The “public health policies” allegedly in place to fight Covid-19 are being rebranded as “saving the planet”
Yesterday was Earth Day. The traditional day environmental hashtags temporarily trend across all social media sites. This year was no different, with the exception of the stronger than usual whiff of agenda.
The narrative of the “deadly viral pandemic” is slowly losing momentum. Whether this is through the public having “post viral fatigue”(as it were), or a deliberate shift in media talking points is unclear. But there’s certainly less energy in the story than at this time last year.
That said, it’s also perfectly clear that governments around the world are in no mood to give up their newly acquired “emergency powers”, and that alleged “anti-covid measures” are not going away anytime soon.
Especially lockdowns, which are being freshly marketed as “good for the planet”.
The narrative that locking down the public was “helping the Earth heal” actually dates back to last March, when it was reported all across the world news that only a few weeks of lockdown had cleared up the water in Venician canals so much there were dolphins swimming through the city.
This story later proved to be completely untrue, but that didn’t stop dozens of outlets from picking up the story and running with it.
At various times in the intervening year, Covid has been sold as having an environmental silver-lining. Including potentially “saving the planet”.
Just last month, the Guardian published a story with the headline:
“Global lockdown every two years needed to meet Paris CO2 goals – study”
That this is all about marketing and opinion control is only further evidenced by the fact that, with a few hours, they edited the headline to remove mention of lockdowns, the new one reading:
“Equivalent of Covid emissions drop needed every two years – study”
At around the same time, they had another article, warning that emissions will increase to “pre-pandemic levels” once lockdowns are ended. Another saying lockdown has taught us to “love nature”. And another claiming the UK’s “star count” had increased thanks to lockdown.
All this kicked into another gear on Earth Day, the theme of which is Restore Our EarthTM (yes, it really is a registered trademark).
Yesterday morning I woke up to a news alert on my phone, claiming this Earth Day we should “celebrate how much the planet has healed during lockdown“.
Later, I saw an advert for a new documentary titled “The Year the Earth Changed”, chronicling the ways nature has rebounded during lockdown, and how much the “Earth has healed”.
To quote one review [emphasis added]:
… lockdown offers scientists a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to observe the extent of human impact on animal behaviour, by simply taking us out of the picture.
We can use what we learn to re-evaluate and modify our habits, they argue, instead of mindlessly returning to how things once were in a pre-pandemic world.
It says, before concluding:
It offers an affirmative slant – less ‘we are the virus’; more, the suffering of these last 12 or so months hasn’t been all in vain – as well as a way out of the environmental disaster that we’re unquestionably still facing.
An article in Forbes urges people to “embrace the lessons of the pandemic”:
… the planet has had a giant pause during the pandemic and had a chance to repair and reclaim itself. The planet is not the problem, we are, so how do we now continue some of the good efforts that we adopted under sudden social distancing and the threat of Covid-19?
The Evening Standard claims the pandemic produced a “70% drop in vehicle emissions” in the city of London.
A press release from the Washington State Department of Health says “tele-working could save the world”.
Sky News reports the UK’s carbon footprint is down 17% as the “pandemic forces people to adopt eco-friendly lifestyles”.
It goes on and on and on.
Essentially, “lockdowns” – which, we remind you, are not shown to have any impact on the transmission of the “virus” – are now being rebranded, not just as “good for public health”, but also good for the planet.
Before getting to the why of all this, let’s deal with the claim itself: Has the lockdown been good for the environment?
The answer to that is either “probably no” or “certainly not”, depending on your priorities.
For starters there are plastic-fibre disposable masks – which, we remind you, do absolutely nothing to prevent the spread of viruses – hundreds of thousands of which are now busily washing up on beaches, entangling wildlife and clogging sewers all over the world.
“What about emissions?” I hear you say, “won’t they be reduced?” Well, maybe. But if they are, it’s not by much.
The “lockdowns” have been sold in the press like a total halt to all human activity but, in reality, it’s mostly small businesses being closed down, and a lot of important-sounding but largely unproductive people having zoom meetings.
The militaries of the world still travel, the navies are still at sea. Public transport is still running, even if it is lessened in some places. Emergency vehicles keep chugging along. Rubbish and recycling are still collected. Container ships, cargo planes, long-haul trucks and freight trains are still taking goods to every part of the world.
The big retailers – WalMart, Tesco, CostCo, Amazon etc. – they are all still open, and their supply lines flow all over the world.
The idea that all human activity just stopped dead is a convenient lie, sold to the sort of people who still buy newspapers and believe that absolutely everyone (or at least, everyone who matters) works a job that a) involves commuting into a city, b) can be done just as easily at home.
This is of course untrue, and most of the real, vital work of keeping society moving still happens.
Mines, mills, and plants still exist. Power stations, dams and sewage processors are still ticking over. Even the service economy is still running, just with different people moving in the opposite direction. Deliveroo, Uber and JustEat drive cars, and any decrease in people going to restaurants will be counterbalanced by increased take-away deliveries.
Factories in China are still making all the things that are being shipped around the world and then delivered to our doors, rather than shipped around the world and having us going to get them. Is that really much of a change in emissions?
Whether you drive to Waitrose, or Waitrose drives to you, the same amount of fuel is being used. Ordering hand sanitiser, an exercise bike or some spare batteries online is not, in any way, more environmentally friendly than walking into town to buy them in person.
And that doesn’t even account for the increased use of electricity/gas caused by (some) people staying home more. Or the fact that many countries never locked down at all.
Even the study being cited in the Guardian admits the lower CO2 emissions for 2020 are merely “projections”.
In short, no, there is no publicly available evidence that “lockdown” was good for the environment at all.
And, indeed, the idea that it was doesn’t really make much sense when you think about it.
The interesting thing is there’s a whole bunch of articles out there which readily admit this. Such as this one in National Geographic, or this one from the BBC. And a handful of others too.
All arguing that the Covid19 lockdown won’t help stop climate change, or will have only a small impact on emissions, or might even make it worse in the long run.
Why? Because they are the other side of the propaganda. The proverbial stick to the “planet is healing” carrot. Telling people this lockdown won’t heal the planet because it’s not strict enough, or because when it stops we’ll go back to normal.
Scary, doomsaying headlines which leave an ellipsis they expect their readers to mentally fill in: “well, I guess we shouldn’t stop lockdowns then.”
This is not the only example of “anti-pandemic” or “public health” policies being turned to include climate change.
Last summer I wrote about an academic article that suggested “moral enhancement” for “coronavirus defectors”. It argued for putting chemicals in the water supply in order to make people more obedient to mask and/or vaccine mandates, and went on to suggest the same technique could be used to combat the “suffering associated with climate change”.
Even when not directly analogous there are plenty of headlines, interviews and articles which clearly seek to associate “Covid” and “climate change” in the public mind.
“Covid19 and climate crisis are part of the same battle”, headlined The Guardian in December. As well as “Covid gives us a chance to act on Climate”.
In an interview originally aired on Earth Day, Prince William urged the world to apply the same “spirit of invention” to climate change that they have done to Covid19 “vaccines”.
This ties in with the Royal’s “Give Earth a Shot” program… which was launched in December 2019, BEFORE the pandemic (or vaccines) ever became a talking point.
A timely reminder that a lot of the solutions proposed to fight the “pandemic”, were being suggested to fight other things before the pandemic even existed. A cashless society, decreased air travel, population control, mass surveillance, decreased meat production and others have all been on the agenda since long before Covid was close to becoming a thing… and have all been mooted as ways to fight this pandemic (or “future pandemics”).
Even the so-called Great Reset actually pre-dates the pandemic.
After all, what is the much talked about “green new deal”, if not a prototype of the WEF’s Great Reset plan?
Mark Carney – former governor of the Bank of England – called for an economic reset and “brand new financial system” in order to “fight climate change”, in a December 2019 article for the International Monetary Fund website… which was, again, weeks BEFORE the “pandemic” materialised.
That’s the takeaway message here, really: The agenda revealed by the past year of pandemic propaganda has always been there, it was just never quite so brazen. It was the before Covid, and will still be there if and/or when they stop talking about Covid altogether.
The “Great Reset” and the “New Normal” are policy goals that pre-date Covid, and are far more important than any of the tools used to pursue them. The created “pandemic” is nothing but a means to an end. They might discard or sideline the narrative of the virus, they might switch storylines for a few months, or stop using certain phrases altogether for a while. But that doesn’t mean their greater agenda has changed at all.
They’ve shown us their hand. They’ve told us – upfront and out loud – what they want to achieve.
Total economic control, marked depreciation of living standards, removal of national sovereignty and radical erosion of individual liberties.
That’s the endgame here. They said so.
It’s our responsibility to hold on to that knowledge and use it. To withhold any belief and see everything with a sceptical eye. Everything. Every story in the press. Every news item on the television. Any government pronouncement or piece of legislation.
Viruses or vaccines. Poverty or prosperity. Discrimination or diversity. War or world peace. The agenda doesn’t change.
Whoever is talking. Whatever they are talking about. Whatever they claim to want. The agenda doesn’t change.
Republican or Democrat. Conservative or Labour. Red or Blue. The agenda doesn’t change.
The colour doesn’t matter. Not even when it’s green.
Happy Earth Day.
April 23, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | Covid-19 |
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Europe can’t soft-pedal a sanitary techno-dictatorship while claiming to protect people from abuse by AI. Pick a lane, hypocrites.
The EU is proposing to regulate AI and facial recognition in the interest of privacy, while pushing ahead with an intrusive scheme that would strongarm citizens into disclosing private medical data through digital certificates.
This week, when logging into the French government’s TousAntiCovid smartphone application – a one-stop shop for everything Covid-19 related, including the latest statistics, news and self-certification forms to be out and about after the 7pm curfew – French citizens discovered a new feature had been quietly added: “My wallet: Your test certificates will be available here,” it reads.
The addition is detailed in the app as an “experiment in progress, only on some flights to Corsica” via Air France and Air Corsica – both of which are controlled in part by the French government through a 29% stake in Air France-KLM, making the state the company’s single largest shareholder.
“To digitize your test certificates and always have them at hand, it’s simple: once the result of your test is available, you will receive a text message with a link and instructions to follow,” according to the new feature. A button below the message can be clicked to activate the user’s camera and scan the QR code of a Covid-19 PCR test.
In an interview earlier this month with CBS News, French President Emmanuel Macron said that “we are building a European certificate to facilitate the travels after these restrictions between the different European countries with testing and vaccination. And the idea indeed is altogether to offer that to the American citizen when they decided to vaccinate or with a PCR test being negative.”
The royal ‘we’ is a reference to the European Union, which has also claimed to be working on a bloc-wide certificate. Hypocritical EU officials also introduced a proposal this week to regulate facial recognition and other artificial intelligence, lest any such technology risk violating personal privacy – kind of like the EU is working on doing with its scheme to have people disclose private medical information to anyone demanding it, under the guise of sanitary nanny statism.
The beta test that has just creeped up on the French government’s anti-Covid app for use on the airline it controls is a little toe dipped into the water of a potentially massive, privacy-breaching tsunami.
At what point do people start to rebel, to send the government the message that state intrusion into the most intimate aspects of their personal life – in this case their medical history – has gone too far? When the government asks for vaccination and antibody certificates to be uploaded? When it expands the program beyond use by Air France to other airlines? When it goes beyond air travel to everyday venues? When a hacker breaches the system and accesses sensitive information? When health insurers start demanding QR codes to Covid-19 related testing in order to reassess the cost of people’s premiums?
French people are known for taking to the streets at the slightest provocation. The now defunct Yellow Vest movement, a casualty of Covid-19 era mass gathering bans, initially ignited over a mere gas tax increase. The creeping sanitary authoritarianism evidenced by the recent Covid app update isn’t as alarming to people as a gas tax because it’s being soft-pedalled, introduced too incrementally to provoke a backlash. No one really cares right now if you need a negative PCR test scanned into your phone to board a plane to Corsica, except the relatively few people going there. And that’s not enough to raise a ruckus.
But the government is deliberately calling it an ‘experiment in progress’ for a reason. It obviously isn’t going to end there. Macron said as much to CBS News. He’s also creating a false dichotomy. Macron is suggesting that the certificates – which he has previously said would be optional (unless you want to leave the house, I guess) – would allow the virus to be controlled, while lifting domestic restrictions and allowing international tourism to resume. The alternative is to be forced to maintain restrictions.
But look, the restrictions will end when we, the people, say they will. And far too many citizens have yet to wake up to that fact.
The insecurity of governments regarding their capacity to contend with a virus, or terrorism, or any other perceived threat, isn’t our personal problem. And it certainly shouldn’t be a reason to invade people’s private lives without a court ordered warrant.
Demanding that everyone provide a Covid test as proof of sanitary ‘innocence’ is radically dystopian. If people want to be vaccinated, that’s their choice. If they don’t, then that’s their choice, too. They may choose to take their chances on catching Covid, and developing natural immunity.
The schizophrenic EU and its member states, like France, which constantly claim that personal privacy is a non-negotiable core value, need to pick a lane. Is Europe going to be a technology-enabled sanitary dictatorship? Or are you going to protect us from creeping fascism? Pick one. Because you can’t have both.
Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist and host of an independently produced French-language program that airs on Sputnik France. Her website can be found at rachelmarsden.com
April 23, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, European Union, France, Human rights |
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In a widely reported announcement, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned, “Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19.”
Taking the drug “can be very dangerous,” FDA said, though 33 years of human use, billions of doses and a Nobel Prize for annihilating parasitic illness suggest otherwise.
The FDA statement, which is the lynchpin of COVID policies worldwide, purported to protect the public from taking over-the-counter ivermectin meant for animals. But its real purpose was to instill fear.
Indeed, a war on ivermectin — by public health agencies, corporations that stand to cash in on the pandemic, and social and mass media – is being waged to dismiss a drug that could be a lifeline to normalcy.
Why?
Confused By The Facts
Ivermectin is a case study in official decrees that do not align with reality.
Take a close look the World Health Organization’s contortions before declaring on March 31 that ivermectin should be limited to experimental trials. WHO first ignored its own commissioned analysis that found the drug would cut COVID deaths by 75 percent. Then, WHO handed the job to a different team, which also found far fewer deaths with ivermectin – but ruled its cherry-picked evidence unconvincing. That is the analysis WHO chose.
Or read the lone study — one among 52 ivermectin trials — that did not find significant evidence of improvement in COVID patients. Despite contradictions and flaws, including some patients given the wrong drug, the results were accepted by the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Scour the list of positive studies, many from countries where this inexpensive drug is reducing illness. Few medical journals will publish them. Though available online, the media ignores them. Major outlets that have not done a single serious story on ivermectin jumped on the told-you-so JAMA story.
Finally, consider that right now, social media is in the midst of a brutal little-reported campaign of censorship to the point that YouTube policy precludes users from saying ivermectin prevents or helps COVID.
Why so rigorously manage the message if the evidence is so weak?
Data Versus The FDA
A website tracker summarizes those 52 ivermectin trials, involving more than 17,500 patients. Collectively, ivermectin:
–Prevented 85 percent of infections (similar to vaccines);
–Resolved 81 percent of early illness;
–Improved 43 percent of late-treated patients;
–Reduced deaths by 76 percent.
As authorities dismiss study after study, it has become clear. The drug’s rejection is not based on science, data or the experience of many doctors. Instead, a disinformation campaign is raging to demonize the drug and belittle studies that support it.
Exhibit #1: The FDA announcement. The agency said in March it had received “multiple reports of patients who have required medical support and been hospitalized” after taking a form of ivermectin used to treat horse parasites.
Among many alarming articles, I could not find any that actually told how many people were “poisoning themselves,” as one report put it. I asked the FDA press office what it meant by “multiple.”
The answer: Four. Three people required hospitalization, though, beyond that, the FDA had no details.
“Some of these cases were lost to follow up, so we can’t be sure of the final outcome,” a spokesperson wrote in an email. “Privacy laws” precluded further comment.
For all we know, the patients might have been sick from COVID, not horse paste, which is regrettably used when patients cannot get the real thing. Ivermectin, incidentally, is FDA-approved and permitted for off-label use, with just 19 associated deaths since 1992, compared to 503 for remdesivir since 2020.
The seeds were nonetheless planted: Ivermectin was an “evolving threat” and “fake COVID treatment,” encouraged by “conspiracy sites trying to push this drug in really high doses.” All based on four cases.
So far, there have been more than 2,500 U.S. deaths after vaccination for COVID-19. I see no hysterical reporting on that.
Unsupported Conclusions
Exhibit #2: The WHO recommendation. On March 31, the World Health Organization dealt a gut punch to ivermectin, decreeing it should be limited to clinical trials only. But the WHO’s review was limited, questionable and seemingly hastily done.
First, the WHO working group called the evidence that ivermectin reduced deaths of “very low certainty” based on five studies. Why so few?
An independent analysis, also done in March, analyzed 13 studies and found ivermectin decreased the risk of death by 68 percent, an effect that was “consistent across mild to moderate and severe disease subgroups.” The systematic review was led by Dr. Tess Lawrie, a physician and author on 41 Cochrane Reviews, which are routinely used to inform medical guidelines.
In the earlier report that WHO discounted, six mortality studies were examined by the University of Liverpool’s Dr. Andrew Hill — four of which were curiously left out of the second WHO analysis.
Notably, even the studies assessed by the WHO group showed strong reductions in deaths. But the group used unconventional methods to downgrade them, Lawrie said in a YouTube interview. It classified two less-impressive studies as having a low risk of bias, wrongly in Lawrie’s view. That effectively inflated their importance, and helped the review conclude the evidence was lacking.
“You have a risk of death across these studies — in their data — of 70 per thousand, and if you get ivermectin you have a risk of death of 14 per thousand,” Lawrie said in the interview with Dr. John Campbell, a PhD nursing teacher.
That comes to a 72 percent reduction in deaths in patients treated with ivermectin, Lawrie said. But indicative of what Lawrie called a “slapdash” approach, a table of conclusions in the WHO study refers to seven, not five, mortality studies, and to an 81 percent reduction in deaths. “Very strange,” Lawrie said.
Significantly, the review omitted trials analyzed by both Lawrie and Hill that demonstrated significantly fewer deaths: From Egypt (92 percent), Bangladesh (86 percent), Iraq (67 percent) and Turkey (33 percent).
Moreover, the WHO review failed to even look at the strongest evidence in favor of ivermectin: its potential to prevent infection.
Dr. Pierre Kory, president of Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, believes that omission was designed to protect the Emergency Use Authorization, which allows administration of unapproved vaccines if no alternative exists. “If ivermectin were to be approved as a standard therapy,” he said in a broadcast to supporters, “…that would kneecap the entire global vaccine policy around the world.”
(Note: I reached out several times to Dr. Bram Rochwerg, co-chair of the WHO analysis. A spokesperson at McMaster University in Canada, where he is an associate professor, said he would have no comment.)
Selection Bias?
Exhibit #3: The JAMA study. Predictably, the WHO report included the only existing negative ivermectin trial in its review, giving the Cali, Colombia study an inexplicable thumbs-up label of “low risk of bias.”
The flaws, outlined in a critique led by David Scheim and in a letter signed by 120 doctors, call that designation, and JAMA’s publication, into serious question.
–With an average age of 37 and lean body mass, the study population was inclined to do well from the get-go — “nebulous parameters,” Schein said, that made statistical relevance negligible. Testament to the robust nature of the group, just one person died in the untreated group, a rate six times lower than locally. Of note, no treated patient died.
–38 people in the control group were accidentally given ivermectin, a serious error, underscoring the letter’s assertion, “The study’s flaws span subject population, design, execution and controls.”
–Participants reported symptoms by telephone, and without objective examination, 16 days after treatment ended, a highly unusual lag time. “Not credible,” the letter said.
Of crucial importance, both patient groups – one got ivermectin and one did not – had almost identical, though minor, side effects, a “striking anomaly” that suggests something, Scheim said. Perhaps ivermectin, which is widely available in Colombia, did not appear to make a significant difference because both groups were taking it. Ivermectin has a bitter taste and 64 placebo patients were given sugar water, compromising a fundamental of controlled trials — that patients cannot discern what treatment they get.
Why would a premier medical journal accept an article with such glaring flaws?
An Organized Campaign
Exhibit #4: Information Management. Everyday, my inbox grows with messages of people who had items removed from Twitter, LinkIn, Facebook and YouTube. Several people were locked out of Twitter for tweets on the results of a registered trial that found ivermectin prevents COVID. I was also locked out of Twitter for eight days after writing the fateful words: “Ivermectin works.”
Aside from a couple of opinion articles in the Wall Street Journal, the media has barely taken notice. Yet this is a clear assault on free expression by outlets that, though privately owned, are essentially monopolies.
“We must never allow anonymous censors to determine what is medical misinformation,” Associate Professor Seymour M. Cohen of Mount Sinai School of Medicine, in a letter to the WSJ, “and cancel scientific inquiry and discussion with which they disagree.”
Held Hostage
Although Kory, Lawrie and others are accused of medical “misinformation,” the real problem, Kory says, is disinformation, akin to historical efforts to cover-up the ills of tobacco and other pharmaceutical and government mistakes.
Among the slew of studies that support ivermectin, you will rarely if ever find listed under authors’ potential conflicts of interest the names of pharmaceutical powerhouses like Sanofi Pasteur, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen, Merck Sharp & Dohme, and Gilead. Yet, each of those was listed on the JAMA article’s COI disclosures.
Merck itself pioneered ivermectin – its chief scientist sharing the Nobel in the process – and has repeatedly said it is a safe, essential medication. Yet Merck disavowed ivermectin for COVID in February in yet another example of how facts do not align with reality. Reuters and others eagerly reported Merck’s statement, but never mentioned the company’s $356-million deal to supply the U.S. government with an “investigational therapeutic.”
The rejection of ivermectin may not be a grand coordinated conspiracy, says Jay Sanchez, an attorney in New York City. Rather, it grows out of something more mundane and insidious that he studied 35 years ago in a course at Harvard Law School taught by later-Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Bryer: “Regulatory Capture.”
“Regulatory agencies may come to be dominated by the industries or interests they are charged with regulating,” says Investipedia. Hence, they act more on behalf of the companies they regulate than on the public they serve. Blame “regulator complacency, cozy relationships,” wrote economist Fred S. Grygiel, “and ultimately, conflicts of interest.”
Those relationships allow PR campaigns to shape messages, news outlets and social media companies to mercilessly reinforce them, and spineless government agencies go along with the shadows of doubt rather than the robust evidence.
That is ivermectin today.
Mary Beth Pfeiffer is an investigative journalist and author of Lyme: The First Epidemic of Climate Change. She was authored 10 articles for Trial Site News.
April 23, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, FDA, WHO |
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The Sun newspaper is claiming this morning that it has seen “core planning documents,” which lay out plans to vaccinate children from September, in a bid to prevent a third wave of coronavirus.
A government source told The Sun that vaccinating children as young as five years-old is also being considered. The source told the newspaper that;
“Plans are in place to vaccinate children aged 12 upwards, and senior government officials have been briefed. Though controversial, it is deemed necessary to stop the UK regressing in its remarkable fight against Covid.”
The core planning documents also suggest that everyone over 50 should be offered a booster jab in the Autumn.
Children are virtually unaffected by coronavirus, but government scientists believe that they can pass it on to elderly relatives or vulnerable people. There is absolutely no evidence to support this claim.
Transmission rates did not increase when schools were reopened last Autumn, nor when they were reopened last month. There is zero evidence to back up the claim that asymptomatic people can spread the virus.
Why is the government hell-bent on vaccinating children for an illness that doesn’t affect them? Where are the paediatricians? The silence is deafening. The media, typically, is absent.
April 23, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, UK |
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It’s the wrong time for US youths with higher education aspirations in mind.
On increasing numbers of US campuses, it’s hazardous to their health and well-being to enroll at colleges and universities whose policies may irreversibly harm them near-or-longer-term.
After Rutgers in March required students to be jabbed with experimental, high-risk, unapproved, rushed to market, DNA altering Pfizer or Moderna mRNA technology that risks irreversible harm to health, a dozen or more US schools of higher education went the same way.
By mandating the above, they’re putting their student body in harm’s way — irresponsibly and recklessly endangering them.
Affected students should transfer to a school that respects their health, and legal right to decide all things related to their well-being.
Schools mandating covid jabs are in breach of federal law and the Nuremberg Code.
The former requires that individuals may “accept or refuse administration of” experimental, unapproved drugs.
According to the Nuremberg Code, voluntary consent is required on all things related to health.
By ignoring the above, US schools that require students to be involuntarily jabbed for covid are in flagrant breach of these standards and contemptuous of the health and rights of their student body.
They include Rutgers, Northeastern, Fort Lewis College, St, Edward’s, Roger Williams, Nova Southeastern, Brown, Cornell, Yale, Columbia, and Columbia College, Chicago.
My esteemed alma mater Harvard University strongly urges students to be jabbed for covid, short of mandating it so far, saying:
“We continue to strongly recommend that you seek vaccination opportunities from all sources available to you to prevent further delay,” falsely adding the following:
“The safety of (covid jabs) is a top government priority (sic).”
Fact: Polar opposite is true, what Harvard suppressed.
Fact: Government mandates and recommendations since last year are intended to inflict harm on individuals following them, not the other way around.
Fact: They’re all about instituting draconian control.
Fact: Experimental covid mRNA technology and vaccines are bioweapons to depopulate the US and other nations of individuals dark forces want eliminated.
Covid jabs “will help protect you from getting” the viral infection (sic).
Fact: Jabs increase the likelihood of being infected. Harvard falsely claimed otherwise.
“(Y)ou may experience some side effects after receiving the injection (sic).
“This is a normal sign that your body is building protection (sic).”
Fact: Toxic jabs risk serious harm to health and no protection.
Fact: The more jabs, the greater the risk.
Fact: Jabs risk contraction of any number of serious diseases short-term or later on.
Fact: For the elderly with weak immune systems, allergic individuals and others, they can kill.
“The cost of the vaccine is covered by the government.”
Fact: To encourage mass-jabbing, US dark forces are incentivizing uninformed Americans to self-inflict harm.
Covid jabs “are one of many important tools to help us stop this pandemic (sic).”
“Once you’ve received your jab, continue to wear your mask and socially distance in public places (sic).
Fact: No pandemic exists, just normal annual outbreaks of seasonal flu-renamed covid to scare us into self-inflicting harm by following draconian mandates and recommendations.
Fact: Masks don’t protect and risk serious harm to health when worn longterm.
Fact: Social distancing provides no protection. It undermines normal interactions — essential to every day life.
Fact: It’s unnecessary and destructive of interpersonal relations, while providing nothing beneficial.
Voice of America, part of the US worldwide propaganda system, falsely said the following:
“The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved use of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines (sic).”
False on two counts! These drugs are NOT vaccines.
They’re hazardous, experimental, unapproved DNA altering mRNA technology — given emergency use authorization when no emergency exists.
According to American College Health Association’s Covid Task Force co-chair Gerri Taylor:
“We would love for all our students to be vaccinated before they go home to either places in the US or places in other countries, because if they go there unvaccinated, they could actually carry the virus to their families and communities (sic).”
All of the above claims are part of the most widespread ever state-sponsored mass deception campaign to convince maximum numbers of unwitting people to follow a high-risk with no reward protocol.
Protecting and preserving health requires rejecting it.
Above all, it’s vital to health and well-being to refuse being jabbed with what’s unneeded and may cause irreversible harm if used as directed.
When I was on campus long ago — circa 1950s — nothing remotely like the above existed.
In college and graduate school, I recall no health-related mandates of any kind.
None should exist today beyond encouraging students not to self-inflict harm by following good health practices — not the other way around like what’s going on today.
A Final Comment
According to draconian Yale and Columbia diktats, students unwilling to be jabbed for covid will be barred from classrooms and prohibited from coming on campus — except for those with medical, religious or other exemptions.
Unacceptable policies instituted by the above colleges and universities may likely be mandated at many others in the coming weeks and months.
Instead of protecting students, they’ll be harmed near-or-longer-term, proving what’s unthinkable.
In the US, higher education is becoming hazardous to students instead of protecting and preparing them for endeavors they seek to pursue.
April 23, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States |
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More lunacy from the federal government threatens doctors with $10,000 fines if they tell you the science about how vitamins and minerals can help with COVID.
The Department of Justice (DoJ) recently announced the first enforcement action against “deceptive marketing” of COVID treatments. The case involves a Missouri chiropractor who is alleged to have advertised that a vitamin D and zinc supplement could prevent or treat COVID—claims that are well-supported in the scientific literature. This is a disturbing and outrageous escalation in the federal government’s actions against doctors and health professionals that inform the public about natural ways of staying healthy during the pandemic, underscoring the need to change the law to allow the free flow of information about foods and supplements.
Previously, the FDA and FTC sent hundreds of warning letters to doctors and clinics discussing the role of natural medicines promoting public health during the pandemic. Then a strategy was put in place to enable the FTC to go after these health professionals with more force. The COVID-19 Consumer Protection Act was introduced on December 20th in the House and Senate, then added to an appropriations bill on December 21. On December 27th it was signed into law.
That’s right: right before the Christmas holiday, when the government knew focus would be elsewhere, this law was introduced, buried in a spending bill to further conceal it, and signed into law—all within seven days.
The law “prohibits deceptive acts or practices associated with the treatment, cure, prevention, mitigation or diagnosis of COVID-19,” violation of which can result in civil penalties. Statute allows the FTC to assess $10,000 for each violation; multiple fines can be doled out based on a single claim. State consumer protection laws could also come into effect, allowing potential class actions.
This is a clear warning to those in the natural health profession: either push vaccines and drugs for COVID-19, or keep your mouth shut.
The DoJ’s actions are astounding. For one, we are in the midst of a pandemic and don’t have time to wait for the ongoing RCTs—which can take years—when strong clinical evidence shows that supplements that pose little risk can be helpful. And the evidence we have for things like vitamin D and zinc is strong. We recently reviewed the evidence for vitamin D’s role in COVID, noting the dozens of studies that show COVID patients with higher vitamin D have better outcomes, not to mention vitamin D’s key role in immune function. There are also clinical trials confirming vitamin D’s ability to prevent upper respiratory infections.
Zinc is also incredibly important for immune function. Although more common in the developing world, 12 percent of Americans are estimated to be at risk for zinc deficiency. We know that immune function is compromised with zinc deficiency; indeed, those with low levels of zinc are at much greater risk of being hospitalized and experiencing severe COVID disease. There is increasing evidence for the role of zinc in reducing the severity of COVID-19 disease and also in COVID prevention.
It is incredibly irresponsible for the federal government to target healthcare professionals who disseminate information about these vital nutrients. We can help right this wrong with our legislation that allows the free flow of information about supplements. … Continue
April 22, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | Covid-19, United States |
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A report from Yahoo News notes that airlines won’t be calling the imminent vaccine passports by that name because “It carries too many connotations,” according to one aviation CEO.
The forthcoming ‘digital certificates’ that will show COVID-19 vaccination status won’t be referred to as vaccination passports says Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian, because that would turn people off.
Bastian declared that airlines are “more focused on a credential, travel credential, if you will, to indicate that you’ve been vaccinated and or tested based on the regulatory requirements.”
The CEO added that he expects “Either a vaccination or a test,” to be a requirement to travel, and airlines are “working with a number of technology providers to be able to facilitate that in an open source way.”
Right. A vaccine passport then.
That is exactly what the ID will be, but never mind, just call it something else to placate the sheeple and hope they remain only dimly aware of a certain unease in the air.
It’s the exact same policy that the UK government is adopting for the system which is slated not only for international travel but also domestically. We are also reliably informed that the vast majority of Brits are willing to accept vaccine passports in order to engage in basic day to day activities, and that they are willing to go along with the digital ID card system PERMANENTLY.
Recent surveys also indicate that almost half of Americans support the introduction of vaccine passports in order to get “back to normal.”
Airline consultant Mike Boyd warned that the companies “would rather not deal with this, but they need to express their points of view very carefully,” adding that creating a global protocol to enforce vaccine passports “could resemble a DMV [Department of Motor Vehicles] on steroids.”
The EU is already ensconced on the vaccine passport road, with a bloc wide ‘Digital Green Certificate’ system set to be rolled out in June.
April 21, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, UK, United States |
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In late March, Rutgers University president Jonathan Holloway explained the following:
Students arriving on campus this fall will be required to be jabbed for covid.
According to Holloway, it’s to “provide a safer and more robust college experience for our students (sic).”
There’s nothing remotely safe and effective about experimental, unapproved, hazardous mRNA technology or vaccines.
Covid is seasonal flu renamed.
Despite years of research, scientists never located an alleged SARS-CoV-2 virus claimed responsible for causing covid.
If not found, perhaps it doesn’t exist.
How then can what may not exist produce a virus or anything else harmful to health?
Covid and seasonal flu/influenza are two names for the same viral illness.
Their symptoms include coughing, shortness of breath, fatigue, sore throat, runny nose, muscle pains, body aches, headache, loss of taste, appetite, and/or smell, and at times vomiting and diarrhea.
Symptoms can be mild or more serious, the latter more likely for individuals over age-70.
Serious complications can include pneumonia, respiratory failure, sepsis, acute respiratory distress syndrome, cardiac injury, multiple organ failure, worsening of chronic medical conditions, inflammation of heart, brain or muscle tissues and secondary bacterial infections.
When occur, the elderly or others with weakened immune systems are most vulnerable.
Years earlier when flu killed up to 650,000 people worldwide in a six-month season, no shutdowns, quarantines, masks, social distancing, and mass-jabbing were called for and heavily promoted by media propaganda.
Yet all of the above and other draconian policies have been in place in the West and elsewhere since seasonal flu underwent a name change early last year.
In mid-April, Chicago-based Columbia College announced the following covid mass-jabbing policy:
For the fall semester beginning September 7:
Students residing on campus are required to be jabbed for covid before “mov(ing) in (to their) residence halls” this September.
All “Fall 2021” students must be jabbed for covid.
“International students already vaccinated in another country with a vaccine not approved by the (FDA) will not be required to be (jabbed), but (jabbing) will be made available to them.”
“The college’s health experts at Rush University Medical Center… advised… that it is safe (sic) for a person (jabbed) with another (covid drug) to be re-(jabbed) with (an) existing USFDA-approved” one.
There are none at this time, and Columbia failed to explain — FDA emergency use authorization alone when no emergency exists.
“International students who arrive (unjabbed) from another country will be required to begin a (jabbing) course upon arrival to campus.”
“(T)he college expects to start offering (covid mass-jabbing) on campus over the next two weeks.”
“The college anticipates its initial batch of doses to be the Pfizer” experimental, rushed to market, high-risk, DNA-altering mRNA technology Columbia falsely called a “vaccine.”
“Future doses may be Moderna(’s) (mRNA technology) or Pfizer.”
“Use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is currently suspended by federal and local health authorities.”
According to the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), nearly 800 — potentially life-threatening — blood clots were experienced by individuals in the US jabbed with Pfizer, Moderna, or J & J covid drugs.
Overall from mid-December to April 8, over 68,000 adverse events and more than 2,600 deaths were reported.
According to HHS, these numbers captured “fewer than 1% of injuries.”
Actual numbers of adverse events over 100-times more than reported totals — harm on a massive scale, rising exponentially as long as this uncontrolled madness continues.
Columbia College added that “faculty and staff will not be required (to be jabbed for covid), but will be strongly encouraged.”
As explained to me by a Columbia faculty member on April 20, “compuls(ory) weekly PCR testing (will be) institute(d) for (unjabbed) faculty and staff…who will be on campus.”
What Rutgers announced weeks earlier, Columbia is now instituting — perhaps many more US colleges, universities, and public schools to follow.
Instituting this policy breaches federal law 21 USC § 360bbb-3(e)(1)(A)(ii)(III).
It requires that individuals may “accept or refuse administration of” experimental, unapproved drugs.
According to the Nuremberg Code, voluntary consent is required on all things related to health.
The FDA’s Fact Sheet on Pfizer’s mRNA technology states:
“It is your choice to receive or not receive (it). Should you decide not to receive it, it will not change your standard medical care.”
The same holds for other experimental covid jabs.
The Congressional Research Service states:
Private businesses (and other entities) are subject to civil liability unless they comply “with applicable directions, guidelines, or recommendations by the (HHS) secretary…”
Mandating covid jabs with experimental, unapproved drugs flagrantly breaches US federal law and the Nuremberg Code.
Yet unjabbed Columbia students — as well as faculty and staff not complying with weekly PCR tests — most likely will be barred from campus.
These policies — and today’s brave new world regimen — show indifference to health and well-being by ignoring the legal right of individuals to choose on all things related to health and well-being.
A Final Comment
Columbia College, my residential building, and other public places follow draconian/harmful to health federal, state of Illinois, as well as Chicago guidelines and mandates.
They include:
Masks that don’t protect and risk harm to health from longterm use.
PCR tests not designed to diagnose viral infections.
Social distancing that disrupts normal interactions.
Restrictions on numbers of people permitted to gather in public.
Disinfecting public places.
Travel restrictions.
Personal hygiene requirements and recommendations.
Workplace requirements.
Testing, jabbing and tracking.
Federal, state, and local policies are all about instituting social control, along with manipulating people to self-inflict harm.
They’re unrelated to protecting and preserving public health.
If that aim was prioritized, none of the above policies would have been instituted.
Not intended to be short-term, they’re highly likely to be in place longterm — perhaps permanently.
Forever mass-jabbing was planned, promoted by Pharma and their media press agents.
Two jabs aren’t enough. Drug companies called for annual or semi-annual booster jabs instead of flu shots — no longer needed after renaming the seasonal illness covid.
Left unexplained is that repeated jabs increase the risk of serious harm to health near-or-longer-term.
Protecting and preserving health requires refusal to play fast and loose with what’s too precious to lose.
April 21, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States |
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So-called experts are warning today, that the relaxation of coronavirus measures, means there will inevitably be a third wave of cases this Summer.
Professor Adam Finn, of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), said that all the modelling points to a rise in cases, because many adults have not yet been immunised.
Finn said that the UK was still vulnerable and warned that the dates for easing restrictions may have to be adjusted. Speaking to BBC Breakfast this morning, Finn said;
“The models that we’ve seen on JCVI clearly point to a summer surge in cases as the lockdown is relaxed, because there are still many people in the adult population who’ve not been immunised.
The sense that the problem is all over, I’m afraid is a flawed one, we’re still in a vulnerable situation, and there are still significant numbers of people who potentially could be harmed by this infection if this happens.”
In England, the next relaxation of lockdown restrictions is due on May 17th. From this date, people can meet in groups of up to 30 outdoors and six people or two households can meet indoors.
Adam Finn and his colleagues are scaremongering. They get away with it because of the corruption and ineptitude that is endemic in the UK media. The more that presenters fail to eviscerate these spoofers, the bolder they become. Their claims become more ridiculous too.
University College London reported three weeks ago that the UK has reached herd immunity against covid-19. The Office for National Statistics said last week that nearly one quarter of all deaths categorised as Covid-19 deaths were not caused by the virus. In reality of course, it’s a lot more than one quarter.
I’ve never said the virus is a hoax, but the pandemic is. There never was a pandemic. This has always been about the vaccine and the vaccine passports. Claims of Summer spikes and double mutant variants are nonsense. Don’t believe them. They’ve lied every step of the way.
April 21, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science | Covid-19, UK |
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With every new study, with every new paper, the “deadly” pandemic gets less and less, well, deadly. The most recent data review, published in late March, puts the infection fatality ratio (IFR) at 0.15%.
That is, once again, pretty much the same as a normal flu season.
The new paper is the work of Dr John Ioannidis, whom you likely remember. He is an eminent epidemiologist and statistician who publicly urged the need for “good data” last spring.
Do you remember last spring? The blissful days of never having even heard of “infection fatality ratio”? (I do. Fondly.)
The phrase really rose to prominence last year, after the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the IFR of the scary new virus was 3.4%.
This is not, in and of itself, especially high. But it is significantly higher than most cold/flu viruses.
Around the same time, somebody (or multiple somebodies) actually edited the Wikipedia page of the Spanish Flu, to change its IFR and make it seem like Covid was just as dangerous. Who did this remains a mystery, although why has become fairly obvious.
At the time, many experts (such as those listed in our 12 Experts article) predicted the actual IFR of “Covid” would be much, much lower than the WHO’s estimate, and that this would become clear as new data were gathered.
Dr John Ioannidis was one of the most vocal on this point, he was featured on our list and was also the first interview in the Perspectives on the Pandemic series. All the way along he has urged the need for cool heads and good data. His first a study, last April, found the REAL IFR of Covid19 was 0.27%. Then he did another in October that found it may be even lower at 0.2%.
And now, this most recent study found 0.15%. Right in line with seasonal influenza (which has, conveniently enough, dropped off the face of the planet).
That’s a reduction of 95% of the WHO’s estimate, in less than a year. It’s also right along the same lines as the WHO’s (accidental) admission, made last October, that around 10% of the world had likely been exposed to the virus, rendering an IFR of roughly 0.14%.
And remember to bear in mind the ridiculous way national governments collate their so-called “Covid deaths”. Even with the official death statistics being “substantial overestimates” the IFR is still low. Very low.
Now, let’s couch this with all the usual disclaimers: Yes, the virus may not ever have been isolated, and thus has not as yet been proven to exist. And yes, even supposing it does exist, it has not been proven to cause the disease known as “Covid19”.
But, increasingly, the distinction between “no virus” and “a virus that isn’t dangerous” seems entirely moot, doesn’t it?
As the real IFR of Covid is revealed to be lower (and lower, and lower) than the original estimates, it moves further and further into line with the basic background risk of just being alive.
Still, don’t forget to take that experimental gene-therapy “vaccine”. We don’t know if they’re completely safe yet, because long-term trials won’t finish for two years, and the technology has never been used on humans before, but still… you’ve only got a 99.85% chance of survival without it.
April 21, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | Covid-19 |
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Back in October of 2020, I wrote an essay called The Covidian Cult, in which I described the so-called “New Normal” as a global totalitarian ideological movement. Developments over the last six months have borne out the accuracy of that analogy.
A full year after the initial roll-out of the utterly horrifying and completely fictional photos of people dropping dead in the streets, the projected 3.4% death rate, and all the rest of the official propaganda, despite the absence of any actual scientific evidence of an apocalyptic plague (and the abundance of evidence to the contrary), millions of people continue to behave like members of an enormous death cult, walking around in public with medical-looking masks, robotically repeating vacuous platitudes, torturing children, the elderly, the disabled, demanding that everyone submit to being injected with dangerous experimental “vaccines,” and just generally acting delusional and psychotic.
How did we ever get to this point … to the point where, as I put it in The Covidian Cult, “instead of the cult existing as an island within the dominant culture, the cult has become the dominant culture, and those of us who have not joined the cult have become the isolated islands within it?”
To understand this, one needs to understand how cults control the minds of their members, because totalitarian ideological movements operate more or less the same way, just on a much larger, societal scale. There is a wealth of research and knowledge on this subject (I mentioned Robert J. Lifton in my earlier essay), but, to keep things simple, I’ll just use Margaret Singer’s “Six Conditions of Mind Control” from her 1995 book, Cults in Our Midst, as a lens to view the Covidian Cult through. (The italics are Singer. The commentary is mine.)
Six Conditions of Mind Control
1. Keep the person unaware of what is going on and how she or he is being changed a step at a time. Potential new members are led, step by step, through a behavioral-change program without being aware of the final agenda or full content of the group.
Looking back, it is easy to see how people were conditioned, step by step, to accept the “New Normal” ideology. They were bombarded with terrifying propaganda, locked down, stripped of their civil rights, forced to wear medical-looking masks in public, to act out absurd “social-distancing” rituals, submit to constant “testing,” and all the rest of it. Anyone not complying with this behavioral-change program or challenging the veracity and rationality of the new ideology was demonized as a “conspiracy theorist,” a “Covid denier,” an “anti-vaxxer,” in essence, an enemy of the cult, like a “suppresive person” in the Church of Scientology.
2. Control the person’s social and/or physical environment; especially control the person’s time.
For over a year now, the “New Normal” authorities have controlled the social/physical environment, and how New Normals spend their time, with lockdowns, social-distancing rituals, closure of “non-essential” businesses, omnipresent propaganda, isolation of the elderly, travel restrictions, mandatory mask-rules, protest bans, and now the segregation of the “Unvaccinated.” Basically, society has been transformed into something resembling an infectious disease ward, or an enormous hospital from which there is no escape. You’ve seen the photos of the happy New Normals dining out at restaurants, relaxing at the beach, jogging, attending school, and so on, going about their “normal” lives with their medical-looking masks and prophylactic face shields. What you’re looking at is the pathologization of society, the pathologization of everyday life, the physical (social) manifestation of a morbid obsession with disease and death.
3. Systematically create a sense of powerlessness in the person.
What kind of person could feel more powerless than an obedient New Normal sitting at home, obsessively logging the “Covid death” count, sharing photos of his medical-looking mask and post-“vaccination” bandage on Facebook, as he waits for permission from the authorities to go outdoors, visit his family, kiss his lover, or shake hands with a colleague? The fact that in the Covidian Cult the traditional charismatic cult leader has been replaced by a menagerie of medical experts and government officials does not change the utter dependency and abject powerlessness of its members, who have been reduced to a state approaching infancy. This abject powerlessness is not experienced as a negative; on the contrary, it is proudly celebrated. Thus the mantra-like repetition of the “New Normal” platitude “Trust the Science!” by people who, if you try to show them the science, melt down completely and start jabbering aggressive nonsense at you to shut you up.
4. Manipulate a system of rewards, punishments and experiences in such a way as to inhibit behavior that reflects the person’s former social identity.
The point here is the transformation of the formerly basically rational person into an entirely different cult-approved person, in our case, an obedient “New Normal” person. Singer gets into this in greater detail, but her discussion applies mostly to subcultural cults, not to large-scale totalitarian movements. For our purposes, we can fold this into Condition 5.
5. Manipulate a system of rewards, punishments, and experiences in order to promote learning the group’s ideology or belief system and group-approved behaviors. Good behavior, demonstrating an understanding and acceptance of the group’s beliefs, and compliance are rewarded, while questioning, expressing doubts or criticizing are met with disapproval, redress and possible rejection. If one expresses a question, they are made to feel that there is something inherently wrong with them to be questioning.
OK, I’m going to tell you a little story. It’s a story about a personal experience, which I’m pretty sure you’ve also experienced. It’s a story about a certain New Normal who has been harassing me for several months. I’ll call him Brian Parks, because, well, that’s his name, and I no longer feel any compunction about sharing it.
Brian is a former friend/colleague from the theater world who has gone full “New Normal” and is absolutely furious that I have not. So outraged is Brian that I have not joined the cult that he has been going around on the Internet referring to me as a “conspiracy theorist” and suggesting that I’ve had some kind of nervous breakdown and require immediate psychiatric treatment because I do not believe the official “New Normal” narrative. Now, this would not be a very big deal, except that Brian is impugning my character and attempting to damage my reputation on the Facebook pages of other theater colleagues, which Brian feels entitled to do, given that I am a “Covid denier,” a “conspiracy theorist,” and an “anti-vaxxer,” or whatever, and given the fact that he has the power of the state, the media, etc., on his side.
This is how it works in cults, and in larger totalitarian societies. It isn’t usually the Gestapo that comes for you. It’s usually your friends and colleagues. What Brian is doing is working that system of rewards and punishments to enforce his ideology, because he knows that most of my other colleagues in the theater world have also gone full “New Normal,” or at least are looking the other way and staying silent while it is being implemented.
This tactic, obviously, has backfired on Brian, primarily because I do not give a fuck what any New Normals think of me, whether they work in the theater world or anywhere else, but I am in a rather privileged position, because I have accomplished what I wanted to accomplish in the theater, and would rather stick my hand in a blender than submit my novels to corporate publishers for review by “sensitivity readers,” so there isn’t much to threaten me with. That, and I have no children to support, or administrations to answer to (unlike, for example, Mark Crispin Miller, who is currently being persecuted by the “New Normal” administration at NYU).
The point is, this kind of ideological conditioning is happening everywhere, every day, on the job, among friends, even among families. The pressure to conform is intense, because nothing is more threatening to devoted cultists, or members of totalitarian ideological movements, than those who challenge their fundamental beliefs, confront them with facts, or otherwise demonstrate that their “reality” isn’t reality at all, but, rather, a delusional, paranoid fiction.
The key difference between how this works in cults and totalitarian ideological movements is that, usually, a cult is a subcultural group, and thus non-cult-members have the power of the ideology of the dominant society to draw on when resisting the mind-control tactics of the cult, and attempting to deprogram its members … whereas, in our case, this balance of power is inverted. Totalitarian ideological movements have the power of governments, the media, the police, the culture industry, academia, and the compliant masses on their side. And, thus, they do not need to persuade anyone. They have the power to dictate “reality.” Only cults operating in total isolation, like Jim Jones’ People’s Temple in Guyana, enjoy this level of control over their members.
This pressure to conform, this ideological conditioning, must be fiercely resisted, regardless of the consequences, both publicly and in our private lives, or the “New Normal” will certainly become our “reality.” Despite the fact that we “Covid deniers” are currently outnumbered by the Covidian cultists, we need to behave as if we are not, and hold to reality, facts, and real science, and treat the New Normals as exactly what they are, members of a new totalitarian movement, delusional cultists run amok. If we do not, we will get to Singer’s Condition 6 …
6. Put forth a closed system of logic and an authoritarian structure that permits no feedback and refuses to be modified except by leadership approval or executive order. The group has a top-down, pyramid structure. The leaders must have verbal ways of never losing.
We’re not there yet, but that is where we’re headed … global pathologized totalitarianism. So, please, speak up. Call things what they are. Confront the Brians in your life. Despite the fact that they tell themselves that they’re trying to help you “come to your senses” or “see the truth,” or “trust the Science,” they are not. They are cultists, desperately trying to get you to conform to their paranoid beliefs, pressuring you, manipulating you, bullying you, threatening you. Do not engage them on their terms, or let them goad you into accepting their premises. (Once they’ve sucked you into their narrative, they’ve won.) Expose them, confront them with their tactics and their motives. You will probably not change their minds in the least, but your example might help other New Normals whose faith is slipping to begin to recognize what has been done to their minds and break with the cult.
April 21, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Book Review, Progressive Hypocrite, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19 |
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Nick Hudson, an actuary and private equity investor, co-founded Pandemics ~ Data & Analytics (PANDA) in response to the many threats to civil rights and freedoms that have occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic response. While media and public health institutions have engaged in a campaign of smoke and mirrors — one that is perpetuating paralyzing fear, needlessly, to this day — data and facts don’t lie.
Hudson and his team at PANDA, which include a data analyst, economist, medical doctors, big data analyst and public health experts, are using live data1 and open science to empower the public to exercise freedom of choice and preserve free societies.2
Hudson spoke at the inaugural BizNews Investment Conference in March 2021, and his keynote address is above. He explains the ugly truth about COVID-19, which is that the world is being crippled by fear due to a false narrative. Anyone who challenges that narrative is being labeled as a lunatic, a menace or a danger to society, which is furthering the repression and unjustified fear.
Bringing COVID-19 Truth to Light
George Washington famously said, “Truth will ultimately prevail where there are plans taken to bring it to light.”3 With that in mind, Hudson saw the “seeds of a great tragedy” being planted with the false COVID-19 narrative, and has made it a mission to get the truth out. So, what is the reality about the pandemic? According to Hudson:4
- A virus that presents high risk to few and negligible risk to most hit some regions
- Few are susceptible to severe disease
- There are several available treatments
- Asymptomatic people are not major drivers of disease
- Lockdowns and mask mandates haven’t worked and instead caused great harm
- The vulnerable were hurt instead of helped
The misinformation has been spewed from the beginning, including by World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. In a March 3, 2020, media briefing, he stated, “Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died. By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected.”5
But according to Hudson, the 3.4% represents case fatality rate (CFR), which is the number of deaths from COVID-19 divided by the number of cases of COVID-19, while the 1% is infection fatality rate (IFR), or the number of deaths divided by all infected individuals.
“By conflating these two separate points (CFR and IFR),” Hudson said, “Tedros was effectively lying.” Quantitative scientist John Ioannidis, professor of medicine at the Stanford Prevention Research Center, calculated the IFR for COVID-19 in a review of 61 seroprevalence studies, which was a median of 0.23%, and 0.05% in people younger than 70.6
Based on this, the IFR for COVID-19 is lower than that of the flu. And wouldn’t you know it, in a New England Journal of Medicine editorial published March 26, 2020, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and colleagues wrote that “the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza.”7
The media have suppressed this fact, Hudson noted, along with the fact that there’s a 1,000 times difference in mortality among those younger than 19 and those older than 70 — something that should have been taken into account in the pandemic response.
Is COVID-19 Really a ‘Novel Virus’?
Further inflaming widespread fear is the idea that COVID-19 is a “novel virus,” which makes it sound like it’s something humans have never encountered before. But is it really? According to Hudson:
“The reality is that the coronavirus is a very close relative, not even a separate subspecies, a very close relative of the 2003 SARS virus. There are seven related coronaviruses known to cause disease in humans, probably many others, and four of them are in general circulation.
Annual, global circulation. So the naming of this disease is terribly inconsistent. This is really a rose by any name, SARS. A variant of SARS. It’s not novel.”
One study even found that 81% of people not exposed to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, were still able to mount an immune response against it, which “suggests at least some built-in immune protection from SARS-CoV-2 …”8
Nonetheless, Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead for the COVID-19 pandemic, stated that “a majority of the world’s population is susceptible to infection from this virus.”9 This is the first of two key elements that, Hudson said, lead to “homosapienophobia” — the idea that everyone is dangerous until proven healthy.
The idea of universal susceptibility to COVID-19 is nonsense, Hudson noted, as was demonstrated early on with the Diamond Princess cruise ship. Among the 3,711 passengers and crew onboard the Diamond Princess, 712 (19.2%) tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, and of these 46.5% were asymptomatic at the time of testing. Of those showing symptoms, only 9.7% required intensive care and 1.3% (nine) died.10
PANDA data also showed that, starting in February 2021, there was not universal susceptibility to the virus. Their data showed cumulative COVID-19 deaths per million people. In Africa, Southeast Asia and Oceania, the population fatality rate was 112 per million compared to 710 per million in Europe and the Americas.
As for Africa, Southeast Asia and Oceania, Hudson said, “the population fatality rate there almost isn’t an epidemic. In a typical year, they’d have 10,000 deaths per million from all causes.”
Fear Mongering Over Asymptomatic Spread
The second element that enables the doctrine of “everyone being a danger” to continue is the idea of asymptomatic spread driving disease. “I was absolutely aghast to find out the poor quality of the science” behind it, Hudson said.
One of the seminal papers involved one woman who reportedly infected 16 colleagues while she was asymptomatic.11 The study was widely used to suggest that asymptomatic spread was occurring, but controversy later ensued over whether the woman was actually asymptomatic when the others were infected or if she was symptomatic and being treated for flu-like symptoms at the time.12
In June 2020, Kerkhove also made it very clear that people who have COVID-19 without any symptoms “rarely” transmit the disease to others. But in a dramatic about-face, WHO then backtracked on the statement just one day later. June 9, 2020, Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s emergencies program, quickly backpedaled Van Kerkhove’s statement, saying the remarks were “misinterpreted or maybe we didn’t use the most elegant words to explain that.”13
“It’s utter, utter nonsense,” Hudson said, adding that Fauci also stated in January 2020, “asymptomatic transmission has never been the driver of outbreaks. The driver of outbreaks is always a symptomatic person.”14
A JAMA Network Open study later found, in December 2020, that asymptomatic transmission is not a primary driver of infection within households.15 A study in Nature Communications also found “there was no evidence of transmission from asymptomatic positive persons to traced close contacts.”16
Lockdown Madness
The myth of widespread asymptomatic spread is what was used to justify worldwide lockdowns of healthy people. “Bruce Aylward will go down in history as a criminal of immense stature,” Hudson said, referring to Aylward’s role as the head of a WHO team that visited Wuhan, China, and concluded lockdowns were working to stop COVID-19 spread.17
“He takes a delegation to China, spends a few days, then comes back and says everyone should follow China’s response, the doctrine of universal susceptibility,” Hudson said. Yet, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic official guidelines for pandemic response plans recommend against large-scale quarantine of the healthy.
In fact, WHO wrote that during an influenza pandemic, quarantine of exposed individuals, entry and exit screening and border closure are “not recommended in any circumstance.”18
Likewise, in 2021 a study published in the European Journal of Clinical Investigation found no significant benefits on COVID-19 case growth in regions using more restrictive nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) such as mandatory stay‐at‐home and business closure orders (i.e., lockdowns).19
Data compiled by PANDA also found no relationship between lockdowns and COVID-19 deaths per million people. The disease followed a trajectory of linear decline regardless of whether or not lockdowns were imposed.
What isn’t a lie, however, is that lockdowns cause a great deal of harm. Infant mortality, poverty, starvation and joblessness are on the rise, as are delays in medical treatment and diagnosis, psychological disorders among youth, suicide and deaths of despair.
Education has been disrupted for an estimated 1.6 billion children, Hudson said, and a survey of 2,000 U.S. adults revealed that 1 in 6 Americans started therapy for the first time during 2020. Nearly half (45%) of the survey respondents confirmed that the COVID-19 pandemic was the driving reason that triggered them to seek a therapist’s help.20 According to Hudson:
“Perhaps the hardest thing for me to swallow about all of this is in undergraduate epidemiology, it is a well-known finding that when you are confronted with a disease with sharp edge graduation, as you are with coronavirus, measures to generally suppress the spread of the disease have the effect, reliably, of shifting the disease burden onto the vulnerable, who we should be protecting. They worsen coronavirus mortality.”
Mask Rhetoric Is Misleading
It’s been touted that face masks are essential to stopping the spread of COVID-19 and could save 130,000 lives in the U.S. alone.21 But in 2019, the World Health Organization analyzed 10 randomized controlled trials and concluded, “there was no evidence that facemasks are effective in reducing transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza.”22
Only one randomized controlled trial has been conducted on mask usage and COVID-19 transmission, and it found masks did not statistically significantly reduce the incidence of infection.23
You may remember that in the early days of the pandemic, face masks were not recommended for the general public. In February 2020, Christine Francis, a consultant for infection prevention and control at WHO headquarters, was featured in a video, holding up a disposable face mask.
She said, “Medical masks like this one cannot protect against the new coronavirus when used alone … WHO only recommends the use of masks in specific cases.”24 As of March 31, 2020, WHO was still advising against the use of face masks for people without symptoms, stating that there is “no evidence” that such mask usage prevents COVID-19 transmission.25
But by June 2020, the rhetoric had changed. Citing “evolving evidence,” WHO reversed their recommendation and began advising governments to encourage the general public to wear masks where there is widespread transmission and physical distancing is difficult.26 Yet that same day, June 5, 2020, WHO published an announcement stating:27
“At present, there is no direct evidence (from studies on COVID-19 and in healthy people in the community) on the effectiveness of universal masking of healthy people in the community to prevent infection with respiratory viruses, including COVID-19.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did a similar about-face on mask usage, citing a study of two hair dressers in Missouri, who were reportedly symptomatic with COVID-19 and styled 139 clients’ hair.
None of the clients tested positive for COVID-19, which the CDC suggested was because they and the stylists wore masks.28 Hudson believes, however, that the customers were probably young and not susceptible to the virus in the first place.
Another study published in the CDC’s journal Emerging Infectious Diseases stated, “We did not find evidence that surgical-type face masks are effective in reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza transmission, either when worn by infected persons (source control) or by persons in the general community to reduce their susceptibility.”29
PANDA data also showed no differences in transmission in states with mask mandates and those without. Still, health officials are now advising you should double or triple up on masks to make them work better.
Vaccines Being Sold as a Ticket to Freedom
People who stand to make countless billions out of COVID-19 vaccines are now selling them as a ticket to freedom, Hudson states:
“How convenient that we now have a logic that tells us that we need to vaccinate 7.8 billion people for a disease that has a mean survival rate of 99.95% for people under the age of 70. The profiteering here is naked. It is transparent.”
It’s a sad situation when teenagers, who aren’t at high risk, are lining up for vaccines just to get their freedoms back, he adds. When you add in all the other inconsistencies and lies — PCR tests that are not capable of diagnosing infectiousness, inflated death numbers, restrictions on travel, media propaganda and arbitrary rules, like the CDC’s recent change in physical distancing in classrooms from 6 feet to 3 feet30 — it’s as though we’re living in an Orwellian reality.
With looming vaccine passports, the loss of personal liberties is at an unprecedented level, while people are generally “enslaved by fear” — fear of infection or reinfection, “long COVID,” resurgence and mutant variants. “The underpinnings of our civilization are under threat,” Hudson noted, and we have a choice. “We’ve been pushed up against a precipice, will we be pushed off or will we push back?”
He urges people to support the Great Barrington Declaration, which calls for “focused protection” and finding a middle ground between locking down an entire economy and just “letting it rip.” As of April 4, 2021, the declaration has collected 41,890 signatures from medical practitioners and over 13,796 signatures from medical and public health scientists.31
In addition, the declaration is open for public signatures and has collected 764,089 from concerned citizens around the world. The website allows you to read and sign the declaration, answers many frequently asked questions, shares the science behind the recommendations and explains how the declaration was written.
PANDA also published a protocol for reopening society “to provide a road map out of the damaging cycle of lockdowns.”32 Hudson quoted Nelson Mandela, who stated courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. We all need to strive for courage and support awareness campaigns aimed at stopping the harmful narrative, relieving fear and protecting future freedom.
Sources and References
April 20, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine |
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