Covid-19 cases decrease in Texas as governor’s ‘NEANDERTHAL THINKING’ apparently hasn’t caused a predicted virus catastrophe
RT | March 30, 2021
Nearly three weeks on from Texas ending its mask mandate and other Covid-19 measures – leading to Governor Greg Abbott being called a murderer by media and politicians – there’s no sign of the sky falling on the Lone Star State.
In fact, Texas just posted a record low in its rate of positive Covid-19 tests, at less than 5.3%, and hospitalizations are at the lowest level since last October. Deaths are at the lowest level in four months. Since March 2, the day Abbott announced that state Covid-19 restrictions would end the following week, the seven-day average for new infections has dropped 48%, to a nearly six-month low of 3,774.
No one is claiming that infections and other Covid-19 measures are down in Texas specifically because Abbott decided “we no longer need government running our lives,” but the absence of predicted catastrophe is providing a shining example for those who argue that states that keep their economies open fare just as well on pandemic performance as those that lock their people down and destroy livelihoods.
Texas, in fact, is seeing declines in Covid-19 cases just as New York and New Jersey – states with such draconian measures that business owners were literally taken to jail for refusing to obey – are once again suffering the highest infection rates in the country. New Jersey has seen a 37% surge in new cases in the past month, to 23,600 weekly.
The juxtaposition in statistics is clearly flipped the wrong way for President Joe Biden, who earlier accused Abbott and Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves of “Neanderthal thinking” for lifting their coronavirus restrictions, and other doomsayers. And by the way, Mississippi’s Covid-19 case rate is down 57% in the past month, to a seven-day average of 254.
Abbott set off a wave of Republican governors freeing their citizens from mask mandates, which Vanity Fair called a “bold plan to kill another 500,000 Americans.” Biden’s fellow Democrat, California Governor Gavin Newsom, called Abbott “absolutely reckless.” Mainstream media hero Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to Biden, called Abbott’s decision “inexplicable,” while author Kurt Eichenwald said it was “murderous.”
Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa accused the governor of being “anti-human” and predicted that hospitals would be jammed with Covid patients.
That hasn’t happened so far, and Texas has posted 18 straight days of improving case numbers since the restrictions officially ended on March 10. But US mainstream media outlets have responded to the counter-narrative phenomenon mostly by ignoring it.
Instead of telling the Texas story, the New York Times breathlessly warned on Monday that case numbers in Republican-controlled Florida had ticked up 8% from two weeks ago, to nearly 5,000 infections a day. Hospitalizations and deaths remained down, the Times conceded, and the increase in cases paled in comparison to those in New York and New Jersey.
But the outlet warned that Florida is a “bellwether for the nation” and falsely said it was “furthest along in lifting restrictions.” Iowa and Montana lifted their restrictions in early February, and some GOP-led states didn’t have mask mandates to begin with.
And rather than rethinking the efficacy of tight Covid-19 mitigation measures, lockdown proponents suggest that the recent case increases in New York and New Jersey mean that their apparently ineffective rules need to be tougher. New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams urged Governor Andrew Cuomo to “stick to the science, trust the experts and pause planned reopenings now.” Biden said Monday that a national increase in Covid cases may stem from people “letting up on precautions.”
24 World Leaders Openly Call For The Great Reset
By Richie Allen | March 30, 2021
World leaders are calling for an end to nationalism and isolationism in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic. 24 countries have come together to call for a global settlement like the one reached after the second world war to “protect countries” and build cross border co-operation.
The call by the 24 world leaders is made in today’s Daily Telegraph and other newspapers around the world including, Le Monde in France and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in Germany.
The leaders claim that a new international settlement is necessary ahead of the next international health crisis. They described Covid as the biggest threat to the global community since the 1940’s.
“A treaty on pandemics “should lead to more mutual accountability and shared responsibility, transparency and co-operation within the international system and with its rules and norms”, the leaders said.
According to The Telegraph today;
The 24 world leaders warned that regardless of the origins of the outbreak, a future global pandemic was an inevitability.
The group, also including Charles Michel, the European Council president, Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, and the presidents of South Africa, South Korea, Indonesia, Tunisia and Senegal, said the key question was not “if but when” the next health crisis would strike.
They warned that “no single government or multilateral agency can address this threat alone”, arguing: “Together, we must be better prepared to predict, prevent, detect, assess and effectively respond to pandemics in a highly co-ordinated fashion.”
Other central aims of a pandemic agreement would be to enhance international co-operation around alert systems, data-sharing and research, as well as the local, regional and global production and distribution of vaccines, medicines, diagnostics and personal protective equipment.
The new treaty would be rooted in the constitution of The World Health Organization. “At a time when Covid-19 has exploited our weaknesses and divisions, we must seize this opportunity and come together as a global community for peaceful cooperation that extends beyond this crisis,” the leaders said.
This is terrifying. For many years, I have been featuring writers, researchers and academics who warned us that this would happen. This is the end game.
International treaties are about one thing and one thing only, that is, concentrating power in the hands of a tiny elite. It’s what globalists have been working towards for decades.
It’s much more convenient for corporations and banks to do business with 24 countries who agree to regulatory alignment, than if those corporations have to deal with 24 individual countries whose rules and regulations are different.
This is what the EU was always about. I’ve been banging that drum for years.
Bill Gates, through his subsidiaries the WHO, CEPI and GAVI, and pharma giants like AstraZeneca, GSK and Pfizer, wants to vaccinate the world’s population against every illness you can name. AZ, GSK and Pfizer have received billions of dollars in grants from Gates.
June Raine, head of the UK’s medicine regulator MHRA, is on the record as saying that countries would be moving away from the traditional approach of treating illnesses when they arise, to a new era where the focus will be on prevention.
It’s claimed that new mRNA technology has opened up a world of possibilities for preventing illness. Vaccines are in development for obesity, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, cancers and allergies. Imagine what the vaccination schedule for children could look like in ten years?
Bill Gates wants these vaccines to be approved and rolled-out quickly. The proposed pandemic treaty, which promises “mutual accountability shared responsibility and co-operation” between 24 countries, will make it easy for him.
French President Emmanuel Macron has been criticised for his government’s failure to approve coronavirus vaccines as quickly as the UK. France is being locked down again. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has faced similar criticism.
A global pandemic treaty would solve that problem. A new vaccine wouldn’t need to be assessed for safety and efficacy by regulators in 24 countries. It would only need to pass one inspection.
There will be alignment on travel and vaccine passports too. The world leaders, in today’s article said;
It (the treaty) would also include recognition of a “One Health” approach that connects the health of humans, animals and our planet. And such a treaty should lead to more mutual accountability and shared responsibility, transparency and co-operation within the international system and with its rules and norms.
Over time, the treaty will inevitably be amended to deal with Climate Change. It will be repeated more frequently, that global warming has an impact on health, and therefore, regulatory alignment to deal with it will be necessary.
The article, published in today’s Daily Telegraph and newspapers around the world, is signed by;
. V. Bainimarama, prime minister of Fiji; António Luís Santos da Costa, prime minister of Portugal; Klaus Iohannis, president of Romania; Boris Johnson, prime minister of the United Kingdom; Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda; Uhuru Kenyatta, president of Kenya; Emmanuel Macron, president of France; Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany; Charles Michel, president of the European Council; Kyriakos Mitsotakis, prime minister of Greece; Moon Jae-in, president of the Republic of Korea; Sebastián Piñera, president of Chile; Carlos Alvarado Quesada, president of Costa Rica; Edi Rama, prime minister of Albania; Cyril Ramaphosa, president of South Africa; Keith Rowley, prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago; Mark Rutte, prime minister of the Netherlands; Kais Saied, president of Tunisia; Macky Sall, president of Senegal; Pedro Sánchez, Prime Minister of Spain; Erna Solberg, prime minister of Norway; Aleksandar Vučić, president of Serbia; Joko Widodo, president of Indonesia; Volodymyr Zelensky, president of Ukraine; Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organisation
Dr. Paul Marik Discusses Ivermectin And Vitamin D
Drbeen Medical Lectures | February 17, 2021
Dr. Paul Marik Discusses Ivermectin and Vitamin D. Wikipedia tells us Dr Marik is “a professor of medicine and serves as Chief, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School. He is known for the vitamin C sepsis cocktail, which is under active multicenter clinical trial.”
Marik was lead author of a journal article on the efficacy of ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment, which had been provisionally accepted for publication by a Frontiers Media journal in early 2021, but which was subsequently rejected on account of what the publisher said were “a series of strong, unsupported claims based on studies with insufficient statistical significance” meaning that the article did “not offer an objective [or] balanced scientific contribution to the evaluation of ivermectin as a potential treatment for COVID-19”.
More from Drbeen Medical Lectures at youtube
UK Now Considering Digital Face Scanning to Enter Pubs
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | March 29, 2021
The UK government is funding companies that are producing technology which will utilize digital face scans to check people’s vaccination status and allow or block them from entering pubs, stadiums and other venues.
“Britons could have their faces scanned to allow them to access pubs, gigs and sports events under one government-funded plan being drawn up for vaccine passports,” reports the London Times.
Two companies – Mvine and iProov – are working together on the system after being given a £75,000 grant by the government having already worked with the NHS on facial recognition technology in the form of the contact tracing app.
The technology is being proposed as a solution to concerns that presenting vaccination status via an app on a phone will be too slow when multiple people are entering a busy venue.
“Whoever is standing on the door of the pub is going to have to scan the certificate, read the name and date of birth, then ask the person for an ID document, check that the name and date of birth on the ID document are the same, squint at the photograph on the ID document and then make sure that the person in front of them is that person,” iProov CEO Andrew Bud said. “To which the answer is, that’s not going to happen.”
Bud said that the facial recognition system would reduce this process to a matter of seconds, streamlining the system.
“It speeds the process up and it absolves people of what would otherwise be a very heavy responsibility,” he added.
After months of promising that there would be no domestic vaccine passport, every indication is now that the government is going ahead with it.
Millions of Brits will refuse to submit to digital face scans to go about their everyday business, but the vast majority are likely to accept it without question, creating a two tier society where those who resist the biosecurity surveillance state will remain in a de facto permanent state of lockdown.
This again underscores the fact that the ‘vaccine passport’ is a digital identity card that citizens will be expected to carry at all times and use whenever they want to engage in basic commerce or other normal leisure activity.
BBC Presenter “Won’t Hug Parents” As It’s “Not Permitted”
By Richie Allen | March 29, 2021
“I’m really looking forward to seeing my parents later”, Rick Edwards told Rachel Burden this morning. The BBC Radio 5 Live presenters were discussing the gradual easing of lockdown, which begins today. “I won’t hug them though”, Edwards hastily added. “Hugging is still not permitted.”
Edwards hasn’t seen his parents in a long time. He’s been avoiding them for fear of killing them with covid. The planet is an open-air lunatic asylum now. Madness reigns supreme. Who’d have believed that such conversations would ever be possible let alone normal?
“How long is it since you saw yer mum?”
“Six months.”
“Shielding?”
“Yep, the government told them to shield cos they’re vulnerable. I’m seeing them later though.”
“Looking forward to it?”
“Yes, but I can’t hug them. Hugging isn’t permitted.”
I met a man in my local park this morning. Lovely bloke. Our dogs were playing and we had a natter. He told me he hasn’t seen his grandchildren in a year.
His daughter is a real stickler for the rules. They get on fine and pre-covid he watched them three times a week. They’re in Liverpool. He’d usually make the short drive.
Now he chats with them on Skype. His daughter won’t hear of them meeting up. She took the “don’t kill granny/grandad” nonsense to heart. The little ones are terrified they’ll make him sick. He has no say in it. He’s concerned that the fear-porn is damaging the kids.
It’s a madhouse. As I write this, Stephen Dixon on SKY News is telling viewers that he’s thrilled to bits that outdoor swimming is “allowed” and that he can now meet with up to six people, because the government said it’s permitted.
A new ad campaign, fronted by ITV resident doctor Hilary Jones, tells us all to “be firm” with friends and relatives if they try to hug us and give them “gentle reminders” about distancing.
Study: U.S. Media’s Covid Coverage Slants Heavily Negative
Mainstream outlets stoke fear while shielding us from encouraging facts
By Brian McGlinchey | March 27, 2021
If you’ve felt the media has heavily emphasized bad news throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, your judgment now has some scholarly corroboration.
Dartmouth College and Brown University researchers have analyzed tens of thousands of Covid-19 articles and found major U.S. media outlets have overwhelmingly pushed negative narratives about the virus.
“The most striking fact is that 87 percent of the U.S. stories are classified as negative, whereas 51 percent of the non-U.S. stories are classified as negative,” according to the study by Dartmouth economics professor Bruce Sacerdote, Dartmouth’s Ranjan Sehgal and Brown University’s Molly Cook.
Thwarting Public Clarity About Covid-19
Though the study doesn’t delve deep into the societal implications, there’s little doubt excessive media negativity has contributed to public misunderstanding of the nature of the disease and the risk it poses to various segments of society.
Consider one of the study’s most glaring findings: Even when Covid-19 cases were falling nationally between April 24 and June 27, major media discussed rising caseloads 5.3 times as frequently as falling ones.
The impact was evident: A June CBS News poll found a record number of Americans felt the fight against coronavirus was going badly. Of course, news of the poll was itself another negative story, feeding a media-facilitated vicious circle of fear.
In July, a Franklin Templeton-Gallup poll found Americans had a poor understanding of the risk of Covid-19 death for different age cohorts:
- Participants said people aged 55+ accounted for a little over half of the deaths, when the actual share was 92%.
- Those under age 25 accounted for just 0.2% of deaths—participants overestimated the share by a factor of 50.
The results aren’t surprising, given the media’s compulsion to accentuate rare occasions when teens and twentysomethings fall victim to the virus.
In June, CNN served up a particularly flagrant example of Covid scaremongering: an article titled “Healthy teenager who took precautions died suddenly of Covid-19.”
The many who skimmed the headline received an anecdotal infusion of fearful misinformation. The minority who made it to the tenth paragraph would finally learn that doctors treating the purportedly “healthy” yet visibly obese teen found he had Type 1 diabetes with a blood sugar level 10 times the norm.
Two months earlier, the Centers for Disease Control announced that about 90% of those hospitalized with the virus had one or more underlying conditions. Among the most common were obesity (48%) and diabetes (28%). Rather than using this teen’s grim story to enlighten the public about who is at greatest risk, CNN aggressively pushed a perception that nobody is safe.
The media’s failure to foster understanding of Covid-19 also seems evident in the many people still seen wearing masks while alone outdoors. According to Dr. Muge Cevik, an infectious diseases and virology scientist at the University of St Andrews, “outdoor risk is negligible unless it involves close interaction or you are in a crowded or semi-outdoor environment.”
Perceptions of the Virus Influence Policy Opinions
Overly-negative Covid-19 reporting has implications well beyond individual feelings and practices: Those who’ve been led to an exaggerated perception of their personal risk are more prone to support strict government policies to counter the virus.
A recent Pew Research poll confirms that individuals’ perception of the pandemic heavily influences their opinions about various government interventions.
For example, Pew asked if limiting restaurants to carry-out service has been necessary to counter the virus. Among those who think Covid-19 represents a minor threat to the U.S. population, 21% agreed. Support soared to 66% among those who deem the virus a major threat.
Many are likely opining from a position of ignorance: How many know that a New York contact tracing study attributed less than 2% of Covid-19 case transmission to bars and restaurants?
Negative About Positives
The Dartmouth and Brown researchers found “the negativity of the U.S. major media is notable even in areas with positive developments, including school re-openings and vaccine trials.”
When schools reopen to in-person teaching—a move validated by the experience of European schools—U.S. media has been quick on the scene with a wet blanket: The study found 86% of mainstream media articles about school reopenings are negative.
The easing of government restrictions reliably attracts negative media. Iowa governor Kim Reynolds’s lifting of the state’s mask mandate in early February sparked a wave of negative reporting and opinion pieces, including a Washington Post piece that was actually titled “Welcome to Iowa: a state that doesn’t care if you live or die.”
In September, similar derision was heaped on Florida governor Ron DeSantis when he lifted major statewide restrictions.
However, when neither Florida nor Iowa experienced negative consequences, there was little media reporting of the good news that government restrictions and mandates may not be worthwhile after all.
We see a similar pattern with the media’s never-ending cycle of warning that various holidays and special events will bring a surge in contagion. From Thanksgiving to Christmas to the Super Bowl and spring break, we’re constantly presented headlines stoking fears these occasions will cause major virus spikes.
When predicted surges don’t happen, the media gives little attention to the happy news that their alarms proved false. Instead, they’re apparently hard at work drafting warnings about whatever’s next on the calendar.
It’s as if mainstream journalists feel duty-bound to stoke Covid-19 fear, while paternalistically shielding us from welcome facts that could lead us to “let our guard down.” In doing so, they negligently disregard the collateral harm they do to mental health and our quality of life.
Hope for Greater Media Balance?
The Dartmouth-Brown study on U.S. media negativity prompted The New York Times’ David Leonhardt to call for introspection: “If we’re constantly telling a negative story, we are not giving our audience the most accurate portrait of reality. We are shading it.”
That’s a welcome acknowledgment: Until recently, Leonhardt’s own Times email newsletter has mirrored the negative slant found across U.S. media.
There are hints of a growing balance. For example, in recent weeks, major outlets have finally started acknowledging that Florida’s post-reopening experience conflicts with the media-reinforced notion that shutdowns are an essential strategy.
Concluding his review of the study, Leonhardt expressed gratitude to researchers Sacerdote, Cook and Sehgal for “holding up a mirror to our work and giving us a chance to do better.” Let’s hope his sentiment proves highly contagious.
Matt Hancock’s UK Health Security Agency would be the worst April Fool’s ever – except he isn’t joking
By Neil Clark | RT | March 27, 2021
The UK Health Secretary confirmed this week that a new ‘UK Health Security Agency’ was being set up on April 1, thus marking the next stage in Britain’s transformation into a repressive bio-security state.
Back in 1957, the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme Panorama (well, it was then) showed a short three-minute film of a family in Switzerland harvesting spaghetti from a family ‘spaghetti tree.’ People rang up the BBC switchboard afterwards for advice on growing their own spaghetti. They should have paid closer attention to the date of the broadcast. The first of April. Yes, it was an ‘April Fool.’ One of the best in history.
The first of April is also the date that the UK’s new ‘Health Security Agency’ is being established but this time it really is no laughing matter. If only Matt Hancock was joking when he said he was setting up a “dedicated, mission-driven national institution for health security.” But, unlike his namesake, the great comedian Tony Hancock, Matt isn’t remotely funny. The establishment of the UKHSA should give us all sleepless nights. It’s actually more terrifying than the scariest Hammer horror movie. Well, Hancock’s video announcing the news was, at any rate.
The new agency –which Britain needs right now as much as a hole in the head– brings together the work of Public Health England, NHS Test and Trace and the Joint BioSecurity Centre.
Hancock says the body will be mission driven, but what will be the mission?
“I want everybody at UKHSA, at all levels, to wake up every day with a zeal to plan for the next pandemic.”
Yes, that’s right. We’re at the tail end of Covid – but it’s time to plan for the next Covid to come along. Has a government agenda ever been so transparent? Of course, Hancock is only echoing Bill Gates when he talks about the ‘next pandemic’. Back in January the software multi-billionaire, who has been able to gain so much influence with his foundation’s funding of academics, scientists and public health organisations, outlined his strategy for dealing with the ‘next pandemic,’ which, he warns, could be “ten times more serious” than Covid. And, guess what, his strategy calls for “mega-diagnostic platforms,” mass vaccinations and governments spending lots of taxpayers’ money.
Compare Gates’ proposals with what Hancock says and the new “Securing Our Health” webpage introducing the UKHSA and you can see quite clearly where the ‘inspiration’ for all this is coming from. Hancock, as he’s done throughout 2020 and 2021, is following a global script.
As I highlighted in a recent OpEd, the ‘War on Covid’ is the new ‘War on Terror.’ Civil liberties were stripped away, post 9-11, in the ‘War on Terror’ and now we have the latest phase of the project. Like the War on Terror, the War on Covid/War on Viruses is never meant to end. In fact we don’t really need new viruses to come along. Covid variants will work quite nicely, if Gates’ ‘ten times more serious’ virus is delayed in traffic.
In a piece for Bloomberg this week entitled ‘We Must Start Planning for a Permanent Pandemic,’ Andreas Kluth spelt it out very clearly for those who still don’t get it: “For the past year, an assumption –sometimes explicit, often tacit– has informed almost all our thinking about the pandemic: At some point, it will be over, and then we’ll go “back to normal. This premise is almost certainly wrong. SARS-CoV-2, protean and elusive as it is, may become our permanent enemy, like the flu but worse.”
The establishment of the UKHSA at a time when deaths with Covid have dropped to low numbers is a clear sign that the UK government plans no ‘back to normal.’ Perhaps the scariest sentence in the UKHSA policy paper is “We need to consider how best to engage with citizens and drive behaviour change in the 21st century.”
What ‘behaviour change’ can that be, I wonder? Requiring people to wear face masks and maintain ‘social distance’ from one another permanently? Don’t forget Home Secretary Priti Patel declared last May that social distancing was ‘here to stay.’
Many thought she misspoke, but ten months later and ‘social distancing’ is still here.
Then there’s the list of the new agency’s five core functions. Number One, again with echoes of the ‘War on Terror,’ is “Prevent.” This means “Anticipating and taking action to mitigate infectious diseases and other hazards to health before they materialise, for example through vaccination and influencing behaviour.”
Yes, you read that right. “BEFORE they materialise.” We will need to be vaccinated against viruses and hazards to health that haven’t yet materialised! What a bonanza for Big Pharma that would be!
Hancock’s announcement comes in the same week as Boris Johnson – the dishevelled charlatan who promoted himself as a ‘libertarian’ to get elected but who’s turned out to be the most dictatorial prime minister in our history – saying that pubs could require Vaccine Passports, once everyone had been offered a vaccine.
With us still in lockdown, and the Coronavirus Act extended for a further six months, the architecture for permanent digital slavery is being constructed – and it’s all being done under the guise of ‘protecting’ us. But who will protect us from our protectors? That really is the question we should all be asking.
Neil Clark is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and blogger. His award winning blog can be found at http://www.neilclark66.blogspot.com.
COVID VACCINE: THE NEW SACRED COW
Computing Forever | March 27, 2021
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Why Is Everyone in Texas Not Dying?
By Jeffrey A. Tucker | AIER | March 26, 2021
I’m sitting at a bar in Texas, surrounded by maskless people, looking at folks on the streets walking around like life is normal, talking with nice and friendly faces, feeling like things in the world are more-or-less normal. Cases and deaths attributed to Covid are, like everywhere else, falling dramatically.
If you pay attention only to the media fear campaigns, you would find this confusing. More than two weeks ago, the governor of Texas completely reversed his devastating lockdown policies and repealed all his emergency powers, along with the egregious attacks on rights and liberties.
There was something very un-Texan about those lockdowns. My hotel room is festooned with pictures of cowboys on horses waving guns in the air, along with other depictions of rugged individualism facing down the elements. It’s a caricature but Texans embrace it. Then a new virus came along – as if that had never happened before in Texas – and the new Zoom class took the opposite path, not freedom but imposition and control.
After nearly a year of nonsense, on March 2, 2021, the governor finally said enough is enough and repealed it all. Towns and cities can still engage in Covid-related mischief but at least they are no longer getting cover from the governor’s office.
At that moment, a friend remarked to me that this would be the test we have been waiting for. A complete repeal of restrictions would lead to mass death, they said. Would it? Did the lockdowns really control the virus? We would soon find out, he theorized.
I knew better. The “test” of whether and to what extent lockdowns control the virus or “suppress outbreaks” (in Anthony Fauci’s words) has been tried all over the world. Every serious empirical examination has shown that the answer is no.
The US has many examples of open states that have generally had better performance in managing the disease than those states that are closed. Georgia already opened on April 24, 2020. South Dakota never shut down. South Carolina opened in May. Florida ended all restrictions in September. In every case, the press howled about the coming slaughter that did not happen. Yes, each open state experienced a seasonality wave in winter but so did the lockdown states.
So it was in Texas. Thanks to this Twitter thread, and some of my own googling, we have a nice archive of predictions about what would happen if Texas opened.
- California Governor Gavin Newsom said that opening Texas was “absolutely reckless.”
- Gregg Popovich, head coach of the NBA San Antonio Spurs, said opening was “ridiculous” and “ignorant.”
- CNN quoted an ICU nurse saying “I’m scared of what this is going to look like.”
- Vanity Fair went over the top with this headline: “Republican Governors Celebrate COVID Anniversary With Bold Plan to Kill Another 500,000 Americans.”
- There was the inevitable Dr. Fauci: “It just is inexplicable why you would want to pull back now.”
- Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke of Texas revealed himself to be a full-blown lockdowner: It’s a “big mistake,” he said. “It’s hard to escape the conclusion that it’s also a cult of death.” He accused the governor of “sacrificing the lives of our fellow Texans … for political gain.”
- James Hamblin, a doctor and writer for the Atlantic, said in a Tweet liked by 20K people: “Ending precautions now is like entering the last miles of a marathon and taking off your shoes and eating several hot dogs.”
- Bestselling author Kurt Eichenwald flipped out: “Goddamn. Texas already has FIVE variants that have turned up: Britain, South Africa, Brazil, New York & CA. The NY and CA variants could weaken vaccine effectiveness. And now idiot @GregAbbott_TX throws open the state.” He further called the government “murderous.”
- Epidemiologist Whitney Robinson wrote: “I feel genuinely sad. There are people who are going to get sick and die bc of avoidable infections they get in the next few weeks. It’s demoralizing.”
- Pundit Bill Kristol (I had no idea that he was a lockdowner) wrote: “Gov. Abbott is going to be responsible for more avoidable COVID hospitalizations and deaths than all the undocumented immigrants coming across the Texas border put together.”
- Health pundit Bob Wachter said the decision to open was “unforgivable.”
- Virus guru Michael Osterholm told CNN: “We’re walking into the mouth of the monster. We simply are.”
- Joe Biden famously said that the Texas decision to open reflected “Neanderthal thinking.”
- Nutritionist Eric Feigl-Ding said that the decision makes him want to “vomit so bad.”
- The chairman of the state’s Democratic Party said: “What Abbott is doing is extraordinarily dangerous. This will kill Texans. Our country’s infectious-disease specialists have warned that we should not put our guard down, even as we make progress towards vaccinations. Abbott doesn’t care.”
- Other state Democrats said in a letter that the decision was “premature and harmful.”
- The CDC’s Rochelle Walensky didn’t mince words: “Please hear me clearly: At this level of cases with variants spreading, we stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we have gained. I am really worried about reports that more states are rolling back the exact public health measures we have recommended to protect people from COVID-19.”
There are probably hundreds more such warnings, predictions, and demands, all stated with absolute certainty that basic social and market functioning is a terrible idea. The lockdown lobby was out in full force. And yet what do we see now more than two weeks out (and arguably the lockdowns died on March 2, when the government announced the decision)?
Here are the data.
The CDC has a very helpful tool that allows anyone to compare open vs closed states. The results are devastating for those who believe that lockdowns are the way to control a virus. In this chart we compare closed states Massachusetts and California with open states Georgia, Florida, Texas, and South Carolina.
What can we conclude from such a visualization? It suggests that the lockdowns have had no statistically observable effect on the virus trajectory and resulting severe outcomes. The open states have generally performed better, perhaps not because they are open but simply for reasons of demographics and seasonality. The closed states seem not to have achieved anything in terms of mitigation.
On the other hand, the lockdowns destroyed industries, schools, churches, liberties and lives, demoralizing the population and robbing people of essential rights. All in the name of safety from a virus that did its work in any case.
As for Texas, the results so far are in.
I’m making no predictions about the future path of the virus in Texas. Indeed for a full year, AIER has been careful about not trying to outguess this virus, which has its own ways, some predictable and some mysterious. The experience has, or should have, humbled everyone. Political arrangements seem to have no power to control it, much less finally suppress it. The belief that it was possible to control people in order to control a virus produced a calamity unprecedented in modern times.
What’s striking about all the above predictions of infections and deaths is not just that they were all wrong. It’s the arrogance and confidence behind each of them. After a full year and directly observing the inability of “nonpharmaceutical interventions” to manage the pathogen, the experts are still wedded to their beloved lockdowns, unable or unwilling to look at the data and learn anything from them.
The concept of lockdowns stemmed from a faulty premise: that you can separate humans, like rats in cages, and therefore control and even eradicate the virus. After a year, we unequivocally know this not to be true, something that the best and wisest epidemiologists knew all along. Essential workers still must work; they must go home to their families, many in crowded living conditions. Lockdowns do not eliminate the virus, they merely shift the burden onto the working class.
Now we can see the failure in black, white, and full color, daily appearing on our screens courtesy of the CDC. Has that shaken the pro-lockdown pundit class? Not that much. What an amazing testament to the stubbornness of elite opinion and its bias against basic freedoms. They might all echo the words of Groucho Marx: “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”
Not quite convinced about the vaccine? Neither is this guy
Self Reliance Central | March 27, 2021
Dr. Yeadon is cynical about the vaccine, especially for women of child-bearing years. He believes there was no need for a vaccine at all. As he was Pfizer’s former Vice President and Chief Scientist for Allergy & Respiratory we should probably listen to him. This is what he said this week. Obviously, he is being painted as a lunatic. But given his pedigree I stop to listen when he speaks.
If you want to listen to an amazing podcast with Dr Yeadon go here to my friend James Delingpole’s podcast. James has an informal technique so you may have to hang on for a few minutes while they get the chit-chat out of the way (although it’s interesting if you like cool facts about WWII!)
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/health-coronavirus-vaccines-skeptic/
NJ Governor Phil Murphy ‘Cannot Conceive’ Of Ending Mask Mandate
By Tom Woods | March 26, 2021
You’d think Phil Murphy, governor of New Jersey — which has the worst COVID death rate of any American state — would have the decency to keep his mouth shut on the subject. Well, you’d be wrong. When asked about Texas’ decision to repeal its statewide mask mandate, Murphy replied that he was “stunned” and that he “couldn’t conceive of lifting a mask mandate inside.”
How about we see how both states are doing?
(Source: nytimes .com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html)
Well, how about that.
California, meanwhile, has seen its numbers come way down from their peak. They are of course pretending that their lockdown did the trick. The problem is this: Nevada didn’t lock down as much and Arizona locked down even less, and yet:
(Source: nytimes .com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html)
On January 20, Germany mandated medical-grade masks. That must have done it, right?
Well, as it turns out, Angela Merkel recently sought an even more barbaric lockdown, even after instituting that mandate, although thankfully she had to back down. I wonder why those medical masks didn’t solve the problem:
(Source: World Health Organization)
Today on Twitter a notorious Doomer cited east/southeast Asia’s numbers as evidence that the public-health recommendations work (but of course those countries tried all different approaches and every one worked fine, so just maybe there’s something else going on here?).
Cambodia has not had a single death. Is that because of Cambodia’s state-of-the-art public-health establishment? Cambodia was number 83 among countries in terms of pandemic preparedness.
I did see this headline, from Reuters : “Cambodian Villagers Trust Magic Scarecrows to Ward Off Coronavirus.”
(Don’t knock it: it’s much cheaper than anything Fauci has recommended, and it seems to have worked for Cambodia.)
Overall, I do think the tide is at last turning in our direction. But you’re still surrounded by crazy people.
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From the Archives
NATO Sanctions and the Coming Global Diesel Fuel Disaster
By F. William Engdahl – New Eastern Outlook – 11.04.2022
Amid the ongoing global inflation crisis, NATO heads of state and mainstream media repeat a mantra that high energy prices are a direct result of Putin’s actions in Ukraine since end of February. The reality is that it is the western sanctions that are responsible. Those sanctions including cutting SWIFT interbank access for key Russian banks and some of the most severe sanctions ever imposed, are hardly having an impact on the military actions in Ukraine. What many overlook is the fact that they are increasingly impacting the economies of the West, especially the EU and USA. A closer look at the state of the global supply of diesel fuel is alarming. But Western sanctions planners at the US Treasury and the EU know fully well what they are doing. And it bodes ill for the world economy.
While most of us rarely think about diesel fuel as anything other than a pollutant, in fact it is essential to the entire world economy in a way few energy sources are. The director general of Fuels Europe, part of the European Petroleum Refiners Association, stated recently, “… there is a clear link between diesel and GDP, because almost everything that goes into and out of a factory goes using diesel.” … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Trita Parsi: Middle East Unraveling — Are We on the Path to World War?
- Iran FM meets with US envoy on UN meeting’s sidelines at American side’s insistence: Report
- Qatar PM calls for Gulf security framework with Iran, says war must be ‘wake-up call’
- China condemns US extortion of Iranian airlines, rejects Washington’s ‘illegal’ sanctions threats
- Italy to move military personnel from Taif base after missile strike
- Finland’s Stubb tells European leaders to calm down
- Defeating Russia on battlefield impossible – Fico
- Finland’s Gender Clinic Reversal
- Massachusetts Wants Mental Health Visits, Why Does Government Use ‘Health’ to Enter Our Homes & Families?
- US lawmaker admits American people footing bill for Trump’s failed aggression against Iran
- If Americans Knew
- Sanctions are collective punishment: immoral and self-defeating
- Phosphorus Munitions Fired by Israel Burn Groves, Orchards in Southern Lebanon
- Israel Carries Out New Ceasefire Violations Across Gaza
- AI – Emphasis on the ‘I’: Israel Is Funding AI Chatbot Propaganda
- Israel Blocking Hundreds of Wheelchairs for Injured Children From Entering Gaza
- Israel Is Expanding and Upgrading Compounds for Palestinian Militias in Gaza
- The Palestinian-American Residents of This West Bank Town Are Wondering: Where Is Trump?
- Gaza desperately needs tents, wheelchairs, fuel… and everything else (Israel blocks it all) – Daily Update
- Israeli Attacks in Gaza Kill at Least Seven Palestinians Over Three Days, including Woman and Child
- Trump’s militarization of Washington DC as he pursues Israel’s war against Iran
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
- The South China Sea Has Not Been Cooperating With The Climate Change Narrative
- Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
- Study: Ocean Heating Rates From Thousands Of Years Ago ‘Dwarf’ Modern Ocean Heating Rates
- Climate Extremists Target, Attack Large-Scale Power Grid Infrastructure In Germany!
- New Study: Antarctic Ice Melt Has Contributed Less Than 1 Centimeter To Sea Level Rise In The Last 30 Years
