A week of life under the Ministry of Fear. This time, we locked ourselves down.
By Laura Dodsworth | December 18, 2021
Last Sunday evening, Boris Johnson interrupted the nation’s TV viewing with an announcement about the new Covid-19 variant. “Fighting Omicron is the most important thing we can do,” he said. It’s early days, and in the absence of clinical data or indeed any rise in hospitalisations and deaths, it remains to be seen if this is true.
We were left in no doubt about how to fight – get boosted. In retrospect, the triadic structure of previous press briefings (“Hands, Face, Space” and “Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives”) was the ultimate in sophistication compared to the frequent repetition of “boosted” (eight times), “booster” (eight times) and “vaccination” (four times) in one short speech.
This past week exemplifies nearly two years of life under the “Ministry of Fear”, as Sir Desmond Swayne MP termed it. Amid a Tory rebellion, he delivered a tirade in the House of Commons on the day that MPs voted on Covid Passes, the expansion of mask mandates and compulsory jabs for NHS workers. He accused the UK government of “twisting the fear lever” and unleashing “the dogs of war”.
He is not alone. Andrew Bridgen MP said that, in his opinion, “the most dangerous epidemic sweeping the world and sweeping our country is an epidemic of fear”. I agree Pandemics come and eventually go, but our basic psychology is here to stay. The UK government has relied upon the use of fear, nudges, behavioural science techniques and propaganda to subliminally encourage people to comply with the regulations, as I set out in my book A State of Fear: how the UK government weaponised fear in the Covid-19 pandemic.
These techniques work so well that, this time, we have essentially locked ourselves down. Without so much as a new law, statutory instrument, or prime ministerial request, Nativity plays, office Christmas parties and pub bookings are cancelled. Stocks of lateral flow test ran dry. People queued for eight hours for their boosters. The media enthusiastically obliged with a new “tidal wave” of articles and programmes prophesying catastrophic cases and demonising the “selfish” unjabbed. Journalists asked for more restrictions, sooner.
I spoke to Swayne who told me he believes the fear is driven very much by the doom-mongering scientists on SAGE and Independent SAGE whose worst case scenarios necessitate action, and then “the media hams it up”.
One of the government’s early concerns was that some people actually understood that the risk from Covid-19 to their demographic is low, hence fear was leveraged to ensure everyone feel at risk so that they would follow the rules. Similarly, last Sunday, Johnson acknowledged that “some people” would believe Omicron to be less severe than previous variants – and at this point there is little clinical data to prove Omicron will be more serious or able to evade our natural immunity and vaccine-derived antibodies – but he warned “scientists cannot say that Omicron is less severe”. Essentially we were told to ignore the lack of scientific evidence and instead embrace fear and follow instructions.
So, how to convince us of a threat, before the threat has actually manifested? By using the same methods they have honed throughout the pandemic, including the use of big scary numbers, advertising, subtle messaging, alarmist language and the most punitive fines since the Dark Ages.
I dedicated a chapter of my book to the metrics of fear – daily death tolls, the reproduction number, cases and worst case modelling. This week’s numbers have crumbled like icing sugar.
Sajid Javid estimated that there were 200,000 infections, which appears to have been a back of the envelope calculation, based upon assumptions and extrapolations. Dominic Raab said there were 250 people in hospital with Omicron, when there were 10. Dr Jenny Harries, head of the UKHSA, warned the Omicron variant is “probably the most significant threat” of the pandemic and we should expect a “staggering” growth rate, but her dire warning was juxtaposed with acknowledging it’s too early a stage to be clear about the clinical severity.
These speed-generated pessimistic numbers and contradictions give the rational mind whiplash and leave you vulnerable to fear. As Swayne put it, “It’s designed to make your flesh creep. Even if you then ameliorate it, the first scary bit is out there.”
To lay the groundwork, masks were re-introduced as a “softening up exercise for Plan B,” according to a government advisor who sits on a government Covid taskforce. He anonymously confided that, “Masks are a behavioural psychology policy. We need to stop pretending that it’s about public health. Nudge is a big thing in government.” Masks turn us into walking billboards advertising danger.
I have already argued that the whole point of the Winter Plan was Plan B and Covid Passes. The government has not provided convincing scientific evidence for vaccine passports, but they are widely understood to be a ‘tool’ to drive take-up. Now, fines of up to £10,000 can be imposed for falsifying Covid Passports – a life-destroying amount designed to strike fear into your heart.
The advisor shared internal documents with me that show Covid Passes were ready to go in early November. Worryingly, they also show that government is also working with analysts to see whether “mandatory vaccination would hit the right target or not”.
The government has launched new advertising campaigns. One TV advertisement, intended to encourage ventilation has frightened children. One father wrote to tell he had complained to his MP and the Advertising Standards Authority because the “sinister black mist” snaking out of people’s mouths terrified his four and six year old in the ad break of a Christmas film. His daughter had nightmares and was still crying about “germs” the next day. He is angry about the “intentionally fear-inducing piece of Gov media forced in their face”.
Martin Kemp played the part of Santa Claus preparing for Christmas by getting his booster jab in a government advertisement. Santa has a long history of being enlisted for propaganda purposes from Soviet space missions to selling World War Two US government bonds. Even Tesco got in on the act this year in their festive ad, making Santa brandish a Covid Pass QR code to enter the country. However, this badly misjudged public mood and #BoycottTesco trended on Twitter.
Press and social media ads have returned to the red and yellow ‘danger’ style chevons, although they feature smiling younger people presumably boosted against Omicron. The “O” in boosted is golden and enlarged, presumably to echo “O-micron” and also evoke the circle of protection Johnson wants the booster to deliver. The people are surrounded with a warming Ready Brek-style glow.
I warned in The Telegraph in October that I would not be surprised to see ministers on television, urging us to follow restrictions in order or to “save Christmas”, once again. I’ll be on Santa’s ‘Nice List’ for getting that right.
Some polls are used as both a nudge and a spoiler of public policy. When you see a result such as 76% of Britons want to see the return of compulsory face masks in shops and on public transport (Yougov) you are meant to identify with the group and imagine yourself in the majority – “ah yes, that is what I think too!” The poll was also a signal to seed the idea of the ensuing policy change. This mutually influential relationship between polls and policy is especially clear in the case of questions such as “If someone has had two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine, but it has been over six months since their second dose, would you consider that person to be ‘fully vaccinated’?” (also Yougov) which should have nothing to do with public opinion.
Polls don’t always go the ‘right way’ though. Good Morning Britain ran a Twitter poll which asked “With Omicrom cases doubling every two days, is it time to make vaccines mandatory?” After 89% of 44,533 respondents voted no, the Twitter poll was pulled. Presumably it was not the answer that GMB wanted and, curtain pulled back, they knew that we knew it.
There is less fear in the air this time despite the “tidal wave” of fear-mongering. Redfield and Wilton Strategies latest research into public attitudes found that 81% of people plan to have a normal Christmas and New Year and feelings of safety in public have only marginally declined. Once you have seen the nudges you cannot un-see them, and fear cannot be sustained indefinitely.
When the government resorts to fear and hyperbole to gain compliance, it shows what they think of us. We are emotionally kettled rather than treated as responsible individuals with agency. As a Nudge Unit report said, we have a “powerful tendency to conform” and the government relentlessly exploits this human feature. I suspect that this time, the government is keen to address concerns that it has not acted swiftly enough in the past, and believes the strong warnings are in our best interests. Perhaps Ministers are themselves in thrall to the anxiety-inducing steep-lined graphs.
10 Downing Street released a nugget sized version of Johnson’s Omicron announcement on Youtube, with a tight crop and dramatic music. The selected few dramatic sentences could have been borrowed from a disaster genre ‘B’ movie. I’m not sure if Youtube comments are more or less valid than Yougov, but they are certainly revealingly scathing about “fear inducing language”, “Orwellian passports” and NHS queues.
I think there is a sense that people will do quite a lot to have a normal Christmas and get life back to normal, but fear of Covid and trust in the messaging are running out, just like those lateral flow tests.
Omicron scare tactics
By Joel S Hirschhorn | December 17, 2021
What is the public to believe about omicron variant? The usual nutty pro-vaccine media are making a lot of fear-mongering noise about omicron.
Here are some things to keep in mind.
A very new medical research article provided compelling information that COVID vaccines are not effective against omicron. The article concluded: “The Omicron variant presents a serious threat to many existing COVID-19 vaccines and therapies.” The only data coming out is on the ineffectiveness of the vaccines. There are no data on whether ivermectin and natural immunity are equally ineffective.
This too was said: “The scientific community has chased after SARS-CoV-2 variants for a year. As more and more of them appeared, our interventions directed to the spike became increasingly ineffective. The Omicron variant has now put an exclamation mark on this point.”
Here is a really important point to keep in mind. Omicron may look like it has high transmissibility, but this may have much more to do with the ineffectiveness of vaccines than with the intrinsic nature of this variant!
See my previous article on omicron that showed research indicating intrinsic low transmissibility relative to delta, and similar to other variants:
Consider these relevant omicron facts.
In South Africa, with only 26% vaccinated, despite omicron, not only has there been no surge in COVID deaths, they are the lowest they’ve been in 18 months. This, after more than three weeks into omicron in South Africa. If screams about a surge were accurate, it would have started by now. And doctors there say the omicron cases are far less severe than presumably delta.
Fewer than 1 in 50 people with confirmed omicron cases are being hospitalized in South Africa – which suggests that the actual hospitalization to infection rate is far lower still. Why? Because so many people with omicron have such mild cases they don’t bother getting tested.
South African scientists announced the discovery of the Omicron variant on November 25. Since then, the country has had more than 230,000 Covid-19 cases, but just 377 deaths. And as of this writing, none of those deaths are confirmed to have resulted from Omicron.
The UK as of now has reported 1 (1!) omicron death, and it was “with” the virus, not necessarily from it. If there have been deaths globally from omicron, they have not been reported
When you read about mounting COVID cases in the US just remember that there normally has been a winter surge in cases. Cases can also be easily manipulated by public health agencies by running PCR tests at high cycles, creating false positive. Keep your attention on deaths in people where there has been gene sequencing to confirm omicron. Ugly and corrupt political forces controlling public health agencies have every reason to create a surge in cases so that fear can be maintained and the public made receptive to getting vaccine and booster shots.
Be patient, do not go crazy over omicron. Keep doing the many good things to maintain a healthy immune system, such as taking vitamins D and C, zinc and quercetin.
Plus, a new medical research article on ivermectin concluded that it really is very effective as a prophylactic, a genuine alternative to COVID vaccines.
Why Have They Done This to the Children?
BY BHASKARAN RAMAN | BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE | DECEMBER 17, 2021
Around the world, there has been widespread fear and anxiety since the beginning of the pandemic. While some fear is natural, we are now into 21 months, and yet fear levels have hardly abated. The mainstream narrative on Covid-19 goes: “Covid-19 is a danger to everyone, and all must socially distance and lockdown until we can eliminate the virus.”
This narrative keeps everyone in constant fear of fellow humans. It treats children more as virus carriers than as adorable, innocent, normal children. Is this narrative accurate, or is it based on disproportionate fear?
In trying to talk to friends and colleagues who believe this narrative, I have been called a conspiracy theorist by many. After all, so many public health authorities in so many countries tell us this narrative. How can it be possible that so many authorities in so many countries are wrong? How can so many scientists be wrong?
The spirit of scientific inquiry demands that we look at things from first principles. It cannot be based on: “how can so many people be wrong.” There are several easy-to-see indications that much of the world’s response to Covid-19 is indeed disproportionate fear rather than a rational response.
Below, I list five such obvious indications, all in the context of children.
(1) Starving already malnourished children: The first indication of the hugely imbalanced response is that the lockdown response, based on the mainstream narrative, starved already malnourished children.
In India, malnutrition among children has been a huge problem for decades, directly or indirectly responsible for killing nearly 3% of infants, about 2000 preventable deaths per day. Yet, the lockdown narrative chose to shut schools and mid-day meal schemes, starving millions of already malnourished kids: they are not yet back to normal after 21 months!
(2) Labeling children as dangerous disease agents: The second indication of imbalanced response is that children have been deprived of a normal childhood, play, socialization and education. In many cases they were even blamed for the death of the elderly.
Even if it were indeed true that children could spread a virus, this is hardly the way to treat them: for several months and years, with no end in sight. And evidence is overwhelming that schools do not contribute much to Covid spread, and some research even indicates that exposure to children may be protective on average, against Covid-19.
In India, it is even more absurd that almost everything is normal for adults: restaurants, malls, movie theatres, crowded events, crowded buses and trains and flights, etc.; while at the same time schools are not open, and even where open, normal activities are not permitted for kids!
(3) Covid-19 vaccines for kids without long-term safety data: The same mainstream narrative also pushes for Covid-19 vaccines for kids, when there has been no pandemic for kids anywhere in the world (e.g. Germany, Sweden, data from various other European countries). Rolling out kids’ jabs without long-term safety data is medical malfeasance, and yet another indication of the disproportionate response to Covid-19.
(4) Vaccine mandates for kids: Some parts of the world (e.g. CA, NY in USA) have announced mandated Covid-19 vaccines for school kids. This adds to the above medical malfeasance.
(5) Vaccinating kids without parental consent: Some parts of the world (e.g. UK, Switzerland, Philadelphia/USA) allowed kids as young as 11 or 12 years to get vaccinated without parental consent. Performing a medical procedure for a child, without parental consent, should be unthinkable. This is another dimension of the above medical malfeasance and disproportionate response.
Ethical dilemma vs treatment of kids in our Covid response
There is a classical thought experiment used to illustrate ethical dilemmas. Should the person standing next to the lever “do nothing” and let the train kill five people, or should he push the lever and be explicitly responsible for the death of one person? It is a dilemma because there is no necessarily “correct” answer.
It is instructive to compare this dilemma with our Covid response: we have victimized kids and robbed them of a childhood, with no benefit whatsoever to show for it! Continuing the same response even after knowing that Covid poses miniscule risk to kids, would be deeply unethical.
Getting out of mass psychosis, for the sake of our children
Due to unidimensional focus on Covid-19, driven in no small part by a profit-motived media as well as social-media echo chambers, disproportionate fear has now reached levels of mass psychosis.
Our children are our future, as Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya has reminded us of the obvious recently. There has been no pandemic for children anywhere in the world. Yet their lives have been upended and futures ruined, not by the virus, but by our disproportionate fear-based response.
It is each child’s constitutional as well as birth-right to have a normal childhood. It is high time the public comes out of disproportionate fear of Covid-19, and high time that health authorities start taking evidence-based steps, rather than fear-based steps. The future of our children is at stake.
Bhaskaran Raman is a faculty in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Bombay. Views expressed here are his personal opinion. He maintains the site: “Understand, Unclog, Unpanic, Unscare, Unlock (U5) India” https://tinyurl.com/u5india . He can be reached via twitter, telegram: @br_cse_iitb . br@cse.iitb.ac.in
CEOs of two major airlines question the need for mask mandates
By Steve Kirsch | December 16, 2021
Why masks are important
Masks are an easier win. Everyone HATES wearing masks (well, almost everyone… there are people who are convinced it is protecting them).
Winning on masks shows people that the authorities got it wrong. If we show the public that the CDC is making us do things that are nonsensical, it erodes trust in the CDC. That make the next argument (that the CDC got it wrong on the vaccine) easier to win because the CDC is no longer infallible.
Top CEOs say masks are useless
From the story in Blaze News on December 16, 2021:
CEOs of two major airlines spoke out and questioned the necessity of masks on flights, CNN reported.
American Airlines CEO Doug Parker and Southwest CEO Gary Kelly both made related remarks during a Wednesday Senate hearing on the financial support the airline industry has received amid the ongoing pandemic.
Masks are required on all American airliners per order of the federal government.
Both Parker and Kelly said that they don’t believe masks make much difference when it comes to tamping down the transmission of COVID-19 and that advanced air filtration systems on airliners make them one of the safest places to be with regard to coronavirus infections.
We are finally moving in the right direction! What they said was true. That’s a great start. But is anyone listening?
I just updated my “Masks don’t work” article
I’ve updated my “Masks don’t work” article to include new research our team did which independently validated the work of UC Berkeley Professor Ben Recht who showed the Bangladesh mask study, hailed by mainstream medical experts as proving once and for all that masks work, actually proved that masks do not work at all. See new bullet point #10. You will love it if you are into statistical analysis.
The author wanted to remain anonymous so he doesn’t get attacked by his peers for telling the truth. You just can’t be too careful nowadays… telling the truth can get you fired.
The 5 signs you DON’T have “Omicron”… you have a cold & a PCR test
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | December 15, 2021
They are determined to make the “Omicron Variant” appear as frightening as possible, that means getting as many cases as possible, which means flipping all the way to the front of the Covid playbook.
Enter “The 5 Signs You May Have Omicron Covid”, an article in the Metro yesterday, and repeated in spirit across dozens of other outlets.
For those of you feeling morbidly curious, here are the five signs of Omicron:
- scratchy throat
- Fatigue
- mild muscle aches
- dry cough
- night sweats
The astute reader will no doubt pick up that these are the symptoms of every single one of the common cold viruses that infect millions of people all over the world every single year.
It’s just the old Simpsons joke about “mild hunger, occasional thirst and tiredness at night”, only they expect us to take it seriously.
The odds are you’ve experienced these symptoms at least once or twice in the last year or so. This does not mean you had Omicron. It does not mean Omicron even exists.
Rather, it’s just a ploy to get you to follow government guidance and, in the words of the article:
“order a free PCR test as soon as possible”.
The government site for ordering PCR tests has already shut down due to millions of requests. We have repeated, ad infinitum, that these tests are scientifically meaningless, and return huge numbers of false positives.
Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands of PCR tests are being done on people with nothing but mild cold symptoms as we speak, and in these nasal swabs lies the incipient “Omicron wave”.
That is why Sajid Javid is going on TV saying he expects cases of Omicron to “dramatically increase” in the run-up to Christmas, because they are going to make it happen.
Then they’ll probably have the Prime Minister announce new restrictions… just after Parliament adjourns for the Christmas break, so they can’t be reviewed or voted on.
It’s the same old trick, again and again and again. Hopefully, people will stop falling for it soon.
Danish Study Confirms That Natural Immunity Protects Better Against Infection Than the Vaccines
By Noah Carl | The Daily Sceptic | December 15, 2021
Last week, I wrote about a second major study finding that natural immunity protects better against infection than the Pfizer vaccine. Both this study and the earlier one were from Israel, and while there’s every reason to believe the results generalise to other populations, it’s always good to have data from multiple countries.
We now have those data in the form of a study published by the Statens Serum Institut in Denmark. I can’t say the report itself is worth reading in full, since it’s written in Danish. But I’ve posted the key figure below. It shows protection against infection for three different groups – adjusting for age, sex, comorbidities, and time of year.
The orange line corresponds to people who’ve been previously infected but not vaccinated; the yellow line to those who’ve been previously infected and vaccinated; and the green line to those who’ve been vaccinated but not previously infected.
The y-axis gives the percentage reduction in the number of infections, compared to those who haven’t been vaccinated or previously infected. For example, a value of 90% means there would be only 10 infections for every 100 in the comparison group. The x-axis gives the number of days since the relevant event.
As you can see, vaccine-induced immunity wanes rapidly, beginning a few weeks after vaccination. And at the five month mark, protection is well below 50%. Natural immunity, by contrast, is robust: a full year after infection, protection is still above 70%.
Consistent with what the two Israeli studies found, hybrid immunity – conferred by the combination of vaccination and previous infection – is slightly better than natural immunity. However, the difference is small compared to that between natural and vaccine-induced immunity.
Evidence for the superiority of natural immunity is now robust. So while those who’ve already had Covid should be perfectly free to get vaccinated, there’s no obvious need for them to do so. The tricky part may be getting this message through to politicians.
32,649 Deaths 3,003,296 Injuries Following COVID Shots in European Database of Adverse Reactions
Young, Previously Healthy People Continue to Die
By Brian Shilhavy | Health Impact News | December 15, 2021
The European Union database of suspected drug reaction reports is EudraVigilance, and they are now reporting 32,649 fatalities, and 3,003,296 injuries, following COVID-19 injections.
A Health Impact News subscriber from Europe reminded us that this database maintained at EudraVigilance is only for countries in Europe who are part of the European Union (EU), which comprises 27 countries.
The total number of countries in Europe is much higher, almost twice as many, numbering around 50. (There are some differences of opinion as to which countries are technically part of Europe.)
So as high as these numbers are, they do NOT reflect all of Europe. The actual number in Europe who are reported dead or injured following COVID-19 shots would be much higher than what we are reporting here.
The EudraVigilance database reports that through December 4, 2021 there are 32,649 deaths and 3,003,296 injuries reported following injections of four experimental COVID-19 shots:
- COVID-19 MRNA VACCINE MODERNA (CX-024414)
- COVID-19 MRNA VACCINE PFIZER-BIONTECH
- COVID-19 VACCINE ASTRAZENECA (CHADOX1 NCOV-19)
- COVID-19 VACCINE JANSSEN (AD26.COV2.S)
From the total of injuries recorded, almost half of them (1,409,643) are serious injuries.
“Seriousness provides information on the suspected undesirable effect; it can be classified as ‘serious’ if it corresponds to a medical occurrence that results in death, is life-threatening, requires inpatient hospitalisation, results in another medically important condition, or prolongation of existing hospitalisation, results in persistent or significant disability or incapacity, or is a congenital anomaly/birth defect.”
A Health Impact News subscriber in Europe ran the reports for each of the four COVID-19 shots we are including here. It is a lot of work to tabulate each reaction with injuries and fatalities, since there is no place on the EudraVigilance system we have found that tabulates all the results.
Since we have started publishing this, others from Europe have also calculated the numbers and confirmed the totals.*
Here is the summary data through December 4, 2021.
Total reactions for the mRNA vaccineTozinameran (code BNT162b2,Comirnaty) from BioNTech/ Pfizer: 15,061 deaths and 1,399,513 injuries to 04/12/2021
- 38,170 Blood and lymphatic system disorders incl. 217 deaths
- 43,454 Cardiac disorders incl. 2,204 deaths
- 404 Congenital, familial and genetic disorders incl. 38 deaths
- 18,886 Ear and labyrinth disorders incl. 10 deaths
- 1,330 Endocrine disorders incl. 5 deaths
- 21,574 Eye disorders incl. 35 deaths
- 115,450 Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 602 deaths
- 354,635 General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 4,251 deaths
- 1,589 Hepatobiliary disorders incl. 78 deaths
- 15,371 Immune system disorders incl. 77 deaths
- 57,255 Infections and infestations incl. 1,605 deaths
- 22,928 Injury, poisoning and procedural complications incl. 261 deaths
- 34,691 Investigations incl. 464 deaths
- 9,568 Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 256 deaths
- 172,420 Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 187 deaths
- 1,254 Neoplasms benign, malignant and unspecified (incl cysts and polyps) incl. 122 deaths
- 236,435 Nervous system disorders incl. 1,609 deaths
- 2,000 Pregnancy, puerperium and perinatal conditions incl. 60 deaths
- 215 Product issues incl. 3 deaths
- 25,493 Psychiatric disorders incl. 182 deaths
- 4,981 Renal and urinary disorders incl. 236 deaths
- 49,076 Reproductive system and breast disorders incl. 5 deaths
- 60,177 Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 1,664 deaths
- 65,710 Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders incl. 128 deaths
- 3,007 Social circumstances incl. 19 deaths
- 7,280 Surgical and medical procedures incl. 90 deaths
- 36,160 Vascular disorders incl. 653 deaths
Total reactions for the mRNA vaccine mRNA-1273(CX-024414) from Moderna: 9,084 deaths and 409,189 injuries to 04/12/2021
- 8,678 Blood and lymphatic system disorders incl. 102 deaths
- 13,650 Cardiac disorders incl. 953 deaths
- 166 Congenital, familial and genetic disorders incl. 7 deaths
- 4,940 Ear and labyrinth disorders incl. 4 deaths
- 373 Endocrine disorders incl. 4 deaths
- 5,992 Eye disorders incl. 31 deaths
- 33,407 Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 339 deaths
- 109,178 General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 3,117 deaths
- 673 Hepatobiliary disorders incl. 44 deaths
- 4,054 Immune system disorders incl. 16 deaths
- 15,636 Infections and infestations incl. 849 deaths
- 8,535 Injury, poisoning and procedural complications incl. 172 deaths
- 8,001 Investigations incl. 211 deaths
- 3,893 Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 220 deaths
- 49,233 Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 184 deaths
- 568 Neoplasms benign, malignant and unspecified (incl cysts and polyps) incl. 74 deaths
- 68,948 Nervous system disorders incl. 870 deaths
- 754 Pregnancy, puerperium and perinatal conditions incl. 6 deaths
- 82 Product issues incl. 2 deaths
- 7,472 Psychiatric disorders incl. 149 deaths
- 2,398 Renal and urinary disorders incl. 174 deaths
- 8,859 Reproductive system and breast disorders incl. 7 deaths
- 18,183 Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 975 deaths
- 21,946 Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders incl. 82 deaths
- 1,872 Social circumstances incl. 39 deaths
- 1,642 Surgical and medical procedures incl. 115 deaths
- 10,056 Vascular disorders incl. 338 deaths
Total reactions for the vaccine AZD1222/VAXZEVRIA (CHADOX1 NCOV-19) from Oxford/ AstraZeneca: 6,515 deaths and 1,088,775 injuries to 04/12/2021
- 13,292 Blood and lymphatic system disorders incl. 254 deaths
- 19,523 Cardiac disorders incl. 720 deaths
- 203 Congenital familial and genetic disorders incl. 7 deaths
- 12,845 Ear and labyrinth disorders incl. 4 deaths
- 619 Endocrine disorders incl. 4 deaths
- 19,170 Eye disorders incl. 29 deaths
- 103,368 Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 340 deaths
- 286,356 General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 1,544 deaths
- 971 Hepatobiliary disorders incl. 62 deaths
- 4,99 Immune system disorders incl. 30 deaths
- 33,416 Infections and infestations incl. 441 deaths
- 12,583 Injury poisoning and procedural complications incl. 180 deaths
- 23,958 Investigations incl. 159 deaths
- 12,472 Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 96 deaths
- 161,308 Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 114 deaths
- 650 Neoplasms benign malignant and unspecified (incl cysts and polyps) incl. 25 deaths
- 223,680 Nervous system disorders incl. 1,007 deaths
- 533 Pregnancy puerperium and perinatal conditions incl. 14 deaths
- 191 Product issues incl. 1 death
- 20,150 Psychiatric disorders incl. 60 deaths
- 4,093 Renal and urinary disorders incl. 63 deaths
- 15,594 Reproductive system and breast disorders incl. 2 deaths
- 38,722 Respiratory thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 817 deaths
- 49,877 Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders incl. 53 deaths
- 1,533 Social circumstances incl. 6 deaths
- 1,499 Surgical and medical procedures incl. 26 deaths
- 27,179 Vascular disorders incl. 457 deaths
Total reactions for the COVID-19 vaccine JANSSEN (AD26.COV2.S) from Johnson & Johnson: 1,989 deaths and 105,819 injuries to 04/12/2021
- 1,029 Blood and lymphatic system disorders incl. 41 deaths
- 1,952 Cardiac disorders incl. 169 deaths
- 36 Congenital, familial and genetic disorders
- 1,080 Ear and labyrinth disorders incl. 2 deaths
- 72 Endocrine disorders incl. 1 death
- 1,415 Eye disorders incl. 7 deaths
- 8,743 Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 80 deaths
- 27,925 General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 533 deaths
- 130 Hepatobiliary disorders incl. 11 deaths
- 473 Immune system disorders incl. 9 deaths
- 4,676 Infections and infestations incl. 157 deaths
- 974 Injury, poisoning and procedural complications incl. 20 deaths
- 4,927 Investigations incl. 111 deaths
- 664 Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 50 deaths
- 15,331 Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 45 deaths
- 59 Neoplasms benign, malignant and unspecified (incl cysts and polyps) incl. 4 deaths
- 20,725 Nervous system disorders incl. 219 deaths
- 43 Pregnancy, puerperium and perinatal conditions incl. 1 death
- 32 Product issues
- 1,479 Psychiatric disorders incl. 17 deaths
- 443 Renal and urinary disorders incl. 26 deaths
- 2,249 Reproductive system and breast disorders incl. 6 deaths
- 3,799 Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 259 deaths
- 3,241 Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders incl. 8 deaths
- 337 Social circumstances incl. 4 deaths
- 718 Surgical and medical procedures incl. 58 deaths
- 3,267 Vascular disorders incl. 151 deaths
*These totals are estimates based on reports submitted to EudraVigilance. Totals may be much higher based on percentage of adverse reactions that are reported. Some of these reports may also be reported to the individual country’s adverse reaction databases, such as the U.S. VAERS database and the UK Yellow Card system. The fatalities are grouped by symptoms, and some fatalities may have resulted from multiple symptoms.
RFK Jr. as America’s #1 HIV/AIDS Denier and the Sounds of Media Silence
BY RON UNZ • UNZ REVIEW • DECEMBER 15, 2021
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s book attacking Anthony Fauci and the medical establishment has become a publishing sensation, spending more than a full week as the #1 Amazon bestseller and racking up over 2,600 reviews, 94% of them five-star.
Now after nearly a month of stunned silence, the American media is finally taking belated notice. This morning the Associated Press released a 4,000 word hit-piece harshly attacking the most prominent public figure in America’s much-vilified anti-vaxxing movement.
- How a Kennedy Built an Anti-Vaccine Juggernaut Amid COVID-19
Michelle R. Smith • The Associated Press • December 15, 2021 • 4,000 Words
A great deal of effort had obviously been invested in this attack, and the byline of the named author was shared by five additional AP writers and researchers, underscoring the journalistic resources devoted to damaging the reputation of an individual who has obviously made such powerful enemies. But in reading the article, the phrase that came to my mind was “the Sounds of Silence” or perhaps the famous Sherlockian clue of “the Dog That Didn’t Bark.”
Almost half of the entire book under attack—around 200 pages—is devoted to the presenting and promoting the astonishing claim that everything we have been told about HIV/AIDS for more than 35 years probably amounts to a hoax. As I wrote last week:
Yet according to the information provided in Kennedy’s #1 Amazon bestseller, this well-known and solidly-established picture, which I had never seriously questioned, is almost entirely false and fraudulent, essentially amounting to a medical media hoax. Instead of being responsible for AIDS, the HIV virus is probably harmless and had nothing to do with the disease. But when individuals were found to be infected with HIV, they were subjected to the early, extremely lucrative AIDS drugs, which were actually lethal and often killed them. The earliest AIDS cases had mostly been caused by very heavy use of particular illegal drugs, and the HIV virus had been misdiagnosed as being responsible. But since Fauci and the profit-hungry drug companies soon built enormous empires upon that misdiagnosis, for more than 35 years they have fought very hard to maintain and protect it, exerting all their influence to suppress the truth in the media while destroying the careers of any honest researchers who challenged that fraud. Meanwhile, AIDS in Africa was something entirely different, probably caused mostly by malnutrition or other local conditions.
I found Kennedy’s account as shocking as anything I have ever encountered.
By any reasonable standard, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has now established himself as America’s #1 “HIV/AIDS Denier,” and prior to the Covid outbreak, AIDS had probably spent almost four decades as the world’s highest-profile disease, reportedly absorbing some two trillion dollars in research and treatment costs. So for someone to essentially claim that the disease doesn’t actually exist would seem the height of utter lunacy, on a par with Flat Earthism. Yet not a single word of this astonishing situation appears in the long AP article, that attacks Kennedy on almost all other possible grounds, fair or unfair. Did all six of the AP writers and researchers somehow skip over those 200 pages in Kennedy’s bestseller?
That large team of AP journalists seems to have spent at least ten days working on their lengthy article, mining Kennedy’s record for almost everything controversial they could possibly find, even highlighting a photograph that merely shows him standing next to Trump allies Roger Stone and Michael Flynn.
Surely these reporters consulted numerous leading figures in the medical establishment on the HIV/AIDS issue, yet not a single word on that incendiary topic was included in their 4,000 word denunciation.
Although ferocious attacks against Kennedy’s HIV/AIDS claims might naturally have been expected, perhaps certain aspects of the book caused the senior editors of the Associated Press to draw back and decide that discretion on this matter was the better part of valor. As I had explained:
However, the first endorsement on the back cover is from Prof. Luc Montagnier, the medical researcher who won a Nobel Prize for discovering the HIV virus in 1984, and he writes: “Tragically for humanity, there are many, many untruths emanating from Fauci and his minions. RFK Jr. exposes the decades of lies.” Moreover, we are told that as far back as the San Francisco International AIDS Conference of June 1990, Montagnier had publicly declared “the HIV virus is harmless and passive, a benign virus.”
Perhaps this Nobel Laureate endorsed the book for other reasons and perhaps the meaning of his striking 1990 statement has been misconstrued. But surely the opinion of the researcher who won a Nobel Prize for discovering the HIV virus should not be totally ignored in assessing its possible role.
I went on to note:
And he was hardly alone. Kennedy explains that the following year, a top Harvard microbiologist organized a group containing some of the world’s most distinguished virologists and immunologists and they issued a public statement, endorsed by three additional science Nobel Laureates, that raised the same questions:
It is widely believed by the general public that a retrovirus called HIV causes a group of diseases called AIDS. Many biomedical scientists now question this hypothesis. We propose a thorough reappraisal of the existing evidence for and against this hypothesis, to be conducted by a suitable independent group. We further propose that the critical epidemiological studies be designed and undertaken.
As Kennedy tells the story, by that point AIDS researchers and the mainstream media were completely in thrall to the ocean of government funding and pharmaceutical advertising controlled by Fauci and his corporate allies, so these calls by eminent scientists were almost entirely ignored and unreported. According to one journalist, some two trillion dollars has been spent on HIV/AIDS research and treatment over the decades, and with so many research careers and personal livelihoods dependent upon what amounts to an “HIV/AIDS industrial-complex,” few have been willing to critically examine the basic foundations of that empire.
Until a couple of weeks ago, I had never given any thought to questioning AIDS orthodoxy. But discovering the longstanding scientific skepticism of so many knowledgeable experts, including four Nobel Laureates, one of them the actual discoverer of the HIV virus, has completely shifted my perspective. I cannot easily ignore or dismiss the theories Kennedy presents… And in basic fairness to the author, he himself also repeatedly emphasizes that he can “take no position on the relationship between HIV and AIDS” but is simply disturbed that Fauci has successfully used his government funding and media clout to suppress an ongoing and perfectly legitimate scientific debate. According to Kennedy, his book is intended “to give air and daylight to dissenting voices.”
So the total silence of the article does certainly raise certain obvious suspicions. As I previously wrote:
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is a top figure in America’s much-vilified anti-vaxx movement and his book is becoming a major element of that cause. His strident attacks against pharmaceutical companies, medical orthodoxy, and Fauci have earned him numerous, powerful enemies. If his AIDS claims were really as ridiculous as they might seem, would they not have already become a lightning rod for attacks against him? Suppose that his anti-vaxx tome had devoted 200 pages to arguing that our world was secretly controlled by invisible 12-foot-tall Reptilians from another dimension. Surely Kennedy’s enemies would have unleashed a huge storm of media ridicule against him for that lunacy, thereby discrediting his critique of vaccination campaigns. Yet instead complete silence has greeted his AIDS claims, raising questions in my mind of whether the medical establishment suspects that it has a great deal to hide and that many of Kennedy’s accusations might be correct.
As an outside observer with no special expertise in these areas of medicine, I was impressed by much of the material that Kennedy marshaled in support of his unorthodox views on vaccines and Covid treatments, but found that the evidence he provided on HIV and AIDS was vastly more comprehensive and persuasive, while being backed by far more authoritative experts. But if as he argues, the truth about HIV and AIDS has been successfully suppressed for decades by the entire medical industry, we must necessarily become very suspicious about other medical claims, including those regarding Covid and vaccinations.
Unless the medical and media establishments swiftly and forthrightly challenges Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on the issue of HIV/AIDS, any fair-minded observers must necessarily conclude they recognize that he is substantially correct. And if he is correct about AIDS, any shreds of remaining credibility in our public health authorities will surely be destroyed, while the longstanding theories of Berkeley Prof. Peter Duesberg will have been vindicated:
- The chemical bases of the various AIDS epidemics: recreational drugs, anti-viral chemotherapy and malnutrition
Peter Duesberg, Claus Koehnlein, and David Rasnick • Journal of Bioscience • June 2003 • 24,000 Words
So as some have suggested, HIV/AIDS might very well become the Achilles’ Heel of our corrupt and incompetent medical establishment.
Forget China, was it CEPI’s bio-spooks who locked down the West?
By Paula Jardine | TCW Defending Freedom | December 15, 2021
IT is nearly two years since the world turned upside down and a sequence of unprecedented lockdowns and quarantines in the name of public health and safety were imposed across the West.
The narrative of the still unfolding story of Covid-19 is familiar to all of us, with China the chief bogeyman of the tale. But is that right?
In this drama has something really important been overlooked? Namely, the role of a powerful, self-appointed supranational organisation, set up 2017, called the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI).
Members of CEPI’s board and scientific advisory committee have been, and still are, key actors in global and national responses to the Covid-19 virus. Its mission? To ‘create a world in which epidemics are no longer a threat to humanity’.
At the start of 2020, all eyes were glued on China. The communist government had dutifully notified the World Health Organisation (WHO) on New Year’s Eve 2019 of its concerns over a small cluster of cases of ‘pneumonia of unknown origin’.
Three weeks later, when the death toll stood at 17, the CCP was sufficiently alarmed to order the home confinement of nearly 12 million mostly healthy people who were unfortunate enough to reside in the outbreak city, Wuhan.
Having fingered as the culprit a relative of the SARS virus that claimed 774 victims in 2003, the Chinese determination to contain the self-evidently nastier 2019 co-variant at all costs was made plain to the world.
The scenes broadcast out of China nightly on the TV news were surreal, but strangely familiar to anyone with a passing familiarity with vintage sci-fi. A nightmare amalgamation of The Andromeda Strain and The Hamburg Syndrome was unfolding in real life, right before our eyes.
Here, a man falling down dead in the street. There, men in white hazmat suits walking through empty Chinese thoroughfares equipped with Ghostbuster-esque backpacks blowing smoke in a desperate attempt to fumigate the invisible peril out of existence.
Knowing that the Queen’s own men at the Porton Down chemical and biological defence establishment long ago discovered that fresh air and sunlight, two commodities already in short supply in Chinese cities, are the most potent of disinfectants, it seemed a strangely futile spectacle. What on Earth were they trying to do? Death apparently lurked around every corner.
As the Wuhan lockdown was being imposed on January 23, 2020, the global elite were busy congregating at their annual networking fest, the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland (where CEPI had been founded three years earlier by the governments of Norway and India, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust global charity organisation, and the World Economic Forum).
Next day, a little-noticed press conference was convened in Davos to discuss the SARS-like, closely-related, but definitely novel, SARS Wuhan coronavirus.
Appearing in front of about 30 reporters were Sir Jeremy Farrar, Director of the Wellcome Trust and board member of CEPI; Richard Hatchett, chief executive of CEPI, and Stephane Bancel, chief executive of Moderna, one of three companies being funded to develop a coronavirus vaccine. A Chinese reporter asked the panel if there was any historical precedent for the lockdown.
Hatchett said: ‘One thing that is important to understand, is that when you don’t have treatments and you don’t have vaccines, non-pharmaceutical interventions are literally the only thing that you have, and it’s a combination of isolation, containment, infection prevention and control and then these social distancing interventions.
‘There is historical precedent for their use. We looked intensively and did an historical analysis of the use of non-pharmaceutical interventions in US cities in 1918 and what we found was that cities that introduced multiple interventions, early in an epidemic, had much better outcomes.
‘The challenge of course is that it is very difficult to sustain these interventions, as they impose enormous cost and they also can produce enormous anxiety among the affected population.’
The ‘we’ Hatchett was referring to was the US Department of Homeland Security where, as an official, he had helped develop the US pandemic preparedness plan in 2005 and 2006 during the H5N1 avian influenza outbreak, which Farrar had discovered in Vietnam.
Hatchett continued: ‘At that time, we looked at how could you have those interventions implemented in a way that maximised their benefit and minimised the cost and we developed an approach that we called “community mitigation” interventions and CDC (the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention) published guidance on this several years ago.
‘There is a literature which I would certainly encourage Chinese authorities to review and certainly I would be happy to talk to them about that, although that’s not my current job.’
There was no need to encourage the Chinese authorities to review the literature. CEPI already had a man in Beijing, Dr George Gao, the director of China’s Centre for Disease Control, but also member of the CEPI scientific advisory panel. The community mitigation approach the Chinese adopted in Wuhan was straight out of the 2006 US Homeland Security pandemic playbook.
Gao, like Farrar, completed his PhD at Oxford University before conducting post-doctoral work under Sir John Bell, the controversial Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford, holder of several extranumerary positions and multiple interests, not least as chair of the global health scientific advisory board of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
An expert on coronaviruses, Gao served on CEPI’s first scientific advisory committee in 2016 and was a player in Event 201, the pandemic simulation hosted in October 2019 by the World Economic Forum, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health – discussed here by Robert F Kennedy Jr.
In all probability, Gao is the old friend Farrar was referring to when he said on Desert Island Discs that he had had a phone call on December 31, 2019 – the day the Chinese authorities reported the Wuhan pneumonia outbreak to the WHO – to alert him that China would release the genome of the new virus on January 10. As things stood on New Year’s Eve, the virus had yet to cause any deaths, although it was making a few people very ill.
By January 17, another CEPI scientific adviser, Dr Christian Drosten, had conveniently developed a PCR test from the genetic sequence posted online by the Chinese, which the WHO advised laboratories could be used as a diagnostic test for Covid-19.
This was almost two months before the WHO declared the novel coronavirus a pandemic on March 11, 2020. Following a visit to Wuhan by the WHO in February 2020, led by its assistant director-general Dr Bruce Aylward, the world was being encouraged to adopt what were now being called Chinese measures.
‘China didn’t approach this new virus with an old strategy for one disease or another disease,’ said Aylward. ‘It developed its own approach to a new disease and extraordinarily has turned around this disease with strategies most of the world didn’t think would work.’
The Chinese government, with its own Big Brother infrastructure, had its own reasons for going along with that. But the response plan is in reality far more complex, and has a much darker background in the West.
The Yellow Brick Road that passes through CEPI and Beijing leads right back to the US Department of Homeland Security, and its 1998 Pentagon strategy paper.
The response plan is in reality an American scheme, with its origins more than decade and a half earlier and against a backdrop of bioterrorism concerns. Uncle Sam is the wizard behind the curtain, not acting in the West’s interests at all.
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Trans ‘milk’ as good as the real thing – NHS
RT | February 18, 2024
The drug-induced nipple secretions of trans women are as good as mothers’ breast milk for babies, the University of Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust claimed in a letter to campaigners made public in a report by British think tank the Policy Exchange on Sunday.
The healthcare trust’s medical director, Rachel James, argued that the off-label prescription drug cocktail men transitioning to female take in order to produce milk was “similar to the natural hormones which encourage lactation to develop when the baby is newly born.”
“The evidence which is available demonstrates that the milk is comparable to that produced following the birth of a baby,” James wrote in the letter, sent to Children of Transitioners last August.
Biological men who wish to lactate must first take hormones to grow milk glands and then take high doses of either domperidone or metoclopramide to stimulate milk production. Neither drug is approved for this use, though they are occasionally prescribed off-label to biological women who have trouble lactating.
However, domperidone’s own manufacturer, Janssen, warns patients the drug “may cause unwanted side effects affecting the heart in a breastfed baby” and “should be used during breastfeeding only if your physician considers this clearly necessary.” … continue
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