Renewed calls for mask mandates are on the rise, as reports of scary Covid variants are making their way through the news. My perception is that most people will not accept this. It’s fairly well known among the public that masks do not work to halt the transmission of respiratory diseases.
There is even less support for vaccine mandates. There are more successful lawsuits against vaccine mandates each month, and greater numbers of doctors are speaking against forced medicines. Many of them seem to be rediscovering informed consent.
There is one other area where mandates may still have a foothold: that is in the test for disease, particularly Covid. Take a test before you enter a public space; take a test before you go to work; take a test merely because the authorities say so, because they want to track where the virus is going. There are many authorities saying that testing should be mandated, and many ordinary citizens are going along with the idea, thinking, “What’s the harm in taking a test?”
Should you be required to take a test for Covid or any other disease in order to participate in society?
This question seems slightly different from the questions of the other two mandates that have been presented in the past few years. The attack on vaccine mandates has been straightforward: Covid is not dangerous to large cohorts of the population; the vaccines do not prevent transmission; the mRNA jab has been known to cause harm. Likewise, with masks, the arguments are centered around the idea that they don’t really work, and they might also cause harm. We have heard about respiratory problems from microparticles and learning disabilities in children, from their stunted growth in communication skills.
To combat mandated testing, these arguments do not hold as much sway. It’s difficult to argue that testing for Covid might harm the person being tested, and therefore, it’s difficult to attack on the grounds that the tests don’t work perfectly well.
Even the arguments I have heard againstmandatory testing usually have a qualifier in them about the relative danger of the disease in question: “I would understand mandated testing if this was a highly virulent and deadly virus.”
There have been many times we have heard from public health officials about the need for centralized control of people’s behavior in the response to disease. Indeed, even Jay Bhattacharya, who has been fiercely against lockdowns and who has promoted focused protective measures, has said that a scenario could arise where such coordination may be necessary. In discussing the rising lack of trust in public health, he says:
In theory, there is a risk to restricting public health action: It will make coordinated nationwide action more difficult in the next pandemic. What if next time, we have a disease outbreak that requires every part of the country to shut down everywhere, all at once, for a long time?
My issue is with the word requires. Required by whom and to what end? A disease is not an agent. Whatever it may do to us, diseases don’t require action. Humans in charge require action.
So let’s ignore for the moment whether tests work or not, but instead focus on what it means for someone to have the authority to say that you must take a harmless test.
Does someone, anyone, an individual or a government authority, have the right to require you to do something, just because it won’t hurt you?
And on top of the claim that you are not being hurt, there is the more insidious charge: you are being selfish. The authorities and society have decided that the needs of the group rise above the needs of the individual. Certainly this seems to be the case if the test causes no harm. But who is being selfish here? Is it you or the selfish collective?
Regardless of whether you are not being hurt, and whether you are being selfish, here is the essential point of requiring you to take the test.
The point is that the outcome of the test will influence or dictate your subsequent behavior.
Based on the test, it is implied that you will have to do something about it, or that someone will make you. If you test positive, will that mean you cannot go out? Will it mean that you will be locked in a room and can’t see your family and friends? Will it open the door to other bodily controls, like mandated medicine?
If there is no understanding that your behavior will be dictated by the result of the test, what’s the point of the test?
This question can be stated more precisely by saying: the act of forcing you to take a test for disease removes your agency. The idea of agency, as introduced in the Enlightenment, is that each individual carries a moral responsibility for their actions, and that each individual should have that responsibility. The responsibility to act in a way that respects the life and liberty of others should not be taken or assumed by another person or authority.
I have heard the argument that authorities test not in order to control our behavior and thus remove our agency, but instead only to understand how the virus may be spreading in a particular area. They can then understand how to best focus resources to help where outbreaks occur. This is indeed the path that Bhattacharya is on in his article: mandatory testing is justified for the public good when there is no infringement of individual rights, and that a uniform nationwide response is never the correct answer.
But I ask you this: how many times in the past three years has mandated testing led merely to expanded awareness of where the virus is headed and not to control individuals? I have heard many stories personally of individuals who tested positive and were immediately quarantined, and then subsequently tracked by authorities through their phones. I have also read more horrible stories, of arrests and inhumane conditions. In fact, the language around these enforced behaviors gets even more dire than that.
On March 22, 2020, Trump said, “In a true sense, we’re at war. And we’re fighting an invisible enemy.” Trump along with many others compared fighting a virus to fighting a war. In fact, that is how the whole pandemic response was run, as a national security operation.
But what is war? War occurs when two groups of people attempt to kill each other. That is, when individuals and their governments use their agency to seek out and destroy others or to defend themselves. When individuals claim not to use their agency, as when they say, “I was just following orders,” or “We all have to do what the authorities are saying is correct,” they are merely abdicating their own agency, but not relieving their own responsibility.
Robin Koerner describes this connection in his recent article, “The Complicity of Compliance.” He points out that in such situations, people merely subordinate their agency to an agenda. They do not alleviate the burden of their responsibility, although they think they might, they are only going along with the immoral action of the state.
How does this compare to a “war” against a virus? A virus has no agency, and more importantly, an individual carrying a virus has no agency. Any individual, sick or not, cannot decide to infect another person. You may argue that a person can use their agency to attempt to make another person sick. You could cough in someone’s face intentionally, for example. But this is about the extent to which you could go to use your agency to attempt to infect others. It is your moral decision not to cough in someone’s face.
Now let’s get back to mandatory testing. What happens to your agency when someone or an authority requires that you be tested for a particular virus? As I’ve described, the test comes with an implicit assumption that your behavior will be controlled if that test is positive. Will you be quarantined? Will you not be permitted to enter a public space? Will your movements be tracked?
The deadliness of the virus is irrelevant.
The accuracy of the test is irrelevant.
The motivation of the authority is irrelevant.
What matters is that by requiring a test, the authority has removed your agency.
You can no longer act in a way in accordance with your morality and conscience, and the door is open for your liberties to be removed.
So really, how harmless is it to allow any authority or state actor to require that you take a test for disease? This is a trick. By going along, you are thus agreeing to subordinate your own agency to that of the state.
This situation throws us back to before the Enlightenment, before the 17th century, to a time of feudal control of the lives of individuals. If the state says you do it, you do it, whatever it is. The comparison of virus control to feudalism has been made many times.
Is that how you want to live your life?
Or has freedom been good to you?
Take a test voluntarily if you like, if you think it will help to protect your family, friends, and all of your compatriots, or possibly if you think it will help authorities to understand the spread of disease. Respect others and do not try to infect them, as unrealistic as that notion may be.
But do not submit to mandatory testing for disease. Maintain your independence, your morality, and your conscience; do not be tricked into relinquishing your agency to the state. It is a trick to obtain control over your life that you will have willingly surrendered.
Your moral responsibilities are yours alone. Keep them that way.
Alan Lash is a software developer from Northern California, with a Masters degree Physics and a PhD in Mathematics.
Dr. Kulvinder Kaur Gill is a pediatric allergist in Toronto. She condemned COVID rules as irrational, political, harmful, and inconsistent with scientific data. In the eyes of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO), Gill was dangerous.
In 2021, the CPSO issued three “cautions” (formal warnings) against her. In 2022 it began disciplinary proceedings. The College alleged that she was undermining confidence in public health measures. Its senior counsel wrote that her communications were unprofessional and unbalanced. In its persecution of Gill, the CPSO has made the case for its own demise. Self-regulated monopolies do not work. The CPSO and other professional regulators need competition.
Gill’s inquisition was not an isolated case. Like other medical regulators in North America, the CPSO forbade its doctors from publicly contradicting COVID orders and recommendations. Its Discipline Tribunal revoked the licence of Patrick Phillips, one of several Ontario doctors pursued for their COVID dissent.
The Nova Scotia medical college investigated Dr. Chris Milburn for writing an op-ed on the death of personal responsibility in the criminal justice system. The Ontario College of Psychologists ordered Jordan Peterson to undergo re-education on the use of social media for tweeting about politics. The BC College of Nurses seeks to discipline Amy Hamm for believing in the biology of two sexes.
The Law Society of Ontario compelled its members to state their concurrence with the ideology of “equity, diversity, and inclusion” until a group of rebel lawyers (of whom I was one) managed to repeal it, although the agenda remains. In British Columbia and Alberta, law societies are instituting politically laden “cultural competency” requirements. Teachers, occupational therapists, engineers, and accountants cannot safely voice doubts about transgenderism or “anti-racist” agendas.
This regulatory bullying is occurring within self-regulated professions. Like “ordinary” regulation, self-regulation is coercive. The state delegates authority to their governing bodies. Some doctors rule over other doctors. A licence from the CPSO is voluntary only in the sense that a driver’s licence is voluntary. You don’t get fines or prison time if you don’t get one, but then you can’t drive or practice medicine. Gill’s livelihood was on the line.
Civil servants do not run self-governing professional bodies, but they are part of the executive branch of government nonetheless. Legislation creates them and they are subject to the constitution. Self-regulation exists only for as long as the legislature says that it does.
Legislatures delegate authority, the theory goes, because professionals have the expertise to ensure competence and ethical practice in the public interest. Your surgeon should know how to cut. Your corporate lawyer should be able to draft articles of incorporation and not skim funds off your trust account. But focusing on technical competence and honest conduct no longer satisfies professional regulatory bodies.
We live in a managerial age. As C.S. Lewis wrote:
“The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid ‘dens of crime’ that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices.”
Professions have become managerial cartels. Governing bodies are their godfathers, permitting only proper people and perspectives. Their purpose is not to ensure public access to a variety of professional opinions. Instead, they seek to herd people into “correct” attitudes and behaviors. Propaganda is not evil, but merely a tool to facilitate right results.
Ironically, managerial cartels turn out to be terrible managers. They excel at exercising control but not at producing good outcomes. During COVID, even propaganda was patently incoherent. Yet Gill was one of a scant few doctors and scientists to decry the public health debacle unfolding in front of them. As her lawyer Lisa Bildy wrote in response to the College’s accusations, Gill provided the public with substantiated facts on lockdowns, masking, and COVID vaccines, relying on credible and respected scientific sources and opinions.
The College had scheduled a two-week disciplinary hearing for early 2024. But in September 2023, it abruptly cancelled the hearing with no explanation. Gill’s disciplinary ordeal had come to an end, although her formal warnings remain. Bildy will challenge their validity by judicial review in spring 2024.
Self-regulation protects professions from government interference. That is ironic, given the CPSO’s insistence that their members toe the government line. But self-regulation does not protect individual professionals from the oppression of their peers. A different model beckons: multiple, private regulators competing for members, credibility, and public trust.
Professional cartels benefit the bullies who run them. There’s no reason to grant them the power of monopoly.
Bruce Pardy is executive director of Rights Probe and professor of law at Queen’s University.
Dr. Malik writes:
My name is Ahmad Malik and I am an honest surgeon passionate about free speech and medical ethics.
I have been suspended without pay and cancelled because I dare to challenge the Government narrative, defend informed consent, oppose mandates and lockdowns, question experimental jabs and insist that there are only two biological sexes.
I am raising funds to take legal action against the hospital to lift my suspension and stop the attempts by organisations to censor me.
It will set a precedent that organisations cannot bully, harass and censor those that speak up for medical ethics, and encourage others to speak out.
I am up against large organisations and my case is complex. Legal costs will easily run into the thousands. I need a decent fighting fund which will give me the best chance of being successful.
Of all the crass misappropriations of scientific principles during the pandemic, none did more harm than the corruption of the ‘precautionary principle’ — the notion that an action or an intervention is justified only once one is clear that the benefits exceed the harms and that, as one sociologist put it, “you have looked very hard for the harms”.
That principle came to be almost wholly inverted in the context of the pandemic: an intervention seemingly could be justified on the ‘precautionary’ basis that if it might have any beneficial effect in slowing the course of the pandemic, it would be worthwhile. This justified indiscriminate measures ranging from universal masking, mass testing (including of young children), 14-day isolated quarantines and even lockdown itself for entire healthy populations, on the basis that even though the evidence base was often weak or non-existent, the intervention just might achieve something, and opened the door to a slew of harms impacting almost all cohorts of the British population.
It was to be hoped that a core task for the Covid Inquiry in this key Module 2 would have been a dispassionate objective assessment of whether the costs (financial costs, direct harms, probable indirect harms, risk of unquantified future harms) of the Government’s population-wide interventions outweighed possible benefits. So, it was deeply disappointing last week to see not only key witnesses but the inquiry Chair herself repeat the same dangerous misconception of the precautionary principle.
In one of the most jaw-dropping interjections of the inquiry to date, Baroness Hallett revealed a prejudgement that if masking people could have had even the slightest of benefits, and seemingly without even contemplating that risks and known harms might need to be weighed too, she pressed Sir Peter Horby, an esteemed epidemiologist at Oxford University, who had indicated that he believed universal masking was not a straightforward decision: “I’m sorry, I’m not following, Sir Peter. If there’s a possible benefit, what’s the downside?”
Coming from the independent Chair of a public inquiry, this is an astonishing comment. It betrays a presumption, or at the very least a predisposition, to accept that it was better to act than not to act — the reverse of the precautionary principle. When a comment such as this, from the Chair of the Inquiry, goes unchallenged, it risks anchoring the entire frame of reference for the inquiry’s interrogation of this critical topic. In our view it was a surprising and serious error of judgement for an experienced Court of Appeal judge.
What made Baroness Hallett feel this to be an appropriate thing to think, let alone say out loud? We suggest the issue lies in the fact that the Chair and the official counsel to the inquiry seem already to have the storyline of the pandemic wrapped up.
The inquiry’s counsel has been at pains to paint a picture of the country facing an almost existential threat from the virus. From the outset, counsel has framed his questioning on the basis that it was indisputable a “highly dangerous fatal viral outbreak was surely coming”, and “by February this viral, severe pandemic, this viral pathogenic outbreak is coming, and it can’t be stopped”. Even hardened lawyers and epidemiologists, it has seemed, were bunkering down because “the virus was coming, it was a fatal pathogenic disease”.
And, with the precautionary principle inverted in the collective mind of this inquiry, almost anything the Government then did against that backdrop was justified.
With preference…
Worse still, it is now starkly evident that the witnesses whose opinions and perspectives support that proposition are being overtly praised and pedestaled, while those whose opinions and perspectives might cast doubt are treated with prejudice and hostility.
For those witnesses who were part of the ‘home team’ — Government-appointed advisers, and those who have already publicly ascribed to the inquiry’s apparently favoured storyline — impeccable credentials and impartiality have been assumed.
Sir Jeremy Farrar, for example, former Director of the Wellcome Trust, member of SAGE and currently Chief Scientist at the WHO gave oral evidence to the inquiry in June. One can almost picture counsel for the inquiry scattering rose petals as he sums up Farrar’s illustrious credentials:
You trained, I believe, in medicine, with postgraduate training in London, Chichester, Edinburgh, Melbourne, Oxford and San Francisco. You have a DPhil PhD from the University of Oxford. You were a director of the Oxford University Clinical Research Institute at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam from 1996 to 2013. From 2013 you were Director of the Wellcome Trust, and from May 2023 have you been the Chief Scientist at the World Health Organisation? Have you throughout your professional career served as a chair on a multitude of advisory bodies, for governments and global organisations? Have you received a plethora of honours from a number of governments, institutes and entities?
Farrar is then treated to counsel’s softest underarm bowls and allowed to give unchallenged testimony in favour of an intervention-heavy approach to pandemic management: “when you have the countermeasures you’re talking about, diagnostic tests, treatment and vaccines, together they create a Swiss cheese model of what our public health is”.
Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London, and chief architect of the dramatic scientific modelling on which the global lockdown response was predicated, was warmly welcomed to the witness box by counsel last week “as a world leading specialist in this field”, and was later thanked profusely for his hard work by Baroness Hallett: “Thank you very much for all the work that you did during the pandemic.”
Gushing perhaps, but nothing compared to the farewell given to SAGE modeller Professor John Edmunds, who had been affirmed upfront by counsel as, “a de facto expert in epidemiology”, and one of “a number of brilliant scientists and advisers who assisted the Government and the country in the remarkable way that you did”. At the end of his evidence, Baroness Hallett delivered the eulogy:
Thank you very much indeed. If I may say so, professor, I think you were unduly harsh on yourself this morning. You had a job, and you described it yourself, your job was to provide expert advice to the policy and decision-makers, and if the system is working properly that advice is relayed to them, then they consider advice coming from other quarters about economics and social consequences and the like. I’m not sure you could have done more than you did, consistent with your role at the time, but you obviously did as much as you felt was appropriate. So I’m really grateful to you, I’m sure we all are.
This is a far departure from the rigorous testing of credentials and potential conflicts that one could expect as an expert witness in any court proceedings, and of the studious impartiality of the presiding judge. It is certainly far short of what the public should rightly expect for an exercise set to spend over £55m on lawyers alone.
None of these witnesses were asked whether their senior positions within organisations that rely on very valuable relationships with global pharmaceutical groups and private pharma-focused organisations could have had any bearing on their advice at the time or their evidence to the inquiry now.
Farrar was director of the Wellcome Trust throughout the pandemic. The Wellcome Trust is one of the institutions behind CEPI, a global vaccine development fund created in 2015 which partners with vaccine manufacturers, including Moderna. During the pandemic Farrar frequently and vocally promoted his view that vaccines would be the means for us to exit the pandemic. He is plainly someone whose professional success and credibility has become indelibly attached to the pharmaceutical industry and in particular the use of pharmaceutical interventions in public health, yet counsel and the inquiry Chair seemed uninterested in that colouring of Farrar’s evidence.
Likewise, Ferguson, of Imperial College London was not asked a single question about potential conflicts or risk of bias. Again, the inquiry seemed unaware, or at least uninterested, that a month after Ferguson’s seismic March 2020 paper had concluded that “epidemic suppression is the only viable strategy at the current time” and that “the major challenge of suppression is that this type of intensive intervention package – or something equivalently effective at reducing transmission – will need to be maintained until a vaccine becomes available”, it was reported that Imperial College had received £22.5 million in funding from the U.K. Government for vaccine research and development; and that in that same year, 2020, Imperial received at least $108 million in funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF).
BMGF is a private philanthropic organisation which has been open about its ideological commitment to vaccine-based solutions for global health issues and which itself has very significant financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
… and with prejudice
For witnesses such as Professor Carl Heneghan, Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford University, but not a member of SAGE, and (unhelpfully for the inquiry) not an enthusiastic supporter of lockdowns, the inquiry appeared to have made somewhat less glowing presumptions:
You are a professor of evidence-based medicine at Oxford University. Could you explain what that discipline entails?
Heneghan’s explanation was swiftly followed with a presumptive conclusion as to the strength of his credentials:
As you know, because I think you have been following the inquiry, we have heard this week from a series of academics who have spent, in the main, their professional careers researching, analysing the spread of infectious diseases, developing models, to analyse how such diseases are spread and how they can be controlled, and considering large-scale public health issues relating to pandemic preparedness and so on. You don’t have a comparable type of expertise in this area, do you?
Not satisfied with having attempted his own disparagement of the man, counsel took the opportunity while having Heneghan in the witness box to ask for his perspective on two ‘home team’ scientists having described him in a private discussion as a “fuckwit” (Dame Angela McLean and Professor Edmunds) — to what ends, other than to rattle, rile or embarrass, was not clear. It was the cheapest shot of the inquiry so far.
During Heneghan’s evidence session, and having seemingly felt entirely comfortable to rely on the expert opinions of Farrar, Ferguson, Edmunds et al. — the ‘good guy’ home team scientists — Baroness Hallett gives short shrift to the notion that Professor Heneghan’s opinion might be relied upon. When talking about the broad scope of evidence-based medicine Heneghan explains that “even my opinion” amounts to evidence, Baroness Hallett retorted dismissively: “Not in my world it doesn’t, I’m afraid.”
Spoiler alert
Here’s what the inquiry is going to conclude, after three to seven years and perhaps £200 million: the Government and its official scientific advisers mostly did their best in the face of what they rightly and fairly believed to be the most devastating viral threat the world had ever seen; those scientists gave the best advice they could, and were entitled to assume that the Government was taking account of other factors; if it hadn’t been for Brexit, we would have been better prepared; the Government perhaps could have thought a bit more about the impact of lockdowns on the economy, but ultimately lockdowns were unavoidable; if it had all been done faster and harder, the U.K. might have come out in a better place, clinically and economically; the sacrifices imposed on children, the isolated and those who missed diagnoses and treatments, were regrettable but had to be done (the ‘precautionary principle’); if we could have saved one more person who died of Covid we should have done; the NHS did a superb job in difficult circumstances. Oh, and COVID-19 vaccines saved us so we should devote more public funds to partnerships with heroic pharmaceutical groups and irreproachable public scientists such as Jeremy Farrar at the WHO.
The inquiry is now hopelessly compromised by the partisan and presumptive words of its own Chair and leading lawyers which are setting us up for a doom-loop of catastrophic errors we cannot afford to repeat. It has become an embarrassment to the legal profession and is jeopardising the reputation of the English legal system. Its exorbitant costs already cannot be justified, and there is only worse to come. It should be abandoned.
People commonly ask me for “comprehensive” publications on vaccine side effects. It is fair to point out that the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein is contained in the virus and it is uncontrollably produced by the mRNA and adenoviral DNA COVID-19 vaccines. Because the vaccines failed to stop COVID-19, most vaccinated persons have had the illness, thereby having multiple Spike protein exposures.
Parry, et al, published a comprehensive review on the litany of Spike-protein diseases that occur after its widespread distribution in the body. Here are some of their evidence based teaching points:
SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is pathogenic, whether from the virus or created from genetic code in mRNA and adenovector DNA vaccines.
Biodistribution rodent study data show lipid nanoparticles carry mRNA to all organs and cross blood-brain and blood-placenta barriers. Some of these tissues are likely to be impervious to viral infection; therefore, the biohazard is particularly from vaccination.
Lipid-nanoparticles have inflammatory properties.
The modification of mRNA with N1-methylpseudouridine for increased stability leads to the production of spike proteins for months. It is uncertain how many cells and from which organs mRNA spike proteins are produced, and therefore, the exact effective dose delivered per vaccine vial is unknown.
The long-term fate of mRNA within cells is currently unknown.
The mRNA and adenovector DNA vaccines act as ‘synthetic viruses’.
In the young and healthy, and even in many older individuals with vulnerable comorbidities, the encoding-based COVID-19 vaccines will likely transfect a far more diverse set of tissues than infection by the virus itself.
Evidence suggests reverse transcription of mRNA into a DNA copy is possible. This further suggests the possibility of intergenerational transmission if germline cells incorporate the DNA copy into the host genome.
Production of foreign proteins such as spike protein on cell surfaces can induce autoimmune responses and tissue damage. This has profoundly negative implications for any future mRNA-based drug or vaccine.
The spike protein exerts its pathophysiological effects (‘spikeopathy’) via several mechanisms that lead to inflammation, thrombogenesis, and endotheliitis-related tissue damage and prion-related dysregulation. Interaction of the vaccine-encoded spike protein with ACE-2, P53 and BRCA1 suggests a wide range of possible biological interference with oncological potential.
Adverse event data from official pharmacovigilance databases, an FDA-Pfizer report obtained via FOI, show high rates and multiple organ systems affected: primarily neurological, cardiovascular, and reproductive.
Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccines’ clinical trial data independently interpreted has been peer-review and published to show an unfavourable risk/benefit, especially in the non-elderly. The risks for children clearly outweigh the benefits.
Repeated COVID-19 vaccine booster doses appear to induce tolerance and may contribute to recurrent COVID-19 infection and ‘long COVID’.
“The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has revealed deficiencies in public health and medicines regulatory agencies. A root cause analysis is needed for what now appears a rushed response to an alarming infectious disease pandemic. Treatment modalities for ‘spikeopathy’-related pathology in many organ systems, require urgent research and provision to millions of sufferers of long-term COVID-19 vaccine injuries. We also advocate for the suspension of gene-based COVID-19 vaccines and lipid-nanoparticle carrier matrices, and other vaccines based on mRNA or viral-vector DNA technology. A safer course is to use vaccines with well-tested recombinant protein, attenuated or inactivated virus technologies, of which there are now many for vaccinating against SARS-CoV-2.”
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Reclaim)
“We have experienced more excess deaths since July 2021 than in the whole of 2020.
Number of excess deaths according to Office for Health Improvements and Disparities
Mar-Dec 2020 (there were fewer deaths than expected in Jan and Feb 2020 according to ONS)
69,293
Jul 2021 – Sept 2023
76,554
Unlike during the pandemic, however, those deaths are not disproportionately of the old. In other words, the excess deaths are striking down people in the prime of life… Full text with graphs
Ambulance calls for life-threatening emergencies ranged from a steady 2,000 calls per day until the vaccine rollout, from then it rose to 2,500 daily and calls have stayed at this level since.
The surveillance systems designed to spot a safety problem have all flashed red, but no one’s looking.
Payments for Personal Independent Payments (PIP) for people who have developed a disability and cannot work, have rocketed with the vaccine rollout and have continued to rise ever since.
The trial data showed that one in eight hundred injected people had a serious adverse event, meaning the risk of this was twice as high than the chance of preventing a Covid hospitalisation.
There were just over 14,000 excess deaths in the under 65-year-olds before vaccination, from April 2020 to the end of March 2021. However, since that time there have been over 21,000 excess deaths in this age group alone.
There were nearly two extra deaths a day in the second half of 2021 among 15 – 19-year-old males, but potentially even more if those referred to the coroner were fully included.
The contrast between the evidence sessions of Prof. John Edmunds (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, SAGE modeller) and Prof. Carl Heneghan at the Covid Inquiry yesterday was absolutely shocking and raises huge questions about the professionalism of the Inquiry.
The King’s Counsel in the morning spent hours questioning Edmunds in a friendly, at times obsequious manner, as he explained how misunderstood the modelling was, how it wasn’t needed to justify lockdowns – as the indicative Basic reproduction number (R0) and Indicative Fatality Rate (IFR) were enough – to justify earlier and harder lockdown measures. Yet, according to Edmunds, the modelling would still be needed in the future. Truly an “all things to all men modelling” – useful when needed to justify future lockdowns, yet hides in the corner when retrospectively scrutinised and compared with real-world data. Three key flaws in the Covid modelling have been highlighted:
These aren’t flaws that can be explained away by saying the scenarios changed with the reality of lockdowns. For example, ICU rates are unaffected by shelter-in-place orders and school closures.
The dangerous implication here is that the Covid Inquiry is lining us up for future restrictions based on indicative RO and IFR, a lockdown hair-trigger switch that gives more authority to the modellers.
The soft-ball questioning and praise from the Inquiry continued as the discussion moved to Summer 2020, circuit breakers and the elision from “flatten the curve” to “zero Covid”.
Then the Inquiry moved on to the Downing Street Summit, where other voices – counsel highlighting as the ‘let it rip’ brigade – were invited at short notice. The big reveal was that Angela McLean, who has replaced Sir Patrick Vallance as Chief Scientific Officer, referred to Carl Heneghan as a “f*ckwit” in a contemporaneous WhatsApp chat, while Edmunds challenged Heneghan’s epidemiological knowledge. In my view, the Inquiry raising the point in this way is indicative of a lack of professionalism.
The Inquiry was also keen to include another pet villain – Doctor Death – the sobriquet applied by McLean to refer to Rishi Sunak, for the perceived crime of pushing for Eat Out to Help Out to reinvigorate the pub and restaurant industry, and providing a much needed moral boost to the nation.
The questioning continued for hours, covering the narrative classics of Long Covid, why the Vaccine rollout should have been broader, etc., all carried out in a cosy relationship included Baroness Hallett’s freely-given praise for Edmund, Ferguson and the whole modelling team.
By contrast, the interrogation of Carl Heneghan started out with a blatant attempt to undermine his credentials, strongly re-buffed by Carl, setting a tone for the only adversarial evidence session I have seen at this Inquiry so far. Any discussion that strayed from the narrative was met with aggressive and hostile demands for ‘yes/no’ answers.
Counsel objected to Carl’s answer rightly pointing out the danger of lockdowns to care homes, as he wanted to concentrate on focused protection and the misrepresentation of it by Counsel as hermetically sealing up the old and vulnerable. The minimum of critical thinking could have told Counsel that it was about reducing risk where it was highest, rather than across the board.
Carl was challenged on his views on the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) – he broadly agreed with it, he explained, but didn’t sign at the time as he needed more evidence on the details as you would expect, before Counsel dived into the Downing Street conference call.
Carl was challenged on his definition of ‘Endemicity’ on that call (presumably Edmunds’ gotcha epidemiological point), with Counsel demanding that the spread of infection be “broad and predictable” for it to qualify as endemic, when seasonal spikes shown on a graph means it wasn’t. This was rebuffed in a strong response from Prof. Heneghan, emphasising the seasonal pattern of endemic respiratory viruses and the variability of testing data and evidence on the ground.
Carl’s response to being challenged on the “f*ckwit” comment was dignified and professional, indicating it signified a lack of professionalism from the author as well as a lack of willingness to engage in debate, and an assumption of certainty where there was great uncertainty. He further pointed out that the entire lockdown response was driven by modelling and failed to take into account empirical data or the reality on the ground. Counsel scuttled along to that favourite fallback of the lockdown zealots – Long Covid – where Carl educated the Inquiry by telling it there was no greater risk of lingering disease from Covid than from any other seasonal respiratory disease.
At this point, Counsel decided to end the very short proceedings, presumably to shield the carefully constructed narrative to live another day.
It was hard not to notice the stark contrast in the attitude and approach to the two witnesses and it raises further serious questions on the ability of this long and expensive public inquiry to professionally and impartially challenge the decision making that led to lockdowns.
I just sent this letter off to the Board of Regents of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy:
October 12, 2023
Dear Executive Director Maddux and Board of Regents,
During the past 3 1/2 years, I have observed the troubling pattern of silencing viewpoints that depart in any way from the official Covid narrative. Your cancelation of Dr. Vinay Prasad as a keynote speaker at the upcoming ACCP Conference is an example of this inappropriate trend.
This is America. The founding principle of America is the freedom of speech, without which none of the other rights enumerated in the Constitution matter, because they cannot be pursued. Healthy, vigorous, oppositional debate is essential to innovation and problem-solving. Without debate there is no progress and people become afraid, first to speak, and then to think for themselves.
Alicia Lichvar states she “cannot – in good conscience – share a platform with an individual who promotes such harmful rhetoric.” Ms. Lichvar claims there is a role for critical discourse, but not as the Keynote speaker. Why not? Since when is it assumed that the speaker at a conference, or graduation ceremony, or civic event represents the viewpoint of all?
In this instance, ACCP appears to have sided with the false ideology recently stated at Twitter (X) that people are entitled to “freedom of speech, not reach.” In Ms. Lichvar’s world, people like Dr. Prasad have the right to their views, just not in public, which is no right at all.
This was the moment to clarify that your group values varied viewpoints by inviting Ms. Lichvar to share her side in a debate with Dr. Prasad, or in her own presentation. It was not a moment to say you will be “revisiting the keynote speaker vetting and selection process to ensure alignment with the expectations and values of ACCP members.” There were obviously ACCP members who wanted to hear from Dr. Prasad, or he would not have been selected as a keynote speaker in the first place.
People who are so fragile they cannot even hear a differing viewpoint to their own, especially one presented by a licensed and credentialed colleague, need a wakeup call, not coddling.
You, Mr. Maddux, Mr. Olsen, Ms. Farrington, Ms. Phillips, Ms. Blair, Mr. Hemstreet, Ms. See, Ms. Finks, Ms. Parker, Ms. Ross, Ms. Clements, and Ms. Badowski, are listed on the ACCP webpage under the dropdown menu of “Leadership.”
The role of real leaders is not to “ensure alignment with the expectations and values” of the vocal few, but rather to preserve the ability to approach problems and issues in a manner that allows for consideration of all sides. People cannot make informed, adult decisions, if they’re awash in a culture of “safety” where “words are violence,” and differing viewpoints are “harmful.”
I invite you to reconsider your roles, and the bigger picture of what is happening in our country today, so as to ensure that free speech and thought are the elevating principles of enlightenment in your organization.
Headmaster Mike Fairclough was the darling of primary school education after creating an unorthodox forest school in a council estate in Eastbourne, East Sussex. Alongside the usual lessons, from 2004 Mr Fairclough provided an extraordinarily rich rural curriculum that you would never expect in a state school. He leased 120 acres of marshland opposite West Rise school, the site of a former Bronze Age settlement. The children learned how to build fires and how to whittle wood with knives to make arrows. They learned fly fishing, how to skin rabbits and pluck pigeons. They tended beehives, sheep and even water buffalo.
Mr Fairclough won the admiration of his peers, and in 2015, the Times Educational Supplement ‘Primary School of the Year’ award. Dame Judith Hackitt, chairman of the Health & Safety Executive, said more school head teachers should be following Fairclough’s example. The underperforming school’s Ofsted rose from ‘Satisfactory’ to ‘Good’ and for 19 years, West Rise thrived. The number of pupils doubled from 179 to 360, as did the number of staff from 30 to 60.
Mr Fairclough enjoyed a good relationship with his staff and his local authority East Sussex County Council but resigned last month after a witch hunt using anti-terrorism legislation left him feeling a broken man. In his resignation letter he said: ‘I feel that I have been discriminated against, harassed, and bullied for exercising my right to lawful free speech and for expressing my philosophical belief in the importance of critical thinking, free speech, and safeguarding children.
‘As a headteacher, I have had a legal duty to safeguard children against harm. My professional field of expertise is child development and education. I have publicly shared my opinion that lockdowns harm children, that I disagree with masking children, and that I feel that the risks from the Covid vaccines for children outweigh any possible benefits. It has therefore been entirely reasonable and relevant for me to express my lawful opinions on these matters in the interest of safeguarding children against harm.’ Other heads agreed privately but 50-year-old Mr Fairclough, a father of four, was the only headteacher of 20,000 in the UK to say so publicly.
‘I first started to lose heart during the pandemic,’ he said. ‘The fear of Covid trumped learning, so children weren’t sitting next to each other and couldn’t share resources. Some schools were having children learning outside in the cold, so they weren’t able to concentrate, and it felt like adults’ fear of dying, which was irrational because we were told early that we were at minimal risk of dying of Covid, meant they were using children in their care as human shields. That made me think that the Department for Education weren’t really bothered about kids at all.’
His lawful response put him under scrutiny at the highest levels. Mr Fairclough found out through freedom of information (FOI) that he had been monitored by the government’s Counter-Disinformation Unit (CDU) and their Department for Counter Extremism, although he was cleared of any wrongdoing by East Sussex County Council.
Some people objected to his negative views on vaccinating children against Covid, opinions expressed outside the school setting, on social media and in podcasts. They fell into four main points, all of which are hard to challenge:
· Healthy children were at low risk of serious illness from Covid. (Office of National Statistics figures show that just six under-tens died between January 2020 and May 2021. They do not say whether the children had underlying health problems. For context, around 1,000 children die on the roads each year.)
· Covid vaccines posed known and very serious risks. (Potentially fatal myocarditis, and pericarditis, inflammation of the heart, are known risks.)
· A child can still catch Covid and spread Covid when vaccinated. (Covid vaccinations were not recommended by the Joint Committee on Vaccination (JCVI) for under-16s, a decision overridden by the chief medical officers in England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.)
· There was no long-term safety data, trials do not finish until this year, and the potential risks outweighed any benefit.
Mr Fairclough said: ‘I tried to communicate with parents who were undecided in a way that didn’t make me sound like I’m mad. I do think there are some in the freedom movement who say things in a way that doesn’t endear themselves to people with a different view.’
In the end 89.4 per cent of five to 11-year-olds remained unvaccinated although the numbers are hard to find and are not reported by the BBC.
So, who complained about this popular and effective headmaster? The first investigation was launched in June 2021. It was made by a group of retired NHS workers on Twitter (now X) whose mission it was to find anyone in education who appeared to be antivax and anti-lockdown. Mr Fairclough does not know who made the second complaint but the third was made by a concerned group of parents and teachers. ‘No parent came to me,’ Mr Fairclough said. ‘I have an open-door policy and they know they can talk to me at any time. I don’t know exactly which staff complained, but I have my suspicions. There was a small group within the school who did not agree with me although most were aligned with my thinking.’
It was December 1 2022 when the third complaint arrived, reported under the Prevent duty, the government initiative that requires all education providers to safeguard learners from extremist ideologies. Mr Fairclough was also reported to the DfE’s Counter-Extremism Division and was being framed as an extremist and potential terrorist, an intimidating move by the local council that left Mr Fairclough traumatised. He was signed off suffering with stress. He said: ‘I found sleeping difficult. I kept dreaming about what was happening and woke up thinking about it. I’m not a terrorist, all I was doing was discussing the alterative narrative.’
We know utopia does not exist and Mr Fairclough had his run-ins. ‘It wasn’t that I never fell out with parents. Say for example they felt like a teacher hadn’t dealt with a bullying issue, then of course they would come in and kick off and I’d have to look into the matter. But what surprised me with the resignation is that even parents that I’d had that kind of fractious relationship with have actually contacted me personally to say, “we’re really gutted that you’re not here any more”. That surprised me. I thought at least one would say good riddance.’
His absence has sent the school into freefall. An Ofsted report carried out in July, seven months after he was signed off, saw West Rise downgraded from ‘Good’ to ‘Requires Improvement’.
Our education system is increasingly focused on learning by rote rather than teaching critical thinking, a skill Mr Fairclough thinks is essential. He said: ‘Education is highly political under the Conservative government, it’s all about acquisition of knowledge to be retained and regurgitated for a memory test on the other side.’
His unusual approach had the full support of parents, the Health and Safety Executive, Ofsted and the media. Some of his pupils gained places at the local agricultural college and now run their own herds in the Sussex South Downs. A number entered media in film, art, and drama, mainly thanks to his ‘Room 13’, where children could go and have complete creative autonomy.
He is not sure what comes next, but he is sure of one thing: advocating for children cost him his much-loved career in our inverted world. He said: ‘Critical thinking and lawful free speech are not dangerous; they go hand in hand in safeguarding children. Open debate on important matters is the bedrock of any democratic society and no one should be pursued for speaking out.’
Mr Fairclough is not giving up on free speech and is crowdfunding to take his former employer to court. You can donate here.
He hopes his future will include writing more books like Wild Thing, which is about how embracing childhood traits into adulthood can lead to happiness. He recently started a Substack which you can see here.
A lawsuit has been amended in California against this US state’s medical boards’ “misinformation powers” – based on a law that is soon to be repealed, and which critics – some of them legal plaintiffs – say allowed the government to prevent them from practicing medicine, the way they were trained to do.
It was one of the rules, called Assembly Bill 2098 (AB 2098), introduced to keep medical professionals in check, in case they felt like speaking their minds freely as insights into Covid were developing.
And since the world has now moved on to other crises, the “forgotten pandemic” censorship laws are getting “quietly” repealed.
But not really, the plaintiffs in this case claim – because of the nature of the repeal of the short-lived AB 2098, made null-and-void on September 14 via Senate Bill 815 (SB 815). California Senator Newsom got to sign all three documents.
However, the repeal – which will not be in effect before the start of 2024 – at the same time incorporates Democrat member of California Assembly Evan Low’s provision that doctors who get accused of “misinformation” can still be punished – “held accountable” – regardless of whether the controversial law was actually applicable.
“The Medical Board of California will continue to maintain the authority to hold medical licensees accountable for deviating from the standard of care and misinforming their patients about COVID-19 treatments,” Low said.
How in the world is this political, ideological, pre-election, and legal gymnastics even supposed to work?
The lawsuit against the bill, Hoang et al. v. Bonta et al., has the plaintiffs represented by California attorney Richard Jaffe.
He had this to say: “Because of the repeal of AB 2098, and the board’s position that it can still sanction the speech targeted by the soon-to-be-repealed law, we are pivoting in our lawsuit and arguing to the judge that they can’t do it under their general statute either because the speech does not change just because the legal theory/statute changes.”
The world clearly has moved to other crises – but it seems, not the California Democrats. And so the plaintiffs in the lawsuit’s amended format are also asking to add more to their ranks. One of the original ones is Children’s Health Defense (CHD).
However absurd the “standard of care” argument that supersedes a law may seem to a layperson, Jaffe is obviously taking it seriously.
The court will hear the arguments related to this new development on November 13.
Hospitalized COVID-19 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) alone, or HCQ plus the antibiotic azithromycin, had significantly lower mortality than those not receiving the drugs, according to a study released this month in New Microbes and New Infections.
Researchers in Belgium report that just 16.7% of COVID-19 patients given HCQ, with or without azithromycin, died within 28 days compared to 25.9% among those not taking HCQ — a 35% lower mortality.
After adjusting for age differences, the risk of death was still 24% lower for HCQ-treated hospitalized patients.
The survival benefit was seen across all ages and was statistically significant.
The results support the efficacy of HCQ and azithromycin in improving outcomes for hospitalized COVID-19 patients. This contrasts with earlier studies using dangerously high HCQ doses that found no benefits.
Who participated in the study?
Led by Dr. Gert Meeus, a nephrologist at AZ Groeninge Hospital, Kortrijk, Belgium, researchers collected data from March 16 to May 20, 2020 — the first few months of the pandemic.
They compared outcomes for 352 COVID-19-positive, HCQ-treated adults hospitalized at AZ Groeninge Hospital with those of 3,533 patients across Belgium who did not receive the drug.
Treated patients averaged 69.7 years versus 73.1 years for the control group. While this age difference favors the younger subjects who face less risk from the virus, this factor was more than offset by the treatment group’s higher incidence of high blood pressure, diabetes, liver and lung diseases, and weakened immunity.
Treated subjects were also more obese — a COVID-19 risk factor — with lower blood oxygen (suggesting severe illness) and higher C-reactive protein levels. C-reactive protein is a blood marker for inflammation and poor COVID-19 outcomes.
During the 28 days following initial treatment, 16.7% of patients who received HCQ, either alone or with azithromycin, died compared with 25.9% in the control group.
How was HCQ administered?
For the study, 299 patients (85%) received HCQ plus azithromycin versus 53 who took HCQ alone. Researchers only prescribed the antibiotic when they suspected bacterial pneumonia. Data for HCQ alone and HCQ plus azithromycin were combined.
Subjects received HCQ as two 400-milligram doses on day one and two 200-milligram doses on days two through five.
Patients younger than 75 years received 500 milligrams of azithromycin for five days. Older patients took 500 milligrams on day 1 and 250 milligrams per day for four days.
88% of patients received the full treatment course but 12% took the drugs for less time, at the caregiver’s discretion, due to side effects or reaching a terminal condition.
Otherwise, side effects observed in 197 patients were mild and mostly stomach issues. One patient had hallucinations and two developed a skin rash.
Thirteen patients dropped out of the study due to side effects, including 4 of 15 who developed heart muscle abnormalities — despite an earlier study reporting an association between HCQ and lower cardiovascular risk.
Nine patients dropped out because of digestive upset. One patient developed an abnormal but nonfatal post-study heart rhythm, but no treated patients experienced sudden death or irregular heartbeat during the study.
How the drugs work
HCQ and azithromycin work together to eliminate the COVID-19 virus, but the drugs may benefit patients in other ways.
Both drugs act on the immune system in ways that may suppress the COVID-19 cytokine storm responsible for much of COVID-19-related illness and death.
HCQ may also prevent blood clots in COVID-19 patients, while azithromycin may prevent additional, non-lung bacterial infections.
HCQ was approved in the U.S. in 1955 to treat malaria, but because of its anti-inflammatory effects it is also prescribed to adults to treat autoimmune diseases like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.
Most serious side effects — including retinopathy, which causes blindness — occur after years of use, while COVID-19 treatments generally last for less than one week.
Meeus designed his study and interpreted his findings to include results that may not have supported the “safety and efficacy” of HCQ.
For example, all patients receiving at least one dose of HCQ were included in the treatment group regardless of whether they completed the study. One dose of HCQ was unlikely to affect their survival, but including such patients would have increased mortality numbers in the treatment group, thereby underestimating HCQ survival benefits.
Excluding very sick patients in a survival study tends to make data appear stronger because fewer deaths invariably occur among healthier subjects. Meeus and coworkers did not do this.
Meeus’ results also likely underestimated the benefits of HCQ treatment by reviewing patients only after hospitalization, when they were already quite sick. COVID-19 treatment experts stress the importance of treatment before patients reach this stage.
This retrospective study associated a current outcome (death) with an earlier effect (receiving HCQ). Retrospective studies are less capable of establishing causation than prospective studies that first look at the intervention or cause and only later for effects.
Another potential study shortcoming involves the statistics investigators chose to report HCQ’s benefits. A reduction in deaths from 25.9% to 16.7% is a 36.5% decrease, but the effect is smaller when survival, not death, is the outcome measured.
Death rates of 25.9% and 16.7% mean that 83.3% of treated and 74.1% of untreated patients survived, for an overall survival benefit under 10%.
Reporting relatively large differences between two small numbers is a common strategy for amplifying modest clinical benefits.
Meeus did not account for the many observational studies carried out by such doctors as Didier Raoult, Vladimir Zelenko, Pierre Kory, Peter McCullough and others using HCQ with azithromycin and/or zinc to treat COVID-19 beginning in 2020 — some with very large practices — all demonstrating significant benefits with early treatment.
The authors described their results as “remarkable” since large HCQ studies during the first pandemic year showed no benefit.
However, where Meeus and co-workers used HCQ at standard doses, the earlier trials used a fourfold higher total dose, including an initial dose seven times higher than the maximum approved dosage.
According to Meeus, other studies (see here, here, and here) using more reasonable HCQ dosing failed because they did not recruit enough subjects to show a statistically significant effect.
One of these studies found a 44% reduction in death at 28 days but included too few patients to be able to claim an HCQ benefit.
Percentage of patients who died in the HCQ group (white bars) vs. the no-HCQ group (black bars) by age group. A survival benefit was seen in all age groups. While about 2.5% of untreated 31- to 44-year-olds died during the study, no treated patients in this age group died. Credit: Gert Meeus et al.
Meeus concluded:
“Our study suggests that, despite the controversy surrounding its use, treatment with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin remains a viable option. The favorable results and reassuring safety data support the need for adequately powered confirmatory randomized controlled trials using low dose hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin.
“Given the pandemic emergency it is reasonable to give this treatment the benefit of the doubt pending the results of these trials or the advent of better treatment options.”
Angelo DePalma, Ph.D., is a science reporter/editor for The Defender.
I would like to open this column by stating that I have long had a great relationship with Amazon, which has sold far more of my books than have ever been sold in bookstores. I have also been extremely grateful to Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing program for empowering me to publish whatever nonfiction books I please, quickly and efficiently, while retaining the rights and earning the best royalty in the business.
In May 2022, Dr. McCullough and I published our book, The Courage to Face COVID-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex, directly on Amazon. Quickly the book became a hit and within a year it had earned over 1000 5-Star Reviews. For almost 3 weeks in July 2022 it was a top 100 seller.
In the autumn of last year, Tony Lyons, President and Publisher of SKYHORSE in New York, graciously offered to bring out a special, handsome hardcover edition with a preface by U.S. presidential candidate, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who warmly endorsed our work.
A bit of Covid fatigue this year caused sales to decline, but in September the book got a second wind as more and more Americans seem to be recognize that Dr. McCullough has been right all along.
To my gratitude and delight, Amazon actually supported the effort by running a deep discount promotion while still paying the same royalty to us—an act of generosity to authors that is unheard of in traditional publishing.
And then, on September 29, seemingly out of nowhere, Amazon Account Review sent me the following notice:
We have temporarily suspended your KDP account because we found offensive content that violates our Content Guidelines in the title(s) listed below:
ASIN: B09ZLVWMD9 –
Title: THE COURAGE TO FACE COVID-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex – Author: John Leake
Upon receiving this message, I humbly beseeched Account Review to restore my account and to let me know what “offensive content” was found in our book. Amazon restored my account and published my latest book—a conventional work of true crime—but refused to reinstate The Courage to Face COVID-19. Yesterday my third appeal was turned down without answering my query about what in our book is offensive.
My question seemed especially pertinent, given that Account Review provided me with a link to its Content Guidelines, which include a section on Offensive Content.
Offensive content
We don’t sell certain content including content that we determine is hate speech, promotes the abuse or sexual exploitation of children, contains pornography, glorifies rape or pedophilia, advocates terrorism, or other material we deem inappropriate or offensive.
Obviously, nothing in our book even remotely touches on any of these subjects. Upon reading this description, it occurred to me that it was a perfection description of 120 Days of Sodom, by the Marquis de Sade, which contains hundreds of pages that glorify the abuse and sexual exploitation of children, violent pornography, and glorifications of rape and pedophilia. I did a quick search for the title, and voila, there it is, for sale on Amazon in three formats.
None of my polite entreaties to Content Review was answered with an explanation of what, in our book, is offensive or in violation of any other published guideline. This strengthened my suspicion that the decision was the result of a sudden imposition of power for which the Content Review staff was not prepared.
Even more stunning than banning my softcover edition was Amazon’s decision to ban Tony Lyons’s SKYHORSE hardcover edition from the site without even sending the publisher notice. He learned of his edition’s demise from me.
This is a developing story about arbitrary censorship and book banning. Generally speaking, Amazon has a robust history of resisting pressure to ban books. Even during the COVID Pandemic, Amazon bucked the censorship regime that was established at Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.
I believe it is no exaggeration to state that Amazon’s decision to ban our work of medical and historical scholarship, carefully vetted by Dr. Peter McCullough—who has published over 600 peer-reviewed papers in top academic medical journals—is the most egregious act of arbitrary censorship in the history of American publishing.
Many works of literature have been banned from public school systems and libraries and censured by religious organizations. However, I cannot find a single example of a banned nonfiction book that contains zero sex, zero violence, zero expletives, zero harshly expressed opinions, and zero assertions that aren’t grounded on rock solid scholarship.
Indeed, the book is a strictly factual narrative based on hundreds of published sources ranging from academic papers to standard works of medical history to documents published by U.S. federal agencies. The longest chapter in the book recounts Dr. McCullough’s U.S. Senate testimony on November 19, 2020.
This is a developing story about a gross infringement of the freedom of speech that is enshrined in the First Amendment of the U.S Constitution. Coincidentally, tomorrow (October 10) I have been invited to address the Republican Women of Greater North Texas about the critical importance of maintaining free speech for the maintenance our Constitutional Republic. I can now speak from very personal experience.
I would like to conclude by stating that I believe this decision is almost certainly the result of outside pressure being brought to bear on Amazon—the sort of outside pressure from the U.S. Executive Branch that was revealed in discovery in Missouri v. Biden.
At companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Amazon, the upper management levels had always included veterans of the national security establishment. But with the new alliance between U.S. national security and social media, the former spooks and intelligence agency officials grew into a dominant bloc inside those companies; what had been a career ladder by which people stepped up from their government experience to reach private tech-sector jobs turned into an ouroboros that molded the two together.
I strongly suspect that the banning of our book from Amazon has the fingerprints of Biden administration or intelligence agency goons all over it.
For those who would still like to purchase our book, please visit our website by clicking on the image below.
Pandemic restrictions were an unmitigated failure, and the evidence base against the politicians and “experts” who imposed them and demanded compliance continues to grow.
And it raises some substantial questions about holding those responsible accountable for their actions. Especially as mask mandates return in certain parts of the country, with hints of more on the way.
Recently a new government report from the United Kingdom was released to little fanfare, which not-so-surprisingly mirrors the fanfare resulting from the release of new data from the CDC itself, showing how vaccine efficacy has fallen to zero.
Finally, Rochelle Walensky did acknowledge publicly that the vaccines couldn’t stop transmission. However it was already far too late to matter.
But all along the agency has strongly stated that the mRNA shots were effective at preventing hospitalizations. Or at least that the latest booster was effective, tacitly acknowledging that the original 2=dose series has lost whatever impact it once had.
What The Evidence Says About NPI’s
The UK’s Health Security Agency (HSA) recently posted a lengthy examination on the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions at preventing or slowing the spread of COVID-19 in the country.
And at the risk of revealing a spoiler alert, it’s not good news for the COVID extremists determined to bring mask mandates back.
The goal of the examination was laid out succinctly; the UK’s HSA intended to use primary studies on NPIs within the community to see how successful or unsuccessful they were at reducing COVID infections.
The purpose of this rapid mapping review was to identify and categorise primary studies that reported on the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) implemented in community settings to reduce the transmission of coronavirus (COVID-19) in the UK.
Streamlined systematic methods were used, including literature searches (using sources such as Medline, Embase, and medRxiv) and use of systematic reviews as sources to identify relevant primary studies.
Unsurprisingly, they found that the evidence base on COVID interventions was exceptionally weak.
In fact, roughly 67 percent of the identified evidence was essentially useless. In fact two-thirds of the evidence identified was modeling.
Two-thirds of the evidence identified was based on modeling studies (100 out of 151 studies).
There was a lack of experimental studies (2 out of 151 studies) and individual-level observational studies (22 out of 151 studies). Apart from test and release strategies for which 2 randomised controlled trials (RCTs) were identified, the body of evidence available on effectiveness of NPIs in the UK provides weak evidence in terms of study design, as it is mainly based on modelling studies, ecological studies, mixed-methods studies and qualitative studies.
This is a key learning point for future pandemic preparedness: there is a need to strengthen evaluation of interventions and build this into the design and implementation of public health interventions and government policies from the start of any future pandemic or other public health emergency.
Modeling, as we know, is functionally useless, given that it’s hopelessly prone to bias, incorrect assumptions and the ideological needs of its creators.
The two paragraphs which followed are equally as important.
Low quality evidence is not something that should be relied upon for decision making purposes, yet that’s exactly what the UK, US and many other countries did. Fauci, the CDC, and others embraced modeling as fact at the beginning of the pandemic. They then repeatedly referenced shoddy, poor quality work because it confirmed their biases throughout its duration, with unsurprising results.
And this government report concurs; stating simply and devastatingly, “there is a lack of strong evidence on the effectiveness of NPIs to reduce COVID-19 transmission, and for many NPIs the scientific consensus shifted over the course of the pandemic.”
Of course the scientific consensus shifted over the course of the pandemic because, as we learned, it became politically expedient for it to shift.
As their paragraphs on the available evidence show, there was little solid, high-quality data showing that NPI’s were having a significant impact on the spread of the virus, a reality that had been predicted by decades of pandemic planning.
But the consensus shifted towards NPIs and away from something approaching Sweden’s strategy or the Great Barrington Declaration, simply because Fauci, the CDC, and other “experts” demanded it shift to suit their ideological aims.
The few high-quality studies on say, masking, that were conducted during the pandemic showed that there was no benefit from mask wearing at an individual or population level. And that is why the Cochrane review came to its now infamous conclusion.
Instead of acknowledging that they were relying on poor quality evidence, the “experts” operated with an unjustified certainty that their interventions were based on following “The Science™.” At every turn, when criticized or questioned, they would default back to an appeal to authority; that the consensus in the scientific community unequivocally believed that the evidence showed that lockdowns, mandates, travel restrictions, and other NPIs were based on the best available information.
After initially determining that the UK should follow Sweden’s example and incorporate a more hands-off approach that relied on protecting the elderly while allowing immunity to build up amongst the younger, healthy populations, Boris Johnson panicked, at the behest of Neil Ferguson, and terrified expert groups. Tossing out decades of planning out of fear, while claiming publicly to be following science.
Instead, a systemic, detailed review of the evidence base relied on by those same experts has now concluded that there never was any high-quality information suggesting that pandemic policies were justifiable. Only wishful thinking from an incompetent, arrogant, malicious “expert” community, and unthinking, unblinking compliance from terrified politicians using restrictions and mandates without care or concern for adverse effects.
While this new report wasn’t specifically designed to determine how effective NPIs were in reducing transmission, it’s clear and obvious conclusions give away that answer too.
If it were easy to prove that COVID policies and mandates had a positive impact on the spread of the virus, there would be dozens of high-quality studies showing a benefit. And those high-quality studies would be covered in this report, with a strong recommendation to reinstate such mandates in future pandemics.
Instead, there’s nothing.
Just exhortations to do better next time, to follow the actual high-quality evidence and not guesswork.
Based on how little accountability there’s been for the “experts” and politicians who lied about “The Science™,” there’s little doubt that when presented with the next opportunity they’ll be sure to handle it in exactly the same way.
In December 1945 and January 1946, the British Mandate authorities carried out an extensive survey of Palestine, in support of the work of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine. The results were published in the Survey of Palestine, which has been scanned and made available online by Palestine Remembered; all 1300 pages can be read here.
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The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
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