YouTube censored a U.S. Senate committee hearing, doctors, journalists, and a U.S. Senator, for discussing evidence suggesting a cheap and widely available drug may help prevent and treat a deadly disease in the middle of a pandemic.
New research published in JAMA(Journal of the American Medical Association) has found that wearing a face mask causes children to inhale dangerous levels of carbon dioxide that becomes trapped behind the mask.
The peer-reviewed research letter from Dr Harald Walach and colleagues found that the air masked children inhaled contained more than six times the legal safe limit set down for closed rooms by the German Federal Environmental Office. The safe limit is 0.2% while the air the masked children inhaled was over 1.3% carbon dioxide.
The effect was worse for younger children, with one seven year-old child inhaling air with 2.5% carbon dioxide, over 12 times the safe limit.
The study looked at two types of mask, FFP2 masks and surgical masks, and found no significant difference between the two.
The authors explained that this alarming result likely explains the complaints from children who wear face masks for long periods.
Most of the complaints reported by children can be understood as consequences of elevated carbon dioxide levels in inhaled air. This is because of the dead-space volume of the masks, which collects exhaled carbon dioxide quickly after a short time. This carbon dioxide mixes with fresh air and elevates the carbon dioxide content of inhaled air under the mask, and this was more pronounced in this study for younger children.
This leads in turn to impairments attributable to hypercapnia. A recent review concluded that there was ample evidence for adverse effects of wearing such masks. We suggest that decision-makers weigh the hard evidence produced by these experimental measurements accordingly, which suggest that children should not be forced to wear face masks.
With face masks shown to have little to no impact in reducing infection or transmission, this suggests the policy is all pain and no gain and should be abandoned without delay.
A common criticism of lockdown sceptics who draw attention to the copious data that restrictions and social distancing make little or no difference to infection rates is that we are denying “germ theory”. By which is meant that we are denying the fact that viruses are transmitted from sick people to those they come into contact with and hence that reducing those contacts will significantly reduce the infection rate.
However, this criticism fails to recognise that risk of infection is not proportional to frequency of exposure. It doesn’t take into account the counterintuitive fact that halving your exposure, say, doesn’t halve your risk of infection, not even close.
Consider the case of John, who is one of the unfortunate few who is highly susceptible to infection, so that whenever he is exposed for a non-trivial length of time he has a 0.8 (i.e., 80%) chance of being infected. Suppose that under normal circumstances he attends four places in a week where he might be exposed outside his home, maybe the supermarket, his workplace, the pub and the barber or doctor.
What is his probability of being infected during the week? It’s one minus the probability of him not being infected. The probability of him not being infected at the supermarket is 1-0.8=0.2 (to keep things simple we assume that in all four contexts he visits he is exposed to the virus). Then the probability of him also not being infected at the pub is 0.2×0.2=0.04. Then add in two more contexts where he has to avoid infection, so multiply by 0.2 twice more, and you get the answer: 1-(0.2 x 0.2 x 0.2 x 0.2)=0.998, or 99.8% risk of infection. In other words, John’s chances of getting through the week when attending four places of exposure without being infected is almost nil.
Now suppose that due to restrictions, John halves the number of places he goes where he is exposed, dropping the pub and workplace maybe but still going to the supermarket and the doctor or barber. So he halves his risk of infection, right? Wrong. That’s not how risk works when the event is a binary one (getting infected or not) that you are trying to avoid. That’s because you only have to get infected once to ‘lose’, but you have to avoid it every time to ‘win’. John’s probability of being infected during the week now is 1-(0.2 x 0.2)=0.96. So halving his amount of exposure during the week reduced his risk of infection from 99.8% to 96%, i.e., it just made it slightly less certain.
Indeed, even if John reduced his weekly exposure to just one context (say, the supermarket or the doctor) he would still have an 80% chance of being infected during the week. The only way to reduce it significantly would be to have zero exposure, but that is rarely possible for anyone. And the risk repeats week in, week out for as long as the virus remains prevalent.
Now, someone having an 80% risk of infection on exposure may be unrealistic (though presumably some people really are that susceptible). But you can reduce the risk of infection in the calculation, and also take into account the chance that you won’t always be exposed when you visit somewhere, and the basic point remains: reducing your frequency of exposure does not significantly lower your risk of infection.
This is one of the reasons that lockdowns and social distancing do not make the impact on the infection rate that many assume they will. They assume reducing exposure reduces risk proportionally, but in reality the virus is quickly able to infect almost everyone who is susceptible, largely regardless of restrictions and distancing, as they continue to be exposed in their day-to-day lives.
Despite a lack of evidence that plastic shields would reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission and documentation that children are at a much lower risk for COVID than adults, officials recommended masks and plastic boxes to separate and socially distance children.1
Not long after China announced the novel coronavirus, researchers began collecting data. Within months many scientists realized that COVID-19 does not affect children at the same rate that it affects adults. There have been many theories as to why this is the case.2 For one thing, children do not have the same types of comorbidities that increase the risk for adults and older adults. Their immune systems are also different.
Experts postulated that another difference was the expression of the angiotensin-converting-enzyme (ACE) 2 receptor that is necessary for the virus to infect cells. Some suggested that other viruses common to the mucosa and airways in young children may limit the growth of the virus, which reduced the rate of severe illness.
Available data3 in the early months from the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed a cohort of 44,672 confirmed cases of COVID-19 indicated 2.1% of patients were aged zero to 19 years. As more data were collected throughout 2020, researchers continued to report that children have a much lower risk of severe disease and mortality from COVID-19 than do adults.4
According to the CDC,5 since children are hospitalized significantly less often than adults, it suggests that children may have less severe illness. They also attribute the lack of transmission in children to school closures in the spring and early summer of 2020, keeping children at home. And yet, children were still exposed to adults in their home who were symptomatic for the viral illness.
The lack of severe symptoms in children infected with SARS-CoV-2 is in stark contrast to the history of significant symptoms with other respiratory viruses in children.6
No Evidence Portable School Desk Shields Are Effective
Dystopian: President Joe Biden visits school kids wearing masks sitting behind plastic protective shields pic.twitter.com/tmfsWzVkNd
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) May 3, 2021
In this 44-second clip, a masked President Biden is visiting a school where the children are all wearing masks behind plastic shields. It’s a disturbing sight that the mainstream media appears to take in stride as they try to convince you that this is the way we should live.
Mid-March 2021, the CDC released new guidelines, which reduced the social distance in schools to 3 feet and removed the recommendations for barriers between school desks. Greta Massetti leads the CDC’s community interventions task force and said about the plastic shields, “We don’t have a lot of evidence of their effectiveness” in preventing transmission.7
The new recommendations triggered a variety of responses in teachers and parents, some of whom are not comfortable sending their children to school where they may be allowed within 3 feet of another child or teacher.8
If you haven’t seen the plastic boxes being purchased in bulk by school systems for students at each of their desks, try imagining a three-sided transparent plexiglass shield that measures about 22 inches high9 and surrounds the front and two sides of the student’s desk.
Some school systems are excited by the prospect of adding another layer of distance between people. One school in Hawaii recently purchased 460 shields for students and teachers. Principal James Denight said, “Our focus is the health and safety of students and staff. We’re going to keep them in their bubble.”10
Mainstream media outlets covering the story are calling face masks and plastic shields “the new normal.”11 In one school in Ohio, students and staff spend the day wearing a mask and carry a foldable plastic shield they set up on their desks.
Unfortunately, the vast fortune the school systems and retail businesses are spending on plastic is not supported by scientific evidence. In the early months, health authorities told the public that the virus was spread by large droplets. Yet, scientists and researchers like Joseph Allen from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, protested, saying the virus could travel farther, making plastic shields ineffective.12
Nearly one year after the novel coronavirus began infecting people, the World Health Organization and the U.S. CDC finally accepted what researchers had been arguing — the virus can spread through the air.13 A recently released study14 by the CDC of COVID-19 transmission in elementary schools in Georgia demonstrated that plastic barriers on desks or tables were not effective.
Building scientist Marwa Zaatari spoke with a reporter from Bloomberg about plastic desk shields, saying they create15 “a false sense of security. Especially when we use it in offices or in schools specifically, plexiglass does not help. If you have plexiglass, you’re still breathing the same shared air of another person.”
Air Flow Restriction May Raise Risk of Transmission
One study published in the journal Science16 has suggested desk shields used in multiple school systems across the U.S. “are associated with lower risk reductions (or even risk increases).”
A preprint paper17 released from Japan investigated the effect plastic shields would have in areas with poor ventilation. They found the plexiglass blocked the air flow and may increase the risk for infection. The CDC study concluded that the results:18
“… highlighted the importance of masking and ventilation for preventing SARS-CoV-2 transmission in elementary schools and revealed important opportunities for increasing their use among schools.”
Yet, the published data do not support their statement supporting masking. It’s important to note that the incidence of COVID-19 in the schools evaluated was extremely low. Among students and staff members, there were only 3.08 COVID-19 cases per 500 enrolled students during the study period.
The analysis of the numbers showed the incidence of COVID was 37% lower in schools where teachers and staff used masks and 39% lower where ventilation was improved, as compared to schools that did not use these strategies. However, in absolute numbers, a 37% reduction is only about one case in the school — hardly a supportive statistic for requiring schoolchildren to wear masks all day long.
Especially interesting is that the statistic was for teachers and staff and not for students. When the researchers looked at masking students they found, “The 21% lower incidence in schools that required mask use among students was not statistically significant compared with schools where mask use was optional.”19
The data suggest that masks are not as effective as government health experts would like you to believe, even though viral experts have been outspoken about the dangers of wearing face masks. Virus expert Judy Mikovits is one of those who have posted on social media. According to Weblyf.com, Mikovits wrote:20
“Do you not know how unhealthy it is to keep inhaling your carbon dioxide and restricting proper oxygen flow? … The body requires AMPLE amounts of oxygen for optimal immune health. Proper oxygenation of your cells and blood is ESSENTIAL for the body to function as it needs to in order to fight off any illness. Masks will hamper oxygen intake.”
Mikovits is joined by Dr. Jenny Harries, England’s deputy chief medical officer. According to News-Medical.Net, she warned the public against wearing face masks “as the virus can get trapped in the material and cause infection when the wearer breathes in.”21 Nationally recognized board-certified neurosurgeon Dr. Russell Blaylock also believes face masks may cause serious harm:22
“Now that we have established that there is no scientific evidence necessitating the wearing of a face mask for prevention, are there dangers to wearing a face mask, especially for long periods? Several studies have indeed found significant problems with wearing such a mask.
This can vary from headaches, to increased airway resistance, carbon dioxide accumulation, to hypoxia, all the way to serious life-threatening complications … By wearing a mask, the exhaled viruses will not be able to escape and will concentrate in the nasal passages, enter the olfactory nerves and travel into the brain.”
Where Will All the Plastic Go?
Interestingly, the sale of plexiglass has roughly tripled since the beginning of 2020, rising to roughly $750 million in the U.S.23 Sales were fueled by offices, restaurants and retail stores that scrambled to put up plastic shields after being told it would reduce the spread of the virus.
Tufts Medical Center epidemiologist Shira Doron supports the use of plastic shields but acknowledges “there’s no research” to support plexiglass barriers against coronavirus spread. She spoke with a reporter from Bloomberg, saying: “We don’t know a lot.” However, she believes that it comes down to, “If it might help, and it makes sense, and it doesn’t hurt, then do it.”24
Unfortunately, it doesn’t make sense and, ultimately, it may trigger mental health issues for children and adds to the growing plastic problem. Zaatari and Allen believe that plastic shields may make sense in certain settings, such as in front of cashiers if it doesn’t impede airflow. However, money would have been better spent on improving ventilation and air filtration in the school systems.
Craig Saunders, president of the International Association of Plastics Distribution, spoke with a reporter from Bloomberg about the future of those plexiglass shields when they are no longer used. He said, “It’s 100% recyclable thermoplastic. [It] just comes down to the logistics.”25
Yet, the logistics of recycling plastic are not a societal strong suit as has been demonstrated in the past 30 years. This begs the question of whether the additional plastic garbage from discarded plexiglass shields will join the trillions of pieces of plastic that litter the oceans and beaches.26
The planet is also facing a new plastic crisis brought on by discarded face masks. Each month there’s an estimated 129 billion face masks being used,27 most of which are disposable, made from plastic microfibers. Before wearing a mask became a daily habit, more than 300 million tons of plastic were already produced globally each year.
Most of it has ended up as waste, which led researchers from the University of Southern Denmark and Princeton University to warn that masks could quickly become “the next plastic problem.”28 Bottled water containers have been a leading source of environmental plastic pollution, but will likely be outpaced by disposable masks.
While about 25% of plastic bottles are recycled, “there is no official guidance on mask recycle, making it more likely to be disposed of as solid waste,”29 the researchers stated. “With increasing reports on inappropriate disposal of masks, it is urgent to recognize this potential environmental threat.”30
No matter what the ultimate goal was in pushing the COVID-19 pandemic, it appears that ensuring the safety of the Earth on which we live was not a priority. It is essential we protect the ecosystem, and thereby our food supply.
Mindless Mask Mandates Likely Ineffective and Harmful
The evidence that masks do not work to prevent the spread of viruses has been demonstrated using influenza and COVID-19. The first COVID-19 specific randomized controlled surgical mask trial was published in November 2020,31 and it confirmed previous, conflicting32 findings showing that:
Masks may reduce your risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection by as much as 46%, or it may increase your risk by 23%
The vast majority — 97.9% of those who didn’t wear masks, and 98.2% of those who did — remained infection-free
Despite scientific evidence, the CDC has relied on anecdotal stories about hair stylists and retrospective reports to prop up their recommendation for universal mask-wearing to prevent the spread of infection.33 In addition to this, their own data34,35,36 also show 70.6% of patients with confirmed COVID-19 reported always wearing a cloth mask or face covering in the 14 days preceding their illness and 14.4% wore it often.
This means a total of 85% of people who had confirmed cases of COVID-19 either “often” or “always” wore a face mask. For a discussion of more science-based evidence about face masks, see “Mindless Mask Mandates Likely Do More Harm Than Good.”
Denight’s focus on keeping children “in their bubble” is not far from what’s happening across the world. Data from a study37 using Germany’s first registry recorded the experiences of children wearing masks. It shows there are physical, behavioral and psychological harms38 being perpetrated on children in the name of science.
Data from 25,930 children found the average child was wearing a mask 270 minutes each day and parents, doctors and others reported 24 health issues associated with that mask wearing. These problems:39
“… included irritability (60%), headache (53%), difficulty concentrating (50%), less happiness (49%), reluctance to go to school/kindergarten (44%), malaise (42%), impaired learning (38%) and drowsiness or fatigue (37%).”
Added to these concerning symptoms, they also found 29.7% reported feeling short of breath, 26.4% being dizzy and 17.9% were unwilling to move or play.40 Hundreds more experienced “accelerated respiration, tightness in chest, weakness and short-term impairment of consciousness.”41
Push Back Against Tyranny
Measurements of anxiety or depressive disorder have also jumped dramatically for adults. Data from the CDC42 show the percentage of adults reporting symptoms of anxiety disorder and/or depressive disorder was 11% in the first quarter of 2019 but jumped dramatically to 41.1%43 across the U.S. by January 2021.
This jump in anxiety and depression in adults is significant for children since there is a positive relationship between a child’s behavioral problems and mental health with maternal mental health44 and parental mental health.45
This means that independent of their own stress and psychological harm from mask-wearing, lockdowns and plastic shields, children also respond negatively to the rising rate of anxiety and depression exhibited by adults. Thus, the impact on a child’s mental health is the result of both their own stress and that of their parents.
March 20, 2021, marked the 1-year anniversary of the first COVID-19 lockdown. On that day, people in more than 40 countries took to the streets to peacefully demonstrate against the lies and tyrannical measures being taken by governmental agencies and experts in the name of a viral pandemic.
Chances are you didn’t hear about this global rallying cry for freedom since the mainstream media have near-universally censored any news of it. However, this information is vital to understanding how your freedoms are being stripped and what you can do to protect your rights.
Our children and our children’s children are depending on us to ensure they have the freedom and the right to make decisions for themselves about their health, wellness and finances. Read more at “Global Pushback Against Tyranny Has Begun.”
There are now 1160 reports of myocarditis and pericarditis after Covid vaccination in the US Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). The total could be significantly higher due to latency in reports being processed. Myocarditis is a serious condition associated acutely with fatal arrhythmias, and chronically, because myocytes are irreplaceable, with heart failure and significant associated mortality. The rate of myocarditis/pericarditis reports post-vaccination has historically been low. For the 28 years from 1990 to 2018, during which there were close to three billion vaccinations for influenza alone, there were 708 such events reported in VAERS.1 Using methodology described by Su et al,1 to search the VAERS database,2 the 1160 myocarditis/pericarditis cases occurred in only six months, during which a total of around 150 million people had Covid vaccines, mostly mRNA and excluding lagged reporting.
There are understandable caveats about attributing ‘causality’ to VAERS adverse events associated with vaccination,3 however the numbers of adverse events are likely to be underreported.4 As the aetiology of Covid vaccine-induced myocarditis is new it may be unwise to extrapolate the prognosis from what is known about myocarditis due to other aetiologies. However, it is worth noting that 3-4% of those with acute myocarditis require heart transplantation.5 The overall mortality rate after one year was 20%6 and after five years 44%7 to 56%.6 Of the 1160 reported incidences after Covid vaccination, there have been seven deaths so far with three in under 60 year olds.
Of the myopericarditis cases in under 30 year olds, 496 have an ejection fraction recorded in VAERS. Of these 52 were graded as “decreased” and 36 graded as “normal”. At a minimum, therefore, more than 10% have at least transiently decreased ejection fractions indicating measurable damage to the myocardium. A low ejection fraction has been associated with major adverse cardiac events.8 The transplantation rate is as high as 11% within the first year in those with complications.9 A case report of post-vaccination ‘mild’ myopericarditis in a 16 year-old initially admitted to the intensive care unit, and hospitalised for six days, revealed that he had myocardial fibrosis.10 His troponin levels were high enough to predict a tenfold increased risk of mortality.11
The FDA has expressed concerns around the rate of reported myocarditis within the VAERS reporting system, especially in the young. A presentation by the FDA on June 10th 2021 compared the reported rates of myocarditis with background expected rates, with data up to May 31st 2021.12 However, the expected rates to which observed rates were compared were those expected over a 31-day period. For under-18s, 90% of cases had an onset by day five after vaccination, making comparison with expected rates over 31 days unreasonable. A further meeting on June 23rd 2021 examined the reports in a seven day window with data up to 11 June 2021. A four fold increase above baseline was evident in the seven days after the first dose for under-24 year-olds, rising to over 27-fold for the seven days after the second dose. The rate per million doses given in males 12-17 years old was 17 times higher than in men aged over 50 years seven days after the first dose, rising to 74 times seven days after the second dose. (For females the risk was 50% higher and 13 times higher respectively.)13
For over-65 year-olds, half of the reported incidences were within eight days of vaccination and 79% occurred in a 31-day window after vaccination. The expected rate for the over-65 year-old age group was 36 to 358 per million over 31 days, whereas the reported rate was 26.12 This gives an indication of the under-reporting of events in the VAERS system which is not capturing even the background expected rates. For both young and old it is not a clinically obvious diagnosis and it is likely that milder cases will have gone undiagnosed. Even for these mild cases, the long term outcome is unknown and the risks to these patients with re-exposure to SARS-CoV-2 is also unknown. Currently, more than half of the reports in VAERS are from patients under the age of 30. It is unclear whether the high excess of reported cases in the younger age groups compared with the old is a reporting issue, as myocarditis may be mistaken for other cardiac pathology in older age groups and not reported, or a genuine finding of increased incidence in the young. Others have found that younger patients have a higher incidence of adverse effects following Covid vaccination which may be a function of more efficient translation of RNA into protein resulting in a higher dosage or a more vigorous immune reaction.14
For an individual the risk of vaccination must be balanced against the benefits. Under the age of 20, the risk of mortality for someone who catches Covid is less than four in a million.15 The risk of catching Covid is far from 100%, with many having naturally acquired immunity and high levels of population immunity. The risk to the individual must be measured as the sum of risks of every adverse effect. With estimates of the incidence of myocarditis alone after Covid vaccination in men 16-24 as high as one in 3-6000, the benefit for young people does not justify this risk.16 Immediately, this summer, controlled one-month longitudinal studies (see “A prospective study of the incidence of myocarditis/pericarditis and new onset cardiac symptoms following smallpox and influenza vaccination”,17for example) of the incidence of myopericarditis should be conducted comparing Covid vaccinated and unvaccinated groups under 30 years of age, undergoing serial echocardiography, electrocardiography, and blood cardiac injury markers (notably, troponin). Pending completion of these studies, and rapid analyses of the data, there should be a moratorium on mass Covid vaccination of healthy, extraordinarily low-Covid-risk persons18 under 30 years old. The FDA’s intention to only continue monitoring is a dereliction of duty.
Dr Clare Craig is a Diagnostic Pathologist in London @clarecraigpath and Dr Andrew G. Bostom, MD, is MS Research Physician at Brown University’s Center For Primary Care and Prevention at Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island @andrewbostom
1 Su JR, McNeil MM, Welsh KJ, et al. “Myopericarditis after vaccination, Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)”, 1990-2018. Vaccine 2021;39:839–45.
6 Mason JW, O’Connell JB, Herskowitz A, et al. “A Clinical Trial of Immunosuppressive Therapy for Myocarditis”. The Myocarditis Treatment Trial Investigators. N. Engl. J. Med. 1995;333:269–75.
7 Grogan M, Redfield MM, Bailey KR, et al. “Long-term outcome of patients with biopsy-proved myocarditis: comparison with idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy”. J. Am. Coll. Cardiol. 1995;26:80–4.
8 Wong BTW, Christiansen JP. “Clinical Characteristics and Prognostic Factors of Myocarditis in New Zealand Patients”. Heart Lung Circ. 2020;29:1139–45.
9 Ammirati E, Cipriani M, Moro C, et al. “Clinical Presentation and Outcome in a Contemporary Cohort of Patients With Acute Myocarditis”: Multicenter Lombardy Registry. Circulation 2018;138:1088–99.
10 Talman V, Ruskoaho H. “Cardiac fibrosis in myocardial infarction-from repair and remodeling to regeneration”. Cell Tissue Res. 2016;365:563–81.
11 Roos A, Bandstein N, Lundbäck M, et al. “Stable High-Sensitivity Cardiac Troponin T Levels and Outcomes in Patients With Chest Pain”. J. Am. Coll. Cardiol. 2017;70:2226–36.
14 Menni C, Klaser K, May A, et al. “Vaccine after Effects and Post-Vaccine Infection in a Real World Setting: Results from the COVID Symptom Study App”. 2021. doi:10.2139/SSRN.3795344
15 Ghisolfi S, Almås I, Sandefur JC, et al. “Predicted COVID-19 fatality rates based on age, sex, comorbidities and health system capacity”. BMJ Glob Health 2020;5. doi:10.1136/bmjgh-2020-003094
17 Engler RJM, Nelson MR, Collins LC Jr, et al. “A prospective study of the incidence of myocarditis/pericarditis and new onset cardiac symptoms following smallpox and influenza vaccination”. PLoS One 2015;10:e0118283.
18 Ioannidis JPA. “Reconciling estimates of global spread and infection fatality rates of COVID-19: An overview of systematic evaluations”. Eur. J. Clin. Invest. 2021;51:e13554.
Four expert reviewers were satisfied by revisions already made. ‘The effort of the authors is praiseworthy in this pandemic situation,’ one said. Their critiques had been technical: some of the statistical methods break down when there are no ‘events’ (in this case, deaths) in both ‘arms’ of a clinical trial. Our lead statistician ran more checks; we fixed the criticisms. This is what ‘peer review’ is supposed to do. It’s normal.
One might take such a comment from the senior editor as the preamble to acceptance for publication. But no, this was the editors’ reason for not publishing the paper. This isn’t normal. What was the problem?
‘We don’t doubt this is an important paper, and would likely be widely taken up.’ Hang on, Lancet Respiratory Medicine wants to avoid printing something it recognises as an important paper, that four of their own experts have passed, because it might be ‘widely taken up’? This is what they usually want.
Of course, the Lancet has a lot to live down, having moved into the business of publishing fake news, as with the notorious hydroxychloroquine fraud which I reported on for TCW last year. Not only did the Lancet publish an obvious fake, it did so with hostile editorial commentary and briefing to BBC Radio 4 Today for maximum impact. So media briefing for planted fake news, but a Lancet specialist title won’t touch an ‘important paper’.
I was told in January, by a senior clinical researcher who knows him personally, that Richard Horton, editor in chief of the Lancet, was ‘very ashamed’ at having let through the fake news. Horton, whose Twitter bio reads ‘welcome to a permanent attack on the present’, wrote in 2015:
‘Much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness . . . Journal editors deserve their fair share of criticism too. We aid and abet the worst behaviours . . . Our love of “significance” pollutes the literature with many a statistical fairy-tale. We reject important confirmations . . . And individual scientists, including their most senior leaders, do little to alter a research culture that occasionally veers close to misconduct.’
Horton was right. The only aspect that the fake news had going for it was the huge sample size: 96,000 patients. Except that the true number was actually zero, since the paper was fake. The Lancet was certainly seduced by a ‘fashionable trend of dubious importance’, namely ‘Big Data’, a flavour-of-the-month set fair to corrupt many other sciences as well as medicine. The Lancet ‘aided and abetted the worst behaviours’, not just those ‘veering close to misconduct’, but those clearly crossing the line.
Has anything changed? In 2015 Horton bemoaned journals that ‘reject important confirmations’, but in March 2021, ‘after lengthy discussions with the editorial team’, Lancet Respiratory Medicine did it again, rejecting our ‘important confirmation’ (passed by four of their own experts, remember) that yes, ivermectin works for Covid-19.
So there we have it. Horton’s 2015 editorial remains true, but he doesn’t seem to have done anything about it. He’s only the man in charge, after all.
I had feared as much, but we were all keen to give our findings maximum visibility. But Lancet Respiratory Medicine did what its friends wanted, which was ‘kill the story’ for as long as possible, which in the event has been over three months, whilst we searched for a journal with enough integrity to publish an article which had already passed four-fold peer-review at the Lancet, and would get yet further examination elsewhere. As of last Friday the paper is now published in the American Journal of Therapeutics, and you can read it here. More importantly your doctor, or your family’s doctors, can read it too. Take it to them, as many as possible.
So what does this dry-as-dust research paper actually show?
The starting point was another review article on ivermectin for Covid-19, also in the American Journal of Therapeutics, published on May 1. Take that paper to your doctor too. Dr Pierre Kory and his Front-Line Covid Critical Care alliance (FLCCC) of US-based intensive care doctors had their four-times peer-reviewed paper accepted for a special issue on repurposed drugs for Covid-19, but then revoked, by the journal Frontiers in Pharmacology. This unprecedented volte face was charted recently in TCWby Dr Michael Yeadon. The same ‘kill the story’ orders delayed publication by over five months.
The FLCCC know what they are doing with Covid-19. Their ‘MATH+’ treatment delivers the world’s best survivals from serious, late-stage, hospitalised Covid-19. It remains almost unknown in the UK and unused in the NHS. (All Brits should be very angry about this). FLCCC luminary Dr Joseph Varon, mentioned en passant in my coverage of the Oxford RECOVERY trial, has the best track record of them all. The FLCCC have used several anti-virals in their continuing evolution of the best treatments, but by late autumn realised that one drug, ivermectin, stood out because it worked at all stages of the Covid-19 disease, from prophylaxis through to the intensive care that the FLCCC specialise in. They wrote up the evidence, posting a preprint in mid-November.
They explain the back-story to ivermectin, little-known in Western countries but worldwide one of the most widely-used drugs at 3.8 billion doses and counting. Earning the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for its discoverers, it has crushed the hideously disabling infestation of onchocerciasis or ‘river-blindness’ across the tropics. A potent anti-parasitic, it is used for threadworms, scabies and head-lice. It costs pence per pill. It is a known anti-viral, working across a range of RNA viruses, (and some DNA ones). It may even be an anti-cancer drug, and has prolonged lives in leukaemia. Specifically against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, a team at Monash University in Australia showed that ivermectin killed off the virus in vitro in April 2020. The usual suspects declared that this meant nothing (which on its own is true), that that you couldn’t get it strong enough in vivo; nevertheless the Monash paper set off a series of clinical trials of ivermectin for Covid-19, usually in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs), or in plain English poor countries. There is a good reason for this: if you are dirt poor, you need your medicines to be dirt cheap. Nothing else will be any use. What did they find? Ivermectin works for Covid-19, at entirely tolerable doses.
Kory’s paper showed how cases and deaths in Peru came crashing down where ivermectin was freely distributed, and not where it wasn’t. The same phenomenon has been repeated in India more recently; states such as Goa that adopt mass distribution of ivermectin crush their cases; those that refuse it such as Tamil Nadu (Chief Minister M K Stalin) don’t.
Dr Kory’s paper identifies and charts the evidence, but doesn’t do a formal meta-analysis, which is where Dr Tess Lawrie came in. Her Evidence-Based Medicine Consultancy does nothing but rigorous systematic reviews, and only for public clients such as the NHS and the WHO. Their objectives are clinical practice guidelines, providing the evidence for decisions on licensing and implementation.
A ‘meta-analysis’ is a synthesis of data from multiple sources – typically clinical trials of a new drug – using recognised statistical methods. A meta-analysis of clinical trials that are themselves ‘randomised’ clinical trials (where patients are allocated at random to receive, or not, the treatment) lies at the summit of the ‘evidence quality’ pyramid, in the doctrines of Evidence-Based Medicine, ruthlessly insisted upon by regulatory authorities. To rehearse a cliché, the Randomised Controlled Trial or RCT is the ‘gold standard’ of medical evidence. If so, a meta-analysis of RCTs is platinum.
What makes the paper a first is being carried out according to the standards of the Cochrane organisation, requiring a protocol to be observed (i.e. no favouritism), data extraction from primary sources by two researchers independently, and the ‘grading’ of those sources for the quality of the evidence. Indeed the paper began life as a Cochrane Review, and was finished by the end of January. But to cut short a long story (parts of which are covered elsewhere by the ever-vigilantFrance Soir ) the Cochrane organisation did not want a systematic review on a topic already approved by a specialised researcher and colleagues whose consultancy does nothing else, and who have contributed nearly 80 such reviews between them. Sounds familiar? It should do by now: the ‘capture’ of learned journals by powerful interests who will suppress, by fair means or increasingly by foul ones, any knowledge that threatens those interests.
The reason for doing a systematic review is that that is what is required by regulatory authorities such as the FDA (in the US) the European Medicines Agency (for the EU), our own Medical and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and the World Health Organisation (WHO). It’s what they require to decide on licensing new drugs (though ivermectin isn’t new at all).
Dr Lawrie didn’t stop at the meta-analysis, but pressed on to a ‘Evidence to Decision’ process, the formal procedure which those regulators are supposed to use in coming to decisions. On February 20, the British Ivermectin Recommendation Development (BIRD) panel voted that ‘ivermectin should be adopted to reduce morbidity and mortality associated with Covid-19 infection and to prevent Covid-19 infection among those at higher risk.’
That was February. The essentials were already clear from Dr Kory’s paper in preprint in November, his testimony to the US Senate in December, Dr Lawrie’s first meta-analysis issued on January 3, and our submission to the Lancet on 5 February (preprint posted March 11). BMC Systematic Reviews were kind enough to post a preprint on March 18 but though they still say it’s ‘under review’ we haven’t heard from them in three months, so it looks like ‘kill the story’ orders apply there too. Our published paper has since been revised and updated.
The paper makes clear that there’s no real doubt that ivermectin is an effective medicine for Covid-19. Multiple clinical trials show it. The Randomised Controlled Trials that our paper analyses are just the tip of the iceberg. Plenty of other trials show it too, but if they were not randomised, according to regulators they don’t count, so our meta-analysis did not include them. Although Risks of Bias are carefully evaluated, disregarding the mountain of evidence from elsewhere, not least the experience and testimony of doctors actually using it, is itself a potent source of bias. You are throwing away all the data that might force you to think. A critic of our paper wrote: ‘a technical tour-de-force based on ritualised ideas’. He’s right, but let’s not argue: our meta-analysis was upon the Regulators’ terms. We played by their rules. That was the point. You want a strict meta-analysis of RCTs only? Take two dozen.
How many do they need? When governments, or regulatory agencies, want to approve medicines, one will do. Dexamethasone, to huge fanfare, was approved last summer on the evidence of just one RCT, though it helps only ventilated patients in the inflammatory stages of the illness, and on its own, by not very much. The FLCCC doctors had been using a different corticosteroid, methylprednisolone, and at higher equivalent doses, long before. In our analysis, ivermectin reduces deaths overall by around 62 per cent, and works at all disease stages. As a prophylactic, it prevents 6 out of every 7 infections that would otherwise occur, and stops household transmission in its tracks. Corticosteroids are vital in the inflammatory phase of the illness, but are useless in the purely viral stage or for prophylaxis.
So where does all this leave ivermectin, for those affected by Covid-19, those worried about it, and vulnerable people at risk?
Ivermectin isn’t new. Its safety record, from those billions of doses, is second to none. Its cost is negligible. The WHO, in its BC (Before Covid) era, listed it as an ‘Essential Medicine’ in their catalogue of the ‘minimum medicine needs for a basic health-care system’ (though our ‘envy of the world’ NHS doesn’t have it).
In the USA, ivermectin is licensed by the FDA, albeit not for Covid, so is available to any American doctor to prescribe ‘off-label’ (i.e. not according to the originally licensed ‘advertising label’). However the fact that it isn’t ‘labelled’ for Covid makes it easy to refuse. Patients’ families have had to go to court for injunctions ordering hospitals to give ivermectin. The FLCCC still swims against the tide, though legal barriers are lower than elsewhere, for open-minded doctors.
In the UK, ivermectin has never been licensed by the MHRA. This makes it easy for doctors to refuse, and for those who want to help to be obstructed. My GP refused me ivermectin for prophylaxis, even after I showed him the evidence. Hospital doctors can’t get it except to special order at pharmacies. The bureaucracy won’t allow them to prescribe it. Listen to Dr Nyjon Eccles having to bring his own ivermectin for his 84-year-old mother in hospital with Covid-19, dependent on oxygen, and failing every time she came off. She was discharged five days after her first dose.
As for the WHO itself, on March 31, 2021, its ‘Living Guideline’ for Covid treatments was updated, declaring: ‘We recommend not to use ivermectin in patients with Covid-19 except in the context of a clinical trial.’ The cherry-picking of studies that helped give the Right Answer, and rejection of those that didn’t, the cavalier appraisal of risks of bias and evidence certainty, make their analysis a complete travesty, but nevertheless potently influential.
In India, seeing the damage that the WHO had done to their Covid-19 policy, and finding the pile of evidence compiled by the FLCCC and BIRD, the Indian Bar Association served two legal notices upon the chief scientist of the WHO, Dr Soumya Swaminathan (an Indian national). The first (May 25) accuses her of a ‘disinformation campaign against ivermectin’ and the second June 13) ups the ante by joining Dr Tedros (director general of the WHO), and accusing them of ‘contempt of court and aggravated offences against humanity by spreading disinformation’. If these move to actual litigation, watch this space.
Meanwhile, patients and their families, and even Bar Associations, should not have to go through the courts or to smuggle medicines into hospital to get treatment for sick patients. At some point, officials who obstruct access to safe medicines are going to have to explain the moral difference between their actions and corporate manslaughter.
This article has been about an anti-viral treatment that is already known, already exists, with an unparalleled safety record, is on the Essential Medicines list of the WHO, costs virtually nothing, and has anti-inflammatory properties to boot. It requires only formal endorsement. Johnson’s Task Force is redundant.
Preparing a formal application to the MHRA, we take comfort from the editors of Lancet Respiratory Medicine: ‘We don’t doubt this is an important paper’.
Robert Dingwall, a member of the JCVI (Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation) has suggested that allowing children to catch Covid and build up natural immunity to the infection, may be safer than vaccinating them.
Dingwall (pictured) sits on the JCVI. The committee advises the government on who should get vaccinated and when. It is currently considering whether 12-18 year-olds should receive the jab. Dingwall took to Twitter yesterday and stated:
“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.”
He went on to say that the pandemic, “would end through population immunity, whether from vaccination or prior infection”.
However, SAGE member John Edmunds told BBC Newsnight last night, that the country should not fully reopen until all secondary school children are vaccinated. He said:
“At some point we do have to dismantle all of these measures that we’ve put in place. I think, for me, the safest time to do that is when children have been vaccinated, certainly secondary-school-aged children at least. That’s the safest way.”
John Edmunds is a lunatic. As Robert Dingwall pointed out, Covid presents no real risk to children. Children should not be coerced into taking a medicine on behalf of someone else.
In fact, Dingwall should go further. The great majority of the population are at no serious risk from Covid. The evidence is overwhelming that the jabs present a far greater risk than the virus.
The risk/benefit for teenagers must be firmly established. The UK programme has already been modified because the risk/benefit of AZ was not clear for 20 and 30 somethings. Teenagers are at intrinsically low risk from Covid. Vaccines must be exceptionally safe to beat this (2/8)
— Robert Dingwall 🎯🏴 🇪🇺 Rejoin (@rwjdingwall) June 30, 2021
The Daily Mail is reporting this morning that the government has shelved plans to use vaccine passports after July 19th, the so-called Freedom Day.
The Mail claims that it has been told that covid certification will not be required at mass gatherings when restrictions are lifted.
Government sources have revealed that those attending festivals, concerts or sporting events will not be required to show proof of vaccination or proof of immunity. That sounds good right?
Wrong. The Mail also reports that:
Organisers will, however, be permitted to run their own schemes, with the Premier League among those expected to introduce some form of certification to prove those attending football grounds do not pose a Covid risk.
There’s the kicker. Organisers will be permitted to run their own schemes. The government is simply passing the buck to the private sector. Here’s what I think will happen in the coming months. It’s all so predictable.
Shortly, the government will confirm that it will not be imposing mandatory covid certification. There will be lots of virtue signalling. Ministers will wax lyrical about civil liberties. “The UK is not that sort of country,” they will claim.
The government will say that it has listened to the hospitality industry and understands the concerns of pub and restaurant owners who do not want to be chasing customers for proof of vaccination.
From late July, through August and September, life will feel more normal. It’ll be a false dawn. We’ll hit October. Covid case numbers will rise steadily. Many of those who took the mRNA jabs will become seriously ill and die. This will be blamed on the mythical variants.
Testing will be ramped up. The redundant and thoroughly discredited PCR test will find Covid in nearly everyone who is screened. The government will say that there is a danger that the NHS will be overwhelmed. They’ll say that flu is back too. Of course it’ll be a very virulent strain of flu. The government will tell us that regretfully, restrictions must be reimposed.
There will be real panic in the hospitality and entertainment industries. Fearing for their businesses, owners will scream bloody murder. At the 11th hour a compromise will be reached. That compromise will be the introduction of vaccine passports.
Landlords and restaurateurs who were previously critical of the scheme, will rush to embrace it. People who had a covid booster jab and a flu jab (meaning they will have had four jabs in 2021), will demand the introduction of the passport to allow them to socialise.
Enormous pressure will be brought to bear on people like me who haven’t had a jab and never will. This was never about a virus. It was always about conditioning us to take gene altering vaccines and lots of them. It’s unimaginably evil, but it is happening.
Singapore has recorded fewer deaths from COVID-19 than almost any other country with reliable data: only 36 to date, which equates to a rate of just six per million. (The U.K.’s official COVID-19 death rate is 1,890 per million.)
And according to the World Mortality Dataset, Singapore has had zero excess mortality since the pandemic began. On the other hand, the country did take a sizeable economic hit last year – with GDP falling by 5.4% (compared to only 2.8% in Sweden).
What’s more, Singapore has not recorded more than 100 cases in a day since August of last year. If any advanced country has come close to “Zero Covid”, it’s Singapore.
Despite that record, three Singaporean ministers have announced that “COVID-19 may never go away” and “it is possible to live normally with it in our midst”.
Writing in The Straits Times, Gan Kim Yong, Lawrence Wong and Ong Ye Kung (the ministers for trade, finance and health) say that “COVID-19 will very likely become endemic”. This means that “the virus will continue to mutate, and thereby survive in our community”.
In other words, the Singaporean Government is under no illusion that it will be possible to eliminate COVID-19, contrary to the claims of the “Zero COVID” movement. Indeed, a survey by Nature of 119 experts found that 89% believe it is “likely” or “very likely” that SARS-CoV-2 will become an endemic virus.
“We can’t eradicate it”, the ministers write, “but we can turn the pandemic into something much less threatening, like influenza.” How do they propose to deal with the virus going forward?
First, they intend to proceed with their vaccination program, which aims to have two thirds of people vaccinated by August 9th. Second, they intend to continue testing, but “the focus will be different”. For example, the country will cease “monitoring COVID-19 infection numbers every day”. Third, they intend to keep using and developing effective treatments for COVID-19.
As Yong, Wong and Kung conclude, “History has shown that every pandemic will run its course.” Though one might object that even the few remaining measures are no longer necessary, the ministers seem to understand what they’re talking about. Their article is worth reading in full.
MANY have asked themselves how policies so ineffective and yet damaging to so many people’s lives and liberties could have been put in place so quickly, and seemingly almost on a global basis, in response to the Covid crisis.
Part of the answer has been provided by an investigation by German journalist and author Paul Schreyer. In an hour-long video, he tracks a series of pandemic simulation exercises conducted at the highest level over many years among the most influential industrial nations of the West.
Top officials were ‘primed’ to respond as they did, once the World Health Organisation declared the pandemic spread of a new coronavirus, SARS-COV-2, almost regardless of the nature of the virus or the degree of harm it was likely to cause.
This weakness can be seen as a huge obstacle to rational decision-making. It helps to explain how the views of thousands of doctors, scientists and others who have challenged the official, fear-based approach to the pandemic came to be ignored.
Schreyer maintains that political decisions during the crisis did not come out of the blue, but stemmed from a ‘war on viruses’ begun back in the 1990s, alongside the ‘war on terror’.
It was as though a fresh enemy had to be brought into being, following the end of the Cold War era in which the superpowers Russia and America confronted each other with immense and potentially suicidal armaments and military budgets.
‘I am running out of villains. I am running out of demons,’ said General Colin Powell in a 1991 newspaper interview. ‘I’m down to Castro and Kim Il-Sung.’ At the time he was the highest-ranking military official in the USA.
That was the context in which the fight against terror, including preparations to fight biological weaponry, began. A 1993 bomb attack on the World Trade Centre in New York City, attributed to Islamist terrorists, boosted demands for continued use of American military abroad, and a similar attack, though with mysterious origins, on a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995 reinforced fears of a ‘shadow enemy’ within.
At the same time, dangerous biological research was being conducted at US facilities, said to be aimed at better understanding the threat that could be posed by a state or terrorist with a biological arsenal.
Colonel Dr Robert Kadlec, Biodefence Programmes Director at the Department of Homeland Security, wrote in a 1998 Pentagon strategy paper: ‘Using biological weapons under the cover of an endemic or natural disease occurrence provides an attacker the potential for plausible denial. Biological warfare’s potential to create significant economic loss and subsequent political instability, coupled with plausible denial, exceeds the possibilities of any other human weapon.’
That same year saw the founding of the Johns Hopkins Centre for Civilian Biodefence Strategies, later renamed the Centre for Health Security. This institution has played a major role in the Covid pandemic, compiling, displaying and analysing data on a global dashboard used by media – for the most part, unquestioningly – all over the world.
And it was this centre that organised several important simulation exercises in the field of disaster response strategies.
The first, the National Symposium on Medical and Public Health Response to Bioterrorism, was held at Arlington, home to the Pentagon, in February 1999. Hundreds of delegates from ten countries took part. Smallpox was the supposed bioweapon, and delegates were taken through a series of sessions simulating how an attack might be handled and problems that might arise.
How far could the police go to detain patients? How to proceed with vaccination? Should martial law be implemented? How to control the message going to the public? Public health issues were for the first time being treated as military problems, with the Department of Health becoming part of the US national security apparatus.
A similar exercise took place in November 2000 in Washington DC, this time using plague as the simulated pandemic. Scenarios enacted in front of the high-level officials attending included: ‘The sight of an armed military presence in US cities has provoked protests about the curtailment of civil liberties … the question is, how do we enforce it, and to what degree? How much force do we use to keep people in their homes?’
A third exercise, called Dark Winter, held at a military base a few miles outside Washington in June 2001, simulated a full-scale smallpox emergency. It brought in journalists from well-known media, including the BBC, to question the politicians and top-level officials so that they could learn the kind of issues that would arise.
Among the conclusions:
We are ill-equipped to prevent the dire consequences of a bioweapon attack.
America lacks the resource stockpiles required for appropriate responses, including vaccines, antibiotics, and means of effective distribution.
Forcible constraints on citizens may likely be the only tools available when vaccine stocks are depleted.
Americans can no longer take basic civil liberties such as freedom of assembly or travel for granted.
On a fictional news channel created as part of the exercise, Kadlec announced: ‘The problem is, we do not have enough vaccine … it means this could be a very dark winter in America.’
When the real Covid-19 struck, Kadlec became the top emergency preparedness official co-ordinating the response from both the US Department of Health and Human Services, and the federal government.
Days after Joe Biden was declared winner of the presidential election, he warned of a ‘dark winter’ ahead, urging continued mask-wearing. ‘You might call it a coincidence, although you could also suspect that his choice of words was related to the exercise,’ Schreyer says.
The September 11, 2001 attacks brought home the terrorist threat to everybody in the global community. Proposed legal changes to extend state powers of surveillance met resistance in the US, but that disappeared following the so-called anthrax attacks in October the same year. Letters containing anthrax spores were sent to several news media offices, and to two senators who had opposed the changes.
‘To this day it is not clear who was responsible for those attacks,’ says Schreyer, who interprets them as ‘a signal that a certain red line should not be crossed’.
A month later, in November 2001, on the initiative of the US Government, a new international organisation was founded called Global Health Security Initiative (GHSI).
It was emphasised that every government was in danger of receiving a deadly pathogen, and there was a need to unite and jointly take action. The participating countries were Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Britain, and the USA. The European Union also signed up to the initiative and the WHO was involved as technical adviser. Health ministers and senior officials came together regularly to discuss bioterrorism and how best to co-ordinate a response.
In 2002 a further crucial step was taken: The group declared that the threat need not only be man-made, but might also come from nature, such as with a flu pandemic. Emergency preparation was needed for both scenarios, on a global scale.
From then on, exercises were co-ordinated internationally. The first, called Global Mercury, convened in 2003, depicted an attack by fictitious self-inoculated terrorists to spread smallpox internationally to target countries. A planning group for the exercise was led by Canada and comprised ‘trusted agents’ from all participating nations or organisations. Hundreds of people participated.
Another important exercise, convened in 2005, was called Atlantic Storm. Many of the country representatives were either current or former individuals with governmental responsibility. The real-life Madeleine Albright, for example, former US Secretary of State, played the US President.
Key questions highlighted in the post-exercise report included:
How should national leaders determine measures such as border closures or quarantine?
If actions are taken that restrict the movement of people, for how long should they be maintained? How would they be coordinated internationally, and how would the decision be made to lift them?
The basic premise of all the scenarios, Schreyer says, was to highlight decision-making processes and competencies in a public health emergency. ‘But they also involved declaring a state of emergency, implementing authoritarian leadership, bypassing parliament and investing certain federal officials with augmented decision-making power while also suspending fundamental civil rights and effecting plans to vaccinate the population.
‘What strikes me as particularly noteworthy is the ready suspension of basic human rights when responding to a pandemic or bioterror attack; because that is not necessarily a logical consequence.
‘Observing all this, the question arises: Maybe such exercises might have served as a cover and testing ground for a state of emergency and checking out how such a political situation could be handled.’
One lesson we might draw from the handling of the Covid crisis is that while politicians understandably feel a need to prepare for global disasters, they risk causing far more harm than good by following tramlines of action rigidly predetermined to be ‘the science’ of the situation, but which actually obstruct rational responses.
“The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.” Edward Grey
Several years ago, I wrote a book called Doctoring Data. It was my attempt to help people navigate their way through medical headlines and medical data.
One of the main reasons I was stimulated to write it, is because I had become deeply concerned that science, especially medical science, had been almost fully taken over by commercial interests. With the end result that much of the data we were getting bombarded with was enormously biased, and thus corrupted. I wanted to show how some of this bias gets built in.
I was not alone in my concerns. As far back as 2005, John Ioannidis wrote the very highly cited paper ‘Why most Published Research Findings are False’. It has been downloaded and read by many, many, thousands of researchers over the years, so they can’t say they don’t know:
‘Moreover for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias.’1
Marcia Angell, who edited the New England Journal of Medicine for twenty years, wrote the following. It is a quote I have used many times, in many different talks:
‘It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgement of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.’
Peter Gotzsche, who set up the Nordic Cochrane Collaboration, and who was booted out of said Cochrane collaboration for questioning the HPV vaccine (used to prevent cervical cancer) wrote the book. ‘Deadly Medicine and Organised Crime. [How big pharma has corrupted healthcare]’.
The book cover states… ‘The main reason we take so many drugs is that drug companies don’t sell drugs, they sell lies about drugs… virtually everything we know about drugs is what the companies have chosen to tell us and our doctors… if you don’t believe the system is out of control, please e-mail me and explain why drugs are the third leading cause of death.’
Richard Smith edited the British Medical Journal (BMJ) for many years. He now writes a blog, amongst other things. A few years ago, he commented:
‘Twenty years ago this week, the statistician Doug Altman published an editorial in the BMJ arguing that much medical research was of poor quality and misleading. In his editorial entitled ‘The scandal of Poor Medical Research.’ Altman wrote that much research was seriously flawed through the use of inappropriate designs, unrepresentative sample, small sample, incorrect methods of analysis and faulty interpretation… Twenty years later, I feel that things are not better, but worse…
In 2002 I spent eight marvellous weeks in a 15th palazzo in Venice writing a book on medical journals, the major outlets for medical research, and the dismal conclusion that things were badly wrong with journals and the research they published. My confidence that ‘things can only get better’ has largely drained away.’
Essentially, medical research has inexorably turned into an industry. A very lucrative industry. Many medical journals now charge authors thousands of dollars to publish their research. This ensures that it is very difficult for any researcher, not supported by a university, or a pharmaceutical company, to afford to publish anything, unless they are independently wealthy.
The journals then have the cheek to claim copyright, and charge money to anyone who actually wants to read, or download the full paper. Fifty dollars for a few on-line pages! They then bill for reprints, they charge for advertising. Those who had the temerity to write the article get nothing – and nor do the peer reviewers.
It is all very profitable. Last time I looked the Return on Investment (profit) was thirty-five per-cent for the big publishing houses. It was Robert Maxwell who first saw this opportunity for money making.
Driven by financial imperative, the research itself has also, inevitably, become biased. He who pays the paper calls the tune. Pharmaceutical companies, food manufacturers and suchlike. They can certainly afford the publication fees.
In addition to all the financial and peer-review pressure, if you dare swim against the approved mainstream views you will, very often, be ruthlessly attacked. As many people know, I am a critic of the cholesterol hypothesis, along with my band of brothers… we few, we happy few. In the 1970s, Kilmer McCully, who plays double bass in our band, was looking into a cause of cardiovascular disease that went against the mainstream view. This is what happened to him:
‘Thomas N. James, a cardiologist and president of the University of Texas Medical Branch who was also the president of the American Heart Association in 1979 and ’80, is even harsher [regarding the treatment of McCully]. ”It was worse than that – you couldn’t get ideas funded that went in other directions than cholesterol,” he says. ”You were intentionally discouraged from pursuing alternative questions. I’ve never dealt with a subject in my life that elicited such an immediate hostile response.”
It took two years for McCully to find a new research job. His children were reaching college age; he and his wife refinanced their house and borrowed from her parents. McCully says that his job search developed a pattern: he would hear of an opening, go for interviews and then the process would grind to a stop. Finally, he heard rumors of what he calls ”poison phone calls” from Harvard. ”It smelled to high heaven,” he says.’
McCully says that when he was interviewed on Canadian television after he left Harvard, he received a call from the public-affairs director of Mass. General. ”He told me to shut up,” McCully recalls. ”He said he didn’t want the names of Harvard and Mass. General associated with my theories.’ 2
More recently, I was sent a link to an article outlining the attacks made on another researcher who published a paper which found that being overweight meant having a (slightly) lower risk of death than being of ‘normal weight. This, would never do:
‘A naïve researcher published a scientific article in a respectable journal. She thought her article was straightforward and defensible. It used only publicly available data, and her findings were consistent with much of the literature on the topic. Her coauthors included two distinguished statisticians.
To her surprise her publication was met with unusual attacks from some unexpected sources within the research community. These attacks were by and large not pursued through normal channels of scientific discussion. Her research became the target of an aggressive campaign that included insults, errors, misinformation, social media posts, behind-the-scenes gossip and maneuvers, and complaints to her employer.
The goal appeared to be to undermine and discredit her work. The controversy was something deliberately manufactured, and the attacks primarily consisted of repeated assertions of preconceived opinions. She learned first-hand the antagonism that could be provoked by inconvenient scientific findings. Guidelines and recommendations should be based on objective and unbiased data. Development of public health policy and clinical recommendations is complex and needs to be evidence-based rather than belief-based. This can be challenging when a hot-button topic is involved.’ 3
Those who lead the attacks on her were my very favourite researchers, Walter Willet and Frank Hu. Two eminent researchers from Harvard who I nickname Tweedledum and Tweedledummer. Harvard itself has become an institution, which, along with Oxford University, comes up a lot in tales of bullying and intimidation. Willet and Hu are internationally known for promoting vegetarian and vegan diets. Willet is a key figure in the EAT-Lancet initiative.
Where is science in all this? I feel the need to state, at this point, that I don’t mind attacks on ideas. I like robust debate. Science can only progress through a process of new hypotheses being proposed, being attacked, being refined and strengthened – or obliterated. But what we see now is not science. It is the obliteration of science itself:
‘Anyone who has been a scientist for more than 20 years will realize that there has been a progressive decline in the honesty of communications between scientists, between scientists and their institutions and the outside world.
Yet, real science must be an area where truth is the rule; or else the activity simply stops being scient and becomes something else: Zombie science. Zombie science is a science that is dead, but is artificially keep moving by a continual infusion of funding. From a distance Zombie science looks like the real thing, the surface features of a science are in place – white coats, laboratories, computer programming, PhDs, papers, conferences, prizes etc. But the Zombie is not interested in the pursuit of truth – its citations are externally-controlled and directed at non-scientific goals, and inside the Zombie everything is rotten…
Scientists are usually too careful and clever to risk telling outright lies, but instead they push the envelope of exaggeration, selectivity and distortion as far as possible. And tolerance for this kind of untruthfulness has greatly increased over recent years. So, it is now routine for scientists deliberately to ‘hype’ the significance of their status and performance and ‘spin’ the importance of their research.’ Bruce Charlton: Professor of Theoretical Medicine.
I was already pretty depressed with the direction that medical science was taking. Then COVID19 came along, the distortion and hype became so outrageous that I almost gave up trying to establish what was true, and was just made up nonsense.
For example, I stated, right at the start of the COVID19 pandemic, that vitamin D could be important in protecting against the virus. For having the audacity to say this, I was attacked by the fact checkers. Indeed, anyone promoting vitamin D to reduce the risk of COVID19 infection, was ruthlessly hounded.
Guess what. Here from 17th June:
‘Hospitalized COVID-19 patients are far more likely to die or to end up in severe or critical condition if they are vitamin D-deficient, Israeli researchers have found.
In a study conducted in a Galilee hospital, 26 percent of vitamin D-deficient coronavirus patients died, while among other patients the figure was at 3%.
“This is a very, very significant discrepancy, which represents a big clue that starting the disease with very low vitamin D leads to increased mortality and more severity,” Dr. Amir Bashkin, endocrinologist and part of the research team, told The Times of Israel.’ 4
I also recommended vitamin C for those already in hospital. Again, I was attacked, as has everyone who has dared to mention COVID19 and vitamin C in the same sentence. Yet, we know that vitamin C is essential for the health and wellbeing of blood vessels, and the endothelial cells that line them. In severe infection the body burns through vitamin C, and people can become ‘scrobutic’ (the name given to severe lack of vitamin C).
Vitamin C is also known to have powerful anti-viral activity. It has been known for years. Here, from an article in 1996:
‘Over the years, it has become well recognized that ascorbate can bolster the natural defense mechanisms of the host and provide protection not only against infectious disease, but also against cancer and other chronic degenerative diseases. The functions involved in ascorbate’s enhancement of host resistance to disease include its biosynthetic (hy-droxylating), antioxidant, and immunostimulatory activities. In addition, ascorbate exerts a direct antiviral action that may confer specific protection against viral disease. The vitamin has been found to inactivate a wide spectrum of viruses as well as suppress viral replication abd expression in infected cell.’ 5
I like quoting research on vitamins from way before COVID19 appeared, where people were simply looking at Vitamin C without the entire medico-industrial complex looking over their shoulder, ready to stamp out anything they don’t like. Despite a mass of evidence that Vitamin C has benefits against viral infection, it is a complete no-go area and no-one even dares to research it now. Facebook removes any content relating to Vitamin C and COVID19.
As of today, any criticism of the mainstream narrative is simply being removed. Those who dare to raise their heads above the parapet, have them chopped off:
‘Dr Francis Christian, practising surgeon and clinical professor of general surgery at the University of Saskatchewan, has been immediately suspended from all teaching and will be permanently removed from his role as of September.
Dr Christian has been a surgeon for more than 20 years and began working in Saskatoon in 2007. He was appointed Director of the Surgical Humanities Program and Director of Quality and Patient Safety in 2018 and co-founded the Surgical Humanities Program. Dr. Christian is also the Editor of the Journal of The Surgical Humanities.
On June 17th Dr Christian released a statement to over 200 of his colleagues, expressing concern over the lack of informed consent involved in Canada’s “Covid19 vaccination” program, especially regarding children.
To be clear, Dr Christian’s position is hardly an extreme one.
He believes the virus is real, he believes in vaccination as a general principle, he believes the elderly and vulnerable may benefit from the Covid “vaccine”… he simply doesn’t agree it should be used on children, and feels parents are not being given enough information for properly informed consent.’ 6
When I wrote Doctoring Data, a few years ago, I included the following thoughts about the increasing censorship and punishment that was already very clearly out in the open:
… where does it end? Well, we know where it ends.
First, they came for the communists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist
Then they came for the socialists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a socialist
Then they came from the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist
Then they came for me, and there was no-one left to speak for me
Do you think this is a massive over-reaction? Do I really believe that we are heading for some form of totalitarian stated, where dissent against the medical ‘experts’ will be punishable by imprisonment? Well, yes, I do. We are already in a situation where doctors who fail to follow the dreaded ‘guidelines’ can be sued, or dragged in front the General Medical Council, and struck of. Thus losing their job and income…
Where next?
The lamps are not just going out all over Europe. They are going out, all over the world.
Covid 19 was and is a pseudopandemic. It was the gross exaggeration of the threat posed by a low mortality respiratory illness, comparable to influenza.
The pseudopandemic was a psychological operation (psy-op) designed to terrorise the public. The objective was to accustom the people to draconian system of government oppression by familiarising them with the mechanisms of a biosecurity state.
The pseudopandemic was based upon an influenza like illness which, regardless of its origin, was not and is not a disease which can legitimately be considered the cause of a “pandemic.” The only way it could ever be described as such was by the removal of any reference to mortality from the World Health Organisation’s definition.
COVID 19 is a disease which has a mortality age distribution profile indistinguishable from standard mortality. Unlike influenza, which disproportionately impacts the young, in terms of threat to life, COVID 19 was and is a wholly unremarkable illness.
Were it not for political theatrics and mainstream media propaganda, which began in China, no one, outside of the medical profession and COVID 19 sufferers, would have remarked on this disease.
The illusion of overwhelmed health services was created by massively reducing their capacity and staffing levels while simultaneously reorienting healthcare to treat everyone who presented with a respiratory illness as viral plague carriers.
In reality the pseudopandemic saw unusually low levels of hospital bed occupancy. However, due to the additional policies and procedures heaped upon them, healthcare services were thrown into into disarray.
This was combined with the use of tests, incapable of diagnosing anything, as proof of a COVID 19 “case.” This enabled governments around the world to make absurd claims about the threat level. They relied upon fake science and junk data throughout. As symptomatic illness and resultant disease mortality was relatively low, they asserted that people without any signs of illness (the asymptomatic) were spreading the contagion.
This was abject nonsense. There was no evidence that the asymptomatic infected anyone. Those at risk of severe illness were the small minority of people who already had serious comorbidities, often due to their age.
The mass house arrests (lockdowns) and other measures, such as wearing face masks, were then used to increase the infection risk, to reduce broad levels of population immunity and give the false impression of an extraordinary public health threat. The removal of health care for every other disease, including cancer and ischaemic heart disease, coupled with the health costs of increasing deprivation and immunosuppressant policies, were then exploited to bolster the illusion of a pandemic.
This does not mean that COVID 19 didn’t kill people but those who died of the disease were a small percentage of the total numbers claimed. COVID 19 had no discernible impact upon all-cause mortality. The increase above one of the lowest ever 5 year mortality averages was mainly caused by the withdrawal of health services, as increasing numbers of people died in their own homes or in overburdened care settings, without receiving normal medical attention.
Despite these efforts, mortality in 2020 was still only the 9th highest in the first two decades of the 21st century and one of the lowest age-standardised mortality rates in the last 50 years.
COVID 19 presented virtually no risk to those of working age an none at all to the young. There was no evidence that children were either at or presented any risk. The school closures were part of the pseudopandemic psy-op. They gave the misleading impression of an emergency and provided fraudulent justification for vaccinating children.
The pseudopandemic was planned to lead to the complete transformation of our culture and society. It has irrevocably changed our relationship with governments, has caused catastrophic economic disruption, shutdown global trade and saw millions become reliant on government subsidies. The pseudopandemic was the opening salvo in a global coup d’état.
The new pseudopandemic biosecurity apparatus is designed to control our behaviour as we are forced through a global transformation. Those behind the pseudopandemic intend to change the International Monetary and Financial System (IMFS) and establish global governance in the shape of technocracy. Technocracy is a neofeudal, totalitarian system based upon communitarian principles.
We will be offered the illusion of participatory democracy through our required participation and belief in “civil society.” Civil society will be a “stakeholder” in the Technocracy. However, civil society will only be allowed to pursue polices set at the global level.
Applied psychology was used throughout the pseudopandemic to fix our “choice environment.” We were conditioned to believe that following the rules was the responsible and moral choice. In reality our behaviour was being deliberately altered to ensure our compliance with the diktats of the biosecurity state, preparing society for the transition to technocracy.
The new global IMFS is built upon carbon trading and a $120 trillion carbon bond market is currently under construction. Assets are being defined in terms of their Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics which rate investments depending upon their environmental, social and governance (ESG) score.
These metrics have been established by the World Economic Forum working in partnership with the central banks, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and other stakeholder capitalists, such as the investment firm BlackRock.
The global system of central banks, headed by the BIS, are “going direct” by directly funding government policy. They have linked monetary policy to fiscal policy which means ultimate control of all government spending by the BIS. The Financial Services Board of the BIS regulates ESG’s and determines the value of sustainable financial assets.
In this way, the global technocracy will facilitate the continuation of crony capitalism, as only the right stakeholders will receive the approved ESG rating. Those who don’t will not be able to raise the investment capital they need and will be forced out of business.
“Going direct” began before the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared a global pandemic. All of the economic and financial responses to the pseudopandemic, such as furlough and business support packages, were agreed as part of the “going direct” plan in August 2019.
The so called economic stimulus of Quantitative Easing (QE) is a fraud. It is based upon the unbridled monetisation of debt on an unprecedented scale. Going direct means that the toxic junk assets of the financial institutions have been taken on to the balance sheets of the central banks. Thus creating unimaginable levels of public debt that can never, and will never, be repaid.
The QE money, created out of absolutely nothing, has been pumped into the financial markets for the continued enrichment of the right stakeholders. The vast expansion of the money supply will shortly lead to hyperinflation. The mass unemployment that will occur as a result of the austerity, caused both by the staggering levels of debt and our transition to a new IMFS, will create stagflation.
The new net zero carbon economy will mean permanent austerity for the majority. The Technate will provide a universal basic income (UBI), or some variation of the concept, to be paid in Central Bank Digital Currency (CDBC). This will mean that no one will have their own money, other than the chosen stakeholders, as all transactions will be monitored and controlled by the central banks.
Those who oppose the neofeudal authority of the corporate, stakeholder Technate and refuse to comply with the imposition of biosecurity obligations will have their CBDC restricted or switched off. The pseudopandemic has established the framework of the biosecurity state that will control all our lives. The vaccine passports are the gateway to full biometric identity for every citizen in the new normal Technate.
We will be required to show our biometric ID on demand. Access to goods and services will be monitored and restricted as desired by the Technate. UBI and CBDC combined with biometric ID will ensure our compliance. The central planners of the Technate will oversee the AI controlled system which will automatically limit the freedoms of those who defy the rules decreed by the stakeholder capitalists.
Money, as we currently understand it, is no longer required by those behind the pseudopandemic. The net zero carbon economy enables them to seize control of the “global commons.” This means that they will have dominion over all of the Earth’s natural resources. All land, the oceans, the atmosphere and even space is being converted into assets via Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics.
Not only will we have no money of our own, we will be unable to access the resources we need to survive without permission from the Technate. While this system of technocracy has been planned for more than a century, it was the financial collapse in 2008 that led the pseudopandemic planners to increase the pace of transformation. The monetisation of debt had long been the source of their authority but this IMFS was unsustainable. As all money was debt, its eventual collapse was inevitable. It passed the point of no return in 2008.
With their going direct plan in place, the stage was set for the pseudopandemic. SARS-CoV-2 provided the perfect opportunity and the core conspirators behind the pseudopandemic had trained extensively in readiness for the operation. We were then barraged by a mainstream media propaganda campaign and military’s information warfare units were deployed to control our “choice environment.”
Scientific and medical doubts were censored as the suspension of normal democratic processes was exploited to introduce the biosecurity state. Laws were passed to allow government to commit any crime it wished in pursuit of stakeholder capitalist sustainable development goals. Laws to end the right of protest and censor free speech are moving unopposed through the legislature as national governments, who are no more than stakeholder partners within the new normal technocracy, prepare us for the coming Technate.
For the core conspirators of the pseudopandemic this is the realisation of their long held dream of global governance. They are steeped in the mythology of eugenics and population control. Once they have total control of the global commons they will no longer need us as consumers and are intent upon significant population reduction.
As insane as this all sounds the evidence, explored in pseudopandemic, is overwhelming. We are facing global neofeudalism unless we act now. Herein lies our hope.
The core conspirators have no real power. It is an illusion that they are desperate to maintain. They invest billions in propaganda, hybrid warfare and security systems because they are terrified that we will realise what they are doing.
Their plan can only succeed if we believe their lies and comply with their orders. If we don’t there is nothing they can do about it.
We can reset the world.
Pseudopandemic, by Iain Davis, is available both in kindle and paperback, from Amazon and other sellers. Or you can subscribe to In This Together for a free copy.
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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With their going direct plan in place, the stage was set for the pseudopandemic. SARS-CoV-2 provided the perfect opportunity and the core conspirators behind the pseudopandemic had trained extensively in readiness for the operation. We were then barraged by a mainstream media propaganda campaign and military’s information warfare units were deployed to control our “choice environment.”
Aletho News
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