldn’t wake Mark successfully so on March 25th they put in a tracheostomy and on March 26th Mark finally woke. However it wasn’t until April 3rd, when they took the tracheostomy out, that Melanie and the family could finally talk to him on the phone. Mark had lost a lot of use of his left arm and leg, but over the coming days thankfully a lot of this returned. Mark was finally discharged from hospital on April 9th 2021, 26 days after being admitted. Against the odds, Mark proved the doctors wrong and walked out of the hospital, albeit loaded with several medications and a long road ahead.
Once home, Mark had to do a lot of therapy. He has now made a good recovery, considering what was expected. However his three fingers on his left hand are not really working and he still suffers with debilitating side effects. But both Mark and Melanie feel they are very lucky that he survived and thank the doctors and nurses for saving his life.
Even though when in hospital Mark was told that the AstraZeneca vaccine caused the CVST, it wasn’t until sometime after he left the hospital that they fully understood what the cause was. It was explained that Mark was diagnosed with Vaccine induced Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia (VITT).
VITT is diagnosed by having all five of the following:
Onset of symptoms five to 30 days after vaccination against COVID-19.
Presence of thrombosis (blood clots)
Thrombocytopenia (platelet count under 150)
D-Dimer level over 4000
Positive anti-PF4 antibodies on ELISA
Mark had all of these, so his diagnosis was confirmed as VITT induced by the AstraZeneca vaccine. There are approximately 444 confirmed cases of VITT in the U.K. and sadly 81 deaths. However, this number is likely to be much higher as thousands of people who suffered blood clots were not given the relevant tests to detect VITT.
To this day, Mark’s PF4 antibodies are still testing positive, so he is still on the same blood-thinning tablets and blood pressure tablets as he came home from hospital with. He now has blood tests every four weeks. As VITT is a newly identified disease there are uncertainties around the decisions on stopping blood-thinning medications and it is still uncertain what it means when PF4 antibodies are still testing positive. Also, Mark’s latest scan revealed the blood on his brain has not dispersed and he still takes 3000mg of levetiracetam a day to prevent seizures, the same amount he came home from hospital with. The doctor has said with time this will be reduced but he will remain on them for the rest of his life.
Since being discharged from hospital Mark has had to go back in: his platelet levels dropped again and he needed an immunoglobulin infusion (IVIg), which made him feel so poorly he needed to go back yet again. It is now almost two years later but Mark still suffers and his life has been hugely affected. He remains extremely weak and tired; he suffers from debilitating fatigue and has daily headaches. Melanie lovingly explains he really doesn’t complain, saying he is marvellous and they know he is so lucky to be alive.
Following almost two years of living in a nightmare, Mark and Melanie are now trying desperately to return to as much normality as possible. They are self-employed and work together so have been impacted hugely, emotionally and financially. Mark is trying to do as much as he can possibly manage.
They applied to the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme (VDPS) in April 2021. They really didn’t get much feedback for months. In June 2022, over a year later, they were told that Mark’s claim had been sent to the medical assessors. The medical assessors are the decisionmakers and assessed Mark’s claim solely on his medical notes that were requested early on; no personal assessment would be carried out and no up-to-date medical records would be requested, so the assessment is not based on any ongoing symptoms or any disabilities that have occurred as a result of VITT.
On December 23rd 2022, Melanie and Mark received an email saying a letter had been sent with the medical assessors’ decision. Melanie asked if the decision could be emailed and on December 29th 2022 that email arrived. It said that the medical assessors accepted causation – that the vaccine had caused Mark’s illness – but did not accept that Mark had reached the 60% disablement that is required to be eligible for an award. They only took into consideration Mark’s hand; they didn’t even mention all the medication he needs to prevent seizures, now or in the future, or take into account how Mark’s life has been impacted by fatigue and daily headaches.
So after two years of living in this nightmare, a future that has now been dramatically altered, no help will be offered by our Government – the same Government that spoke on TV daily throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and the months to follow, telling us all that we must have the vaccine to stop the spread and to save lives. The same Government that told us all that the vaccine was safe and effective. The same Government that prevented us from travelling if we weren’t fully vaccinated. And the same Government that told us we were selfish if we didn’t have the vaccine. Mark had done what was asked of him by our Government, and now Mark and Melanie will have to live with that decision and the consequences for the rest of their lives. Any help from our Government has now been rejected.
Mark and Melanie, who are members of VIBUK, will now be asking for a mandatory reconsideration and will be supplying further evidence which was not requested by the VDPS. If this fails then it will go to a tribunal. But one thing is for sure, none of us are giving up and VIBUK will continue to fight and campaign for a reform of the current VDPS which we all agree is unfit for purpose.
The latest VDPS figures show, as of January 10th 2023, there were 491 VDPS claims rejected and only 33 awarded – a success rate of just 6%. Thousands more are still waiting for their decisions, and with the percentage of claims being rejected so high it is expected that there will be many more disappointments in the coming weeks.
This is extremely upsetting for many who are injured, who can no longer live the lives they had pre-vaccine and also for the families of the bereaved. The financial impact is enormous and many claimants and families are desperate for financial help; the VDPS was a lifeline that has now, in more than 90% of cases to date, been taken away.
Many can no longer work due to the injuries caused by the vaccine and many families have been hugely impacted financially and emotionally by the loss of a loved one. Lots of these families have been told they are not eligible for a payment by our Government, some because the medical assessors believed on the balance of probability the vaccine was not the cause of the injuries or death and some because the assessors believed the claimant is not injured enough, that they do not reach the 60% threshold required to be eligible for an award. Some of those rejected on the 60% threshold but accepted on causation, such as Mark, have a range of shocking injuries that vary from brain damage, blindness, permanent seizures, loss of feeling in limbs, loss of mobility, neurological issues, debilitating fatigue and damage to internal organs including serious heart conditions, plus many more. But the medical assessors have based their decisions on their own opinions, ignoring the opinions of the specialist consultants such as neurologists and haematologists. Many of those rejected will now be appealing and asking for a mandatory reconsideration.
Claire Hibbs, who was injured by the AstraZeneca vaccine, is part of Vaccine Injured and Bereaved U.K. (VIBUK), a group of individuals injured or bereaved by the Covid vaccines (with medical or coroners’ reports confirming this) campaigning for a change to the current Government vaccine damage payment scheme (VDPS) to create a bespoke COVID-19 compensation scheme that ensures the adversely affected are appropriately compensated and supported. They also want people similarly affected by the vaccines to know that help is available and for their stories to be heard and not ignored. VIBUK can be found on Twitter and contacted here.
It seems that the Thai Royal family had a Princess who was a good global citizen. She took 3/three of the Pfizer shots. She went into a coma a while back.
The Thai Royal family was/is very distressed. Investigations were ordered.
The distress of the Royals was increased by the reports coming back from their investigators. It seems that Pfizer, apparently, did NO safety studies on this shot. Shortly thereafter, Thailand cancels the covid contracts with Pfizer on the basis of fraud.
As may be expected, all this has taken weeks. The investigators are still at work as this is a giant, global scam/fraud with many threads to trace back to sources.
People known to me for decades are living as ex-pat Americans in Thailand. Two of them are outstanding, though now ‘retired’ into a different life, investigators. One worked for over 30 years as a US Naval officer, the last 15 of which were involved in criminal fraud cases. The other was an investigator for the Washington State Patrol, again, Criminal investigations.
Both are in resident in Bangkok these last few years. My ex-Navy friend is a serious linguist, concentrating on 7 Asian languages. That’s how I know him.
Rumors:
They have revealed to me that several, different, sources, are reporting to them, that ‘something’, a really big ‘something’, is disturbing the Bangkok ‘underworld’. My guys have contact with it through a couple of martial arts dojos. Both are hearing the same rumors, ‘disturbance in the force’ kind of rumors.
The rumor to NOT listen to says that ‘assassins’ are being ‘recruited’ out of very deep holes in the martial arts world.
Me? I would NOT want to have this logo on my letterhead as an executive:
As the trans-Atlantic world is pulled into the vortex of a McCarthyite nightmare with a renewed wave of anti-Russian and now anti-China hysterics, a wave of new “Asia Pacific” doctrines have emerged across captured states… I mean “member” states throughout NATO.
Starting with the February 2022 American ‘Indo-Pacific Strategy’, similar anti-China programs have popped up left and right with one principled target in mind: eliminate the threat of China through every tool available.
By early June 2022, the UK announced its own branding of the Asia Pivot remixed into the oddly named ‘Indo-Pacific Tilt’ which focuses less on the liberal eco-friendly language of the EU and devotes itself entirely to vastly increasing its military presence in China’s backyard.
After NATO’s June 2022 Madrid Summit officially designated China as ‘a systemic rival’, Canada’s foreign ministry announced its own Indo-Pacific Strategy in November 2022 followed by an absurd 26 page program published in January 10, 2023 outlining the details of Canada’s new role in the Pacific (which will be the subject of a subsequent report).
On January 25, 2023 NATO’s ironically named ‘Science for Peace and Security Program’ launched a new ‘cooperative initiative on the Indo-Pacific, followed by a January 30, 2023 Atlantic Council Indo-Pacific Security Initiative focused on dealing with “China’s growing threat to the international order”. The same day the Atlantic Council unveiled this new doctrine, an American intelligence spook named Markus Garlauskas was named the program’s new director.
While efforts have been made to avoid using an explicitly militaristic language within the majority of the seemingly unconnected reports outlined above, the fact is that what is emerging is a mutation of Obama’s toxic ‘Asia Pivot’. Unlike the small kinetic wars against non-nuclear states like Iraq or Libya, this new war plan against China is a diverse hodgepodge of every single tool of asymmetrical war launched all at once and targeting not only China, but more importantly China’s weaker neighbors. Besides the obvious conventional military and color revolutionary techniques which I’ve written about extensively in other locations, this new era of Indo-Pacific Strategies rely upon:
1- Seducing Asian neighbors into trade deals, economic partnerships, and military partnerships with the Trans Atlantic community which pull them out of China’s orbit
2- Coerce China’s neighbors into military agreements with the U.S., Canada, the EU and especially the absurd ‘Global NATO’ advocated by Jens Stoltenberg and his think tank clones in Brussels and Washington.
3- Promote an anti-Chinese human rights consensus to justify endless sanctions on Beijing for imagined abuses of Tibetans, forced labor of Uyghurs and tyrannized Hong Kongers.
4- Induce as many nations in the Anglo-American sphere of influence to cut themselves off of business with China or Chinese state firms in order to defend the rules based order
5- Build an anti-development cage around China and its neighboring regions under the guise of ‘ecosystems management’, ‘green finance’, ‘decarbonization’ and ‘ocean conservation’
6- Construct new trade alliances in the Pacific to counteract both China’s maritime Silk Road and also the China-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) with an ambiguously titled U.S.-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF)
Since the architects of this agenda are not known for their commitment to reality, the objectives also include a fair amount of tools that aren’t available but are imagined to be so.
Chief among the list of imaginary tools to subdue China, we find the incredible economic power of the mighty U.S. dollar whose business everyone in the world is believed to desperately desire.
Take the example of some champions of the anti-China program writing at The Hill who criticized IPEF not for being delusional- but rather not for being delusional enough saying: “The IPEF neglects one of the secrets of U.S. success in Asia- access to U.S. markets. It was this lure and a U.S. regional security umbrella that fostered the economic miracles of Japan and South Korea after World War II and later Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and China itself”.
Ignoring the fact that the once viable U.S. economy of the post-WWII decades has become a hollowed out shell of de-industrialized rot replaced with a cancerous speculative bubble economy, the authors of the article cited above exhibit a complete ignorance to the reality that the only insecurity shaking the foundations of the Asia Pacific is caused by the belligerent antagonisms of an insecure dumb giant overcompensating for its own mediocrity and impending collapse.
Even if one disregards my remarks about China’s program as “romantic idealism” and instead consider only the basic self-interest of anyone doing business with China, the basic economic facts of China’s trade relationship with its neighbors should cause anyone with half a brain to recognize where Asian-Pacific nations see as the principled force of their present and future prosperity.
Take the case of the U.S. military colony of Japan, which saw China consume over 20% of her trade exports in 2020, surpassing the USA and which increased from $146 billion to $206 billion in 2021. Despite being run by synthetic puppets clamoring for antagonism with China, Japan much more dependent on China economically than any other nation, including the USA.
Or take South Korea – another candidate for the Pacific NATO and second largest military colony of the Pacific behind Japan, whose largest trading partner is China running up to the tune of $240 billion between 2016-2021 (contrasted with a mere $131 billion with the USA over that same period). Without China, South Korea’s economy literally falls to pieces.
Despite the fact that the USA is desperately trying to intimidate nations of Asia to partner up with itself in opposition to China, Beijing’s trade with all 10 ASEAN nations rose by an incredible 71% over last year and grew 41% with India – both of whom share common interests with Russia, Iran, Africa and the broader multipolar alliance.
The European Union has conducted its fair share of blood-letting under Anglo American pressure over the past year.
First by slashing access to cheap and abundant Russian oil and natural gas, but then by freezing a long-awaited EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investments in May 2021 after China counter sanctioned five European parliamentarians for using CIA-propaganda to justify a sanction regime onto China over alleged abuses of Uyghurs. The freezing of this deal was followed Brussel’s decision to begin imposing tariffs onto Chinese aluminum and by Germany’s cancelling of a Chinese purchase of a chip manufacturer and blocking of China’s purchase of an un-named construction firm. As of January 30, Thierry Breton, European Commissioner for International Markets attested to the EU’s devotion “to the goal of choking China’s semiconductor industry” and went on to say “We fully agree with the objective of depriving China of the most advanced chips. We cannot allow China to access the most advanced technologies”.
Despite these ugly facts, the fact remains that the EU is still (and will continue to be) completely reliant upon trade with Beijing which is still by far the EU’s #1 trade partner. Not only is China the biggest source of exports to the EU (making up 22% of exports in 2021 and whose bilateral trade amounted to $711 billion during the first 10 months of 2022), but the EU is also dependent upon rare earth metals controlled by China (which controls nearly 90% of global supplies). It should be noted that before the USA announced its Indo-Pacific Strategy in February 2022, the EU had already made its own intentions clear to launch its ‘EU Strategy for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific’ in September 2021 except with the important difference that China was not targeted as a rival or ‘systemic disrupter’ but rather as a partner in cooperation. This spirit of cooperation was obviously intolerable to an oligarchy seeking to set the stage for a new dark age.
Not that this obvious fact should need to be stated, trade with Russia, the Russian-led EAEU, the African Union, Southwest Asia, Central Asia, Gulf States and CELAC nations has also increased in leaps and bounds this year showing no signs of reversal.
I’ve stated this before, and I’ll say it again: China, Russia and every other nation sitting on the other side of the trans-Atlantic gated community are extremely aware of the precarious time bomb that is the Wall Street-City of London bubble banking system.
While synthetic shells might currently be sitting in positions of management within the capitals of Germany, France, Japan, Taiwan and other abused sacrificial states, the vast majority of the people, business class and intelligentsia knows that the script that celebrated a new world order and ‘end of history’ in 1992 no longer applies to the Eurasian-led world.
Barring a mindlessly desperate unleashing of nuclear warheads in the short term, the very fact of the real centers of gravity caused by the pro-growth, human-centric priorities of Eurasia led by China’s evolving Belt and Road initiative ensure that the storms which WILL befall the western world will not be everlasting nor will the dark abyss caused by the meltdown of the banking system be something which cannot be replaced by a viable economic and security architecture more befitting the human species.
Remember how it was all just a fear-porn story designed to discourage people from eating real food, drive up the price of poultry and eggs and sell more vaccines?
Bird flu has jumped to mammals in the UK – so how worried should humans be?
Yes, the experts are back and they have more “warnings”. But don’t worry “It’s not that alarming”… yet. Although clearly someone at the New York Times didn’t get the “don’t be alarmist” memo, because they went with…
An Even Deadlier Pandemic Could Soon Be Here
Anyway, the story is that scientists have found bird flu in otters, bears, dolphins and foxes in the last year. And that means it could potentially jump to humans.
Because the order goes otters->bears->dolphins->foxes->people. That’s like biology 101.
Seriously though, what makes this story nonsense is the only reason they found this virus is that they were looking for it. After last year’s “scare” they have increased screening…using PCR tests.
PCR tests which don’t diagnose disease, don’t reliably work and can find basically anything basically anywhere. You know the arguments.
Essentially, now, all that needs to happen is some nature reserve sends a sample of (dead?) otter to a government lab, the lab runs “routine bird flu screening”… and finds it. Becuase of course it does.
Just like that Bird flu can jump from birds to otters to foxes to dolphins.
… like how “Covid” jumped from bats to people to goats to guavas to motor oil. Remmeber?
But what’s the next step?
Well, testing people of course, since we know it can infect mammals now.
And, like clockwork, cue the “experts” in the Guardian saying [emphasis added]:
scientists warn there is a possibility that bird flu viruses could change and gain the ability to spread easily between people. Monitoring for human infection is extremely important
And – just like Covid – if they start testing everyone for bird flu, they will find it.
But, apparently, the already-approved vaccines aren’t good enough. Just ask the New York Times…
Perhaps the best news is that we have several H5N1 vaccines already approved by the Food and Drug Administration whose safety and immune response have been studied… The current plan is to mass-produce them if and when such an outbreak occurs, based on the particular variant involved […] Worryingly, all but one of the approved vaccines are produced by incubating each dose in an egg.
Good news though, there’s a solution on the way. An mRNA-based solution…
The mRNA-based platforms used to make two of the Covid vaccines also don’t depend on eggs […] those vaccines can be mass-produced faster, in as little as three months. There are currently no approved mRNA vaccines for influenza, but efforts to make one should be expedited.
The American military industrial complex was stunned and embarrassed by the rapid fall of its puppet government in Saigon in 1975. The CIA faced budget cuts and sought a new conflict to justify its size and spending. Portugal had just freed its colonies so there were power struggles in nations such as Angola. The American public was not told that the CIA had begun shipping arms to Angola and hiring mercenaries to fight there. Once news reports about CIA involvement appeared, the effort was spun as a fight against evil communists.
“We call upon the Charity Commission to conduct an independent and urgent investigation into these very serious allegations relating to the British Heart Foundation.”
Joint Open Letter from Doctors for Patients UK, HART and the UK Medical Freedom Alliance to Helen Stephenson, CEO, Charity Commission
Cc: Dr Charmaine Griffiths, CEO, British Heart Foundation (BHF)
Prof Charalambos Antoniades, BHF Chair of Cardiovascular Medicine
Rt Hon Rishi Sunak, Prime Minister
Rt Hon Steve Barclay, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
Mr Andrew Bridgen, MP
Re: Allegations that the British Heart Foundation (BHF) is involved in concealing and withholding important information relating to harms to cardiac function caused by the novel mRNA vaccines
31 January 2023
Dear Ms Stephenson
We wish to express our deep concern, regarding allegations that the British Heart Foundation (BHF) is involved in concealing and withholding important information relating to the potential of the novel mRNA vaccines to damage cardiac tissue and function.
It was alleged in the House of Commons that staff working in a cardiology research department at Oxford University withheld information, for fear of losing funding from the pharmaceutical industry, and were therefore prioritising funding over patient safety.
Mr Andrew Bridgen MP stated in Parliament on 13 December 2022:
“It has also been brought to my attention by a whistleblower from a very reliable source that one of these institutions is covering up clear data that reveals that the mRNA vaccine increases inflammation of the heart arteries. It is covering this up for fear that it may lose funding from the pharmaceutical industry. The lead of that cardiology research department has a prominent leadership role with the British Heart Foundation, and I am disappointed to say that he has sent out non-disclosure agreements to his research team to ensure that this important data never sees the light of day. That is an absolute disgrace.”
It was subsequently asserted on GB News that the research department mentioned above was headed by Professor Charalambos Antoniades whose position is funded by the BHF. Despite GB News approaching Professor Antoniades for comment, he has made no public denial that Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) were entered into by members of his department.
Doctors and the public rely on reputable and well-established charities such as the BHF to provide accurate and up-to-date information, as well as to highlight and investigate potential, novel causes of heart damage and heart disease. Concerns should be raised immediately, whenever there are doubts relating to the safety of any pharmaceutical product, so that administration of the product can be halted, protecting the public from unnecessary harm, while an investigation is carried out.
The BHF rapidly dismissed the allegations made by Mr Bridgen and called for those making the allegation to provide specific and credible information in support of it.
Due to the seriousness of the allegations, and given the absence of any public denial or clarification from Professor Antoniades, we are calling for a full and independent investigation into any suppression of data by the British Heart Foundation itself or by senior BHF grant holders.
There are a significant number of signals that COVID-19 vaccines have led to cardiac pathology, which warrants an urgent review of their safety:
The Pfizer trial saw four cardiac arrests in the vaccination group but only one in the placebo group after 6 months (although the numbers are too small to be statistically significant, this was a signal that should have been followed up).
The evidence for vaccine-induced myocarditis is well established and in older patients this may be misdiagnosed as any of the more common forms of heart disease. The rate of myocardial infarction was disproportionately high in the first three days after vaccination.
Studies in Thailand and Switzerland have shown rises in troponin levels consistent with damaged heart muscle in 3% of those vaccinated. Heart cells cannot be replaced and the resulting scarring can lead to electrical conduction issues and sudden death. 30% of the children in the Thailand study had cardiac signs or symptoms.
Vaccine-derived spike protein was detected in the heart biopsies of 9 out of 15 patients with post-vaccination myocarditis.
Vaccinated people had a rise in cardiovascular risk factors that would predict a significantly increased risk of heart disease (from 11% to 25% risk of a heart attack in 5 years). This study has been criticised for not having a control group but is the equivalent of an early phase clinical trial in demonstrating a safety concern.
An Israeli study showed a 25% increase in acute coronary syndrome and cardiac arrest calls in 16-39 year olds associated with the first and second doses of vaccine but not with COVID-19 infection.
There were 14,000 more cardiac arrest calls to ambulances in England in 2021 than 2020.
There has been a rise in cardiac excess deaths and excess deaths have been disproportionately seen in more highly vaccinated groups e.g. less deprived cohorts and people of white ethnicity.
In a report of 35 autopsies in Germany, there were 5 deaths confirmed as caused by a COVID-19 vaccine and a further 20 deaths where a contribution from the vaccination could not be excluded.
Post mortem studies have shown inflammation of the coronary arteries after vaccination, causing death four months later.
A separate post mortem report showed vaccine-derived spike protein in heart muscle, in the absence of COVID-19 infection, in a subject who had myocarditis before he died.
Australian hospitals have experienced intense service pressure since Summer 2021, despite no significant COVID-19 infection rates or reduction in healthcare capacity at that time.
Australians have seen a similarly timed rise in excess non-Covid deaths, with ischaemic heart disease being the biggest contributor. This was despite no significant volume of COVID-19 cases or reduction in healthcare before Omicron as was seen in the UK.
Systematic exploratory analysis of the possible causes in the rise in excess deaths by comparing countries, suggests a link to healthcare quality cannot be excluded but there is no link to COVID-19 or Long Covid. There is a weak link to lockdown severity but a strong correlation with vaccination.
Crucially, data has not been shared to counter the hypothesis that the mRNA vaccinations are linked to recent excess deaths caused primarily by cardiac pathology. The ONS were regularly publishing deaths by vaccination status. The last data was released for May 2022 and showed a higher mortality rate for that month in the vaccinated. No data has been shared since.
As medical professionals, and in the interest of patient safety, we demand that the British Heart Foundation immediately release the following information, in the public interest and in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA):
Any and all information and emails regarding potential and actual harms caused by the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.
A copy of any Non-Disclosure Agreements that have been sent to people working at, or associated with, the British Heart Foundation and Oxford University, relating to COVID-19 vaccine safety and data.
A full list of conflicts of interests that the BHF and Oxford University have relating to the COVID-19 vaccines.
We further call upon the Charity Commission to conduct an independent and urgent investigation into these very serious allegations relating to the British Heart Foundation. Suppression of research findings, conflicts of interest and acting in the interests of commercial entities are in direct conflict with the requirements inherent in holding charitable status.
Thank you for your attention. We look forward to receiving a prompt response.
Professor Richard Ennos, MA, PhD. Honorary Professorial Fellow, University of Edinburgh
Professor John A Fairclough, BM BS, BMed Sci, FRCS, FFSEM(UK), Professor Emeritus, Honorary
Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon
Professor Dennis McGonagle,PhD, FRCPI, Consultant Rheumatologist, University of Leeds
Professor Anthony Fryer, PhD, FRCPath, Professor of Clinical Biochemistry, Keele University
Professor Karol Sikora, MA, MBBChir, PhD, FRCR, FRCP, FFPM, Honorary Professor of Professional Practice, Buckingham University
Professor Angus Dalgleish, MD, FRCP, FRACP, FRCPath, FMedSci, Professor of Oncology, University of London; Principal, Institute for Cancer Vaccines & Immunotherapy
Professor Roger Watson, FRCP Edin, FRCN, FAAN, Professor of Nursing
Lord Moonie, MBChB, MRCPsych, MFCM, MSc, retired member of House of Lords, former Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State 2001-2003, former Consultant in Public Health Medicine
Dr Najmiah K Ahmad, BM, MRCA, FCARCSI, Consultant Anaesthetist
Dr Ali Ajaz, Consultant Psychiatrist
Dr Shiraz Akram, BDS, Dental Surgeon
Dr Sonia Allam, MBChB, FRCA, Consultant Anaesthetist
Dr Victoria Anderson, MBChB, MRCGP, MRCPCH, DRCOG, General Practitioner
Julie Annakin, RN, Immunisation Specialist Nurse
Wendy Armstrong, RN, BSc, DipHE, Practice Nurse
Dr Abby Astle, MBBChir, BA(Cantab), DCH, DGM, MRCGP, GP Principal, GP Trainer, GP Examiner
Dr Jonathan Eastwood, BSc, MBChB, MRCGP, General Practitioner
Dr Jonathan Engler, MBChB, LlB(Hons), DipPharmMed
Dr Elizabeth Evans, MA(Cantab), MBBS, DRCOG, retired Doctor, Director UKMFA
Dr Chris Exley, PhD, FRSB, retired Professor in Bioinorganic Chemistry
Dr John Flack, BPharm, PhD, retired Director of Safety Evaluation at Beecham Pharmaceuticals 1980-1989 and Senior Vice-president for Drug Discovery 1990-92 SmithKline Beecham
Dr Simon Fox, BSc, BMBCh, FRCP, Consultant in Infectious Diseases and Internal Medicine
Gayle Gerry, BSc(Hons), Registered Nurse
Sophie Gidet, RM, Midwife
Dr Cathy Greig, MBBCh(Hons), General Practitioner
Dr Ali Haggett, Mental Health Community Work, 3rd sector, former Lecturer in the History of Medicine
Mr Anthony Hinton, MBChB, FRCS, Consultant ENT Surgeon, London
Ian Humphreys, UKMFA Programme Director
Dr Keith Johnson, BA, DPhil(Oxon), IP Consultant for Diagnostic Testing
Dr C Geoffrey Maidment, MD, FRCP, retired Consultant Physician
Mr Ahmad K Malik, FRCS(Tr & Orth), Dip Med Sport, Consultant Trauma & Orthopaedic Surgeon
Dr Ayiesha Malik, MBChB, General Practitioner
Dr Imran Malik, MBBS, MRCP, MRCGP, General Practitioner
Dr Kulvinder S Manik. MBChB, MRCGP(2010), MA(Cantab), LlM(Gray’s Inn)
Dr Fiona Martindale, MBChB, MRCGP, General Practitioner
Dr Sam McBride, BSc(Hons) Medical Microbiology & Immunobiology, MBBCh, BAO, MSc in Clinical Gerontology, MRCP(UK), FRCEM, FRCP(Edinburgh), NHS Emergency Medicine & Geriatrics
Kaira McCallum, BSc, retired Pharmacist, Director of Strategy UKMFA
Mr Ian McDermott, MBBS, MS, FRCS(Tr&Orth), FFSEM(UK), Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon
Dr Scott Mitchell, MBChB, MRCS, Emergency Medicine Physician
Dr Alistair Montgomery, MBChB, MRCGP, DRCOG, retired General Practitioner
Dr Alan Mordue, MBChB, FFPH, retired Consultant in Public Health Medicine & Epidemiology
Dr David Morris, MBChB, MRCP(UK), General Practitioner
Margaret Moss, MA(Cantab), CBiol, MRSB, Director, The Nutrition and Allergy Clinic, Cheshire
Theresa Ann Mounsey, BSc Hons in Midwifery studies.
Dr Alice Murkies, MBBS, MD, FRACGP, General Practitioner and Medical Researcher
Dr Greta Mushet, MBChB, MRCPsych, retired Consultant Psychiatrist in Psychotherapy
Dr Angela Musso, MD, MRCGP, DRCOG, FRACGP, MFPC, General Practitioner
Dr Sarah Myhill, MBBS, Dip NM, Retired GP, Independent Naturopathic Physician
Dr Christopher Newton, PhD, Biochemist, CIMMBER
Dr Rachel Nicoll, PhD, Medical researcher
Tim Nike, BSc(Hons), MCSP, HCPC, Senior Neurological Physiotherapist
Dr Richard O’Shea, MBBCH, BA(Hons) MRCGP, General Practitioner
We genuinely urge doctors involved with medical regulation not to go down with the sinking ship of authoritarian censorship and suppression of intellectual freedom. Not only is this behaviour historically illiterate and intellectually feeble, it is putting the safety of patients at risk, causing hazards to public health, runs counter to our community standards of a liberal democracy, and sits in conflict with the societal benefits of intellectual freedom that have recently been stated by the High Court of Australia.
When has there been a society that prospers because people are cancelled, removed, or ‘disappeared’ from their vital work because they dared to disagree with the ‘regime’s unquestionable truth?’ Do our modern medical authoritarians want to be looked back on with the same pathetic disdain with which we judge similar historical despots?
In this article we present two rays of hope in the context that the tide is changing. Firstly, for those doctors who genuinely want to have an open expression of ideas, there is a High Court precedent about the benefits to society of intellectual freedom where professional views asserted in the context of intellectual freedom can be expressed forcefully even if they cause offence, embarrassment, or lack of trust.
Secondly, for those doctors who continue to persecute other doctors for participating in the act of intellectual freedom, accumulated medical, ethical and legal information – we believe this warrants consideration that those doctors involved with AHPRA and the Medical Board of Australia themselves have their licenses suspended as they potentially pose a danger to the public’s health, in our opinion.
Go forth and be confident in the concept of intellectual freedom
Recent controversy has surrounded the sanctioning, by regulatory authorities, of doctors for publicly expressing views on elements of the Covid pandemic. Doctors have been punished because they sought to bring critical (if not ideologically uncomfortable) medical information to the public’s awareness.
This controversy is fundamentally about the limits of intellectual freedom doctors have within the constraints of general, and often highly subjective, Codes of Conduct that doctors must adhere to. In this context, a recent unanimous High Court of Australia judgment gives an important window into how the Court considers what the boundaries of intellectual freedom are and how the Court considers attempts by authorities to curtail such freedom under the guise of ‘conduct.’ (Find the example in detail at the end of the article.)
Although the case of Ridd v James Cook University (JCU) involved specific clauses within an Enterprise Bargaining Agreement, the High Court included valuable commentary on the societal importance of intellectual freedom from an instrumental, ethical, and historical perspective. This provides a useful context for academic freedom in general. Inherent in the developed concept of intellectual freedom is the ability to dissent against the establishment narrative. It is one of the modern marvels of living in a liberal democracy and brings tremendous benefit to society, as affirmed by the High Court:
‘Once developed, justification for intellectual freedom is instrumental. The instrumental justification is the search for truth in the contested marketplace of ideas, the social importance of which Frankfurter J spoke powerfully about.’
The Court further affirmed that:
‘Another justification is ethical rather than instrumental. Intellectual freedom plays “an important ethical role, not just in the lives of the few people it protects, but in the life of the community more generally” to ensure the primacy of individual conviction: “not to profess what one believes to be false” and “a duty to speak out for what one believes to be true.”’
Although doctors do not have a specific clause guaranteeing them the right to intellectual freedom, the High Court’s discussion of the societal benefits makes it difficult to argue that doctors should be punished for participation in the act of intellectual freedom.
There have been suggestions that the sanctioning of doctors has not necessarily been for the content of their views but how they have expressed them; invoking concepts such as incivility, rudeness, bullying, and harassment.
The Court explicitly addressed this issue in Ridd v JCU and was forthright in the view that intellectual freedom is not always pretty and wrapped in civility; curtailment on these grounds necessarily involves an assault on the fundamental phenomenon of intellectual freedom itself:
‘The instrumental and ethical foundations for the developed concept of intellectual freedom are powerful reasons why it has rarely been restricted by any asserted “right” of others to respect or courtesy … however desirable courtesy and respect might be, the purpose of intellectual freedom must permit of expression that departs from those civil norms.’
Furthermore, the Court reinforced the concept that there is no right against embarrassment or against lack of trust resulting from someone else’s assertions made in the course of intellectual freedom.
The Court quotes Dworkin:
‘The idea that people have that right [to protection from speech that might reasonably be thought to embarrass or lower others’ esteem for them or their own self-respect] is absurd. Of course, it would be good if everyone liked and respected everyone else who merited that response. But we cannot recognise a right to respect, or a right to be free from the effects of speech that makes respect less likely, without wholly subverting the central ideals of the culture of independence and denying the ethical individualism that culture protects.’
For the public’s safety it’s time to cancel the cancellers
It is absolutely frightening that major medico-legal organisations have issued advice to doctors to be wary about participating in intellectual freedom and that even reporting on evidence-based scientific data might put them in peril of being professionally ‘disappeared’ if that data doesn’t conform with the government’s ‘messaging.’ Is that what the community at large expects?
Sure, the regime may allow some new information if it is from a regime-approved source and disseminated in a way that the regime approves. But that defeats the whole purpose of intellectual freedom and merely perpetuates the formation of insular establishment echo chambers. A previous article showed the mass lethality of that group-think and establishment thinking during the first world war until dissident thinkers like General Sir John Monash came along.
But what about supposedly ‘bad ideas?’
Firstly, if those ideas are plausible, then as the High Court says, the truth is found in the ‘contested marketplace of ideas.’ If they are really bad ideas, then the sunlight of rigorous intellectual critique is the best disinfectant. Does driving a bad idea underground really make people think, ‘Oh well, the government told me it’s wrong, so it must be?’
Dr Li Wenliang was credited as one of the first doctors in Wuhan to sound the alarm about Covid on social media.
‘In early January (2020), he was called in by both medical officials and the police, and forced to sign a statement denouncing his warning as an unfounded and illegal rumor.’ [New York Times] Sound familiar?
And it is accepted that chilling the expression of ideas (by making people scared to speak out) is just as detrimental as the specific banning of ideas.
Scholars of history, the Australian public at large, Dr Li and the High Court of Australia, understand the importance of the developed concept of intellectual freedom.
In this context, intellectual freedom is so important to knowledge advancement through, as the High Court ruled regarding ‘the contested marketplace of ideas,’ that banning intellectual freedom (unilaterally removing that contested marketplace) poses a serious risk to public health. Therefore, should doctors associated with AHPRA or the Medical Board of Australia who have participated at all in the dangerous repression of intellectual freedom have their licences to practice medicine immediately suspended while a thorough investigation is undertaken into their fitness to practice?
What builds trust in an institution? Intellectual freedom through open scientific discourse or enforced adherence to the regime’s singular ‘truth’ under the threat of professional excommunication?
Public health is still dependent on individuals receiving informed consent about treatments, consent being specific to the individual patient.
This introduces the last issue where transparency should be favoured over repression. If any information comes to light that would materially alter someone’s decision to give/not give consent (and that information was suppressed as a result of the chilling effect on intellectual freedom by AHPRA/Medical Board’s censorship), then AHPRA and the Medical Board should be open to both civil and criminal liability for any harm caused due to the silence they fashioned.
Statements by the High Court of Australia in Ridd v James Cook University
One developed justification for intellectual freedom is instrumental. The instrumental justification is the search for truth in the contested marketplace of ideas, the social importance of which Justice Felix Frankfurter spoke powerfully about in Sweezy v New Hampshire. Another justification is ethical rather than instrumental. Intellectual freedom plays ‘an important ethical role not just in the lives of the few people it protects, but in the life of the community more generally’ to ensure the primacy of individual conviction: ‘Not to profess what one believes to be false’ and ‘a duty to speak out for what one believes to be true.’
Whilst different views might reasonably be taken about some additional restrictions upon intellectual freedom, the instrumental and ethical foundations for the developed concept of intellectual freedom are powerful reasons why it has rarely been restricted by any asserted ‘right’ of others to respect or courtesy. It is not necessary to go as far as Said’s assertion that ‘the whole point [of an intellectual] is to be embarrassing, contrary, even unpleasant’ to conclude that, however desirable courtesy and respect might be, the purpose of intellectual freedom must permit of expression that departs from those civil norms.
JCU’s submission depends upon drawing a distinction between what is said and how it is said. But such a distinction may not exist. The content of what is said often depends upon how it is said. This is particularly so when impugned speech concerns the expression of an opinion. The content of speech that expresses an opinion will often be inseparable from the strength of conviction with which the opinion is held, which is tied to the manner of expression. The message conveyed by a statement, expressed tentatively ‘It may be that it was an error for Professor Jones to claim that the earth is flat’ expresses a proposition only of possibility. It cannot be divorced from the tentative manner in which it was expressed. By contrast, ‘no reasonable person could ever claim that the earth is flat’ expresses a proposition of certainty, all the more so if it is expressed in an emphatic manner.
That interpretation aligns with the long-standing core meaning of intellectual freedom. Whilst a prohibition upon disrespectful and discourteous conduct in intellectual expression might be a ‘convenient plan for having peace in the intellectual world,’ the ‘price paid for this sort of intellectual pacification, is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind.’ The 2016 Censure given to Dr Ridd was, therefore, not justified.
Michael Keane is adjunct associate professor, Swinburne University, Adjunct senior lecturer, Monash University and a specialist anaesthetist.
“Beatles” ISIS member was tried in the US was to conceal his previous links to British intelligence and his role in their regime-change efforts in Syria
In January 2023, reports emerged that Alexanda Kotey, known as “Jihadi George” and one of the four British ISIS members collectively known as the “Beatles,” had disappeared from the custody of the US Bureau of Prisons (BOP).
In 2022, Kotey was convicted in a US court and sentenced to life in prison for the abduction and detention of multiple western hostages in Syria between 2012 and 2015, including journalists James Foley, John Cantlie, and Steven Sotloff, and aid workers Kayla Jean Mueller, Peter Kassig, David Haines, and Alan Henning, most of whom were later executed by ISIS.
A BOP spokesperson refused to provide details of Kotey’s whereabouts or why he had been moved, stating only that there are “several reasons” why an inmate may be referred to as “not in BOP custody,” including for “court hearings, medical treatment or for other reasons. We do not provide specific information on the status of inmates who are not in the custody of the BOP for safety, security, or privacy reasons.”
Kotey’s links with British intelligence
The refusal of BOP officials to provide details of Kotey’s whereabouts raises fears that Kotey may be able to escape facing justice for his crimes. This is due to Kotey’s previous links to British intelligence, which sought to use UK-based Islamist extremists such as Kotey as proxies in the 2011 US-led regime-change war against the Syrian government.
Kotey’s links to British intelligence are evidenced by the convoluted effort to prosecute him after his 2018 detention by the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
Although Kotey held UK citizenship like three of his alleged victims, Haines, Henning, and Cantlie, British officials insisted that Kotey and fellow Beatle Elshafee Elsheikh be tried in US rather than UK courts.
A review of events surrounding Kotey’s case reveals that prosecuting the West Londoner in the US was necessary to avoid revealing his and fellow Beatles’ links to British intelligence.
Laying the foundations for ISIS
Kotey traveled to Syria in August 2012 with fellow Beatle Muhammad Emzawi, known as “Jihadi John,” as part of a “terror-funnel” established by British intelligence. Upon arrival in Syria, Kotey and Emzawi immediately joined an armed group fighting against the Syrian government known as Katibat al-Muhajireen.
In November 2012, Emzawi participated in the abduction of American journalist James Foley and British journalist John Cantlie near the town of Binnish in northwestern Syria.
Kotey, Emzawi, and Elsheikh then served as prison guards for Foley, Cantlie, and other western hostages. Many members of Katibat al-Muhajireen – including the trio – then helped lay the foundation for the rise of ISIS by joining the terror group when it was established in April 2013.
Foley was brutally murdered by Emzawi in August 2014. In a video recording of the murder, a black-clad and masked Emzawi beheaded Foley, who was kneeling in the desert sand in an orange Guantanamo-style prisoner’s jumpsuit. Sotloff, Haines, Hennig, and Kassig were murdered subsequently, while Cantlie’s whereabouts are still unknown.
Terrorism researcher Raffaello Pantucci reports that Kotey and Elsheikh, “were longstanding figures of concern to the security services. Involved in a West London network that has long fed young British men to jihadi battlefields and created terrorist cells back in the UK.”
The Times reports that according to court papers filed in Kotey’s case, he first tried to travel to Syria with three other Britons via the Channel tunnel in February 2012 but was denied entry at the Turkish border and deported.
A month later, Kotey tried again but failed to reach Syria by flying from Barcelona. He returned to London through St Pancras station, where police arrested him for carrying a “lock-blade knife.”
The Times reported further that, “In August 2012 Kotey tried for a third time to make it to Syria by travelling overland across Europe with Emwazi. He has disclosed that the pair were detained at least twice during the two-month journey, although it is unclear in which countries. Each time, it seems, they were allowed to continue on their way.”
A spokesman for the SDF claimed that Kotey entered Turkey in 2012 “even though the Turkish intelligence had his jihadi record. He gained two months’ residence in Turkey and then he was allowed to go to Syria and he entered Syrian soil through the border crossing at Bab al Hawa.”
After years of fighting for Katibat al-Muhajireen and then ISIS, Kotey and Elsheikh were detained by the SDF in 2018 as the Caliphate faced defeat by the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies on the one hand, and US and SDF forces on the other, during the race to control Syria’s northeastern oil and grain producing regions. Emzawi had already been killed in a US airstrike in 2015.
Trial in the US instead of UK
By the time of Kotey’s detention in 2018, British police had long been collecting evidence of Kotey’s terrorist activities. As a result, the Guardianreported that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) had charged Kotey with five counts of murder and eight counts of hostage-taking in February 2016, and issued warrants for his arrest.
However, once Kotey was in SDF custody, British officials took extraordinary legal measures to ensure he would not be brought back to the UK for trial, insisting instead that Kotey be tried in a US court.
The British Home Office then revoked Kotey’s British citizenship, making it more difficult to prosecute him in the UK. According to Ken Macdonald, a former UK director of public prosecutions, stripping Kotey of his citizenship appeared to be an attempt by the government “to duck responsibility for bringing this Briton to justice.”
The Guardianreports that UK Security Minister Ben Wallace claimed to parliament in July 2018 that the UK did not have enough evidence to try Kotey and a US trial was the only option. However, a legal source with knowledge of the case claimed that the “British families of those murdered by ‘the Beatles’ were misled by UK government officials” and told that “if these men are not sent to the US, we won’t be able to prosecute them.”
The Telegraphreported in 2018 that according to a leaked letter from British Home Secretary Sajid Javid, the Metropolitan Police and FBI had been investigating Kotey’s activities in Syria for the past four years, “collecting more than 600 witness statements in a criminal inquiry involving 14 other countries,” and that there was “intelligence” implicating Kotey in the “kidnap and murder” of two Britons and three Americans.
Britain’s support of terrorists in Syria
UK officials were correct, however, in saying to the victims’ families that if Kotey and Elsheikh were not sent to the US, they could not be prosecuted. This was because British intelligence had been directly supporting Katibat al-Muhajireen, the armed group Kotey, Elsheikh, and Emzawi initially fought for during the time they participated in the abduction and captivity of numerous western hostages.
Two previous efforts to convict British citizens on terrorism charges for their involvement with Katibat al-Muhajireen had fallen apart for this specific reason, illustrating British intelligence support for the armed group.
The first was the 2015 terror trial of Swedish citizen Bherlin Gildo, who according to the Daily Mail fought for Katibat al-Muhajireen and later for the official al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, the Nusra Front.
The Guardianreports that after Gildo abandoned the conflict, he was detained while transiting through Heathrow Airport. He was accused by British authorities of attending a terrorist training camp and receiving weapons training between 31 August, 2012, and 1 March, 2013, as well as possessing information likely to be useful to a terrorist.
However, the terror trial collapsed “after fears of deep embarrassment” to the British security services. This was because, as Gildo’s lawyer explained, “British intelligence agencies were supporting the same Syrian opposition groups as he [Gildo] was.”
Another example is former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg, who was also tried on terror charges for assisting Katibat al-Muhajireen. Begg traveled to Syria several times in 2012 and provided physical training to foreign fighters from the group in Aleppo, as reported by Foreign Policy. Begg made his latest trip to Syria in December 2012.
As a result, Begg was detained by UK authorities in 2014 and accused of attending a terrorist training camp. The Guardianreported, however, that Begg was freed after British intelligence officials from MI5, “belatedly gave police and prosecutors a series of documents that detailed the agency’s extensive contacts with him before and after his trips to Syria,” and which showed that MI5 told Begg he could continue his work for the so-called opposition in Syria “unhindered.”
It was therefore clear that any terror trial of Kotey and Elsheikh in the UK would collapse for the same reasons as the previous cases, leaving UK officials no choice but to have them tried in the US instead.
In the letter leaked to the Telegraph, former Home Secretary Sajid Javid explained that “the UK does not currently intend to request, nor actively encourage, the transfer of Kotey and El-sheikh to the UK to support future UK-based prosecution.” Showing that he was under pressure as a result of this decision, Javid wrote further to the letter’s addressee, “I do understand your frustration on this subject.”
The Telegraph notes further that, “despite repeated ministerial assurances that British jihadists traveling to Syria would be held to account in British courts, the Home Secretary’s letter discloses concerns that laws in this country may not be robust enough to ensure successful prosecution. He believes American terrorism laws are more effective.”
In other words, British law was not robust enough to convict someone on terrorism charges for fighting with a terrorist group the UK intelligence services themselves supported.
The capital punishment loophole
Despite claims that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute Kotey in the UK, any successful conviction in the US would have relied on evidence collected by UK prosecutors, which would have to be shared with their US counterparts.
This was problematic, however, because US officials had not provided assurances that Kotey would not face the death penalty if convicted. Because the death penalty is banned in the UK, it was contrary to long standing UK policy to provide evidence that could contribute to a death sentence.
Home Secretary Javid nevertheless approved providing evidence against Kotey and Elsheikh to US prosecutors after the pair were transferred from SDF to US custody.
House of Lords member Alex Carlile, a former reviewer of terrorism legislation, described Javid’s willingness to approve this as “a dramatic change of policy by a minister, secretly, without any discussion in parliament,” and that “Britain has always said that it will pass information and intelligence, in appropriate cases, provided there is no death penalty. That is a decades-old policy and it is not for the home secretary to change that policy.”
This led Elsheikh’s mother to sue the British government, fearing that if her son and Kotey were convicted in a US court, they would be executed. The case eventually went to the British Supreme Court, which according to the New York Times, “unanimously ruled that the British home secretary’s decision to transfer personal data to law enforcement authorities abroad for use in capital criminal proceedings without any safeguards violated a data protection law passed in 2018.”
As a result, US Attorney General William Barr belatedly gave the assurance in August 2020 that Kotey and Elsheikh would not face the death penalty, allowing the sharing of evidence and the prosecution to move forward.
A testimony of the west’s support of ISIS
In 2022, Kotey and Elsheikh were finally convicted and sentenced to life in prison. At the time, the Washington Post explained that the successful prosecution of Elsheikh and Kotey had been unlikely, given that at time of their capture, it was “unclear whether an American trial would happen at all. A federal prosecution was met with opposition at the highest levels of government on two continents.”
While the reason for Kotey’s recent disappearance from US Bureau of Prisons custody is unclear, the insistence of UK officials to have him and fellow Beatle Elsheikh prosecuted in a US rather than UK court, and the reluctance of both governments to try the two ISIS militants at all, indicates that British planners wished to hide their previous support for extremists who helped lay the foundation for ISIS.
While ISIS is widely understood to have emerged in Iraq, evidence continues to emerge showing that officials in London and Washington played the crucial role in the rise of the notorious terror group as part of a broader effort to topple the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad.
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.
It is easy to get bogged down in the technical detail of the climate debate. But science can distract us from the fact that before climate change, environmentalists made exactly the same kind of predictions that now drive arguments for draconian climate policies. The gloomy predictions of civilisation’s imminent collapse made by environmentalists in the 1970s came to nothing – the world population grew larger, wealthier, healthier and safer. This should alert us to the fact that, whether or not ‘climate change is real’, environmentalism is a radical political ideology, bent on reorganising the world, whatever the facts are. It is not merely a response to scientific discovery about our relationship with the natural world.
We should not forget this historical context of the climate debate and motivation for the climate policy agenda, because ideology is insidious, and far more powerful than scientific rationalism. Today’s radical greens, from world leaders to street-blocking narcissists, have learned not to make the mistake of their predecessors. Rather than making predictions that fail to materialise, their new trick is to claim that the ‘climate crisis’ is ‘happening now’: people are starving, diseases are rampant, storms, floods, wildfires and heatwaves kill thousands by the day, forcing millions from their homes and into poverty, all underpinned by dramatic images on TV news stories to cement the narrative without any journalistic incredulity towards official stories.
But the ‘climate crisis’ simply isn’t happening at all. Just as the world defied green predictions half a century ago, all metrics of human welfare make the opposite case: humanity is thriving like never before. And just as in the 1970s, it is ideology, not fact, which drives the green narrative. In our new film, we at Climate Debate UK attempt to show how this regressive ideology has been transmitted, using the idea of a ‘climate crisis’, from the top strata of global society, through governments and the media, to very young children, where it poisons their view of the world and their futures.
It is ideology, not mere scientific error, that has blinded people to the fact that abundant, affordable and reliable energy has made the world a much better place. Worse, it is ideology that has clouded the moral judgement of people who have wilfully turned extremely young children into instruments of the political agenda, to prevent them driving this development onward. ‘Science’ is just a fig leaf.
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.
UNESCO says it is seriously concerned about the increase in “disinformation” and “conspiracy theories”. And they plan to put an end to it through a network of informants.
“Conspiracy theories can be dangerous,” the UN agency warned. “Often they ignore scientific evidence and polarize society with dire consequences. This has to stop.”
Unesco’s director-general warned that “conspiracy theories” could cause damage to people as well as to their health. “They reinforce misconceptions about the pandemic, reinforcing stereotypes that can fuel violence and violent, extremist ideologies,” said Audrey Azoulay.
The UN agency has launched a campaign to help people identify, debunk and report “conspiracy theories” to prevent them from spreading further.
This campaign is being carried out in collaboration with the European Commission, Twitter and the World Jewish Congress. The UN has created a toolkit to “debunk” such theories and smear anyone who dares to claim that governments are not fair and transparent.
The UN also warned that George Soros, the Rothschilds and Israel should not be linked to “alleged conspiracies”.
World events “are not secretly manipulated behind the scenes by powerful players with malicious intent,” the UN agency maintained.
And if anyone therefore comes across someone who believes that the world elite is plotting to consolidate power or direct events, then that person needs to take action. According to the UN agency, when meeting a “conspiracy theorist”, under no circumstances should one enter into a discussion. … continue
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