What is left to say?
By Dr Malcolm Kendrick | December 30, 2020
I have not written much about COVID19 recently. What can be said? In my opinion the world has simply gone bonkers. The best description can be found in Dante’s Inferno, written many hundreds of years ago.
In it, Dante describes the outcasts, who took no side in the rebellion of angels. They live in the vestibule. Not in heaven, not in hell, forever unclassified. They reside on the shores of the Acheron. Naked and futile, they race around through a hellish mist in eternal pursuit of an elusive, wavering banner, symbolic of their pursuit of ever-shifting self-interest.
I find this description of the desperate pursuit of an elusive wavering banner rings rather true. This, it seems, is pretty much the place we have arrived at. Which banner have you decided to follow?
The ‘COVID19 s the most terrible infection ever, and we must do everything in our power to stop it, whatever the cost’ banner.
Or the ‘What on earth are we doing? This is no worse than a bad flu, and we are destroying the world economy, stripping away basic human rights and killing more people than we are saving’ banner.
There may be others.
Between these two, main, completely incompatible positions, lies the truth. It is in pretty poor shape. It has been crushed, and bent out of shape, smashed, and left as a broken heap in the corner. I search where I can, to find the fragments, in an attempt to bring together a picture that makes some kind of sense.
But what to believe? Who to believe?
I feel somewhat like Rene Descartes. In order to find the ineluctable truth he scraped everything away until he was left with ‘Cogito, ergo sum’. ‘I think, therefore I am.’
I have stripped away at the accuracy of PCR COVID19 testing. I found myself left with nothing I could make any sense of. I hacked down to establish the way that COVID19 deaths are recorded. All I found were assumptions and difficulties.
Did someone die with COVID19, of COVID19 – or did it have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with COVID19? Who knows? I certainly don’t, and I wrote some of the death certificates myself.
Have we overestimated deaths, or underestimated deaths? I do not know … and so it goes on.
So, what do I know? I know that COVID19 exists – or I am as certain of this as I can be. Was it a natural mutation from a bat, or was it created in a laboratory? Well, I suppose it doesn’t really matter. It’s here, and there is no chance that any Government, anywhere, would ever admit responsibility for creating the damned thing. So, we will never know. If you asked me to bet, I would say it was created in a lab, then escaped by accident.
Is it deadlier than influenza? Well, it is certainly deadlier than some strains of influenza. Indeed, most strains. However, Spanish flu was estimated to have killed fifty million, when the world’s population was about a fifth of what it is now. So, COVID19 is definitely less deadly than that one. About as deadly as the influenzas of 1957 and 1967. Probably.
Will it mutate into something worse? Who knows.
Will the current vaccines work on mutated strains? Who knows.
Can it be transmitted by asymptomatic carriers? Who knows.
How effective are the current vaccines going to be? Who knows.
What are we left with?
At the beginning, I kept relatively quiet on how deadly COVID19 would prove to be. Because I didn’t know. The figures raged up and down. The infection fatality rate become a battle scene, with warriors lined up on either side to defend their positions.
I even got attacked by factcheckers, the self-appointed know-it-alls who are, it seems, capable of judging on all matters of scientific dispute. Truly, the Gods have descended to live amongst us. Those who can determine what is true, and what is not. No need for any further clinical trials, or any more scientific studies of any sort, ever. We just need to ask the Fact Checkers for the answer, to any given question.
Anyway, it appeared that tens of thousands died in some countries, almost none in others. What I was waiting to see, was the impact on the one outcome that you cannot alter, or fudge. The outcome that is overall mortality i.e. the chances of dying, of anything.
I did this because, when it comes to recording deaths from a specific illness, things can go in and out of fashion. A couple of years ago I looked at deaths from sepsis. At one time this was a condition of far lower priority. Doctors didn’t routinely search for it, or routinely record it, on death certificates.
Sepsis is an infection that gets into the blood, toxins are released, and people die. Everyone knew it happened. Or at least I hope they did.
Then, all of a sudden, there was a gigantic push to look for it more diligently, diagnose it more, treat it better. I think this was generally a good thing. Sepsis is eminently treatable, if you think to look for it, and lives can be saved. We now have initiatives like ‘Sepsis six’ and warnings that pop up on computers. ‘Have you considered sepsis,’ and suchlike. I love it … not. Because I do not love being told how to think, and do my job, by a computer algorithm programmed with ‘zero risk’ as their touchstone. But, hey ho.
In 2013, in the UK, a report was published by the health ombudsman ‘Time to Act – severe sepsis, rapid diagnosis and treatment saves lives.’ As the report stated.
‘Sepsis is a more common reason for hospital admission than heart attack – and has a higher mortality.’ The UK Sepsis Trust 1
That last statement is somewhat disingenuous, as many people with sepsis are very elderly, often with multiple morbidities, and suchlike. They were probably going to die, shortly, from something else.
Anyway. With all this activity, with all this increased sepsis recognition and treatment, you would expect the rate of deaths from sepsis to fall. It did not. The rate has gone up, by around 30% since 2013. Does this mean there is far more sepsis going about? Or, that it is just more often written on death certificates? I suggest the latter. I use this example, simply to make it clear that even the cause of death written on a death certificate is far from rock solid evidence.
With COVID19, this is a massive problem. In the UK, and several other countries if you have had a COVID19 positive test (which may, or may not, be accurate) and you die within twenty-eight days of that positive test, you will be recorded as a COVID19 death. I do not know much for sure about COVID19, but I do know that is just complete nonsense.
There are so many cases where – even if the COVID19 test was accurate – COVID19 would have had nothing whatsoever to do with the death. Another thing known, or at least we probably know, is that the vast majority of people who die had many other things wrong with them.
In the US, the Centre of Disease Control (CDC) found that ninety-four per cent of people who died of COVID19 ‘related deaths’ had other significant diseases (co-morbidities) 2. This ninety-four per-cent figures would only be the co-morbidities that were known about – who knows what lurked beneath? Especially as people stopped doing post-mortems (i.e., autopsies in the US).
So yes, they had COVID19 (or at least they had a positive test – which may not be the same thing), but they were often very old, and already severely ill. Using an extreme example, someone with terminal cancer who is a week from death, catches COVID19 in hospital, and dies. What killed them? The statistics say COVID19. I say, bollocks.
When I started in medicine, ‘bronchopneumonia’ (a bad chest infection) used to be known as the ‘old man’s friend.’ For those who were very old, and frail, often demented, lying in care homes, often incontinent, a chest infection represented a reasonably painless way to die.
Very often we would not actively treat it, instead we allowed for a peaceful death. Indeed, this still happens. Less so now, as someone, somewhere, often a relative from a country far, far, away – who has not visited for years – is far more likely to sue you.
Did they really die of bronchopneumonia? You could argue yes, you could argue no. Yes, it was the thing that finally pushed them over the edge. No, they were already slowly dying as their body gave out. In the end, what does anyone actually die of? My Scottish grannie, who lived to one hundred and two, used to say ‘they die frae want of breath.’ Entirely accurate, but, alas, also completely useless.
So, what you need to do, is look beyond what is written on death certificates. You need to look at what is happening to the overall mortality. Whilst you can argue endlessly, pointlessly, about specific causes of death. What you cannot argue about is whether or not someone is alive, or dead. Even I usually get this one right. No pulse, no breathing, no reaction of the pupils to light, no response to pain… and suchlike. Yup, dead. Now… what they die of? Um… let me think.
Thus, I have tended to look to EuroMOMO. The European Mortality Monitoring project. As they say, of themselves:
‘The overall objective of the original European Mortality Monitoring Project was to design a routine public health mortality monitoring system aimed at detecting and measuring, on a real-time basis, excess number of deaths related to influenza and other possible public health threats across participating European Countries.
Mortality is a basic indicator of health. Therefore, understanding its epidemiology is fundamental for effective public health planning and action.
Mortality monitoring becomes pivotal during influenza or other pandemics for several reasons. In a severe pandemic, mortality monitoring can be a robust way to monitor the pandemics progression and its public health impact when other systems are failing, due to an overburdened health care sector. Decision makers will require data on the pandemics impact and on deaths by age and geographical area in various stages of the pandemic. Mortality monitoring can provide such estimates, which will be important to guide and prioritize health service response and decision-making, i.e. use of antivirals and vaccines.’ 3
Here are the data that you can therefore, pretty much, fully rely on. It is where I go to see what is really happening across Europe. Not all of Europe, as some countries do not participate. However, there are more than enough, to get a good picture. It encompasses key countries such as Spain, Italy, the UK (split into four separate countries), Sweden and suchlike.
Here is the graph of overall mortality for all ages, in all countries. The graph starts at the beginning of 2017 and carries on to almost the end of 2020.
As you can see, in each winter there is an increase in deaths. In 2020, nothing much happened at the start of the year, then we had – what must have been – the COVID19 spike. The tall pointy bit around week 15.
It started in late March and was pretty much finished by mid-May. Now, we are in winter, and the usual winter spike appears. It seems to be around the same size as winter 2017/18. It also seems to have passed the peak and is now falling. But it could jump up again. [The figures in the most recent weeks can always be a bit inaccurate, as it can take some time for all the data to arrive]
Two things stand out. First, there was an obvious ‘COVID19 spike’. Second, what we are seeing at present does not differ greatly from previous years. The normal winter spike in deaths.
If we split this down into individual countries, this reasonably clear pattern falls apart.
Here are the figures from England
Unlike the first graph, the scale on the left is not absolute numbers. It is a thing called the Z-score. Which means standard deviation from the mean. Sorry, maths. If the Z-score goes above five, this means something significant is happening. The red, upper, dotted line is Z > 5. As you can see, despite the howls of anguish from England about COVID19 overwhelming the country, we are really not seeing much at all.
What of Sweden, that pariah country? They did not fully lock-down, the irresponsible fools (all they did was follow WHO guidance – by the way), and we are now told they are suffering terribly, they should have enforced far more rigid lockdown, their ‘experiment’ failed etc. etc. COVID19 shall have its vengeance. Or to quote Arnie – I’ll be back.
As you can see, nothing much happening in Sweden either.
Then, if you look further, there are anomalies all over the place. Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, and did exactly the same things as the rest of the UK with regard to lockdown, masks etc. At least it did in the earlier part of the year. However, it shows a completely different pattern to England. Or, to be fully accurate, it shows no pattern at all. No waves, and nobody drowning.
What of Slovenia?
As you can see absolutely nothing happened earlier in the year in Slovenia. Now, it has the biggest spike of all – apart from, maybe, Switzerland. Earlier in the year it was held up as a great example of how brilliantly effective masks were. Now… you don’t hear so much about masks. Maybe masks only work in months beginning with M. [Maybe, whisper it, they don’t work at all].
So, what have I learned from euroMOMO? First that it appears to have made absolutely no difference if a country locked down hard, and early, or did not. Everyone points at Norway and Finland as examples of great and early government action, and how wonderful everything would have been if we had done the same.
Well, look up at Northern Ireland. Then look at Finland
Spot the difference. There is none.
Of course, much of the most heated debate surrounded what happened during the so-called first wave. Who dealt with it well, or badly. Now, everyone in Europe is doing much the same things. Lockdown, restrictions on travel, restrictions on meeting other people, everyone wearing masks, etc. etc. Yet some countries are having a new wave, and others are not.
There is a special prize for anyone who can match up the severity of restrictions in various countries, to the Z-score. I say this, because no correlation exists.
So, again, what have I learned about COVID19? I learned that all Governments are floundering about, all claiming to have exerted some sort of control over this disease and ignoring all evidence to the contrary. In truth, they have achieved nothing. As restrictions and lockdowns have become more severe, in many cases the number of infections has simply risen and risen, completely unaffected by anything that has been done.
The official solution is, of course, more restrictions. ‘We just haven’t restricted people enough!’ Sigh. When something doesn’t work, the answer is not to keep doing it with even greater fervour. The real answer is to stop doing it and try something else instead.
I have also learned that, in most countries, COVID19 appears to be seasonal. It went away – everywhere – in the summer. It came back in the autumn/winter, as various viruses do.
On its return it has been, generally, far less deadly. Much as you would expect. The most vulnerable died on first exposure, and far fewer people had any resistance to it, at all. Now, a number of people do have some immunity, and many of the vulnerable are already dead.
Which means that, in this so-called second wave, COVID19 is no greater an issue than a moderately bad flu season.
If I were to recommend actions. I would recommend that we stop testing – unless someone is admitted to hospital and is seriously ill. Mass testing is simply causing mass panic and achieves absolutely nothing. At great cost. We should also just get on with our lives as before. We should just vaccinate those at greatest risk of dying, the elderly and vulnerable, and put this rather embarrassing episode of mad banner waving behind us.
Hopefully, in time, we will learn something. Which is that we should not, ever, run about panicking, following the madly waved banners… ever again. However, I suspect that we will. This pandemic is going to be a model for all mass panicking stupidity in the future. Because to do otherwise, would be to admit that we made a pig’s ear of it this time. Far too many powerful reputations at stake to allow that.
1: https://www.ombudsman.org.uk/sites/default/files/Time_to_act_report.pdf
Even While It Was Happening, It Wasn’t Happening
Was there really such a year as 2020?
By Michael Lesher | OffGuardian | December 31, 2020
You know how it goes: if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, et cetera…?
Suppose an entire society goes to smithereens, while our media elites stubbornly refuse to notice. What then?
Suppose the reporters and the pundits and the “experts” ignore the coup that has trampled our basic freedoms since last March.
Suppose they all assure us that defending democracy is “anti-science,” and preach to us that civil rights (except for Black Lives Matter protests) are nothing but a “death cult.”
Suppose, after an “election” conducted mainly in the press, on the basis of a torrent of worthless propaganda, a notorious corporate whore is about to be installed in the White House as carnival-barker-in-chief for scantily-tested vaccines – drugs being peddled by a gang of profiteers who wouldn’t even make the stuff until they were promised complete legal immunity for whatever they do to their victims.
Well? Does the murder of our liberties even make a sound?
Was there really such a year as 2020?
In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 2005, the playwright Harold Pinter had this to say about every atrocity concealed by the Western press:
It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest.
And so much never happened this past year!
Four-fifths of the United States of America suspended democracy and declared the Bill of Rights obsolete. The United Kingdom unleashed a new sort of “police” – faces masked, truncheons in their paws – to maul peaceful protesters for the crime of breathing. In parts of Australia, it became a criminal offense to tell other people the time and place of a political demonstration. Germany outlawed political protest.
But none of that happened. It wasn’t reported in the mainstream press. It was of no interest.
In just over nine months, economies in once-wealthy countries were reduced to ruin. Social media reeled under systematic thought-policing. Following a wave of “executive orders” that shuttered small businesses across the United States, an unprecedented number of Americans began to steal food to survive. In the U.K., UNICEF is distributing food to hungry children for the first time in more than 70 years. Around the world, people in need still can’t get medical treatment. Cultural institutions have been shattered. The performing arts have been banned. Singing was deemed a public health risk.
It didn’t matter.
This year, for the first time in history, more than 40 governors in the U.S. awarded themselves quasi-dictatorial powers – on the strength of laws hastily designed less than 20 years ago for massive bioterrorism attacks, pressed into service to counter a medical “emergency” that was never an emergency. By the end of 2020, most of the American population was still living under dictatorial rule.
That was of no interest.
Huge numbers of people, in Europe as in America, were placed (without a court order) under virtual house arrest. This was called a protective measure – and it was reported as such, though the practice violated civil-rights rulings going back nearly a century. Tens of millions of people saw their livelihoods snatched from them by officials they never even had the opportunity to confront.
Yes, a handful of states that did not imprison their populations or wreck their economies claimed to have medical results as good as – if not better than – neighboring states that did both. Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson went so far as to assert all this on May 5 in the editorial pages of the Washington Post, a main purveyor of coronavirus propaganda. But those claims were never investigated in the mainstream press. They didn’t matter.
Now the mega-corporations that supported the “lockdowns” are sucking the life out of the small-business economy that was once the mainstay of the free world. For restaurants, the picture is so bleak that chef and author Edward Lee calls it “the end of the independent restaurant era,” and warns that…
we will lose the culture of all of our American cities…. [W]e will become a nation of corporate chain restaurants that will look and taste the same in every city.
Culture is under attack from other directions as well. London’s theatres, heirs to one of the proudest dramatic traditions in the world, are closed for the first time in modern history – and whether they will ever open again depends upon the whims of politicians. Musicians and other artists have been devastated by “social distancing” rules that never made any sense and have never been obeyed by the powerful.
That doesn’t matter, either.
In respectable society, it can’t even be talked about.
The U.K. Labour Party’s Angela Rayner – last seen threatening to expel “thousands and thousands” of members who don’t think their country should be governed by Israel – is now grousing that…
[o]ur children should not have to rely on humanitarian charities that are used to operating in war zones and in response to natural disasters.
You’d never guess that the self-righteous Rayner actually supported the economy-wrecking madness that caused this deepening poverty – in fact, back in May, she wanted even stricter police-state tactics than those the government imposed.
Governments lied to us throughout the year about the nature of the medical threat we faced, about what they planned to do about it, and about what it was going to cost us.
Formerly-esteemed scientists tried to tell us that the hype made no sense. “We’re falling into a trap of sensationalism,” Stanford University’s John Ioannidis said as early as March 23. “We have gone into a complete panic state.” The interview containing those comments was soon banned by Youtube, even though Ioannidis is universally recognized as “one of the world’s foremost epidemiologists.”
Prominent scientists who signed the Great Barrington Declaration suffered a similar fate, smeared as fringe elements promoting “craven lunacy” and a “brutal” attempt to “let people die” – in other words, as Nazis.
But that wasn’t name-calling. And it wasn’t censorship, either – even though Reddit’s moderators promptly banned the Declaration. Such facts mustn’t be mentioned. Breathe the word “censorship” and you’re a right-wing fanatic.
Speaking of fanaticism, though: an 18-year-old American college student is behind bars at this moment in the Cayman Islands. Her crime? Watching – by herself – as her boyfriend competed in his last jet-skiing race of the year, after she had received not one but two negative tests for COVID19. It seems other people attending the race snitched on the woman, resulting in a four-month prison sentence for cutting short a fourteen-day “quarantine” – one that was issued without a court order, of course.
Once upon a time, we would have called those snitches “collaborators,” if not “heartless fanatics.” Now their actions are praised by newspapers and prosecutors alike: after all, they were protecting the public “health” by putting a young woman in prison.
New vaccines for COVID19 are another way of protecting the public health, of course – they have nothing whatsoever to do with the billions of dollars pharmaceuticals companies are likely to make from selling them.
Never mind that the Food and Drug Administration had to short-circuit its own rules in order to authorize their use. Never mind that the manufacturers had to be promised that “for the next four years, [they] cannot be sued for money damages in court over injuries related to the administration or use” of their new vaccines – a blanket legal immunity that is “very rare,” according to a prominent labor attorney. (Oh, and you can’t sue the FDA either.)
None of that matters. None of that is of interest.
That’s why CNN’s “political analyst,” Joe Lockhart, could recently insist that the government ought to prevent Tucker Carlson from stating inconvenient facts about those vaccines on his Fox News program. The First Amendment doesn’t matter any more, you see. Joe Lockhart says so. He’s a representative of a press outlet calling for government censorship of another press outlet – for expressing an opinion he doesn’t agree with.
And? Has anyone in the “free press” complained about Lockhart’s breathtaking treachery – attacking the Constitution’s press protections while handing over a colleague to the Thought Police? Not as far as I know.
Because, you see, none of it happened.
Just like the rest of the coronavirus coup. Even while it was happening, it wasn’t happening.
It didn’t matter that all the recent hysteria about COVID19 “cases” was based on the results of a manifestly unreliable testing procedure. It didn’t matter that inexpensive and effective treatment for the disease may already be available, with no serious side effects, from drugs like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. When the highly-credentialed Dr. Pierre Kory tried to interest Congress in the use of these medications – from which no one stands to benefit except those suffering the worst cases of COVID19 – he was the target of an astonishing smear by the ranking Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Committee.
That was typical of official reaction, though: after a group of physicians announced the promising results of the same drugs on December 4…
no major U.S. media outlets reported [their] pleas for help from the federal government to act… Nor did any representative from the CDC, the NIH or the World Health organization contact them,
… according to one of the rare alternative news sources that bothered to report the story.
So the unproven vaccines will roll out everywhere; Big Pharma will get even richer; poor people will be allowed to die. As manufactured claims of rising “case” numbers stoke renewed hysteria, government after government will subject its citizens to further mass house arrests, even though the experience of Belarus – which did not impose “lockdowns” – strongly suggests that the mass-incarceration strategy does more harm than good.
To those in power, all this is of no interest. It didn’t matter. It never happened.
And to the rest of us?
That will depend, I suppose, on the steadfastness of people who care more about the truth than about conformity.
Those for whom words still have meaning, and facts still matter.
Those who are not ashamed to touch, nor afraid to stand up.
Those who will not swallow lies nor ingest a fraud.
Those to whom the word “freedom” isn’t an insult.
Those are the ones who have truly survived the ghastly year 2020 – and on whom our future depends.
The criminal WHO blows its own cover: fake PCR test
By Jon Rappoport | December 31, 2020
In early 2020, the WHO accepted a PCR test for “SARS-CoV-2” that was designed without having possession of the virus. Yet the test is meant to detect… the missing virus. This is evidence of deep criminal intent. [1]
But as of December 14, 2020, WHO has made a correction [2]. Thereby blowing its own cover. Why?
Two reasons. Huge numbers of people have caught on to the PCR test scam. And by their correction, WHO paves the way for “declining COVID case numbers”—thereby making it appear the new vaccine is a roaring success. I predicted this development. [3] [4]
A brief review. The PCR test (a complete fraud for several reasons) is run in “cycles.” Each cycle is a giant magnification of a tiny portion of the swab sample taken from the patient.
As I’ve reported, even Tony Fauci readily asserts that if the PCR is run at 35 cycles or higher, it’s meaningless. [5] [6]
Every positive result—indicating “infection with the virus”—occurring at 35 cycles or higher is meaningless.
BUT, as I’ve also pointed out, public health agencies recommend running the PCR test at up to 40 cycles. Therefore, labs comply.
Therefore, millions upon millions of PCR tests results, over the last nine months, which indicate “infection,” are a vast lie.
Therefore, the COVID case numbers are a vast lie, and the lockdowns, which are based on those numbers, are absurd, insane, criminal, and predatory.
NOW, the WHO is walking back their stance on how the PCR should be run, for the reasons I mentioned above.
The WHO document is titled, “WHO Information Notice for IVD Users/Nucleic acid testing (NAT) technologies that use real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) for detection of SARS-CoV-2.” [2]
Here are the money quotes. The language is mealy-mouthed, intentionally confusing, cautious, and sterile. Nevertheless, we can see the intent to lower the number of test cycles.
“Users of RT-PCR reagents should read the IFU [Information for Use] carefully to determine if manual adjustment of the PCR positivity threshold is necessary to account for any background noise which may lead to a specimen with a high cycle threshold (Ct) value result being interpreted as a positive result.”
Translation: Using too many test cycles—aka “high cycle threshold (Ct) value”—has resulted in patients being told they’re infected, which is a lie.
“In some cases, the IFU will state that the cut-off should be manually adjusted to ensure that specimens with high Ct values are not incorrectly assigned SARS-CoV-2 detected due to background noise.”
Translation: Running the test with a high number of cycles yields “background noise”—aka a false positive result. The patient is told he’s infected but he’s not.
“The design principle of RT-PCR means that for patients with high levels of circulating virus (viral load), relatively few cycles will be needed to detect virus and so the Ct value will be low. Conversely, when specimens return a high Ct value, it means that many cycles were required to detect virus. In some circumstances, the distinction between background noise and actual presence of the target virus is difficult to ascertain.”
Translation: When the test is run with a high number of cycles, we can’t tell the difference between “irrelevant” and “meaningful.”
A frank and honest translation of the WHO message: “We’re changing the way we’re doing PCR tests. We were running them with a high number of cycles and getting millions of false positives, and those numbers were deployed to justify the lockdowns—but NOW we’re moving to a lower number of cycles. This change, all on its own, will result in fewer positive results, fewer case numbers, making the vaccine look VERY GOOD.”
The WHO is still crazy, still criminal, but not entirely stupid. They know what they’re doing and why.
SOURCES:
[1] https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2020/12/25/you-thought-the-pcr-test-detects-an-actual-virus-wrong/
[2] https://www.who.int/news/item/14-12-2020-who-information-notice-for-ivd-users
[4] https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2020/11/13/how-theyll-fake-the-success-of-the-covid-vaccine/
[6] https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2020/12/08/florida-forces-labs-to-report-number-of-pcr-test-cycles/
Five Times this Year the New York Times Accidentally Told the Truth
By Jeffrey A. Tucker | American Institute for Economic Research | December 29, 2020
The paper of record in 2020 shifted dramatically to the most illiberal stance possible on the virus, pushing for full lockdowns, and ignoring or burying any information that might contradict the case for this unprecedented experiment in social and economic control. This article highlights the exceptions.
The first shocking sign of the placing of a persistent bias was a podcast with reporter Donald McNeil on February 27. This was the beginning. It was grossly irresponsible. He asserted that half the American public would get this disease and that it would have a case fatality rate of 2.5%, or 25 times as deadly as flu, hence 4.8 million dead people. No consideration of demographic gradients in risk and no knowledge of viral basics such as the tradeoff between severity and prevalence. Even if you leave aside the fog of fatality misclassification, he exaggerated the risk by 12 times but still spoke with a sense of certainty designed to create panic.
Host Michael Barbaro himself seemed shocked: “I thought you were here to bring calm, Donald.”
“I’m trying to bring a sense that if things don’t change, a lot of us might die,” he said. “If you have 300 relatively close friends and acquaintances, six of them would die.”
The primal fear of disease is thus thrown into massive overdrive, following 100 years in which public health tried to bring rationality to the topic.
That podcast was followed by an op-ed by the same journalist/pundit: “To Take On the Coronavirus, Go Medieval on It.” It seemed incredible that such a responsible outlet would advocate the overthrow of a century of public-health wisdom and even immunological basics, but that’s what they did. At this point, the New York Times was fully committed to the narrative that we must dismantle society to save it. And there it has been for nearly a year of unbearably biased coverage.
Even within the blatant and aggressive pro-lockdown bias, and consistent with the way the New York Times does its work, the paper has not been entirely barren of truth about Covid and lockdowns. Below I list five times that the news section of the paper, however inadvertently and however buried deep within the paper, actually told the truth.
1. Your Coronavirus Test Is Positive. Maybe It Shouldn’t Be. Byline: Apoorva Mandavilli
I’m still stunned that the paper did a study that confirmed what people have suspected, namely that a high cycle threshold used on PCR testing was creating the appearance of a pandemic that might have long receded. The testing mania was generating wild illusions of millions of “asymptomatic” carriers and spreaders. How severe was the problem? Read this and weep:
In three sets of testing data that include cycle thresholds, compiled by officials in Massachusetts, New York and Nevada, up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus, a review by The Times found.
On Thursday, the United States recorded 45,604 new coronavirus cases, according to a database maintained by The Times. If the rates of contagiousness in Massachusetts and New York were to apply nationwide, then perhaps only 4,500 of those people may actually need to isolate and submit to contact tracing.
The implications of this revelation are incredible. A major reason for the ongoing lockdowns are due to the pouring in of positive case numbers from massive testing. If 90% of these positive tests are false, we have a major problem. The whole basis of the panic disappears. All credit to the Times for running the article but why no follow up and why no change in its editorial stance?
2. Scientists See Signs of Lasting Immunity to Covid-19, Even After Mild Infections. Byline By Katherine J. Wu
Gone missing this year in public commentary has been much at all about naturally acquired immunities from the virus, even though the immune system deserves credit for why human kind has lasted this long even in the presence of pathogens. That the Times ran this piece was another exception in otherwise exceptionally bad coverage. It said in part:
Scientists who have been monitoring immune responses to the virus are now starting to see encouraging signs of strong, lasting immunity, even in people who developed only mild symptoms of Covid-19, a flurry of new studies suggests. Disease-fighting antibodies, as well as immune cells called B cells and T cells that are capable of recognizing the virus, appear to persist months after infections have resolved — an encouraging echo of the body’s enduring response to other viruses….
Researchers have yet to find unambiguous evidence that coronavirus reinfections are occurring, especially within the few months that the virus has been rippling through the human population. The prospect of immune memory “helps to explain that,” Dr. Pepper said.
3. Why You Shouldn’t Worry About Studies Showing Waning Coronavirus Antibodies. Byline Apoorva Mandavilli
Reinforcing the solid point above:
Data from monkeys suggests that even low levels of antibodies can prevent serious illness from the virus, if not a re-infection. Even if circulating antibody levels are undetectable, the body retains the memory of the pathogen. If it crosses paths with the virus again, balloon-like cells that live in the bone marrow can mass-produce antibodies within hours.
4. Schoolchildren Seem Unlikely to Fuel Coronavirus Surges, Scientists Say. Byline: Apoorva Mandavilli
It’s still a shock that so many schools closed their doors this year, partly from disease panic but also from compliance with orders from public health officials. Nothing like this has happened, and the kids have been brutalized as a result, not to mention the families who found themselves unable to cope at home. For millions of students, a whole year of schooling is gone. And they have been taught to treat their fellow human beings as nothing more than disease vectors. So it was amazing to read this story in the Times:
So far, schools do not seem to be stoking community transmission of the coronavirus, according to data emerging from random testing in the United States and Britain. Elementary schools especially seem to seed remarkably few infections.
5. One-Third of All U.S. Coronavirus Deaths Are Nursing Home Residents or Workers. Byline Karen Yourish, K.K. Rebecca Lai, Danielle Ivory and Mitch Smith
Another strangely missing part of mainstream coverage has been honesty about the risk gradient in the population. It is admitted even by the World Health Organization that the case fatality rate for Covid-19 from people under the age of 70 is 0.05%. The serious danger is for people with low life expectancy and broken immune systems. Knowing that, as we have since February, we should have expected the need for special protection for nursing homes. It was incredibly obvious. Instead of doing that, some governors shoved Covid patients into nursing homes. Astonishing. In any case, the above article (and this one too) was one of the few times this year that the Times actually spelled out the many thousands times risk to the aged and sick as versus the young and healthy.
Notable Opinion columns
The op-ed page of the paper mirrored the news coverage, with only a handful of exceptions. Those are noted below.
Is Our Fight Against Coronavirus Worse Than the Disease? Op-ed by David Katz
I am deeply concerned that the social, economic and public health consequences of this near total meltdown of normal life — schools and businesses closed, gatherings banned — will be long lasting and calamitous, possibly graver than the direct toll of the virus itself. The stock market will bounce back in time, but many businesses never will. The unemployment, impoverishment and despair likely to result will be public health scourges of the first order.
Worse, I fear our efforts will do little to contain the virus, because we have a resource-constrained, fragmented, perennially underfunded public health system. Distributing such limited resources so widely, so shallowly and so haphazardly is a formula for failure. How certain are you of the best ways to protect your most vulnerable loved ones? How readily can you get tested?
Quarantine May Negatively Affect Kids’ Immune Systems. Op-ed by Donna L. Farber and Thomas Connors
During the Covid-19 pandemic, the world is unwittingly conducting what amounts to the largest immunological experiment in history on our own children. We have been keeping children inside, relentlessly sanitizing their living spaces and their hands and largely isolating them. In doing so, we have prevented large numbers of them from becoming infected or transmitting the virus. But in the course of social distancing to mitigate the spread, we may also be unintentionally inhibiting the proper development of children’s immune systems.
What Has Lockdown Done to Us?. Op-ed by By Drew Holden
Our mental health suffers, too. The psychological effects of loneliness are a health risk comparable with risk obesity or smoking. Anxiety and depression have spiked since lockdown orders went into effect. The weeks immediately following them saw nearly an 18 percent jump in overdose deaths and, as of last month, more than 40 states had reported increases. One in four young adults age 18 to 25 reported seriously considering suicide within the 30-day window of a recent study. Experts fear that suicides may increase; for young Americans, these concerns are even more acute. Calls to domestic violence hotlines have soared. America’s elderly are dying from the isolation that was meant to keep them safe.
Emergency Hospitals Dismantled Despite Claim Hospitalisations Worse Than ‘First Wave’
The hospitals have been almost completely empty for the duration of the health crisis
By Steve Watson | Summit News | December 29, 2020
A report has confirmed that emergency hospitals in the UK are being dismantled and removed, despite government claims that hospitalisations from coronavirus have hit a level HIGHER than they were during the first wave of the pandemic back in March and April.
The reports in the Daily Mail and the London Telegraph note that the facilities, known as ‘Nightingale hospitals’, set up at huge conference centres and other warehouse spaces are “being quietly taken apart” because there are not enough staff to run them.
Despite the seven facilities throughout the UK costing as much as £220million to set up and equip, the hospitals have been almost completely empty for the duration of the health crisis.
Indeed, just 57 Covid-19 patients were admitted to NHS Nightingale London between April and the start of May, according to Department of Health records. The facility was then put back into ‘standby’, and left empty.
The report states that the ExCeL Centre, which hosts the London facility, has confirmed that 90 per cent of the hospital has already been removed, including stripping 4000 beds and hundreds of additional of ventilators.
Videos of the facilities being dismantled first surfaced in the Summer:
The government has repeatedly pushed the narrative that the lockdowns have been necessary to ‘protect the NHS’, yet now it is taking apart the hospitals it says were set up to alleviate the strain.
It has been claimed that a third of major hospital trusts in England are now experiencing more Covid-19 patients than at the peak of the first wave. In the East and South West, more than half of all hospitals say they have more patients now than earlier in the year.
National Health Service data claims that over 20,000 beds are now occupied by COVID patients, up from 17,700 recorded last week, and surpassing the almost 19,000 recorded in mid April.
Throughout the crisis, we have been told that hospitals are on the brink of being overwhelmed, yet reports have continued to emerge suggesting that hospitals are up to four times emptier than usual.
Despite the claims that there are not enough NHS staff to man the facilities, there has been a resurgence of nurses posting dancing tik-tok videos:
France Accused of ‘Hysteria Over COVID Variant’ After Nearly 15,000 Truckers Tested Negative
21st Century Wire | December 29, 2020
Before Christmas, sensational reports of a new COVID “variant” in the UK prompted European neighbors France, Netherlands and Belgium – to close their international borders for fear of a dangerous new viral wave. As a result, ferries were unable to leave the Port of Dover until Christmas morning, with some 6,000 hauliers remaining in Kent over the subsequent days, and with many spending Christmas Day and Boxing Day parked, waiting to cross the English Channel. What was all the fuss about? Is there really a new “mutant strain” which UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock claims is still ravaging through the British Isles?
As part of this bio-security theatre, military personnel were then deployed to Kent, including a massive cohort of 1100 British troops, 30 French firefighters, and 60 Polish soldiers – all to supposedly to provide aid and services to the drivers, and to “speed up testing to 600 per hour” carried out at nearby Manston airfield.
As it turns out, all of this was completely unnecessary.
UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps tweeted: “Update on Kent lorry situation: 15,526 #Coronavirus tests now carried out. Just 36 positive results, which are being verified (0.23%). Manston now empty and lorries should no longer head there please.”
What the Government and Mainstream Media will not tell the public is that if the highly dubious PCR Testing was used, then that tiny reported number of 36 ‘positive cases’ could have easily fallen within the margin of false positive errors – meaning all 15,000 plus drivers may have been ‘COVID free’ – an incredible but very telling data point – all but proving that the virus is likely to be severely over-hyped right now in the UK.
As 21WIRE already reported last week, Hancock’s claims of a new ‘dangerous and more transmissible’ virus were totally unfounded and based on sloppy science from the UK government’s NERVTAG science advisory committee.
Because of the near nonexistent COVID cases within this giant trucker sample, critics are now railing against France and other European countries for panicking and closing their borders based on irrational fear of an non-existent “mutant strain” of COVID-19. But the UK authorities have no business pointing the finger at anyone….
MSN reported on Dec 25th…
The French authorities slapped restrictions on hauliers crossing the Channel following the [alleged] emergence of the VUi202012/01 coronavirus mutation which is believed to spread faster than other strains.
The UK and France agreed to a testing regime to allow trucks to start flowing again on the Dover-Calais link.
The Standard has been told that out of the first 1,500 tests none came back positive.
A Whitehall source criticised the “over hasty” action by the French authorities, adding: “All of this trouble – there have been 1,500 tests – no positives.”
The EU’s Transport Commissioner Adina VÄlean criticised Emmanuel Macron’s government over the weekend’s freight ban.
She tweeted: “I am pleased that at this moment, we have trucks slowly crossing the Channel, and I want to thank UK authorities that they started testing the drivers at a capacity of 300 tests per hour.
“I deplore that France went against our recommendations and brought us back to the situation we were in in March when the supply chains were interrupted.”
Mind you, that’s more than a bit rich for anyone in the UK Government-Media Complex to accuse France of over-reacting – when it was Matt Hancock and the fawning mainstream press who for weeks shamelessly pumped-out incessant fear-based claims of an allege COVID “mutant strain” – absent of any actual evidence to back-up their wild assertions. Lesson learned?
SEE MORE:
UK ‘Variant Fears’ Are Over-Hyped Says Leading US Microbiologist
THE PCR DECEPTION
Short Documentary About the Test Used for Covid-19
The Conscious Resistance Network | December 23, 2020
Watch on Minds / Flote / Bitchute / Odysee / Hive
Script:
Reports are streaming in, declaring a Dark Winter for the world due to COVID19. The media rushes to tell the public that case numbers are on the rise again. In response, case numbers are used to support calls for lockdowns, travel and dining restrictions, and the push for compulsory vaccines.
However, in recent months an abundance of evidence has shown that the “gold standard” procedure for detecting COVID-19 is unreliable and could be producing untold numbers of false positives. If this is the case, why are health officials around the world calling for more tests?
This report is a brief look into the history of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) procedure and the evidence that PCR is unreliable and should not be used as a determinant for the number of COVID-19 cases or as a factor in political decisions. Please share with friends and family to keep them informed, and if someone shared this with you, please watch with an open mind.
The PCR Deception
In the months since the COVID-19 panic began health authorities around the world have encouraged the public to “get tested” to help track the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the strain of coronavirus that causes COVID19. However, as fear and hysteria subside, the scientific community and public at large are calling into question the efficacy of the test used to determine a patients status.
The main test that is used to determine an individual status involves the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method. This incredibly sensitive technique was developed by Berkeley scientist Kary Mullis, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1993. The PCR method amplifies a small segment of DNA hundreds of times to make it easier to analyze. For COVID19, a process known as Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) is used to detect SARS-CoV-2 by amplifying the virus’ genetic material so it can be detected by scientists.
PCR is sometimes described as a technique or process, but for simplicity we will refer to it as a test. PCR is viewed as the gold standard, however, it is not without problems. PCR amplifies a virus’s genetic material and then each sample goes through a number of cycles until a virus is recovered. This is known as the “cycle threshold” and has become a key component in the debate around the efficacy of the PCR test.
In late August 2020, I attended a press conference in Houston, Texas to ask Houston Health Authority Dr. David Persse about concerns about PCR.
Dr. Persse says that when the labs report numbers of COVID-19 cases to the City of Houston they only offer a binary option of “yes” for positive or “no” for negative. “But, in reality, it comes in what is called cycle-thresholds. It’s an inverse relationship, so the higher the number the less virus there was in the initial sample,” Persse explained. “Some labs will report out to 40 cycle-thresholds, and if they get a positive at 40 – which means there is a tiny, tiny, tiny amount of virus there – that gets reported to us as positive and we don’t know any different.”
Persse noted that the key question is, at what value is someone considered still infectious?
“Because if you test me and I have a tiny amount of virus, does that mean I am contagious? that I am still infectious to someone else? If you are shedding a little bit of virus are you just starting? or are you on the downside?.”
He believes the answer is for the scientific community to set a national standard for cycle-threshold. Unfortunately, a national standard would not solve the problems expressed by Dr. Persse.
UK Parliament and Scientists Have Concerns About PCR Test
In the first weeks of September 2020 a number of important revelations regarding PCR came to light. First, new research from the University of Oxford’s Center for Evidence-Based Medicine and the University of the West of England found that the PCR test poses the potential for false positives when testing for COVID-19. Professor Carl Heneghan, one of the authors of the study said there was a risk that an increase in testing in the UK will lead to an increase in the risk of “sample contamination” and thus an increase in COVID-19 cases.
The team reviewed evidence from 25 studies where virus specimens had positive PCR tests. The researchers state that the “genetic photocopying” technique scientists use to magnify the sample of genetic material collected is so sensitive it could be picking up fragments of dead virus from previous infections. The researchers reach a similar conclusion as Dr. David Persse, specifically they state:
“A binary Yes/No approach to the interpretation RT-PCR unvalidated against viral culture will result in false positives with segregation of large numbers of people who are no longer infectious and hence not a threat to public health.”
Heneghan, who is also the the editor of BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, told the BBC that the binary approach is a problem and tests should have a cut-off point so small amounts of virus do not lead to a positive result. This is because of the cycle threshold mentioned by Dr. Persse. A person who is shedding an active virus and someone who has leftover infection could both receive the same positive test result. Heneghan also stated that the test could be detecting old virus which would explain the rise in cases in the UK and said setting a standard for the cycle threshold would eliminate the quarantining and contact tracing of people who are healthy and help the public better understand the true nature of COVID-19.
Shortly after Heneghan’s criticisms the UK’s leading health agency, Public Health England, released an update on the testing methods used to detect COVID-19 and appeared to agree with Professor Heneghan regarding the concerns on the cycle threshold. On September 9, 2020, PHE released an update which concluded, “all laboratories should determine the threshold for a positive result at the limit of detection.”
This is not the first time Heneghan’s work has directly impacted the UK’s COVID-19 policies. In July 2020, UK health secretary Matt Hancock called for an “urgent review” of the daily COVID-19 death numbers produced by Public Health England after it was revealed the stats included people who died from other causes. The Guardian reported that Professor Heneghan and a fellow scientist released a paper showing that if someone dies after having tested positive for COVID-19, their death is recorded in the COVID-19 death statistics. A source in the Department of Health and Social Care told The Guadian, “You could have been tested positive in February, have no symptoms, then hit by a bus in July and you’d be recorded as a COVID death.’”
Heneghan also recently told the BMJ , “one issue in trying to interpret numbers of detected cases is that there is no set definition of a case. At the moment it seems that a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) positive result is the only criterion required for a case to be recognised.”
“In any other disease we would have a clearly defined specification that would usually involve signs, symptoms, and a test result. We are moving into a biotech world where the norms of clinical reasoning are going out of the window. A PCR test does not equal covid-19; it should not, but in some definitions it does.”
Heneghan says he is concerned that as soon as there is the appearance of an outbreak there is panic and over-reacting. “This is a huge problem because politicians are operating in a non-evidence-based way when it comes to non-drug interventions,” he stated.
Heneghan is correct that the scientific authorities ought to take false positives seriously, especially when a person can be sent to isolate or quarantine for weeks due to a positive test result. Even the U.S. FDA’s own fact sheet on testing acknowledges the dangers posed by false positives:
“ in the event of a false positive result, risks to patients could include the following: a recommendation for isolation of the patient…. unnecessary prescription of a treatment or therapy, or other unintended adverse effects.”
A CDC fact sheet also acknowledges the possibility of false positives with the PCR test.
Professor Heneghan believes the confusion around COVID-19 has come as a result of a shift away from “evidence-based medicine.” In a recent opinion piece published at The Spectator, Heneghan wrote that patients have become a “prisoner of a system labelling him or her as ‘positive’ when we are not sure what that label means.” He warns:
“Governments are producing a series of contradictory and confusing policies which have a brief shelf life as the next crisis emerges. It is increasingly clear the evidence is often ignored. Keeping up to date is a full time occupation.”
More evidence for the unreliability of PCR came on November 11, 2020, when the Lisbon Court of Appeal ruled that PCR ““in view of current scientific evidence, this test shows itself to be unable to determine beyond reasonable doubt that such positivity corresponds to the infection of a person by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.”
The decision relates to an appeal by the Regional Health Administration of the Azores,Portugal which forced four German citizens to comply with a 14 day quarantine in a hotel room. After the four citizens appealed the decision, the panel of judges concluded that “the number of cycles of such amplification results in a greater or lesser reliability of such tests. And the problem is that this reliability shows itself, in terms of scientific evidence (…) as more than debatable.”
The ruling was criticized by some scientists in Portugal and has been completely ignored by the United States media and politcians.
More recently, On December 3, 2020, the Florida Department of Health announced a new update requiring all laboratories conducting COVID-19 tests to record new details for the PCR test.
The update notes that all Florida “laboratories are subject to mandatory reporting to the Florida Department of Health (FDOH),” including for “PCR, other RNA, antigen and antibody results.” The update adds new requirements for the PCR test, asking labs to record the “cycle threshold” (CT) values for the process. The FDOH document states:
“Cycle threshold (CT) values and their reference ranges, as applicable, must be reported by laboratories to FDOH via electronic laboratory reporting or by fax immediately.”
On December 14, the World Health Organization (WHO) posted a notice on their website warning that PCR may not be entirely accurate for detecting SARS-CoV-2. The WHO memo admits that using too high of a cycle threshold will likely result in false positives.
“Users of RT-PCR reagents should read the IFU carefully to determine if manual adjustment of the PCR positivity threshold is necessary to account for any background noise which may lead to a specimen with a high cycle threshold (Ct) value result being interpreted as a positive result.”
“The design principle of RT-PCR means that for patients with high levels of circulating virus (viral load), relatively few cycles will be needed to detect virus and so the Ct value will be low. Conversely, when specimens return a high Ct value, it means that many cycles were required to detect virus. In some circumstances, the distinction between background noise and actual presence of the target virus is difficult to ascertain.”
The fact that the Florida Department of Health and the WHO is taking this step is another sign that an increasing number of health professionals and regulators are questioning the accuracy of PCR. Unfortunately, both of these stories have been ignored by the mainstream media.
As noted earlier, this incredibly sensitive technique was developed by Berkeley scientist Kary Mullis, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1993. By the mid-90’s, Mullis had become skeptical that PCR was able to detect HIV and made several statements towards the end of his life indicating that he believed the technique was being improperly used by researchers.
As we approach 2021 the public is being told that a Dark Winter is waiting, with governments and media predicting a rise in cases and deaths. However, it’s important that we pause to acknowledge the many concerns surrounding the PCR test before international health authorities crash the economy, send millions into poverty, and threaten civil liberties. We must help the public understand the limitations of the PCR test and the dangers of resting public health policy on such a flawed process.
Finally, we must also hold accountable those who continue to promote PCR and refuse to answer these questions or even acknowledge these concerns. We cannot ignore the disastrous results produced by policymakers who failed to heed warnings about PCR.
12,000 NYC Students Banned From School For Not Consenting To Random Covid Testing
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | December 28, 2020
About 12,000 New York City students are being prevented from attending in-person learning because their parents “failed to sign consent forms for weekly random testing”, Bloomberg reported last week. The students are part of a larger group of 190,000 pre-school through elementary students who returned to classrooms in December.
While about 60,000 pre-school and kindergarten students are exempt from testing, there are still about 130,000 students who are required to participate in random testing.
Nathaniel Styer, a spokesman for the city Department of Education, said: “Due to the extensive efforts of our staff, 91% of students who need a consent form have one on file. Students without consent forms, and who do not have approved exemptions, are transitioned to remote instruction.”
Random testing is conducted on 20% of everyone in each school building, every week. Mayor Bill de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza are responsible for implementing the standards that went into place after NYC schools had previously shut down.
Meanwhile, high school and middle school students that are part of NYC’s 1 million plus student body are all receiving remote instruction. “Tens of thousands” of elementary school parents have voluntarily opted out of the random testing in favor of remote learning as well, Bloomberg concluded.
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Book Review
Alarmist climate science as a textbook example of groupthink
By Paul MacRae | May 1, 2012
… Groupthink was extensively studied by Yale psychologist Irving L. Janis and described in his 1982 book Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes.
Janis was curious about how teams of highly intelligent and motivated people—the “best and the brightest” as David Halberstam called them in his 1972 book of the same name—could have come up with political policy disasters like the Vietnam War, Watergate, Pearl Harbor and the Bay of Pigs. Similarly, in 2008 and 2009, we saw the best and brightest in the world’s financial sphere crash thanks to some incredibly stupid decisions, such as allowing sub-prime mortgages to people on the verge of bankruptcy.
In other words, Janis studied why and how groups of highly intelligent professional bureaucrats and, yes, even scientists, screw up, sometimes disastrously and almost always unnecessarily. The reason, Janis believed, was “groupthink.” He quotes Nietzsche’s observation that “madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups,” and notes that groupthink occurs when “subtle constraints … prevent a [group] member from fully exercising his critical powers and from openly expressing doubts when most others in the group appear to have reached a consensus.”[2]
Janis found that even if the group leader expresses an openness to new ideas, group members value consensus more than critical thinking; groups are thus led astray by excessive “concurrence-seeking behavior.”[3] Therefore, Janis wrote, groupthink is “a model of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.”[4]
The groupthink syndrome
The result is what Janis calls “the groupthink syndrome.” This consists of three main categories of symptoms:
1. Overestimate of the group’s power and morality, including “an unquestioned belief in the group’s inherent morality, inclining the members to ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their actions.” [emphasis added]
2. Closed-mindedness, including a refusal to consider alternative explanations and stereotyped negative views of those who aren’t part of the group’s consensus. The group takes on a “win-lose fighting stance” toward alternative views.[5]
3. Pressure toward uniformity, including “a shared illusion of unanimity concerning judgments conforming to the majority view”; “direct pressure on any member who expresses strong arguments against any of the group’s stereotypes”; and “the emergence of self-appointed mind-guards … who protect the group from adverse information that might shatter their shared complacency about the effectiveness and morality of their decisions.”[6]
It’s obvious that alarmist climate science—as explicitly and extensively revealed in the Climatic Research Unit’s “Climategate” emails—shares all of these defects of groupthink, including a huge emphasis on maintaining consensus, a sense that because they are saving the world, alarmist climate scientists are beyond the normal moral constraints of scientific honesty (“overestimation of the group’s power and morality”), and vilification of those (“deniers”) who don’t share the consensus. … Read full article
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- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
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- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
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