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The Origin of the Species – and of our Viral Issue!

The Fat Emperor | March 2, 2021

Pure gold is all I can say for Episode 110 – that’s what this conversation is!

The New York Times, WSJ and all of the media have mused about the origins of this virus – well here we explain the actual science and data, and what IT actually tells us 🙂

Jump straight into the origins discussion here: https://youtu.be/jPNu8sOU5RM?t=591

NOTE: My extensive research and interviewing/video/sound editing and much more does require support – please consider helping if you can with monthly donation or one-off payment – simply use the following link: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=69ZSTYXBMCN3W

… or join up at my Patreon Link: https://www.patreon.com/IvorCummins

July 19, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

A Brighter Future

Brighter Future – Oil on Linen – 40×72 inches.
A child assists her father in blocking the New Normal. If left unobstructed the New Normal would shut out their pathway to a brighter future.
By Jordan Henderson | OffGuardian | July 18, 2021

The worldwide push towards authoritarianism under the pretext of a faux pandemic is coercing nearly every aspect of society into its respective pen, which means that nearly everyone is in a position to become a wrench in the gears.

This is what inspired me to create this painting; it celebrates the revolutionary spirit being demonstrated by all manner of people, from grandmothers refusing to shop at mask enforcing stores, to parents exploring alternative ways to educate their children rather than letting them be muzzled and injected by the state.

To represent the New Normal crowd on the right and left of the painting, I elaborated on an idea that I established in an earlier painting Safe and Sanitized with skulls gagged by facemasks and held by their handcuffed hands (lockdowns), plus vaccine syringes stuck half haphazardly into them.

The building towering over the crowd on the left is Building 21, one of the CDC’s most iconic structures in their headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.

On the right is the United States Capitol Building, with the bronze Statue of Freedom that crowns the Capitol dome having been replaced in my painting by a statue of the Caduceus (serpents twined around a winged rod ). The Caduceus is an ancient symbol with various interpretations including commerce, though used in the USA as a symbol of medicine. Here it represents freedom displaced for “medicine” with the added irony that “medicine” is really just business and is actually being represented by a commerce symbol.

Also on the right is the ancient symbol of medicine still widely used, The Rod of Asclepius (a single serpent twined around a staff ). Here the serpent rises above its “patients” which it terrorizes, and the knob on the top of the rod is a human skull impaled on a large vaccine syringe. This rendition of The Rod of Asclepius more accurately captures the spirit of modern medicine.

The landscape that can be seen through the center is set both in autumn and in the evening to emphasize that it is the past, which is why our protagonists cannot go back that way.

They must push back against the New Normal, thereby maintaining open a doorway to a brighter future.

Jordan Henderson lives in the Northwest of the United States. He works in oil paints, and charcoals. A portfolio of his works can be viewed at either of his websites: Original Paintings – Fine Art Prints.

July 18, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

Infections in the Vaccinated Overtake Those in the Unvaccinated For the First Time – But the Graph is Removed From the ZOE App Report

By Will Jones • Lockdown Sceptics • July 17, 2021

Health Secretary Sajid Javid has tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, despite being vaccinated – and he is far from alone. The latest ZOE data shows that, as of July 12th, infections in the vaccinated (with at least one dose) in the U.K. now outnumber those in the unvaccinated for the first time, as the former continue to surge while the latter plummet (see above). (Note that 68% of the population has had at least one vaccine dose, so there are still at this stage disproportionately more new infections in the unvaccinated, though on current trends that may soon change.)

At what point will the Government accept that these vaccines have limited efficacy in preventing infection and transmission, and thus the whole rationale of being vaccinated to protect others – vaccine passports, compulsory vaccination, and so on – is suspect?

The above graph was in yesterday’s report, so I downloaded today’s report (you can get it by signing up to the app and reporting your symptoms) to get the new update. I was dismayed to find the graph was gone. At the bottom, a note explains:

Removed incidence graph by vaccination status from the report as there are very few unvaccinated users in the infection survey, the Confidence Intervals are very wide and the trend for unvaccinated people is no longer representative.

Which I would say is very convenient, just as infections in the vaccinated became the majority. Perhaps ZOE should try to recruit some more unvaccinated people for its survey, so it can continue to report on this as well as have a control group for its vaccine data? That would seem the scientific thing to do, rather than just stop reporting it because it is suddenly “no longer representative”.

It’s doubly odd because Tim Spector, lead scientist on the ZOE app, made the decline among the unvaccinated a feature of his video this week. So the realisation that the trend is “no longer representative” appears to have been rather sudden, even invalidating the contents of a ZOE ‘data release‘ two days earlier.

It seems we will never know how the story ends, which is a shame and a missed opportunity for ZOE.

ZOE data continues to suggest the current Covid surge is peaking and possibly even beginning to decline in the U.K., at least outside England (see above). Yet this is at odds with the daily Covid reports from the Government, which show continued growth.

UK positive tests by date reported (HMG)

Why the discrepancy? Is it because the Government figures include all the lateral flow tests that schoolchildren are taking as they isolate? 839,100 children – 11.2% of the total pupil population, more than one in 10 – were absent from state schools for Covid-related reasons on July 8th. All of them will have been tested and this will be picking up asymptomatic or mild infections that would usually not be noticed. ZOE data is symptom based, with a confirmatory PCR test, so would not be affected by surges in lateral flow testing among schoolchildren picking up asymptomatic infections.

Whatever the explanation, one to watch.

July 18, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Tess Lawrie explains why the vaccine rollout must be halted

By Neville Hodgkinson | The Conservative Woman | July 17, 2021

WHILE some well-intentioned (but ill-informed) MPs are doing their utmost to counter Covid ‘vaccine hesitancy’ in their constituencies, the remarkable Dr Tess Lawrie is continuing to try to persuade medical colleagues to pause the rollout.

She sets out her case simply and powerfully in this interview with Mark Dolan of talkRADIO, aired on Wednesday. Well worth watching, and it could be sent to friends and relatives who are wondering who to believe on the issue.

Dolan, who has had both doses of the vaccine himself, puts questions reflecting the perspective held by most people, that the vaccine is safe and effective, as repeatedly advertised by the NHS.

Lawrie, who founded the Evidence-Based Medicine Consultancy Ltd, a specialist firmcommitted to improving the quality of healthcare through rigorous research, shows a cool authority in her replies.

‘I’ve looked at the data and I think there is reason to pause,’ she says. By the end of June, 300,000 people had reported adverse events through the UK regulator’s Yellow Card system after taking the vaccine, and this is not normal.

‘If you take a vaccine like tetanus, around since 1968, there are 36 deaths attributed to it on the World Health Organisation (WHO) database, whereas six to seven thousand deaths have been reported from Covid vaccine in just a few months.

‘In the UK, there are 1,440 deaths. So this is unprecedented in the history of any medicine, to have so many deaths reported in such a short time, and indeed so many reports in such a short time.’

Pressed by Nolan on whether this meant the need for a pause, even though the reports do not prove cause and effect, she says: ‘I tend to adopt the precautionary principle. I think if there’s any cause for concern, especially in view of these alarming numbers of reports, we need to get more information, and follow up each and every report to find out a bit more about its association – indeed, is it a cause for concern.

‘I feel there is a lack of transparency from the regulatory bodies. In their report, they highlight a very rare brain clot, cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, and that there have been 30 deaths associated with this and a couple of hundred cases.

‘But when you look at the Yellow Card data, you find there have been 2,208 strokes reported – a brain bleed – and of those, 154 people died. These data are far more worrying to me than just the cerebral venous sinus thrombosis data.

‘And when you look at all sorts of bleed, and the causes of death overall, you see that many are associated with bleeding and clotting. We’re seeing brain clots and heart clots and lung clots. The commonest causes of death are brain clots – strokes – and then pulmonary embolism, which is a lung clot, and also heart clots – heart attacks.

‘I would like to know more. I personally think these should be investigated.’

Dolan: Wouldn’t pausing the vaccine rollout put us back into the mess of the pandemic?

‘Not really, because we now know there are many safe, effective treatments for Covid. It is not an untreatable condition. There’s a very safe medicine called ivermectin, very low-cost, and around for 40 years, registered on the WHO’s database since 1992. And they’ve only registered 20 deaths since 1992. It’s been given billions of times, used against tropical parasites and available over-the-counter in many countries.’

Dolan: Should the vaccine be given to children over 12?

‘It’s unnecessary and dangerous. A child has more chance of dying from a vaccination – looking at these figures – than they do from Covid.’

Dolan: Is the relatively small risk from the vaccine better than getting Covid? It’s certainly a nasty virus.

‘I think we all have a robust immune system, if you’re not vulnerable and not very elderly. Our immune systems are geared up to deal with viruses, bacteria and others. A lot of the side-effects we see from Covid – the long Covid and so on – can be prevented by early treatment.

‘The doctors using ivermectin say you don’t get long Covid if you treat with it in the early stages. If you’ve got a treatment for Covid, you don’t have to be afraid of Covid.’

Dolan: What’s your professional verdict on 16 months of rolling out lockdowns in the UK and across the world?

‘I haven’t seen any good evidence that lockdowns or masks work. More concerning, we’ve known that ivermectin works for some time, and doctors have been trying to communicate this message to the authorities, who have been very single-minded in their strategy and approach. If ivermectin had been employed last year, when the UK authorities were notified, there would have been no lockdown in my opinion.’

Dolan: Why do you think your message about applications such as ivermectin were ignored?

‘I think there are a lot of forces at play that we don’t fully understand, particularly with regard to the huge . . . Covid is probably a £100billion-a-year industry, and ivermectin and other generic medicines are very cheap.’

Lawrie adds: ‘I think it’s time everybody took more responsibility for their health. Get themselves in better shape, be careful of what they eat – not just the quantity and the calories, but the nutritional value; exercise, and sunlight, and including taking responsibility for getting the information. Anybody can go to the Yellow Card system and have a look at the data. It’s not that easy on the government system, but there is a group called UK Column with a website that’s really easy to navigate. They update the data every week. You can type in a problem, and see what other people are reporting too.

‘I would encourage everybody, if you have the vaccine today and tomorrow you have some kind of problem, to report it – it may be associated with the vaccine, and there might be many other people who are suffering a similar thing. It’s only by highlighting these things that we will be able to ask the government to investigate.’

July 18, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

What SAGE gets wrong: The evidence that almost everyone is exposed during a surge and most are immune

By Will Jones • Lockdown Sceptics • July 17, 2021

During a Covid surge, what proportion of the population is exposed to an infective dose of the virus, which they either fight off with no or minimal symptoms or are infected by? This is one of the most important questions scientists need to answer.

It’s closely related to the question of whether lockdowns work. If lockdowns work then, as per SAGE and Imperial orthodoxy, the restrictions successfully prevent the virus from reaching most people, who remain unexposed and susceptible – and hence in need of vaccination to protect them when the protective restrictions are lifted. If lockdowns don’t work, however, then they don’t prevent the virus spreading, and thus the majority of people will be exposed to it as it spreads around unimpeded by ineffectual restrictions.

Another related question is: What proportion of exposed people are infected? Using ONS data we can estimate that around 10-15% of the country tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 over the autumn and winter. How many were exposed to the virus to produce this number of infections? Was it, say, 10-20%, with half to all of them catching the virus? Or was it more like 80-90%, with around 10% being infected? It’s a question that makes all the difference in our understanding of the virus and how to respond to it.

If almost all are exposed during a surge, and relatively few of them are infected, then a number of things follow. First, most people have enough immunity to fight off the virus when exposed to it, and only a small minority become infected. Second, the surge ends when enough of that small minority who are particularly susceptible to this virus or variant acquire immunity through infection, i.e., when herd immunity is reached. Third, there won’t be another surge or wave until there is a new virus or variant which evades enough of the existing population immunity to require herd immunity to be topped up via a further spread of infections.

If, on the other hand, very few are exposed during a surge, and most of them are infected, none of these things is true. It means: Most people have little immunity and are highly susceptible. A surge which infects 10-20% of the population has exposed not much more than that. The surge does not end because of herd immunity but because of restrictions. And there will be another surge as soon as restrictions are eased or behaviour changes and the unexposed begin to be exposed again. SAGE orthodoxy, in other words.

The evidence, however, is strongly supportive of the first position – ubiquitous exposure – not the second, limited exposure.

Consider the secondary attack rate (SAR, the proportion of contacts an infected person infects). Data from Public Health England consistently shows this figure sits around 10-15%, meaning around 85-90% of the contacts of infected people do not become infected. It rises during a surge, which is typically due to the higher SAR of a novel variant, and then falls after the surge, as the new variant’s SAR also falls.

Such data is much more consistent with ubiquitous exposure than with limited exposure, as it shows that only a minority of those exposed to an infected person are themselves infected (10-15%), meaning ubiquitous exposure with a minority infected is the much more plausible scenario. This meshes with the data on high levels of prior immunity via T cells and other mechanisms.

Another key data point is the fact that surges consistently peak abruptly and begin to fall, independently of the imposition of restrictions. For instance, as Professor Simon Wood has shown, all three lockdowns in England were imposed after infections had peaked and begun to decline. Similarly, multiple peer-reviewed studies have shown no relationship between the imposition of restrictions and Covid infections or deaths across different countries and U.S. states.

The pattern of abrupt peaks and falls in incidence, independent of restrictions, is strongly indicative of hitting a herd immunity threshold (or overshooting it), as the virus or variant runs out of susceptible people to infect and exhausts itself.

Similarly, when restrictions are lifted there is typically no immediate surge, as there wasn’t in Europe last summer and in numerous U.S. states such as Texas and Mississippi in spring 2021. Surges only tend to occur when a new variant arrives, which again suggests it is not restrictions that are preventing spread to a still highly susceptible population but herd immunity that is preventing it, at least until a new virus or variant arrives to temporarily disturb it.

How, though, does the virus circumvent restrictions to achieve ubiquitous exposure of the population, and apparently without being noticeably even slowed down by the restrictions or voluntary distancing behaviour?

The answer, as I have suggested previously, likely lies in the airborne transmission of the virus. It is likely that the virus primarily spreads through building up to infective levels in the air, and that people are infected by breathing it in (a form of transmission which face masks do little or nothing to prevent). During a surge the virus becomes increasingly ubiquitous in the air at higher concentrations, accelerating exposure and infections until the herd immunity threshold is hit, at which point it abruptly enters decline. This explains why even though it is at its highest point of prevalence and was spreading at its fastest rate just a few days before, it suddenly stops and enters sustained decline. It is hard to see how any explanation other than herd immunity can explain this consistently abrupt change in the rate of virus transmission, particularly as there is no evidence of a similarly abrupt change in public behaviour in the mobility data.

Is there any concrete evidence that SARS-CoV-2 or other airborne viruses like influenza are ubiquitous in the air? Yes, there is. As HART notes in its bulletin this week:

For novel influenza viruses, between 7% and 8% are susceptible and develop antibodies in the first winter, much as we saw with SARS-CoV-2… If a certain proportion of the population are susceptible to infection in any one season, those individuals will end up infected sooner or later, regardless of which day they are exposed.

Studies have demonstrated that influenza is transmitted by aerosol particles and that such particles are prolific, indeed ubiquitous, in all indoor settings during the winter season. What stops people contracting the virus is their level of susceptibility, not their level of exposure.

HART refers to a study on influenza from 2014, which argues:

There are some amounts of the virus in the air constantly. These amounts are generally not enough to cause disease in people, due to infection prevention by healthy immune systems. However, at a higher concentration of the airborne virus, the risk of human infection increases dramatically. Early detection of the threshold virus concentration is essential for prevention of the spread of influenza infection.

The idea of a “threshold virus concentration” at which an outbreak is triggered (rather than just low level transmission) may be important for understanding how airborne viruses spread, and how they can become ubiquitous during a surge. Seasonal factors such as temperature, humidity, UV radiation, human behaviour (e.g. gathering indoors with little ventilation), and cycles in the human immune system may play a role in how easily this threshold concentration is reached.

A study in JAMA tested the air in hospitals for SARS-CoV-2 and found plenty, particularly in the public areas:

Overall, 14 of 42 samples (33.3%) in public areas were positive, with 9 of 16 (56.3%) in hallways, 2 of 18 (11.1%) in other indoor areas, and 3 of 8 (37.5%) in outdoor public areas (P = .01).

There isn’t yet much evidence from other settings, though a study, COVAIR by Imperial College, is underway and the results will be of great interest when they eventually appear.

To my mind, this is the explanation that (at least for now) explains all the known facts better than others – the low secondary attack rate, the ineffectiveness of lockdowns, the outbreaks that explode then suddenly end, the absence of resurgence when restrictions are lifted, the repeated hitting of herd immunity, and so on. At the heart of it is the idea of ubiquitous exposure – that almost everyone, not just a small percentage, are exposed each time the virus passes through, and the vast majority are already immune.

July 17, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Mental ‘virus’ or real, governments can’t just censor and imprison their way out of immunity debt

By Helen Buyniski | RT | July 16, 2021

Covid-fearing parents may think they’re doing their kids a favor by keeping them inside, masked and encased in a bubble of hand sanitizer. But as humans we need pathogens to function – literally and metaphorically.

Evolution, it turns out, isn’t stupid. There’s a reason our guts are swarming with bacteria, and while we’ve been taught to recoil at the very concept (especially after a year and a half of plague-talk in which bacteria are regularly brutally assaulted with jets of hand sanitizer for nothing more than existing), those microscopic creatures actually digest our food for us. If it weren’t for them, we’d starve.

The bacterial colonies that call us home also need to interact with one another, which means once in a while touching a doorknob (or even a subway pole) and not immediately dousing your microscopic hitchhikers in caustic death-juice; sneezing on public transit without having to worry you’ll be lynched; and letting your kid play in the mud with other kids. Their lives could depend on it, as several countries previously praised for their ability to control their citizens are being reminded.

Under Covid-19’s new abnormal, we think nothing of going weeks without seeing friends, months without seeing family, long periods without so much as touching another person, and are told that this is not only healthy – if you don’t do it, you could die! So we learn to run across the street when we spot an old friend coming in for a hug, and to almost preemptively say “no” when our kids ask if they can for once play with their friends in real life instead of through an endless series of screens.

Turns out this is a great way to guarantee future epidemics. New Zealand, a global media darling for its 26 (reported) Covid deaths, is experiencing a major spike in a normally non-threatening childhood illness, since – while kids remain all but unaffected by Covid-19 – the same doesn’t hold true for other common respiratory diseases. Nearly 1,000 cases of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) have been diagnosed in just five weeks in the country, more than half of the number usually reported in an entire 29-week winter, according to the Guardian, which quoted public health experts placing the blame squarely on the “immunity debt” incurred from the country’s prolonged, stringent Covid lockdowns. In other words, “two weeks to flatten the curve” was one thing, but 18 months later, the curve is flattening us.

This problem wasn’t exactly unknown to medical science, and NZ’s willingness to go down this path rather than, say, encourage residents to come out of their homes and behave like normal humans when the worst danger of Covid-19 had passed, speaks to a pattern of martyrdom and virtue signaling that President Jacinda Ardern has capitalized on expertly. Her government postponed elections, forced new arrivals into “quarantine camps” for a period of not less than two weeks even with negative test results (positive results, or worse a refusal to be tested, could have you locked up even longer), and has all but smothered the independent press. The economy imploded, posting its largest quarterly decline in history, and housing costs remained unmanageable for many.

Yet she and her party got a historic mandate to rule (in October’s delayed election, with unprecedented numbers of mail-in ballots, after Facebook shut down one of the opposing parties’ pages right before Election Day, and other asterisks that went unmentioned by the press as they dined on her fiance’s cooking during the vote count). Turns out democracy is a risk factor for Covid-19, too. Who knew?

The phenomenon of “immunity debt” translates well to information, and Wellington isn’t the only government long overdue for a reckoning regarding the censorship it’s been forcing down its citizens’ throats, supposedly in the name of protecting them from infectious bad ideas. Kiwis were already resigned to being shut out of the global conversation after the Christchurch mosque shooting made it OK – nay, expected! – for an emergency to require termination of non-approved communications – and 10-year prison sentences for anyone who wouldn’t comply and delete the wrongthink. For a “democratic” country to enact such censorship would have elicited screams if it had come from Trump’s America, but Ardern was doing it in the name of Safety. With literally no way to test the success of such measures other than an absurd “X number of days without another mass shooting,” the silencing campaign was preemptively declared a success and governments around the world signed on, elevating censorship to the chief crime (and protest)-fighting method. Object? What are you, a terrorist?

Applying analogous measures while the world panicked over Covid-19 was a no-brainer, and in many countries it has been effectively – if not literally – forbidden to question the official story of the virus’ arrival and spread, even though the World Health Organization and its national counterparts were changing that “official story” on a monthly, if not weekly basis. Context-free videos of people dropping to the ground and convulsing in China, even without an implication those people even had the virus, put the fear into the rest of the world and, by the time American news networks were getting caught rerunning footage of packed Italian hospitals as “Covid-hit New York City,” even dissenting voices had largely shied away from questioning the “facts” the government was putting out. Only in cases where the government was not pushing total fear was it acceptable to mock the orders one was given, because not wanting us to live in fear could only mean they didn’t really care about us.

With Trump safely out of the White House, though, the entire American power structure has presented a united front pushing the same stultifying and borderline-nonsensical message of fear on offer from Ardern. The Biden administration is no longer even covering up unconstitutional behaviors like “flagging misinformation” for Facebook to delete, and even the White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki seems to have been forced into arguing with herself as social media muffles all opposing voices. Pacified by deliveries of occasional helicopter money whose value is steadily declining – a fact they might understand if they hadn’t declared math racist – Americans have proudly stepped up to act as the guards in the narrative managers’ mental prison. Far from demanding more transparency from their government, Americans are demanding less, while dog piling on dissenters – aware at some basic level they’re being lied to but unwilling to admit who’s doing the lying.

New Zealand’s censorship may be more photogenic – certainly Ardern is easier on the eyes than the ever-stumbling gaffe-mummified Biden – but both countries are headed straight for a wall built up by years of unpaid epistemological “immunity debt.” One cannot simply stuff “offensive” ideas or “misinformation” down the pipes eternally unless one wants to experience a killer mental toilet backup. The more reality has diverged with whatever is believed by these increasingly-unhinged closed societies, the more of a mess that backup will leave. Neither country can afford such a meltdown, and both would be wise to start allowing reality to filter back into their media before it’s too late. That means ending knee-jerk social media censorship (which has been shown to make users more gullible when it comes to fake news, anyway), rolling back the ever-expanding definition of “hate speech,” and in general behaving like adults.

Instead, Wellington is trying to make “hate speech” itself a crime punishable by three years in prison, and continues to push absurd poll results in which “75% of New Zealanders feel like the country is heading in the right direction, and for the most part, Covid-19 is not impacting their future.” Washington is trying to take the Second Amendment away from its citizens even while still choking on the First. Meanwhile, over in the UK, the Johnson government is warning of an influenza “epidemic” even as citizens remain under lockdown from the last Covid wave. It’s hard to guess which of these three policies will fail first, but whichever one it is, I wouldn’t want to be in charge of the cleanup job.

Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Telegram

July 17, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

Chicken Licken Finds Safety and Freedom in the Land of Covidia

By Rob Slane | The BlogMire | July 16, 2021

Once upon a time there was a little chick called Chicken Licken. One day as she was scratching about in the farmyard, she heard a message coming from the television in the farmhouse saying that everyone must stay home or else we would all die.

‘Oh no,’ cried Chicken Licken. ‘I must go into my coop and stay there.’

So off she went to stay in her coop for three weeks, which was how long the nice man on the telly reckoned it would take. On the way, she met Henny Penny.

‘Oh Henny Penny,’ cried Chicken Licken, ‘There’s a deadly virus about and if we don’t stay cooped up we’re all going to die.’

‘But why would those who are perfectly healthy need to do that?’ asked Henny Penny confused. ‘If we’re healthy, that means we haven’t got it. And if we haven’t got it, we can’t spread it.’

‘Henny Penny!’ replied Chicken Licken aghast. ‘The man on the telly said that healthy people can spread it to one another even if they haven’t got it. Stay Safe.’

‘Sounds like nonsense to me,’ said Henny Penny, ‘but I suppose they must know what they’re talking about.’

So Chicken Licken and Henny Penny hurried off to their coops. On the way they met Cocky Locky.

‘Oh Cocky Locky,’ cried Chicken Licken. ‘There’s a deadly virus about, and we need to go into Lockdown to protect vets from being overwhelmed.’

‘But we’ve never quarantined millions of the healthy before Xi Jinping did it in China,’ said Cocky Locky, ‘and there’s not a jot of scientific evidence that it will do anything to prevent deaths, although it will undoubtedly wreck our society, economy, and lead to a never-ending medical tyranny.’

‘Cocky Locky, I’m ashamed of you,’ sneered Chicken Licken. ‘You sound more like Tucker Carlson by the day. I think you need to stop watching right-wing talk shows and alternative media and instead get your news from established sources like the BBC and CNN. Follow the Science.’

So Chicken Licken, Henny Penny and Cocky Locky hurried off to their coops. On the way they met Ducky Lucky.

‘Oh Ducky Lucky,’ cried Chicken Licken, ‘There’s a deadly virus about and we all need to put pieces of cloth across our faces.’

‘But they told us we shouldn’t do that,’ replied Ducky Lucky. ‘And besides, what good is a piece of cloth with holes of an order of magnitude bigger than virus particles?’

‘Ducky Lucky,’ said Chicken Licken disapprovingly. ‘I’m shocked to hear you question the science. Wear Your Mask!’

‘Okay then,’ said Ducky Lucky in resignation as she strapped to her face a piece of old rag she found on the floor. ‘I suppose if the man on the telly says it will do us good, we’d better do it then.’

So Chicken Licken, Henny Penny, Cocky Locky and Ducky Lucky hurried off to their coops. On the way they met Drakey Lakey.

‘Oh Drakey Lakey,’ cried Chicken Licken. ‘There’s a deadly virus about and you need to take a PCR test.’

‘But I’m feeling fine,’ replied Drakey Lakey. ‘Why would I need to take a test for an illness I don’t have? And besides, the PCR test is not a clinical diagnostic tool and cannot tell whether you are infected or infectious.’

‘Drakey Lakey!’ said Chicken Licken frowning contemptuously. ‘I never dreamt you were a conspiracy fowl. Everything you say has been debunked by various factchecking websites and the mainstream media. Are you saying they’re all wrong? Get Your Test!’

‘Well okay, I don’t want to be seen as a crank,’ replied Drakey Lakey anxiously, shoving the test up his beak.

‘Aagghh!’ cried Drakey Lakey. ‘Even though I feel perfectly fine and healthy, the test tells me I have the deadly virus.’

‘You see,’ said Chicken Licken smugly. ‘I told you it was a conspiracy theory to doubt those who are trying to keep us safe. Now stop listening to Mike Yeadon, Sucharit Bhakdi and Peter McCullough and go and self-isolate.’

So Chicken Licken, Henny Penny, Cocky Locky, Ducky Lucky and Drakey Lakey hurried off to their coops. On the way they met Goosey Loosey.

‘Oh Goosey Loosey,’ cried Chicken Licken. ‘There’s a deadly virus about which is like the plague and it could kill us all.’

‘Hmm?’ replied Goosey Loosey quizzically. ‘Actually, according to John Ioannidis, the world’s most cited epidemiologist, the Infection Fatality Rate of this virus is between 0.15% – 0.23% — about the same as a bad flu season. What is more, it’s only really dangerous to the elderly and sick.’

‘Goosey Loosey! Are you saying the lives of the elderly are worth nothing?’ said Chicken Licken, sounding like Cathy Newman.

‘Well no, that wasn’t what I meant,’ replied Goosey Loosey looking somewhat shamed. ‘But if we know which people it effects, surely targeted protection towards them would make more sense than this scattergun approach.’

‘If you’re referring to the so-called Great Barrington Declaration,’ said Chicken Licken dismissively, ‘not only did Matt Hancock dismiss it out of hand, but you won’t find it coming up in the Google rankings – that’s how thoroughly discredited it is.’

‘Oh,’ replied Goosey Loosey taken aback. ‘Well, I suppose if Google, Facebook and other Big Tech companies have decided it’s not something we should see, it can’t have any credibility, can it?’

‘Indeed,’ said Chicken Licken. ‘Now come along and Don’t Kill Granny.’

So Chicken Licken, Henny Penny, Cocky Locky, Ducky Lucky, Drakey Lakey and Goosey Loosey hurried off to their coops. On the way they met Turkey Lurkey.

‘Oh Turkey Lurkey,’ cried Chicken Licken. ‘There’s a deadly virus about for which there’s no known treatments.’

‘I don’t think that’s the case,’ replied Turkey Lurkey. ‘A number of highly qualified physicians and scientists have put in place treatment protocols, some of which prevent up to 85% of deaths.’

‘Turkey Lurkey,’ sneered Chicken Licken. ‘You sound like a card-carrying Covidiot. Do you really think if such treatments existed, the Government and the scientists on the telly would ignore them?’

‘But they’ve been suppressed and censor…’

‘Stop it!’ screeched Chicken Licken. ‘Stop spreading disinformation. Now come along with us and Help Save Lives.’

So Chicken Licken, Henny Penny, Cocky Locky, Ducky Lucky, Drakey Lakey, Goosey Loosey and Turkey Lurkey hurried off to their coops, keeping two wings apart as they went. On the way they met Foxy Loxy.

‘Oh Foxy Loxy,’ cried Chicken Licken. ‘There’s a deadly virus about, it’s mutating into new variants, and we’re all going to die.’

‘If you come with me,’ said Foxy Loxy with a glint in his eye. ‘I’ll keep you safe and give you your freedom back.’

With sighs of relief, Chicken Licken, Henny Penny, Cocky Locky, Ducky Lucky, Drakey Lakey, Goosey Loosey and Turkey Lurkey followed Foxy Loxy who took them to a yard surrounded by black and yellow walls covered in slogans, such as ‘Watch Out for Invisible Dangers,’ whilst over the gates were the words, ‘Safety and Freedom for All’.

‘This, my friends, is where you can lay aside all your fears,’ explained Foxy Loxy calmly. ‘Once you enter here, I not only give you my personal guarantee for your safety, since it is guarded day and night by my own family, but we will give you all the freedom you like, within these four walls. As if that weren’t enough, we’re actually giving away two shots of our brand new Virus Vanquisher as part of the entry package. We’ve been working on it flat out for days, so you really are very lucky birds indeed. What are you waiting for?’

As they received their shots and filed into the yard, the gates clanged shut behind them. Looking up at the top of the walls, they were reassured to see the kindly eyes of the smiling Loxy family keeping watch over them, and glad to hear the ping of the app they’d been given telling them what to do and when to do it. But most of all they were comforted by the words on the inside of the gates:

‘All who attempt to leave do so at their own risk.
Stay Safe. Be Free. Never Leave.’

July 17, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

White House: If you’re banned for “misinformation” on one platform, you should be banned from ALL platforms

More calls for censorship from the Federal Government

By Tom Parker | Reclaim the Net | July 16, 2021

After making the shocking admission that the Federal Government is flagging content for Facebook to censor in yesterday’s White House Press Briefing, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki doubled down on the censorship rhetoric in today’s Press Briefing by calling for users to be banned from all platforms if they post “misinformation” and dismissing concerns that the Biden administration is acting as “Big Brother.”

During the Press Briefing, Psaki was asked to elaborate on the Biden administration’s flagging of misinformation to Facebook and to respond to a CNN report about the Biden administration’s “frustration with what they view as Facebook’s failures to uphold its own policies on vaccine misinformation.”

Psaki responded by framing the flagging issue as simply staying in “regular touch with social media platforms” to make them “aware of the latest narratives dangerous to public health” and engaging with them to “better understand the enforcement of social platform policy.”

She insisted that the social media platforms make the decisions when it comes to content moderation.

Of course, Psaki failed to mention that while Facebook is technically free to make its own content moderation decisions, this outreach about so-called dangerous public health narratives is coming from the same Federal Government that is placing huge amounts of pressure on Facebook’s business through an antitrust lawsuit.

When pressed on whether Facebook’s censorship has been as proactive as the White House would like, Psaki said there are “more steps everyone can take” and suggested that one step that “could be constructive for public health” is for social media platforms to coordinate and implement cross-platform censorship when users post alleged misinformation.

“You shouldn’t be banned from one platform and not others…for providing misinformation,” Psaki added.

After she was told that Facebook had already removed 18 million pieces of “COVID misinformation” and connected more than two billion people to “reliable information,” Psaki was asked whether the White House finds this “sufficient.”

“Clearly not,” Psaki responded.

She added: “They’re a private sector company, they’re gonna make decisions about additional steps they can take, it’s clear there are more that can be taken.”

Psaki also dismissed Fox News reporter Pete Doocy’s question about a lot of people on Facebook being concerned about “Big Brother watching you” now that they know the White House flags posts to Facebook to be censored.

“They’re more concerned about that than people dying across the country because of a pandemic where misinformation is traveling on social media platforms?” Psaki said. “That seems unlikely to me. If you have the data to back that up, I’m happy to discuss it.”

When Doocy raised the double standard with which The White House flags and censors so-called misinformation, Psaki again dismissed the concerns.

“There are videos of Dr. Fauci from 2020 before anybody had a vaccine and he’s out there saying there’s no reason to be walking around with a mask,” Doocy said. “So, is the administration going to contact Facebook and take that down?”

Psaki responded by arguing that Fauci said: “Science evolves, information evolves.”

But when she discussed other claims that she doesn’t approve of during the Press Briefing, such as claims that the vaccines cause infertility, Psaki framed it as “information that is irresponsibly traveling” and pushed social media platforms to let the White House know that they’re “taking steps to address it.”

The White House Press Secretary’s comments are yet another example of the increasing collaboration between public officials and private companies that are raising First Amendment violation flags.

Prior to Psaki’s recent statements, numerous reports have pointed to similar public-private sector censorship collaborations. These include a recent lawsuit showing that Democrats have worked with Twitter to flag tweets and get them taken down and a recent letter from Republicans accusing Fauci of advising Facebook to censor lab leak theories.

July 17, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Social media misinformation ‘killing people,’ Biden says, as White House doubles down on private censorship

RT | July 16, 2021

US President Joe Biden claimed social media platforms are “killing people” with misinformation about Covid-19, as his press secretary Jen Psaki made a case for deplatforming ‘offenders’ across the ostensibly private networks.

“They’re killing people,” Biden told reporters who asked him to send a message to platforms like Facebook. “The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. And they’re killing people,” he shouted, over the noise of a helicopter outside the White House on Friday.

On Thursday, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory against health “misinformation,” calling it “an imminent and insidious threat to our nation’s health.” He defined it as information that is “false, inaccurate, or misleading according to the best available evidence” and claimed 67% of unvaccinated Americans had heard at least one “myth” about Covid-19 vaccines.

At the same press conference, Psaki admitted the government was “flagging problematic posts for Facebook,” causing a stir among some civil libertarians.

Insisting that it was these ostensibly private companies doing the censorship and not the federal government – thereby trying to dodge the thorny issue of the First Amendment – Psaki then doubled down on Friday, saying that platforms should coordinate their rules and terms of service so that a person “shouldn’t be banned from one platform and not others… for providing misinformation out there.”

Her announcement raised more than a few eyebrows across the political spectrum. Journalist Glenn Greenwald, responsible for publishing NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013, called the entire line of White House thinking “pernicious.”

Psaki was “issuing decrees on who should and shouldn’t be allowed to use social media, then smugly scoffing at the notion that this should concern anyone on the ground that we’re going to die if we don’t submit to the White House’s orders,” Greenwald added, summarizing her exchange with Fox News’ Peter Doocy.

In a video making rounds on social media, Psaki tells Doocy that everyone, including journalists, ought to be more concerned about “the number of people who are dying around the country” due to misinformation rather than any Big Brother-like behavior by the government. When he argued the opposite, she replied, “That feels unlikely to me.”

“We don’t take anything down… Facebook makes decisions,” she insisted.

Asked politely by Philip Wegmann of RealClearPolitics to explain how often and how long the White House has been flagging “misinformation,” and if she could define it, Psaki responded with generalizations and claims that all this information is “publicly available” on social networks.

Psaki’s remarks amounted to an admission that the government is coordinating with private corporations to ban people from social media, podcast host Jack Murphy pointed out, calling it “literal fascism before our eyes.”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was conspicuously silent about this threat to freedom of expression, Greenwald noted, and was instead tweeting about transgender issues.

Meanwhile, a UK-based nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) claimed the White House relied on their research in identifying the people producing alleged “misinformation,” and promoted their CEO Imran Ahmed’s TV appearance in which he spoke about online “superspreaders.”

CCDH first drew attention in June 2020, when NBC – one of the big three broadcast TV networks in the US – cited their research in a story trying to pressure Google into demonetizing the blog ZeroHedge and the conservative-leaning online magazine Federalist.

July 17, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

UK ‘Freedom’ Means Continued Masking, Govt Tracking & Vax Passports

By Mark Harper | Principia Scientific | July 16, 2021

After weeks of denying that vaccine passports would be introduced into everyday domestic life in the UK, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced Monday that the government will ask nightclubs, pubs, and anywhere where people gather to adopt the measure ‘as a matter of social responsibility’.

The announcement was again completely vague, with little details on exactly what venues will be made to use the NHS COVID app system as “a means of entry,” or how it will be managed and enforced.

The only details that were given by ministers are that it will be ‘encouraged’ anywhere where people are “likely to be in close proximity to others outside their household.”

So everywhere then.

Far from being a “terminus date” for restrictions in England, “Freedom Day” will see the Government urge large indoor venues to tell customers to show Covid passes before being granted entry, it has been confirmed. https://t.co/lsQDulALek — Toby Young (@toadmeister) July 12, 2021

Government guidelines, published Monday also state that if sufficient measures are not taken to limit infection, the Government will “consider mandating certification in certain venues at a later date.”

The announcement also comes on the heels of the government suggesting that while face masks and distancing measures will become optional, businesses and transport companies will be encouraged to make their own policies.

Literally every shop, restaurant, pub, education facility, government facility, bank, form of transport and event could do the same if not expressly forbidden by law – and many will, perhaps the majority. So in other words – not a “lifting” of restrictions at all. https://t.co/2A1qo2Lckd — Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) July 9, 2021

In addition, the NHS ‘Test, Trace & Isolate’ system will also remain in place, meaning that people will still be subject to spontaneous house arrest orders.

The government documents state that “Test, Trace and Isolate has an important ongoing role in managing the virus and reduces the risk of potentially dangerous variants spreading.”

“The Government expects the Test, Trace and Isolate system will remain necessary through the autumn and winter,” it adds.

The guidance also states that “Anyone who tests positive will still need to self-isolate regardless of their vaccination status. Further details will be published in due course and the changes are likely to come into effect later in the summer.”

The Prime Minster also stated Monday that the Government will keep Covid data under review “probably, I’m afraid, into next year” adding that he “will not hesitate” to re-impose restrictions if needed.

The series of ‘freedom’ announcements has left journalists, business owners, MPs, and the general population asking what exactly they are being freed from.

“There is a model for what will be coming our way if we do not resist vaccination passports and electronic ID cards: China’s social credit system, which blacklists people for numerous antisocial offences” | Writes @RossjournoClark https://t.co/f1OzQeJSAe — The Telegraph (@Telegraph) July 13, 2021

Anyone who thinks I’m being too pessimistic should take a look at the small print in Government documents, which offer more than a hint that the Government is intending to reintroduce restrictions this winter… Read more in my article for @ConHome here👇https://t.co/AUwboHRmau — Mark Harper (@Mark_J_Harper) July 12, 2021

July 16, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

Governments are using credit card purchase data as “contact tracing’ COVID surveillance

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim the Net | July 16, 2021

The ongoing “war on cash” that far preceded the pandemic, whose goal is to steer people towards using traceable forms of payment, is coming in very handy in the COVID era precisely for the reason the policy is criticized in the first place – it makes it easy for authorities to keep tabs on individuals who use card transactions.

Reports now mention instances of Australian residents receiving a mandate to quarantine after using their credit card to pay at an establishment, where somebody known to be infected with the virus had stayed.

Credit card receipts led back to the person that was then forced to self-isolate (although they did not have coronavirus) – and apparently led the person to consider what, if anything, is left of their privacy in a world where more and more people leave long “data trails” behind them.

Stop-gap measures like switching to alternative browsers etc (while probably running it on Windows) aside – the takeaway is that the only way to regain some privacy in the world of mass surveillance and tracking is to turn to alternatives – but do it consistently, and be prepared to pay for the privilege of removing oneself from the closed ecosystems like those ruled with an iron fist by Google, Apple, or Microsoft.

As for using card transactions to do COVID contact tracing, Australia is far from being the only country that is doing it. In fact, those lauded as most successful in even getting their contact tracing efforts off the ground, like South Korea, pioneered the practice. Data surveillance, reports said, was used by authorities there to make sure that people who were either unable or unwilling to share their every move are eventually forced into doing it.

Australia has “distinguished” itself for being willing to jeopardize people’s privacy with a series of COVID surveillance and control measures over the past 18 months, and last November, the National Contact Tracing Review, whose chair is Australia’s Chief Scientist Alan Finkel, recommended using consumer credit card data for track and trace purposes.

But what about privacy? Privacy rules will apply – until they don’t, seems to be the gist of it.

“Privacy rules will apply,” the Review said, but then added, “and in some jurisdictions legislative change may be required.”

July 16, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

Covid – start at the beginning and question everything

By Abir Ballan | The Conservative Woman | July 15, 2021

ASKING questions is at the heart of science. Science is not an institution and not an authority. Science is never settled. It is forever evolving through conjecture and criticism. Questions form the basis of all scientific inquiry and scientific progress. Without challenging existing concepts – usually held by a majority – there is no knowledge creation. Censoring dissenting voices eliminates the mechanism of error correction and pushes humanity back into the dark ages.

From the beginning, lockdowns were a questionable public health tool, even described as ‘pro-contagion’ by Professor Ioannidis of Stanford University. As early as June 2020, papers showed that lockdowns and other non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) had no effect on reducing deaths. We were all aware that lockdowns would have a terrible economic impact and a devastating human toll, especially in the developing world. We went along with this ‘cure’ because we were told it would save lives – it was necessary for two to three weeks to flatten the curve of infections and prevent healthcare system strain. Yet the goalposts kept shifting endlessly, moving towards a ZERO COVID world: a completely unrealistic and unachievable goal.

Is now the time to question absolutely everything?

The US Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organisation and ‘experts’ have flip-flopped multiple times. In February 2020, Anthony Fauci said: ‘In all the history of respiratory-born viruses of any type, asymptomatic transmission has never been the driver of outbreaks. The driver of outbreaks is always a symptomatic person.’ However, all the pandemic measures were based on the assumption that people who are healthy might be sick without knowing it. On June 8, 2020, Maria Van Kerkhove of the WHO stated  that asymptomatic spread of SARS-CoV-2 is very rare. The next day she walked back her comment saying that studies, based on computer modelling not real-life data, show that asymptomatic spread is cause for concern. A systematic review and meta-analysis paper, published in 2020, falsified this assumption. Asymptomatic spread is simply not the main driver of disease.  What should be of even less concern is transmission in the open air, likely to be below 0.1 per cent of all transmissions. Unfortunately, the CDC overestimated outdoor spread, claiming that it represented 10 per cent of transmissions. This exaggeration was used to justify futile outdoor mask mandates. They later admitted their error, too little, too late. Why are we still testing healthy people and locking populations indoors?

The CDC and the WHO confused the public with their contradictory social media recommendations about masks: ‘Masks don’t work in the community. Everyone should wear masks in the community. Everyone should wear two masks. Even if you are vaccinated you should still wear a mask. If you are vaccinated you can do without a mask.’ Behind the scenes, the CDC published a policy review in May 2020 stating, ‘We did not find evidence that surgical-type face masks are effective in reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza transmission’. The WHO published an Interim guidance in June 2020 stating ‘At present, there is no direct evidence on the effectiveness of universal masking of healthy people in the community’. Fauci’s leaked emails showed that he didn’t believe in the power of masks either. He said in February 2020 in his email to Sylvia Burwell, ‘The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through the material.’ Why were masks mandated even when the data showed that they made no difference?

The WHO flip-flopped on the definition of herd immunity, which is the point at which an infectious disease stops being a cause for concern because most of the population is immune to it. They removed natural immunity from the definition and limited herd immunity to that reached via vaccination only. After this meddling caused an uproar, they went back again and included both forms of immunity as contributing to herd immunity. Furthermore, they changed their recommendations about the PCR test, first allowing very high cycle thresholds of 45 (which is the number of times the genetic material of the virus is multiplied until it is detected) and recommending that cases are diagnosed based on a positive PCR test, regardless of symptoms – previously unheard of in medicine. Patients are usually diagnosed with a disease if they are sick. Later the WHO rectified their stance, clarifying that the diagnosis of cases requires clinical symptoms and that high cycle thresholds lead to false positives. Why did the WHO make recommendations contrary to established medical practice for infectious diseases? The PCR test was not designed to diagnose infectiousness. It merely detects viral genetic material, dead or alive. Studies indicate that 25 cycles are enough to detect an infectious virus. How much have the false positive results affected the number of cases and in turn the number of deaths? How many deaths were wrongly attributed to COVID instead of other diseases?

Science doesn’t flip-flop like that. Politics does. Science has become politicised. We need to decouple science from politics. It is being manipulated to serve corporate and political agendas. Anyone criticising ‘The Science’ is silenced harshly. People are smart and if given accurate information they can make the right decisions for themselves and their communities. Unfortunately, people are being misinformed and terrified with non-stop death reports, apparently vanishing immunity and the threat of new variants. Fear is not good for us. It’s not good for our immunity, our health or our ability to think rationally. To calm the fear, we need to know that ‘cases’ are meaningless, deaths are overestimated and immunity – whether natural or vaccine-induced – Is long-lasting and can protect us from future variants. Variants are not unique to Covid. All respiratory viruses mutate. The variants are so minutely different from each other that our immune system will recognise them and protect us. It’s like your friend wearing a cap. Can you still recognise him? In the same way, your immune system also recognises the variants. How much longer should we let those variants haunt us?

Now is the time for error correction. Start at the beginning and question everything: lockdowns, asymptomatic transmission, mask mandates, claims about short-lived immunity and dreadful variants. Now is the time for a better solution.

Mark your calendar for The Question Everything: Lockdowns Summit, on July 17, 2021, where pre-eminent experts from science, social sciences, law and industry will evaluate the response to Covid-19.

July 16, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

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