Social Media Skewed Lockdown Debate According To Data Expert
By Richie Allen | February 16, 2022
Experts who spoke out against lockdowns were labelled as pseudo-scientists who possessed fringe ideas, because pro-lockdown scientists had more followers on social media, particularly Twitter.
Data Science expert Professor John Ioannidis of Stanford University, has compared the expertise of the experts who signed The Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) with those who signed The John Snow Memorandum.
The GBD argued that vulnerable people should be shielded and that everyone else be allowed to get on with their lives in order to build natural immunity against the virus. They warned lockdowns would be devastating for public health and the economy.
The signatories of the Snow Memorandum argued that it would be unethical to let the virus rip, therefore lockdown was essential.
According to The Telegraph :
In an article published in BMJ Open Research, he (Professor Ioannidis) found that both letters were authored by very influential experts, but that the John Snow Memorandum authors had a far greater reach on social media, which made it appear that their view had more support.
By November 2021, just four key signatories of the GBD had more than 50,000 Twitter followers, compared with 13 of the key authors of the JSM.
Prof Ioannidis concluded: “Both the Great Barrington Declaration and John Snow Memorandum include many stellar scientists, but JSM has far more powerful social media presence and this may have shaped the impression that it is the dominant narrative.
“GBD is clearly not a fringe minority report compared with JSM, as many social media and media allude.
“If knowledgeable scientists can have a strong social media presence, massively communicating accurate information to followers, the effect may be highly beneficial.
“Conversely, if scientists themselves are affected by the same problems (misinformation, animosity, loss of decorum and disinhibition, among others) when they communicate in social media, the consequences may be negative.”
Prof Ioannidis also said signatories of the JSM had contributed to the vilification of authors of the GBD through their tweets and op-eds.
John Ioannidis is right on when he says that social media skewed the debate in favour of the lockdown evangelicals, but he has missed one very important point. He seems to have overlooked shadow banning.
It shouldn’t have really mattered that pro-lockdown scientists had more followers on Twitter than their Great Barrington Declaration counterparts.
Twitter and Facebook worked in tandem from the outset of the scamdemic to amplify the posts of academics who supported lockdowns while at the same time limiting the reach of experts who opposed the tyrannical measures.
This meant that users were many times more likely to read pro-lockdown propaganda than they were to read the opinions of sceptics. The social media firms use not very sophisticated algorithms to ensure that their users read what they want them to read.
It’s happening today. The Welsh government has announced plans to give covid jabs to children over five years-old. England will announce later this week.
There are tens of thousands of doctors and scientists who are horrified at the prospect of jabbing young children with an unproven medicine that they do not need.
You and I know who they are, but the majority of people do not. This is because they will never see these experts in their news feeds. Free speech has no greater enemy than social media.
Forced Vaccination Policy in Austria Has No Impact on Jab Uptake
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | February 15, 2022
Austria’s best-selling newspaper says the government’s introduction of a mandatory vaccination policy has had no discernible impact on jab uptake in the nation’s capital and could have even caused a drop-off.
Since the compulsory jab mandate came into force on February 5, Kronen Zeitung reports that the law actually caused a reduction in the number of people being vaccinated.
“There is no mandatory vaccination effect – and if there is, then rather in the other direction,” the newspaper reported.
There was a significant reduction in the number of people getting vaccinated on February 6, one day after the mandate was imposed, a trend that was also noted on February 12.
“All in all, the Austrian instruments relating to measures and vaccination do not result in a well-rounded strategy and have no recognizable goal,” the the office of City Councilor for Health Peter Hacker told Kronen Zeitung. “That is why no run on vaccinations is to be expected in the coming days and weeks.”
While the mandate failed to boost vaccination rates, it did succeed as prompting Canadian trucker-style protests in Austria.
As we highlighted last week, enforcement of the jab mandate is nothing less than draconian.
Citizens are being stopped randomly in the street and pulled over in their vehicles and forced to comply with vaccine status checks by police.
As we previously reported, the Austrian government authorities announced they would hire people to “hunt down vaccine refusers.”
Austrians who don’t get vaccinated face fines of up to €7,200 ($8,000) for non-compliance, and those who refuse to pay would also face a 12 month jail sentence.
The Sad and Brutal Final Hours of Camp Freedom and the Convoy to Canberra
A Sense of Place | February 15, 2022
What had been a remarkably successful policing operation, handling the one million protestors who showed up in Canberra to protest two years of government overreach during the Covid era, turned sour in the final hours.
Until that point there had been no reports of violence, rapes, vandalism or all the other behaviours one might fairly expect with such a wildly diverse and yes, angry crowd.
Although the crowd was unmasked, and certainly weren’t lining up to QR code in, the authoritarian derangement and violent police excesses the nation has become accustomed to were nowhere to be seen.
Australians are extremely slow to protest; but with millions having lost their jobs, their businesses, even contact with their families amidst deep social divisions created by being daily threatened or ostracised if they do not take “the jab”, they are silent no more.
The hands off policing which had characterised both the protest and the handling of the 200,000 campers at Camp Epic, only one of a number of campsites, were largely peaceful because the police did not seek confrontation.
That all ended on the 14th of February, 2022, two days after a million people marched on Parliament House in jubilant unity.
The putative and publicly squabbling leadership of the movement at Camp Epic did nothing to dispel tensions. And all of them disappeared on the penultimate day, leading to yet more fear and confusion amongst the thousands who remained on the site itself, including many with children who had no jobs and no homes to return to.
All the rhetoric from various members of the movement that they were there “until the job is done”, or “until this is over”, proved as substantial as smoke.
The social chaos and personal crises wrought by the blizzard of government diktats and authoritarian overreach of the past two years is now clearly evident.
Camp Epic was already rapidly emptying on the final day when police moved in and aggressively moved every last protestor off the site.
In the inflammatory leadup, sowing yet more tension and confusion, protestors were initially told that they would have to move on by midnight. One woman with two young children said people had come to her tent early in the evening and told her she would be bashed and arrested if she did not move on.
The woman did not have a car and had no way of complying.
The next rumour in this evolving drama was that campers had until 8am to comply.
As it turned out the police arrived in force at around 11am, repeatedly broadcasting the message: “Leave Now. You are trespassing. Leave immediately. If you do not leave you will be arrested.”
Police, tolerating no resistance, worked their way through from the showgrounds from the top camping ground until every last protestor had been evicted.
The irony of police aggressively moving demonstrators from the nation’s capital, ostensibly the heart of Australian democracy, was lost on nobody.
As more than 98% percent of protestors had already left, and of the holdouts most were already packing up to leave, it was a largely pointless show of force.
In one of those all too human moments, one protestor pleaded with the police: “Don’t vax your kids.”
One sign, emblematic of the passionate sincerity of protestors, read: “Touch Our Kids & It’s War.”
While from a policing point of view the dissolving of Camp Freedom may well be deemed a success and end up as a textbook model for policing in highly volatile situations, it has also left many questions over its inhumanity and deceptive nature.
Every last protestor moved on yesterday has one message in their head: “The government is my enemy.”
Campers were told multiple conflicting stories. They could move to a large holiday camp an hour outside of town; that they could move to another Council controlled camping ground Camp Cotter at Cotter Creek half an hour away; or that they would be safe and welcome to stay on Ground Seven, at the top of the Epic showgrounds.
In the dramatic unravelling, none of these stories, or deliberate falsehoods, turned out to be true.
The hundreds of people who moved up to Ground Seven on the understanding that as it was private property they would be safe to stay were easily kettled, or corralled, given no choice but to leave after more than 50 police entered the grounds with backup forces clearly evident behind them. While many wore the standard uniforms of local police, there were other heavily armed special operatives wearing masks and holding leashed dogs, adding to the fear and panic already spreading through the crowd.
Amid these surreal and frightening scenes, it was obvious that a few of the officers were enjoying their role perhaps “a little too much”; but that many were unhappy about the duties they were being asked to perform.
In the midst of this chaos, some of the younger officers in particular, were exceptionally polite, thanking the protestors for their cooperation.
Many protestors moved to Cotter Creek Campground, a council run venue, on the assurance that they would be safe and welcome there.
That also proved false, with police aggressively moving protestors on, despite the fact that they had already made bookings and paid for their visit.
Another suggestion that protestors could move to a large conference and adventure centre Caloola Farm, an hour outside of Canberra, provided free of charge by the sympathetic owner, also proved false.
Police blockaded the roads and refused to let protestors enter.
Owner Ralph Hurst-Meyers, well known for his community generosity, said: “After consultation with the authorities, Caloola Farm and the Hurst-Meyers Charity Limited will allow vulnerable people affected by recent events such as the elderly, the disabled, and the indigenous community, single mothers with children, vulnerable families with children to temporarily stay at Caloola Farm free of charge while they make preparations to return home.
The problem with that, of course, is that many of the remaining protestors have no home to return to.
As one of the many passionate people involved in the weeks events observed: “Everyone here is on the verge of losing everything.”
A million people on their doorstep has upset the smug disdain displayed towards the largely working class protestors by Canberra’s insular, well paid public servants and their political overlords.
But as the many Australians who are refusing to accede to the government’s vaccine mandates burn through their savings and resources, the social chaos inflicted on Australia’s working and middle classes by the Canberra elites can only intensify.
The authorities may have succeeded in moving the protestors on this time around, but this story is going nowhere.
Threat of War between Syria and Israel is getting More Real
By Vladimir Platov – New Eastern Outlook – 14.02.2022
On February 9, Israel launched yet another series of strikes on targets near Damascus, which resulted in one Syrian killed and five injured, which has aggravated the threat of war between Syria and Israel.
According to the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), on February 9, four Israeli F-16s, without crossing the state border of Syria, launched another guided missile attack on facilities near Al-Kiswah, a village south of Damascus. One of the anti-aircraft missiles of the Syrian army exploded over the occupied Golan Heights, after which the IDF fired from the area occupied by Israeli troops in the Syrian Golan Heights ten surface-to-surface missiles at the positions of the Syrian air defense forces. Some missiles were brought down by Syrian air defenses. Nevertheless, the attack still caused significant damage to some buildings in the city of Qudsaya, destroying dozens of houses and cars. To repel the attack, Syrian troops utilized Russian-made air defense systems, which shot down eight missiles.
According to an IDF statement, in response to an intercepted missile fired from Syria into northern Israel, Israel attacked targets in Syria, including the “Syrian radar and anti-aircraft batteries that launched missiles at Israeli Air Force aircraft.” However, it is obvious that the missile chosen by the IDF as the reason for retaliation was the anti-aircraft missile that exploded in the air and was launched by Syrian air defenses as a measure of protection against earlier Israeli missile attacks launched from Lebanon.
In the message the Syrian Foreign Ministry sent to the UN Security Council regarding the aforementioned act of aggression by Tel Aviv, the Syrian government denounces the dangerous consequences the Israeli attacks on the SAR territory may have for stability in the Middle East and the entire world. “Syria reserves the right to use all legal means to respond to the treacherous strikes carried out by Israel on the outskirts of Damascus from Lebanese airspace and from the occupied Golan Heights,” the document says. The Syrian Foreign Ministry drew attention to the fact that “the United States, which patronizes Israel, encourages it to continue attacks and paralyzes possible measures by the UN Security Council to deter the aggressor, which undermines the prestige of the international community.”
Initially, Israel planned to launch two strikes simultaneously on February 9 – one on the outskirts of Damascus, and the other on Latakia. However, after encountering two Su-35s scrambled in response, the IAF fighters flew back without attacking the Syrian port. At the same time, almost all of the missiles allegedly aimed at Iranian facilities in the Rif Dimashq Governorate were shot down by Russian-made Syrian air defense systems. The attack was carried out from Lebanese airspace, which is another gross violation of international law.
Israeli Air Force regularly strikes targets in Syria without entering the airspace of the Arab Republic, and mainly operates from the airspace of Lebanon – in violation of international norms, or from the Mediterranean Sea. Since 2013, the IDF has been carrying out hundreds of airstrikes on the territory of a neighboring country primarily targeting pro-Iranian forces in the SAR. This year, there have already been two such attacks by Israel. The first one was took place on January 31 at targets near Damascus, namely Hezbollah facilities and warehouses in the vicinity of Al-Qutayfah. In 2021, there were 55 attacks:
– 3 missile strikes in December (on December 7, 16 and 28, mainly in the area of the port of Latakia, one Syrian soldier was killed, and significant damage was caused). It is noteworthy that on December 28, not for the first time, two F-16s of the Israeli Air Force launched four guided missiles at facilities on the territory of the port of Latakia without crossing the Syrian border (from the Mediterranean Sea). The Syrian air defense forces did not engage in a battle to repel the IAF raid on the port of Latakia, since a landing Russian Air Force transport plane could be in the affected area;
– 4 missile strikes in November (on November 3, 8, 17 and 28, mainly on targets near the city of Homs, which resulted in four people killed, including two civilians, several people wounded and significant material damage);
– 4 missile strikes in October (on October 8, 13, 25 and 30, strikes were carried out on the outskirts of Damascus, the outskirts of al-Ba’ath and the village of Al-Krum in the Quneitra Governorate in southern Syria, and the city of Abu Kamal, as a result of which more than ten Hezbollah militants and a Syrian soldier were killed, and significant damage was caused);
– 3 missile strikes in September (on September 3, 14 and 27, South from the village of Mayadin in the Deir ez-Zor Governorate in Eastern Syria, near the Iraqi border, with many people being wounded);
– 2 missile strikes in August (on August 17 and 19); 3 missile attacks from May to July (on May 5, June 8 and July 19); 9 missile strikes from January to April, with dozens of people dead and wounded;
– 39 missile attacks and air raids were carried out in 2020.
Israel explains its attacks with the desire to prevent modern weapons from falling into the hands of it enemies. Enemy No. 1 in this regard is the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, which is fighting on the side of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and is controlled by Tehran. After the first Israeli airstrikes, Moscow invited all interested parties to meet and talk about disentangling their interests in order to avoid armed conflicts and civilian casualties. However, these calls of Russia have not been heeded.
Israel, despite repeated statements by official Syrian authorities to the UN, continues regular airstrikes on Syrian civilian targets, using, among other things, provocative air attacks by its fighters “under the cover” of civilian aircraft. Thus, in addition to the attack of December 28, on the night of October 13, 2021, four IAF F-16s once again entered the Syrian airspace in the area of the US-occupied Al-Tanf zone in the Homs Governorate and, under the cover of civilian aircraft flying at the same time, carried out an airstrike on a phosphate ore processing plant in the Palmyra area. It is noteworthy that this is not the first time such air attacks have been carried out from the area of the US-occupied zone in the Homs Governorate, which clearly indicates the coordinated actions of the IAF with the US military.
Such provocative tactics of the Israeli Air Force can lead to a serious aggravation of the situation, and it will by the IAF’s fault if the Syrian air defenses in their anti-missile actions shoot down a civilian aircraft of any country, under whose cover Tel Aviv carries out its airstrikes. And such an incident has already occurred in 2018 when Israeli planes bombed Syria from the air zone where the Russian reconnaissance plane was located, and the Syrian air defense shot down this plane by mistake. Russian service members were killed and a big scandal broke out, which was extinguished, and an armed conflict with Israel prevented, only thanks to complex diplomatic efforts.
The Syrian leadership has repeatedly demanded that the UN Security Council put pressure on Israel to stop attacks on the territory of the republic, since such actions violate its sovereignty and lead to increasing tensions in the region. The Syrian Foreign Ministry has previously repeatedly stated that the republic can use “all legal means” to respond to Israeli airstrikes on the Syrian territory. Therefore, by continuing such provocative attacks, Israel is openly tempting its fate, which could turn into a serious armed conflict at any time.
The New Zealand Government Needs to Engage With ‘Freedom Camp’ Protesters, Not Send in the Police
By Richard House | The Daily Sceptic | February 13, 2022
Inspired by the Canadian truckers, a number of New Zealand Freedom Convoys started out on February 5th from the tip of the North Island and the bottom of the South Island to converge on Wellington. Most of the South Island convoy is still camped at Picton (top of the South Island), unable to cross the Cook Strait by ferry. The North Island convoy arrived in Wellington early on February 8th and set up camp outside the New Zealand Parliament, blocking local streets with vehicles. While lacking central leadership and coming with a range of motives, all are calling for the lifting of mandated Covid health restrictions.
The anti-mandate protest camp outside Parliament poses a problem for Government authority. The Government’s response so far mirrors the effect (and often, it seems, motive) of the Covid public health orders in marginalising those who do not conform. The protestors have not been met by any politicians, as is the custom in New Zealand with protests against Parliament. They have been classified as an aggressive minority and have been accused of trespassing on Parliamentary grounds.
The Government’s dilemma is that to recognise any of the protesters’ demands will signify Government weakness, which – with declining polls – it can ill-afford. However, to take physical action to remove the protestors risks adverse publicity and the galvanising of more support. Yet to continue ignoring the protest – which appears to be there for the long haul – keeps it in the public eye, with the Government appearing reactive rather than proactive. There is no easy way out.
The Government has mishandled the situation so far. It should have realised that with every increase in restrictions and every mandate the protest movement would gather numbers, initially from those who are anti-lockdown, then anti-vaccine, then anti-mandate. With Government and opposition party apparatus all being so ‘on-message’ with health order controls, this blind spot is perhaps understandable, as few state workers would have raised concerns their bosses don’t want to hear, but as blind spots go it is a big one.
This protest is different to many previous high-profile protests in New Zealand’s history. Rather than a group campaigning on behalf of others, such as with the anti-apartheid protests, it is a group protesting about their personal treatment by the Government. They have ‘skin in the game’; the outcome significantly affects their lives.
On February 10th at around 8am, the police attempted to remove the protest group on Parliament’s lawn – estimated to be at least several hundred by official sources – one-by-one with tactics that resembled a rugby scrum. After taking most of the day to arrest around 120 protestors, the police withdrew. The police violence involved in removing a generally peaceful protest galvanised more people across the country to respond locally or join what they now call Camp Freedom. The central business district (city centre) roads in Wellington are gridlocked.
The inept state response this week shows the weakness of Government and its lack of strategy. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, when questioned about the protestors at a news conference, replied that it was a police matter and not for politicians. This is a serious miscalculation; it is high-stake politics. The failed police operation to forcibly evict the protestors from the lawn was not viable from the start. Purely from a numbers perspective, the rate of protestor removal was never going to succeed. The demonstration of police aggression went viral on social media and brought more protestors to support. New Zealand (unlike, say, France) isn’t accustomed to this intensity of protest.
Parliament Speaker Trevor Mallard’s decision to turn on the lawn sprinklers was an act of desperation and source of ridicule. In the festival atmosphere, protestors have responded with humour.
The Speaker’s latest hare-brained initiative is to blast music and vaccine adverts at the protestors. The protestors have brought in food kitchens and first aid tents, and are being creative in responding to the weather challenges as support through social media – like the rain, but much more welcome – is flooding in.
What should the Government have done? With hindsight, the simple answer is to have recognised the limits to its authority when it breached accepted norms of human rights and medical ethics. New Zealand had the benefit of seeing the Covid experience in the rest of the world, but the Government seems to have learned little and failed to anticipate how quickly the situation changes. If it had provided a ‘route to normal’ by announcing end dates to mandates and other restrictions before the protest reached the Parliamentary lawn, it may have taken steam out of the movement. Good leadership unites by providing a clear plan and end destination. Ambiguity and coercion lead to suspicion and division.
What should the Government do now? One thing seems for sure: it needs a political solution rather than a police operation.
3,573 Fetal Deaths in VAERS Following COVID-19 Vaccines
By Brian Shilhavy | Health Impact News | February 13, 2022
The U.S. Government’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) database was updated this past Friday, February 11, 2022, and it is now reporting that there have been 1,103,893 cases of injuries and deaths following COVID-19 vaccine since December of 2020, when the FDA issued emergency use authorizations for the COVID-19 vaccines. (Source.)
By way of contrast, there were 918,856 cases of injuries and deaths following all FDA-approved vaccines for the previous 30+ years, from 1990 through November of 2020. (Source.)
So there have been more injuries and deaths recorded in VAERS during the past 14 months following COVID-19 vaccines, than there were for the previous 30+ years combined following all vaccines recorded in VAERS.
Fetal Deaths Increase by 1,867% Following COVID-19 Vaccines
This most recent update of VAERS shows that there have now been 3,573 fetal deaths following COVID-19 vaccines. (Source.)
To arrive at the number of fetal deaths recorded in VAERS I had to test several different searches on listed “symptoms” and then see if the search results documented fetal deaths, since there is no demographic for “fetal deaths.”
The following is the current list of “symptoms” in VAERS that reveals fetal deaths:
- Aborted pregnancy
- Abortion
- Abortion complete
- Abortion complicated
- Abortion early
- Abortion incomplete
- Abortion induced
- Abortion induced incomplete
- Abortion late
- Abortion missed
- Abortion of ectopic pregnancy
- Abortion spontaneous
- Abortion spontaneous complete
- Abortion spontaneous incomplete
- Ectopic pregnancy
- Ectopic pregnancy termination
- Ectopic pregnancy with contraceptive device
- Foetal cardiac arrest
- Foetal death
- Premature baby death
- Premature delivery
- Ruptured ectopic pregnancy
- Stillbirth
This list may not be exhaustive. But if we use the exact same search using these symptoms, we can compare “apples to apples” in examining fetal deaths following COVID-19 vaccines as compared to fetal deaths following all non-COVID vaccines.
Using this search for all FDA-approved vaccines for the previous 30+ years before the COVID-19 vaccines were given emergency use authorization in December of 2020, we find 2,519 fetal deaths, the vast majority of which followed vaccines produced by Merck, which would include the Gardasil vaccines. (Source.)
Here are the yearly averages:
- 82 fetal deaths per year following non-COVID vaccines
- 3063 fetal deaths per year following COVID-19 vaccines
I arrived at these averages by taking the total number of fetal deaths following non-COVID vaccines and divided by 31, and for the fetal deaths following COVID-19 vaccines I divided by 14 to get the monthly average, and then multiplied by 12.
To get a more accurate percentage of how many more fetal deaths are following the COVID-19 vaccines than all other FDA approved vaccines, we have to also factor in the number of doses administered.
The U.S. Government’s Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) complies data on the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, and a report that they published on 12/01/2021 shows that there were over 4 billion (4,092,757,049) doses of vaccines administered in the United States between 1/01/2006 through 12/31/2019, a year before the COVID-19 vaccines were given emergency use authorizations. (Source.)
Using that date range I repeated the exact same search for fetal deaths recorded in VAERS during that time, and VAERS reports 1,369 deaths from among those 4 billion+ doses administered between 1/01/2006 through 12/31/2019. (Source.)
The CDC reported this past week that there have been 543 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines administered as of February 3, 2022. (Source.)
So from 2006 through 2019, there was 1 fetal death recorded in VAERS for every 2,989,596 doses of vaccines administered.
From December, 2020 through February 4, 2022, there has been 1 fetal death recorded in VAERS for ever 151,973 doses of COVID-19 vaccines administered.
That’s a 1,867% increase of fetal deaths recorded in VAERS following COVID-19 vaccines.
I’ve run out of superlatives to use in the English language to describe this. And this is just using the U.S. Government’s own reported statistics, without even trying to figure out what the unreported factor is.
Here are two recent stories from young mothers who lost their unborn babies just after receiving a second COVID-19 vaccine. Perhaps their words and their experiences, which obviously represent, at least, many thousands of others, can better communicate just how truly horrible this is.
This is on our Bitchute channel, and also on our Telegram channel.
Europe considers regulating Spotify
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | February 13, 2022
National media regulators are hoping the upcoming speech laws will give them power to censor “misinformation” on Spotify.
Spotify has been attacked heavily in recent months, mostly for hosting the Joe Rogan Experience, which doesn’t always go along with the mainstream narrative.
“We should hold them accountable not as a publisher but just like any other online platform in the Digital Services Act,” Frédéric Bokobza, deputy director general of France’s media regulator, Arcom, told POLITICO.
The EU is finalizing the Digital Services Act (DSA), a law focused on content moderation on online platforms. The bill might also empower national media regulators to regulate a broader list of tech platforms, including Telegram and Spotify.
“As of now, we do not have regulatory tools in the French law which would enable us to oversee audio streaming companies, on top of the fact [Spotify] is not based on our territory,” said Roch-Olivier Maistre, president of France’s audiovisual regulator.
For long, Spotify escaped public scrutiny as it mostly hosted music. But in recent years it has become a popular podcast platform, with more than 400 million users globally and a new avenue for ideas that the establishment wants censored.
Despite the backlash, Spotify has refused to cut ties with Joe Rogan, whose show is the most popular podcast on the platform.
Covid and the death of medical ethics
By Guy Hatchard | TCW Defending Freedom | February 12, 2022
FROM our unique perspective in New Zealand there is probably no more twisted tale of the pandemic than the transformation of medical ethics. Due to our closed borders, NZ has so few Covid cases (18,000 at the time of writing) and almost no Covid deaths (53), that our pandemic medical history so far has been largely about isolation, vaccination and testing.
The political history of the pandemic has been about control of our borders, the creation of fear, and public assurances of the absolute safety of mRNA vaccines. In contrast, the official count of adverse effects of Pfizer Covid vaccination stands at 50,000 and the death toll at 130-plus. Both these figures are known to be huge underestimates. The excess all-cause non-Covid deaths during the vaccine rollout has been reliably measured at 2,000-plus.
Despite this, booster shots are being heavily advertised and mandated. At no point has there been any admission of our lack of knowledge of the long-term effects of mRNA vaccination. Certainly there is increasing evidence of harm from the jab. For example, data from the US military points to massive rises in disease rates including a threefold rise in cancers. There has been a concerted effort to keep this story out of the mainstream media. The cover-up is almost a bigger story than the actual data.
Along with reports of vaccine injury, a steady stream of papers published recently are beginning to elucidate very worrying mechanisms underlying vaccine injury. Initial expectations were that after stimulating spike protein production sufficiently to induce an immune response, mRNA genetic sequences in the vaccines would dissipate rapidly, and therefore safely. A study published in the journal Cell on January 24 shows that the mRNA sequences can persist in lymph node germinal centres for weeks causing greater spike havoc than Covid infection itself.
The official reports of vaccine adverse effects in NZ are running at 30 times the rate of reported injuries from previous flu vaccines. The fact that this has not rung alarm bells is incomprehensible. The fact that the government has persisted with its saturation advertising announcing the safety and necessity of Covid vaccination is doubly concerning. It is apparent from the failure to investigate alarming data that the practice of medical ethics has transformed to become almost unrecognisable.
A common framework used when analysing medical ethics is the ‘four principles’ approach postulated by Tom Beauchamp and James Childress in their textbook Principles of Biomedical Ethics. It recognises four basic moral principles, which are to be judged and weighed against each other, with attention given to the scope of their application. The four principles are:
Autonomy – the patient has the right to refuse or choose his or her treatment. This is rooted in society’s respect for individuals’ ability to make informed decisions about personal matters with freedom.
Beneficence – a practitioner should act in the best interest of the patient and family. In other words, healing is the aim of medicine.
Non-maleficence – not to be the cause of harm. Many consider this should be the primary consideration, that it is more important not to harm your patient than to do him good, which is part of the Hippocratic oath that doctors take.
Justice – concerns the fair distribution of scarce health resources, and the decision as to who gets what treatment.
In practice, however, many treatments carry some risk of harm. In some circumstances, for example in desperate situations where the outcome without treatment will be grave, risky treatments which stand a high chance of harming the patient could be justified. This is because the risk of not treating is also very likely to do harm. So the principle of non-maleficence (non-harm) is not absolute, and balances against the principle of beneficence (doing good). This has particularly affected debates around the promotion to doctors by drug companies of strong narcotics such as Oxycodone which is highly addictive and whose overuse commonly leads to respiratory failure and death.
It can readily be appreciated that the debate around how to apply ethics to medical practice has some grey areas and deficiencies. Medical misadventure is now the third-leading cause of death in the USA. Has this led to an acceptance of risk which should in fact be avoided? In large part the rules applied to drug approval are very strict. Double blind trials are required. Lengthy periods of assessment are mandated. Deaths following treatment are investigated and usually trials are suspended when these occur. Generally for vaccinations, assessment takes around ten years and two deaths per million recipients would be the maximum allowed in a finally approved product.
In contrast, the pre-approval trial periods for Covid-19 vaccines have been of the order of six months. The critical assessments of secondary effects have not been undertaken. These are aimed to check that general health outcomes for trial participants such as cardiac conditions and cancers do not exceed population norms. Note the US military data here. Clearly serious injury and deaths associated with Covid-19 vaccinations have exceeded the traditional limits by a massive margin. Moreover outcomes reported cover a wide range of conditions. Have professional medical bodies raised the alarm? No. Why?
Initially there were reports that Covid-19 was a very serious illness with mortality rates as high as 5 per cent. Figures as high as 180,000 deaths in NZ were predicted.
This alarmist assessment rapidly dissipated. Published studies put mortality rates well under 1 per cent and there was a realisation that serious Covid outcomes and deaths primarily occurred among those who were already seriously ill or physically weak due to other causes including advanced age. During the early months of 2021, it was also apparent that mRNA vaccines waned in effectiveness rapidly and did little to stop transmission. The only principles of medical ethics that seemed still to be appropriate were those of justice and beneficence. Reports suggested that Covid vaccination reduced the severity of illness; might it not be beneficial to the individual and save our over-stretched health service from becoming overwhelmed by unvaccinated Covid patients, thereby helping patients requiring treatment for other conditions? Despite doubts about the outcome data and mounting evidence of vaccination harm, the answer given to this by the NZ government was a big YES. It decided to mandate vaccination to the extent that the unjabbed would lose their right to employment. It thereby overruled the first principle of medical ethics, autonomy orpatient choice, a degree of coercion which ensured vaccination rates in NZ rose above 90 per cent among those eligible.
The Health Forum NZ is a Facebook, Telegram and MeWe site with 50,000-plus members which has served as a meeting and information place for the vaccine-injured. NZ has a population of 5million so HFNZ members comprise 1 per cent of the population. HFNZ has received reports of 600-plus deaths proximate to vaccination. More than 300 of these have been investigated and confirmed by the voluntary group NZ Doctors Speaking Out on Science.
The most common among the thousands of reports of vaccine injury are chest pain, arrhythmia, shortness of breath and persistent extreme fatigue and debility. Sometimes these develop as cardiac events, clotting, stroke and death. There are many experiences of patients being assured that they were over-anxious and being sent home with an aspirin, only to suffer immediate complications necessitating hospital admission. Sometimes sufferers find that the doctor is uninterested and dismissive when he hears that the injury followed vaccination.
Our government decided early on not to take the reporting of adverse effects following vaccination seriously. It denied repeated requests to make reporting adverse events mandatory with the result that there is no way of knowing the extent of vaccine injury. The health authorities already knew that the voluntary had a history of catching only 5 per cent of adverse events. Their decision flouted the most important principle of medical ethics – do no harm. It also enabled the government and the whole medical establishment to avoid any public discussion of adverse events. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern arranged for the hurried deletion of over 30,000 reports of adverse events from her Facebook account.
Why did our authorities do this? The government opted for a stand-alone vaccination strategy because it believed assurances of safety and efficacy from Pfizer. Almost immediately, and before any decision on mandates, we found out vaccine effectiveness waned rapidly and did little to reduce transmission, directly contradicting Pfizer trial results. The government and the Ministry of Health switched arguments – ‘millions of people have received the vaccine worldwide so it must be safe and effective’, a vacuous argument from a scientific point of view. Almost a hundred thousand people were prescribed thalidomide before it was realised that it was unsafe.
The medical ethics criteria of public good and patient well-being are not usually weighed in the absence of considerations of maleficence and autonomy. Thus the stance of the government, to sweep vaccine injury under the carpet, departed radically from previous ethical practice. This kind of departure has previously been entertained only in times of war when the threat to the nation is judged to be sufficient to mandate military service call-up and tolerate the inevitable heavy casualties of conflict. This condition was of course not met in any way by the Covid pandemic.
The mounting numbers of individuals reporting vaccine injuries should have rung alarm bells to a point that detailed investigation of their extent became a priority. Instead and inexplicably, hiding their occurrence rose to the top of the government’s agenda. Jacinda Ardern lashed out at a journalist asking questions about the death of a 17-year-old girl who had a stroke immediately following vaccination, labelling the journalist as irresponsible and denying any relationship with vaccination before there had been any time to assess causation. A few medical professionals were disciplined for raising similar questions. This was enough to discourage any public consideration of the ethics involved.
The government decided further to reverse ethical practice. Dr Ashley Bloomfield, Director General of Health, has personal responsibility for granting vaccine exemptions to those injured by the first shot. In almost all cases, he refuses exemptions including among those hospitalised and still ill, even when there is supporting documentation from specialists.
Now that extensive research has concluded that the outcomes for Omicron patients are similar for both the vaccinated and unvaccinated, there is no longer a valid scientific argument for justice and beneficence. All ethical arguments for mandates are moot, but why is there still no move to protect individuals from the adverse effects of vaccination?
As mounting evidence has been ignored, government decisions verge towards the criminal. There are floundering attempts by the media to label mandate protesters as variously Right-wing extremists and uneducated Luddites. The arguments in support of mandated vaccination are still being presented to the public through strident political rhetoric unsupported by science publications. The government must realise that there are serious scientific and ethical failings involved. It must mount an honest attempt to change the debate from politics to science, and adjust public policy accordingly. At this stage, anything less is culpable.
CHD Informs the FDA that the Facts Certainly Fail to Support Vaccinations in the 6 month-60 month age group
By Meryl Nass, MD
February 9, 2022
VIA FEDERAL EXPRESS and EMAIL
Dear Dr. Janet Woodcock:
We write to you on behalf of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), a non-profit organization devoted to the health of people and the planet. We have actively followed your work to evaluate, authorize and approve vaccines for the American public, and particularly children.
We are aware that you are likely to grant Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of Pfizer’s BioNTech SARS-CoV-2 vaccine for children aged six months up to five years old following your upcoming meeting on February 15, 2022. We are writing to put you on notice that should you recommend this pediatric EUA vaccine to children under five years old, CHD is poised to take legal action against you. CHD will seek to hold you accountable for recklessly endangering this population with a product that has little, no, or even negative net efficacy but which may put them, without warning, at risk of many adverse health consequences, including heart damage, stroke and other thrombotic events and reproductive harms.
We briefly outline why such a recommendation would be reckless for nearly 20 million children in the United States, and millions more around the world.
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There is no COVID emergency for children under five years old. Children have a 99.995% recovery rate and a body of medical literature indicates that almost zero healthy children under five years old have died from COVID.
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A large study conducted in Germany showed zero deaths for children under 5 and a case fatality rate of three out of a million in children without comorbidities.
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A Johns Hopkins study monitoring 48,000 children diagnosed with COVID showed a zero mortality rate in children under 18 without comorbidities.,
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A study in Nature demonstrated that children under 18 with no comorbidities have virtually no risk of death.
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Data from England and Wales, published by the UK Office of National Statistics on January 17, 2022 revealed that throughout 2020 and 2021, only one (1) child under the age of 5, without comorbidities, had died from COVID in the two countries, whose total population is 60 million.
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Another study in Nature from April, suggests children’s bodies clear the virus more easily than adults.
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This study published in December in Nature demonstrated how children efficiently mount effective, robust and sustained immune responses.
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Over one third of all children are estimated to have natural immunity to COVID, according to CDC’s own data. There is no ethical justification for superfluous vaccination that will put children at elevated risk of vaccine harm.
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The risks demonstrably outweigh the benefits of COVID vaccination in young children. A study out of Hong Kong, showed one out of every 2,700 12-17 year old boys being diagnosed with myocarditis following the 2nd dose of Comirnaty vaccine, or 37 per 100,000 vaccinated. A study from Kaiser found the same rate of myocarditis in 12-17 year old American boys, 1/2700.
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While the CDC is saying that myocarditis is a mild disease, cardiologists know otherwise. CDC’s own preliminary data, reported at the February 4 ACIP meeting, revealed that nearly half of the young people diagnosed with myocarditis still had symptoms 3 months later, and 39% had their activity restricted by their physician. We know this serious adverse event occurs frequently in teenagers. But no one knows how often it occurs in younger children. This is of major concern for babies and younger children.
5. The clinical trials for children 2 through 4 years old failed., You’re proposing to use a product and schedule that failed in its clinical trials, and you may potentially add a third dose later in the spring. This is an unprecedented proposal not backed by science. It does not meet the risk-benefit standard of 21 U.S. Code § 360bbb–3 “the known and potential benefits of the product, when used to diagnose, prevent, or treat such disease or condition, outweigh the known and potential risks of the product.”
6. Some children likely will die and others will be permanently injured from these vaccines based on reporting to the current VAERS database. The latest data shows a total of 1,088,560 reports of adverse events from all age groups following COVID vaccines, including 23,149 deaths and 183,311 serious injuries between Dec. 14, 2020, and Jan. 28, 2022.
7. The pediatric clinical trials for the COVID vaccines were too small to detect safety signals–especially for a population in the tens of millions.
8. There are a) no long-term safety data for COVID vaccination of young children, and b) the proposal is to vaccinate children under the Emergency Use Authorization. Both a) and b) establish that vaccinating small children for COVID will be an experiment, not a standard medical procedure.
9. Unethical coercive pressure will be applied to children and their parents, as has occurred with older children and adults. To grant authorization is to abet this unethical coercion that violates the Nuremberg Code’s first principle.
10. There is no available care for children injured by COVID shots. There is no way to remove the spike protein and other toxic byproducts of vaccination, which may be produced for a considerable period of time following inoculation of messenger RNA. The science and medicine have not yet developed, and most families will be unable to cover the costs of potential catastrophic injuries.
11. First, do no harm. You are a physician who owes a duty to patients and medical ethics. If you recommend these shots to this age group, given all you know, will you be upholding your oath? If not, is it possible that your acts could later be seen as reason to remove your medical licenses?
12. The liability-free nature of your deliberations may not stand the test of time. In the fullness of time, your decisions may not have the liability protection that they currently enjoy. Under the PREP Act of 2005, all actors advancing an EUA agenda for medical countermeasures enjoy liability protection, absent willful misconduct., Nonetheless, if at a later point these shots are deemed non-therapeutic gene products that you knowingly and recklessly recommended, and which were then distributed to children as a direct result of your decision, it is possible that liability could later attach.
13. There are safer drugs that could be used prophylactically and therapeutically for COVID in children. There is extensive and compelling medical evidence for this assertion; and the choice to eschew use of these drugs in favor of a demonstrably dangerous vaccine is arbitrary and capricious.
14. The vaccines do not prevent transmission. They do not prevent infection. There is no statistically valid evidence that they prevent severe disease or deaths in children. Which begs the question: what are you actually trying to accomplish by vaccinating small children? What is your goal?
15. On August 23, 2021, FDA’s letter to BioNTech explained that neither the VAERS nor the VSD surveillance systems were adequate for FDA to determine the risk of myocarditis resulting from the Pfizer vaccine. Therefore, Pfizer and BioNTech were instructed by FDA to carry out a series of studies of myocarditis to ascertain the risk in different groups, including children. These studies were scheduled to produce final reports to FDA over the next five years. If the FDA is willing to wait until 2027 to learn the actual risks of myocarditis from the vaccine for children, shouldn’t it be required to wait until 2027 before inoculating millions of small children with a vaccine anticipated to provide them no benefit and possibly substantial risks?
16. An important Cell article in press, written by scientists from Stanford, has shown that, based on lymph node sampling after mRNA vaccination, spike protein and its mRNA remain present in the germinal centers of draining lymph nodes for up to 60 days, which is when sampling ceased. This was not supposed to happen. The demonstration of vastly prolonged spike protein production has revealed that the dose of spike protein produced in vivo by mRNA vaccines is unpredictable. FDA, however, requires uniformity of dosing. This fact alone should disqualify all authorizations and approvals of mRNA COVID vaccines.
We ask that you carefully consider all the information above before making any recommendation for Pfizer’s vaccine in the 6 months to under 5 year age group at your meeting on February 15, 2022.
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Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Meryl Nass, M.D.
Unfortunately, the footnotes are missing from this version. They can be found at:
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/wp-content/uploads/CHD-Letter-to-FDA__EUA-Under-5_2-9-2022-1.pdf
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By Wyatt Reed | The Grayzone | December 17, 2023
Lawsuits accusing top US universities of harboring antisemitism all originate from one source: a corporate law firm that fielded the pro-settler ex-US ambassador to Israel, and which was registered as a foreign agent of an Israeli principal as recently as 2021.
The firm now represents professional Israel lobby activists posing as victimized “Jewish students” and seeking to crush the free speech rights of Palestine solidarity activists. … continue
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