The Mainstream Bubble
By Ralf Arnold, translation by S. Robinson | OffGuardian | February 6, 2021
At the beginning of the already memorable year 2020, a term forced its way into public and private consciousness, which should increasingly determine and overshadow all of our lives: The “novel corona virus”, also called SARS-CoV-2. The name was officially announced by the WHO on February 11th. After that everything happened in quick succession.
At first I saw the pictures of Chinese people with masks only in the Tagesschau (the flagship evening news program by ARD, one of the two main public broadcasters in Germany; S.R.), which was not an unusual sight, but soon corona also reached our newsroom.
On the day when the first suspected corona case surfaced in our region, I was urged by our news chief to use it as a “lead story”, i.e. as the first report in the next news program.
At that time I was already extremely skeptical and found it excessive to use a mere suspected case as the lead story. However, I couldn’t escape the general excitement around me and put the message on “one”. But a bad feeling remained and that should intensify massively over the next few weeks.
A dynamic set in that seemed unstoppable.
More and more suspected cases, then confirmed corona cases, at some point the first death in Germany, some time later the first in our region. And more and more I noticed that not only colleagues, but also people in my private environment let themselves be infected by a vague fear and even panic.
Not that I dismissed the deaths, the so-called “corona deaths”, but didn’t we have many deaths in every flu epidemic, especially among the elderly? I checked our archives and found that we had only a handful of reports in three months during the 2018 flu epidemic. More than 25,000 people are said to have died of the flu at that time.
The now famous Johns Hopkins University dashboard was quickly featured on all television and online news. The so-called “new infections” were simply accumulated on this. It became clear to me that the graph with the constantly rising curve contained more psychological effects rather than factual information. In this way the curve could never sink again, in the best case it would stay horizontal. But that didn’t seem to bother anyone.
Part of the basic training of a journalist is that he never reports figures without meaningful reference. He must always provide comparisons, references and proportionalities so that the viewer / listener / reader can contextualise the information. I stuck to it for many years, and it seemed a matter of course for other journalists too. However, I saw this basic principle practically vanish into thin air in the first weeks of the pandemic. Absolute numbers, always only absolute numbers, without any meaningful reference.
To this day, people like to say that the USA is the country most severely affected by corona, with mere reference to the absolute numbers of infections and deaths, regardless of the size of the population, to which the numbers are rarely put in relation.
AN OMINOUS ALLIANCE
Our newsroom also adopted all these counting methods with a sleepwalking naturalness. Everything that was communicated by the health authorities, the district administration and the regional government was adopted and reported without questioning and without doubt. Almost all critical distance disappeared, and the authorities became supposed allies in the fight against the virus.
I have to point out, however, that I have never been called or written to directly by politicians to influence me in any way. There were only the usual press releases from the ministries and offices, which are of course written from their point of view. Nor have I been pressured by superiors, at least not directly. The whole thing is far more subtle, as will be shown.
March was the start of the first restrictions: major events were banned and soon after the first lockdown was imposed. Almost all journalists of the “mainstream”, so the so-called “leading media”, including my editorial team, seemed to immediately develop an ‘inhibition to bite’ towards politicians and the authorities. Why this uncritical reluctance among journalists?
I can only explain it to myself that particularly the pictures from Bergamo and New York also put the experienced editors and reporters into an emotional state of shock, even if they might not admit it. But they, too, are only people who are afraid of illness and death, or who worry about elderly or sick relatives; this was repeatedly an issue in conversations with colleagues. They rallied around the government, the RKI (Robert-Koch-Institute; the German equivalent of the CDC; S.R.) and the health authorities, as if one really had to stick together now to combat this dire, external threat.
You couldn’t throw a club between the legs of those in charge, who were having a difficult time already, by fundamentally questioning their measures – that was how the attitude seemed to me.
In our conversations, too, it was said more and more frequently that “the government is really doing a good job”. Most were firmly convinced that the lockdown and the restrictions of our fundamental rights were necessary and certainly only temporary. I heard only a few skeptical voices.
And then there were the TV interviews with politicians. Esteemed journalists, who in conversation with politician XY eagerly nodded and verbally agreed when they presented their assessment of the situation and made their demands. I couldn’t believe my eyes and ears!
What was the motto of the legendary television journalist Hanns-Joachim Friedrichs?
“You can recognize a good journalist by the fact that he does not make common cause with anything, not even with a good cause; that he is everywhere, but doesn’t belong anywhere.”
There was nothing left of this guiding principle, and very little in the way of tough and critical inquiries. But even that didn’t seem to bother anyone, yes to not even attract attention.
A DECAY OF REPORTING LANGUAGE
In the news of all the leading media, including ours, important, little words like “alleged”, “supposed”, “apparently” suddenly died out. For example, the Tagesschau said that Twitter wanted to delete “false information about corona” in the future. There is clearly no “alleged” or “supposed” as an addition, because it is assumed that Twitter can judge without any doubt what is false and what is correct information in terms of the corona virus (or in general). Which of course is absurd.
Sometimes I made my colleagues in the newsroom aware of such things and sometimes even earned a nod of approval, but often just a helpless shrug.
In this day and age, news reports need to be short, easy to understand, and interesting. We have been trained to do this for many years. This has a lot of advantages, namely the ease of understanding on the part of the consumer. But there are also significant disadvantages, namely that the news reports are written more and more simplistically. Deeper connections and backgrounds or complicated differentiations are increasingly disappearing. The trick is to shorten and omit.
From early summer, one could increasingly observe the phenomenon that the corona virus and the measures against it were equated in the media. For example, it was said: “Because of the corona pandemic, the municipalities are collecting significantly less taxes” or: “The WHO fears that the corona pandemic will plunge one and a half million more people into poverty.”
This is wrong, because not the pandemic, but the lockdowns have this effect, regardless of whether they are justified and appropriate. By ignoring this distinction, however, the anti-corona measures of the governments are being turned into something inevitable and without alternative and are no longer called into question.
The cause and therefore the scapegoat is always the virus, not politics.
This practice also crept into our newsroom. Advice from me was kindly noted, but nobody really took it to heart. I had the freedom to formulate this differently, but again nobody seemed to notice the small but subtle difference.
It is also often said that Covid-19 patients in the intensive care units “have to be ventilated”. Have to? They are being ventilated, that’s the fact. The attending doctor has to decide whether this is really medically necessary, and this question is quite controversial. There are a number of well-known experts who warn against intubating too quickly. So here too, as a journalist, you should remain neutral.
THE DREADFUL NUMBER OF “NEW INFECTIONS”
In spring 2020 I began to increasingly question the counting method of the RKI and thus also of the government. I pointed out to my superiors that all numbers such as the “new infections” reported daily or the “R-value” were basically worthless if we did not relate them back to the number of tests performed. They took note of this, but thought no further verification or inquiries were necessary, because the trend of rapidly increasing numbers could not be misunderstood, regardless of how much was tested, it said.
The number of so-called “new infections” rose from week 11 to week 12 from 8,000 to 24,000. At the end of March, the RKI announced (after multiple inquiries by the online magazine Multipolar ) that the number of PCR tests had almost tripled from 130,000 to 350,000 during the same period. The relative increase in new infections was thus far less than the absolute. There had been no “exponential increase”.
When the number of “new infections” continued to fall in early summer, the politicians still constantly conjured up the risk of the “second wave” if one were to ease the efforts – that is to say, the restrictions contrary to fundamental rights. In fact, most of my colleagues also agreed with these fears, while to me – who was no less of a medical and epidemiological layperson – it was pretty clear that there would be no second wave in summer, but an even bigger in autumn / winter because that is when the number of respiratory diseases routinely increase sharply. It was easy to foresee.
The whole issue of the PCR tests and the alleged “new infections” has to this day not been questioned by the leading media. Although over time there have been more and more studies and statements by virological and epidemiological experts harshly criticising the PCR test and its particular use, hardly any of it has penetrated our mainstream bubble. The Cycle Threshold values that were probably far too high in the tests, which give ample room to possible manipulation, were not an issue at all.
I suspect a lot of my colleagues haven’t even heard of it.
In general, the terms continue to be mixed up in this context. Even after ten months of corona, many colleagues still do not seem to know the difference between the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the lung disease Covid-19. “Infected” (that is, those who have tested positive) are often equated with “sick”, regardless of whether they have symptoms or not.
The term “recovered” is also adopted uncritically by the authorities, although it implies that those affected were actually all sick, which is highly doubtful: On the one hand because there is most likely a proportion of false-positive test results that should not be underestimated, and, on the other hand, because many “infected” people do not develop any symptoms at all and it is therefore very dubious to call them sick.
SELECTIVE PERCEPTION AND HERD INSTINCT
In the meantime, all kinds of regulations have been introduced in our broadcasting corporation: mask requirements, physical distancing between desks, many colleagues have moved to home office, disinfectants everywhere and so on. This and the regular, ominous-sounding situation assessments by the management, of course, still exert a psychological influence and pressure on every employee. A subtle fear is built up here too, whether intentionally or unintentionally. There is literally an invisible threat in the air that is difficult to shield yourself from.
In addition, television screens are running in the newsroom and in other offices, on which reports about corona are broadcast almost continuously.
Everywhere reporters, pictures from intensive care units, running texts with the latest, ever higher numbers – it is almost impossible to avoid this influence. In addition, there are the newspapers and agency reports that also constantly report on corona, here a study, there another apocalyptic warning from a politician, and again and again sad individual stories which are particularly highlighted.
Although we continue to have daily conferences, now mostly by telephone, right from the start – at least during the conferences in which I participated – the current narrative of the national and regional government was never fundamentally questioned, namely that we have an extremely dangerous pandemic that can only be controlled, or at least slowed down, by tough government measures. Why is that?
Everyone probably knows the effect of “selective perception”. For example, if you or your wife are pregnant, you will most likely see more and more pregnant women on the street. Or if you fall in love with someone who drives a certain make of car, then you suddenly discover that make of car, in the same color, permanently on the streets. This effect also occurs in journalism.
Years ago, for example, there was a serious incident in Germany with several attack dogs biting a three-year-old girl to death. At that time there was great shock, a political discussion about the consequences was set in motion, a “character test” for dogs and stricter rules for dog owners were demanded, the media reported about it for days and weeks. And at the same time, suddenly more and more cases of dog attacks were reported. Sudden reports of even very minor incidents came from the police.
One would have thought that all dogs in Germany, like Hitchcock’s birds, would have agreed to meet for a general attack.
What happened? The general perception had become sensitised and extremely focused, on all levels. A dachshund bit someone in the calf in the park, they immediately reported this to the police and reported the owner, the police immediately passed the report on to the press, which turned it into a news report, although it was ultimately a triviality.
Due to the alarmed attitude and the narrowed perception of all those involved, however, the triviality that would normally have fallen under the table was given an oversized significance. And the readers, listeners or viewers noticed and thought: “Not again! This is piling up now.”
The same effect can of course also be observed in crime reporting. The media user can get the impression, for example, that the situation in the country is getting worse and more dangerous and that you can hardly dare go out in the streets. It might very well be that the pure statistics show that the total number of violent crimes continues to decline. That contradicts the subjective impression, but strangely enough, hardly anyone calms down. The pictures and reports of individual fates weigh far more than the sober numbers.
You can guess what I’m getting at.
In my opinion, in the corona crisis we are basically experiencing the same effect in a global, completely exaggerated and downright paranoid dimension. And that affects just about everyone: the common man, the police officer, the journalist, the politician and even the doctor and the scientist. Nobody is per se free from it. Unless he breaks free and dares to think for himself and think outside the box.
But there is a widespread journalistic herd instinct. Most journalists look at the daily newspapers that are delivered to the editorial office every day. And of course these are all newspapers that are mainstream: Welt, FAZ, Frankfurter Rundschau, Süddeutsche [the leading national papers; S.R.] and the regional newspapers.
In the evening, one watches “heute” [the evening news program of ZDF, the second of the two main public broadcasters in Germany; S.R.] and the “Tagesschau”, followed by the relevant talk shows, from Anne Will to Maischberger [two of the leading talk shows; S.R.] Mainstream almost always dominates there too. Real critics of the corona narrative are, with rare exceptions, categorically not invited.
Still, most of the journalists I know are of the opinion that the discussions there are quite controversial. But they do not notice – for lack of comparison – that these controversies are only fig-leaf discussions. It is only discussed when and to what extent the measures should be relaxed, but the corona narrative itself remains untouched.
All of this is not to say that there is no disease or death, but the perception of this is downright neurotically excessive. There are many reports on the Internet from the last few years that describe completely overcrowded hospitals, intensive care units at the limit and overburdened crematoria. With appropriate media support, one could have caused great panic in the population back then.
Another effect is that the media now also present their journalistic content online. There it is easier and faster for everyone to access than would be the case with hardcopy newspapers and broadcasts on radio or television. This means that this content can be easily copied and adopted.
As long as it is not personal, lengthy reporting or comments, but “only” news reports, it is easy to copy-paste these into your own reports, at least parts of them. Again and again you can find almost identical formulations and messages from different providers. Even if one does not copy-paste, one is tempted to orient oneself at the selection of topics by colleagues from other leading media.
A PERFIDIOUS FRAMING
I cannot say for sure whether the corona virus can be proven with the PCR tests, where it ultimately comes from, how dangerous it really is and what the right measures are to be taken against it. But this not what this is about. I do not deny that there is a bad illness, that people die from it and that you have to take it seriously.
And that brings us to the next emotive word, the so-called “corona denier” (Corona-Leugner). A term that has been gaining ground since the summer and is now regularly used by the mainstream media to label critics of the government’s anti-corona measures. The comparison with the “God denier” and the “Holocaust denier” is obvious.
While the term “God denier” has long been history, at least in our society, the term “Holocaust denier” is still relevant and it is no coincidence that the “corona denier” is involuntarily associated with it. There is now broad consensus that one cannot deny God at all, but only not believe in him. The “Holocaust denier” is the only generally recognized exception in which journalists use the word “deny”. Otherwise it is a taboo, at least it should be. Quite simply because it contains “lie” (lügen) in the stem of the word and thus implies a lie.
Responsible journalists know that defendants never deny the allegations in court, they contest them. This should be the case even after a final judgment, because courts can also be wrong and lawsuits can be reopened.
The term “corona denier” is now infamous in three ways. Firstly because of the linguistic similarity to the socially ostracized “Holocaust denier”, secondly because the corona critics are generally claimed to deny the existence of the virus (which is not the case with the vast majority of them) and finally because they are also accused of conscious lying. This is not just bad style, it is perfidious and ensures that the rifts in society are deepened even further.
An equally dubious term used as defamatory framing is that of the “conspiracy theorist”. It basically says everything and nothing. It can be someone who believes in chem trails or that the Americans’ moon landing was only staged, but it can also be someone who exposes a Watergate scandal or who claims (as happened) that Iraq did not hoard any weapons of mass destruction, and who is later confirmed in his assumptions.
Basically every investigative journalist has to be partly a conspiracy theorist, because of course the rulers of this world do not want to have all their activities published and therefore keep them secret. In this respect, it is somewhat grotesque that the media adopt the rulers’ fighting term and use it thoughtlessly.
Alleged conspiracy theorists are also made fun of internally. Many colleagues are joking that they are crazies, who believe that Bill Gates wants to open a vaccination station with Hitler on the back of the moon. Or similar childish nonsense.
A negative highlight was the reporting of the “leading media” about the large demonstrations in Stuttgart, Leipzig and especially Berlin in the summer. It started with the number of participants. Actually, it is common for journalists to name both the number of demonstrators as announced by the police and the number of demonstrators as announced by the organisers (which is naturally always higher) at rallies.
On August 1st 2020 in Berlin, however, these details diverged so widely that one had to become suspicious. The “leading media” solved the problem by only naming the small number from the police and ignoring the high numbers that the organisers and participants mentioned. How high the number actually was is still unclear today, but here too the media acted against journalistic practices.
Were a few right-wing radicals and Reich citizens among the demonstrators? Were there many or were they even dominating the action? Numerous video streams showed that a large, if not overwhelming, proportion of the demonstrators apparently came from the middle of society. On average a little older, educated and from a middle-class background. There are also surveys and studies that confirm this.
Of course, you can argue about it, but in our editorial team, too, the matter was clear: the focus of the reporting was clearly on the right-wing radicals and Reichsbürger.
One reason for this can be found in the increasingly important part of online media. In contrast to newspapers, television and radio, it is possible to analyse exactly how many hits an individual post has, or how many “likes” on the Facebook pages, which are now also operated by all leading media.
As a result, the spectacular, and the supposedly scandalous, comes more and more to the fore because it promises more attention and thus more clicks. Various media critics say that almost everything in our society is increasingly being scandalised, no matter how casual. If so, then it is surely largely due to the “leading media” (including their tabloids).
A SEALED BUBBLE
Why is the “mainstream media” a closed bubble? Because they always get their information from the same, pre-sorted sources – and that is largely the news agencies that belong to the same bubble. They are like the gatekeepers of published opinion. That has always been the case, of course, but in the corona crisis it has become clearer than ever.
The major agencies mainly report on what supports the official corona narrative and what is propagated and implemented by the vast majority of governments around the world.
For example, almost only studies from around the world are reported which highlight the danger of the virus and the effectiveness of tough government measures. A Chinese study of around ten million people in Wuhan, which found that non-symptomatic transmission of the virus (almost all government measures are based on this assumption) was as good as irrelevant, did not feature in the agencies. It could only be found in the alternative online media.
By contrast, a study by the US-American CDC, which had contrary results, was reported. Numerous studies that showed that government lockdowns have virtually no impact on the infection rate have also been ignored by the agencies so far.
For me personally in my work this means that I cannot use any studies or information that I have found by myself on the Internet, because I would almost certainly be accused of using an uncertain source. But if DPA, AP, AFP or Reuters reported the study, I would be more or less on the safe side and could report it. If there were inquiries, I would refer to the agency. This could still lead to discussions as to whether the study is credible and whether it is worth reporting, but that would be part of a normal journalistic decision-making process.
Yes, it does happen again and again that critical experts or politicians are interviewed in the leading media or that the RKI and the federal government are criticized. But mostly it’s just fig leaves and they don’t really get to the heart of the matter.
There are statements from leading editors-in-chief of the public services that say that people like Wolfgang Wodarg or Sucharit Bhakdi [two high-profile critics with an accomplished medical / research background; S.R.] are generally not to be invited to talk shows on the subject. The bubble should stay as tightly sealed as possible.
AN ATTEMPT AT AN EXPLANATION
Again and again I wonder why almost all of my colleagues so willingly and uncritically adopt this narrative from the government and from a few scientists (selected by the government) and disseminate it further. As already mentioned, concern for your own health or that of relatives certainly plays a role. But there is more.
In the last few years, something called “attitude journalism” has emerged. It is an intellectual and moralising arrogance that I think is spreading more and more. You simply belong to the “good guys”, to those who are on the “right side”. One believes that one has to instruct the mistaken citizen.
It is no longer a question of neutrality, but of representing the “right cause”, and surprisingly often this coincides with the interests of the government. The sentence by Hanns-Joachim Friedrichs mentioned above has even been completely reinterpreted in the meantime, in the sense of “attitude journalism”.
But this is increasingly alienating journalists from a good part of their clientele.
In the 1990s, the red carpet was rolled out to us reporters, editors, and presenters when we showed up anywhere in the country. Today we almost have to be happy when people don’t shout “Lying press!” [Lügenpresse; a term adopted by the Nazis in the Third Reich for the Jewish, communist, and foreign press; S.R.]. Of course, this term is wrong and should be rejected because of its history, but we journalists play a large part in the increasing alienation.
To be fair, the aforementioned “attitude journalism” only applies to some of the journalists, but mostly to their prominent representatives. Many of my colleagues seem to be overwhelmed by the complexity of the subject. Not intellectually, but rather because there is no time to dig into these things alongside the daily routine work. Close to impossible if you still have to do homeschooling with the children in the evening. Others simply lack interest in the subject.
In any case, one reason is the fear of attracting negative attention through overly critical statements. The self-reinforcing momentum of the mainstream bubble ensures that hardly anyone wants to swim against the current. Although a good number of the editors are on permanent contracts, there is great concern about the consequences. As I can observe in myself.
A fundamental problem with the mainstream bubble is that it either ignores or suppresses what is outside the bubble or perceives and interprets it from within that bubble. And so most mainstream journalists know the statements and positions of critical thinkers like Wodarg and Bhakdi (to name just two of many) only from reports in the mainstream media, which are of course biased accordingly. Hardly anyone takes the trouble to actually draw from the numerous alternative sources.
AN AFTERWORD
This report is of course only a subjective assessment. Most of my fellow journalists would see it completely differently. However, I am not so concerned here with assessing the danger of the corona virus or the appropriateness of government measures. My concern is that in the corona crisis, in my opinion, journalistic standards and principles have been increasingly thrown overboard, as I have tried to at least indicate.
This in turn ensures that the media have become virtually meaningless as a democratic corrective, which in turn plays into the hands of political aspirations to power.
George Orwell is reported to have said that journalism is when you publish something that someone does not want published. Everything else is propaganda. Measured against this claim, it has to be said that the mainstream media in the corona crisis to 99 percent only deliver propaganda.
I myself have the naive hope of still being able to make a difference, in whatever way, because freedom of the press is in and of itself an extremely important asset in a democratically free society. I still believe in that.
The author of the following text has been an editor and newscaster for public broadcasting for many years and writes here under a pseudonym. He reports from the inner workings of a newsroom during the corona crisis. The article was originally published by the German online magazine Multipolar. Culture-specific explanations have been added by the translator.
UK COVID Conundrum: The Mysterious Case Of Disappearing Flu
By Banson Wilcot PhD | Principia Scientific | January 27, 2021
At the end of 2020 many statisticians, doctors and independent scientists noticed something amiss about this extraordinary year. The Office of National Statistics, Public Health England shows that the numbers for death from influenza and those from Covid-19 are askew.
Despite the media and government pandemic presentations, we need to step back and consider the larger picture.
Sometimes it is difficult to see the forest for the trees, but perhaps we have succumbed to seeing a single tree and ignoring the rest of the forest.
Is the fact that one virus has suddenly been given a name, Covid-19, (with wildly hyped media coverage) taken our focus off the overall reality of the annual flu season group of viruses? Has one name and media hype highjacked our lives?
With the 2019–2020 flu season, there have been a number of reports of Covid-19 illnesses in the UK and USA well before the end of 2019. Just today there was a report of Covid-19 illnesses in China as early as August, 2019. [1A]
Until the introduction of the PCR test for Covid-19 in late February, Covid-19 cases and deaths did not exist. This gives the impression that the virus appeared just then, while it was undoubtedly present much earlier as part of the flu season, from numerous anecdotal reports. Various reports indicate symptoms typical of Covid-19 in the U.S. as early as November–December, 2019 and likely even earlier.
With growing attention given to the virus and the increasing availability of PCR testing, we started receiving regular accounts of the number “cases” of the virus. Stepping back a bit and looking at general numbers and ignoring the contentious PCR accuracy regarding positive and negative cases, we see an overall pattern that is very similar to past flu seasons. Cases of flu-like illness generally start in October/November and last until March or April in the UK [1].
The observation can be made that this fairly well describes the 2019–2020 flu season, including Covid-19. The 2019–2020 Covid-19 death numbers appear as a spike because there was no PCR test until about the middle of the flu season, giving the impression that Covid-19 physically appeared late in the season. No, the test appeared late in the season. Despite the testing results, the UK government actually declared the pandemic over in March, but then, oddly, imposed a lockdown a week or two later.
The government declaration of the pandemic’s end can be considered innocently valid and devoid of politics. The advent of lockdowns and more could then be considered political. [So often, when an event occurs, the first observations prove to be the most honest, while the spin and changes come later.]
Much confusion has been generated by different accounting systems regarding illnesses and deaths. There are disparities in the cause of death, whether with the virus or without, and with an over reliance on the PCR test. In addition, many Covid-19 cases were diagnosed solely from symptoms, ignoring the fact that such symptoms are often seen during the flu season.
The observation that some people lose their sense of smell and taste with Covid-19 clearly ignores that these effects occur in every flu season, but now people are told that this is diagnostic for Covid-19. [Dogs are animals and can have spots, but all spotted animals are not dogs.]
We have always taken these symptoms in stride and happily waited until our senses returned. Suddenly, these symptoms are unique and diagnostic of Covid-19. It simply defies reality. If they suddenly reported that you could get a flesh-eating disease from a hang-nail, we would suddenly start considering every incipient hang-nail as a life-threatening event, when, in fact, they are not.
No careful lines have been defined to tell whether deaths have been due to a single virus, multiple viruses, comorbidities (conditions already burdening an individual’s health), or a virus with complications, such as pneumonia. Bacterial pneumonia often has a chance to take hold when one’s lungs are compromised by a flu-type illness. [Note that subsequent pneumonia is not a comorbidity.] Curiously deaths from influenza in the US have recently dropped to about zero; more on this below. [2]
Making our understanding of illness and death in the UK and other regions more difficult are the inclusion of diagnoses determined solely by the PCR test and others solely by symptoms. It is very clear that the traditional symptoms of cold and influenza broadly overlap those of Covid-19, thus making definitive diagnoses very difficult. Add to this the purported rate of false positives from the PCR test (now +97% according to the WHO) [3] and accounting of nonlethal “cases” becomes what they call “problematic.”
To really eliminate the many possible confusions and conditions that can be placed on death rates and possible death causes, it is useful to step back and look at the overall death rate, from all causes, for a country or state. The focus here is on the UK, but the US also provides some guidance. [4]
First, the concept of a pandemic needs to be addressed. A pandemic is the movement of a disease, bacterial or viral, that moves around the world and has a higher than normal damaging effect. Until recently this was described as a higher than normal mortality. The definition has been changed at WHO’s website such that the flu season is now a pandemic despite death rates being within a normal range. [5] (It is also curious that the definition of herd immunity originally included the benefits of natural and vaccinated immunity, but the definition now only includes vaccinated immunity. Very curious.)
Flu season viruses move around the world every year, largely deriving from farms in Southeast Asia where flu-type viruses are exchanged and hybridized between fish, pigs, and chickens and eventually transmitted to farmers, thus starting the next round of viruses for the annual newly-defined “pandemic.” From teaching Environmental Science, I learned that there has been an effort to break this chain of virus evolution by encouraging farmers to specialize in only one major livestock, thus decreasing viral exchanges between these species. This virus hybridization (mixing) is the source of the H#N# marker recombinations that vaccine labs try to detect early for each new flu season and then attempt to offer appropriate vaccines.
The flu season in the tropics is actually all year round and, because of the humidity, virus transmission is low but constant. However, in the more temperate regions, transmission blossoms when Fall arrives and people start spending more time indoors, in a relatively closed environment, and closer to each other.
It is a bit counter intuitive that humidity (which goes with warm temperatures) decreases transmission rates. It is a good deal in the tropics, sunlight on clear days kills viruses and humidity is always on the job. Small water droplets containing virus, from speaking, coughing, sneezing, and even breathing, tend to gain weight under humid conditions and fall to the ground more quickly than under dry conditions.
Flu season in the Southern hemisphere appears to mirror the Northern hemisphere, but flu viruses are likely introduced to the south by air travel during their summer and, thus, possibly starts and dilutes their six-month later flu season over a longer period.
For all of this, it is very difficult to see the forest for the tree (Covid-19, highlighted by the PCR test), but one statistic that sums up and ignores all the various causes of death and various biases in categories is the overall death rate of a country or state [4], such as the UK, which is a well-defined population with good reporting capabilities. [6]
There are some interesting aspects to death rates. Again, from Env. Sci. teaching, when a heat wave hits a city, as happened in Paris a number of years ago, the death rate rises as people succumb to the physiological burden of heat. However, after the heat wave is gone, the death rate tends to dip below normal for a time. This indicates that the heat wave took people who were already very frail and likely to die in the near future, in a couple of weeks or months, the old “one foot in the grave,” which is not an inaccurate description in many cases..
With cold snaps, there is also a spike in the death rate, but after it is over, there is no dip in the death rate, as it goes back to normal. This is because cold does not discriminate and kills all ages. Heat tends to impose a physiological burden on those already heavily burdened, but cold is a much simpler core temperature problem that is a critical problem for all ages.
That said, is there anything we can learn by comparing the death rates from the last year of “the Covid” and previous years? Focusing mainly on the UK as a single, well-defined population and putting aside all reporting bias and possible cause of death confusions, what do the overall death rates tell us?
It has been speculated, not unreasonably, that many more people died from Covid-19 at home, fearful, unwilling, unable to go to hospital, and thus not counted in the Covid death total. However, overall deaths in the UK in the last year would also include those who died at home. Overall deaths effectively eliminates all biased death factors and includes deaths not immediately reported.
The excess total deaths for the UK show a well-defined peak in the 2nd quarter of 2020, from mid-March to mid-May. Looking at the age break-down, it is clear that those over 45 and particularly over 65 were most susceptible to whatever virus or viruses of the flu season were making people ill. The rest of the year showed a low (normal) death rate that was low until Fall, when the new flu season arrived, which showed then a broader peak more similar to a flu season. [1]
It is a realism that every year more people have aged or developed infirmities that make them susceptible to a flu-like illness and/or complications. The fact that there is an annual peak does not indicate unusual illness or mortality; it’s the flu season that we have had for many years.
We need to resist the temptation to think that we are seeing something new in our world. By the same token, with a focus on flu-type infections and the elderly, it is easy to conclude just from the effective hyping of such deaths that many people are dying.
Elderly with complications die from complications all year round, just more in the flu season and this is very usual. It is curious that suddenly the public has been sensitized to the elderly death rate, as if it was a new thing. Suddenly, a virus is singling out the elderly, while, in fact, the elderly are always at risk, while the risk to other age groups varies from season to season.
It is also clear that the overall death rate in 2020 was exceeded by the five years of 1999-2003. [2] I need to define the death rate here, as it is based on the deaths per thousand people, which eliminates the fact that populations were lower in earlier years. It’s a given that larger population might have a higher death total from a given disease, but not a higher death rate. Diseases work on the susceptible individuals of a population and, thus, it is a proportion of the population that becomes ill or dies. [6]
That said, how does the death rate in the UK for 2020 compare to previous years? It is clear that the death rate in the UK for 2020 was not exceptional compared to previous years [4]. How can that be? If you have Covid-19 as well as influenza killing people, what is going on? An observation has been made that, for some mysterious reason, influenza, as of April in the US, dropped to zero and continues at zero in the latest flu season. [6]
In light of the apparent missing influenza, claims have been made that masking, distancing, and lockdowns were completely effective against influenza, but then there is no talk about its failure in stopping Covid-19, which is a virus of the same size and transmission mode.
Then, we are told that Covid is still around because people are not masking and such properly, which means influenza should also still be around in the US. Since these are infectious viruses, how can these restrictions be effective against one virus and not the other? It does not make sense.
It is also easy to find that US states with strict mandates have the same rates of PCR-positive cases as those who do not. The conjecture can be made that influenza cases are largely reported as Covid-19, based either on a positive PCR test result or on symptoms alone.
In the US, it is clear that there has been a monetary incentive for diagnosing the [Covid] disease and encouraging hospitalizations. The cessation of other medical procedures and tests during this period clearly is going to lead to increased overall deaths. The fact that there appears to be no excess of deaths despite this, indicates that the C-19 virus itself was not as lethal as they claim.
Overall, the death rate in the UK is not out of line with the normal death rates from other years and clearly not close to the highest in the last 22 years. [1] It is difficult to consider influenza deaths when there appears to be a bias toward categorizing influenza and other causes as Covid-19 deaths.
Every year and, for that matter, all year long, there is a population of health-critical individuals who may be overwhelmed by a flu-like illness and open to pneumonia complications. The questionable Covid-19 PCR test appears to be keeping the presence of Covid-19 alive, possibly detecting viruses of the current flu season.
The WHO is now admitting that that this test can be 97% false positives or more, with higher processing cycle numbers. [3] The argument could be made that we have an epidemic of testing.
A little exploration of the Office of National Statistics, Public Health England shows that the numbers for death from influenza and those from Covid-19 are askew. [7] They show 4649 cases mentioning influenza and only 380 with influenza only. This means 92% of these cases had other complicating conditions. However, the same week they report 6057 cases mentioning Covid-19 and 5387 mentioned only Covid-19, with 89% being Covid-19 only.
This defies logic. What happened to pneumonia? It is well-known that flu-like illnesses open one up to pneumonia but, according to the above numbers, 89% of deaths from this virus were ONLY from this virus. That does not correlate with the many reports of illnesses with complications and does not at all correlate with the US CDC’s report that only 6% of their Covid-19 related deaths were from Covid-19 only, which means 94% had comorbidities or complications, such as pneumonia.
This is pretty much the exact opposite of UK statistics. [8] However, the CDC is not that far off from the UK’s own death numbers, showing a small fraction of defined Covid-19 deaths, showing 13,844 deaths from Covid and 50,000 with Covid. [9]
One could ask what happened to influenza. There appears to be a strong tendency to list illnesses as Covid-19 to make the situation appear more dire and possibly more profitable. In the US, there is a financial incentive to diagnose Covid-19 and encourage hospitalizations.
A sad fact is that unethical medical personnel can talk people into feeling sicker than they really are, particularly when they are primed by fears of a deadly virus. From multiple points of view, looking at the lack of a proper virus isolation and description, the highly variable Covid-19 symptoms, and the fact that a variety of viruses comprise the flu season, I believe that this undescribed virus is most likely not present anymore, but there is no way to show that it is or not because the only “evidence” is the poorly designed PCR test. It is very hard to prove a negative.
[1A] “More evidence of ‘suspicious activity’ at the Wuhan Institute of Virology emerges”
[https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6225724386001]
[1] Euromomo, Graphs and Maps
[https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/]
[2] “REPORT: Surge in COVID Coincides w/ Suspiciously Mild Flu Season”
[https://headlineusa.com/surge-covid-suspicious-flu-season/]
[3] “COVID-19: A Very Different Truth“
[https://thenaturaldoctor.org/article/covid-19-a-very-different-truth/
[4] “Beware Those Excess COVID-19 Death Analyses”
<https://principia-scientific.com/beware-those-excess-covid-19-death-analyses/>
[5] “WHO exposed: How health body changed pandemic criteria to push agenda”
[6] “Neither US Nor UK Have ANY Excess Deaths From COVID19” [
[https://principia-scientific.com/?s=neither]
[7] Weekly deaths for January 1–8, 2021
[8] “How Many Americans Has Covid-19 Really Killed?”
[https://principia-scientific.com/?s=How+Many+Americans+Has+Covid-19+Really+Killed%3F]
[9] “Breaking: UK Govt’s OWN NUMBERS Expose Their COVID19 Fraud!”
[https://principia-scientific.com/breaking-uk-govts-own-numbers-exposes-their-covid19-fraud/]
About the author: Banson Wilcot PhD holds degrees in Marine Biology and Biochemistry, with a focus on dermatology and lipid biochemistry, and taught university courses for 12 years. Dr. Wilcot has been professionally editing and critiquing foreign-source research papers for publication and grant applications for 16 years (1000+ items). Being a generalist, he has edited papers ranging from coal-fire dynamics, nanotechnology, material science, electrochemistry, all areas of biochemistry and molecular biology, and organic applications as well as oceanography/marine biology and many marine research topics.
Study: CDC Broke Federal Law by Manipulating COVID Death Statistics
By Brian Shilhavy | Health Impact News | February 3, 2021
A study published in the journal Science, Public Health Policy & the Law recently claims that the CDC violated federal law by inflating COVID-19 fatality statistics.
The study is titled “COVID-19 Data Collection, Comorbidity & Federal Law: A Historical Retrospective.”
From the Abstract:
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on August 23, 2020, “For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19 , on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death.”
For a nation tormented by restrictive public health policies mandated for healthy individuals and small businesses, this is the most important statistical revelation of this crisis. This revelation significantly impacts the published fatalities count due to COVID-19.
More importantly, it exposes major problems with the process by which the CDC was able to generate inaccurate data during a crisis.
The CDC has advocated for social isolation, social distancing, and personal protective equipment use as primary mitigation strategies in response to the COVID-19 crisis, while simultaneously refusing to acknowledge the promise of inexpensive pharmaceutical and natural treatments.
These mitigation strategies were promoted largely in response to projection model fatality forecasts that have proven to be substantially inaccurate.
Further investigation into the legality of the methods used to create these strategies raised additional concerns and questions.
Why would the CDC decide against using a system of data collection & reporting they authored, and which has been in use nationwide for 17 years without incident, in favor of an untested & unproven system exclusively for COVID-19 without discussion and peer-review?
Did the CDC’s decision to abandon a known and proven effective system also breach several federal laws that ensure data accuracy and integrity?
Did the CDC knowingly alter rules for reporting cause of death in the presence of comorbidity exclusively for COVID-19? If so, why? (Full study.)
Patrick Howley, writing for National File, reported:
The groundbreaking peer-reviewed research…asserts that the CDC willfully violated multiple federal laws including the Information Quality Act, Paperwork Reduction Act, and Administrative Procedures Act at minimum. (Publishing Journal – Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge / Public Health Policy Initiative)
“Most notably, the CDC illegally enacted new rules for data collection and reporting exclusively for COVID-19 that resulted in a 1,600% inflation of current COVID-19 fatality totals,” the watchdog group All Concerned Citizens declared in a statement provided to NATIONAL FILE, referring to the Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge study.
The research demonstrates that the CDC failed to apply for mandatory federal oversight and failed to open a mandatory period for public scientific comment in both instances as is required by federal law before enacting new rules for data collection and reporting.
“The CDC is required to be in full compliance with all federal laws even during emergency situations. The research asserts that CDC willfully compromised the accuracy and integrity of all COVID-19 case and fatality data from the onset of this crisis in order to fraudulently inflate case and fatality data,” stated All Concerned Citizens.
On March 24th the CDC published the NVSS COVID-19 Alert No. 2 document instructing medical examiners, coroners and physicians to deemphasize underlying causes of death, also referred to as pre-existing conditions or comorbidities, by recording them in Part II rather than Part I of death certificates as “…the underlying cause of death are expected to result in COVID-19 being the underlying cause of death more often than not.”
This was a major rule change for death certificate reporting from the CDC’s 2003 Coroners’ Handbook on Death Registration and Fetal Death Reporting and Physicians’ Handbook on Medical Certification of Death, which have instructed death reporting professionals nationwide to report underlying conditions in Part I for the previous 17 years.
This single change resulted in a significant inflation of COVID-19 fatalities by instructing that COVID-19 be listed in Part I of death certificates as a definitive cause of death regardless of confirmatory evidence, rather than listed in Part II as a contributor to death in the presence of pre-existing conditions, as would have been done using the 2003 guidelines.
“The research draws attention to this key distinction as it has led to a significant inflation in COVID fatality totals. By the researcher’s estimates, COVID-19 recorded fatalities are inflated nationwide by as much as 1600% above what they would be had the CDC used the 2003 handbooks,” stated All Concerned Citizens.
Then on April 14th, the CDC adopted additional rules exclusive for COVID-19 in violation of federal law by outsourcing data collection rule development to the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE), a non-profit entity, again without applying for oversight and opening opportunity for public scientific review.
On April 5th the CSTE published a position paper Standardized surveillance case definition and national notification for 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) listing 5 CDC employees as subject matter experts.
“This key document created new rules for counting probable cases as actual cases without definitive proof of infection (section VII.A1 – pages 4 & 5), new rules for contact tracing allowing contact tracers to practice medicine without a license (section VII.A3 – page 5), and yet refused to define new rules for ensuring that the same person could not be counted multiple times as a new case (section VII.B – page 7),” stated All Concerned Citizens.
By enacting these new rules exclusively for COVID-19 in violation of federal law, the research alleges that the CDC significantly inflated data that has been used by elected officials and public health officials, in conjunction with unproven projection models from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), to justify extended closures for schools, places of worship, entertainment, and small businesses leading to unprecedented emotional and economic hardships nationwide.
“A formal petition has been sent to the Department of Justice as well as all US Attorneys seeking an immediate grand jury investigation into these allegations,” All Concerned Citizens stated.
Read the full article here.
Where are the 2020-2021 Influenza Statistics? “Influenza has been renamed COVID” According to Epidemiologist
Epidemiologist Dr. Knut Wittkowski. Image source.
Daniel Payne, writing for Just the News, interviewed epidemiologist Dr. Knut Wittkowski regarding the disappearing flu statistics this year.
Dr. Knut Wittkowski is the former head of biostatistics, epidemiology and research design at Rockefeller University. He holds two doctorates in computer science and medical biometry, and one of his videos on YouTube last year had amassed over 1 million views before YouTube took it down, because he was critical of the lockdowns and its ineffectiveness on stopping the spread of COVID-19.
Just the News reports:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s weekly influenza surveillance tracker reports that the cumulative positive influenza test rate from late September into the week of Dec. 19 stands at 0.2% as measured by clinical labs. That’s compared to a cumulative 8.7% from a year before.
The weekly comparisons are even starker: This week one year ago, the positive clinical rate was 22%, where now it stands at 0.1%.
Those low numbers continue trends observed earlier in the year in which flu rates have remained at near-zero levels. The trend is not limited to the U.S. Worldwide, health authorities have all reported sharply decreased influenza levels throughout what is normally peak flu season in the northern hemisphere. Rates in the southern hemisphere were also low this year.
Where have all the flu cases gone?
Epidemiologist Knut Wittkowski thinks he can answer the riddle.
“Influenza has been renamed COVID in large part,” said the former head of biostatistics, epidemiology and research design at Rockefeller University.
“There may be quite a number of influenza cases included in the ‘presumed COVID’ category of people who have COVID symptoms (which Influenza symptoms can be mistaken for), but are not tested for SARS RNA,” Wittkowski told Just the News on Thursday.
Those patients, he argued, “also may have some SARS RNA sitting in their nose while being infected with Influenza, in which case the influenza would be ‘confirmed’ to be COVID.” (Read the full article.)
Is the CDC Hiding and Manipulating Data Regarding Overall Death Rates for 2020?
As we were nearing the end of 2020, we reported on some analysis projections for 2020 that were shaping up to have about as many total deaths for the year as previous years, based on the CDC’s own statistics. See:
A subscriber to Health Impact News recently sent me some screen shots that she allegedly saved at the end of December, 2020, from the CDC website, including a page that was reportedly available during most of 2020 tracking COVID deaths and deaths due to all causes (see above).
This page allegedly used to be at this URL: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/covid_weekly/index.htm
However, when you go this page now, you get this notice:
Resource Not Available
“The page you requested cannot be found at this time. It may be temporarily unavailable or it may have been removed or relocated.”
This is NOT the standard 404 error code which you get if you mistype a page address, because on the CDC website the 404 error code looks like this:
So this is a page that used to exist, and according to the screenshot that this user sent to me, on December 30, 2020 this page stated that the total deaths from all causes in 2020 was 2,902,664.
Here is a copy of page 9 of the National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 68, No. 6, June 24, 2019, which lists total deaths for 2016 and 2017:
There were 2,744,248 recorded deaths from all causes in 2016, and 2,813,503 recorded deaths from all causes in 2017, according to the CDC.
So if the alleged CDC numbers for deaths from all causes in the screen capture from December 30, 2020 is correct, with 2,902,664 on December 30th, it is right in line with what we would expect, without the additional deaths allegedly attributed to COVID-19.
The only way this number for total deaths could be accurate, along with the deaths attributed to COVID, would be if deaths due to all other causes that were not COVID, drastically decreased. Is it possible that deaths due to heart disease, cancer, etc. – all decreased so that the total deaths would be on par for what would be expected if there was no Coronavirus pandemic?
So what happened to this page on the CDC website?
What is the CDC now reporting as the total deaths for 2020 here in 2021?
If you go to: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/index.htm – and go down to Table 1, and click on “Yearly,” it will produce this chart showing 3,320,435 deaths for 2020:
So which version is correct?
Only the CDC would know the answer to that question, since they control all the data.
Is the CDC Trustworthy?
I have published this information in several articles the past few weeks, but it obviously bears repeating in this article, since the CDC is supposed to be supplying accurate information and statistics, especially now with regards to the new non-FDA approved experimental COVID mRNA injections.
The CDC is the largest purchaser of vaccines in the world, allocating over $5 BILLION in their budget (supplied by American taxpayers) each year to purchase and distribute vaccines from Big Pharma. See:
Do you think this might be a conflict of interest?
Secondly, the CDC owns over 56 patents on vaccines, and many of their scientists earn royalties from the sale of vaccines. (Source.)
Do you think this might be a conflict of interest?
The CDC has a long history of corruption, and over the years many of their own scientists have tried to blow the whistle on this corruption only to be silenced. See some of our previous coverage on CDC corruption:
CDC Scientist Whisteblowers Confirm Corruption Within the CDC
CDC Whistleblower: CDC Covered Up MMR Vaccine Link to Autism in African American Boys
The CDC’s History of Research Fraud Regarding Vaccines and Autism
Can We Trust the CDC? British Medical Journal Reveals CDC Lies About Ties to Big Pharma
In addition, many of the directors running the CDC go on to work for Big Pharma after they complete their term at the CDC. See:
Dr. Scott Gottlieb was the former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner. He joined the board of directors of Pfizer, Inc.—the world’s largest pharmaceutical company and second largest manufacturer of vaccines, in 2019 just shortly after he left the FDA. Pfizer, which posted total revenues of $53.7 billion in 2018, announced Dr. Gottlieb’s election to the board on June 27, 2019.
On July 22, 2020 President Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed” project awarded $1.95 BILLION to Pfizer and BioNTech for 100 million doses of their mRNA-based COVID-19.
So what do you think? Can we trust the CDC and the FDA? Are they actually concerned about Public Health, or are they simply the marketing branches of Big Pharma trying to protect their products?
Beijing hopes Washington will follow China’s lead and invite WHO to the US in search for origin of Covid-19
RT | February 2, 2021
The Chinese Foreign Ministry has urged Washington to invite the WHO to conduct traceability testing in the US, citing the fact the American authorities found Covid-19 antibodies in blood donations as early as December 2019.
Speaking on Friday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters that Beijing has always maintained close communication and cooperation with the World Health Organization (WHO) on Covid-19 traceability, and he said it was time the US followed suit.
“I hope that the United States will adopt a positive, scientific, and cooperative attitude on traceability issues, as well as maintain transparency, like China, and invite WHO experts to the United States to conduct traceability research and make positive contributions to international anti-epidemic cooperation and scientific traceability.” Wang said.
The spokesman told reporters that traceability testing was a very complex issue, with many clues, reports and studies needing to be taken into account.
“I will give you an example. According to a research report by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were antibodies to the new coronavirus in some American blood donations in December 2019. This means that the new coronavirus may have appeared in the United States at that time, earlier than the official US report,” Wang stated, reinforcing Beijing’s call for Washington to invite the WHO to America.
Wang continued to point out that China has conducted multiple rounds of in-depth exchanges and shared a lot of information and research results with international partners, including the WHO.
WHO experts are currently in China investigating the source of Covid-19, and they visited a wet market in Wuhan on Sunday. It has been widely suggested that a Chinese wet market was the environment where Covid-19 first passed to humans.
Scientists are still exploring a number of theories relating to the origins of the virus.
Locusts; or A Tale of Monstrous Foolishness
By Catte Black | OffGuardian | February 1, 2021
One day in a land far away and a time long gone a Priest came to where the Many were tending their crops and livestock and said…
“There are locusts coming and we must prepare!”
“But locusts come every year and all the years gone by”, the Many replied, “It is always so, why must we prepare?”
“These are not the locusts of all the years gone by,” the Priest said, “these are new and terrible locusts that I call by a New Name. We must prepare.”
“What do these new and terrible locusts with the New Name do?” the Many asked in great fear.
“Why,” said the Priest, “they consume a portion of our crops and then move on.”
The Many trembled in dread.
“But this is what locusts always do”, one man of the Many said, “why must we prepare this year when we never have before?”
The Priest regarded the one man of the Many.
“Did you not hear me?” he said. “These are not the old locusts of years gone by, these are new and terrible locusts and they have a New Name. We MUST PREPARE.”
“But what do the new and terrible locusts with the New Name do that is worse than the old locusts of years gone by?” the one man said.
“Why, are you a fool?” the priest cried. “Did I not tell you they consume our crops and then move on. We MUST PREPARE!”
“Yes, we must prepare!” cried the many in unison, though they did not know what this required.
“I do not understand”, the one man of the Many persisted, “do these new and terrible locusts look different from the old locusts of years gone by?”
“I have not said that,” the Priest replied.
“Do they consume more of our crops than did the old locusts of years gone by?”
“I have made no such claim,” the Priest replied.
“Then if the new and terrible locusts do not look different from the old locusts of years gone by and do not consume any more of our crops than the old locusts of years gone by, how are they new and terrible?”
At this the Priest grew wrathful with a priestly wrath.
“Who are you little man to put others at risk with these questions? Have I not told you these are new and terrible locusts and HAVE A NEW NAME?”
And the Many turned to the one man and said “Yes, fool, do not put others at risk with these questions. The Priest has told you – the new and terrible locusts HAVE A NEW NAME! Be silent in your foolishness and let the Priest tell us how we should prepare.”
And then they turned as one to the Priest and knelt before him and begged: “Oh wise one, tell us how we must prepare against the new and terrible locusts.”
So the Priest stood before them and said…
“I have spoken with great minds and with the gods, and they have told me the only way to prepare against the new and terrible locusts is to wear these hats of Monstrous Foolishness…”
…and he held a hat aloft of such exceeding monstrous foolishness that the Many were dismayed…
“Oh great one, how will the wearing of these hats of Monstrous Foolishness save us from the new and terrible locusts?” they cried.
“The great minds and the gods have studied the question and that is sufficient”, the Priest replied. “All those who have care for others will wear these hats and together we will save ourselves from the new and terrible locusts.”
The Many looked at one another and saw the wisdom of the Priest’s words, and willingly placed the hats of Monstrous Foolishness upon their heads and went back to tending their crops and their livestock, happy that they had been saved.
~ * ~
The next day the Priest came back to where the Many were tending their crops and livestock and wearing their hats of Monstrous Foolishness and said…
“Alas, I have spoken further with great minds and with the gods and they tell me the wearing of the hats of Monstrous Foolishness is not enough to save us from the new and terrible locusts. More is needed”.
The Many turned to the Priest in great alarm and cried, “oh wise one, tell us what we must do! to save us from the new and terrible locusts”
“It is this”, the Priest said, “to save us from the new and terrible locusts you must burn your crops to the ground before they can be eaten!”
“Thank you oh wise one!” the Many cried.
“Wait”, the one man of the Many said, “how will burning our crops to the ground before they can be eaten save them from the new and terrible locusts?”
“Foolish one,” the Priest answered, ” do you not understand the new and terrible locusts will pass us by if our crops are all gone?”
“But”, said the man, “you said to me that the new and terrible locusts will eat no more than the old locusts of years gone by.”
“That is true”, said the Priest.
“So, if we let the new and terrible locusts eat their fill and move on we will still have most of our crops as in years gone by, but if we burn them to the ground we will have none”.
The Priest sighed and the Many sighed also, following his example.
“Do you care nothing for those whose crops will be eaten if we do nothing?” the Priest asked in indignation.
“Do you care NOTHING for the crops that will be eaten?” echoed the Many, in great indignation for the callousness of the man.
And they went into their fields and burned all their crops to the ground so that a portion would not be eaten by the new and terrible locusts.
“But what will we do for bread,” asked the man, “now all our crops are burned to the ground?”
The Many looked troubled at this, for truly that question had not occurred to them. They turned to the Priest for answer.
“Sacrifices must be made, in times of need”, the Priest said.
“Yes”, the Many agreed, finding he spoke the very words they had in their own minds, “sacrifices must be made – and at least we are now safe from the new and terrible locusts!”
“I see the Priest has not burned HIS crops to the ground,” said the one man of the Many, “why is this?”
The Many turned to him at this and said “be silent, fool, enough of your nonsense, the Priest has spoken with great minds and with the gods and he knows best how to save us from the new and terrible locusts. All praise to our Priest and his wisdom.”
~ * ~
Next day the Priest came back to where the people were wearing their hats of Monstrous Foolishness standing in their burned fields and tending their livestock and said…
“Alas, I have spoken further with the gods and great minds and they tell me wearing the hats of Monstrous Foolishness and burning the crops to the ground is not enough to save us from the new and terrible locusts! We must also slaughter all our livestock and let their blood water the earth”.
“How will slaughtering livestock and letting their blood water the earth save us from locusts?” the one man of the Many asked.
The Many were indeed somewhat troubled by this new question and they turned to the Priest for answer.
“Do you not hear me say these are new and terrible locusts?”, the Priest said in his kindly voice. “Do you not understand that new ways must be found to save us from them?”
The Many looked relieved at this and found, once again, the Priest had spoken the very thoughts in their own minds. And so they willingly slaughtered their livestock and let the blood water the earth and rejoiced that they were now finally saved from the new and terrible locusts.
~ * ~
The Priest came a fourth time to where the people were sitting in their burned fields newly watered with the blood of their livestock, wearing their hats of Monstrous Foolishness, and he saw some were dead or dying.
“Alas,”, he said, “because of the incursions of the new and terrible locusts, we now have no bread and no meat and no milk, and even the wearing of the hats of Monstrous Foolishness, the burning of the crops and the slaying of the livestock has not been enough to save us, for see how many are dying.”
At this there was great fear and despair among the Many.
“Oh woe,” they cried, “truly these new and terrible locusts are a deadly scourge for look how many people are now dying despite all that we have done!”
And they turned to the Priest and begged “tell us oh wise one what must be done to save us from the new and terrible locusts that are killing us despite all we have done!”
“Truly”, said the Priest in great sadness, “this land is so scorched and devoured by the new and terrible locusts that nothing remains to be done but to leave our old lives behind and begin again in a new state of equity. You must come to my compound where I will protect you. I have a little food in my own storehouses, which you may have a portion of if you work for the common good by cleaning my house and tending my crops and livestock”.
“Thank you oh wise one!” the Many cried, and prepared to follow the Priest to the safety of his compound.
“Wait”, cried the one man of the Many, “it was not the new and terrible locusts that took away our food, it was us at your command, and now you want to make us your slaves?”
The Priest shook his head in pity, and the Many followed his example.
“What must be done with such persistent ignorance?” he demanded.
“Terrible persistent ignorance”, agreed the Many in unison.
And the Priest said:
“Do you not understand, that if we had NOT worn the hats of Monstrous Foolishness and burned down our crops and killed our livestock the new and terrible locusts would have made things far, far worse than they are now?”
“How?” asked the one man of the Many.
The priest chuckled and the Many followed his example.
“Why, simple fool, because the new and terrible locusts are new and terrible and have a NEW NAME!”
“A new name!” the Many echoed looking in disbelief at the one man who did not understand what this meant.
And then they turned and filed into the Priest’s compound in their hats of Monstrous Foolishness, to work for the common good by tending the Priest’s crops and livestock and cleaning the Priest’s house and singing songs of hope for their new beginning that the Priest’s scribes had written for them to sing.
Meanwhile, the one man left alone in the barren and bloody fields set out alone to find another path and sing his own songs.
Phantom Virus: In search of Sars-CoV-2
By Torsten Engelbrecht, Dr Stefano Scoglio & Konstantin Demeter | OffGuardian | January 31, 2021
Even the Robert Koch Institute and other health authorities cannot present decisive proof that a new virus named SARS-CoV-2 is haunting us. This alone turns the talk of dangerous viral mutations into irresponsible fearmongering and the so-called SARS-CoV-2 PCR tests definitely into a worthless venture.
In a request for a study which shows complete isolation and purification of the particles claimed to be SARS-CoV-2, Michael Laue from one of the world’s most important representatives of the COVID-19 “panicdemic,” the German Robert Koch Institute (RKI), answered that[1]:
I am not aware of a paper which purified isolated SARS-CoV-2.
This is a more than remarkable statement, it is admitting a complete failure. This concession is in line with the statements we presented in our article “COVID-19 PCR Tests Are Scientifically Meaningless” which OffGuardian published on June 27th, 2020 — a piece that was the first one worldwide outlining in detail why SARS-CoV-2 PCR tests are worthless for the diagnosis of a viral infection.
One of the crucial points in this analysis was that the studies contending to have shown that SARS-CoV-2 is a new and potentially deadly virus have no right to claim this, particularly because the studies claiming “isolation” of so-called SARS-CoV-2 in fact failed to isolate (purify) the particles said to be the new virus.
This is confirmed by the answers of the respective studies’ scientists to our inquiry, which are shown in a table in our piece — among them the world’s most important paper when it comes to the claim of having detected SARS-CoV-2 (by Zhu et al.), published in the New England Journal of Medicine on February 20, 2020, and now even the RKI.
Incidentally, we are in possession of a further confirmatory answer from authors [2] of an Australian study.
WANTED, IN VAIN: SARS-COV-2 VIRUS
Additionally, Christine Massey, a Canadian former biostatistician in the field of cancer research, and a colleague of hers in New Zealand, Michael Speth, as well as several individuals around the world (most of whom prefer to remain anonymous) have submitted Freedom of Information requests to dozens of health and science institutions and a handful of political offices around the world.
They are seeking any records that describe the isolation of a SARS-COV-2 virus from any unadulterated sample taken from a diseased patient.
But all 46 responding institutions/offices utterly failed to provide or cite any record describing “SARS-COV-2” isolation; and Germany’s Ministry of Health ignored their FOI request altogether.
The German entrepreneur Samuel Eckert asked health authorities from various cities such as München (Munich), Dusseldorf and Zurich for a study proving complete isolation and purification of so-called SARS-CoV-2. He has not obtained it yet.
REWARDS FOR PROOF OF ISOLATION AND CAUSALITY
Samuel Eckert even offered €230,000 to Christian Drosten if he can present any text passages from publications that scientifically prove the process of isolation of SARS-CoV-2 and its genetic substance. The deadline (December 31, 2020) has passed without Drosten responding to Eckert.
And another deadline passed on December 31 without submission of the desired documentation. In this case the German journalist Hans Tolzin offered a reward of €100,000 for a scientific publication outlining a successful infection attempt with the specific SARS-CoV-2 reliably resulting in respiratory illness in the test subjects.
PARTICLE SIZE VARIATION ALSO REDUCES VIRUS HYPOTHESIS TO ABSURDITY
Recently we are being scared by alleged new strains of “SARS-CoV-2”, but that claim is not based on solid science.
First of all, you cannot determine a variant of a virus if you haven’t completely isolated the original one.
Secondly, there are already tens of thousands of supposed new strains, “found” since last winter all over the world. In fact, the GISAID virus data bank has now more than 452,000 different genetic sequences that claim to represent a variant of SARS-Cov2.
So, to claim that now suddenly there are “new strains” is hogwash even from an orthodox perspective, because from that perspective viruses mutate constantly. Thus, they can constantly proclaim to have found new strains, perpetuating the fear.
Such fearmongering is all the more absurd when one casts a glance at the electron micrographs printed in the relevant studies, which show particles that are supposed to represent SARS-CoV-2. These images reveal that these particles vary extremely in size. In fact, the bandwidth ranges from 60 to 140 nanometers (nm). A virus that has such extreme size variation cannot actually exist.
For example, it can be said of human beings that they vary from about 1.50 meters to 2.10 meters, as there are several individuals of different heights. Now, saying that viruses as a whole range from 60 to 140 nm — as did Zhu et al.— may eventually make sense; but to say that the individual SARS-Cov2 virions vary so much would be like saying that John varies his height from 1.60 to 2 meters depending on the circumstances!
One could reply that viruses are not human individuals, but it is also true that, according to virology, each virus has a fairly stable structure. So, with SARS-Cov2 they are taking liberties of definition which further confirm that everything on this specific virus is even more random than usual. And that license of unlimited definition led to the fact that the Wikipedia entry on coronavirus was changed, and now reports that “Each SARS-CoV-2 virion has a diameter of about 50 to 200 nm”.
That would be like saying that John varies his height from 1 to 4 meters according to circumstances!
What is passed off as SARS-Cov2 are actually particles of all kinds, as can also be seen from the images provided by the mentioned paper by Zhu et al. Below is the photo that Zhu et al. present as the photo of SARS-Cov2:
Through a screen size meter (FreeRuler), the particles that the authors assign to SARS-CoV-2 can be measured. The enlarged particles of the left side photograph measure about 100 nm each (on a 100 nm scale). But in the image on the right side, all the small particles indicated with arrows as SARS-CoV-2, measured on a scale of 1 MicroM (1,000 nm), have totally different sizes.
The black arrows actually indicate vesicles. Measuring some of these particles with the ruler, the result is that in the central vesicle the highest particle at the center measures almost 52nm, thus below the range proposed by Zhu et al (60 to 140 nm); the particle immediately to its right measures a little more, about 57.5nm, but still below limit; while, almost at the center of the lowest vesicle, the largest particle (yellow arrow) measures approximately 73.7nm, falling within the broad margins of Zhu et al.; finally, in the lower-left vesicle, the largest particle measures a good 155.6nm, i.e. well above the maximum limit defined by Zhu et al. (140nm).
It is likely that the correction made lately on Wikipedia was aimed precisely at covering this problem.
There are other strong indications that the particles referred to as SARS-CoV-2 may actually be those harmless or even useful particles, called “extracellular vesicles” (EVs), which have extremely variable dimensions (from 20 to 10,000nm), but which for the most part range from 20nm to 200nm, and which include, as a sub-category, that of “exosomes.”
Exosomes are particles produced by our cells and contain nucleic acids, lipids and proteins, and are involved in various activities useful to our body, such as the transport of immune molecules and stem cells, as well as the elimination of the cell’s catabolic debris.
Exosomes account for perhaps the largest share of EVs, and have been the object of numerous studies for over 50 years. Although few have heard of these beneficial particles, the scientific literature on them is huge, and only on PubMed, if one types “exosome,” over 14,000 studies are provided! We cannot go into detail about EVs and exosomes here, but it is important to point out how they are indistinguishable from viruses, and several scientists think that in reality what is defined as a dangerous virus is nothing but a beneficial exosome.
This is immediately visible under the electron microscope [3]:
As can be seen, the largest of the exosomes is of the same size and structure of the alleged SARS-CoV-2, and it is therefore plausible to believe that, in the large sea of particles contained in the supernatant of the COVID-19 patient’s broncho-alveolar fluid, what is taken to be SARS-CoV-2 is but an exosome.
WHY PURIFICATION IS VITAL TO PROVING SARS-COV-2 EXISTS
So, logically, if we have a culture with countless extremely similar particles, particle purification must be the very first step in order to be able to truly define the particles that are believed to be viruses as viruses (in addition to particle purification, of course, it must then also be determined flawlessly, for example, that the particles can cause certain diseases under real and not just laboratory conditions).
Therefore, if no particle “purification” has been done anywhere, how can one claim that the RNA obtained is a viral genome? And how can such RNA then be widely used to diagnose infection with a new virus, be it by PCR testing or otherwise? We have asked these two questions to numerous representatives of the official corona narrative worldwide, but nobody could answer them.
Hence, as we have stated in our previous article, the fact that the RNA gene sequences – that scientists extracted from tissue samples prepared in their in vitro studies and to which the so-called SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR tests were finally “calibrated” – belong to a new pathogenic virus called SARS-CoV-2 is therefore based on faith alone, not on facts.
Consequently, it cannot be concluded that the RNA gene sequences “pulled” from the tissue samples prepared in these studies, to which the PCR tests are “calibrated,” belong to a specific virus, in this case SARS-CoV-2.
Instead, in all the studies claiming to have isolated and even tested the virus something very different was done: the researchers took samples from the throat or lungs of patients, ultracentrifuged them (hurled at high speed) to separate the larger/heavy from the smaller/lighter molecules, and then took the supernatant, the upper part of the centrifuged material.
This is what they call “isolate,” to which they then apply the PCR. But this supernatant contains all kinds of molecules, billions of different micro- and nanoparticles, including aforementioned extracellular vesicles (EVs) and exosomes, which are produced by our own body and are often simply indistinguishable from viruses:
Nowadays, it is an almost impossible mission to separate EVs and viruses by means of canonical vesicle isolation methods, such as differential ultracentrifugation, because they are frequently co-pelleted due to their similar dimension,
… as it says in the study The Role of Extracellular Vesicles as Allies of HIV, HCV and SARS Viruses published in May 2020 in the journal Viruses.
So, scientists “create” the virus by PCR: You take primers, ie. previously existing genetic sequences available in genetic banks, you modify them based on purely hypothetical reasoning, and put them in touch with the supernatant broth, until they attach (anneal) to some RNA in the broth; then, through the Reverse Transcriptase enzyme, you transform the thus “fished” RNA into an artificial or complementary DNA (cDNA), which can then, and only then, be processed by PCR and multiplied through a certain number of PCR cycles.
(Each cycle doubles the quantity of DNA, but the higher the number of cycles necessary to produce detectable “virus” material, the lower the reliability of the PCR — meaning its ability to actually “get” anything at all meaningful from the supernatant. Above 25 cycles the result tends to be meaningless, and all current circulating PCR tests or protocols always use way more than 25 cycles, in fact usually 35 to 45.)
To make matters worse, the primers are constituted of 18 to 24 bases (nucleotides) each; the SARS-Cov2 virus is supposedly composed of 30,000 bases; so the primer represents only the 0.08 percent of the virus genome. This makes it even less possible to select the specific virus you are looking for on such a minute ground, and moreover in a sea of billions of very similar particles.
But there is more. As the virus you are looking for is new, there are clearly no ready genetic primers to match the specific fraction of the new virus; so you take primers that you believe may be closer to the hypothesised virus structure, but it’s a guess, and when you apply the primers to the supernatant broth, your primers can attach to any one of the billions of molecules present in it, and you have no idea that what you have thus generated is the virus you are looking for. It is, in fact, a new creation made by researchers, who then call it SARS-CoV-2, but there is no connection whatsoever with the presumed “real” virus responsible for the disease.
THE “VIRUS GENOME” NOTHING BUT A COMPUTER MODEL
The complete genome of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has never been sequenced and was instead was “pieced together” on the computer. The Californian physician Thomas Cowan called this a “scientific fraud.” And he is not the only one by far!
Cowan wrote on October 15, 2020 [our emphasis]:
This week, my colleague and friend Sally Fallon Morell brought to my attention an amazing article put out by the CDC, published in June 2020. The purpose of the article was for a group of about 20 virologists to describe the state of the science of the isolation, purification and biological characteristics of the new SARS-CoV-2 virus, and to share this information with other scientists for their own research.
A thorough and careful reading of this important paper reveals some shocking findings.
The article section with the subheading “Whole Genome Sequencing” showed that “rather than having isolated the virus and sequencing the genome from end to end”, that the CDC “designed 37 pairs of nested PCRs spanning the genome on the basis of the coronavirus reference sequence (GenBank accession no. NC045512).
So, one may ask, how then did they sequence the virus, ie. analyse it genetically?
Well, they did not analyse the whole genome, but instead took some sequences found in the cultures, claimed without proof that they belonged to a new specific virus, and then made some sort of a genetic computer puzzle to fill up the rest. “They use the computer modelling to essentially just create a genome from scratch,” as the molecular biologist Andrew Kaufman says.
Maybe then it’s no surprise that one of the primers of the test developed by the Pasteur Institute corresponds exactly to a sequence of chromosome 8 of the human genome.
NO PROOF THAT SARS-COV-2 CAN FLY
Supposedly to stop the spread of the alleged new virus, we are being forced to practice various forms of social distancing and to wear masks. Behind this approach is the idea that viruses and in particular SARS-CoV-2, believed to be responsible for the respiratory disease Covid-19, is transmitted by air or, as has been said more often, through the nebulized droplets in the air from those who cough or sneeze or, according to some, just speak.
But the truth is that all these theories on the transmission of the virus are only hypotheses that have never been proven.
Evidence for this was missing from the beginning. As reported by Nature in an article from April 2020, experts do not agree that SARS-CoV-2 is airborne, and according to the WHO itself “the evidence is not convincing.”
Even from an orthodox point of view, the only studies in which the transmission of a coronavirus (not SARS-Cov2) by air has been preliminarily “proven” have been carried out in hospitals and nursing homes, in places that are said to produce all types of infections due to hygienic conditions.
But no study has ever proven that there is transmission of viruses in open environments, or in closed but well-ventilated ones. Even assuming that there is this transmission by air, it has been stressed that, for the “contagion” to occur, it is necessary that the people between whom the alleged transmission occurs are in close contact for at least 45 minutes.
In short, all the radical distancing measures have no scientific ground.
NO ASYMPTOMATIC “INFECTION”
Since particle purification is the indispensable prerequisite for further steps, i.e. proof of causality and “calibration” of the tests, we have a diagnostically insignificant test and therefore the mantra “test, test, test” by the WHO’s Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, mentioned in our article from June 27, has to be called unscientific and misleading.
This holds especially true for testing people without symptoms. In this context even a Chinese study from Wuhan published in Nature on November 20, 2020, in which nearly 10 million people were tested and all asymptomatic positive cases, re-positive cases and their close contacts were isolated for at least 2 weeks until the PCR test resulted negative, found that:
All close contacts of the asymptomatic positive cases tested negative, indicating that the asymptomatic positive cases detected in this study were unlikely to be infectious.
Even the orthodox British Medical Journal recently joined in the criticism.
Shortly before Christmas, the science magazine published the article “COVID-19: Mass testing is inaccurate and gives false sense of security, minister admits” explaining how the testing being deployed in parts of the UK is simply not at all accurate for asymptomatic people and arguing that it cannot accurately determine if one is positive or negative, as Collective Evolution wrote. (The WHO themselves have since admitted as much. Twice. – ed.)
Already a few weeks before, you could read in The BMJ that:
Mass testing for COVID-19 is an unevaluated, underdesigned, and costly mess,
And:
Screening the healthy population for COVID-19 is of unknown value, but is being introduced nationwide
And that [our emphasis]:
“the UK’s pandemic response relies too heavily on scientists and other government appointees with worrying competing interests, including shareholdings in companies that manufacture covid-19 diagnostic tests, treatments, and vaccines,
Apart from that, the lawyer Reiner Füllmich, member of the German Extra-Parliamentary Inquiry Committee “Stiftung Corona Ausschuss”, said that Stefan Hockertz, professor of pharmacology and toxicology, told him that thus far no scientific evidence has been found for asymptomatic infection.
When asked, the Robert Koch Institute was unable to send us a single study demonstrating that (a) “positive” asymptomatic persons made someone else sick (not just “positive”), that (b) “positive” persons with symptoms of illness made someone else sick (not just “positive”), and that (c) any person at all who tested “positive” for SARS-CoV-2 made another person “positive.” [4]
“IF YOU WOULD NOT TEST ANYMORE, CORONA WOULD DISAPPEAR”
Even back in May, a major publication such as the Journal of the American Medical Association stated that a “positive” PCR result does not necessarily indicate presence of viable virus,” while a recent study in The Lancet says that “RNA detection cannot be used to infer infectiousness.“
Against this background, one can only agree with Franz Knieps, head of the association of company health insurance funds in Germany and for many years in close contact with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who stated in mid-January that “if you would not test anymore, Corona would disappear.”
Interestingly, even the hyper-orthodox German Virus-Czar and main government adviser on lockdowns and other measures, Christian Drosten, has contradicted himself on the reliability of PCR testing. In a 2014 interview regarding PCR testing for so-called MERS-CoV in Saudi Arabia he said:
The [PCR] method is so sensitive that it can detect a single hereditary molecule of the virus. For example, if such a pathogen just happens to flutter across a nurse’s nasal membrane for a day without her getting sick or noticing anything, then she is suddenly a case of MERS. Where fatalities were previously reported, now mild cases and people who are actually in perfect health are suddenly included in the reporting statistics. This could also explain the explosion in the number of cases in Saudi Arabia. What’s more, the local media boiled the matter up to unbelievable levels.”
Sound vaguely familiar?
And even Olfert Landt is critical about PCR test results, saying that only about half of those “infected with corona” are contagious. This is more than remarkable because Landt is not only one of Drosten’s co-authors in the Corman et al. paper — the first PCR Test protocol to be accepted by the WHO, published on January 23, 2020, in Eurosurveillance — but also the CEO of TIB Molbiol, the company that produces the tests according to that protocol.
Unfortunately, this conflict of interest is not mentioned in the Corman/Drosten et al. paper, as 22 scientists — among them one of the authors of this article, Stefano Scoglio — criticized in a recent in-depth analysis.
Altogether, Scoglio and his colleagues found “severe conflicts of interest for at least four authors,” including Christian Drosten, as well as various fundamental scientific flaws. This is why they concluded that “the editorial board of Eurosurveillance has no other choice but to retract the publication.”
On January 11, 2021, the editorial team of Eurosurveillance responded to Torsten Engelbrecht’s e-mail asking for a comment on this analysis:
We are aware of such a request [to retract the Corman/Drosten et al. paper] but we hope you will understand that we are currently not commenting on this. However, we are working towards a decision by the end of January 2021.
On January 27, Engelbrecht approached the journal once more to ask again: “Now is end of January. So please allow me to ask you again: What is your comment on the mentioned analysis of your Corman/Drosten et al. paper? And are you going to retract the Corman et al. paper – or what are you going to do?” Two days later, the Eurosurveillance editorial team answered as follows:
This is taking some time as multiple parties are involved. We will communicate our decision in one of the forthcoming regular issues of the journal.
BILLIONS UPON BILLIONS WASTED ON TESTS THAT COULDN’T MEAN LESS
Considering the lack of facts for detection of the alleged new virus and for the SARS-CoV-2 PCR tests to have any meaning, it is all the more scandalous that the costs of the tests are not publicly discussed, as they are enormous. Often, we hear politicians and talking heads state that meeting certain criteria the tests are free, but that is an outright lie. What they actually mean is that you don’t pay on the spot but with your taxes.
But regardless how you pay for it, in Switzerland, for example, the cost for a PCR test is between CHF140 and CHF200 (£117 to £167). So, let’s do the maths. At the time of writing, tiny Switzerland, with a population of 8.5 million, made about 3,730,000 SARS-CoV-2 PCR tests, besides about 500,000 antigen tests, which are a bit cheaper.
Considering an average price of CHF170 per PCR test, that’s a staggering CHF634 million, or £521 million. And despite the absurdity of testing asymptomatic people, just last week, on January 27th, the Swiss Federal Council called again on the people to get tested. Announcing that, starting the next day, the Swiss will have to pay with their taxes as well for mass testing of asymptomatic people. The Swiss Federal Council estimates that this will cost about 1 billion Swiss Francs.
Epidemiologist Dr. Tom Jefferson said in an interview to the Daily Mail:
Most PCR kits still cost more than £100 to obtain privately, for example, and the [UK] Government says it is now delivering 500,000 a day. But even these figures are dwarfed by the £100 billion the Prime Minister is prepared to spend on a ‘moonshot’ dream of supplying the population with tests [PCR and other kinds – ed.] more or less on demand—only £29 billion less than the entire NHS’s annual budget.
In Germany, the price varies widely, depending also if the test is paid privately or not, but on average it is similar to those in GB, and up to date they have performed about 37.5 million PCR Tests.
That is to say, billions and billions are spent — or downright “burned” — on tests that couldn’t mean less and are fuelling worldwide molecular and digital “deer hunting” for a virus that has never been detected.
Konstantin Demeter is a freelance photographer and an independent researcher. Together with the journalist Torsten Engelbrecht he has published articles on the “COVID-19” crisis in the online magazine Rubikon, as well as contributions on the monetary system, geopolitics, and the media in Swiss Italian newspapers.
NOTES:
- [1] Email from September 4, 2020 [BACK]
- [2] Email from October 5, 2020 [BACK]
- [3] The pictures are taken from a presentation by Dr. Andrew Kaufman, Ohio, one of the main proponents of the theory that viruses are actually exosomes. [BACK]
- [4] Email from December 3, 2020 [BACK]
Header image: Alfred Abel, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, and Gertrude Welcker in Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (1922)
Have 400,000 Americans Died of Covid-19?
By Celia Farber | Uncover DC | January 25, 2021
Many assumed, lots screamed it, but now there is proof: The Covid-19 death count is a fabrication. However, the story is much bigger than number manipulation within our government. It’s a story told best with an introduction. For those who may be impatient, scroll down to the section titled “The Natural Enemy of the PSYOP is the True Scientist” and read from there. Otherwise, learn what they have done and will continue to do. Learn about the PSYOP.
A Scientist Finds Something Shocking In CDC Covid Stats
“In less than 12 months, they closed our businesses, forced us to wear muzzles, kept us from our families, killed off our sports, burned down our cities, forcibly seized power.
Then they accused us of the coup.” — Raheem Kassam.“Besides being the first President to get impeached twice, Donald Trump will have a stain on his legacy with arguably longer-lasting consequences: He’s about to become the only American leader in a century with more than 400,000 deaths from one event on his watch.” — Jose Ortiz, USA Today.
“But, you know, I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints. Heroism and sanctity don’t really appeal to me, I imagine. What interests me is being a man.” — Albert Camus
“I don’t want to jump up and down and start screaming, ‘Death! Death!’” — Donald Trump
A PSYOP is a most dangerous thing—a fusion of reality, simulation, and projection. A form of a storm—monsoon or typhoon—that moves in fast, breaks and soaks, changes everything, and kills in a variety of ways.
Its guilt grip is so powerful, you will also be stripped of the right to reject or even resent it. Powerful and merciless, it splits people, weaponizes our thoughts and feelings about one another, tears apart families, old friendships, gets people fired, and above all, makes everybody miserable.
Even when it’s wrong (and it’s always wrong), you can’t put an end to it. It is essentially mass media’s mental implants that people mistake for their own thoughts and feelings. It violently demands certain “emotions” while it cruelly strips away all individual, natural human ones.
PSYOPS, or “Influence Operations,” don’t have to correlate with reality because they create a new hyper-reality, seen only through specific virtual reality goggles. Inside the virtualized media dome, all of its promises come true, funnily enough—like clockwork, whereas a natural story will contain surprise twists.
The generators and controllers of the PSYOPS know how to use large numbers with which to savagely club people. If a number is suspiciously big and suspiciously even, you can be sure it is a PSYOP number.
Right now, we are all being clobbered hard by the number 400,000—but none so viciously as former President Donald Trump.
The 400,000 PSYOP was timed to coincide with the days before, during, and after Joe Biden’s inauguration. Thus, Donald Trump was accused of essentially killing all “400,000,” as the Empire State Building lit up in red (the same color as the AIDS PSYOP, now retired). It was suggested on National Public Radio that perhaps Donald Trump should be executed for this crime.
The media drums on the 400,000 began just before Joe Biden’s Covid-centric inauguration. A few headlines bearing the accusation of genocide:
“Blood On His Hands’: As US nears 400,000 Covid-19 deaths, experts blame Trump administration for a ‘preventable’ loss of life.” USA Today, Jan 17
“One Year, 400,000 coronavirus deaths: How the US Guaranteed Its Own Failure.” The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, Jan 17.
These media attacks brought together the two titanic PSYOPS of our era: Trump Is Hitler and Covid is Eternal Mass Death. In the second week of January, the two mated, giving birth to a new PSYOP, never fully flogged before, namely: Covid is Eternal Mass death because of Trump.
Covid is not a respiratory illness so much as a blunt force perception and guilt weapon to “kill” Donald Trump with. Decent people can’t locate what former President Trump did wrong exactly. Nor why none of this was the highly paid and revered Dr. Anthony Fauci’s responsibility, especially since he said years ago, ominously, that President Trump could “expect” a new pandemic during his tenure. (For the record, I think what he did wrong was to listen to Anthony Fauci. This was no minor error; The country has fallen.) But the Covid PSYOP has that precisely the other way around.
Here’s a cloudy, highly revealing PSYOP-adherent Trump flogging from Nathalie Baptiste, writing in Mother Jones, with all the cliches in bold:
“The staggering death toll was both preventable and entirely predictable. Even aside from his vast personal incompetence—we’ll get to that later—President Trump blithely put into practice cherished conservative principles that are incompatible with a decent pandemic response. Castigating and de-legitimizing government institutions, demonizing minority communities, and playing into white grievances may help Republicans win elections, but when it comes to beating back a massive public health catastrophe, what’s paramount is robust public agencies, a strong health care system, and special attention to the vulnerable. In many ways, we were doomed from the start.”
Incredibly, this is from the side that claims to believe in science.
I was troubled enough to see the spate of articles and TV reports chiming the 400,000 death bells, but soon I saw what it was preparation for: The inauguration.
US Vice President-elect Kamala Harris (2nd L) and husband Douglas Emhoff and US President-elect Joe Biden (R) and wife Dr. Jill Biden attend a Covid-19 Memorial at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, on January 19, 2021, to honor the lives of those lost to Covid-19. (Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP)
Biden/Harris and their production teams had long since made this new number—400,000—centrally symbolic to its eerie, choreographed, virtualized inauguration ceremony.
Milan Kundera called this kind of thing “Communist Kitsch.” Exploiting the dead (no matter what they, in truth, died of, but primarily old age), the pageant was all about Covid, with flags representing those who could not attend due to the Covid Scare and the Domestic Terrorism (from Patriots) scare. Throughout the ceremony, those who died “of Covid” were remembered, though no mention of those who have died from lockdowns. PSYOPS hyper-direct our allowed emotions. In the end, the supposed “blood on hands” of the outgoing President was fused with the (dark) triumphalism of the incoming one. Meaning: The very theme of Biden’s Presidency would not be, say, America, but rather, “Covid.” Don’t serve America; serve Covid, as the new America. The new America is actually America inverted, prepared, and served up to The Great Reset and the final destruction of all human freedoms, in the name of a “virus” you may not question without risking prison.
Little detail: 400,000 Americans did not die of “Covid-19” in 2020. Neither did half that number. Nor a third, nor one 10th. If we are generous to the scare-mongers, the real number is only 4.2% of the genocidal drama number, 400,000, namely: 16,848.
And if they were held to further scrutiny and forced to explain the difference between an influenza death and a Covid death, the number would go down even further, possibly down to zero.
The Natural Enemy of the PSYOP is the True Scientist
Unbeknownst (of course) to the architects of the two Covid PSYOPS of 2020 and 2021, an atmospheric scientist in Greensprings, Oregon, himself unafraid of controversy, was putting the finishing touches on a Covid-19 paper he’d begun to write three months earlier.
The bombshell paper is titled: “A Critical Review of CDC USA Data on Covid-19: PCR/Antigen Tests & Cases Reveal Herd Immunity Only, & Do Not Warrant Public Hysteria or Lockdown.” It was posted on two of his academic webpages on 16 Jan 2021. The links are here and here.
In it, Dr. James DeMeo, Ph.D., demolishes the central premise of global lockdown policies. That people are dying in massive and alarming numbers from a novel disease. He’d been waiting for the final statistics to come in for 2020. When they did, he noticed two spectacularly odd things:
Firstly, if one subtracted the numbers of Covid deaths (around 315,000) from the total number of people who died from all causes in 2020 (around 2.9 million), one obtained a dramatically low number of total deaths, lower than in any year since 2014. It appeared to him that the reported number of “Covid” deaths were being re-defined and subtracted from other causes of deaths; the people who died of “co-morbidities” were being shifted over into the Covid category.
Secondly, on January 3rd, the CDC released its year-end count of all-cause deaths in one dramatically high number—268,259 to be exact.
These deaths did not appear anywhere in the CDC’s records previously but turn up as a “data dump” in the very first days of 2021, as though there had been some catastrophic event or mass die-off of older Americans in a single week. In a very unsettling way, it echoed the middle of the night miraculous Joe Biden lead over Donald Trump between Nov 3 and 4, 2020.
“I have never seen anything like it,” said Dr. DeMeo, when I reached him at home to discuss his paper, which a mutual friend had brought to my attention.
“It’s extremely odd. The only thing I can compare it to is when people in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission were trying to cover up large radiation discharges from nuclear power plants. They took the radiation levels and put a “0.” They were stupid; they didn’t realize, background radiation never goes to zero.”
But where might those deaths have come from? I pressed.
“I could not tell you,” DeMeo replied. “The end of year data I used was the CDC’s data as of Dec 26, and that was a figure of 2 million 900,000 deaths from all causes with 301,679 deaths from Covid. I went to Our World In Data—they have a dynamic, interactive graph. You can hold your mouse over any part of the graph, and it will show you the numbers. That’s how I got my numbers. It did not have this massive data dump. There was nothing like that.”
“I cannot know what the heck happened. Why would they dump so many all-cause deaths on that last week? There was no atom bomb going off, in Miami or some other place where a lot of old people live, to kill that many people at the tail end of December. I tried calling the AP reporter who first came out with an article around Christmas where he said there would be 3-3.2 million deaths in the US—he made it sound like most would be from Covid.”
The Dec 22, 2020 article Dr. Demeo refers to was written by Mike Stobbe in AP. It opens:
“This is the deadliest year in U.S. history, with deaths expected to top 3 million for the first time—due mainly to the coronavirus pandemic. Final mortality data for this year will not be available for months. But preliminary numbers suggest that the United States is on track to see more than 3.2 million deaths this year, or at least 400,000 more than in 2019.”
DeMeo remarks:
“When people hear “cases in the millions” They start thinking of people who are dying and on the way to death or who have already died, and it’s not true, but they’re not even trying to clarify that to the public. They’re very deliberately sending people into a panic. It’s irresponsible as hell.”
DeMeo says he sent Stobbe an email, asking him what statistics he was referencing.
“I didn’t get a response.”
DeMeo is well equipped to deconstruct Covid statistics if that word even applies anymore.
“I’m a geographer and an atmospheric scientist by training; we work with data sets of all different kinds. Moisture, humidity, barometric pressure, and so on. Agriculture and human health, Climate factors around the world. I have a background in epidemiology, and I used to teach university courses covering epidemiology and population dynamics. So I’m used to looking at those kinds of numbers, and they just didn’t make any sense. So that’s how it all got uncovered.”
The mutual friend who brought the paper to my attention was Tom DiFerdinando, who’s worked closely with Dr. DeMeo on various research projects for many years, and has a long history deconstructing medical tyranny. He is the President of a Non-Profit called “Unmasking Covid and AIDS.” His email, clarifying the “trick,” put it like this:
If there were 315,507 excess deaths due to Covid-19, why is the difference in all-cause deaths between the end of 2020 and the end of 2019 only 61,654? That’s 61,654 more all-cause deaths in 2020 than in 2019, where the increase in all-cause deaths over each of the past ten years has averaged 44,806. That’s a difference of 16,848 from the median in a year with an alleged 315,507 extra Covid-related deaths.
When you subtract the alleged 2020 Covid death total from the all-cause 2020 death total, i.e., 2,916,492 – 315,507, you get 2,600,985.
That figure, 2,600,985, is less than the all-cause death counts each year going back to 2014! That means the total death count for all fatal diseases and accidents in 2020, excluding Covid-19, dropped mysteriously and substantially—right about to the same degree that Covid-19 went up. For the Covid deaths to be genuinely new “excess” deaths, that all-cause total of 2.9 million—which already includes “Covid-19” deaths—should be something like 3.2 million, with an annual increase in 2020 of 376,000 deaths, not 61,000.
What these two points mean, of course, is that the 315,507 Covid death count does not represent Covid deaths but a displacement of deaths from other causes.
In his January 7 postscript, DeMeo catches the CDC red-handed. Earlier in the paper, he points out, as I did above, that there are nearly 300,000 missing deaths in the all-cause category for the numbers to pan out. On that day, Jan 7, he discovered the CDC had suddenly added 269,249 all-cause deaths into their end of year all-cause death totals!
Evidently, 269,249 people suddenly died in the last week of 2020. How convenient for the Covid narrative!
In a phone interview, DiFerdinando elaborated:
“Without those added deaths, there would be no evidence of a Covid pandemic,” he said. ”This triangulation of facts: essentially no excess deaths beyond the normal annual background count; absolutely NO relationship between Covid “confirmed” cases and Covid “confirmed” deaths; and the mysterious, last-minute dump of 268,259 all-cause deaths into the 2020 end-of-year all-cause death totals; completely demolish any pretext of their having been a 2020 viral pandemic, whether caused by a novel coronavirus or by anything else and that therefore there is no rational reason to be putting masks on children, isolating elders, destroying businesses, locking down populations and shattering the public trust.”
Says Dr. DeMeo:
“The people who are dying of so-called Covid, it’s all happening in the wintertime. So, all this correlates with the idea that this is a big error, a big mistake. Maybe with nefarious motivations. You don’t even have to reference why to understand that it is indeed a falsehood, the whole construct of a Covid pandemic. The numbers do not lie; the numbers tell the story. Where are the massive, massive numbers of people dying, which you would correlate with positive PCR and antigen tests, which is what you would expect to happen. People who are dying of old age diseases, they’re re-defining them as Covid 19, but the symptomatology is so exactly similar to influenza and other lung diseases.”
It comes down to a truly devastating assault of PSYOP by media and a fast-growing class of super-predators; Covid careerists. We must have our lives destroyed because they must assert and enrich themselves.
“I would not trust anything I read in the American newspapers or media, Johns Hopkins, CDC, WHO—all untrustworthy,” says DeMeo. “Where are they coming up with 400,000 deaths?” He continues. “They’re talking about approximately 318,000 people who died as of Jan 2. Where are they coming up with… in 15 days they are saying they’ve identified another 75,000 dead? I don’t think so. This is data magic.”
One of the most astonishing features of “Covid 19” is that nobody can quite define what it is or why it is so spectacular as to force almost the entire world into lock-down.
“I think what we’re dealing with absolutely is a confusion of ordinary lung and heart diseases that take out a lot of old people as they approach the end of their lives,” says DeMeo. “And it’s being redefined in very ugly ways.
“What’s going on with influenza statistics? They’ve gone down to a very low number, the figure I found was 0.2%. Two-tenths of one percent, when at this time of year, we should be having something between 5 and 20 percent. In terms of the number of influenza deaths, that happens every winter. The numbers they are throwing out make no sense whatsoever.”
Shortly before press time, Dr. Demeo followed up, having cross-checked his numbers yet again. He wrote in an email:
“I now feel fully confident that my method for making that excess deaths calculation is the best and most scientific method possible, given all the other factors revealed in the paper. It may actually be the only scientifically-sound method, making the fewest assumptions. I could stand before Fauci or any of them with high confidence. They are like powdered-wig fops and dandies in the French Court of the Louies, commanding “respect” only due to position and faux-authority, but not by scientific accuracy or empathy for the ordinary people they were appointed to serve.”
From the towers of academic science to bold citizen journalism, “Covid 19” has been assailed all around the world as the least credible, most diabolical pack of lies ever launched upon innocent people.
Richard Citizen Journalist has posted many videos to his Twitter feed, inside US hospitals, always empty. His Profile says: “Empty Hospitals Are The Smoking Gun.”
This video is his pinned Tweet:
Scientist, Social Theorist, and former Professor of Physics Denis Rancourt tweeted:
And one of my favorite ever Covid tweets came from Dr. Thomas Bender, one of the 22 authors of the paper, requesting withdrawal of the Corman/Drosten paper that spawned this whole nightmare with an unavailable viral isolate turned into a global hell-PSYOP, presumably for economic and socio-political reasons. He wrote:
Dr. Kevin Corbett, Ph.D., also an author of the challenge to the Corman/Drosten PCR paper, said in a telephone call from London:
“This paper joins the ranks of academic works around the world, all pointing to the same conclusion: They’re lying. They’re doing it very deliberately, and we all know statistics are a convenient tool of the Big Lie. At this point, the actual statistical and epidemiological case for Covid-19 being a real pandemic is closed. To honest people, it’s closed. We’re done.”
The PSYOP, however, is a beast that must be fed daily, hourly, new variations of mangled, manipulated numbers, new scenarios intended to scare you anew into submission. The PSYOP depends upon you reacting with fear and guilt. Don’t be afraid, therefore, and don’t feel guilty for not being afraid. None of us know when our lives will end, but let us remain fully human—alive, loving, and trusting—until that time comes.
As Albert Camus wrote in his most famous novel, The Plague, where the real plague winds up being something well beyond the illness:
“And he knew, also, what the old man was thinking as his tears flowed, and he, Rieux, thought it too: that a loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one’s work, and of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth, and wonder of a loving heart.”
Celia Farber is half Swedish, raised there, so she knows “socialism” from the inside. She has focused her writings on freedom and tyranny, with an early focus on the pharmaceutical industry and media abuses on human liberties. She has been under ferocious attack for her writings on HIV/AIDS, where she has worked to document the topic as a psychological operation and rooted in fake science. She is a contributor to UncoverDC and The Epoch Times and has in the past written for Harper’s, Esquire, Rolling Stone, and more. Having been gravely injured in legacy media, she never wants to go back. She is the recipient of the Semmelweis International Society Clean Hands Award For Investigative Journalism and was under such attack for her work; she briefly sought protection from the FBI and NYPD. She is the author of “Serious Adverse Events: An Uncensored History of AIDS” and the editor of The Truth Barrier, an investigative and literary website. She co-hosts “The Whistleblower Newsroom” with Kristina Borjesson on PRN, Fridays at 10 am.
Twitter: @CeliaFarber
Web: www.truthbarrier.com
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From the Archives
A low-fat, high-carb diet has been the largest public health experiment in history. It’s past time for a rethink.
By Malcolm Kendrick | RT | November 25, 2020
New research suggests that four billion people globally will be overweight in 2050. This trend can be traced back to the ‘low-fat, high-carb’ guidelines first issued in the 70s, and should prompt a major U-turn on dietary advice.
A recent report from the Potsdam Institute predicts that by 2050 there will be four billion overweight people in the world, with one-and-a-half billion of them obese. This is not entirely surprising. The world has been getting fatter for years, and things do not seem to be slowing down.
Why is this happening? … continue
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