Aletho News

How COVID lockdowns failed to protect the vulnerable but fattened up the laptop privileged ‘café latte’ class

By Paul Elias Alexander, PhD | Trial Site News | June 21, 2021

The thesis is that lockdowns did not protect the vulnerable, but rather harmed the vulnerable and shifted the morbidity and mortality burden to the underprivileged. Devastatingly so! We instead locked down the ‘well’ and healthy in society, which is unscientific and nonsensical, while at the same time failing to properly protect the actual group that lockdowns were proposed to protect, the vulnerable and elderly. We actually did the opposite. We shifted the burden to the poor and caused catastrophic consequences for them. They were in the worst economic situation to afford the lockdowns and estimates are that it will be decades for them to recover from what we did. Wealth disparities placed those who were more vulnerable economically in a very difficult position in terms of sheltering from the pandemic. It was devastating for them for they could not shelter. It left them exposed! COVID-19 has emerged as a boon for the rich ‘laptop’ class and a disaster for the poor. The actions of our governments hurt the poor in societies terribly, and many could not hold on and committed suicide. Deaths of despair skyrocketed. Poor children, especially in richer western nations such as the US and Canada, self-harmed and ended their lives, not due to the pandemic virus, but due to the lockdowns and school closures. This is the legacy for our governments and their inept COVID advisors. Full of arrogance, hubris, and self-righteousness, in spite of their catastrophic failures. Their actions were detrimental and costed lives.

How did we get here? The reality is everything about the response to this pandemic, by the governments, bureaucrats, technocrats, their medical advisors, and the television medical experts have been catastrophically wrong! Even medical doctors have become politicized and biased in their reactions and how they have managed this. Doctors (not all) but a vast majority just decided that they would not treat COVID-positive high-risk patients and took a hands-off ‘therapeutic nihilism’ approach, while the high-risk infected worsened and declined. While empiricism traditionally underpins clinical practice and doctors even take eclectic approaches, with COVID, the approach was ‘do nothing’ until the patient cannot breathe anymore and requires oxygen. This while we had effective and cheap anti-virals and corticosteroids and anti-clotting drugs like hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, colchicine, favipiravir, budesonide, dexamethasone, methylprednisolone, high-dose aspirin, heparin etc. as part of sequenced, multi-drug early treatment ‘cocktail’ protocols devised by pioneers such as McCullough, Risch, Zelenko, Smith, Fareed, Kory, Oskoui, Urso, Ladapo, Lawrie etc.

They, these specious and inept Task Forces and medical advisors to these unreasoned government leaders have been flat wrong on all and have failed and costed tens of thousands if not millions of lives! These advisors and governments lied about equal risk to all of becoming ill if infected, and this damaged the response. They lied about asymptomatic spread and recurrent infection, for our detailed examinations have shown these to be very rare if at all. They lied that the RT-PCR test was a valid test and to be used. They set cycle count thresholds (Ct) for PCR positive of 40 and above knowing that 20 to 24 was the threshold for viable, culturable infectious virus. They knew that Ct of 30 and above was denoting viral dust and fragments and non-infectious, non-pathogenic virus. They also misled the public that COVID recovered persons are to be vaccinated, and that children are to be vaccinated. They know the risk to children is so very negligible (even less than the seasonal flu) and that the vaccine has potential harms for children, yet they, combined with the CDC and Fauci, continue to provoke fear into parents to vaccinate their children. They have lied on everything COVID and all of these duplicitous statements and policies carry deep consequences. Nothing they have ever said turned out to be accurate and they have done this with reckless abandonment.

Our focus is on the devastating burden shifted to the poor in our society by the lockdowns and we begin by arguing vehemently that any epidemic or pandemic steps to mitigate severe outcomes cannot only focus on the harms from the pathogen, but must also focus on the harms from the policy steps such as lockdowns and school closures. Why? Because lockdowns (also known as non-pharmaceutical interventions) have crushing effects and function to exacerbate inequalities. Women and children and especially the poorer among them, have fared worst of all due to the effects of lockdowns! Look at the devastation visited upon women in our societies. She has lost most! We have learned a terrible lesson now that these specious, unsound, restrictive lockdown and school closure policies carry costs that may well be life-long, and especially on the backs of the poorer among us, who are least able to afford. We have argued with governments since spring 2020 against these draconian and unscientific policies, and that the approach must be nuanced and finessed, tailored and ‘focused’ with an age-targeted, risk-based approach. We had learned very early on that COVID-19 was amenable to risk stratification, and age (and obesity) were the principal risk factors, along with diabetes, renal disease, cardiovascular disease etc. We pleaded for an age-risk stratified approach to the pandemic response yet were dismissed and sidelined.

We argued about strongly protecting the vulnerable first (e.g. elderly and especially those with underlying medical conditions) as they were the key target group for the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen, and allow the rest of the low-risk ‘well’ healthy population to live reasonably normal lives, taking sensible common-sense precautions. We knew that simple hand-washing and isolation of the ill/symptomatic persons was the key step. No isolation of asymptomatic persons, no testing of asymptomatic persons. Contact tracing after the pathogen had breached the borders and had spread was useless. These harmed people and populations and did not help in any manner. We knew this, we told the illogical and irrational, often hysterical and inept Task Forces and COVID advisors and governments this, but they did not listen.

Early data was showing us that people over 75 to 80 years old were over 10,000 times more likely to die of COVID-19 if infected than someone under 10 years old. Thus, why would we have a blanket carte blanche lockdown when there is so much risk differential? We could look at the situation in the rest of the low-risk ‘open’ population and monitor, and only if we saw infections and hospitalization increase markedly then we would move to impose restrictions etc. on them. As needed. No mass testing of asymptomatic persons and no quarantine of asymptomatic persons.

We knew that once the high-risk and elderly were properly protected, that we could reduce hospitalization and death. We also knew that if we used early drug treatment in these groups, that we would dramatically cut hospitalizations by 85% and save thousands of lives. But these maladroit and inept, unscientific Task Forces and television experts did not listen. We did not think that we were any smarter than the Task Force and lunatic television medical experts, by any means, but we knew that they were seemingly averse to the science and that we were literally studying the data and basing our decisions on balancing the benefits versus the harms to any decision. They had to be averse to the data for how else could you explain the often idiotic and nonsensical tripe they would spew 24/7 to the public? Consider Dr. Anthony Fauci as an example, for near 16 months now, we cannot think of or locate one statement that he has made publicly that made any sense whatsoever, and could be backed up by any data or science. None! Not one. We continue to look and ask if anyone can locate such, if they can bring it to our attention urgently for us to correct this record.

We felt strongly that if we indeed secured the high-risk elderly and vulnerable, then lockdowns would not have to be applied across the board. We were always confident in this, the question really being would those in decision-making positions understand this. Would they, the bureaucrats and technocrats and their illogical advisors be able to understand that the key is to drive a risk differential between the high and low-risk in a population whereby the low-risk of severe illness be allowed harmlessly and naturally to live lives normally and if exposed, become infected and to clear the virus with full, broad, and robust resulting natural immunity?

In other words, we do not impede the low risk of severe outcome of becoming infected and we leave them largely unrestricted with common sense safety precautions. We knew they would have no symptoms or very minimal and recover quite well. The evidence was clear in this. We heighten their risk of transmission (we increase the probability of infection among the younger and low-risk persons, low-risk adults etc.), so to speak. And that at the same time, we secure the high-risk of illness persons so that infection risk is reduced for them. We mitigate the chance of infection in the high-risk of illness. We create a risk differential of contracting the virus that is skewed towards the young and healthy. And we do this harmlessly and naturally. We do this so that the low-risk who become infected can become immune, and they can then help protect the high-risk vulnerable persons in a society.

Would they, these lockdown lunatic advisors understand that you do not lock down the well and healthy so that you effectively cause the low-risk of severe illness to have low risk of becoming infected and that this only works to delay moving toward population immunity? That this is the worst step you can take? That you also put selection pressure on the virus when you lockdown, that drives mutations? Akin to the mutations driven by vaccinating during a pandemic, this itself being a terrible step.  That with lockdowns, the pathogen does not go away and waits for the restrictions to be loosened and infections will always go up once restrictions are loosened. That this also denies them, the low-risk persons, the opportunity to clear the virus and become naturally immune? That this mistake actually harms the elderly who are then not protected by the population immunity that was not gained by the low-risk? We use the low-risk in the population to protect the high-risk as the full strategy, or in combination with a properly developed and safety tested vaccine. Everything these lockdown lunatics in charge did, was wrong! Did they not think these things through?

The stark reality is that our lockdowns badly harmed the elderly for it left them confined in their nursing homes and extended the window of exposure to the virus for them. And they were subject to repeated exposure from staff who brought pathogen into the confined settings and drove the hospitalizations and deaths. Lockdowns worked to kill the elderly! Lockdowns thus reduced the movement of the younger low-risk persons to the same level of movement and mobility as the elderly higher-risk persons (basically none) and thus equalized the chance of infection between the low-risk and high-risk (young and old). This was devastating.

While we knew this and spoke of this repeatedly to inform the policy makers, they, the media, and the inept television medical experts attacked us and smeared us. Pilloried us. They, the governments and their utterly bogus scientific advisors ‘knew best’. They were so inept and academically sloppy, and refused to do the work and abreast themselves of the science and to think this through. They were lazy and either did not understand the science, did not read it, did not ‘get’ it, or were blinded to it by their cognitive dissonance of any information that did not align with their politicized views. This led to catastrophic decisions that continue even today. Again, just look at Ontario in mid-June 2021, it is as if it were February 2020.

Now look at what they have done to the globe by their hubris and arrogance and ineptness. Look around you. We were always right for we took the time and thought this through and understood the catastrophic mess the lockdowns would cause. We knew that a finessed, nuanced ‘targeted’ approach was needed here. We studied the policy implications and considered the harms from the lockdown policies. In the end, still to this day, they have failed to properly protect the elderly while damaging the well in the society with crushing lockdowns and closures. Thousands of Americans, including children, died due to suicides and deaths of despair, needlessly. The effects will be felt in some models for the rest of the 21^st century. In no country, no setting, is there any evidence that lockdowns, school closures, shelter-in-place, social distancing, mass asymptomatic testing, and mask mandates worked. None! Zero! This is why the father of epidemiology and eradicator of small-pox, Dr. Donald Henderson, argued in 2006 against these devastating measures even for more lethal pathogens, for he knew of the disastrous outcomes. He did not advocate for them for he knew of the devastating consequences.

What have we found out about the illogical and unscientific societal restrictions since March 2020? This is not ‘new’ data or evidence as the CDC would tend to say, for this data began emerging soon after the catastrophic lockdowns and school closures began in spring of 2020. We learnt about the catastrophic harms (consequences) and failures of lockdowns (AIER lockdowns) and principally that they do not work and are ineffective and detrimental to societies rich or poor, whereby lockdowns decimates a society as it drives desperation especially among the disenfranchised and marginalized. We learnt that school closures (AIER school closures) was and remains a catastrophic failure whereby keeping children out of the school system harms them. Many children get their only meal in the school, get their eyes and hearing tested, and the school acts as a safety valve for possible physical and/or sexual abuse. These are normally noticed from the school initially. Many children killed themselves in the west due to the school closures, and the US Task Force led by Fauci et al. wears this. Moreover, we learnt about the catastrophic harms of mask use especially for children. In addition, we learnt of the ineffectiveness of masks (blue surgical as well as cloth face-masks) (AIER masks) as well as the failure of mask mandates (especially for children who are damaged socially, emotionally, and health-wise due to the masking).

We learnt that everything that the US Task Force and other medical advisors called for and implemented (especially the British and Canadian Task Forces), was destructive and caused devastating consequences to economies and lives. Just look at the insanity Canadians are living now, 16 months in, especially in the province of Ontario. Look at the economic destruction, lost businesses, jobs, and lives. What a catastrophic mess and every single step the provincial government takes is nonsensical and unscientific and completely irrational. None have worked. Who comprises the Ontario government’s Task Force? They should have all been fired 12 months ago and all their salaries recouped. What an inept, highly incompetent, senseless bunch, a clown car out of control! Hundreds of thousands of people died not due to COVID, but as a result of the damaging restriction policies by these absurd and reckless medical experts who should all have been fired after one month of their lunacy!

Acquired immunity due to exposure, some cross-reactivity cross-protection to other coronaviruses (common cold), as well as innate resistance to begin with was the pattern we were observing. How come we saw and knew this but these Task Forces could not? We were seeing that the vast majority of persons were at no risk for serious illness or death and only a small sliver of the population, was at risk. An approximate 99.98% risk of survival. In fact, the specific high-risk group e.g. elderly persons with underlying medical conditions, was more focused on by SARS-CoV-2 than for influenza since influenza cuts a wide swath including devastating to children. We knew COVID was clearly devastating for high-risk vulnerable people. But we knew quickly how to manage COVID and that the virus was treatable with existing cheap, safe, and effective therapeutics, when applied early in the disease sequelae. Yes, early outpatient treatment with existing repurposed therapeutics would have played a major role in closing off this pandemic much earlier. Yet, what did we do? We shut our societies down and moved massively toward vaccinating the nation(s). We refused to consider the potent role of natural immunity and COVID recovered immunity, as well as cross-protection immunity. It went counter to all of what we knew and were seeing.

Perhaps Dr. John Lee wrote it best by stating, “The moral debate is not lives vs money. It is lives vs lives. It will take months, perhaps years, if ever, before we can assess the wider implications of what we are doing. The damage to children’s education, the excess suicides, the increase in mental health problems, the taking away of resources from other health problems that we were dealing with effectively. Those who need medical help now but won’t seek it, or might not be offered it. And what about the effects on food production and global commerce, that will have unquantifiable consequences for people of all ages, perhaps especially in developing economies”?

Lockdowns did not protect the vulnerable and defenseless among us, no, it actually harmed and devastated the vulnerable people, for lockdowns work to expose vulnerable people. These lockdowns, these school closures, these mask mandates, these shelter-in-place edits and polices were all Fauci’s and Birx’s policies. These were their policies that the President implemented and the gross error he made was listening to these inept illogical so-called ‘experts’ and not firing them on day one! How could he be so misled? Their lockdown polices costed lives! What a clown car of disaster visited upon the United States for near 16 months now and it continues under the new administration. Even worse!

Gupta and Kulldorff write, “a key feature of COVID-19 is that there is more than a thousand-fold difference in the risk of death between the oldest and the youngest”. We agree fully and this is a core theme of this offering, in that the crushing burden of the forced societal lockdowns that time has shown us were very harmful, is shifted from the richer and middle class to the poor. For example, in Toronto, one can see graphically the shift in burden to the poorer in the society where the incidence rates were the same at the beginning of the pandemic, but after the March 23 lockdowns, detected infections/cases declined in affluent neighborhoods while they skyrocketed in less affluent, poorer areas. A similar effect was subsequently observed for mortality.

In a similar light, Chang published an informative paper in journal Nature that examined mobility network models of COVID-19 to explain inequities and inform reopening. They found that higher infection rates (and subsequent deaths) among disadvantaged racial and socioeconomic groups could be predicted “solely as the result of differences in mobility: we find that disadvantaged groups have not been able to reduce their mobility as sharply, and that the points of interest that they visit are more crowded and are therefore associated with higher risk”.

In both affluent first world nations and even lesser developed nations, the more wealthy in these societies have basically not been impacted by the lockdowns as did poorer persons, the underprivileged class. Their concerns were not pressing, they did not need worry about the children when the schools were closed, or the need for proper lap-tops and internet access and tutors etc. They had home offices they could remodel and make their accommodations more comfortable, as the poorer had to go out to ‘in-person’, often high-risk employment. Why? Because they were the ‘essential workers’ and had the front-facing, high-contact, high-risk jobs. Poorer persons suffered two pandemics, one due to the virus, and the other which operated in insidious ways, was due to the impact of the societal lockdowns. And their children fared worst of all!

The persons who made the decisions to lockdown and close schools had the type of jobs that could allow for remote working and this could continue forever if they could have it. The bureaucrats, technocrats, and COVID medical advisors were always far removed from the crushing impact of their policies. They did not ‘feel’ the lockdowns and for some, it was like an extended vacation where Amazon and UBER became staple names in their households. It’s actually fun and relaxation for many. You could walk your dogs at your own pace, and tend to your garden, fix up the house, do your chores, relax, shop online etc. Even vacate. The poor had no such avenues and were ravaged by the lockdowns and incurred losses that by some estimates, will never be recovered and to think that lockdowns worked to protect vulnerable persons is indeed a fallacy and terrible misconception. It is actually cruel and misguided and something very perverse really has happened here when you do take time to think about it.

So now, given we spent the last 15 to 16 months shielding the wealthier from the ravages of the lockdowns, we even have them, the more financially able, rumbling about why should we even lift the lockdowns. Why? Because they are now settled into a flow of things that does not cause them any substantial challenges. Just some re-arranging. The questions they pose are quite different to the dire ones by the poorer in societies. Do we do it now? How about we wait? Yeah, let’s wait, we do not need to rush this re-opening. Do we move to re-open schools? To this ‘lap-top’ class, the lockdowns are a mere small inconvenience and why lift them? Heck, keep it going if you have to. Remote schooling or in-person? Either way my child has no risk so, what’s the bother, what’s all this fuss, any format will do. Just tell us. No problem, we got pods and tutors etc. We do not need to re-open, what’s the rush?

We are so outraged about what was done to whole societies by these lunatic medical experts and Task Force advisors. We say ‘never again’ must we allow these absurd and reckless technocrats and bureaucrats with their failed medical COVID Task Force advisors do this to us! Never again! These unscientific ever preening Task Force advisors and medical experts, with their tripe! Their daily drivel. Their absurd drivel 24/7 that is never backed up with any science or when there is any ‘so called’ science, it is utter junk pseudoscience. Case in point, CDC. Not one proper cost-effectiveness analysis has been done by anyone regarding these lockdowns and restrictive policies. You would think this was would have been a basic step to inform decision-making and even calibrate it enroute. It was as if the decision-makers did not want to know the truth. Akin to how no proper mask or social distancing studies were ever done given what the findings would have shown.

Fire all the governments at the next polls for what they have done here! Fire these inept bureaucrats. All of them. The truth is that we delude ourselves, we lie to ourselves when we live in a fantasy that the forced societal lockdowns, school closures, and associated COVID-19 pandemic mandates and edicts work to protect the weak and vulnerable. It never did. It never worked to protect the vulnerable elderly and we failed to protect them. That is the biggest running joke among these Task Force morons, they lied to us telling us para ‘we are doing this to protect the vulnerable and elderly’.

What a load of nonsense and garbage and the tragedy is that people like Fauci by his emerging e-mails showed that he and they always knew the actual science. While we felt that they could not be that inept, we were right. They were actually corrupt and duplicitous too. They knew what they were doing was inaccurate and deceitful and said one thing behind the scenes and another on the podium (see Fauci’s trove of e-mails), lying to the people who only sought truth.

These corrupt inept advisors and government leaders shelved all of the important evidence they already had to guide them (e.g. see WHO’s non-pharmaceutical public health measures for mitigating the risk and impact of epidemic and pandemic influenza ISBN 978-92-4-151683-9). Something other than science was at play, and while at it, the poor suffered irreparably! The burden was shifted to them near entirely and they, near entirely, are left to pick up the pieces of the disaster visited upon them by all these so called ‘good people’ wanting to ‘do good’ by them.

June 22, 2021 Posted by aletho | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Canada, CDC, Covid-19, United States | Leave a comment