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The Largest Experiment on Humans Ever Seen

By Rob Slane | The BlogMire | January 30, 2021

Which is the more reasonable approach a society might take in the outbreak of epidemic:

To quarantine the sick, and take reasonable precautions to stop those who are identified as vulnerable from contracting the illness.

To attempt to “control the virus” by preventing millions of healthy people from having contact with other healthy people.

To any society prior to 2020, it would have been obvious that the first approach is not only logical and proportionate, but the one least likely to have other unintended and highly destructive consequences. However, to my continued astonishment, many in our society not only believe that the answer is the second, but they somehow believe it to be based on established science.

Now I understand that many who support Lockdown will object to my characterisation of their position. They will say that it is deliberately misleading, since it talks about healthy people, and does not mention the sick. Such objections founder, however, on this undeniable fact: Lockdowns are, by their nature, an entirely untargeted and indiscriminate approach to a health issue, and the prohibiting by law of millions of healthy people from having contact with other healthy people is a feature, not a bug of a policy that was untried and untested before it was first implemented by the Chinese Communist Party in January last year, then copied by many Governments around the world thereafter.

For some reason, many Lockdownists seem to think that the onus is on Lockdown opponents to disprove their position. But as Dr Malcolm Kendrick points out in his excellent piece – Does Lockdown Work or Not, this is the opposite of how things are supposed to work:

“The starting point, for any scientific hypothesis, is for the proponents to disprove the null hypothesis. Demanding that those who believe something may not work, to prove that it doesn’t, is to turn the scientific method upside down. You can never prove a negative.”

Even so, he goes on to point out that most of the countries with the highest deaths per million are those which had fairly stringent Lockdowns, and therefore the data so far most certainly does not show that Lockdowns are effective, even on their own terms. Of course, Covidian Logic always has an answer to this, which is that these Lockdowns weren’t real Lockdowns. They were too little, too late, too soft, too lenient, too short, too small, too purple or something like that! But they can never be wrong. Low death rates show they work. High death rates show they would have worked if only people hadn’t been bad.

But the main point I wish to make about them is that they are not something that has been proposed, studied or trialled before, but are an entirely new practice, foisted upon the world for the first time in 2020. Which means what? It means that they are an experiment in real time. It means that our society (along with many others) has for the last year, and continues to be for the foreseeable future, subject to an experiment. In fact, the largest psychological, social and experiment ever conducted.

When I use this sort of language, it tends to meet the following mocking response: “So are you saying it’s all a mass conspiracy? Who’s the puppet-master then?” But this just misses the point. It does not need some Dark Lord sitting over all of it in order to be an experiment, although it has to be said that the likes of Professor Schwab do seem keen on putting themselves forward as pretty good candidates. No, it simply is by definition a psychological, social and economic experiment by the very nature of the fact that the mass quarantining and mass masking of millions of people, which cannot fail to change the psychology, society and economy, are untried, untested methods, based merely on hypothesis, and not on hard data. In fact, the data is still coming in from this enormous experiment, but as Dr Kendrick says, it doesn’t actually look good for the hypothesis:

“… I would conclude that the observational studies had – thus far – failed to disprove the null hypothesis. In fact, the evidence up to this point could suggest that lockdowns may actually increase the death rate. In short, I would look for another idea.”

But the psychological, social and economic experimentation are by no means the end of it. We have now moved on to the medical experimentation, by which I mean the giving of so-called “vaccines” to millions of people (so-called because they don’t actually stop people getting the virus, and it is not yet known whether they prevent transmission).

Incredibly, if you look at the Pfizer BioNTech SE Clinical Study Trial on the US National Library of Medicine Clinical Trials database, you will notice something very odd, which is that the Estimated Study Completion Date is on January 31st 2023. This is:

“the date on which the last participant in a clinical study was examined or received an intervention/treatment to collect final data for the primary outcome measures, secondary outcome measures, and adverse events.”

In other words, the medium to long-term side effects of this product cannot possibly be known, because the study is still ongoing. The long and short of it, as Professor Sucharit Bhakdi points out in this excellent interview (watch it soon before the YouTube Gatekeepers scrub it) is this: every single person now getting these jabs is effectively an unwitting test subject in the largest medical experiment ever carried out, having been asked to give their consent to receive a product injected into their bodies without being properly informed as to the status of the product.

Simply put, neither those administering these jabs nor those receiving them can have any idea of the potential medium to long-term consequences of these things, because the companies producing them have not completed the studies on them. And no, it is not the mark of an anti-vaxxer to be deeply concerned about this (I am not); it is just the mark of having one’s critical faculties in working order and of caring about what is being done to people – it’s called Loving Your Neighbour as Yourself.

In summary, both Lockdowns and the “vaccines” are essentially a mass experiment on humanity. The mid to long-term consequences of both are entirely unknown. Future generations will marvel at how the authorities were able to do this, but they will marvel even more at how millions of people acquiesced without much thought. None of this can possibly bode well. We need to humble ourselves and take a long hard look at what we are doing, or allowing to be done to us, as a matter of the utmost urgency.

January 31, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

The Corona Crisis. Is There Light at the End of the Tunnel?

Trapped in the Bowels of “Plato’s Cave”

By Prof. Ruel F. Pepa | Global Research | January 30, 2021

What matters most at this point in time is not the peddled stories of Covid-19’s life-threatening proliferation but rather the enormous effect of those stories in the lives of people whose fear has already evolved into paranoia. This whole situation has likewise led them in a unilateral direction without considering in-depth transcripts of research studies produced on the other side of the fence.

The same people have developed the tendency to ignore the fact that the researchers involved in these studies are competent and distinguished scientists whose expertise is recognized in prestigious academic institutions and professional organizations.

It doesn’t matter anymore how comprehensive and evidence-sustained these studies are. Nobody wants to listen because of the simple reason that people have already been caught in a loop of lies and fear and there is no way out. Well, it is not that there really is no way out; there is, but they are just incorrigibly blinded to the core that such blindness has drawn them away from the way out.

To be more accurate, it could actually be more of an issue of deafness rather than blindness because nobody wants to listen to how they could find the way out. That is the common aftermath of getting brainwashed–all the windows of possibilities are shut off and any attempt to show them the way to unlock such windows is already an exercise in futility.

People have been agonizing in the face of massive economic disempowerment, disenfranchisement and devastation. But no one, except a few, has the will, courage and initiative to stand up and confront the diabolical powers behind this tragic state of affairs. What rules the situation is nothing but paralysis as no one has the guts to break away from the profound deception that what has befallen the globe is an incontrovertible pandemic. No one is able to break away from the widespread lies that have engulfed humanity.

Behind all these is the extensive power of the post-industrial media used to manipulate consciousness and exploit the material conditions from which we have been programmed to draw the meaningfulness of life in the present dispensation.

This is the very “unpleasant place” where humanity is located and as long as we don’t reach that point of realization that this is a “shithole”, no more no less, no redemption is in sight. We are condemned and this condemnation is all for the benefit of the powers that be who are behind this infrastructure of the hell that they created on planet Earth.

Yes, hundreds of thousands are getting infected day in day out. But on what basis?

On the basis of PCR tests conducted all over the world.

Hundreds of thousands are getting infected according to the highly unreliable testing device and procedure.

And mainstream media are always waiting at the sideline to globally disseminate the news of how things are getting worse. In the process, all other diseases–particularly those that affect the respiratory system–have already been expunged; all is Covid-19. Even recorded deaths generally fall under the category of Covid-19.

As critical minds navigate the rough terrain of the infernal landscape created and sustained by the perpetrators behind the manufactured pandemic, we don’t only find people scared to the bones but among them are hardcore “dogmatic” believers who have gone extremely ballistic against all defiant viewpoints aimed to falsify the indoctrination they get from the propagandists of the pandemic lies.

Confronted by this reality, there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel.

Or is there really a tunnel? Perhaps we are all in the bowels of “Plato’s cave” and the most crucial problem now is the majority just refuse to take the initiative to find the way out.

*

Prof. Ruel F. Pepa is a Filipino philosopher based in Madrid, Spain. A retired academic (Associate Professor IV), he taught Philosophy and Social Sciences for more than fifteen years at Trinity University of Asia, an Anglican university in the Philippines.

January 30, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

‘DOCTORS, IT’S UP TO YOU’

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | January 29, 2021

American’s Frontline Doctor, Orthopedic & Spinal Surgeon Lee Merritt, MD has stumbled upon a story so shocking that it’s impact is felt going back decades. Did Doctor Merritt just expose one of modern medicine’s long held assumptions?

January 29, 2021 Posted by | Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | , , | Leave a comment

COVID: If there is no virus, why are people dying?

By Jon Rappoport | January 29, 2021

Since the beginning of this false pandemic, I’ve been offering compelling evidence that no one has proved SARS-CoV-2 exists.

Then people ask, “So why are all these people dying?”

I have explained that, many times, and in this article I’ll explain it again.

First of all, the whole notion that COVID-19 is one health condition is a lie. COVID IS NOT ONE THING.

This is both the hardest and simplest point to accept and understand.

Don’t reject the existence of the virus and then say, “So what is THE cause of people dying?” There is no ONE CAUSE. There is no one illness. There is no “it.”

By far, the biggest sources of illness we are dealing with are lung conditions: various kinds of pneumonia; flu and flu-like disease; TB; other unnamed lung/respiratory problems.

THESE ARE BEING RELABELED “COVID.” It’s a repackaging scheme. People are dying for those traditional reasons, and their deaths are being called “COVID.”

Thus, the old is artificially made new. It’s still old.

In this wide-ranging group of people who have traditional lung conditions, by far the largest component is the elderly and frail.

They are dying in nursing homes, in hospitals, in their houses and apartments. In addition to their lung problems, they have been suffering from a whole host of other conditions, for a long time, and they’ve been treated with toxic drugs.

They’re terrified that they might receive a diagnosis of “COVID,” and then they are given that diagnosis. THEN they’re isolated, cut off from friends and family. They give up and die.

This is forced premature death.

Some of these elderly and frail people are heavily sedated and put on breathing ventilators—which is a killing treatment. In a large New York study, it was discovered that patients over the age of 64, who were put on ventilators, died 97.2 % of the time. Staggering.

Some of these elderly and frail patients are now dying from reactions to the COVID vaccine—and of course, their deaths are listed as “COVID.”

Why else are people dying? In many cases, it’s a simple matter of bookkeeping. They die in hospitals for a variety of reasons, and staff write “COVID death” on their files. In the US, states receive federal money based on these statistics.

Let’s say that, in certain places around the world, there are clusters of deaths (being called COVID) that can’t be explained in the ways I’ve just described.

In those situations, you would have to examine EACH situation closely. For example, just prior to an outbreak in Northern Italy, was there a vaccination campaign? What was in the vaccine? A new breed of toxic substances?

You have to consider each cluster independently.

Getting the picture?

None of the “COVID deaths” anywhere in the world requires the existence of a new virus.

For instance, in Wuhan, where the whole business began, the first “COVID” cases of pneumonia occurred in a city whose air is HEAVILY polluted. In China, every year, roughly 300,000 people die from pneumonia. That means millions of cases. None of those deaths need to be explained by invoking a new virus.

Now, add to all this the fact that the PCR test for the virus is irreparably flawed and useless (for a variety of reasons I’ve explained in other articles). The test spits out false-positives like a fire hose. Thus, the high case numbers. If the authorities have to go to such extremes to paint a picture of a spreading viral epidemic…

There is no evidence that an actual germ is traveling around the world felling people. The “evidence” is invented.

The “pandemic” is invented.

The fraud is promoted.

During these fake epidemics (there have been many), someone will say: “But my neighbor’s son, who was very healthy, died suddenly. It must be the virus.”

No. People who appear to be healthy do die. Not just today, but going back in history as far as you want to go. No one has an explanation. They might have an explanation if they looked very closely, but they don’t look closely.

Favoring the “virus explanation” is a bias, a knee-jerk reaction, a response to propaganda.

If you think there must be other major reasons to explain “why all these people are dying,” keep in mind that “lung conditions” is a category that expands all over the globe. For instance, there are about one BILLION cases of flu-like illness EVERY YEAR on planet Earth.

Repackaging/relabeling just a small percentage of those cases alone would account for all official COVID death numbers.

What’s new about COVID is the STORY. That’s what’s being sold: a STORY about a virus.

January 29, 2021 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

A third French lockdown could drive fed-up French away from Macron towards rising Le Pen

Marine Le Pen at an end of summer annual address in Frejus, France September 15, 2019 © REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier
By Rachel Marsden | RT | January 28, 2021

A new poll shows that if the French presidential election was held today, populist National Rally leader Marine Le Pen would beat French President Emmanuel Macron – at least in the first round of voting.

While there’s no reason for Macron to start panicking, he’s nonetheless at a critical crossroads as he faces a decision over whether to lock down the country once again and risk triggering chaos.

Much is being made in the worldwide press of the new Harris Interactive poll indicating that Le Pen currently leads Macron by a score of 26-27 percent to 23-24 percent in a head-to-head, first-round presidential matchup.

It’s not exactly a shock poll, and closely mirrors the first round of the actual faceoff between Macron and Le Pen in 2017 that saw Macron lead Le Pen by only three percent. Macron still won massively in the second round, 66 percent to 34 percent, as voters who favored candidates in the first round all held their noses and voted for Macron in order to block Le Pen. And because of that phenomenon, conventional wisdom suggests that Le Pen simply can’t ever win a French presidential election.

Unless, of course, all hell breaks loose and voters decide that their priority is to get rid of those they perceive as destroying France, at any cost. It’s the same kind of sentiment that swept Donald Trump into the White House and has left permanent marks on American society in Trump’s wake via the radicalization of those who feel that the establishment spent his entire four-year term refusing to accept their electoral choice to the point that it wasn’t a stretch for them to believe that the same establishment would have rigged Trump’s reelection.

Macron finds himself staring down the possibility of what the French call a general “ras-le-bol” – that is, the French being totally fed up with him and his team, to the point of casting whatever vote would be required to replace him in the second round. That would still require a massive shift of 30 percent of Macron voters in the last election’s second round to choose Le Pen. But, given the increasingly dire economic and social crisis facing the country, anything seems possible.

A lot will depend on the next few weeks. Macron is under pressure from sanitary advisers who are encouraging him to adopt a preventative lockdown to avoid hospitals from being overwhelmed by Covid-19 patients. A third lockdown would mean that the economy would take yet another hit, while the French are growing increasingly fed up with nearly a year of government-imposed restrictions on their lives and livelihoods. Already under a 6pm curfew and with some businesses by now closed for months, Macron apparently feels that there’s a growing possibility of civil unrest. And he has good reason to fear, as 38 percent of French citizens are against a third national lockdown, according to an Elabe poll.

Macron can’t keep asking all of French society to fall on their swords for a virus that kills mainly the elderly and people with preexisting problems, all while watching the government roll out the vaccine at the pace of an escargot. The fact that hospitals still risk being overwhelmed a year into the pandemic is a sign of government ineptitude. They could have built hundreds more hospitals within the past year. Instead of offering any other solution, they prefer to just keep downloading their failures onto the backs of the citizens by asking them to lock themselves up at home and tolerate going broke and mad so the government can save face.

Into this breach storms Marine Le Pen, saying on FranceInfo this week: “Lockdown is the last solution when you’ve failed with all the others. Why did the government not take advantage of the last lockdown, which required a lot of sacrifices from the French, to test massively and get ahead of the epidemic?” She added: “We have the feeling that the government has nothing under control, that it spends its time chasing the virus. To be ahead of the game, certain systems need to be generalized, in particular the massive analysis of wastewater, or even sequencing.”

Le Pen echoes the frustration of the French with the government’s go-to solution to its own insufficiencies being repeated lockdowns. When the government handouts dry up – and they soon will – businesses that have been forced by the government to close for months under pandemic pretext will simply fail, and along with them so will the livelihoods of many voters.

And while Macron clearly has a sense that he’s needed to move further right to block a Le Pen rise by adopting measures to better control immigration and Islamist extremism, those measures will amount to pointless window-dressing if he allows the lockdown bulldozer to destroy the social and economic foundation of the country.

So Macron has a choice to make in the coming days. And it may very well decide his presidential fate.

Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist and host of an independently produced French-language program that airs on Sputnik France. Her website can be found at rachelmarsden.com

January 28, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

Universities Threaten To Cut Off Students’ Internet Access If They Fail To Comply With COVID Restrictions

By Steve Watson | Summit News | January 28, 2021

Universities in the US are threatening to completely cut off basic services, including internet access for students if they do not fully comply with all COVID restrictions on campus, according to a report.

Campus Reform notes that several universities are cracking down on students who are not following strict lockdown policies.

The University of Arizona has stated that students will only be able to use the internet if they have tested negative for coronavirus.

The University of Illinois has also threatened to restrict internet access, as well as the tools students need to study and submit assignments.

A January 20th email to students from the Chancellor Robert Jones warned that students who flout the mandates “face university disciplinary action, up to and including dismissal.”

“Please note that this semester, students who are out of compliance may also lose access to university Wi-Fi, Zoom, Compass and other technologies,” the email read.

Boston University also threatened to remove internet access and place blocks on ID cards, which are used for all university services, if students do not get coronavirus tests and report symptoms.

Baylor University in Waco, Texas also announced that internet access will be suspended for the entire semester if three test appointments are missed. If just two appointments are missed then students “will not be allowed to participate in University or student organization activities (All University SING, athletic events, student organization events, campus recreation sports, access to the Student Life Center for recreation, etc.).

Baylor student Charlie Letts told Campus Reform “I find the punishments put in place by Baylor to be a little extreme.”

“The wifi is something students pay for and they need in order to be successful as students,” Letts said.

He continued “I realize that Baylor is trying to enforce the testing protocol, but taking something away that hinders being a productive student maybe isn’t the best option. Especially when everyone has different views about Covid like how compliant to be with social distancing, mask wearing, etc.”

As we have previously reported, colleges are being used as testing grounds for technology to enforce draconian distancing, mask and lockdown measures:

Universities are also threatening to suspend students who dare to leave pre-determined ‘bubble’ areas around campuses, or visit non “approved businesses” without permission.

Other colleges have suggested that students who want to have sex with each other should ‘consider’ wearing face masks while doing so.

It is no longer a stretch to imagine this prison-like model of coercion being implemented in the wider world, indeed it is already being widely touted and in some instances put into place.

Fines for failing to comply with lockdown restrictions. Police given powers to enter your home or place of business to conduct COVID patrols. No internet for you if you fail to take and submit test results. No access to basic services unless you take the vaccine.

January 28, 2021 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

#TheGreatReopening – #SolutionsWatch

Corbett • 01/27/2021

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Yes, #TheGreatReopening is happening as we speak. No, it will not be televised (or even YouTubed). Find out the details as James highlights the resistance movements that are rising up around the world on this week’s edition of #SolutionsWatch.

Watch on Archive / BitChute / LBRY / Minds / YouTube or Download the mp4

SHOW NOTES

The Uprising Has Begun (New World Next Week)

30,000 Italian Restaurants Defy Lockdown Rules / Hugo talks #lockdown

100’s Of Polish Business’s To DEFY Lockdown / Hugo Talks #lockdown

“BURN IT DOWN!” – Anti-Lockdown RIOTS Lead To Covid Testing Facility Being TORCHED In Netherlands!

#TheGreatReopening

Ontario barbershop reopens despite provincial lockdown using loophole

Unmasked COVID protesters try, fail to place Canadian mayor under citizen’s arrest

What You Need to Know About Making a Citizen’s Arrest

Baraga County Manifesto

Taking a Stand: Sheriffs, Local Officials, and Rule of Law VS. Covid Dictators

Solutions: The Thick Red Line

Left, Khaps, Gender, Caste: The solidarities propping up the farmers’ protest

Freedom Airway – #SolutionsWatch

Fact check: PCR testing and viral genetic sequencing serve different purposes

I’m Blocked From Uploading to GooTube (and Other News)

The Future of Vaccines

January 27, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics, Solidarity and Activism, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

Scientific evidence on lockdowns suggests they don’t work. The places with the highest death rates all had them

By Malcolm Kendrick | RT | January 26, 2021

The history of medical interventions tells us that often the accepted way of doing things turns out to be dreadfully wrong. I fear this is going to be the case with this so-called Covid ‘cure’.

“Paradoxically, human beings, when compelled to act, learn to justify a chosen course with an assurance unwarranted by the evidence for the course chosen.” – Bernard Lown.

I have studied the history of medicine, and medical interventions, for many years. The most extreme disasters have always followed a fairly distinct pattern. A series of steps, if you like.

Step one: We have a serious disease that is killing lots of people.

Step two: It creates great fear, and the medical profession has nothing much in place to deal with it.

Step three: A charismatic leader emerges to decree that he (almost always a ‘he’ up to now) knows how to treat it/control it, etc. This is ‘the idea’.

Step four: The ‘idea’ is enthusiastically taken up around the world and becomes mainstream thinking.

Step five: The ‘idea’ becomes standard practice.

Step six: The ‘idea’ is taught to medics and becomes accepted truth, a fact.

Step seven: Anyone who goes against the ‘idea’ is ruthlessly attacked.

There is always, of course, the possibility that the ‘idea’ is the best thing to do. This happens from time to time. However, there seems to be little or no correlation between the enthusiasm – and speed – with which ideas are taken up, and the likelihood that they are correct.

The problem, as I came to recognise, lies between step two and step four. By which I mean that a charismatic figure convinces everyone that they have the answer, before there is any evidence to support it. The person may not be charismatic, rather simply someone who has the ability to grab attention and push the ‘idea’ forward. Such as the Chinese premier.

Another thing that leads to disaster, which is of perhaps even greater importance, is that the ‘idea’ must sound like the most obvious common sense. It should trigger a response along the lines of “Yes, of course, that sounds perfectly reasonable.” Once that’s been achieved, the ‘idea’ drops neatly into people’s minds, settles down, and grows roots, creating not a ripple of cognitive dissonance.

At which point it cements itself in, and becomes difficult – even painful – to remove.

To quote the film ‘Inception’: “What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient… highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it’s almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed – fully understood – that sticks; right in there somewhere.”

We love ideas; they make us who we are. We defend them, sometimes with our very lives.

“Why do people insist on defending their ideas and opinions with such ferocity, as if defending honour itself? What could be easier to change than an idea?” – JG Farrell.

So, yes, I have no illusions about the strength of ideas. They are so powerful, and so dangerous, that you must be very careful where you aim them. Because ideas also have a God-like power, which is that they are immortal.

The damage inflicted by medical ideas

You can kill a person who holds an idea. You can kill thousands of people who hold the same idea – but you cannot kill that idea. Unless you kill every single person who believes in it, then wipe it from the historical record, so that no-one can ever think it again. See ‘1984’.

I will give you a couple of examples of horribly damaging medical ideas. The first is the radical mastectomy. An idea first driven by William Halsted, a US surgeon from the end of the nineteenth century. He believed, as did almost everyone else at the time, that breast cancer spread locally – as did all cancers. Therefore, anything located anywhere near the cancer had to be cut away in case it had already been polluted.

With a radical mastectomy the entire breast, the other breast, muscles on the chest wall, lymph nodes, more muscles were cut out. Almost anything that could be removed without actually killing the women in the process.

The mutilated women were immensely grateful, and the surgeons proud of their expertise. They were doing a good thing, because the idea was considered to be inarguably correct. Questioning it was to be met with the response like, ‘Do you want these women to die – you heartless swine?’

Except that it wasn’t correct. Breast cancer does not spread locally. At least, when it does, it does so very slowly. The spread that causes problems, and kills women, is not local. Cancer cells get into the lymphatic system, and the bloodstream, and spread widely around the body, very early on. Often, long before the primary cancer can be detected.

Those who questioned the radical mastectomy, were attacked. Geoffrey Keynes, brother of John Maynard, tried less radical surgery in the 1920s. It did not go down well:

“Halsted’s followers in America ridiculed this approach, and came up with the name ‘lumpectomy’ to call the local surgery. In their minds, the surgeon was simply removing ‘just’ a lump, and this did not make much sense. They were aligning themselves with the paradigm of Radical Mastectomy. In fact, some of the surgeons even went further to come up with ‘superradical’ and ‘ultraradical’ procedures that were morbidly disfiguring procedures where the breast, underlying muscles, axillary nodes, the chest wall, and occasionally the ribs, part of the sternum, the clavicle and the lymph nodes inside the chest were removed. The idea of ‘more was better’ became prevalent.”

More is better… this is another of the deadly repeating themes of ‘the idea’. The idea can never be wrong, it is just that people are not doing it with sufficient vigour. If women are still dying from metastatic breast cancer, even after radical mastectomies (and they were), the answer could not possibly be that the procedure doesn’t work. The answer is that we are not being radical enough: “Hack away more, and then more.”

‘I was greeted with hands stretched out in a Nazi salute’

Another big medical idea is that of bed rest following a heart attack. It was thought, at one time, that all heart attacks were fatal. James Herrick, another US doctor, described the first non-fatal heart attack in 1912, then suggested that following such an attack, strict bed rest was important. This would take pressure off the heart and allow it a chance to heal. Again, this sounds perfectly reasonable. As described by Dr Bernard Lown, a professor of cardiology and the developer of the defibrillator:

“To a medical novice like me, the justification for enforced bed rest was persuasive. It was based on a sacrosanct therapeutic principle, the need to rest a diseased body part, be it a fractured limb or a tuberculosis-affected lung. Unlike a broken bone, which could be immobilized in a cast, or a lung lobe, which could be collapsed by inflating the chest cavity with air, the heart could not be cradled into quietude. The only approximation for a diseased heart was to diminish its workload. It was long known that during recumbency the heart rate slows and blood pressure drops, both indices of less oxygen usage and therefore of decreased cardiac work. Heart rest was therefore equated with bed rest.”

And so it became standard practice. It was simply what you did:

“Patients were confined to strict bed rest for four to six weeks. Sitting in a chair was prohibited. They were not allowed to turn from side to side without assistance. During the first week, they were fed. Moving their bowels and urinating required a bedpan. For the constipated, which included nearly every patient, precariously balancing on a bedpan was agonizing as well as embarrassing.

“Because world events might provoke unease, some physicians prohibited their patients from listening to the radio or reading a newspaper. Visits by family members were limited. Since recumbency provoked much restiveness and anxiety, patients required heavy sedation, which contributed to a pervasive sense of hopelessness and depression. Around one in three patients died.”

Bed rest started as a relatively mild thing. However, as it is with almost all things, it became increasingly ‘radical’. Lown, along with his mentor Dr Samuel Levine, tried to change this. He became involved in trying to get patients up out of bed to sit in a chair:

“Little did I realize that violating firmly held traditions can raise a tsunami of opposition. The idea of moving critically ill patients into a chair was regarded as off‑the‑wall. Initially the house staff refused to cooperate and strenuously resisted getting patients out of bed. They accused me of planning to commit crimes not unlike those of the heinous Nazi experimentations in concentration camps. Arriving on the medical ward one morning I was greeted by interns and residents lined up with hands stretched out in a Nazi salute and a ‘Heil Hitler!’ shouted in unison.”

Step six: Anyone who goes against the ‘idea’ is ruthlessly attacked.

No evidence, no problem

Then, among all the other problems with ‘the idea’, between steps two and three, is one that I have not yet mentioned. It is that no study is ever done to find out whether or not the idea works. It is just conceived to be so obviously beneficial, such common sense, that there would be no point in wasting time and resources trying to prove that it worked.

No-one ever did a study to find out if the radical mastectomy improved survival. No-one ever did a study to prove that bed rest saved lives. They were both introduced on the back of absolutely nothing. In time, eventually, the folly of both was finally recognised. It took 70 years for radical mastectomy, 50 for bed rest.

Which takes us to lockdowns. The most expensive, invasive, and potentially destructive medical intervention ever attempted by humanity. Was there any evidence from anywhere, before we embarked upon them, that lockdowns would work? No, there was none. But we have the six steps on full display here.

Step one: We have a serious disease that is killing lots of people – check.

Step two: It creates great fear, and the medical profession has nothing in place to deal with it – check.

Step three: A charismatic leader emerges to decree that he (almost always a ‘he’ up to now) knows how to treat it/control it etc. This is the ‘idea’ – check.

Step four: The ‘idea’ is enthusiastically taken up around the world and becomes ‘mainstream thinking’ – check.

Step five: The ‘idea’ becomes standard practice – check.

Step six: The ‘idea’ is taught to medics and becomes accepted truth, a fact – check.

Step seven: Anyone who goes against the ‘idea’ is ruthlessly attacked – check.

Does it work? Have lockdowns worked? You can pick and choose countries to support the case that it does and dismiss any evidence you don’t much like. Unfortunately, once you introduce a medical intervention that affects everyone, everywhere, you have lost the possibility of carrying out a controlled experiment of any sort.

Despite the lack of any randomised evidence, most people are absolutely convinced that lockdowns work to control the spread of Covid-19. They point to various countries, e.g. New Zealand, Norway, Australia and Taiwan, to prove their case. They always have a ready explanation as to why countries that underwent lockdown still have high death rates and vice-versa.

The ‘idea’ has become the truth. Its proponents now demand that those who doubt the efficacy of lockdowns prove that they don’t work. It is not the job of those suggesting lockdowns don’t work to prove that they don’t, it is the job of those promoting them to prove that they do.

The starting point for any scientific hypothesis is for the proponents to disprove the null hypothesis. Demanding that those who believe something may not work prove that it doesn’t is to turn the scientific method upside down. You can never prove a negative.

The null hypothesis, by the way, is that there is no difference between two things. Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs) in medicine are designed to prove, statistically, that there is an actual difference between doing A and B. This is how science is done, how research is done.

We must look carefully at the death rates

Unfortunately, it is not possible to do a controlled trial with Covid-19. The possibility of doing any randomised study was lost very early on. Which means that we are instead forced to rely on observational studies. We can look at country X, that did Y, and see how it compares with country Z that did not do Y.

Or we can look at two countries that did Y, to see how they compare. Or two countries that did not do Y. With Covid, of course, no two countries did exactly the same thing. Not even the four ‘countries’ within the UK. So any observations become more difficult to rely on due to this ‘confounding variable’.

In some UK countries, six people could meet up, while in others it was eight, or two households, or only one household etc. In some, restaurants were open, in others they were shut – at varying times. From a scientific perspective, it’s a mess.

Anyway, to simplify things, let’s look at the 10 countries around the world with the highest death rate from Covid. That is, deaths per million population (I have left out countries with a population of less than one million, such as Monaco, or Liechtenstein, because a few deaths here or there can distort the death rate considerably)

What did they do differently, and what did they do the same? These countries all locked down, relaxed them, then brought in tighter lockdowns at various times. Looking only at first lockdown dates:

Belgium first locked down on March 18, 2020.

Slovenia first locked down on March 20, 2020.

Czechia first locked down on March 16, 2020.

The UK first locked down March 23, 2020.

Bosnia-Herzegovina first locked down March 16, 2020.

Italy first locked down March 9, 2020.

North Macedonia first locked down March 18, 2020.

The USA is highly federal and different states took different approaches – seven states did not issue lockdown orders: Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming. In those seven states, the death rate from Covid averaged at 1,280 per million, versus 1,254 as the US average.

In comparison, New Jersey first locked down on March 21, 2020, and its current death rate is 2,310 per million. New York locked down on March 12 – its current death rate is 2,130 per million. These states have the highest Covid related deaths in the US.

Bulgaria first locked down on March 13, 2020.

Hungary first locked down on March 28, 2020.

All countries locked down, Italy first, Hungary last. As you can see, the date of first lockdown is unrelated to the death rate. The other stand-out facts are that these are all countries with majority Caucasian populations. They are all in the northern hemisphere.

People will say, ah, but what about variables, such as population density, age distribution, number of tests done… etc, etc (there are dozens to choose from)? In the end, you can only rely on two things – did a country lock down and what is the death rate from Covid? These are the inescapable facts, everything else can be twisted to suit any argument.

If I were thinking of running a clinical trial where the hypothesis was that a lockdown was the best way to prevent deaths from Covid, then I would start by looking at observational data such as this.

I would find that the 10 countries in the world with the highest death rates all locked down.

I would look at the US, where the death rates in states that locked down, and those that did not, were almost the same rate (or vastly higher in the cases of New Jersey and New York), and I would conclude that the observational studies had – thus far – failed to disprove the null hypothesis. In fact, the evidence up to this point could suggest that lockdowns may actually increase the death rate.

In short, I would look for another idea.

Malcolm Kendrick, doctor and author who works as a GP in the National Health Service in England. His blog can be read here and his book, ‘Doctoring Data – How to Sort Out Medical Advice from Medical Nonsense,’ is available here.

January 26, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

The Question of Masks

By Jenin Younes | AIER | January 26, 2021

I envy the reader who can reach the end of Alex Berenson’s Unreported Truths About Covid-19 and Lockdowns: Masks, without tearing her hair out in frustration at the absurdity of the world today, which apparently is not so different from the one that Galileo inhabited four centuries ago.

Berenson makes an airtight case (no pun intended) that there is no evidence whatsoever that surgical and cloth masks work to control coronavirus spread, and a substantial amount that they do not. Nevertheless, as anyone who has tried to discuss the topic in a blue state knows, the subject has been so politicized that to make this contention amounts to heresy.

This is the third booklet in a series, Unreported Truths About Covid-19 and Lockdowns. The first two focus upon the deleterious effects of lockdowns and overestimation of the virus’s dangerousness. Berenson, who used to work as a reporter at the New York Times before he became a full-time novelist, has been known from the very beginning as a coronavirus “contrarian,” and has since attained unofficial status as king of the lockdown skeptics. As his Twitter profile famously depicts him smiling sardonically with a mask under his chin, it is about time he addressed the subject.

Initially, Berenson documents the so-called experts’ notorious about-face on masks this past March. Having said for weeks that face coverings do not stop transmission of the virus, Anthony Fauci, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Surgeon General, and others, did a 180 virtually overnight. The common explanation for this sudden change is that the first message was disingenuous, and given only to prevent a mask shortage among health care professionals. Berenson eschews this interpretation, arguing that the initial message was correct, but these people and institutions succumbed to political pressure.

What is the proof that this was political? Although Berenson does not explicitly state as much, it is worth noting that former President Trump immediately defied the idea of mask-wearing, as did many of his supporters, which I believe led to the extreme reaction in the opposite direction among Democrats and liberals.

Berenson points out that immediately, when mere weeks and months before Americans had been told not to wear masks, newspapers and magazines began publishing “insufferably arrogant” pieces portraying those who resisted mask-wearing as cretins, narcissists, and even sociopaths. This plays into the idea, held by many in this country, that those who are not on their side politically are fundamentally different, morally inferior, or perhaps even evil. Thus, to suggest that people who resist masks are narcissists or sociopaths fits squarely into the narrative that the political other is less-than.

But the real evidence lies in the fact that, contrary to the dogma that has taken root in American society, especially in Democratic circles, there is simply no scientific substantiation for the claim that masks, as they are worn in everyday life, protect either the wearer or those who encounter her. In Berenson’s words, “The evidence that face coverings do any good turns out to be even more porous than the masks themselves.” In my opinion, were the subject not so politically fraught, it is unlikely that the scientific evidence would be ignored.

Berenson describes the studies that evaluate whether surgical and cloth masks protect the wearer, and his verdict will, at this point, be unsurprising. Theoretical evidence establishes that surgical and cloth masks “offer next to no protection” because the virus typically travels on particles so small that in order to provide protection, the material must be fine enough to catch nearly all aerosols and droplets.

Apart from N95 respirators, which also are more effective because they are fitted to the individual’s face, masks are not made from such material. Not only are N95s expensive, but worn properly, they are “suffocating, uncomfortable, and difficult to tolerate for long durations.” Thus, as a practical matter, if non-medical professionals are going to wear face-coverings for an extended time period, they will be standard cloth or surgical masks.

The yet stronger proof, from randomized controlled studies (RCTs) — the “gold standard” in science – is overwhelming that these masks are not effective. As Berenson explains, research from Hong Kong and Vietnam found no evidence that surgical masks reduce influenza transmission, and evidence that cloth masks increase rates of infection, respectively.

The first large RCT, conducted in Denmark specifically to assess the utility of masks against SARS-CoV-2, found no difference in rates of infection between those who wore and those who did not wear masks (I have previously analyzed the distortion of the study’s results, especially by the New York Times and other center-left publications).

As for the proposition that masks may not protect the wearer but do protect those around her, again, “masks have almost no chance of catching most of the particles we exhale” because of the particles’ size, as explicated in a paper published in the Lancet. (From a logical standpoint, I have never found the concept that masks can protect those around the wearer though they do not protect her to be persuasive: either the mask functions as a barrier or it does not, although I am not a scientist and perhaps am missing something).

Berenson notes that the author “did not go so far as to call masks useless – a near impossibility in the current environment – but he was lukewarm at best on their value to protect other people even in the most obvious case, when they are worn by symptomatic cases in hospitals.”

Similarly, on June 5, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a paper stating that “widespread use of masks by health people in the community setting is not yet supported by high quality or direct scientific evidence and there are other potential benefits and harms to consider.”

Again, given the political climate, the WHO “chok[ed] out” a tepid endorsement of mask usage: “Governments should encourage the general public to wear masks in specific situations and settings.”

Berenson compellingly dispels the myth that observational studies prove masks’ efficacy, such as the much cited salon in Missouri where two hairdressers who had coronavirus symptoms wore masks and did not infect 139 clients. As Berenson notes, there are countless other explanations for this result. For example, maybe the salon had good ventilation, or maybe the hairdressers were not very infectious. Despite the lack of scientific and intellectual rigor underlying it, this anecdote served as the rationale for many jurisdictions’ mask mandates.  Moreover, the remaining observational data points staunchly in the opposite direction: worldwide, rising cases are not correlated with mask usage.

As anyone who has become embroiled in the mask debate knows well, the next question is always, why not wear one, since we don’t know for sure and there’s a chance they help? As Berenson argues, government directives should be supported by some evidence.

It has not been disproven that five-minute headstands prevent coronavirus spread, but most of us would see a problem with government requiring us to stand on our heads for five minutes a day just in case. Put otherwise, allowing the government to make rules without adequate evidence they are effective creates substantial danger that it will issue arbitrary directives to give the appearance of doing something.

Furthermore, as Berenson explains, masks are not harmless. He details two 2013 decisions from Canadian arbiters, addressing a challenge to hospital rules requiring nurses to wear masks if they had not been vaccinated against influenza. Both arbiters found in the nurses’ favor, and determined there was limited or no evidence that demonstrated the “utility of masks in reducing transmission” and substantial harms, including discomfort and skin irritation.

Although Berenson does not discuss this, widespread, long-term mask usage may cause significant psychological damage, especially to children and babies and even more so to those with disabilities such as autism. Even the New York Times acknowledged that masks likely impede children’s cognitive development, despite reaching the irrational conclusion that such harm is inevitable.

One of Berenson’s most critical points is that there is now substantial evidence that the coronavirus is very rarely, if ever, spread by asymptomatic individuals. The belief that asymptomatic transmission was one of the primary forces driving coronavirus spread propelled lockdowns and universal mask requirements in the spring.

If only symptomatic people spread the virus, then there is no justification whatsoever for quarantining and masking healthy populations: all that societies must do is ask people exhibiting symptoms to stay home.

Several large, recent studies have established that asymptomatic transmission of the coronavirus is exceedingly uncommon, if it occurs at all; the WHO has also recognized this fact. Of course, these studies have been entirely ignored by the media. Those who have staked their personal and professional reputations on the efficacy and necessity of lockdowns and mask mandates cannot now acknowledge having made such a grave, crucial error.

Berenson ends by theorizing that mask mandates appear to reflect “an effort by governments to find out what restrictions on their civil liberties people will accept on the thinnest possible evidence . . . Today, we must wear masks. Tomorrow we’ll need negative Covid tests to travel between countries. Or vaccines to go to work.”

As I have written in the past, I agree resoundingly with Berenson’s conclusion, although I tend to blame governmental incompetence and refusal to concede error as well as more nefarious motives.

Of course, the media is at fault too, with publications and television channels such as the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC promoting a blindly pro-lockdown, pro-mask ideology, at the same time discounting the evidence pouring in from all corners of the earth that lockdowns do not work as long- or medium-term solutions while they are destroying millions of lives, and masks are ineffective. Even now, with a vaccine available, the New York Times is publishing articles arguing that the supposedly deadlier new strain of the virus means that countries must lock down harder and longer; Australia expects to keep its borders closed through the end of 2021, if not longer; and the United Kingdom has indicated it will remain in lockdown until at least July.

Berenson sees the writing on the wall. Until a substantial portion of us stand up and make clear that we will not tolerate being stripped of life, liberty, property, and dignity, our governments will continue to inflict these repressive measures.

Jenin Younes is a graduate of Cornell University and New York University School of Law. Jenin currently works as an appellate public defender in New York City.

January 26, 2021 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

“I do everything my TV tells me to do” – That’s why we’re hurtling towards the Great Reset

THE DAILY EXPOSE • JANUARY 18, 2021

If the current pandemic of dictatorial tyranny sweeping across the world has taught us anything, it is that the majority of humanity has been so well trained to obey authority that it is now incapable of free thought and afraid to ask questions. Never before have we seen such docile conformance to words echoing from the speakers of a television screen as when the Prime Minister of the UK announced in March 2020 that he had “one simple instruction” for the British people… ”You must stay at home”. But Mr Johnson spoke through the ‘telescreen’, and the nation listened.

Within an instant the UK economy came to a halt, without question, all because a man, in a suit, on the TV said it should. Hundreds of thousands of businesses closed their doors to customers and staff. Schools and nurseries closed their doors to children, which in turn lead to parents being unable to work because they could not find care for their children. Unless of course the man, in a suit on the TV told them that there job was deemed essential, in which case it was fine to send their children to school and go out to work.

“Three weeks” was what the man, in a suit, on the TV said the country needed “to flatten the curve,”. But three weeks turned into five weeks, which turned into eight weeks, which turned into fourteen weeks. I wonder how many would have complied for so long with an instruction given to them by a man, in a suit, on the TV if it had not been for another man, in a suit, on the TV promising to subsidize up to eighty percent of their wages for sitting at home and not working?

Sounds great doesn’t it, sitting at home and still being paid. The people so eager to accept this scheme most likely didn’t realise that A) it was not the man, in a suit, on the TV paying these wages, it was in fact the British taxpayer. B) They would have to pay this money back in the future via higher taxes, and C) that’s only if they still had a job to pay those taxes as the only purpose of this scheme was to delay everyone’s unemployment to ensure that they complied. It was never about making sure you were going to be okay and have a job to go back to, it was about making sure you were complicit in the destruction of the job market as we know it, in order to bring in the new age of AI.

We bet the authorities could not believe their luck at how easy it was to get the vast majority of every man and woman in the land to obey an instruction that was emitted via the telescreen, and boy have they made the most of it ever since.

On the 3rd April 2020, Professor Jonathan Van Tam, deputy chief medical officer for England, told the British public via the ‘telescreen’ that he had spoke with a colleague in Hong Kong who had carried out an evidence review for the World Health Organisation and stated they “were of the same mind that there is no evidence that the general wearing of face masks by the public affects the spread of a disease in our society, what matters right now is social distancing. In terms of the hard evidence, we do not recommend face masks for general wearing by the public.”

Yet fast forward four months and the Government enforced the wearing of face coverings in all indoor public settings. However we did not instantly see a swarm of face nappy clad folk outdoors for over a week, and why was that? Because the man, in a suit, on the TV said this would not come into force for another week. That week came and went and on the day of enforcement there was not a smile to be seen. But what does that say about the majority of the British public and their acquiescence to authority. Not wearing a face covering because they genuinely thought it would work in the “fight against the virus”, but wearing it because a man, in a suit, on the TV said they would be subject to a £200 fine if they refused to do so. We know this to be true because they would have worn the face covering from the moment it was announced they were required otherwise.

Fast forward another few months and we were told by Professor Jonathan Van Tam, again via the ‘telescreen’ that he did not think there would “come a moment when we can have a big party and throw our masks and hand sanitiser and say ‘that’s it, it’s behind us’ like the end of the war? No I don’t.” Insisting that the wearing of face masks “may persist for many years and that may be a good thing”.

The contractions on the wearing of face masks alone should have been enough for the British public to wake up and question why they were partaking in the destruction of the world as they knew it, unknowingly bringing in a “new normal” and a chance for the globalists to fast forward their “great reset” agenda. But disappointingly it has yet to be the case.

Instead we are now stuck in a cycle of stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives, repeat. Whenever a man, in a suit, on the TV appears on the British public’s ‘telescreen’s’ they stand to attention and hang on every word that echoes from the speaker. We don’t hold much hope that this will change anytime soon, instead we are stuck firmly on the road to the ‘Great Reset’ and we’re hurtling towards it at a few hundred miles per hour.

They do everything their TV tells them to do…but do you?

January 26, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

WHO (finally) admits PCR test is potentially flawed

Second PCR memo in two months casts even more doubt on the “gold standard” of Covid diagnosis

OffGuardian | January 25, 2021

The World Health Organisation has released a memorandum which potentially completely undermines all the “pandemic” case numbers from all over the world.

On the 13th of January, they put out this memo, stating that a single positive PCR test should not be used for diagnosing Sars-Cov-2 infection.

To quote them directly:

Where test results do not correspond with the clinical presentation, a new specimen should be taken and retested using the same or different NAT technology.

Translation: If you get a positive test for someone with no symptoms, re-test them. Or rather: any PCR positive test is potentially a false positive.

It goes on to say:

Most PCR assays are indicated as an aid for diagnosis, therefore, health care providers must consider any result in combination with timing of sampling, specimen type, assay specifics, clinical observations, patient history, confirmed status of any contacts, and epidemiological information.

Note it says “an aid for diagnosis” and NOT “a diagnostic test”.

In careful bureaucratic language, they are essentially admitting that PCR tests were not meant to be used diagnostically, and cannot be relied upon to do so accurately. Just as Dr Kary Mullis, the inventor of the PCR test, said himself many times.

Understand this. The PCR test is virtually the ENTIRE foundation of the Covid narrative. Without it you have nothing but healthy people and the normal winter flulike illnesses. Every ‘case’ you read about is only a case because of a PCR test.

We and others have been saying since at least June that the PCR test is scientifically meaningless. And now, by degrees the WHO is admitting it too.

And if the PCR test is meaningless. So is the “pandemic”. A lie built in the deliberate misuse of a tool not fit for purpose.

January 25, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

All Hail the Reopening!

By Jeffrey A. Tucker | AIER | January 25, 2021

What a glorious thing the reopening is! After nearly a year of darkening times, the light has begun to dawn, at least in the US.

Given how incredibly political this pandemic has been from the beginning, many people smell a rat. Is it really the case that the reopening of the American economy, particularly in blue states, is so perfectly timed? Do the science and politics really line up so well?

These are questions for another day. And for the record, my own opinion is that the loosening of restrictions is timed well with the relaxing of public disease fear, from whatever source, political or through exhaustion or through a shift in the media narrative. In any case, it doesn’t matter for now. What matters right now is that the astonishing destructiveness of lockdowns might be coming to an end.

For those of us inveighing against lockdowns for a full year, it’s truly been a remarkable week. Restrictions are being loosened or are going away. We are finally getting some truth about the carnage. And we are even starting to see some elected officials being honest with us.

Let’s start in the most locked down state on the mainland: Massachusetts. Governor Charles Baker, whose pandemic management has wrecked so many businesses in his state, has decided it’s time to open up restaurants and businesses.

More remarkably, Massachusetts’s chief epidemiologist admits that the lockdowns didn’t achieve their goal. Shira Dorn of Tufts said: “Businesses and restaurants have not been shown to be a significant source of spread of infection, and it’s not clear that the additional measures that were instituted in November and December actually helped.”

So sorry we ruined your holidays and lives.

The egregious limits on gatherings will persist for a few more weeks, but the tone of the argument here has shifted. It is the most significant change in state policy in a very long time. Perhaps people can begin soon to get their human rights back?

The same is happening in other states.

Washington, D.C. will resume indoor dining.

Maryland’s governor has decided that the state needs to reopen schools now and no later than March 1.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan says Michigan restaurants can reopen for indoor dining on February 1. Her health adviser decided to resign. Let us hope it is the beginning of many.

Chicago’s mayor is now demanding an immediate opening of restaurants and bars. Chicago is also threatening teachers unions that they must return to work.

New York Governor Cuomo has dramatically reversed his rhetorical course and demanded a reopening of the city.

Governor Gavin Newsom, incredibly, has lifted all stay-at-home orders across the state and is permitting dining to open up. Many restaurants have defied orders for months now, and good for them. This new announcement shows that their defiance had an influence.

Montana’s new governor has lifted Covid restrictions.

National Public Radio has decided to announce that the virus has peaked.

The WHO is insisting that the PCR cycle threshold must change. If nations adjust, it should make a big difference in the case trend.

And perhaps in the most honest statement uttered by any elected official in twelve months, Joseph Biden said the following: “There’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months.” He didn’t need to qualify that statement. He could have stopped after pandemic.

CNN has removed the death tracker from its main page, while the New York Times has reported a 33% decline in new cases in the past two weeks. Plus, the Times, which arguably made the most profound contribution to the public panic over the virus, is finally reporting on the terrible carnage.

In an incredibly heartbreaking article, the Times chronicles the unspeakable deaths of despair from young children denied schooling over the past year. It’s an absolutely shocking article, one that should echo unto the ages, given what happened this last year. It’s worth a read.

As for the astonishingly anti-scientific blather dished out by the media over the last year, even that is starting to change. The Washington Post has published a helpful introduction to immunological basics, as written by JHU Professor Marty Makary:

Having the infection activates both antibodies as well as memory B- and T-cells, which teach your immune system to recognize the same virus in the future to swiftly eradicate it.

Natural immunity after covid-19 infection appears to last for at least the one year in which the virus has been circulating at large. Extrapolating from research on the SARS and MERS coronaviruses, it could be much longer. In one study of 176 people infected with SARS, immunity lasted for an average of two years. Another long-term analysis of health-care workers previously infected with SARS found antibodies up to 12 years later. Protective antibodies for the MERS coronavirus have similarly been documented to last for at least three years. And while the 1918 pandemic was caused by an influenza virus, the immune systems of those infected were able to make antibodies to the virus nearly nine decades later, a 2008 Nature study found.

Even mild infections appear to elicit a persistent and functional immune response. One recent European study found that people who had mild or asymptomatic covid-19 mounted a “robust T-cell immunity” afterward. A separate French study affirmed this, noting that some people who lived with a confirmed covid-infected person developed T-cell immunity even when they did not test positive for covid.

The article goes even further to openly admit what many of us have noticed since March: “Many medical experts have been dismissive of natural immunity due to prior infection, but there is overwhelming data showing that covid-19 reinfections are rare, and when they do occur, the infection is often mild.”

These basic facts fundamentally change the rationale for locking down. We’ve evolved with viruses without locking down. Starting in the late 19th century, once we got smarter about viruses, we realized that protection of the vulnerable and exposure among the non-vulnerable, in the framework of a functioning society, was the best approach to dealing with pandemics. We pursued that policy for a full century until last year. The unprecedented experiment with lockdowns will end up causing more death than if we had maintained a functioning society while treating disease as a medical and not a political problem.

We are also getting some truth telling on track-and-trace, courtesy of Holman Jenkins in the Wall Street Journal :

Top of the list is magic solution X, a national test and trace program. I won’t mince words. A 9-year-old could see the math didn’t work. Covid spreads more easily than the flu. An overwhelming share of cases are asymptomatic or indistinguishable from ailments that millions of Americans suffer every day. In a country as big, mobile and open as the U.S., there was zero chance of catching and isolating enough spreaders to matter.

Many experts said so at the time, but quietly. Anthony Fauci eventually said so, but quietly. All implicitly knew not to get between the media and its imperative that every big misfortune be played as a failure of inadequate government.

Even when the testing data shouted the truth, the press couldn’t hear it. Our testing misses 70% to 90% of Covid cases and yet 91% of the people being tested for Covid tested negative and were suffering from something else. We were never going to make a dent in the epidemic this way. It was a distraction.

Finally, we have actual experiments in openness right here in the US. Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and South Dakota have all been open since the spring of last year, with life continuing on more or less as normal. The results have been no worse and most often better than what we see in lockdown states. It’s almost as if the virus doesn’t care about your political solutions.

One final data point. I watched the AFC Championship football game last night. Gone were the dreary ads of 2020 that all began “In these challenging times.” Instead we were treated to pictures of happy parties, friends socializing, people living life normally and happily. Even the masks are going away. True the stadium was only half full due to preposterous regulations but it felt much more normal.

Are our governments getting wise? Doubtful but many are feeling pressure to start recognizing the rights of human beings again. The new variant (viruses naturally mutate and the NYT is trying to bring calm) might frighten them again. Biden has already imposed new international travel restrictions. We aren’t out of the woods yet.

Will they admit error and apologize? That will take longer if it happens at all. At this point, right now, other things matter more. The priority must be to emancipate us from bad science and destructive policy so we can put our lives back together again.

January 25, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

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