Stringency Index Is Not Associated With COVID-19 Death Rate Across US States, but IS Associated With Higher Unemployment
By Noah Carl • Lockdown Sceptics • July 5, 2021
Some people oppose lockdown on principle, arguing that the government should never infringe on fundamental liberties like the freedom to leave our home or open our business, regardless of the impact this may have on disease transmission.
It’s a reasonable position, but I’m more drawn to the consequentialist case against lockdowns. This can be summed up as “benefits small, costs large”. In other words, even if lockdowns do reduce mortality from COVID-19 (under some circumstances), they don’t do so by anywhere near enough to justify their costs.
As I noted recently, several cost-benefit analyses of the UK’s lockdowns have been published, and each one concluded that the costs almost certainly outweighed the benefits. (Which may explain why the Government has thus far refrained from publishing any estimates itself.)
A rather elegant demonstration of the consequentialist case against lockdown was provided back in May, in the form of a Twitter thread by the data scientist Youyang Gu.
Comparing the 50 US states, Gu obtained data on the COVID-19 death rate, the change in unemployment rate, and the average Government Stringency Index. The latter is a measure of the number and severity of restrictions imposed during the course of the pandemic (school closures, stay-at-home orders, etc.). Gu’s two main charts are shown below:
He found that the Stringency Index was not associated with the COVID-19 death rate (left-hand chart), but was strongly associated with an increase in unemployment (right-hand chart). In other words, US states with longer and more stringent lockdowns haven’t had fewer COVID-19 deaths, but they have seen higher unemployment.
In the replies to Gu’s thread, some critics argued that restrictions were often imposed in response to large outbreaks, so you can’t assume that causation only goes from restrictions to deaths and unemployment. However, Gu points out that the relative ordering of restriction levels is fairly constant over time, so this is unlikely to be a major issue.
His analysis adds to a large body of evidence indicating that – for the vast majority of Western states – the benefits of lockdown were small, but the costs were very large. Gu’s thread is worth reading in full.
Wow! What a load of Covid propaganda!
By Sally Beck | The Conservative Woman | July 5, 2021
WOW! What a Year! That’s a sentiment none of us would disagree with. Except that this is the title of a primary school musical production promoting Covid vaccines and face masks to children aged four to 11.
The Key Stage II musical, performed by the leavers of year 6, has been condemned as ‘unethical’ by some parents. They have complained to Leicestershire-based Edgy Productions, who charge schools £39 for a script.
Two songs in the production, which is about living in times of Covid, prompted the most outrage. One is A Shot In The Arm, the chorus of which cheerily tells children: ‘We’ll all roll up our sleeves and send it on its way . . . Because with just a little prick, we won’t get sick, And that will be an end to it!’ The other is Put That Mask On, with the chorus: ‘Put that mask on your face, Give each other some space, Wash your hands every chance you get. We’ll beat this yet! Ha! No sweat!’
Sorrel Scott, a physiotherapist from south-west London, said in a letter to Dr David Lewis, the director of Edgy Productions: ‘My immediate reaction to reading these lyrics was horror. The UK Government have not made the decision to vaccinate children currently and so it is hard to understand why your musical is trying to normalise and push vaccines for children when there is no medium or long term safety data, and these vaccines are still very much in experimental stages (none of the vaccines finish their experimental stage until 2023).
‘To promote vaccinations for young children who are unable to understand the real harms that may affect them in the short and long term is unethical.
‘To promote face masks for young children goes against current Government guidelines and it is important to note that there are very real harms that can come from wearing face masks, especially in children. These harms include headaches from a build-up of CO2, respiratory and heart problems, microbial contamination, and psychological harms. It has also been noted that facemasks offer little or no protection from tiny virus particles.
‘Have we come to a point where we want to promote mask wearing in small children who are not at risk of the virus and do not pass it on? Have you given a second thought to what effect these songs could have on young children by pushing these messages?’
The musical is not the only way in which children are being bombarded with vaccine propaganda for a jab many experts say they don’t need.
The Stephen Hawking Foundation has produced a slide presentation for schools called Are Vaccines Safe? Slide 11 shows horrific pictures of a child locked in spasm suffering ‘painful muscle contractions of tetanus’, a boy covered in smallpox pustules and a child post-polio in callipers. In almost all cases, Covid is mild or unnoticed in healthy under-18s, so these scare stories are totally irrelevant.
Former headteacher Nigel Utton, education co-ordinator for the World Freedom Alliance, one of a number of organisations fighting for medical freedom, wrote an open letter in May debunking the presentation slide by slide.
He said: ‘Scientists, doctors, lawyers, teachers and citizens are alarmed at the way schools are being used as a vehicle for taking away parental responsibility for the well-being of their children.
‘By allowing this propaganda in your school, you would be acting in loco parentis and you would therefore be morally responsible for any ill effects that the vaccine has on the children in your care. Children have already died in the vaccine studies and others have had life-threatening side effects.’
Adding weight to the campaign to prevent under-18s being vaccinated, Professor Robert Dingwall penned an eight-part heartfelt Twitter post last Wednesday. Professor Dingwall is a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination (JCVI) who advise the government on vaccination.
His post said: ‘Teenagers are at intrinsically low risk from Covid. Vaccines must be exceptionally safe to beat this. Given the low risk of Covid for most teenagers, it is not immoral to think that they may be better protected by natural immunity generated through infection than by asking them to take the *possible* risk of a vaccine.
‘Covid is now a long way from being an important cause of mortality.
‘A reminder: medicine cannot deliver immortality and it is profoundly damaging to society to imply that it can, if only we try hard enough.
‘As Rene Dubos [French-American microbiologist and Pulitzer Prize winning author of So Human An Animal] noted 60 years ago, humans, viruses and bacteria form an ecosystem which has evolved over millennia.
‘Surely we have enough experience of the unintended consequences of humans reshaping other ecosystems to suit their own ends not to rush into reshaping this one without really understanding what it would mean for human lives and immune systems.’
Edgy say that ‘hundreds’ of schools across the country are busy rehearsing Wow! What a Year!
Director Dr Lewis defended the production. He said: ‘It celebrates heroes: nurses, doctors, shop assistants, teachers, delivery drivers, parents who home-schooled their children, (and the children who were home-schooled), those who struggled financially but still managed to feed their families, those who missed closeness to their loved ones, and those that led by example to show resilience in the face of adversity. This is the message that children are presented with.’
He said that if teachers do not like any of the songs, they may remove them: ‘If the teachers don’t like the content or don’t deem it appropriate, their children will not perform it.’
He added: ‘Any accusations that this musical is propaganda for a vaccine or mask agenda, have come exclusively from individuals who have not read the entire script or heard the songs in context. We encourage them to do so.’
Peter Cansell, spokesman for the National Association for Primary Education, said: ‘We would be unwise to offer an opinion as it is straying into requiring medical knowledge rather than educational understanding, but we feel that you have done the right thing in contacting the producers/publishers in this instance.’
Congressman Ken Buck challenges Zuckerberg on COVID censorship and more
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim the Net | July 4, 2021
In a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, GOP Rep. Ken Buck, from Colorado, criticized Facebook’s content moderation policies. Buck pointed out, among other things, how Facebook’s content moderation practices are biased against some opinions.
“During the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Facebook removed more than 7 million posts that purportedly spread misinformation about the virus, and your company placed contextual notes on more than 98 million posts it deemed as potentially misleading,” Buck wrote. “Monitoring posts across Facebook and Instagram for misinformation about COVID has been an undoubtedly herculean task, but Facebook has vigorously taken on this challenge.”
Buck said that the platform censored content on the origins of the pandemic and the Hunter Biden story for “the supposed interest of public informational safety.”
“Your company is only able to selectively moderate content based on the political agenda of your company and its employees because Facebook possesses monopoly power over the market,” Buck wrote. He warned that “stifling ideas can backfire if it leads people to believe there’s a ‘real story’ that is being suppressed.’”
In both cases (the Hunter Biden story and the origins of the pandemic), “Facebook has had the embarrassing position of having to defend its censorship of legitimate content.” In recent months, more evidence has emerged that supports the lab leak theory. Additionally, “the unconditional erasure of reports that were damaging to the-candidate Joe Biden regarding his son, Hunter Biden, has since proved to be unfounded.”
Buck continued to point out that Facebook has been keen on censoring legal content, but has failed to remove “illegal and sexually abusive content.”
“The company appears to have an astonishing lack of concern about illegal and sexually abusive content that is rampantly permitted on your company’s platforms,” Buck wrote to Zuckerberg.
“Facebook has established a rigorous system for policing speech that is Constitutionally protected, yet your company’s failure to effectively screen illegal and exploitative content represents a misalignment of values that is deeply disconcerting.”
Buck’s letter also highlights Zuckerberg’s recent testimony in Congress about reforms to Section 230, expressing disapproval of Zuckerberg’s recommendation of what the Congressman described as “counterproductive actions.”
“Recently, you testified before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. In this hearing, you advocated for vaguely defined Section 230 reforms, saying that the law should ‘condition immunity for the larger platforms on having a generally effective system in place to moderate clearly illegal types of content,’” Buck wrote.
“Simply because a company has established a system to review potentially illegal content does not create any standard for ensuring such content is systematically removed from the platform,” he explained. “I agree with you that no system is perfect, but if Congress were to adopt your recommendation, it would codify the status quo and fail to address the issues that are pervasive across Facebook.”
The letter concluded with a plea to Zuckerberg: “I urge you to take necessary steps to ensure your platform is an open platform for the free and open exchange of ideas and an unwelcoming place for illegal and exploitative content.”
YouTube censors video of Nobel Prize winner Dr. Satoshi Ōmura discussing ivermectin
By Tom Parker | Reclaim the Net | July 2, 2021
Before the coronavirus pandemic, ivermectin was described as a “wonder” drug by the medical community. And in 2015, Dr. Satoshi Ōmura and Dr. William C. Campbell were awarded half the Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work that led to the development of ivermectin.
“The importance of Ivermectin for improving the health and wellbeing of millions of individuals with River Blindness and Lymphatic Filariasis, primarily in the poorest regions of the world, is immeasurable,” the Nobel Assembly stated in its press release for the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
But after the pandemic began, the tech giants have gone all out to purge content that recommends ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19.
And today, these Big Tech policies against ivermectin resulted in one of Ōmura’s speeches where he discussed ivermectin being struck down for “violating YouTube’s community guidelines.”
“When the fascists at YouTube censor the Noble Prize winner Dr. Satoshi Omura, a man whose discoveries have saved a hundred million + from blindness, the world has entered a very, very dark place,” Australian Member of Parliament Craig Kelly tweeted. “I cannot express in words how angry & sad this makes me & fearful for the future.”
Frontline Covid-19 Critical Care, an alliance of physicians and scholars that has committed to “research and develop lifesaving protocols for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 in all stages of illness,” also spoke out against the censorship and warned that “brilliant scientists and lifesaving science are systematically being gagged.”
Ōmura joins the ranks of many other senators, lawmakers, medical journals, biologists, and YouTubers who have been censored by Big Tech for discussing ivermectin.
Judge dismisses Children’s Health Defense lawsuit against Facebook censorship
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim the Net | July 1, 2021
A Northern District of California court has dismissed a complaint claiming that the First Amendment had been violated when Facebook started censoring the Children’s Health Defense (CHD) page.
The complaint was brought against Facebook, its CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and three third-party fact-checkers that the giant outsources to.
CHD, an activist group chaired by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., asked to proceed with the case that alleges government-sponsored censorship, therefore making the First Amendment relevant even if Facebook is a privately-owned company. The complaint also cited false disparagement and wire fraud.
The issues that are the subject of censorship concern vaccines and public health agencies, and the plaintiff focused its argument on how the First Amendment was being challenged here by “the authorities openly censoring unwanted critique of its narrative.”
The defendants then filed a motion to dismiss, which Judge Susan Illston of the Northern District of California, after hearing both sides’ arguments on Wednesday, decided to accept.
We obtained a copy of the ruling for you here.
Where it concerns the First Amendment, the ruling states that the allegations failed to show that “Zuckerberg personally” was involved in censoring CHD – clearly, the court does not believe in the “command responsibility” of a CEO.
Next, the US federal government is exonerated, as the judge established that it did not form a “joint enterprise” with the social media company for the purpose of censoring the page.
“Emails between Zuckerberg and Dr. Fauci about a COVID information ‘hub’ on Facebook do not relate to any actions taken regarding CHD’s Facebook page,” the ruling stated.
And Judge Illston didn’t understand some members of Congress speaking publicly about the need for companies like Facebook to censor “misinformation,” including about vaccines, to constitute government coercion – and says she found no evidence that Facebook was pressured specifically into censoring CHD.
Regarding the filing’s count addressing wire fraud, the judge threw the case out saying that CHD had no valid argument either under the Lanham Act or RICO.
CHD sought to link Facebook’s censorship with more than a political or ideological matter, but one of monetary value, effectively accusing the giant of collusion for monetary gains with government’s health agencies, vaccine manufacturers, and the telecommunications industry.
Specifically, CHD has been strongly critical of the WHO, CDC and FCC, accusing them of corruption.
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From the Archives
Alarmist climate science as a textbook example of groupthink
By Paul MacRae | May 1, 2012
A while ago, I received an email from a friend who asked:
How can many, many respected, competitive, independent science folks be so wrong about [global warming] (if your [skeptical] premise is correct). I don’t think it could be a conspiracy, or incompetence. … Has there ever been another case when so many ‘leading’ scientific minds got it so wrong?
The answer to the second part of my friend’s question—“Has there ever been another case where so many ‘leading’ scientific minds got it so wrong?”—is easy. Yes, there are many such cases, both within and outside climate science. In fact, the graveyard of science is littered with the bones of theories that were once thought “certain” (e.g., that the continents can’t “drift,” that Newton’s laws were immutable, and hundreds if not thousands of others).
Science progresses by the overturning of theories once thought “certain.” … continue
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