Some Observations On the Efficacy of Masks in a #COVID19 World
By Kevin Kilty | Watts Up With That? | March 16, 2021
Some weeks ago, Pat Frank suggested that I might consider writing an essay about the efficacy of masks and mandates to wear masks during this pandemic. I hesitated doing so at first, but March 8th I noticed another research effort on the part of the CDC to justify masks as a prophylactic strategy.[1] This effort seems very deficient in my view and so this essay resulted. What I write here is a summary of a much larger work in progress.
Lincoln Moses and Frederick Mostellar long ago suggested that public policy be organized as experiments so that we might learn of its effectiveness, or lack thereof, and avoid successive failures.[2] When the COVID-19 pandemic arrived last spring, I wrote that we didn’t need to go through successive battles with exponential processes, but that we appeared not ready to gather useful data and evidence about the effectiveness of social distancing and other advice in this battle.[3] Considering the tendency of people to don a mask against all sorts of bad air is so universal that even screen writers employ it to add realism to a disaster scene, one would think we would know something about their effectiveness.[4] We do and we don’t. While I am told by some people employed in medicine along with many amateurs that masks are essential to controlling spread of SARS-COV-2; highly reputable authorities, many of them, thousands of them, make much more modest and even opposite claims.[5]
How might we analyze these competing claims? I see three avenues of attack: First, we can examine theoretical reasons for and against masks from a mechanical perspective. Second, there are limited experiments known as randomized clinical trials available, all of which have some deficiencies and limited pertinence. Third, we can examine observations of the progress of this epidemic as shown by cases in the light of local mandates. These observations and the methods used to evaluate them are quite deficient in many ways, but they do tend toward similar conclusions.
Mechanical Considerations
The CDC, WHO, and local departments of health have issued a variety of advisories about masks which they update periodically. A typical advisory begins as follows:
“Because the virus is transmitted predominantly by inhaling respiratory droplets from infected persons, universal mask use can help reduce transmission.”
As a rationale for masks this fails because it does not mention a necessary prior element. In order to work, masks have to attenuate the guilty aerosols. The individual aerosols involved could be only a micrometer or few micrometers in size. The individual virions are in the range of 50-130 nanometers.[6] I have looked at a number of cloth masks that one can purchase and found their pore sizes to be 0.05 to 0.15 millimeters. This is 1000 times larger than virions and hundreds of times larger than small aerosols. No wonder these packages of masks should come with disclaimers. Adding to this issue of excessive pore size is that cloth masks are not made of certified materials, are manufactured to no standard, are often ill-fitting displaying gaps aside the nose and on the cheeks, or pulled down below the nose, and sometimes placed over a beard. Flat surgical masks do better at times with the excessive pore size problem but still present issues with poor fit and gaps.
There is a mask that corrects most of these deficiencies. The N-95 mask is made of qualified materials and manufactured to a standard. These masks attenuate 95% of particles in the size range of 0.3 to 0.5 micrometers. However, they still require attention to fit to reduce gaps, and they are not guaranteed to halt very small aerosols the size of individual virions. A news article last summer in the Japanese newspaper, The Asahi Shimbun,[7] summarized measurements that researchers made on particle attenuation of cloth, gauze, and N-95 masks, supports what I have summarized here. Cloth and gauze masks have zero effectiveness; while N-95 masks perform to specification, but only if fitted and worn properly. And even then there is no guarantee they prevent the transmission of disease.
There is one more mechanical aspect to ponder. Often in a crisis people will offer what expertise they can – they recycle their expertise. Something I am doing here. Recently a number of researchers in the field of fluid dynamics have weighed in with measurements and simulations (as one would expect) using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The AIP journal Physics of Fluids produced a special issue in October 2020 highlighting the physics of masks. One study uses CFD to model persons wearing masks inside and outside, in various conditions of air flow, to address ability of masks to attenuate aerosols ejected from a cough or a sneeze.[8] They state in conclusion…
“… our results suggest that, while in indoor environments wearing a mask is very effective to protect others, in outdoor conditions with ambient wind flow present wearing a mask might be essential to protect ourselves from pathogen-carrying saliva particulates escaping from another mask wearing individual in the vicinity.”
This means, I presume, that masks are useful in a situation when all around are sick, and sneezing, wheezing, and coughing — in other words, in a Covid ward of a health care facility. What does “very effective” mean? If it means a very great attenuation of particles, greater than 95% say, then this still has to be interpreted in the light of findings that as few as 300 virions can lead to disease.[9] However, one would think that if coughing and sneezing are the issue, then covering a cough or sneeze should do as well, or perhaps even better when one considers the problem of ill-fit and aerosol escaping through gaps. My experience since March 2020 is that I never encounter anyone in public who are so sick that they are simply sneezing and coughing with abandon.
This computational fluid dynamics approach to determining the efficacy of masks resembles the equivalent modeling approach to climate change. They imply that models define reality when, in fact, it should be that observations and measurements do. There is no means to turn CFD models into clinical outcomes.
In summary, there are mechanical reasons to suppose that masks could reduce the spread of virus in some settings, but none appear pertinent to the materials used to construct masks, or to the ways the public wear them in about 98% of situations. Opposed to supposing that masks might work, or modeling how they might work, we can only learn what efficacy they have by making experiments or observations.
Experiments
The closest thing I have found to true experiments regarding masks are a small number of randomized clinical trials (RCTs). A surprisingly few RCTs involving masks and respirators have been done.[10] I will summarize only two of these. Of these one is pre-COVID-19 and not controversial, and the other is post COVID-19 and subject to controversy and censorship.
There are many respiratory diseases which circulate in the human population. The recent epidemics of MERS, SARS, Ebola and influenza provoked a search for effective non-pharmaceutical interventions. In one example, a group of doctors became interested in how well cloth masks performed for preventing infection in hospitals because such masks are in wide use in the developing world. This trial involved 1607 volunteers at 14 hospitals in Hanoi, Vietnam working in high-risk wards. There were three arms in this RTC: cloth masks, surgical masks, and a control arm of “standard practice” which involved some mask usage but at about one-half the compliance rate of the two treatment arms. The study took place over a four week period, and was to the authors’ knowledge, the first RCT involving cloth masks. Among their findings were that particle attenuation was virtually nil in the cloth masks (97% infiltration), and surprisingly poor in these particular medical masks (44% infiltration). The rate of infection in the cloth mask wearers was double that in the medical mask wearers; medical masks showed some effectiveness, but this contradicted earlier studies showing no efficacy to the medical masks.[11] The researchers conclude that cloth masks should not be advocated for health-care workers, at least until a much better design of such is produced.[12]
The second RCT was performed in Denmark last spring and was subject to censorship by our social media as well as facing some publication resistance.[13] It involved 4862 participants who completed the study. It is more pertinent to this essay because it addressed the efficacy of masks outside of a health care setting. Participants were divided into a control group asked to refrain from wearing masks when out of their home and a treatment arm asked to wear a mask when out of the home for three hours per day. Both groups were ask to follow other social distancing guidelines in order to prevent confounding of masks and distancing which have similar if not identical effects. The primary measured outcome was the number of participants showing SARS-CoV-2 or other respiratory viral infections after one month as determined from PCR testing or hospital diagnosis.
The outcome produced an infection rate of 2.1% in the control arm against 1.8% in the treatment arm. However, the confidence interval of odds ratio (CI of 0.53 to 1.23) included a value of 1.0 almost at its center, suggesting no significant difference in outcomes. If one were to yet insist that the small difference in attack rate (42/2392=1.8% versus 53/2470=2.1%) is nonetheless an important risk reduction, the absolute risk reduction implied (0.003) translates into 30,000 hours (90 hours/0.003) of mask wearing to prevent one case of COVID-19 when community prevalence is around 2.0%. Take that as you may.
There is an interesting series of response letters to this study that are published along with it. These make some legitimate points about design deficiencies. It is certainly true that a study involving masks cannot be a “true RCT” because one cannot blind a study involving masks to a clinical end. The wearer knows they are wearing a mask, and so does the rest of the public. I won’t belabor this point by describing what can go wrong in an unblinded study. Another criticism focuses on using PCR tests, with their false positives and negatives, to measure outcome – a problem which will return in the next section about observations. However despite some criticism, one might note that the outcome of the CHAMP study, in which U.S. Marine Corps recruits were subjected to rigorous social distancing, hygiene and mask wearing resulted in just about the same attack rate as found in this study.[14] I doubt it is possible in the present politicized and hysterical atmosphere to do an RCT on any non-pharmaceutical intervention that could satisfy critics, but none that I know of have shown significant effectiveness of masks.[15]
Observations
Before launching into a discussion of what observations concerning the epidemic may mean, a brief segue into the incubation period and other influences on reporting is instructive. The incubation period of Sars-CoV-2 is probably ten or fourteen days long. Following exposure there is a probability on each successive day of someone becoming a case with half of the ultimate cases developing by day five or six.[16] The process behaves like a low pass filter with a delay. Figure 1 shows this. One-hundred exposures on day zero, presuming all result in cases, produces rising numbers until 19 cases occur on day five. Then they decline to zero.
This has two important considerations. First, it smooths the results of any factor producing a change to R, the reproductive ratio, and makes such changes harder to detect. That is, it reduces resolution. Second, it produces a correlation of cases day to day, so that counts of cases on successive days are not independent of one another, and this has the effect of reducing the degrees of freedom in observational data.[17]
Add to this the distortions resulting from common graphing options like 7 to 21 day averaging done with one-sided (causal) filters; and distortions which resulted from switching from clinical diagnosis to “lab confirmed” cases resting on PCR tests, and what one has is a mess. It is easy to reach a point where what a graph shows today is what might have happened three weeks earlier.
Figure 1. From a single exposure event cases climb for many days afterward in the incubation period. This behaves like a low-pass filter with a delay.
One does not have to search extensively to find evidence suggesting that epidemics proceed unhindered despite all sorts of mandates. I know of no epicurve showing a clear effect. Figure 2, using data drawn from the Covid Tracking Project, for example, shows a comparison among Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. Despite mandates of various rigor, introduced at different times, the epicurves are virtually the same.[18] The Swiss Policy Research Group produced a nice twelve-paned panel, found here, which makes comparisons among various countries, with the same result – masks have no obvious benefit. A more detailed time series of cases in four German cities during April, 2020 also shows no benefit;[18] however, I would criticize these time series as being of such short duration following the mandatory mask order as to have possibly missed the period of greatest effect, if there is one, just over incubation delay.
Figure 2. Comparison of epicurves from three neighboring states, with timing of mask mandates shown. This was done by @ianmSC on Twitter using data drawn from the Covid Tracking Project.
The global data firm Dynata reported that by the first of July mask wearing in Houston and south Florida was likely to be 80% even before mandates; yet these places saw multiple large waves of infection thereafter.[20] California and New York applied rigorous mask mandates, yet still went through several large waves in the summer and autumn. The USA as a whole, in which 39 states imposed mask mandates in April or before, exhibits an epicurve almost identical, except for vertical scale, to Wyoming, the smallest state, even though Wyoming applied no state-wide mandate until November 9. The CDC reported that most people contracting COVID had worn masks, although self-reporting is notoriously inaccurate.[21]
There are many problems with our observational data. Death counts have been biased by incentives provided to hospitals over payments for COVID-19 deaths.[22] While many states tried to build useful epicurves by placing cases on date of symptom onset, many publically available data sets were built by date of case report and become dominated by the cycle of bureaucratic testing and reporting rather than by characteristics of the disease. To see how these differ Figure 3 shows Colorado data from 08/02/20. The difference is stark with a dominant seven day cycle which some people have confused with a dynamic of the disease and which disappears in the date of onset rendition. A subtle effect like mask usage is likely to be lost in these extraneous influences.
Figure 3. Comparison of epicurves by date of onset vs. report date.
The case data is a mess because when it began early in 2020 cases were confirmed through symptoms or at least a probable contact with another case, but eventually became dominated by mass testing of people without symptoms using PCR tests. Once this mass testing took hold even states trying to maintain an epicurve by date of onset could no longer do so. Figure 4 shows the curve for the state of Wyoming which became dominated by the weekly cycle of PCR testing which began at the University in Laramie in mid-august, but really took effect with return of students around September 1. Because so many of the “lab confirmed” cases had no associated symptoms a full one-third of cases remained always under investigation and the date of report became the de facto date of onset.[23]
This university provides an interesting case study in itself. The total number of cases from the start of the epidemic to the 31st of August in the entire county was134 – less than one case per day. The university instituted a very rigorous set of rules for reopening including mask wearing in all settings inside and out, rules for limiting number of persons in university vehicles, foot traffic patterns inside buildings, dedicated entrances and exits, periodic sanitation of all surfaces, social distance guidelines and even a web site to report persons not following rules. I did a few informal surveys around campus in September and October and thought mask compliance was between 80 and 90%.
Nevertheless by October 15, six weeks later, the county had added 780 cases of which 551 (71%) were connected to the U.W. campus. The rules and masks appeared to present no barrier to the spread of our mini-epidemic.[24]
Figure 4. Confirming cases using lab PCR tests caused the appearance of a seven day period in the epicurve.
Evidence provided to support mask mandates consisted mainly of a single study.[25] There have been many criticisms of this study, including one which suggested it be retracted.[26] However, ignoring its controversy for the moment, let’s just focus on what the authors have to say.
They state, first of all, that masks may have effectiveness as large as 85%, but that this estimate has low confidence – precise number but narrow confidence interval. Second, they notice a diminished effectiveness between N95 respirators on the one hand and cloth masks with 12 to 16 plies on the other. No one wears cloth masks with even one-fourth as many plies. Thus, this can’t be an endorsement of cloth masks. No one has unlimited access to N95 respirators,[27] and couldn’t because there is not enough manufacturing capacity to supply them to the public in general. Thus, this “essential” study does no more than reiterate what the other sources of information, including the measurements of particle attenuation reported in the Asahi Shimbun article, have to say. Its recommendations are not pertinent to reality of mask wearing by the general public. This is an unscientific rationale.
A more recent effort to promote masks as essential to controlling the pandemic appears to me to have many shortcomings.[28] This is a retrospective study of the history of the epidemic on a county level, referenced to timing of mask mandates and orders to close or limit restaurant traffic between March 2020 and October 2020. It is what economists would call an “event study”.[29] Problems with the study include:
- The event involved in an event study should be independent of the data. It is not in this case. Mask mandates were generally applied through political pressure during a pandemic wave. Often applied when the wave had begun to wane.
- Mask mandates are probably hopelessly confounded with other orders such as closure of restaurants. According to the researchers themselves, the mask mandates began in April in 39 states, and restaurant closures began in 49 states in March and April. Two influences atop one another. The claim to having a mask measurement unconfounded by closures cannot be true, or there was a lot of data sorting involved which becomes another confounder.
- The paper is missing details about the statistical methods and calculation of significance.
- Even if significant in a statistical sense, the effect seems very small.
The worst flaw seems to me to be a subtle one. The underlying data of the CDC study are curves of cumulative cases and deaths, which I have already explained are flawed to begin with. However, the typical cumulative curve, being a logistic curve, has a particular shape that begins as an almost exponential rise but quickly passes through an inflection with constantly diminishing slope as it approaches a horizontal asymptote. Such a curve will display a long sequence of days in which the case rate declines. An average of daily changes over segments of this decline, even with noise added, which are then referred to an earlier time period, will produce results just like those in the CDC study. No matter what the cause of the limit to an epidemic, the result is the same. What has happened is the CDC has chosen a statistic having a nearly perfect expectation to the characteristics of a logistic curve from any limiting influence, and cannot draw a distinction between the null hypothesis and a particular alternative. It is like circular logic.
Conclusions
There are situations, health care settings mainly or situations of extreme community prevalence with a lot of coughing and sneezing in public, where masks serve a useful purpose. Yet, people who insisted last spring that the epidemic would go away with mask mandates could not have been more wrong. Every consideration shows this.
Nearly all the masks we see people wearing are constructed to no standard, made of varying sorts of cloth, are poorly fitting, are worn with near complete disregard for effectiveness, reused who knows how many times, used for what else we know not, and are often completely open at the cheeks, nose, chin and beard. They appear mainly useful for making a person touch their face constantly.
How about experimental or observational evidence from the present pandemic? The only experimental evidence is consistent with the benefits being so small they cannot be distinguished from occurrence by chance. Probably no new experimental evidence will become available for the following reason: People have probably changed their behavior drastically during this pandemic leading to too many confounding factors to identify the effect of just one. As the epidemic wanes recruiting sufficient subjects for RTCs becomes difficult.
Masks mandates are not a risk free intervention. They have a poor effect of civil society, they absorb resources, they possibly carry health risks of their own, and they certainly contribute to mistaken notions of safety and risk. Masks seem to me like a solution to a political problem which should alone raise skepticism about all claims.
References/Notes:
1- Gery P. Guy,Jr. et al, Association of State-issued Mask Mandates and Allowing On-Premises Dining with County-level COVID-19 Case and Death Growth Rates, https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7010e3.htm?s_cid=mm7010e3_w, last accessed 3/8/2021.
2-Lincoln Moses and Frederick Mostellar, Experimentation: Just do it!, In Statistics and Public Policy, Bruce D. Spencer Ed., Oxford U Press, 1997.
3-Futile Fussings: A history of Graphical Failure from Cattle to #coronavirus https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/03/31/futile-fussings, last accessed 03/13/2021.
4-Close Encounters of the Third Kind, for example.
5-I have a collection including about three-dozen essay, opinion pieces, and research papers, discussing the topics of social distancing, mask mandates, lockdowns, school closures. These include contributions by Dr.s Scott Atlas, John Ioannidis, Paul Alexander, Donald Henderson, Jay Battacharya, Sunetra Gupta, Carl Henehgan, Tom Jefferson, Martin Kulldorff, and others; and almost all of these have been ignored, scorned, or censored in some way.
[6]-Individual virions are mentioned as having various sizes ranging from 50 to 130 nanometers in various internet sources. Corona viruses are pleomorphic which means they have a variety of shapes.
7- Cloth face masks offer zero shield against virus, a study shows, Nayon Kon, The Asahi Shimbun, July 7, 2020.
8-Ali Khosronejad, et al, Fluid Dynamics simulations show that facial masks can suppress the spread of COVID-19 in indoor environments, AIP Advances 10, 125109, (2020); https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0035414;
9-Referenced in Imke Schroeder, COVID-19: A Risk Assessment Perspective, J Chem Health Saf., 2020 May 11: acs:chas.0c00035
10-Tom Jefferson, and Carl Heneghan, Masking lack of evidence with politics, Center for Evidence Based Medicine, July 23, 2020. In particular the authors note the surprisingly small number of RTCs considering the great importance of controlling respiratory disease.
11-C. Raina MacIntyre, et al, A cluster randomized trial of cloth masks compared with medical masks in healthcare workers. BMJ Open 2015;5;e006577. doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2014-006577. Two earlier studies conducted in China by same group found no effectiveness for medical masks.
12-By significant in this context the authors mean a 95% confidence interval that does not enclose a relative risk of infection of 1.0, but is entirely above or below 1.0.
13-Henning Bundgaard, et.al. Effectiveness of adding a mask recommendation to other public health measures to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection in Danish mask wearers, Annals of Internal Medicine, 18 November 2020. https://doi.org/10.7326/M20-6817
14-Andrew G. Letizia, et al, SARS-CoV-2 Transmission among Marine Recruits during Quarantine, N Engl J Med 2020; 383:2407-2416. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2029717
15- Not finding significant protection, significant in the statistical sense, does not mean masks are completely ineffective, or counter-effective, but rather that their effect was not so large that it could be distinguished from a chance outcome at some level, usually 95%, of confidence.
16-P.E. Sartwell, The distribution of incubation periods of infectious disease, Amer. Jour. Hyg., 1950, 51:310-318. Sartwell lists coronaviruses as having a log mean of 0.4 (2.5 days) and dispersion of 1.5. However, a recent training class stated a median of 5-6 days for SARS-CoV-2. I used 5 days for purposes of producing Figure 1.
17-swprs.org/2018/10/01/covid-19-intro/ search for the English language version.
18- This panel of four German city graphs can be found at swprs.org/face-masks-evidence/ last accessed on 3/12/2021
19-This is well known, but see for example, chaamjamal, Illusory Statistical Power in Time Series Analysis, April 30, 2019, https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/40/30/illusory-statistical-power-in-time-series-analysis/ last accessed 1/18/2020
20-WSJ July 29, 2020.
21-CDC report referenced in article at The Federalist, CDC Study Finds Overwhelming Majority Of People Getting Coronavirus Wore Masks, October 12, 2020 https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/12/cdc-study-finds-overwhelming-majority-of-people-getting-coronavirus-wore-masks/
22-Payments for covid deaths, but not for others is incentive enough to bias results.
23-My attempts to learn how many cycles were being employed to report PCR results revealed that no one at any responsible agency in my state knew. All they would do is refer me to a misleading and wrong page at the supplier of the tests. However, a news item reported that researchers at Wayne State University a variety of cycle numbers are used to report results nationally including numbers from 25 to above 37. Viral Loads In COVID-19 Infected Patients Drop, Along With Death Rate, Study Finds Researchers find “a downward trend in the amount of virus detected.” Joseph Curl, DailyWire.com, Sep 27, 2020
24-UW to implement enhanced covid-19 testing program Monday, UW press release, Oct. 15. Data from this also mentions the university expects to perform 15000 tests per week. Yet my asking questions revealed that no one seemed to know what to expect from false positive and negative results. Amazingly few people recognize that interpreting the outcomes of PCR tests is a matter of conditional probability and cannot be done reliably without other information. Even one-half of the faculty and students at Harvard medical school did not know this according to an example from Julian L. Simon in his book “Resampling: The New Statistics, 1997.”
25-Derek K Chu, MD, et al, Physical distancing, face masks, and eye protection to prevent person to person transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19: a systematic
review and meta-analysis, The Lancet, v 395, issue 10242, p1973-1987, June 27, 2020 https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31142-9
26-For example, the Center for Evidence Based Medicine (CEBM) at Oxford University objects to its social distancing conclusions.
27-The term “N95 Respirator” is ambiguous. These respirators are designed to be tight fitting, but most N95s are manufactured for construction, while there are N95s specifically manufactured to prevent disease transmission. Unfortunately the studies cited do not present a clear picture of which N95s were employed.
28-Refer to note #1 above. But in addition to my concerns listed here more were raised in Paul E. Alexander, The CDC’s Mask Mandate Study: Debunked, AIER, March 4, 2021 https://www.aier.org/article/the-cdcs-mask-mandate-study-debunked/ last accessed 3/13/2021
29-John Staddon, Scientific Research: How Science Works, Fails to Work, and Pretends to Work, Routledge, 2018, p. 124.
Are Doctors Failing To Record Bad Reactions To Covid Jabs?
Conservative Woman | March 16, 2021
This article was written by ‘a frontline NHS consultant’.
I HAVE just logged on to enter a patient with a fatal flare-up of malignant melanoma (originally diagnosed and surgically excised in 2014) manifesting as a suspected stroke with unilateral arm paralysis at the end of February, exactly one month after the patient’s first dose of the AstraZeneca coronavirus jab. This is the sixth Yellow Card report I have made in a month.
It seems entirely plausible to me, from a biological perspective, that natural tumour-suppressing activity of our lymphatic cells (NK cells and various classes of T Cell) could be temporarily suppressed by the surge of spike protein induced by the vaccine. As this is a new class of drug, which was rushed to market at breakneck speed, it is my clinical instinct that we should err on the side of over-caution as regards reporting observational anomalies or potential adverse reactions. With this week’s news that Denmark and other countries have suspended the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine, this approach seems even more sensible.
As a doctor with more than three decades of experience, this observational practice defines a long tradition of proper science.
But just how accurate and usable is the adverse event Yellow Card reporting system in the UK? Given the highly experimental nature of the Covid-19 vaccine, was due diligence given to making sure those rolling it out, and indeed those receiving it, were well versed in this system of reporting?
I have noticed that young doctors I work with are rather perversely trained not to respond to their instincts and clinical observations. The strict and immovable hierarchy within the NHS quickly instructs them that in this environment, the squeaky wheel definitely does not get the grease. It may find itself rolled out of the door, never to return. Working in a sector with only one potential employer, viz the NHS, this is not a risk many young medics would be prepared to take.
Using the MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) reporting system for adverse effects following the vaccine is a shockingly unlikely thing to happen among hospital doctors where I work. From many discussions I have had over the years, I know that this is also the case in various hospitals where colleagues work. None have had any training in using the online system and many seem surprised to learn of its existence.
The net result is that many adverse events do not get reported by medics. Most are not even noticed. There is no tradition of timelining the appearance of a problem and remarking any possible connection to the vaccine. Because the mantra ‘vaccines are safe’ is so embedded, both societally and medically, most in the medical fraternity struggle to envisage that a vaccine could have deleterious effects past the first 15 minutes of being injected. There is a collective spirit of self-censorship with respect to the Covid-jabs in particular. It is disquieting to say the least.
Members of the public, as well as healthcare professionals, are free to lodge a Yellow Card event at this site. Has every person getting the jab received clear instructions on how to do this? Did every individual really receive the information necessary to give informed consent? In a world where patient safety was the primary objective, this would be a bare minimum for an entirely novel medical product, particularly when being rolled out to millions of people at once. Were care home managers educated on the reporting system and trained in observing changes and possible symptoms? From enquiries made to care home managers, it seems this did not happen.
It is also possible to lodge an event on behalf of a relative you care for, or for an elderly relative who cannot perhaps navigate the labyrinthine online reporting system. When making the report, you can register so that any future reporting you do may be accessible by putting in your email and password to bring up the reporting system. However, you may lodge a report without doing this.
The online form is poorly designed. I know numerous computer-literate clinical colleagues who find it time-consuming and cumbersome. For something as simple as a headache one has to choose from 50 different types of headache. For insulin, 20 types. Such systems need to be simple and slick to avoid further unnecessary blocks for busy medics.
The issues cited above are reflected in the fact that adverse effects have been reported for only 0.3 per cent of Pfizer vaccinations and 0.5 per cent of AstraZeneca vaccinations. In their phase 1 and 2 trials, adverse events were reported at least 100 times more often (Pfizer 84 per cent pain, 63 per cent fatigue; AstraZeneca 50 per cent moderate symptoms). With these kind of percentages slipping through the cracks, it seems that the entire reporting system is in dire need of an overhaul.
Scott Atlas: The Last Word
The Stanford Review | March 7, 2021
Editor’s Note: Scott W. Atlas, MD, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, served from August through November 2020 as Special Adviser to the President and was a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. Atlas delivered the following remarks in a virtual lecture hosted by the College Republicans. They have been lightly adapted to appear in print.
It is always a great pleasure, and an important part of my job, to speak to students. It is essential for students to hear ideas from many sources, especially ideas they may not agree with. That is a key part of learning how to think critically – and critical thinking is the most important lesson to learn in college, in my opinion.
The coronavirus pandemic has been a great tragedy, there can be no doubt about that. But it has also exposed profound issues in America that now threaten the very principles of freedom and order that we Americans often take for granted.
First, I have been shocked at the enormous power of the government, to unilaterally decree, to simply close businesses and schools by edict, restrict personal movement, mandate behavior, and eliminate our most basic freedoms, without any end and little accountability.
Second, I remain surprised at the acceptance by the American people of draconian rules, restrictions, and unprecedented mandates, even those that are arbitrary, destructive, and wholly unscientific.
This crisis has also exposed what we all have known existed, but we have tolerated for years: the overt bias of the media, the lack of diverse viewpoints on campuses, the absence of neutrality in big tech controlling social media, and now more visibly than ever, the intrusion of politics into science. Ultimately, the freedom to seek and state the truth is at risk here in the United States.
First, we all acknowledge that the consequences of the SARS2 coronavirus pandemic and its management have been enormous. Over half million American deaths have been attributed to the virus; more will certainly follow. Even after almost a year, the pandemic still paralyzes much of our country. And despite all efforts, there was an undeniable failure to stop cases from rapidly escalating and prevent hospitalizations and death.
Here’s the unacknowledged reality: almost all states and major cities, with a handful of exceptions, have implemented severe restrictions for many months, including closures of businesses and in-person school, mobility restrictions and curfews, quarantines, limits on group gatherings, and mask mandates dating back to at least the summer.
And let’s clear up the myths about the behavior of Americans – social mobility tracking of Americans and data from Gallup, YouGov, the COVID-19 Consortium, and the CDC have shown significant reductions of movement as well as a consistently high percentage of mask wearing since the late summer, similar to Western European countries and approaching those in Asia.
All legitimate policy scholars should, today, be openly reexamining policies that severely harmed America’s families and children, while failing to save the elderly. Studies, including one in January from Stanford University’s infectious disease scientists and epidemiologists Bendavid, Oh, Bhattacharya, and Ioannidis, have shown the mitigating impact of the extraordinary measures was small at best and according to the study’s senior author Ioannidis, “usually harmful” – in his words, “pro-contagion.” President Biden openly admitted their lack of efficacy in his speech to the nation on January 22, when he said, “there is nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months.”
Bizarrely, though, many want to blame those who opposed lockdowns and mandates for the failure of the very lockdowns and mandates that were widely implemented.
Separate from their limited value in containing the virus — efficacy that has often been “grossly exaggerated” in scientific journals, as documented by epidemiologists and biostatisticians Chin, Ioannidis, Tanner, and Cripps – lockdown policies have been extraordinarily harmful. The harms to children of closing in-person schooling are dramatic, including poor learning, increased school dropouts, and social isolation, most of which are far worse for lower income groups.
A recent study confirms that up to 78% of cancers were never detected due to missed screening over three months. If one extrapolates to the entire country, up to a million new cases or more over nine months will have gone undetected. That health disaster adds to missed critical surgeries, chemotherapy, organ transplants, presentations of pediatric illnesses, heart attack and stroke patients too afraid to call emergency services, and others, all well documented.
Beyond hospital care, CDC reported four-fold increases in depression, three-fold increases in anxiety symptoms, and a doubling of suicidal ideation, particularly among young adults – college age – after the first few months of lockdowns, echoing the AMA reports of drug overdoses and suicides. An explosion of insurance claims for these psychological harms in children just verified this, doubling nationally since last year; and in the strictly locked down Northeast, there was a more than 300% increase of teenagers visiting doctors for self-harm.
Domestic abuse and child abuse have been skyrocketing due to the isolation and specifically to the loss of jobs, particularly in the strictest lockdowns. Given that many in-person schools have been closed, hundreds of thousands of abuse cases are never reported, since schools are the number one agency where abuse is noticed. Finally, the unemployment “shock” from lockdowns, according to a recent NBER study, translates into what they called a “staggering” 890,000 additional U.S. deaths over the next 15 years from the lockdowns, disproportionately affecting minorities and women.
We know we have not yet seen the full extent of the damage from lockdowns, because it will last for years, even decades. Perhaps that is why lockdowns were not recommended in previous pandemic analyses, even for infections with far higher lethality.
To manage such a crisis, shouldn’t policymakers objectively consider both the virus harms and the totality of impact of policies? That’s the importance of health policy experts – my field – with a broader scope of expertise than that of epidemiologists and basic scientists. And that’s exactly why I was called to the White House – there were zero health policy scholars on the Task Force; no one with a medical background who also considered the impacts of the policies was advising the White House.
To determine the best path forward necessarily means admitting that social lockdowns and significant restrictions on individuals are deadly and extraordinarily harmful, especially on the working class, minorities, and the poor.
In his book “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds,” Charles Mackay wrote: “of all the offspring of Time, Error is the most ancient, and is so old and familiar an acquaintance, that Truth, when discovered, comes upon most of us like an intruder, and meets the intruder’s welcome.”
Optimistically, we should be seeing the light at the end of the long tunnel with the rollout of vaccines. I believe that we are. But, using logic that would put the Mad Hatter to shame, we now hear some claim that all children must be tested and vaccinated, even though they have extremely low risk from this infection and are proven to not be significant spreaders to adults? Or that all teachers must be vaccinated before they teach in-person, even though schools are one of the lowest risk environments and the vast majority of teachers are not high risk?
Worse, we hear the same faces on TV once again stressing uncertainty, and issuing new warnings – that social distancing, masks, and other restrictions will still be necessary after vaccination and until 2022. Is there no intention of those who control the narrative – the often proclaimed “consensus” – to allow Americans to live normally, to live freely, without fear, again?
Just as in Galileo’s time, one real problem is the experts and “vested academic interests.” Faculty members of many universities, America’s centers for critical thinking, have overtly intimidated views contrary to their own, likely out of political reasons, leaving many afraid to speak up. That intimidation has been effective – I know, I have received hundreds of emails from scientists and policy scholars all over the country, all over the world, telling me to never give up, but they are afraid to come forward. And yes, even a number of infectious disease experts right here at Stanford are afraid to step forward publicly and say the truth.
It is commendable that Stanford’s President and Provost, former Provost Etchemendy, and a few other distinguished members of the academic community here spoke in defense of academic freedom at a recent Faculty Senate meeting. But it is not only the matter of academic freedom that needs comment.
Instead of rethinking failed policies and admitting their errors, some have chosen to employ smears in opinion pieces and through organized rebukes against those of us who disagreed with what was implemented and who dared to help the country under a President they despised – apparently, the ultimate transgression.
Straw-man arguments and out-of-context distortions to defame people are not acceptable in civilized society, let alone in our great universities. There has been an attempt to silence and delegitimize me using falsifications and misrepresentations. This dishonors Stanford’s code of conduct, damages the Stanford name, and most importantly, it abuses the trust parents and society place in them to influence America’s children, our next generation of leaders.
It is understandable that most Stanford professors are not experts in health policy – that is my field, my lane – and understandable that most Stanford professors are ignorant of the data about the pandemic. But it is not acceptable to claim that I made recommendations that were “falsehoods and misrepresentations of science.” That is a lie. No matter how often a lie is repeated, and regardless of how often those lies are echoed in biased media, lies do not transform into truths.
We should all remember the phrase attributed to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels – “A lie told once remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth” – and pray to God that it never becomes true in these United States of America.
All policy considerations I recommended to the President were designed to reduce both the spread of the virus to the most vulnerable and the structural harms of the policies to those impacted the most – the poor and working class of America. I was one of the first to push for increasing protections to those most at risk, particularly the elderly, because they were dying by the tens of thousands because the chosen policies implemented by states, recommended by other Task Force members, were failing to protect them. Almost a year ago, I recognized that we must also consider the enormous harms to physical health, mental health, and lives lost coming directly from the draconian policies that attempted to contain the infection. That is the most appropriate goal of public health policy: to minimize all harms, not simply to stop Covid-19 at all costs.
The claim in a recent JAMA opinion piece by three Stanford professors that “nearly all public health experts were concerned that [Atlas’s] recommendations could lead to tens of thousands (or more) of unnecessary deaths in the US alone” is patently false, absurd on its face. As pointed out on February 10 by Zinberg, the proposal called the Great Barrington Declaration, is “far closer to the one condemned in the JAMA article than anything [Atlas] said”. Yet, that policy declaration was co-authored by medical scientists and epidemiologists from Stanford, Harvard, and Oxford, and it has already been signed by over 50,000 medical and public-health practitioners.
When critics display such ignorance about the scope of views held by experts, it exposes their bias and wholly disqualifies their authority on these issues. Indeed, it is beyond parody that these same critics wrote “professionalism demands honesty about what they know and do not know.”
I have indeed explained the fact that younger people have little risk from this infection, and I explained the biological concept of herd immunity – protection arising when a large percentage of people acquire immunity – just like Harvard epidemiologists Katherine Yih and Martin Kulldorff, and some of the top scientists at Stanford, have explained. That is very different from proposing that people be deliberately exposed and infected by “allowing the virus to spread naturally” without mitigation efforts. I have not advised that.
And how timely it is that Professor Makary of Johns Hopkins School of Public Health just did the same, acknowledging in the Wall Street Journal on February 18, 2021 that “herd immunity is the inevitable result of viral spread and vaccination.” Makary went on to celebrate what he called “the good news” – that “the consistent and rapid decline in daily cases since Jan. 8 can be explained only by natural immunity. Behavior didn’t suddenly improve over the holidays; Americans traveled more over Christmas than they had since March. Vaccines also don’t explain the steep decline in January. Vaccination rates were low and they take weeks to kick in.”
Those are Makary’s words. Will Dr. Makary now be linked with doctors who promoted eugenics and those who conducted the racist Tuskegee syphilis experiments, as in the piece in JAMA ? Will professors also call for his medical license to be stripped, or that he be formally censured for explaining the benefit of naturally-acquired immunity?
In fact, directly contrary to advocating that the infection spread, I have repeatedly called for mitigation measures, including extra sanitization, social distancing, masks, group limits, testing, and other increased protections to limit the spread and damage from the coronavirus. I also explicitly called for augmenting protection of those at risk in dozens of on-the-record presentations, interviews, and written pieces, including:
Written pieces in The Hill– May 3, The Hill-September 3, New York Post– September 15, New York Post– April 26; presentations to: Senate Committee on Homeland Security, Parliamentary Intelligence Security Forum, Liberty Forum of Silicon Valley, YPO retreat in Sea Island, Georgia; and interviews with: Ben Shapiro podcast, John Bachelor radio, Steve Deace Blaze TV, Tucker Carlson Fox News TV, Florida televised press conference, WAML Radio, and numerous others.
One must ask the question: why would accusers also ignore my explicit, emphatic public denials about supporting the spread of the infection unchecked to achieve herd immunity – denials quoted widely in the media. Are not my own statements the object of their criticism in the first place? Or is it due to a desire to “cancel” anyone who accepted the call, who had the audacity to help this country under President Trump?
I have been accused of claiming that “young people are not harmed by the virus and cannot spread the disease.” To the contrary, I have frequently cited detailed data explicitly stating that children do get the infection, that children can have serious consequences from the infection, and that some children die from the disease. When I said in a 5/20/2020 interview with Congressman Andy Biggs that there was “an extremely low risk for children that Covid-19 poses” and that the risk of dying if you’re under 18 from this disease is “nearly zero,” that matches the data, including CDC, and is almost verbatim what John Ioannidis, renowned Stanford epidemiologist, summed up about the entire world’s data. The risk of dying from Covid-19 is “almost zero” for young people.
For many months, I was maligned after calling for opening in-person schools. The compelling case to open schools is now admitted to be longstanding truth, even in lay publications like the Atlantic. They acknowledged that “Research from around the world has, since the beginning of the pandemic, indicated that people under 18, and especially younger kids, are less susceptible to infection, less likely to experience severe symptoms, and far less likely to be hospitalized or die.” Further, that “We’ve known for months that young children are less susceptible to serious infection and less likely to transmit the coronavirus. Let’s act like it.”
The accusers who wrote the opinion piece in JAMA stated: “Atlas disputed the need for masks”. That is misrepresenting my words. To the contrary, my advice on mask usage has been consistent and explicit – “wear a mask when you cannot socially distance” – and it matched the published recommendations of the World Health Organization in June: “When outside, wear a mask if you cannot maintain physical distance from others.”
In December, the WHO modified that to “(In areas of known or suspected community or cluster SARS-CoV-2 transmission), WHO advises that the general public should wear a non-medical mask in … settings where physical distancing of at least 1 metre cannot be maintained”, i.e. not at all times, not by everyone. That also matches the NIH document dated February 2021 “Prevention and prophylaxis of SARS-COV-2 infection”: “When consistent distancing is not possible, face coverings may further reduce the spread of infectious droplets from individuals with SARS-CoV-2 infection to others.”
Regarding universal masks: 38 states have implemented general-population mask mandates, most since at least the summer, with almost all the rest having mandates in their major cities. Widespread, general-population mask usage has shown little empirical utility for stopping cases, even though that evidence has been censored by Twitter and Amazon. Widespread mask usage showed only minimal impact in Denmark’s randomized controlled study. Those are facts. And facts matter.
Here’s the reality: those who insist that universal mask usage is absolutely proven to be effective at controlling the spread of this virus and is universally recommended by “the science” are ignoring the published evidence to the contrary. One could say they are propagating false and misleading information; some might even call that, using a phrase from the JAMA opinion, “subverting science.”
I posted a list where mask mandates empirically failed to stop cases, along with direct quotes, without any edit, from WHO, CDC, and Oxford University. That was censored by Twitter. And I stated numerous times that it would be irrational to wear a mask “when alone riding a bicycle outside, when driving your own car alone, or when walking in the desert alone.” I stand by those words.
Those who charge that it is unethical, even dangerous, to question broad population mask mandates must not realize that several of the world’s top infectious disease scientists and major public health organizations explicitly question the efficacy of general population masks. The public needs to know the truth.
For instance, Jefferson and Heneghan of University of Oxford’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine wrote: “It would appear that despite two decades of pandemic preparedness, there is considerable uncertainty as to the value of wearing masks.” Oxford’s renowned epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta said there is no need for masks unless one is elderly or high risk. Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya stated “mask mandates are not supported by the scientific data … there is no scientific evidence that mask mandates work to slow the spread of the disease.”
Throughout this pandemic until December, the WHO’s “Advice on the use of masks in the context of COVID-19” stated: “At present, there is no direct evidence (from studies on COVID19 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.” In December, the WHO changed their wording to today’s “At present there is only limited and inconsistent scientific evidence to support the effectiveness of masking of healthy people in the community to prevent infection with respiratory viruses, including SARS-CoV-2.”
The CDC, in a review of influenza pandemics, “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.” And until the WHO removed it on October 21, 2020 (almost immediately after Twitter censored my tweet highlighting the WHO quote), the WHO had written “At the present time, the widespread use of masks by healthy people in the community setting is not yet supported by high quality or direct scientific evidence and there are potential benefits and harms to consider.”
My advice on masks has always been based on scientific data, and it matches the advice of many of the top scientists and public health organizations throughout the world.
One final false accusation must be addressed: that I “made unsupported claims about the immunity conferred by surviving infection“.
To the contrary, I was correct in accurately citing the scientific literature, when I explained that biological protection from this infection is not fully shown by antibody tests, since antibody prevalence changes in people over time (September 2020, Japan), and protection is also derived from other parts of the immune system (January 2021, Germany), including T-cells (January 2021, Minnesota), even in asymptomatic and mildly symptomatic patients, according to the Karolinska Institute.
Professor Makary of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health acknowledged this on February 18, 2021, explaining that “Antibody studies almost certainly underestimate natural immunity. Antibody testing doesn’t capture antigen-specific T-cells.”
I was also correctly citing data that demonstrated some individuals could have cross-protection from previous coronavirus infections, shown by Singapore researchers and explicitly supported by the NIH itself on December 15, 2020. “The evidence that a subset of people has a cross-reactive T cell repertoire through exposure to related coronaviruses is strong.”
At this point, one could make a reasonable case that those who continue to push significant societal restrictions without acknowledging their failures and serious harms are themselves putting forth dangerous misinformation. As Stanford’s Ioannidis stated on February 20, 2021, “most of the estimates show the draconian lockdowns increased the problems, it was pro-contagion.” Those restrictions have plainly “damaged the public health,” as my Stanford accusers might say.
But I will not call for their official rebuke or punishment. I will not try to cancel them. I will not try to extinguish their opinions. And I will not lie to distort their words and defame them. To do so would repeat a behavior of intimidating the discourse that is critical to educating the public and arriving at the scientific truths we desperately need.
As a health policy scholar for over 15 years and as a professor at top universities for 30 years, I now fear for our students and our nation’s future. Some faculty members of our acclaimed universities – many of whom are automatic recipients of society’s respect because of those university titles – are now dangerously intolerant of opinions contrary to their personally favored narrative. Without permitting, indeed encouraging, open exchange of views and admission of errors, we might never solve any future crisis.
At a minimum, university mottos, if such things matter – like Harvard’s “truth,” Stanford’s “the winds of freedom blow,” and Yale’s “light and truth” – need to be explained to all faculty members at these universities.
Some go further, distorting and misrepresenting words to delegitimize and prompt punishment of those of us willing to serve the country – their country – alongside a President they happen to loathe. As Tobin wrote on March 1, “Delegitimizing [Atlas] and his analysis of the coronavirus disaster was a matter of treating all those who have any connection with the Trump administration as criminals, something that could only be accomplished by blatant misrepresentations of his views and statements.”
Worse than a violation of ethical behavior among colleagues, that does not meet my standard of simple human decency.
If academic leaders – and the entire academic community – fail to denounce such attempts to vilify those whom one disagrees with, many more experts with a reputation to lose will be unwilling to serve this country in contentious times. As educators, as parents, as fellow citizens, that would be the worst possible legacy to leave to our children.
We should also fear that the concept of “the science” has been seriously damaged. Even the best journals in the world – NEJM, Lancet, Science and Nature – have become contaminated by politics and published bad science. That adds to the public’s confusion, and it diminishes trust in experts. By now, many in the public have simply become fatigued by the arguments. That reaction is even worse, because widespread fatigue will allow fallacy to triumph over truth.
Americans are now faced with a new status quo: biased social media have joined a dominant voice on campuses to be the arbiter of allowable discussion.
The United States is on the precipice of losing its cherished freedoms, with censorship and cancellation of all those who bring views forward that differ from the “accepted mainstream.”
It is not clear if our democracy, with its defining freedoms, will recover, even after we survive the pandemic itself. But it is clear that people must step up – meaning speak up, as we are allowed, as we are expected to do in free societies – or it has no chance.
Finally: Mackay, again, presciently spoke about the herd: “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”
So, how do we proceed at this very moment, in this country, with its heavily damaged psyche? Those of us who want the truth must keep seeking it, and those of us who see the truth must keep speaking it. Even if the recovery from madness is slow, and even if it is only one by one. Because truth matters.
Tanzania – The second Covid coup?
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | March 12, 2021
John Magufuli, President of Tanzania, has disappeared. He’s not been seen in public for several weeks, and speculation is building as to where he might be.
The opposition has, at various times, accused the President of being hospitalised with “Covid19”, either in Kenya or India, although there remains no evidence this is the case.
To add some context, John Magufuli is one of the “Covid denier” heads of state from Africa.
He famously had his office submit five unlabelled samples for testing – goat, motor oil, papaya, quail and jackfruit – and when four came back positive and one “inconclusive”, he banned the testing kits and called for an investigation into their origin and manufacture.
In the past, he has also questioned the safety and efficacy of the supposed “covid vaccines”, and has not permitted their use in Tanzania.
In the Western press Magufuli has been portrayed as “anti-science” and “populist”, but it is not fair to suggest that the health of the people of Tanzania is a low priority for the President. In fact it’s quite the opposite.
After winning his first election in 2015 he slashed government salaries (including his own) in order to increase funding for hospitals and buying AIDs medication. In 2015 he cancelled the Independence Day celebrations and used the money to launch an anti-Cholera campaign. Healthcare has been one of his administration’s top priorities, and Tanzanian life expectancy has increased every year while he has been in office.
The negative coverage of President Magufuli is a very recent phenomenon. Early in his Presidency he even received glowing write-ups from the Western press and Soros-backed think tanks, praising his reforms and calling him an “example” to other African nations.
All that changed when he spoke out about Covid being hoax.
When he was re-elected in October 2020 the standard Western accusations of “voter suppression” and “electoral fraud” appeared in the Western press which had previously reported his approval rating as high as 96%.
And the anti-Magufuli campaign increased momentum in the new year, with Mike “we lied, we cheated, we stole” Pompeo initiating sanctions against Tanzanian government officials as one of his final acts as Secretary of State. The sanctions were notionally due to “electoral irregularities”, but the obvious reality is that it’s due to Tanzania’s refusal to toe the Covid line.
Just last month, The Guardian, always the tip of the spear when it comes to “progressive” regime change ran an article headlined:
“It’s time for Africa to rein in Tanzania’s anti-vaxxer president”
The article makes no mention of goats, papaya and motor oil testing positive for the coronavirus, but does ask – in a very non-partisan, journalistic way:
“What is wrong with President John Magufuli? Many people in and outside Tanzania are asking this question.”
Before going on to conclude:
“Magufuli [is] fuelling anti-vaxxers as the pandemic and its new variants continue to play out. He needs to be challenged openly and directly. To look on indifferently exposes millions of people in Tanzania and across Africa’s great lakes region – as well as communities across the world – to this deadly and devastating virus.”
The author doesn’t say exactly how Magufuli should be “challenged openly and directly”, but that’s not what these articles are for. They exist simply to paint the subject as a villain, and create a climate where “something must be done”. What that “something” is – and, indeed, whether or not it is legal – are none of the Guardian-reading public’s business, and most of them don’t really care.
Oh, by the by, the article is part of the Guardian’s “Global Development” section, which is sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Just so you know.
So, within two weeks of The Guardian publishing a Gates-sponsored article calling for something to be done about President Magufuli, he has disappeared, allegedly due to Covid. Funny how that works out.
Even if Magufuli miraculously survives his bout of “suspected Covid19”, the writing is on the wall for his political career. The Council on Foreign Relations published this article just yesterday, which goes to great lengths arguing that the President has lost all authority, and concludes:
“… a bold figure within the ruling party could capitalize on the current episode to begin to reverse course.”
It’s not hard to read the subtext there, if you can even call it “subtext” at all.
If we are about to see the sudden death and/or replacement of the President of Tanzania, he will not be the first African head of state to suffer such a fate in the age of Covid.
Last summer Pierre Nkurunziza, the President of Burundi, refused to play along with Covid and instructed the WHO delegation to leave his country… before dying suddenly of a “heart attack” or “suspected Covid19”. His successor immediately reversed every single one of his Covid policies, including inviting the WHO back to the country.
That was our first Covid coup, and it looks like Tanzania could well be next.
If I were the President of Turkmenistan or Belarus, I wouldn’t be making any longterm plans.
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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
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- 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
