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
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.
‘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?
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
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.
#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!
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
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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.
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NATO Sanctions and the Coming Global Diesel Fuel Disaster
By F. William Engdahl – New Eastern Outlook – 11.04.2022
Amid the ongoing global inflation crisis, NATO heads of state and mainstream media repeat a mantra that high energy prices are a direct result of Putin’s actions in Ukraine since end of February. The reality is that it is the western sanctions that are responsible. Those sanctions including cutting SWIFT interbank access for key Russian banks and some of the most severe sanctions ever imposed, are hardly having an impact on the military actions in Ukraine. What many overlook is the fact that they are increasingly impacting the economies of the West, especially the EU and USA. A closer look at the state of the global supply of diesel fuel is alarming. But Western sanctions planners at the US Treasury and the EU know fully well what they are doing. And it bodes ill for the world economy.
While most of us rarely think about diesel fuel as anything other than a pollutant, in fact it is essential to the entire world economy in a way few energy sources are. The director general of Fuels Europe, part of the European Petroleum Refiners Association, stated recently, “… there is a clear link between diesel and GDP, because almost everything that goes into and out of a factory goes using diesel.” … continue
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