In a November 12, 2021, blog post,1 Maryanne Demasi, Ph.D., reviews how the benefits of the COVID-19 shots have been exaggerated by the drug companies and misrepresented to the public by an uncritical media. She has previously given many lectures on how the drug companies conflated absolute and relative risks for statin drugs.2
Demasi was a respected Australian science presenter at ABC television until she produced a Catalyst report on the dangers of Wi-Fi and cellphones. In the wake of the controversy it raised, she and 11 of her staff members were axed and the episode retracted.3 That was 2016. Today, Demasi is one of the few professional journalists seeking and publishing the truth about COVID-19.
Absolute Versus Relative Risk Reduction
In her post, Demasi highlights one of the most commonly used tricks in the book — conflating absolute and relative risk reduction. As noted by Demasi, AstraZeneca and Australia’s health minister, Greg Hunt, claimed the AstraZeneca injection offered “100% protection” against COVID-19 death. How did they get this number? Demasi explains:4
“In the trial5 of 23,848 subjects … there was one death in the placebo group and no deaths in the vaccinated group. One less death out of a total of one, indeed was a relative reduction of 100%, but the absolute reduction was 0.01%.”
Similarly, Pfizer’s COVID shot was said to be 95% effective against the infection, but this too is the relative risk reduction, not the absolute reduction. The absolute risk reduction for Pfizer’s shot was a meager 0.84%.
It’s worth noting that an incredibly low number of people were infected in the first place. Only 8 out of 18,198 vaccine recipients developed COVID symptoms (0.04%), and 162 of the 18,325 in the placebo group (0.88%).
Since your risk of COVID was minuscule to begin with, even if the shot was able to reduce your absolute risk by 100%, it would still be trivial in real-world terms.
According to Gerd Gigerenzer, director of the Harding Centre for Risk Literacy at the Max Planck Institute, only quoting the relative risk reduction is a “sin” against transparent communication, as it can be used as a “deliberate tactic to manipulate or persuade people.” Demasi also quotes John Ioannidis, professor at Stanford University, who told her:6
“This is not happening just for vaccines. Over many decades, RRR [relative risk reduction] has been the dominant way of communicating results of clinical trials. Almost always, RRR looks nicer than absolute risk reductions.”
Demasi continues:7
“When asked if there was any justification for misleading the public about the vaccine’s benefits to encourage uptake, Prof Ioannidis rejected the notion.
‘I don’t see how one can increase uptake by using misleading information. I am all in favor of increasing uptake, but this needs to use complete information, otherwise sooner or later incomplete information will lead to misunderstandings and will backfire,’ says Ioannidis.
The way authorities have communicated risk to the public, is likely to have misled and distorted the public’s perception of the vaccine’s benefit and underplayed the harms. This, in essence, is a violation of the ethical and legal obligations of informed consent.”
US Health Authorities Have Misrepresented the Data
U.S. health authorities, like Australia’s, are guilty of misrepresenting the data to the public. In February 2021, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Rochelle Walensky co-wrote a JAMA paper8 which stated that “Clinical trials have shown that the vaccines authorized for use in the U.S. are highly effective against COVID-19 infection, severe illness and death.”
Alas, “there were too few deaths recorded in the controlled trials at the time to arrive at such a conclusion,” Demasi writes.9 This observation was made by professor Peter Doshi, associate editor of The BMJ, during Sen. Ron Johnson’s Expert Panel on Federal Vaccine Mandates, November 1, 2021.10 During that roundtable discussion, Doshi stated that:
“The trials did not show a reduction in deaths, even for COVID deaths … Those who claimed the trials showed that the vaccines were highly effective in saving lives were wrong. The trials did not demonstrate this.”
Indeed, the six-month follow-up of Pfizer’s trial showed 15 deaths in the vaccine group and 14 deaths in the placebo group. Then, during the open label phase, after Pfizer decided to eliminate the placebo group by offering the actual shot to everyone who wanted it, another five deaths occurred in the vaccine group.
Two of those five had originally been in the placebo group, and had taken the shot in the open label phase. So, in the end, what we have are 20 deaths in the vaccine group, compared to 14 in the placebo group. We also have the suspicious fact that two of the placebo participants suddenly died after getting the real deal.
How You Express Effect Size Matters
As noted in a July 2021 Lancet paper,11 “fully understanding the efficacy and effectiveness of vaccines is less straightforward than it might seem. Depending on how the effect size is expressed, a quite different picture might emerge.”
The authors point out that the relative risk reduction really needs to “be seen against the background risk of being infected and becoming ill with COVID-19, which varies between populations and over time.” This is why the absolute risk reduction figure is so important:12
“Although the RRR considers only participants who could benefit from the vaccine, the absolute risk reduction (ARR), which is the difference between attack rates with and without a vaccine, considers the whole population …
ARR is also used to derive an estimate of vaccine effectiveness, which is the number needed to vaccinate (NNV) to prevent one more case of COVID-19 as 1/ARR. NNVs bring a different perspective: 81 for the Moderna–NIH, 78 for the AstraZeneca–Oxford … 84 for the J&J, and 119 for the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccines.
The explanation lies in the combination of vaccine efficacy and different background risks of COVID-19 across studies: 0.9% for the Pfizer–BioNTech … 1.4% for the Moderna–NIH, 1.8% for the J&J, and 1.9% for the AstraZeneca–Oxford vaccines.
ARR (and NNV) are sensitive to background risk — the higher the risk, the higher the effectiveness — as exemplified by the analyses of the J&J’s vaccine on centrally confirmed cases compared with all cases: both the numerator and denominator change, RRR does not change (66–67%), but the one-third increase in attack rates in the unvaccinated group (from 1.8% to 2.4%) translates in a one-fourth decrease in NNV (from 84 to 64) …
With the use of only RRRs, and omitting ARRs, reporting bias is introduced, which affects the interpretation of vaccine efficacy.
When communicating about vaccine efficacy, especially for public health decisions such as choosing the type of vaccines to purchase and deploy, having a full picture of what the data actually show is important, and ensuring comparisons are based on the combined evidence that puts vaccine trial results in context and not just looking at one summary measure, is also important.”
The authors go on to stress that comparing the effectiveness of the COVID shots is further hampered by the fact that they use a variety of different study protocols, including different placebos. They even differ in their primary endpoint, i.e., what they consider a COVID case, and how and when diagnosis is made, and more.
“We are left with the unanswered question as to whether a vaccine with a given efficacy in the study population will have the same efficacy in another population with different levels of background risk of COVID-19,” the authors note.
One of the best real-world examples of this is Israel, where the relative risk reduction was 94% at the outset and an absolute risk reduction of 0.46%, which translates into an NNV of 217. In the Phase 3 Pfizer trial, the absolute risk reduction was 0.84% and the NNV 119.13 As noted by the authors:14
“This means in a real-life setting, 1.8 times more subjects might need to be vaccinated to prevent one more case of COVID-19 than predicted in the corresponding clinical trial.”
SARS-CoV-2 Specific Antibodies Pose Danger for the Obese
In related news, a recent study15 published in the International Journal of Obesity warns that “the majority of SARS-CoV-2-specific antibodies in COVID-19 patients with obesity are autoimmune and not neutralizing.”
In plain English, if you’re obese, you’re at risk of developing autoimmune problems if you get the natural infection. You’re also at higher risk of a serious infection, as the antibodies your body produces are not the neutralizing kind that kill the virus. As explained by the authors:16
“SARS-CoV-2 infection induces neutralizing antibodies in all lean but only in few obese COVID-19 patients. SARS-CoV-2 infection also induces anti-MDA [malondialdehyde, a marker of oxidative stress and lipid peroxidation] and anti-AD [adipocyte-derived protein antigens] autoimmune antibodies more in lean than in obese patients as compared to uninfected controls.
Serum levels of these autoimmune antibodies, however, are always higher in obese versus lean COVID-19 patients. Moreover … we also evaluated the association of anti-MDA and anti-AD antibodies with serum CRP and found a positive association between CRP and autoimmune antibodies.
Our results highlight the importance of evaluating the quality of the antibody response in COVID-19 patients with obesity, particularly the presence of autoimmune antibodies, and identify biomarkers of self-tolerance breakdown. This is crucial to protect this vulnerable population at higher risk of responding poorly to infection with SARS-CoV-2 than lean controls.”
Now, these findings apply to obese people who develop the natural infection, but it makes one wonder whether the same holds true for the COVID jab. If the antibodies produced in response to the actual virus are primarily autoantibodies, will obese people develop autoantibodies instead of neutralizing antibodies in response to the COVID shot as well?
For clarity, an autoantibody is an antibody that is directed against one or more of your own body’s proteins. Many autoimmune diseases are caused by autoantibodies that target and attack your own tissues or organs.
So, this is no small concern, seeing how the mRNA in the COVID shots (and subsequent SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, which is what your body produces antibodies against) gets distributed throughout your body and accumulates in various organs.17,18
At this point, there’s an overwhelming amount of evidence showing the COVID shots are not working. What little protection you do get clearly wanes within a handful of months, and may leave you worse off than you were before. We’re seeing data to this effect from a number of different places.
In the U.S., we can now look at Vermont.19 At nearly 72% vaccinated, it has the highest rate of “fully vaccinated” residents in the country, according to ABC News,20 yet COVID cases are now suddenly surging to new heights.
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show Vermont had the 12th highest COVID case rate in the nation as of November 9, 2021. Over the previous seven days, cases had increased by 42%. It couldn’t have been due to a surge in testing, though, as the weekly average of tests administered had only increased by 9% in that time.
What’s more, during that first week of November, the hospital admission rate for patients who were fully vaccinated increased by 8%, while the admission rate for those who were not fully vaccinated actually decreased by 15%.
Keep in mind that you’re not considered “fully vaccinated” until two weeks after your second injection. If you got your second dose a week ago and end up in the hospital with COVID symptoms, you’re counted as unvaccinated. This gross manipulation of reality makes it very difficult to interpret the data, but even with this manipulation it is beyond obvious that the vaccines are failing.
Overall, the case rate in Vermont is FAR higher now than it was in the fall of 2020, when no one had gotten the “vaccine.” According to Vermont health commissioner Dr. Mark Levine, the surge is occurring primarily among unvaccinated people in their 20s and children aged 5 through 11 — a curious coincidence, seeing how the shots are just now being rolled out for 5- to 11-year-olds.
Levine blames the surge on the highly infectious delta variant, but delta has been around for months already. The first case of delta in Vermont was identified in mid-May 2021.21 Surely, it wouldn’t have taken six months for this most-infectious of variants to make the rounds and cause an unprecedented spike?
Two clues are given by Levine, however, when he admits that a) Vermont has one of the lowest rates of natural immunity in the U.S. and b) protection is waning among those who got the COVID shot early to mid-year. Breakthrough cases among the fully vaccinated shot up 31% during the first week of November.22
Fully Vaxxed Are Nine Times More Likely To Be Hospitalized
Coincidentally, data from physician assistant Deborah Conrad, presented by attorney Aaron Siri23 October 17, 2021, shows vaccinated people are nine times more likely to be hospitalized than the unvaccinated.
The key, however, was in what they counted as vaccinated. Rather than only including those who had gotten the shot two weeks or more before being hospitalized, they simply counted those who had one or more shots, regardless of when, as vaccinated. This gives us an honest accounting, finally! As explained by Siri:24
“A concerned Physician Assistant, Deborah Conrad, convinced her hospital to carefully track the COVID-19 vaccination status of every patient admitted to her hospital. The result is shocking.
As Ms. Conrad has detailed, her hospital serves a community in which less than 50% of the individuals were vaccinated for COVID-19 but yet, during the same time period, approximately 90% of the individuals admitted to her hospital were documented to have received this vaccine.
These patients were admitted for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to COVID-19 infections. Even more troubling is that there were many individuals who were young, many who presented with unusual or unexpected health events, and many who were admitted months after vaccination.”
Despite these troubling findings, health authorities ignored Conrad when she reached out. In mid-July 2021, Siri’s law firm also sent formal letters to the CDC, the Health and Human Services Department and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Conrad’s behalf,25 and those were ignored as well.
“This again highlights the importance of never permitting government coercion and mandates when it comes to medical procedures,” Siri writes.26
Now, one of the most shocking details gleaned from Conrad’s data collection, which Siri failed to make clear but Steve Kirsch highlights in a recent substack post is that:27
“The only way you can get those numbers is if vaccinated people are 9 times more likely to be hospitalized than unvaccinated. It is mathematically impossible to get to those numbers any other way. Period. Full stop. This is known as an ‘inconvenient truth.’”
Indeed, the more data we gain access to, the worse it looks for these COVID shots. Unfortunately, those who push them seem hell-bent on ignoring any and all data that don’t support their stance.
Worse, it seems data and statistics are being intentionally manipulated by our health authorities to present a false picture of safety and effectiveness. All such tactics are indefensible at this point, and people who believe the official narrative without doing their own research do so at their own risk.
Despite a preponderance of the evidence proving COVID to be a non-event for most of us, over 1 million people have fallen foul to vaccine injury. This should be enough to stop most people in their tracks. It hasn’t.
Many emerge from near death experience even more pontifical than before, denouncing the rest of us for not joining in this mortal game of Russian Roulette. Fuelling their self-righteous indignation of us, is other people’s self-righteous indignation of them. It is a perpetual loop of blame and shame.
There can be no avoiding these people. A sort of Provisional Mask Army. The ones acting in good conscience lost to the morally virtuous super spreaders of hyperbole.
They will believe whatever they hear and do whatever they’re told. They have been groomed by something far more powerful than the truth, called ‘the science,’ and they will follow ‘it’ right off the edge of a cliff.
This unholy mess works because a new ideology has swept across the moral fabric. Unless you’re taking an experimental medical intervention fraught with danger, you’re dancing on the graves of all those who have died.
Ridding people with guilt takes away their power, and blind obedience to authority does the rest, as Milgram discovered in his landmark experiment.
But the fact that humanity is in an abusive relationship with its governments, is only one part of the problem. There’s a long history of cults infiltrating polite society. The cult of personality of Lenin and later Stalin once captured an entire nation. But never in history has the entire world fallen to a cult.
Where the New Normal departs from other cult archetypes is in the instruments of mass communication, in the hands of a few fanatics, that have infiltrated the commons, and created an apotheosis around COVID-19, glorifying it to the divine proportions of Christianity. It has long been understood that if you repeat a lie often enough it becomes consensus.
Also of great importance to these evangelists are the decades of behavioural studies by the most distinguished experts in the field of social psychology.
Not everyone in the Asch Experiment conformed, but the reasons why many found solidarity with the group are well understood by the behavioural scientists, on the payroll of HM government, nudging the British people towards existential ruin.
And much of what is happening today in the rank and file of the New Normal, has the lessons of the Third Reich written all over it. If you’re still oblivious to the fact that you’re being indoctrinated into a cult, it’s probably because you’ve already been indoctrinated.
THE END IS NIGH
Cults are established on the back of major events, typically apocalyptic in nature. These biblical, extra-terrestrial, or, indeed, viral prophecies speak to an impending disaster and redemption. A tinderbox setting forces people together under the protection of communitarianism, and encourages the more zealous members to denounce, ridicule and intimidate anyone not acting in accordance with the group.
Deindividuation, as it is known, turns these harmless groups into psychological crowds, and very often results in a mob mentality.
Our need to take refuge in the herd is, after all, hardcoded into our DNA, just as fear of social exclusion and a desire to cooperate are inherited evolutionary traits. Explaining why COVID began with social isolation. And why, after capitulating to every conceivable demand, we continue to be held to ransom, with the threat of further social isolation.
Despite the obvious abuse of power, people remain beholden to their captors, through some bizarre emotional bond, strengthened every time they are released, albeit temporarily, from their captivity.
HIERARCHIES
You can identify cults by their organisational structure. People are assigned a role, as in Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment and many go beyond the call of duty. The problem isn’t so much that ‘we are all in this together’ It’s that we simply are not, it’s the cult nobility lording over the rest of us.
In this heightened state of emergency, however, people will not only accept more authority from those who are beyond the rules, they will emulate the prevailing authoritarian order, rather than become a victim of it. As Hannah Arendt discovered in her landmark thesis, ordinary people in search of purpose and direction, who are dutifully just following orders, have the potential to commit the most atrocious acts of evil.
Throughout COVID, these unpaid, unsolicited officers in the rank and file have spread the communicable indoctrination far wider than any bureaucrat. We are full to the rafters of morally superior COVID-vigilantes, condemning anyone for the mere suggestion that the earth, might in fact, orbit the sun.
The resulting groupthink – if you’re not with us you’re against us – not only isolates new initiatives from outside influence, it removes their right to think and act for themselves and admonishes anyone brave enough to question the All Powerful Redeemer.
The habitual lies, backpedalling and science that buckles under the lightest of scrutiny, is no arbitrary event. People understand they’re being duped, but refuse to act on crucial information. Instead, they acclimate to the golden age of false narratives.
Encouraging people to act counterintuitively will, eventually cause them to abandon personal agency altogether, because that violent buffer to critical thinking, called consensus, holds the opposite to be true, to that which is before our very eyes.
In one breath, Boris Johnson implores us to get vaccinated because of the risk versus the reward. In the next, he admits ‘the vaccine doesn’t protect against catching or passing on COVID.’ Meanwhile, his co-conspirator holds Christmas to ransom if people refuse a third shot, and proceeds to threaten those who had previously been the only at-risk group, which this entire debacle was supposed to be about protecting.
When the lips move, brace for lies, any collision with real world events is entirely accidental.
ANATOMY OF A CULT
Cults are illusive by nature. An outlier sailing under the false colours of a normal state of affairs. This is achieved by compounding cult rituals into the everyday humdrum, and converting old cultural touchstones into new ideological frontiers, until one is no longer distinguishable from the other.
There are numerous tell-tale signs you may have accidentally joined a cult, from elbow bumps to muzzles, hand sanitizer to the 2-meter rule.
There is a long history of people’s superstitions being manipulated into performing irrational acts, if they can be demoralised to the point of despair. Under such circumstances people have been known to, commit ritualistic mass suicide, disembowel themselves and even murder their own children.
To say that it’s a mad, mad world, doesn’t do it justice.
OTHER CULTS YOU MAY HAVE JOINED
Against this frenzy of health persecution complex, other bizarre ideologies chip away at the social fabric. Membership to society hinges on your range of pronouns. The new cultural etiquette is wokeism. Your affinity with those who have swapped their sexual identity determines your social cachet, while your desire to find the nearest bucket, paints a target on your back.
You only need to observe the Cult of Personality being visited upon future generations by the lionising of Greta, to catch a glimpse of how climate change will evolve into the New Age Church.
The end game to all of this is the spiritual requisition of the human soul and a day of reckoning for humanity mark 1.0.
But as the circus catches fire there are those watching from the sidelines who are simply not having it. The vestiges of rationality left behind, call them deniers or refuseniks, have formed a cult of their own. A cult of scepticism and non-compliance.
By some accounts, these people are at a greater risk of a long and healthy life, and woe betide, the mob is agitated. Ther are calls for immediate sanctions. Following twenty months of denouncements, public enmity is reaching fever pitch. If the barbaric treatment of another dehumanised social group, pre-Auschwitz, is anything to go by, it could be just a matter of time before the deniers are forced into internment camps, or worse, lined up against firing squads.
On the other hand, the cult has revealed its more sinister aspects, thousands of legitimate voices from science and medicine are pushing back in opposition, and even the double vaccinated are waking up to the fact that their freedoms are in jeopardy every six months.
As a wise man once said, “first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win.”
GIVEN the feared winter resurgence of Covid infection despite, or because of, the government’s mass vaccination programme, the continued ban on ivermectin in this country becomes ever more perverse.
It beggars belief that the British public is still denied access to this proven prophylactic and treatment. If the public health authorities are genuinely worried about pressure on hospitals, why have not the Medicines and Health products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), Public Health England, the NHS and Department of Health all gone flat out over this last year to approve ivermectin with the same zeal they gave emergency authorisation to the limited trialled, novel gene therapy, Covid vaccines?
The answer is widespread misinformation from the top down. Put ‘ivermectin’ into the Google search box and what do you come up with? Topping the list is a warning from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) why it should NOT be used to treat or prevent Covid-19. Their reason? It’s as simple as the fact that they have not approved it and, because they have not approved, it cannot be used. Trials are ongoing they say. Maybe some are. But plenty have been completed, as Dr Pierre Kory’s paper (he was the lead author) ‘Review of the Emerging Evidence Demonstrating the Efficacy of Ivermectin in the Prophylaxis and Treatment of Covid-19’, published by the American Journal of Therapeutics earlier this year, made quite clear.
By contrast with this detailed review of the evidence the FDA’s substantive concern appears to rest on random reports of harms deriving from self-medication with ivermectin.
The BBC not to be behindhand entered the fray with its customary selective and biased take on ‘the science’. Its recent report entitled ‘How false science created a Covid ‘miracle’ drug‘ made not even the most minimal of checks on the veracity of their assertions, which are pulled apart here. A letter sent to a programme journalist in response to their request for information (in advance of transmission) by Dr Tess Lawrie, the Director of the British Ivermectin Recommendation Development Group (BIRD), an advocacy group of clinicians and scientists from around the world, setting out the science behind the case for authorising it, was completely ignored. Her letter can be found here.
How the BBC came not to ask how it was that remdesivir – a standard medication for Covid in the UK – was approved on the basis of one study when ivermectin, with 63 studies, of them 31 Randomised Controlled Trials (RCT), 7 meta-analyses, 32 Observational Controlled Trials (OCT), multiple country case studies, expert opinion, patient testimony ALL pointing in favour of the medication, was not, is inexplicable.
This is the news source the public is still told to trust.
A blog posted on BIRD last week asked whether there are indeed any genuine gripes about the quality of the evidence, as the FDA and others suggest?
No, there are not. The author argues it is down to a misinformation campaign based on misleading information produced by high profile public health agencies, like the World Health Organisation, itself a victim of disinformation tactics, that has been ‘perpetrated by a minority of corporations to manipulate and delay government action on matters that would adversely affect their income and profit’. Speculation of course. But every indication points that way.
As reported extensively in TCW Defending Freedom, for example here, the WHO is subject to the huge financial influence of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the organisation’s second biggest donor. Since one of the BMGF’s long-term interest is in delivering vaccines, why would they show any interest in promoting the use of cheap, old repurposed medications in the treatment and prevention of Covid-19? It’s for the very same reason that ivermectin has proved of so little interest to Big Pharma -it’s hardly the money spinner that indemnified world-wide vaccination is.
Worse perhaps than what these big interests have not done is what they have actively done to discredit ivermectin. The BIRD blog relays an analysis by Dr Kory setting out what the WHO ‘did’ with the ivermectin evidence. He says it:
· Failed to publish a pre-established protocol for data exclusion
· Excluded two ‘quasi-randomised’ controlled trials (RCTs) with lower mortality
· Excluded two RCTs that compared ivermectin to or gave it together with other medications, all reporting lower mortality
· Excluded seven other available ivermectin RCT results
· Excluded all RCTs and observational controlled trials (OCTs) investigating ivermectin in the prevention of Covid-19
· Excluded 13 OCTs, more than 5,500 patients, that showed reductions in mortality
· Excluded numerous published and pre-print epidemiologic studies.
The bottom line, however, remains – if ivermectin is good enough and provenly effective for the more than 20 lower-income countries which do distribute it and also benefit from lower Covid rates, why are the populations of wealthier nations and individuals still being denied?
It’s a point that clearly has bothered the chairman of the Tokyo Medical Association, Dr Haruo Ozaki, who would recommend ivermectin for Covid patients, noting that the parts of Africa that use ivermectin to control parasites have a Covid death rate of just 2.2 per 100,000 population, compared with 13 times that death rate among African countries that do not use ivermectin.
‘I would like,’ said Dr Ozaki, ‘the government to consider treatment at the level of the family doctor’ with the informed consent of the patient. So would we.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s latest book, “The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health,” today claimed the #1 spot overall on Amazon’s bestseller list.
The book, released Tuesday, debuted at #2, but moved up on the list today. The book is also in the #1 spot on the Kindle books bestseller list.
“Conventional wisdom holds you can’t have a bestselling book without plenty of media attention” — and no surprise, ‘The Real Anthony Fauci’ has had a near-total news media blackout,” said Kennedy, Children’s Health Defense chairman and chief legal counsel. “Given that, it feels great to report this good news.”
The Real Anthony Fauci” chronicles Fauci’s 50-year tenure at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), including his long list of failures.
The book also and sheds light on previously little-known experiments using animals and orphaned children. It recounts recent NIAID experiments performed on beagle puppies. In a recent letter to Fauci, U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) and a bipartisan coalition of Congress members described the experiments as ”cruel.”
Social media picked up on the revelations, with trending hashtags #AvengeTheBeagles and #ProtectOurChildren.
“Books might literally be the last bastion of free speech in America,” said Kennedy.“ They can’t be easily erased, deleted, canceled, or disappeared.”
At a time when the world is being overwhelmed with an array of perplexing problems, the political leadership necessary for solving them is coming up short everywhere. Is this perceived shortage of talent on the global stage a mere coincidence, or is it by design?
For 40 years, Klaus Schwab, the German economist and engineer, has played host to the World Economic Forum in the picturesque town of Davos, Switzerland, a venue that the WEF itself describes as “sufficiently removed to foster among participants a feeling of seclusion and camaraderie.” It is amid that comfortable setting that the global elite are seeing through their plans without much transparency in the process. It’s probably safe to say that the financial elite deciding the fate of the planet at an isolated Swiss ski resort is probably not what the Ancient Greeks had in mind when they theorized about democracy and ‘rule of the people.’
Yet that is exactly what we’ve come to inherit from this exclusive Forum, which fervently believes that global affairs are best managed by an unelected assembly of corporations and technocrats that exert unprecedented power over governments and civil society. And now, thanks to the totally, 100% completely unexpected visitation to planet Earth by a virus of uncertain origins, the elite have been blessed with “a rare but narrow window of opportunity,” according to Schwab, to “reset our world” through a grand initiative known as the Great Reset, which can be summed up in six words: “You’ll own nothing and be happy.”
With such a downsized future ahead of us, the one question that seems to have escaped the world’s divided attention is: how is it remotely possible that one individual has managed to concentrate so much unwieldy power into his hands? The short answer is that it was probably no accident.
The young Schwab studied at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government (1966-67), where he earned a Master of Public Administration degree. During his stay, he developed friendships with a number of luminaries, including the macroeconomist Dean Baker, the economist John Kenneth Galbraith, and the great godfather of RealPolitik, Henry Kissinger. Schwab’s relationship with Kissinger, the trigger-happy Secretary of State in the Nixon and Ford administrations, was more than casual. Schwab described it as a “50-year-long mentorship” that continues paying dividends to this day.
As the quaint story goes, in February 1971 the 32-year-old Schwab somehow managed to organize the first ‘European Management Symposium’ in Davos, which would change its name in 1987 to the World Economic Forum. That first meeting managed to attract over 400 corporate executives from 31 nations, an astonishing feat even for an ambitious young man like Schwab. In fact, the native of Ravensburg, Germany may have been less directly involved in the formation of the group than is typically believed.
As the journalist Ernst Wolff explains, “the Harvard Business School had been in the process of planning a management forum of their own, and it is possible that Harvard ended up delegating the task of organizing it to him.” Incidentally, 1971 was the very same year that President Richard Nixon enacted a plan that ended dollar convertibility to gold, a move that soon brought an end to the Bretton Woods System.
Now that Klaus Schwab and the WEC have drafted up the blueprints for their highly coveted technocratic state, there remains one crucial key, and that is making sure leaders sympathetic to the message are in positions of power to see it through.
Welcome to Schwab’s ‘Young Global Leaders’
In 1992, Schwab and the WEC established the Global Leaders for Tomorrow school, which went on to become Young Global Leaders in 2004. The Who Who’s list of past members of this “most exclusive private social network in the world,” as Bloombergdescribed it, suggests that Davos Man was fishing for a very particular type of future leader.
Included among the alumni of this elite grooming factory are former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and California Governor Gavin Newsom. Aside from Blair, who hailed from an earlier, more muscular period of U.S.-dominated history that focused heavily on the ‘war on terror,’ the two common features that unite these politicians is their strong liberal tendencies and draconian approach to the coronavirus pandemic.
Last month, Jacinda Ardern, for example, without the slightest hint of regret, smiled as she said that New Zealand was on its way to becoming a “two-tier society,” divided between those who choose to get the Covid vaccine and those who do not. Currently, residents must scan into stores using a QR code, which isn’t tied to a person’s vaccine status, but rather used for ‘contact tracing.’ Eventually, the Ardern government plans to implement vaccine passports and all of the delightful chaos that will inevitably incur.
In France, another graduate from the Young Global Leaders (YGL), French President Emmanuel Macron, has made it mandatory that visitors to cultural venues, like museums and theaters present a so-called ‘green pass’ to gain entry. Thus far, however, public resistance is stalling any future efforts at preventing the unvaccinated from shopping at the large retail outlets.
“There are protests all the time,” said Peter Kellow, a correspondent from London now residing in Toulouse. “I can use all the shops now. They tried making hypermarkets illegal for the non-vaxxed but backed down.”
“I expect the big companies were losing too much business,” he added.
Meanwhile, across the pond, in the United States, California Governor Gavin Newsom (Class of 2005), after mandating first-in-the-nation school masking and staff vaccination protocols, now wants to enforce vaccinations on children as young as five years old. Protesters gathered at the State Capitol in Sacramento this week in an effort to prevent the mandate from passing. Organizers of the rally emphasized they are not against vaccines, but simply want to have a democratic say in the matter.
A striking thing about the global leaders who passed through Schwab’s tutelage is their relative lack of any special achievements before rising to power. As Wolff further explains in an interview with the RAIR Foundation, “the thing that the Global Leaders graduates have in common is that most of them have very sparse CVs apart from their participation in the program prior to being elevated to positions of power…” Wolff goes on to surmise that this may demonstrate that it is “their connection to Schwab’s institutions that is the decisive factor in launching their careers.”
As shocking as it may be that so many like-minded politicians did an apprenticeship under the direction of Klaus Schwab, that twist of fate pales in comparison with the news that Microsoft founder Bill Gates also fell under the sway of YGL (Class of 2003). Perhaps more than any other person, Gates, through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and despite having no medical training whatsoever, has been a staunch proponent of Covid-19 vaccines. The problem here is not the vaccines per se, but rather the massive conflict of interest for the parties involved.
Here we have the secretive World Economic Forum not only grooming young overachievers who go on to advocate on behalf of Mr. Schwab and his technocratic vision for the future (i.e. the Great Reset), but also the business leaders who will profit handsomely from the great global transition, which the pandemic has made possible.
Take, for example, Jeff Bezos, yet another alumnus of YGL. Mr. Bezos saw his personal wealth explode exponentially as small businesses, many of which will never rise from the ashes, were forced to close their doors at the peak of pandemic. Millions of consumers, forced to ‘shelter in place,’ did the only thing possible, which was to flock to online stores, like Amazon.
Again, it is the glaring conflict of interest that makes the story of Klaus Schwab, the WEF and these fine, young protégés, who are perfectly placed at just the right moment in Schwab time, not a little disturbing. Not only did the World Economic Forum, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security anticipate with astonishing accuracy the outbreak of a pandemic just two months before it happened with a security exercise dubbed ‘Event 201,’ the predicted health emergency allowed for Schwab’s long sought-after “better world” that he discussed with such enthusiasm in his book, ‘Covid-19: The Great Reset.’
“At the time of writing (June 2020), the pandemic continues to worsen globally,” Schwab writes, once again, with amazing foresight, especially considering the pandemic was just six months old. “Many of us are pondering when things will return to normal. The short response is: never. Nothing will ever return to the ‘broken’ sense of normalcy that prevailed prior to the crisis because the coronavirus pandemic marks a fundamental inflection point in our global trajectory.”
“Some analysts call it a major bifurcation, others refer to a deep crisis of “biblical” proportions,” he continues, “but the essence remains the same: the world as we knew it in the early months of 2020 is no more, dissolved in the context of the pandemic.”
Few other men have had the pleasure of watching their life dream – and a bold one at that – play out in real time as Klaus Schwab has. Indeed, the 83-year-old may just live to see his Great Reset come to fruition in his own lifetime. How much of that was the result of intense planning and preparation, or a random roll of the dice is anybody’s guess, but it may be wise to heed Franklin D. Roosevelt’s keen observation that “in politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.”
National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins has angrily called for anyone who spreads “misinformation” about COVID-19 online to be “brought to justice.”
“Conspiracies are winning here. Truth is losing. That’s a really serious indictment of the way in which our society seems to be traveling,” Collins told the Washington Post.
Citing an onslaught of angry messages directed at Dr. Anthony Fauci, who Collins appears to believe is above criticism, the bureaucrat demanded that those responsible for such behavior should be identified and “brought to justice.”
The article cited one such example of “misinformation” being Fauci’s involvement in barbaric experiments conducted on dogs by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), despite the fact that such cruelty factually occurred under Fauci’s leadership.
While Collins didn’t specify precisely what he meant by “brought to justice,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla previously asserted that individuals who spread false information about COVID vaccines are “criminals” who “have literally cost millions of lives.”
That’s an interesting benchmark given that it was once considered false to claim that COVID vaccines didn’t stop the vaccinated spreading COVID, which is now an all too obvious fact.
Quite what constitutes “misinformation” about COVID-19 is anyone’s guess given that several things that turned out to be plausible or true, such as the origin of the virus behind the Wuhan lab, were once deemed to be “misinformation.”
It seems likely that whatever the National Institutes of Health, Anthony Fauci or Pfizer deem to be “misinformation” will become the standard.
As we previously highlighted, efforts to brand those who question the safety and efficacy of products manufactured by pharmaceutical corporations that have been plagued by a myriad of historical scandals are also underway in the UK.
The Online Safety Bill, described as “the flagship legislation to combat abuse and hatred on the internet,” will apparently include a provision that jails “antivaxers spreading false information that they know to be untrue” for a period of two years.
Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Bolivia, Paraguay, Peru, Guatemala, Honduras, Macedonia, Uttar Pradesh, India, Zimbabwe, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, parts of Brazil, and other nations have the following in common:
They use known safe and effective ivermectin for treating and curing flu/covid.
As a result, the incidence of the viral illness in these countries is low.
Their success is in stark contrast to surging outbreaks, serious cases, hospitalizations and deaths throughout the US/West, Israel and in other heavily mass-jabbed countries.
Since discovered and approved for human use, around 4 billion doses of ivermectin have been prescribed worldwide.
The WHO includes it on its list of Essential Medicines.
In 2015, co-developer of the drug, Dr. Satoshi Omura, won a Nobel Prize in Medicine.
In February, British Ivermectin Recommendation Development (BIRD) — comprised of medical and scientific experts from over 15 countries — recommended global use of ivermectin as a verifiably safe and effective drug for preventing and treating flu/covid.
Evidence-Based Medicine Consultancy director and BIRD organizer Dr. Tess Lawrie stressed the following:
“Ivermectin is already in use around the world and can reach the poorest people long before other expensive COVID treatments will ever get to them.”
“Ivermectin has an ever-increasing evidence base that shows that it works.”
“Even the prestigious Institute Pasteur in France has confirmed that the evidence is sound.”
Front Line (Flu/Covid) Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) president/chief medical officer Dr. Pierre Kory explained the following:
“When we examine the extensive evidence on ivermectin as a treatment for (flu/covid), we still see a significant reduction in the spread of (the viral illness), as well as a reduction in hospitalizations and deaths.”
“All science needs to be scrutinized. As some of the most published researchers in our fields, we are used to having our work examined by others.”
Peer-reviewed studies showed that when used as directed, ivermectin virtually eliminates flu/covid, most often in a few days.
Noted journalist and author, former Philadelphia Inquirer/Miami Herald reporter, six-time Pulitzer Prize nominee, two-time National Book Award nominee, National Headliner Award winner Michael Capuzzo wrote about “The Drug that Cracked (Flu)Covid,” stressing:
“Hundreds of thousands, actually millions, of people around the world, from Uttar Pradesh in India to Peru to Brazil, who are living and not dying” are alive and well thanks to ivermectin.
He “saw with (his) own eyes” the other side of the story that MSM suppress, adding:
He “wishes the world could see both sides” — notably that ivermectin is a virtual wonder drug for treating and curing flu/covid.
It’s safe, effective and cheap.
If used worldwide in lieu of toxic jabs — crucial to shun — flu/covid could be largely eliminated.
It’s not throughout the US/West, Israel and elsewhere with mass-extermination and destruction of freedom in mind.
AP News dubiously claimed that “scientists are mystified and wary (about why) Africa avoid(ed) (flu/covid) disaster (sic).”
Outbreaks are largely absent in dozens of African countries.
What AP News called “mysterious” is what it suppressed.
Widespread use of ivermectin rendered much of the continent largely flu/covid-free.
It’s where “fewer than 6% of the people” are jabbed, AP reported.
In its weekly reports, the WHO calls Africa “one of the least (flu/covid) affected regions in the world.”
What AP News should have explained, it suppressed.
Widespread use of ivermectin in many African countries prevented flu/covid outbreaks — and cured the viral illness safely, effectively, quickly and cheaply when they occurred.
Upon admission to a once-trusted hospital, American patients with COVID-19 become virtual prisoners, subjected to a rigid treatment protocol with roots in Ezekiel Emanuel’s “Complete Lives System” for rationing medical care in those over age 50. They have a shockingly high mortality rate. How and why is this happening, and what can be done about it?
As exposed in audio recordings, hospital executives in Arizona admitted meeting several times a week to lower standards of care, with coordinated restrictions on visitation rights. Most COVID-19 patients’ families are deliberately kept in the dark about what is really being done to their loved ones.
The combination that enables this tragic and avoidable loss of hundreds of thousands of lives includes (1) The CARES Act, which provides hospitals with bonus incentive payments for all things related to COVID-19 (testing, diagnosing, admitting to hospital, use of remdesivir and ventilators, reporting COVID-19 deaths, and vaccinations) and (2) waivers of customary and long-standing patient rights by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
In 2020, the Texas Hospital Association submitted requests for waivers to CMS. According to Texas attorney Jerri Ward, “CMS has granted ‘waivers’ of federal law regarding patient rights. Specifically, CMS purports to allow hospitals to violate the rights of patients or their surrogates with regard to medical record access, to have patient visitation, and to be free from seclusion.” She notes that “rights do not come from the hospital or CMS and cannot be waived, as that is the antithesis of a ‘right.’ The purported waivers are meant to isolate and gain total control over the patient and to deny patient and patient’s decision-maker the ability to exercise informed consent.”
Creating a “National Pandemic Emergency” provided justification for such sweeping actions that override individual physician medical decision-making and patients’ rights. The CARES Act provides incentives for hospitals to use treatments dictated solely by the federal government under the auspices of the NIH. These “bounties” must paid back if not “earned” by making the COVID-19 diagnosis and following the COVID-19 protocol.
The hospital payments include:
A “free” required PCR test in the Emergency Room or upon admission for every patient, with government-paid fee to hospital.
Added bonus payment for each positive COVID-19 diagnosis.
Another bonus for a COVID-19 admission to the hospital.
A 20 percent “boost” bonus payment from Medicare on the entire hospital bill for use of remdesivir instead of medicines such as Ivermectin.
Another and larger bonus payment to the hospital if a COVID-19 patient is mechanically ventilated.
More money to the hospital if cause of death is listed as COVID-19, even if patient did not die directly of COVID-19.
A COVID-19 diagnosis also provides extra payments to coroners.
CMS implemented “value-based” payment programs that track data such as how many workers at a healthcare facility receive a COVID-19 vaccine. Now we see why many hospitals implemented COVID-19 vaccine mandates. They are paid more.
Outside hospitals, physician MIPS quality metrics link doctors’ income to performance-based pay for treating patients with COVID-19 EUA drugs. Failure to report information to CMS can cost the physician 4% of reimbursement.
Because of obfuscation with medical coding and legal jargon, we cannot be certain of the actual amount each hospital receives per COVID-19 patient. But Attorney Thomas Renz and CMS whistleblowers have calculated a total payment of at least $100,000 per patient.
What does this mean for your health and safety as a patient in the hospital?
There are deaths from the government-directed COVID treatments. For remdesivir, studies show that 71–75 percent of patients suffer an adverse effect, and the drug often had to be stopped after five to ten days because of these effects, such as kidney and liver damage, and death. Remdesivir trials during the 2018 West African Ebola outbreak had to be discontinued because death rate exceeded 50%. Yet, in 2020, Anthony Fauci directed that remdesivir was to be the drug hospitals use to treat COVID-19, even when the COVID clinical trials of remdesivir showed similar adverse effects.
In ventilated patients, the death toll is staggering. A National Library of Medicine January 2021 report of 69 studies involving more than 57,000 patients concluded that fatality rates were 45 percent in COVID-19 patients receiving invasive mechanical ventilation, increasing to 84 percent in older patients. Renz announced at a Truth for Health Foundation Press Conference that CMS data showed that in Texas hospitals, 84.9% percent of all patients died after more than 96 hours on a ventilator.
Then there are deaths from restrictions on effective treatments for hospitalized patients. Renz and a team of data analysts have estimated that more than 800,000 deaths in America’s hospitals, in COVID-19 and other patients, have been caused by approaches restricting fluids, nutrition, antibiotics, effective antivirals, anti-inflammatories, and therapeutic doses of anti-coagulants.
We now see government-dictated medical care at its worst in our history since the federal government mandated these ineffective and dangerous treatments for COVID-19, and then created financial incentives for hospitals and doctors to use only those “approved” (and paid for) approaches.
Our formerly trusted medical community of hospitals and hospital-employed medical staff have effectively become “bounty hunters” for your life. Patients need to now take unprecedented steps to avoid going into the hospital for COVID-19.
WHAT do you do with people who refuse to do what they’re told by our great overlords in government?
Why, you lock them up, of course.
If the latest opinion polls are to be believed, 58 per cent of Brits would support an Austria-style lockdown of the unvaccinated, rising to 63 per cent among Conservatives and 72 per cent for pensioners. Note, please, that only children of 12 and under are exempt from the lockdown in Austria. One Austrian official expressed doubts that such a lockdown could be enforced since it applies to only part of the population. Don’t worry about that, the interior minister said, the police will be able to carry out thorough checks. So it’s a return to ‘papers please’ in Austria for a minority. This is a disgraceful turn of events in Europe.
Forcing this kind of medical apartheid on a section of your population who will not play ball would have been unthinkable in Britain just a few years ago. Today various media outlets and of course the polling companies are falling over themselves trying to commission polls that say yes, it’s perfectly normal to demand that your neighbour be put under house arrest. Well, I’ve got news for you control freaks: it’s not!
It was bad enough when the government and members of the public wanted to deprive us of breathing fresh air by forcing us all to wear useless face masks, but the idea that it is morally right to demand your neighbours stay at home because they will not sacrifice their bodily integrity and consent to a vaccine that they have refused in good conscience is outrageous.
The selfishness of these people, people who would like to deprive their neighbours of their liberty, should not at this stage surprise us. The hallmark of the entire lockdown hysteria and fear porn has been selfishness dressed up as moral superiority.
It is also notable that 72 per cent of pensioners would either strongly support or somewhat support locking down their unvaccinated kids and grandchildren. Given how much teenagers have already sacrificed in this Covid mania, it once again is a very sad reflection on the older generation that they seek to jail their own grandchildren who have not consented to a vaccine that’s been around for about two minutes.
We have discussed whether or not the lockdown was a lockdown to save the baby boomers before and I received some pushback from those of the generation who pointed out that they did not support the lockdown. However it is also true that many got in touch with me privately to say that sadly they were indeed a minority and that there was overwhelming support amongst their boomer friends for a national lockdown.
The question is, what is the aim of this sort of medical apartheid? It surely cannot be to save the vaccinated as it would be ludicrous to lockdown the unvaccinated to protect those who have already been vaccinated against the illness they sought a vaccine for. We are on very shaky ground if the aim is to protect the unvaccinated from themselves. We don’t ban the obese from McDonald’s or alcoholics from pubs. It would seem ridiculous to ban those who refuse the vaccine from going about their daily lives. It is also morally indefensible to ban people from going about their daily lives in case they get ill. I didn’t think ‘Our NHS’ discriminated like that.
The only other argument is that it will somehow protect the health system as it’s more likely that the unvaccinated will end up in hospital. In fact frequently the vaccinated do end up in hospital, as for once the ‘the science’ is pretty clear (and acknowledged even by the PM) that two doses of the vaccine do not stop one contracting the virus, nor do they stop person-to-person transmission, nor do they stop hospitalisation, while the jury is out on whether they mitigate the severity of the disease.
All in all, this is a very dark turn in our current Covid regime although it is unsurprising that yet again it is Austria and, it seems likely, Germany who are the first to introduce a medical apartheid.
Although I think it is unlikely that the Conservatives would introduce this kind of discriminatory lockdown and abuse of people’s bodily integrity and medical privacy, we must yet again not give in when it comes to these totalitarian measures being thought about or implemented by our government.
Even if such a draconian move is not made by Boris Johnson, it is unfortunate that the whole idea of medical apartheid can even be thought about in Britain. It causes serious damage to the social fabric in terms of separating those who have been compliant with the government and the medical establishment from those who wish to take a more prudent approach.
What I will not do is engage in a sort of apartheid system of my own or hold any ill will for those who have in their good conscience decided to be vaccinated.
I respect your decision and all we ask for is an equal amount of respect when it comes to our decision as to what we should or should not subject our bodies to.
The basic principles of civil liberties and medical ethics are well established. We will have to fight to conserve these principles that make up a civilised society and liberal democracy.
Radio New Zealand has recently criticized a Facebook live conversation between former National MP Matt King and epidemiologist Dr Simon Thornley. While people should undertake their own research, we provide some comments related to the media’s critique. The evidence related to covid-19 policy continues to change and be updated.
In the interview, Professor Rod Jackson made several claims, decrying Thornley personally during the interview. Let’s examine them in turn.
“There is no trial evidence that ivermectin [an anti-parasitic drug used as early treatment for covid-19 in some parts of the world] works in people with Covid – it doesn’t exist.”
Trials do exist. In fact a meta-analysis or summary study of six such trials exist. The pooled effect of these trials is a 79% decline in all-cause mortality (95% confidence interval: 89% to 58%). These trials are from Iraq, Iran, Bangladesh, Egypt, Turkey and India, places less reticent about its use. But they are trials, and the reduction in all-cause mortality is stark, an endpoint which is generally considered clinically important and free of error and bias. Another trial points to effective treatment, such as from vitamin D supplementation, which reduced intensive care admissions to 1/50 (2%) in the treated from 13/26 (50%) in the untreated in Spanish covid-19 patients.
We’re not advocating ivermectin at all. But we are prepared to look at the evidence. The fact that Jackson didn’t know there were trials invalidates his point.
“Professor Jackson also said claiming Covid-19 was no worse than the flu was nonsense”.
In the interview, Thornley claimed the infection fatality rate of covid-19 was as bad as a ‘severe flu’. A summary study of many countries indicates that the average global infection fatality rate of covid-19 is 0.15% or 1/667 people.
The fatality rate for H1N1 influenza is variable, but this figure from covid-19 is well within the range of estimates presented from a similar summary study.
The comparison between covid-19 and flu is therefore fair and accurate. Jackson’s claim is misinformation.
We should note that many fatality studies take the definition of a covid-19 death at face value but it does not mean the individual died exclusively from the virus. This was exemplified by the counting a recent covid-19 death in a man who was actually shot and killed, yet tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 during the autopsy. This was defended by the Ministry of Health, as it conformed with World Health Organization policy.
We are able to test the accuracy of Jackson’s claimed fatality risk. In May 2020, Jackson admonished Sweden for its lax approach. He said the fatality rate of covid-19 was 1/100 people infected, so predicted 56,000 deaths from covid-19 in the country, assuming 60% of the population would be infected. To date, there have been about 15,000 covid-19 deaths, with an age distribution similar to that of background deaths (figure). In fact, by all accounts, Sweden has fared through the epidemic particularly well compared to other European countries.
Figure. Deaths with covid-19 in Sweden, by age at November 3, 2021. Source: statistica.com
“This is a severe disease and we have a evidence-based treatment [the vaccine] where there is definitive evidence that it reduces the risk of severe disease and death by 95 percent, in that order.”
This is an extraordinary claim for several reasons. First, the original Pfizer trial reported about the same number of overall deaths in the treated and the untreated groups (14 in the treated and 13 in the untreated). In the six-month trial results, only three covid-19 deaths occurred, one in the treated and two in the untreated group. This is not consistent with Jackson’s assertion of a 95% reduction in risk of severe disease and death.
Given the numbers of deaths in the original trial, it is possible to work out whether the trial would have picked up a 95% reduction as Jackson claims. The trial would have been expected to have only one death in the treated group, and would have detected a difference more than expected by chance with 96% certainty.
There is observational evidence from Sweden of reduced covid-19 hospitalisations and deaths (not from all-causes), however, the vaccine effect diminished to zero for all three outcomes eight months after the date that the vaccine was administered.
To compound the confusion about the effect of the vaccine, the original Pfizer trial now is marred by whistle-blowers who have given the British Medical Journal evidence of fraud occurring during its conduct. Sixteen Swedish doctors have now called for the injection to be suspended as a result of these revelations.
Both Jackson and RNZ use extensive use of ad hominem attacks, which are considered an invalid, and lowest, form of argument.
Examples include:
“anti-vax”
“discredited academic”
“And we have someone who is questioning that evidence, who doesn’t know what they’re talking about, talking to an epidemiologist who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“outlier in his field”.
The purveyors and writers of such ‘argument’ appear to have no embarrassment at the anti-intellectualism and inhumanity of their conduct.
We’ll stick to the contest of ideas by again considering Jackson’s accuracy. Back in August 2020, Jackson and his colleagues claimed that elimination was still the best strategy for New Zealand to tackle covid-19. That article has not dated well, yet the personalised tirade and arguments are familiar.
“He [Thornley] is the only dissenter in the epidemiological community,”
“It’s not like this is a discussion like a boxing match with two equal partners. What you’ve got is every experienced epidemiologist in the country supporting the Government’s elimination approach.”
“We are all advising the Government, and we speak with one voice. And you have got a junior epidemiologist who is presenting a different case.”
Jackson has made increasingly inaccurate claims during the pandemic, claiming, unchallenged that one in five infected people will be hospitalised after infection with covid-19. No media have ever fact checked this.
New Zealand’s own government data shows Jackson overestimated by at least a factor of ten, since the proportion of cases (rather than infections) hospitalised is 2% (table).
Table. Counts of cases of covid-19 in New Zealand (16 November 2021).
Count
%
Self-isolation
2058
56%
Isolation Complete
969
26%
Managed Isolation
396
11%
Hospital
73
2%
Other
198
5%
As sailing great Russell Coutts has recently pointed out, it is questionable how “media entities can maintain objectivity when they have accepted a government grant that is conditional on them promoting certain government policies”.
It is prudent to check all sources of information, not only those who dare to question the what is coming from the Beehive.
Like many other pandemic measures, the extended closures of university campuses has been a massive social and public health experiment.
The results in the report published this week in Collateral Global this week on the impact of pandemic restrictions on university students’ mental health – sadly – should not be too surprising. Young people were not a priority during the pandemic. It is quite telling that most countries – and most people – did not change strategies and attitudes after the initial uncertainty, as we gained more evidence about how minuscule young people’s risk is from Covid. We continued imposing population-wide restrictions, including the closures of schools and university campuses, and moving to online-only teaching, even when it became clear that these restrictions would not benefit young people. They did not need protection from Covid as much as they needed protection from the effects of policy responses on their mental health and their psycho-physical development more generally. This report emphasises once more how we failed to protect young people’s well-being from the inevitable harms of prolonged restrictions.
Public health policies are justified to the extent that they produce significant enough collective benefits without disproportionately burdening certain groups. Admittedly, in situations of uncertainty, a rigorous cost-benefit analysis is not always possible. And yet, the stricter the restrictions, the stronger the duty to rigorously gather real-time evidence on what costs they impose on different groups. Like many other pandemic measures, the extended closures of university campuses have been a massive social and public health experiment. But even experiments require constant interrogation as to whether they are working, and a measure of their success must be the continuous evaluation of whether they are creating collateral damage. It seems we didn’t want to see or give due consideration to such damage.
The prolonged closure of university campuses and the decision to move online all the teaching, socializing, and formal and informal interactions that play a central role in young people’s psycho-physical development resulted in enormous costs that we could not see on our computer screens. With the report this week, the evidence of the significant damage we caused to them becomes more apparent – for example, with the studies showing one in three students reporting symptoms of anxiety and depression.
Those of us working in academic institutions (or better, working on that non-existent space that is Zoom) could not see what was happening beyond those discrete windows through which we were delivering classes or supervising students from our homes. When the world exists only to the extent that it appears on a computer screen, it is easy to forget that students’ existence and experiences do not end the moment they disappear from view. When Zoom meetings and classes are over and the computer shuts down, the young people remain out of sight. Many were sitting alone in their rooms, deprived of their lives as students and, indeed, as whole persons, at a developmental stage when experiences and social interactions play a critical role in helping them understand themselves and the world around them. Although we could not see that, it should not have been difficult to imagine the damage already when the cameras turned off.
There may be limited utility at this point in blaming those responsible for the public health decisions that completely disregarded this potential (and foreseeable) damage to students. It also might be pointless to assign culpability to the academics who kept (and continue to keep) supporting tight restrictions and advocating for online teaching from the comfort of their homes while relegating students to social isolation. But what is undoubtedly useful, in light of this week’s report, is to look ahead as winter in the Northern Hemisphere approaches and more people begin putting restrictions back on the table.
Before making any decisions, we must acknowledge that we don’t need to run social and public health experiments on students any more. We have data now about the harm we have caused to them. And we now know the threat that closing campuses and moving the whole student experience online can pose.
Any decision to close university campuses at this point can no longer be construed as an innocent mistake – if, indeed, it ever was.
Dr. Alberto Giubilini is a Senior Research Fellow in Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford.
Collateral Global is a U.K.-based charity researching the collateral impacts of the mandated non-pharmaceutical interventions.
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