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Energy Experts

Tony Heller | November 4, 2022

World leaders have been taking energy advice from people like Michael Mann and Greta Thunberg, who have no experience or expertise related to energy. Simultaneously, governments have been refusing to listen to the people who provide the world’s energy.

November 14, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

Despite progress in data transparency, the FDA still keeps its data secret

By Maryanne Demasi, PhD | November 10, 2022

History shows that hiding clinical trial data can be deadly.

Vioxx is a well-known example of how the US drug regulator withheld important information about the harms of the drug for over three years, before it was withdrawn from the market and tens of thousands of people died as a consequence.

Numerous initiatives have been launched over the past two decades to improve access to trial data after it became evident that what was reported in peer-reviewed journals was often cherry-picked and misleading.

Eminent scientists have succeeded in gaining access to trial data from the European and Canadian drug regulators, but a recent analysis published in the Journal of Law, Medicine, & Ethics, found that the US FDA still lags behind others when it comes to data transparency.

Europe ahead of the pack

Drug regulators have traditionally been the guardians of a treasure trove of trial data which they kept hidden from the public. But, over a decade ago, the efforts of Danish professor Peter Gøtzsche turned that on its head.

Gøtzsche and his PhD student were studying the effects of an anti-obesity drug and requested the trial data held by the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

“We already had good evidence that the efficacy and harms of drugs were incompletely reported in the medical journals, so by asking for the regulatory data for the anti-obesity pills, we were convinced it would get us closer to the truth”, said Gøtzsche.

At first, EMA denied their request, saying that it needed to protect commercially confidential information, but Gøtzsche was undeterred. He made a formal complaint to the European Ombudsman.

After an arduous 3-year process, the Ombudsman accused EMA of “maladministration” for refusing to share its data – it was a serious and embarrassing charge, so EMA had no choice but to capitulate.

In 2013, EMA announced that it would provide public access to regulatory data – which included study reports, protocols and the raw anonymised patient data in statistical programmes enabling anyone to independently scrutinise the data for all new drugs that it approved.

It was a bitter-sweet moment for Gøtzsche.

“I was satisfied with the outcome, but I also felt a bit betrayed. When EMA praised itself for being transparent, it conveniently omitted telling the public that it was basically forced to make the decision because of my efforts and that of the Ombudsman,” said Gøtzsche.

“I’ve been around a while to know that this is exactly how the drug industry operates. They cover up their failures while praising themselves for what others force them to do,” he added.

Millions of pages containing trial data have since been released. Interestingly though, this remarkable feat has gone largely unrecognised and the response from the research community has been rather tepid.

Gøtzsche suspects it’s because analysing regulatory documents is complex and requires experience to decipher regulatory data – skills that few researchers have.

“It is a huge job to do systematic reviews of clinical study reports held by drug regulators, but it is the difference between producing reliable reviews or merely “garbage-in, garbage-out” reviews,” said Gøtzsche.

Since then, Gøtzsche’s group showed this was the case for reviews of antidepressant drug trials.

When they compared data from medical journals to that from regulatory documents, they found major discrepancies such as underreporting of harms, including suicide attempts and aggressive behaviour.

Canadian regulator in the cross hairs

Following the landmark policy change in Europe, researchers believed it would help unlock regulatory documents elsewhere that were historically kept hidden from the public.

In 2016, Peter Doshi, professor at the University of Maryland and senior editor of The BMJ requested the release of unpublished clinical trial data relating to antivirals for the treatment of influenza (Tamiflu, Relenza) and three human papillomavirus vaccines from the Canadian drug regulator, Health Canada.

After some resistance, Health Canada agreed to allow Doshi access to the documents but imposed a confidentiality agreement that would prevent him from making his findings public.

When Doshi refused to sign the confidentially agreement, his request for access to the trial data was denied, so he filed a lawsuit in a federal court seeking a judicial review of the regulator’s decision.

Remarkably, in 2018, in the case of Peter Doshi v. Attorney General of Canada, a federal court judge ruled in favour of Doshi and in the public’s interest, ordering Health Canada to hand over the trial data for independent scrutiny.

It was hailed a “major victory” for transparency and after the win, Doshi told The BMJ, “For me this case has always been about something larger than my specific request. It is about the principle of transparency. If my case sets a precedent and Health Canada begins making clinical trial data available to others—promptly, and without imposing confidentiality agreements—that will be the real victory.”

Notably, the Canadian drug regulator has gone one step further than EMA by proactively releasing data for not only approved drug submissions, but also “unapproved, and withdrawn drug and biologic submissions… Class III and IV medical device applications.”

What about the US FDA?

The US FDA houses the largest known repository of clinical trial data in the world, but it doesn’t proactively share it.

In 2018, the FDA launched a new pilot program to proactively publish clinical study reports from the pivotal studies of nine recently approved drugs – but the agency put an end to that program in March 2020.

“It is just so typical of the FDA, which is very beholden to industry, and which some have dubbed the Foot Dragging Agency when it comes to the public interest,” said Gøtzsche.

Now, the only mechanism to ascertain regulatory data for FDA-approved drugs is to submit Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, a lengthy process which often results in heavily redacted documents of limited value.

study by US researchers, analysed the FDA’s willingness to release data, compared to other regulators, EMA and Health Canada.

They found that between 2016 and April 2021, EMA released data for 123 unique medical products, while Health Canada released data for 73 unique medical products between 2019 and April 2021.

In stark contrast, the FDA only proactively disclosed data supporting one single drug that was approved in 2018, clearly demonstrating that the agency has failed to keep pace with the European and Canadian regulatory bodies.

The problem of data secrecy within the FDA has been especially evident during the pandemic. Recently, I reported in The BMJ that the agency had failed to disclose covid-19 vaccine ‘safety signals’ derived from post-marketing data.

Also, the non-profit group, Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency had to sue the FDA for access to trial documents used as the basis for licensing Pfizer’s covid-19 mRNA vaccine. Initially, the agency wanted 75 years to release all the data but a Federal Court Judge rejected its request, ordering the release of the documents at a rate of 55,000 pages per month, taking approximately 8 months.

Given the widespread use of this important public health intervention, and the billions of dollars in public funds used to conduct vaccine research and development, these data should have been made publicly available immediately.

Data secrecy has undermined the health care system by subverting the allocation of scare resources and eroding public trust. The damage done to people’s confidence in vaccines, and medicines more broadly, will be felt for generations and likely to harm public health.

November 13, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

How the British royals overthrew Australian democracy

By Kit Klarenberg | Press TV | November 13, 2022

This week marked the 47th anniversary of the dismissal of former Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam by the country’s British-appointed governor-general John Kerr.

The role and power of governors-general is little known, let alone understood today, but they wield enormous clout over many countries that once comprised the British Empire.

Appointed by a royal decree, they serve as the reigning British monarch’s local representatives, appoint government ministers, judges and ambassadors, grant royal assent to laws passed by parliament, bestow state honors, and are commanders-in-chief of the respective nation’s armed forces, among other things.

The unceremonious dismissal of Whitlam and his elected government is largely forgotten today, but the sordid episode detonated the myth that constituents of the British Commonwealth are independent, sovereign states, free from control or influence of their former imperial master – however briefly.

Elected in 1972 on a wave of popular upheaval, Whitlam was an upstart social democrat who made clear his country would not be dominated by the interests of foreign powers.

Within months, he abolished royal patronage, recognised the People’s Republic of China, drew up plans for Aboriginal land rights, ended conscription, and withdrew all Australian troops from Vietnam, with his ministers referring to the US war as “corrupt and barbaric.”

Fast forward to November 1975, and he was thrown out of office upon the request of governor-general John Kerr. When that fateful day came, Queen Elizabeth II’s deputy private secretary William Heseltine, an Australian citizen, stated that “the palace was in a state of total ignorance.”

Secret communications between Buckingham Palace and Kerr, recently reported on in forensic detail by Declassified Australia, prove Helestine’s professions to be an outright lie, beyond doubt.

Doing the monarchy ‘good’

In a series of letters, starting in September 1975, Kerr openly discussed ways in which Whitlam could be removed from power in a bloodless coup with both the Queen and Prince Charles, now King of Great Britain, and Australia.

This was despite vice-regal convention dictating that a governor-general must “advise, counsel and warn” an elected prime minister about their planning and thinking, even in the event of potential dismissal, the British monarch theoretically being duty-bound to remain disinterested and politically neutral, and Australian High Court justice Anthony Mason warning Kerr that his behavior was “deceptive”.

Both he and the palace were unfazed, no doubt confident that “royal secrecy” laws would conceal their activities forever.

Among the earliest communications are notes from a meeting between Prince Charles and Kerr during Papua New Guinea’s 1975 independence celebrations. The governor-general made clear what he was plotting, but expressed anxiety that Whitlam, if he caught wind of the conspiracy, would dismiss him first.

“The Queen should not have to accept advice that you should be recalled at the very time, should this happen, when you were considering having to dismiss the government,” Kerr cited Charles as saying.

Upon returning to Britain, Charles informed the Queen of the plan in motion. Charteris then wrote to Kerr outlining how he would be protected in the event Whitlam requested that the palace recall the governor-general.

Should that “contingency” arise, Charteris said, Elizabeth II would “try to delay things” rather than responding promptly according to protocol, allowing Kerr to plunge the dagger first.

While the Queen took the lead role in consulting with Kerr on legal and regulatory routes to oust Whitlam, Prince Charles was also intimately involved, actively encouraging and counseling the governor-general.

In order to legitimize his sinister scheme, Kerr sought the advice of Australia’s two most senior law officers as to whether Whitlam could be dismissed under “reserve powers”. This authority, only usable in specific, adverse circumstances such as crises, would allow the governor-general to act unilaterally, without governmental or parliamentary approval.

Kerr knew that it was likely no legitimate grounds for such an extraordinary intervention would be identified, and accordingly warned the palace in early November, although made clear he would move ahead anyway.

In a series of letters, Charteris variously reassured Kerr, “that you have powers is recognised,” “those powers do exist,” and “if you do, as you will, what the constitution dictates, you cannot possibly do the monarchy any avoidable harm. The chances are you will do it good.”

The senior Australian legal officers’ opinion arrived on November 6, 1975 – and as expected, they warned Kerr he had no legal or constitutional grounds for overthrowing the Whitlam government. Five days later, he did so anyway.

In March 1976, Prince Charles wrote to Kerr, praising him for his actions and stellar work as Buckingham Palace’s man Down Under more generally.

“I wanted you to know that I appreciate what you do and admire enormously the way you have performed in your many and varied duties. Please don’t lose heart. What you did last year was right and the courageous thing to do,” the King-in-waiting fawned.

Web of lies and connivance

The public would be utterly in the dark about this web of lies and connivance, were it not for a bitter four-year-long High Court battle in Australia to secure declassification of these highly incriminating papers.

Within hours of the release of letters, Buckingham Palace issued a public statement, denying the dark reality so amply exposed by the disclosure: “Neither Her Majesty nor the Royal Household had any part to play in Kerr’s decision to dismiss Whitlam.”

The High Court decision was a landmark development, marking the first time the concept of “royal secrecy” had been overturned anywhere in the British Commonwealth.

It has remained unchallenged in every other constituent country ever since, meaning the obvious question of whether similar chicanery was undertaken against troublesomely independent figures elsewhere in the political association remains an open one.

This is particularly relevant to consider given that the new British King has a dual history of directly pressuring state officials at home to structure policy and action domestically and internationally according to his personal will, and doggedly attempting to keep such lobbying hidden from public view.

In May 2015, over two dozen private communications between then-Prince Charles and British ministers were published after a 10-year-long legal struggle, which cost successive governments hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The contents of these letters showed Charles – again in breach of conventions on “political neutrality” – petitioning elected representatives on subjects ranging from the Iraq War to alternative medicines.

In some, then-heir to the British throne openly warned a health secretary that “chickens will come home to roost” in their government department if redevelopment of a hospital – in which the Prince’s architecture charity was involved – was not accelerated.

It’s clear though that Charles didn’t typically need to rely on threats – government officials were usually willing to obsequiously roll over how and when he requested them to.

In response to one royal intervention, then-Prime Minister Tony Blair unctuously stated: “I always value and look forward to your views.” In another, an education secretary signed off: “I have the honour to be Your Royal Highness’s most humble and obedient servant.”

The letters were released at a time when speculation was rife in the mainstream media that Charles intended to rule in a far more outspoken way than his publicly taciturn mother.

Since taking the throne, there is little sign publicly of this – although that could in part be attributed to the British government amending the Freedom of Information Act to provide an “absolute exemption” on all requests relating to the royal family since.

Now that more and more countries are choosing to unbridle themselves from the yoke of British rule and secede from the Commonwealth, it’s surely never been more important for the royal family to maintain an intensive cloak of secrecy around their political influence.

And the temptation to employ “reserve powers” to displace upstart governments in the manner of Gough Whitlam’s has surely never been higher.

November 13, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Name-Calling, ‘Fact-Checking’ and Censorship in the Covid Era

BY NOAH CARL | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | NOVEMBER 11, 2022

One novel feature of the pandemic, from the standpoint of public debate, is the fact that so much name-calling, ‘fact-checking’ and censorship was aimed not just at random dissidents but at credentialed scientists.

Academics who’d reached esteemed positions within their field were denounced as ‘Covid deniers’, accused of spreading ‘misinformation’, and subjected to multiple forms of censorship.

Renowned scholars had warning labels attached to their tweets, and found their articles blacklisted on sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. In one particularly egregious case, the Great Barrington Declaration was downranked by Google, so that when users searched for it, articles critical of the Declaration appeared above the Declaration itself.

Somehow, Big Tech firms felt they were in position to adjudicate complex scientific debates. This would be like two scientists having an argument at speaker’s corner in Hyde Park, but the groundskeeper keeps blasting an airhorn every time one of them speaks.

And it wasn’t just Big Tech that restricted one side’s freedom of speech. Academics who questioned the mainstream view on Covid faced sanctions from their universities, journals and professional associations.

In a recent paper, Yaffa Shir-Raz and colleagues analysed the tactics that were used against dissenting scientists, based on semi-structured interviews with some of the targets. Their findings have already been summarised by Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson, but it’s worth pulling out a few anecdotes from the paper.

One interviewee recounted that he/she was even censored on Google docs – a program for creating documents and spreadsheets (like Microsoft Office):

Google Docs started restricting and censoring my ability to share documents… This is not Twitter throwing me off like they did. This is an organisation telling me that I cannot send a private communication to a colleague or to a friend, or to a family member.

Another interviewee explained that his/her employment contract was re-written after he/she deviated from the narrative:

They offered me a new contract… we got some new terms for you, because my old contract was not restricted. The new one basically had like seven or eight restrictions of my First Amendment rights… basically I couldn’t talk to the press, I couldn’t speak in public… unless I said, these are my opinions not that of my employer… It was a relatively short conversation. I said that’s never going to happen, I’m never going to sign that thing.

A third interviewee described how he/she was cancelled by several organisations without any due process:

There was a whole series of actions taken again with no due process and no explanation… I received a notice from the [medical association] that I was being stripped from a committee position… I received a letter from a journal…where I was the Editor-in-Chief, being stripped of the editorship, again with no due process, no phone calls no, tractable explanation… I received a letter from the National Institutes of Health being stripped from a longstanding committee position.

Remember, these were all “established doctors and scientists”, not foreign spies engaged in subversion.

The point isn’t that dissenting scientists were right about everything (although they were right about a lot). It’s that we can’t have a proper debate if one side faces a barrage of name-calling, ‘fact-checking’ and censorship. Enforcing a narrative around Covid shouldn’t be the role of Big Tech companies. And it certainly shouldn’t be the role of academic institutions.

November 13, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

How False Narratives Are Protected

By Bill Rice, Jr. | November 9, 2022

In my research into “early spread,” one oddity that’s jumped out at me is how some people with antibody evidence of early infection seem to intuitively know this information is taboo or controversial. Some people clearly sense when they’re saying something that “goes against the narrative” … and this makes them very nervous.

On one level, this has always bothered me. What’s wrong with simply telling the truth? For an investigative journalist, it’s frustrating that some people with important information won’t go on the record and provide such information.

On the other hand, I get why some people would prefer to remain anonymous or not be mentioned in any story at all. Fear rules the thinking of just-about everyone (a maxim that also explains how those who create said fear effectively rule the world).

Many people with important information clearly fear some type of reprisals even if they are simply telling the truth. The disturbing point is that many of these people aren’t being paranoid. They probably would suffer some kind of negative blowback if they told the truth. This could be as extreme as losing a job or as prosaic as having friends or family members treat them differently because they said something others don’t agree with.

The story of ‘Jean’ from Washington state ….

I started thinking about this topic when I went back and re-read a couple of stories published by The Seattle Times that document two residents of Snohomish County who almost certainly had Covid in December 2019.

One of these two residents was not named. However, the other resident did exhibit some level of courage by allowing a reporter to interview her. But the lady was only identified in the story by her middle name. So “Jean,” a 64-year-old retired nurse from a rural area of Washington state, thinks she had Covid.

My hunch is Jean intuitively knew her story might upset some powerful people – people who did not want to “confirm” any evidence that Americans were coming down with this illness before the Wuhan Outbreak in China.

Or maybe Jean thought her claims might bother some of her friends and neighbors, friends who always trust the experts and authorities and don’t like it when anyone goes against, say, the pronouncements of Anthony Fauci … or CNN.

For whatever reason, Jean settled on a compromise. She’d share her story, but she wouldn’t use her full name.

And the example of Mayor Michael Melham ….

After researching the case of another “early spread” candidate, I understand why Jean might have wanted to be identified only by her middle name.

Michael Melham happens to be the mayor of Belleville, New Jersey. Along with Jean and the other unknown person from Washington, Melham is among the 17 Americans I’ve identified in previous articles as Americans who almost certainly had Covid weeks or months before the virus was supposed to be circulating in our country.

Michael Melham did go public with his story. Among the news organizations covering his claim was NJ.com.

The headline from the “straight news” piece makes this news organization’s point, as well as my point:

“N.J. mayor makes unfounded claim that he had coronavirus in November.”

One piece of yellow journalism apparently wasn’t enough so the news organization also published a scathing opinion column the next day.

Wrote columnist Jeremy Schneider:

“It needs to be said. Again. This is not the time for voluntary stupidity. If you have something to say about the coronavirus that is not supported by proven truths presented by experts, you should really, really just keep it to yourself. People are dying and you are almost certainly not an epidemiologist. Be quiet and listen.”

Schneider also called the people who suspect they may have had Covid before the experts said was possible, “a sub-sect of well-meaning dopes on social media.

And although readers had already gotten the author’s unsubtle point – our official guidance –  the writer made it again in the smear piece he was happy to pen: “Stay safe, listen to the experts.

Basically, Schneider is calling Mayor Melham, and anyone else who believes they had Covid before mid-January 2020, idiots. It never occurs to the author he might be the real idiot. Nor does it occur to him that the experts he thinks are infallible may be using people like himself to advance their misery-producing agendas.

Why don’t more people come forward? Well …

Why don’t more people come forward as whistleblowers? Here we probably have part of our answer.

But the sociology and psychology component that really fascinates me is how so many people quickly accept the authorized “narrative” and then have a visceral reaction to people who do not happen to subscribe to this thinking.

This evidence of mass “groupthink” can also be seen from reading the 1,600 reader comments that followed a Fox News story on Michael Melham’s claim.

As I was doing my “due diligence” on early spread, I think I read every one of these comments. I would say that 95 percent of commenters thought Melham was simply wrong in thinking he had Covid or, like the NJ.com columnist, were angered the mayor had the temerity to share his own story and personal opinions.

What I’m really trying to understand is why so many people are so quick to share their disgust with individuals who don’t think like they do.

People with important information like Jean who are afraid to use their full name (or those who won’t come forward at all) must conclude that the potential wrath of their peers is not worth the benefits … and/or that there are no benefits from going against the narrative.

Due to this dynamic, the public is unlikely to learn important, narrative-changing information. The only thing that might change some harmful and false narratives is if people did come forward and expose this. However, in the “home of the brave” very few people are bold enough to do this.

And as we saw above, even when people like Mayor Melham do come forward, their revelations are dismissed or ridiculed by the people who matter – the watchdog press and authorities. That is, everything works to “protect the narrative.”

The real villain remains the AWOL ‘watchdog’ press

Which leads me to my final depressing point: If 99 percent of the people posting in Reader Comments sections happen to be dead wrong, this wouldn’t matter if, say, 10 percent of the country’s journalists were real skeptics and did the job of real journalists.

If this was the case, truth-seeking journalists would write important stories that might influence the 90 percent of the population who’ve been sold a bill of goods. That is, journalists – if they did their most important job – could maybe change a few bogus or dubious narratives.

But this isn’t going to happen because, at least regarding Covid narratives, the group think is 100 percent.

So what we have is some kind of “Catch-22” self-protecting loop of WrongThink. In such a world, the probability any taboo truths could break through the barricades erected by our “gatekeepers of the news” is probably zero. No false narratives will ever be de-bunked.

The journalists who are supposed to challenge narratives won’t do it because they always believe authorities and experts. As most people get their information from mainstream journalists, it’s a case of the dumb leading the …. ah, non-critical thinkers.

Anyway, all of this probably explains, at least in part, why so many would-be whistleblowers are afraid to blow any whistles.

In summary, many people intuitively sense when they posses information that contradicts the official narrative. This Sixth Sense makes many people leery of coming forward or attaching their name to revelations that go against conventional wisdom .

While this is a small observation, the implications which flow from it are probably large. For example, the quality of life of our children and grandchildren will be lower because important truths were not previously acknowledged, because rotten leaders were not previously exposed.

It might be counter-intuitive, but it’s not the false opinions of the masses that matter. It’s the views of a very small minority of truth-revealing contrarians, a group that’s too often afraid to come forward and reveal what they know.

Those who smear, bully or dismiss such people know not what they do … nor the harm they are really causing.

November 13, 2022 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Band of Brothers

Dr. Paul Marik and his fellows in the FLCCC fight for patients’ rights. All have paid a heavy price for taking care of patients and telling the truth.

By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | November 12, 2022

Part I in a series on Dr. Paul Marik—a magnificent doctor who was fired from his job and professorship because he successfully treated his COVID-19 patients with FDA-approved drugs and high-dose Vitamin C.

The following post is from The Courage to Face COVID-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex, by John Leake and Peter A. McCullough. MD, MPH.


Dr. Paul Marik is to critical care medicine what Dr. McCullough is to cardio-renal medicine. The 65-year-old native of South Africa has published over 500 peer-reviewed papers and books, which made him the second most published critical care doctor in the history of medicine.

Dr. Paul Marik with Dr. Peter McCullough and John Leake at the Nurses Freedom Network Conference in Franklin, TN, June 12, 2022

Upon meeting Dr. Marik, one is overwhelmed by the impression of his vast physical stature. His gentle manners and elegant South African accent conjure accounts of 19th century British gentleman explorers. Since the early days of his career, he’d been keenly interested in discovering how to treat sepsis—the body’s extreme, life-threatening response to an infection. Well into the 21st century, sepsis continued to be a major cause of death. According to the CDC, approximately 1.7 million American adults fall ill with sepsis every year, of which approximately 270,000 die in hospital. Globally, the sepsis burden is estimated at 15 to 19 million cases annually, with a mortality rate approaching 60% in low-income countries.

Dr. Marik knew the literature on sepsis treatment. Several studies had indicated that large doses of IV-administered Vitamin C and Vitamin B1 (thiamine) showed some benefit. Other studies indicated that hydrocortisone showed promise. Dr. Marik reasoned that combining the three into a cocktail could amplify their benefit. As had often been observed in medicine, combining agents seems to affect multiple pathways, causing an overlapping and synergistic effect.

In 2016, he and his colleagues conducted a study in which they compared 47 sepsis patients who received the cocktail to a control group of 47 patients who received sepsis standard of care at the time. The mortality rate of the treatment group was 8.5% compared to 40.4% of the control group—a stunning difference. Skeptics claimed the study was too small and nonrandomized. Nevertheless, what became known as the “Marik Cocktail” was adopted by critical care units all over the world, which reported excellent results with the therapy.

When COVID-19 struck and Dr. Marik’s critical care unit at the Sentara Norfolk General Hospital received its first patients, he observed they were suffering from an inflammatory lung reaction, and he suspected this could be treated with a corticosteroid. He contacted four other critical care specialists—Professor Joseph Varon at United Memorial Medical Center in Houston (who, in the year 2020, would work 268 days straight treating COVID-19 patients in his ICU) Professor Gianfranco Umberto Meduri at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis, Professor Jose Iglesias at the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine in Seton Hall, New Jersey, and Professor Pierre Kory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As author Michael Capuzzo pointed out in his marvelous story about these doctors, it would be hard to imagine a more experienced and scholarly team of pulmonary critical care doctors.

Together they formed the Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Consortium (FLCCC) and got to work on a protocol for saving hospitalized patients. They started their work by focusing on the extreme inflammation they were observing. Often called “cytokine storm” after the proteins produced by the immune system, this was an extreme and maladaptive immune response that had often been observed in other viral illnesses, including virulent influenza. It was this inflammation of the lungs, kidneys, and other organs that killed the patient, and not the virus itself. Thus, the key to treating the syndrome was reducing this inflammation.

Professor Meduri was a leading expert on corticosteroid therapy in critical illness. He conducted an exhaustive review of corticosteroid use against SARS-CoV-1, MERS, and H1N1 and found significant evidence that these agents had been lifesaving in their reduction of extreme inflammation. For decades the corticosteroid methylprednisolone had been the standard medication for suppressing cytokine storm. And yet, despite this glaring fact, every US federal health agency recommended against using corticosteroids against COVID-19 from the outset of the pandemic.

Unlike these agencies, the FLCCC concluded that their best bet for tackling the disease in hospitalized patients was a combination of Methylprednisolone and the antioxidant Ascorbic acid (Vitamin C). To these they added Thiamine (Vitamin B1) to optimize cellular oxygen utilization and energy consumption, and the anticoagulant Heparin to prevent and help in dissolving blood clots that appear with high frequency.

There is nothing experimental about these drugs. Methylprednisolone and heparin had long been FDA-approved for treating inflammation and blood clotting. Vitamin C and B1 were available over the counter, though in the hospital setting they were IV-administered in high doses. The FLCCC doctors began giving this “MATH Protocol” to ICU patients and tracked their progress for a case study. By the end of April, they had treated 100. Of these, 98 survived. The two who died were in their eighties and had other advanced chronic illnesses. None of the patients had long durations on ventilators, were ventilator dependent, and or had long hospital stays.

During this period, Dr. Pierre Kory was in daily communication with ICU doctors in his native New York City, where he’d worked in multiple hospitals. His colleagues reported that they turned the tide in the ICUs as soon as they started using methylprednisolone. Other ICU doctors in hard hit New Orleans reported the same. Kory and colleagues therefore sent letters to the White House, the CDC, and the NIH, presenting their real-world evidence of the corticosteroid’s efficacy—all to no avail.

Dr. Kory’s efforts were drawn to the attention of Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, who was chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee. Since his daughter had been born with a congenital heart defect—successfully corrected by an innovative operation—Senator Johnson had believed that if citizens were faced with a life-threatening condition for which there was no proven treatment, they should have the right to try drugs or operations that seem to offer some benefit, even if these had not yet passed the conventional FDA-approval process. The alternative was to do nothing and accept the high probability of death.

Critics of the right to try claim that unless procedures and medications are carefully regulated by the FDA, unscrupulous doctors will create false hope by offering them to desperate patients, even if there is little trial data to prove their efficacy. Senator Johnson did not find this argument persuasive and he introduced his federal right to try bill in 2017. A companion bill was introduced in the House, ultimately passed in both houses, and was signed into law by President Trump in 2018.

Upon Senator Johnson’s invitation, Professor Kory addressed the Senate Homeland Security Committee on May 6, 2020. Speaking via WebEx, Kory stated the credentials of the FLCCC doctors, and then explained the rationale for using their protocol. He then reported the success they and other doctors were having with it. This was excellent news, and a naive viewer would likely assume that it would be welcomed by the entire medical profession.

And yet, despite the FLCCC’s well-founded rationale for their therapy, broad consensus for the efficacy of its components in related conditions, and their success with it, they continued to get pushback from the CDC and NIH, which refused to change their advisory against using corticosteroids to treat COVID-19. On four occasions, the FLCCC tried to notify the White House of their favorable results, but they received no reply.

November 12, 2022 Posted by | Book Review, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Our Addiction to Unnecessary Medicine is Letting Children Down

BY DR MARK SHAW | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | NOVEMBER 8, 2022

On Monday, October 24th a debate on vaccine safety took place in Parliament. Three MPs, Danny Kruger, Sir Christopher Chope and Andrew Bridgen, discussed a number of issues the mainstream media have not been reporting on. The health concerns raised appear to be receiving very little, if any, serious recognition by the Government. It was the safety of children and young adults that concerned me most in this debate and in this article I want to explore whether the medical profession is being as cautious and conscientious as it should be in the administration of medication, including but not limited to Covid vaccines, to children. How well are children and young adults being monitored following medical interventions?

A few days ago it was reported that dozens of children between the ages of five and 11 were given higher doses of the Covid vaccine “by mistake”. Solent NHS Trust operated the ‘pop-up’ vaccine clinic (see later) and one mother was told that “she shouldn’t expect anything significant” to happen to her daughter following the mistake but that any reaction to the jab “would last longer”. The Chief Medical Officer for the Trust said that this was an isolated occurrence.

In other news, the Indonesian Health Ministry said on Thursday, October 20th that it had found traces of three hazardous chemicals in children with acute kidney injury, two of which are present in Indian-manufactured syrups suspected to be linked to dozens of deaths in Gambia. According to the Ministry, at least 70 cases of children under the age of five years with acute kidney failure are being detected every month with a mortality rate of about 50%.

This type of news is always disturbing to hear, not only because innocent young lives are involved but also because these children had little, if any, choice in the administration of a treatment that might not even have been necessary. It seems all too easy to reach out to the medicine cabinet for just about any ailment, no matter how mild or trivial these days. Likewise, it seems too easy for parents to be made to believe that Covid vaccinations offered to their child are essential for their health and wellbeing.

Errors in paediatric doses are not in fact uncommon. Research shows that potential adverse drug events occur three times more frequently among paediatric patients than among adults. Some of these differences in error rates are due to:

  • larger volumes of stock solution for adults;
  • greater variability in weight and body surface area of children;
  • differences in pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics;
  • children’s kidneys, liver and immune systems are still developing;
  • children not being able to communicate what they are feeling;

Monitoring of adverse events in children is also much more difficult than for adults and conducting and monitoring long term drug trials for children is even more problematic. The conclusion of a 2019 medical study was that: “Paediatric clinical trials designed to sufficiently investigate drug safety and efficacy to support approval are of relatively limited duration. Given the potential long-term exposure of patients to these drugs, the clinical community should consider whether new approaches are needed to better understand the safety of long-term use of these drugs.”

An example of a recent attempt to monitor the effect (and therefore safety) of Covid vaccines on children has been the reliance on testing for antibody production against the disease. A recent JAMA study suggests that these trials have been inadequate and inappropriate. It found that such antibody production provides children with little or no protection against infection. The main determinant is actually cellular immunity (i.e., T Cells). The study even found that having antibodies to Omicron increased the infection risk, which may help to explain the negative vaccine effectiveness seen in a number of studies where infection rates are higher in the vaccinated than the unvaccinated.

Whilst evidence of the adverse reactions and immediate harms of Covid vaccines on young people is building at an alarming rate, it is easy to overlook the possible unknown long term consequences. History has taught us that medical experts can fail to see harms in both pre-licensed and post-licensed pharmaceuticals and in non-licensed or non-prescription drugs for dangerously long periods. There are too many examples to list here, but in the early 1900s concern about smoking was considered alarmist. There was no definitive evidence that smoking was bad for you. By the 1930s, tobacco companies had an army of doctors ready to debunk you as a quack for even suggesting something as benign as a cigarette could give you cancer. By the 1960s, the evidence against smoking was more than damning. By then, the debate over smoking’s deadly impact had been raging around the world for more than a generation and medical experts were slowly reaching the same conclusion.

In July 1956, medical authorities in West Germany licensed a drug for sale without a prescription. Thalidomide had been developed as a sedative or tranquiliser, but people were soon taking it for a range of conditions, including pneumonia, colds and the flu, as well as to relieve nausea in early pregnancy. Six years later, more than 10,000 babies had been born with physical abnormalities caused by the drug. It wasn’t until 1962 that Thalidomide was banned in most countries in which it was sold – and this for a drug with such early and devastating side effects. In the U.K., the MHRA Yellow Card adverse event reporting system was introduced partly as a result of Thalidomide, but we know that average reporting rates are estimated to be around 10% of actual adverse events under this system.

Scandals are often associated with a failure to learn from history. In the early 50’s a Dr. Krugman wanted to create a vaccine for hepatitis. He deceptively coerced carers and parents into forcing 50 children from a home for developmentally challenged kids to be injected with the virus itself or by making them drink chocolate milk mixed with faeces from other infected children. Dr. Paul Offit, a paediatrician, said that “Krugman certainly did speed up the development of a hepatitis B vaccine but I don’t think you’re ever justified to inoculate a child with an infectious virus that might kill them”. In 1979 the Belmont Report was published in an effort to learn from this and provide a comprehensive guideline of basic ethical principles.

Augmenting the hoped for protections of the Belmont Report, a 2004 article described the main ways in which the risk of medication errors for children could be minimised. It said it is critical to have

  1. personnel trained in paediatrics to prescribe, prepare, dispense and administer medications;
  2. a quality review system in place to review drug use and medication errors, and;
  3. to implement computerised physician order entry with decision support and other tools in the next decade to improve pharmacologic therapy for paediatric patients.

It is concerning therefore, in relation to the above, that the ‘pop-up’ Covid vaccine clinics in the U.K. are often staffed by volunteers who may have had no prior medical, nursing or any type of clinical experience. The BMA paper on the recruitment of these Covid vaccination volunteers lists the minimal qualifications. The volunteer has to:

  • be between the age of 18 and 69;
  • have at least two or more A-levels or equivalent;
  • be at low risk of COVID-19;
  • be prepared to undergo a reference check.

How can we be sure that the Solent NHS Trust incident was an “isolated occurrence” and how can we be sure that nothing “significant” will happen to the children (estimated to have received three times the correct dose)?

Surely this cannot be right, 70 years on from the days of Krugman? Is it also acceptable for parents to have been pressured (in the case of Covid, through fear from Government, scientists and the media) into providing consent for a novel ‘vaccine’, without long term data, on behalf of their healthy offspring? This fear was instilled through overstating the risk of Covid to healthy children, misinforming the public that the vaccines prevented transmission and describing vaccine effectiveness in a misleading way by claiming up to 95% effectiveness (relative risk) instead of the actual or absolute reduction in risk which in the trial was less than 1% in adults and is now possibly less than nil for children (see above).

I try to put myself in the shoes of these children when, possibly some time later in their lives, they are told of their participation in the administration of a not yet fully licensed medication. Or not told. They were possibly too young to comprehend the personal risk and bodily infringement inflicted. Andrew Bridgen MP reported one study alone involving several thousand vaccinated children showing that one in 500 under five years of age who received a Pfizer Covid vaccine were hospitalised with a vaccine injury and one in 200 had symptoms ongoing for weeks or months afterwards.

Why has the Government, the medical profession and media not allowed the public to be informed that the Yellow Card reports, and those of the American equivalent, VAERS, show up more adverse Covid vaccine incidents in young people than all other known vaccinations combined? Around 6,000 doctors, scientists and professionals in more than 34 countries have declared an international medical crisis due to “diseases and death associated with the COVID-19 vaccines”. Their report highlights the large number of sudden deaths in previously healthy young people who were inoculated with these ‘vaccines’, and the high incidence of miscarriages and perinatal deaths which have not been investigated.

Danny Kruger MP said: “The MHRA is funded by the pharmaceutical companies that produce the drugs and vaccines that it regulates. There might be some universe in which that makes sense, but this is not it.”

In 1995, the comedienne Mrs Merton famously asked Debbie McGee (unfairly I thought): “So what attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?” Similar could be asked of Government and others involved in the rollout of experimental mRNA Covid vaccinations: “So why were healthy children and young adults coerced into receiving unnecessary multiple Covid vaccinations from a $1.4 trillion global pharmaceutical industry?”

Dr. Mark Shaw is a retired dentist.

November 12, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

ADL’s “Anti-Hate” Conference Will Feature Speech From Accused Israeli War Criminal

By Eric Striker | The Main Street Trbune | November 8, 2022

A prominent Jewish organization, the Anti-Defamation League, will be hosting a keynote speech from an accused Israeli military official alleged to have committed serious war crimes at their annual New York conference on Thursday.

The powerful ADL bills itself as a civil society organization dedicated to battling expressions of racism, anti-Semitism, and hate. The purpose of the upcoming conference, titled “Never Is Now,” will be to foster “meaningful dialogue, education and interpersonal connections,” in order to “continue the fight against antisemitism, hate and bias in all its forms—together.”

Featured speakers will include figures such as Congresswoman Liz Cheney, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and actor David Schwimmer.

They will be sharing a stage with retired Israel Defense Forces Maj. Gen. Doron Almog, a man who was the subject of outstanding arrest warrants in the United Kingdom for crimes against humanity.

In 2005, the chief London magistrate issued a warrant for Almog’s arrest for his actions as head of the IDF’s Southern Command between 2000 and 2003. British law asserts universal jurisdiction for war crimes.

According to the indictment, Almog ordered his forces to indiscriminately bulldoze the houses of Arabs living in the occupied Gaza Strip in the Egyptian border city of Rafah, an ethnic cleansing campaign which turned over 10,000 people into homeless refugees.

On July 22nd, 2002, Almog ordered a military strike on the residence of a Palestinian activist resisting the demolition campaign, which killed over a dozen people, including nine children, according to court records.

During a 2005 incident, Almog learned that he was the subject of a secret warrant when he landed at Heathrow airport, which led him to return to his plane and hide until it returned to Israel. Scotland Yard documents show that British counter-terrorism officers did not arrest the fugitive due to fear that Almog would open fire on them and cause a gun battle to break out in the middle of the airport.

After Almog’s getaway, human rights organizations such as Amnesty International publicly condemned British security forces for allowing the dangerous and egregious violator of the Geneva convention to escape justice.

While the warrant for the suspect’s arrest appears to have expired due to subsequent amendments to British human rights laws, Almog continues to avoid setting foot in the UK.

Almog remains a highly controversial figure among non-Jews internationally, but global Jewry has embraced him as a hero. In 2016, Almog was awarded the Israel Prize for lifetime achievement, and earlier this year, he was made head of the Jewish Agency, suggesting that there is no stigma with being associated to the military figure among Jews.

The ADL has been the subject of intense public scrutiny in recent years for its campaigns targeting Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk, Kanye West, and Kyrie Irving in the name of combating what it perceives as speech and action that undermines the interests of the Jewish community. The group’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, also admitted responsibility for the deplatforming of President Donald Trump from social media.

November 12, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

COVID-19: The Evidence revisited – summer 2022

What have we learned?

Health Advisory & Recovery Team | November 10, 2022

It is now two and a half years since the first lockdown and eighteen months since HART published its paper COVID-19: an overview of the evidence. Over the last few months, we asked all the original authors to go back and review their articles and update with relevant publications, revising their conclusions as appropriate. These chapters spelled out either evidence of harms from the pandemic policies or theoretical concerns.

A year later the evidence is coming in and it is damning.  This ‘updates’ series will hopefully form part of HART’s evidence to the Independent Review.

Without an introspective ability to learn from its collective mistakes, societies run the risk of causing irreparable damage to themselves. HART came together as a grass-roots organisation in late 2020 to challenge what we thought were a series of incorrect prevailing narratives, specifically the alleged efficacy of novel interventions (both of the pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical varieties) and a lack of careful consideration of their collateral harms. Why did Parliament not ask these questions before meekly surrendering power to HM Government for a two-year period back during the early panic in March 2020? How did age-old disease management principles get tossed to one side in favour of hocus-pocus measures based on ‘science’ that was anything but settled?

We do not claim to have got everything right and we have continued to probe and challenge our own thinking. HART remains a broad church and we encourage debate and discussion from a wide range of disciplines — how else will we learn?

But we will not stand by while those in authority — and their cheerleaders — censor and stifle this debate, brush aside some of the occurrences of the last few years with a breezy “never mind” while at the same time rushing to impose the next set of half-baked, inappropriate, economically damaging or downright harmful measures that got dreamed up in a think tank or focus group. It must be possible to do better than this. Our children’s futures depend on it.

We invite you to read the updated chapters of our initial evidence review:

  1. Variants of SARS-CoV-2 and the Futility of Border Closures
  2. Natural vs vaccine immunity: which is safer or more protective?
  3. Zero Covid – an impossible dream
  4. Living with Covid: What does this mean for those in adult social care?
  5. Masks do more harm than good
  6. Ethical considerations of the COVID-19 response updated
  7. Lockdowns: the evidence revisited
  8. COVID-19 vaccination in children – major ethical concerns remain
  9. The ONS Infection Survey: a re-evaluation of the data
  10. Vaccine Certification – a trojan horse for digital ID?
  11. Why are so many treatment options still being ignored?
  12. What has changed regarding asymptomatic spread?
  13. Covid policies and harms to children updated
  14. The Psychological Impact of the Government’s Communication Style and Restrictive Measures

November 11, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Australian Media: “Majestic Princess cruise with 800 COVID-19 patients set to dock in Sydney”

Three years later and the press is still reporting cruise ship outbreaks like they matter. I just want everything to stop being so stupid.

eugyppius: a plague chronicle | November 11, 2022

Somehow cruises are still a thing, which people are still somehow doing.

Specifically, around 4,600 people are currently aboard the Majestic Princess as she approaches Sydney. Among the amusements provided them by the wise administrators of Princess Cruises is apparently a rigorous antigen testing regimen, doubtless because passengers and crew alike believe this is hygienic and responsible, even though none of them, if challenged, could defend their bizarre compulsion or explain its benefits in any way at all. Alas, idiocy has consequences, and suddenly around 800 testees turn out to have SARS-2 antigens in their mucus. This is now a newspaper story in multiple languages, because everything has to be extremely, unbearably stupid all the time now.

According to press reports, some of these 800 people feel mildly unwell, while others feel totally healthy. Nobody is dying or seriously ill in any way. Regardless of anybody’s actual medical condition, all 800 have been confined to quarters, while the rest of the passengers have been required to don masks, and – I swear this is real – “crew members have been advised to wear full PPE.”

Australian news also notes that “The Majestic Princess has been ranked by NSW Health as a tier three risk level,” which sounds extremely terrible. They report further that “there are no plans to prevent any unwell passengers from disembarking” when the ship arrives at port tomorrow morning, and if you can detect a little regret behind those words, perhaps it’s because 800 positive passengers represents a staggering 4% increase in the current case count of New South Wales.

Some days I am very optimistic that the pandemic at least is behind us, and then I stumble across a story like this one, and I basically want to abandon all of civilisation and take up residence by myself on a desert island somewhere. While the most intrusive pandemicist policies have died an ignominious death, the toxic and idiotic cultural attitudes that supported them are still alive and well, and waiting – just waiting – to seize the levers of policy once again.

November 11, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Roosevelt’s War to Unite the World

Tales of the American Empire | November 10, 2022

Americans are taught their nation fought World War II to free Europe from Nazi tyranny, but historical accounts prove otherwise. President Franklin Roosevelt continued President Woodrow Wilson’s effort to unite all nations under a world government based in New York. Creating a United Nations under American control required destroying the growing German and Japanese empires, dismantling the huge British and French empires, and weakening the growing Soviet Union. Roosevelt had no interest in fighting the Germans to win the war quickly. He wanted Germany and the Soviets to destroy each other while he expanded his United Nations to rule the world.

____________________________________

Related Tale: “Everyone Lost in World War II”; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXHxi…

Related Tale: “The Anglo-American War on France”; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkUlo…

Related Tale: “The Madness of Operation Torch”; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeUFL…

Related Tale: “An Invasion of Sicily in 1942?”; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yA5fe…

Related Tale: “Poland Lost World War II”; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOgNH…

Related Tale: “The Disastrous Liberation of the Philippines”; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7bcQ…

November 11, 2022 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , , | Leave a comment

WEF: Eco-anxiety a Driver of the Mental Health Pandemic

By Igor Chudov | November 9, 2022

Big news from the World Economic Forum’s agenda articleEco-anxiety is a major mental health issue for our young people.

67% of young people are concerned about the impact of climate change on their mental health.

Reread this, please!

They are not merely worried about climate change. They are concerned about the impact of worrying about “climate change” on their MENTAL HEALTH!

Since many of my readers are not currently suffering from eco-anxiety, some may not immediately understand the mental struggle. But it is real, I assure you.

So bad is the climate change anxiety that there exists a “Climate Psychiatry Alliance,” an organization of psychiatrists helping those suffering from climate change anxiety. Watch the co-founder of “Climate Psychiatry Alliance” explain her work helping sufferers of climate anxiety.

World Economic Forum’s article acknowledges that there is a mental health pandemic caused by eco-anxiety:

Identifying as female, using social media, and having a sense of helplessness all increase susceptibility to this new global mental health pandemic.

Fortunately, the WEF has a suggestion on how to cope with climate anxiety: engage in activism. A young sufferer of climate change anxiety Sofia Palau, did just that. To alleviate her sense of helplessness, she joined a youth climate activism group, “Youth vs. Apocalypse,” whose purpose is actually to create MORE climate anxiety:

No doubt, like most in-groups, “Youth vs. Apocalypse” take pains to validate and normalize their climate anxieties. Having “climate change panic attacks” is a matter of course for them and is celebrated.

Recruiting more young people into their climate advocacy group reaffirms their general outlook. It finds an outlet for frustrations that rule its members. Watch the video if you want.

The WEF agenda article explains the theoretical underpinnings:

While emotion-focused coping has been the most common strategy used by adolescents and young adults to date, research has found that meaning-focused coping is the most effective in regards to eco-anxiety. When done correctly, meaning-focused coping, such as getting involved in the fight against climate change through volunteering or campaigningfacilitates positive emotions like hope without ignoring negative ones like anger or anxiety.

The end result is processing, rather than getting stuck in, anxiety and feeling motivated to engage in activism and other pro-environmental behavior.

What is the result? More and more anxiety-affected young people suffering from real mental health problems, with adults in charge recommending that they get together and recruit more people who would also be made to suffer from climate anxiety.

The likely outcome is mass psychosis or mass formation of people who are good and well-intentioned but stuck in an anxiety-ridden in-group circular dynamic.

This pandemic of climate fear is not entirely dissimilar to the “mass formation” that Matias Desmet discussed so many times concerning whipping up fear during the Covid pandemic. Is the climate anxiety mass formation purely accidental? Not really.

All this is facilitated by rich old men with well-positioned investments, of course.

The press, sponsored by the same rich old men, intentionally creates climate anxiety in people also:

Kids are particularly targeted with child-friendly but anxiety-provoking messaging:

Please be Respectful to Your Own Kids!

I hope my somewhat tongue-in-cheek but completely accurate retelling of what is going on in the mental health/climate activism world was interesting and perhaps made you smile.

Do NOT, please, make my story into a justification to dismiss your children! If your children, or young friends, suffer from climate anxiety, remember that

  • they are human beings
  • they base their emotions on what they see on TV and on their social feeds
  • that stuff is important to them
  • rebelliousness is a part of growing up
  • anxiety, helplessness, and hysteria do NOT need to be parts of growing up
  • we live in an uncertain world, and some of their concerns may be justified
  • the number one goal is NOT to lose their trust and respect
  • never dismiss them as persons or make fun of their anxieties

Any parent whose child has ANY anxiety needs to engage with the child, listen to them, NOT be judgmental, offer support, etc. Our children are NOT copies of ourselves (I bet you changed compared to when you were 16 also,) and we cannot force them to think the way we want.

A bonus is instilling a sense of self-reliance and internal locus of control in your children so that they do not feel “helplessness” and are not compelled to be a part of groups to normalize their anxieties. Helplessness drives many bad decisions and affects mental and physical health.

I am not a child psychiatrist or anything, but if my own hypothetical daughter (I have two great sons) suffered from climate anxiety, I would listen to her extensively. Then I would plant trees with her and make her dig big holes (the bigger, the better) to plant larger trees. Small trees are too easy. Perhaps plant a garden to “use less diesel fuel to grow food.”

Challenge some of their most anxiety-provoking beliefs without dismissing them. Explain how this tree needs CO2 to grow. That could give the child a sense of purpose and balance instead of falling prey to lunatic groups like “Youth Apocalypse.”

If you, my reader, disagree with me, you are welcome to comment and explain why.

Covid-Skeptics, in-Group Mentality, Anxiety, and Helplessness

My message would be remiss without noting that we, Covid-skeptics, also form an in-group with a very special narrative. Being vilified and targeted by the media, of course, does not help. Worrying about our health and loved ones could also create anxiety — oftentimes justified. A sense of helplessness among the unvaccinated was purposely instilled:

I am also, frankly, worried about what will happen with excess mortality and reduction in births!

Thus, we could be susceptible to the same challenges as some climate-anxious young people. So let’s make sure that we keep each other challenged, debate, and use our virtual gatherings to at least somewhat alleviate our anxieties instead of always whipping them up.

I am personally guilty of making several anxietyprovoking posts. I kind of realized that a while ago and try to mix them with good news to keep the balance.

Sorry if I sound too opinionated. Guilty as charged.

November 10, 2022 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment