PHYSICIANS TRY TO HEAL THE DOCTOR-PATIENT RELATIONSHIP
Interview begins at 11 minutes:
The Great Debate that won’t happen
Kennedy vs. Hotez might be a narrative-changer.
BY BILL RICE, JR. | JUNE 18, 2023
In south Alabama we have an expression: “If you’re scared, say you’re scared.”
Well, Dr. Peter Hotez – one of the best-known vaccine advocates and defenders of all the Covid mitigation measures – is obviously scared to death. He just needs to come out and admit it.
What scares Dr. Hotez is an invitation for him (Hotez) to debate presidential candidate and contrarian Covid expert Robert Kennedy, Jr. on Joe Rogan’s ultra-popular podcast show.
Apparently, Hotez kept bad-mouthing “disinformation super-spreader” Kennedy and Rogan finally had enough.
Rogan offered to donate $100,000 to Hotez’s favorite charity if Hotez would just come on his show and, in a debate with no time-table, debate Kennedy on vaccine effectiveness, safety and all the other allegedly “settled” Covid science.
As I write, the debate invitation has gone viral on Twitter with plenty of other wealthy people (like Steve Kirsch) ponying up money to make the debate happen. At last look, Dr. Hotez could net $1.5 million for his favorite charity by simply talking to Kennedy and Rogan for two or so hours.
Talk about easy money.
Needless to say, Kennedy is game for a “cordial” debate and, needless to say, he doesn’t need to be bribed to participate. He’ll do it for free and pay his own expenses to show up in the studio.
Truth be told (there’s that word – “truth”) … Nobody is surprised that Dr. Hotez is running from a genuine debate on Covid topics. This is because no expert in America has participated in a genuine debate on Covid topics in 40 months.
Apparently, one new feature of our “New Normal” “scientific method” is that real debates are no longer necessary.
In fact, they are strongly discouraged, which is exactly why Facebook, Google, YouTube, the CDC, “Joe Biden’s” White House and the corporate press have been pushing for censorship on steroids for so long.
For those who haven’t picked up on this yet, censorship also precludes real debates.
Hotez and every “expert” and authority of his ilk has been saying for almost four years that people like Kennedy who are spreading “disinformation” and “misinformation” are potentially killing and harming massive numbers of people with their false Covid claims.
According to the experts, the claims made by Kennedy, Kirsch (and Bill Rice Jr.!) are ridiculous, preposterous, obviously false, easily discredited, etc.
Such claims are interesting as they suggest that any debate with a Covid skeptic would be a lay-up or gimme to win. Even a cave man could humiliate RFK, Jr. in a debate about real science.
So, if victory would be so easy – and if one can make a couple million for his favorite charity – why not do this?
Speaking for myself, I’m tired of acting like I’m obtuse when I’m not. We all know the answer: The Dr. Hotez’s of the world are scared to death of a real debate.
If this isn’t a giant “tell” about these frauds and charlatans nothing is.
Also, every one of them are pro-censorship.
Facebook has been censoring content left and right for three-plus years, but Hotez’s cabal of “influencers” are demanding that Congress and the White House make social media companies censor even more content/speech that they don’t like.
The entire justification for North Korea-style censorship is that the disinformation spreaders are harming people. Presumably, Hotez’s noble goal is to save lives and shut up all the “disinformation” spreaders.
Well, what would shut them up more than a pay-per-view prize fight between one of the leading advocates of the Status-Quo narrative and the best known Covid skeptic in the world?
Once Dr. Hotez wipes the floor with Kennedy, every other vaccine super spreader will crawl back into a cave and keep his mouth shut from here on out.
My side will be disgraced and humiliated … and every neutral person will now know this.
In one fell swoop, the “disinformation” movement will suffer a lethal blow. Millions of lives will be saved because, in the future, everyone will know that Dr. Peter Hotez and Dr. Anthony Fauci were exactly right with everything they said about Covid.
Not only will Kennedy lose this “science” debate, his hopes of pulling an upset and winning the White House will also go down the toilet.
Dr. Hotez would be THE hero to all the groups, companies and bureaucracies who are having nightmares about Kennedy beating their chosen candidate, “Joe Biden.”
Kennedy’s Children Health Defense non-profit, which has been growing by leaps and bounds, would wither up and die.
Everyone would know that not only did the Covid vaccines save millions of lives, they’d also know that the massive spike in autism cases in recent decades had nothing to do with vaccines and the flu vaccine – which is now being questioned by more and more Americans – would once again be perceived as a must-get annual shot.
Hotez could also put to bed the claim that his side is anti-free speech because they would be allowing Kennedy and Rogan to deploy their dad-blasted free speech in said “debate.”
“See, we are NOT censors and we do believe in free speech and genuine debates in our democracy,” Hotez could show the world in this debate.
For all these reasons, it would seem Dr. Hotez and his side would achieve a panoply of positive, life-saving results, with no down-side whatsoever.
The only downside might be if, Hotez, in fact got annihilated in this debate and every American who witnessed the event started questioning all the claims the experts had made in the last four years (or decades for that matter).
But this scenario can’t be a possibility because the science is so “settled” and Kennedy is such a “wacko” and conspiracy theorist that he would have no chance of prevailing in any debate … right?
Of course, we all know Dr. Hotez knows he’d get his ass whipped in any debate with Kennedy. Fauci knows this, The New York Times knows this, Bill Gates knows this, every commentator at MSNBC and CNN knows this.
“Whatever you do, do NOT debate Robert Kennedy on Covid topics!” they are all now screaming at Dr. Hotez.
If the debate is held, it will set Internet ratings records. The fact that Hotez is running from said debate is already giving another huge boost to the presidential campaign of RFK, Jr, who is having no trouble going around the MSM “gatekeepers of the news,” who all despise and fear him.
In fact, that’s another reason the debate can’t be allowed. It’s almost a given that RFK, Jr. would go off on the captured mainstream press in said debate.
Dr. Hotez would be the one defending the credibility of The New York Times and singing the praises of Big Pharma, which has of course always been as honest as the day is long.
If enough Americans keep calling Dr. Hotez a sissy, maybe this will goad the previously cocky doctor into taking the bait and actually debating Kennedy.
If so, this might qualify as a game-changer and give the world it’s very first honest discussion of Covid policies. It might also help elect a president who genuinely wants to dismantle the Military Industrial Complex and the Science/Medicine Industrial Complex.
But my bet is Dr. Hotez won’t debate.
There’s another expression we’ve all heard: “You can run, but you can’t hide.” Well, in our surreal New-Normal times, apparently the experts and authorities CAN run and they can hide. That’s what they’ve been doing for 40 months and, as far as I can tell, they are still in power. So that strategy is working perfectly.
Can We Please Have Some Honesty About Trump’s Lockdowns?
By Alan Dowd | Brownstone Institute | June 15, 2023
The salvos being lobbed between former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis over their respective handling of the COVID-19 pandemic are at once troubling, encouraging, and revealing. Citizens who believe in individual liberty, individual responsibility, and constitutional government should listen to what these men and all policymakers are saying about COVID-19 today—and equally important—remember how they responded in 2020.
Causes and Consequences
With global health experts initially warning that the virus was killing 3.4 percent of those infected—and the now-disgraced British epidemiologist Neil Ferguson churning out computer models that offered policymakers a false choice between mass death or mass lockdowns—Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services drafted a document aimed at containing COVID. It was on March 13, 2020.
Stamped “not for public distribution or release” and indeed kept from public view for several months, that document would guide decision-makers at every level of government and every sector of the economy in dealing with COVID-19.
In March 2020, the Trump administration unveiled elements of the document under the banner “15 Days to Slow the Spread.” Among other things, the document introduced us to phrases like “social distancing,” “workplace controls,” “aggressive containment,” and “non-pharmaceutical interventions” at the federal, state, local and private-sector level. These would include “home isolation strategies,” “cancellation of almost all sporting events, performances, and public and private meetings,” “school closures,” and “stay-at-home directives for public and private organizations.”
A PDF sheet handed out at the March 16 press conference said: “In states with evidence of community transmission, bars, restaurants, food courts, gyms and other indoor and outdoor venues where groups of people congregate should be closed.”
This was the blueprint for locking down and closing down our free and open society. With that one sentence, an attempt to nationalize the pandemic response, the Bill of Rights became a dead letter, free association was abolished, and free enterprise itself was put on hold.
It’s no surprise that, when faced with estimates of such a high infection-fatality rate (IFR) and such terrifying computer models, some of the people advising the president would recommend locking down.
What is surprising and telling is that, apparently, the president didn’t respond to those recommendations with questions that would serve to defend individual liberty, encourage individual responsibility and challenge the default position of locking down—questions like: “Haven’t we, as a society, dealt with viruses like this in the past? Didn’t something like this happen in the late 1960s and late 1950s?
What did government do—and not do—back then? How dependable are those IFR numbers? Can we trust those computer models? Are the costs of locking down—economic, societal well-being, individual well-being, constitutional, institutional—worth the benefits? Are there any computer models on that? What are the trade-offs? Is there anything in the scientific canon that challenges this lockdown strategy?”
Americans don’t expect their Presidents to have all the answers. What they expect—and need—from their Presidents is a breadth of knowledge and experience to ask those kinds questions, the capacity to build a diverse team to help answer such questions and to challenge the answers, the ability to instill a sense of calm in the face of chaos, and enough wisdom to navigate a crisis without first worsening it.
Trump did not display any of those characteristics in mid March 2020, which came as no surprise to some of us. There was a revealing moment during the 2016 campaign when Trump was asked, “Who do you talk to for military advice?” Candidate Trump answered, “I watch the shows”—as in the cable-news shouting matches, where the loudest voice or scariest scenario or biggest bang or best one-liner or sharpest elbow or nastiest rejoinder or last word wins. That’s no way to learn about or understand issues of war and peace, life and death. But it revealed much about how a President Trump would respond in a time of crisis.
He seemed to have no intellectual curiosity, no sense of history, no nuance or depth, no wisdom, not a modicum of humility to ask questions. And so, when the COVID crisis slammed into America, Trump was influenced by the last words he heard, impressed by the most maximalist course of action, and drawn to the loudest, biggest-bang advisors—people who had no interest in anything beyond their enclaved neighborhood of expertise, no grasp of the law of unintended consequences, no desire to try to balance public health with individual liberty.
The consequences were devastating—far worse than COVID-19 itself. Aimed at saving life, the lockdowns—ironically but predictably—were a hideous destroyer of life and living. The evidence is literally everywhere: a 25.5 percent increase in alcohol-related deaths, a 30 percent surge in homicides, huge spikes in domestic violence and child abuse, thousands of preventable cancer deaths and heart-disease deaths, decreased life expectancy and decreased earnings for a generation of children, every level of government utterly failed, hundreds of thousands of businesses shuttered, millions left jobless, tens of millions of Americans barred from gathering for worship, the devaluing of work, the expansion of government, the acceleration of dependency.
As a recent study conducted by scientists at Johns Hopkins University and Lund University concludes, the lockdowns were a “policy failure of gigantic proportions…the biggest policy mistake in modern times.”
Yet in the wake of all that wreckage and destruction, we are left to conclude that Trump has no second thoughts, no regrets, no apologies, no lessons learned, no remorse, no sense of responsibility.
While he claims, “I never was for mandates,” and his campaign gushes that “President Trump saved millions of lives, opposed mandates and embraced the federalist system to allow states to make the decisions best for their people,” his record and rhetoric say otherwise.
For example—ignoring factors such as age, comorbidities and population size—Trump recently jabbed, “How about the fact that [DeSantis] had the third most deaths of any state having to do with the China virus? Even [New York Governor Andrew] Cuomo did better.”
He’s comparing here a lockdown state—a state that followed his HHS “guidelines,” quarantined the healthy and tried to control a virus through government coercion—with an individual-liberty state. And he’s applauding the former while criticizing the latter.
“I did the right thing,” he has said about his response to COVID. Almost boasting, he huffs, “We closed the country down…I had to shut down.”
But it wasn’t the right thing to do—not in light of the prescient warnings of people like Donald Henderson, not in light of the Constitution, not in light of history.
He did not have to shut the country down. Other free societies did not imitate the PRC and lock down in response to deadly new viruses—Taiwan, South Korea and Sweden in 2020, America in 1957 and 1968.
And while Trump says he never imposed mandates, his administration drafted and disseminated the blueprint for locking down—a blueprint almost every state followed. If he “had to shut it down,” to use his words, did he do so with gentle suggestions? In fact, Trump himself used the bully pulpit to publicly scold governors for ending lockdowns, especially Georgia Governor Brian Kemp. As Kemp tried to pry open his state after a month of lockdowns, Trump warned him he was “in violation” of the administration’s “phase one guidelines.” This had a chilling effect on other governors who wanted to follow Kemp’s lead. So much for “the federalist system.”
The reality is that by bringing in Scott Atlas—who was using reason and facts to fight the mass psychosis unleashed by the lockdown herd—in August 2020, Trump was tacitly admitting his mistake in handing over the reins of America’s government and economy to unelected public-health officials.
But by then it was too late. In their refusal to allow a return to normalcy and their Orwellian lexicon—“15 days to slow the spread…30 days to slow the spread…the next two weeks are critical…essential workers…together apart…follow the science…six feet apart or six feet under…shelter in place…no mask no service…proof of vaccination required…get the shot and get back to normal”—we were reminded of the human tendency to control other humans, the penetrating potency of fear, and the state’s default desire to expand its reach and role. Once these pathologies are let loose, as they were in March 2020, they are not easily or quickly subdued.
The New Normal
DeSantis—a kind of stand-in for all of us who have a default belief in individual liberty and individual responsibility—initially deferred to Washington’s mandates and threats masquerading as “guidelines.” He says he regrets not challenging Trump and the high priests of scientism from the outset. He deserves credit not only for admitting his initial reaction was wrong, not only for changing course once he recognized what the lockdowns were doing to America and Americans, but also for making this a front-and-center issue today.
Although the Trump camp has resorted to a “My opponent did it too” defense, the New York Times reported in spring 2020 on DeSantis’s “resistance to closures throughout the coronavirus pandemic.” DeSantis reopened and returned his state to normalcy so early that people like Cuomo attacked him: “You played politics with this virus, and you lost,” Cuomo preened in mid-2020. In his backslapping exchange with Trump, Cuomo recently added, “Donald Trump tells the truth…Florida’s policy of denial allowed COVID to spread, and that’s why they had a very large second wave.”
But the numbers tell a different story. “Florida had less excess mortality than California or New York,” as DeSantis points out. Plus, a study conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research, using CDC data, found free Florida’s age-adjusted COVID deaths per 100,000 (265) to be far lower than locked-down New York’s (346).
“Leaders,” DeSantis argues, “don’t subcontract out their leadership to health bureaucrats like Dr. Fauci.” He bluntly calls “Fauci-ism” and its lockdowns “wrong” and “destructive.” He openly wonders why Trump—best known before his presidency for his trademark tagline “You’re fired!”—couldn’t bring himself to fire Anthony Fauci or at least shut down the White House Coronavirus Taskforce. And he challenges Americans—the tens of millions who were impoverished, broken, left alone by the lockdowns—to wrestle with an unsettling idea: “If [Trump] thinks Cuomo handled it better, that’s an indication if something like this were to happen again, he would double down and do what he did in 2020.”
This isn’t about supporting DeSantis or any other candidate. It’s about discovering who has learned from history and who would repeat the mistakes of March 2020. Every candidate running for every federal office and statewide office should be asked where they stand on this fundamental issue—because there will be other viruses, other pandemics, other computer models that tempt or terrify those in power. In a nation founded on individual liberty and individual responsibility, lockdowns cannot become the new-normal response to such events.
Alan Dowd is an essayist and a Senior Fellow at the Sagamore Institute in Indianapolis.
HHS is Still Wasting Money Fighting Online Covid “Disinformation”
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | June 17, 2023
Apparently, Covid discussions are still a thing worth cracking down on. That’s at least according to The Biden administration, which is injecting $500,000 into Texas Woman’s University as part of a grant program aimed at curbing COVID-19 “misinformation” and “disinformation” allegedly aimed at Hispanics, according to funding records reviewed by the Washington Examiner. The grant aims “to expand research on mitigating the effect of misinformation and disinformation” regarding “COVID-19 prevention and treatment initiatives among Hispanics.”
Timeline: Kicking off on May 10 and set to wrap up in April 2024, this grant is part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)’s Food and Drug Administration’s portfolio. It’s part of Biden’s broader push to censor alleged disinformation by joining forces with social media platforms on content moderation – a move likened to “censorship” by some Republicans.
What GOP says: This funding allocation may prod GOP lawmakers to probe deeper into the Biden administration’s methods in countering certain types of speech. House Republicans, according to the Washington Examiner, are considering wielding the appropriations process as a tool to block federal agencies from pumping money into domestic initiatives tagged as combating “disinformation.”
What HHS did before: In 2021, HHS, spearheaded by Secretary Xavier Becerra, allegedly dabbled in misinformation tracking, by offering guidance to Twitter and Facebook on handling virus-related content. The US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy admitted in an August 2021 call with education groups, that the government was “working to combat misinformation in many ways, one being working with tech companies.”
Skeptical voices: Brian Harrison, a former HHS chief of staff under Trump and a current GOP Texas state House member, communicated his skepticism to the Washington Examiner: “I have no confidence this is anything more than Biden’s HHS spending money we don’t have on government censorship efforts.”
Inside the project: Texas Woman’s University’s venture consists of crafting a “social network analysis” to scrutinize “misinformation consumed by the Hispanic community.” It involves conducting focus groups, creating “an economic impact analysis of proposed informational strategies for Hispanics,” and establishing a “longitudinal misinformation/disinformation index.” The study, set in El Paso, Texas, is also sifting through social media content in both English and Spanish.
Deja vu?: The aforementioned “index” has set off alarm bells due to its echo of a tool from the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which previously backed the Global Disinformation Index, a British entity that faced criticism for supposedly operating blacklists of conservative media outlets.
HHS’s stance: In response, HHS spokeswoman Anne Feldman said: “HHS does not censor speech.”
Roles of Bromelain and Curcumin in Battling Recurrent SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Exposures
Natural Products have Strong Rationale for Use Post-COVID-19 and Vaccine Syndromes
By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse | June 16, 2023
I find it interesting that a large group of post-COVID-19 acute sequalae are occurring in those who have taken failed COVID-19 vaccines. We are a long way off from definitive clinical trials of multidrug strategies for patients who have had multiple exposures to the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein via vaccination or recurrent COVID-19.
Kritis et al point out:
“Curcumin (diferuloylmethane) is a natural phenol found in turmeric (Curcuma longa), a member of the ginger family of plants [4]. Curcumin modulates inflammation preventing the subsequent cytokine storm by inhibiting multiple transcription factors such as nuclear factor kappa B (NF-kB) and signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT-3), and downregulating the proinflammatory cytokines, as this has been demonstrated in human macrophages after influenza virus infection [4,6]. Additionally, curcumin inhibits ACE modulating angiotensin II synthesis and downregulating inflammation, while it also promotes fibrinolysis and the anticoagulation process [4,6,7] (Fig. 1). The antiviral actions of curcumin against multiple viruses (influenza and hepatitis viruses, herpes viruses, human papilloma virus, human immunodeficiency virus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus and other coronaviruses), bacteria and fungi have been established by experimental evidence [8]. Remarkably, recent evidence from in silico studies has demonstrated that curcumin prevents SARS-CoV-2 entry into cells by blocking the viral binding sites and the cell ligands (spike protein, ACE-2 receptors and basigin), downregulating trans-membrane serine protease 2 (TMPRSS-2), and by interfering with viral replication through the interaction with various viral proteins [4]. However, the minimal absorption of curcumin following oral administration presents a major limitation in its bioavailability [6].
Bromelain is a cysteine protease, isolated from the pineapple stem (Ananas comosus) [9]. Traditionally, it has been used for its anti-inflammatory and healing effects in cases of arthritis and injury, while it has been approved in Europe for the debridement of burn wounds. Experimental studies have demonstrated that bromelain presents unique immunomodulatory actions: 1) downregulation of the pro-inflammatory prostaglandin E2 (PGE-2) through inhibition of NF-kB and cyclooxygenase 2 (COX-2); 2)upregulation of the anti-inflammatory PGE-1; 3) activation of inflammatory mediators (interleukin 1b, interleukin-6, tumor necrosis factor-a and interferon-g) as an acute response to cellular stress, but also inhibition of inflammatory mediators in states of overt cytokine production; 4) modulation of T cell responses in vitro and in vivo; and 5) enhancement of T-cell dependent antigenspecific B cell antibody responses [5,10e14]. Importantly, bromelain exerts dose-dependent anticoagulant effects: 1) downregulation of PGE-2 and thromboxane A2 (TXA2), thus leading to relative excess of prostacyclin; 2) promotion of fibrinolysis by stimulating the conversion of plasminogen to plasmin and prevention of platelet aggregation. Bromelain also hydrolyzes bradykinin and reduces kininogen and bradykinin levels in serum and tissues, improving inflammation and edema as shown in animal studies [15]. Notably, the latter action supports a potential role of bromelain in alleviating COVID-19 symptoms such as cough, fever and pain, and the more serious implications of inflammation, thrombosis and edema. The effect of bromelain on PGE-2 inhibition exceeds that of prednisone and aspirin, presenting very low toxicity and no major side effects. Interestingly, a recent experimental study demonstrated that bromelain inhibits infection of VeroE6 cells by SARS-CoV-2 through blocking the virus binding and entry into cells via downregulation of ACE-2 and TMPRSS2 expression, and cleavage of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, presenting a novel promising therapeutic option that warrants further investigation.”
In summary, the combination of curcumin and bromelain are well positioned as supplements in people who are getting repetitive COVID-19/Spike protein exposure. Future randomized trials will elucidate the clinical benefits in specific applications.
Kritis P, Karampela I, Kokoris S, Dalamaga M. The combination of bromelain and curcumin as an immune-boosting nutraceutical in the prevention of severe COVID-19. Metabol Open. 2020 Dec;8:100066. doi: 10.1016/j.metop.2020.100066. Epub 2020 Nov 13. PMID: 33205039; PMCID: PMC7661945.
Pandemic and Panopticon: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State
By Janet Levy | American Thinker | April 20, 2023
The pandemic of 2020 saw the imposition of shocking restrictions. For the first time, healthy people were confined to their homes. Vaccines cleared for emergency use – meaning not rigorously tested – were forced on all citizens. Debate, even by scientists, was censored. Refusal to obey these arbitrary impositions could mean arrest, legal action, or, as Dr. Aaron Kheriaty found out, losing one’s job.
A psychiatry professor in good standing at the University of California at Irvine (UCI), Dr. Kheriaty became persona non grata when he demurred to the mandatory vaccine policy, claiming natural immunity as a Covid-recovered individual. Not caring for scientific debate, the university declared him a “threat to the health and safety of the community,” suspended him without pay, barred him from campus, and eventually fired him.
It did not matter that his psychiatry clerkship was the highest rated clinical course at UCI’s medical school; that he’d been chosen keynote speaker to address incoming medical students; and that when the pandemic broke out, he had risked his life to work long hours at the hospital, often uncompensated, while many colleagues stayed home in safety.
Uncowed, Dr. Kheriaty sued the university. In a more far-reaching action, he authored The New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State, a sober analysis and exposure of the tyranny of pandemic policies and the devastation they wrought. The book traces the roots of state interference in, and control of, the biomedical aspects of citizens’ lives to utilitarian ideas that began with Galton and Darwin, and trickled into eugenics, which he says is falsely viewed as entirely a creation of the Nazis when in fact American states were enforcing sterilization from the 1900s to the 1960s.
The core idea, he says, is this: the freedom of a citizen to make health and life decisions can be annulled by the state for the greater good, especially during emergencies. The questions it raises are: Who makes these decisions and on what basis? Who decides what is the greater good? Who is to be held responsible for errors of judgement? What checks and balances do we have, then, against the dictatorial inclinations of the powerful? Ancillary to the idea, he says, is the dangerous circular logic of the state of exception: those who declare an emergency in which citizens’ rights – including the right to question the declaration – stand suspended will believe that in that instance it is morally and politically justified!
We saw all that playing out during the pandemic. Kheriaty observes that the global elite and other political entities, in unbridled collaboration with intelligence and police powers, promoted the acceptance of biomedical surveillance. None of the extreme measures – lockdown, school closure, mandatory masking, vaccine mandates and passports – were subject to debate. No benchmarks were set to justify the emergency or identify when it would end. In fact, America continues to remain in a state of emergency (until May 11th).
Compliance was achieved through propaganda, policing, and surveillance. Guilt – Don’t Kill Granny – and Mao-style rousing – 15 Days to Stop the Spread – were deployed. Six-foot social distancing and curtailment of gatherings to no more than 10 people were imposed with no explanation of where these magic numbers came from. Human contact was redefined as a source of contagion. Exposure could build natural immunity, but this wasn’t acknowledged, for it would have potentially halved the profits of the $100 billion Covid vaccine industry.
Kheriaty identifies the characteristics of the biosecurity paradigm:
- a hypothetical risk, magnified to worst-case scenario to adduce grounds for maximum behaviorial control;
- systematic imposition of control on the entire citizenry, instead of vulnerable subsets;
- catastrophizing, in order to justify intrusive surveillance and the use of police and military action; and
- a merging of public health and the military-intelligence-industrial complex in developing and implementing tracking and data-mining capabilities.
Surveillance is the backbone of dictatorial regimes, and it was no different during the pandemic. In 2021, evidence emerged that the CIA had used digital surveillance to gather information on Americans sans judicial oversight or congressional approval. There were no safeguards to protect civil liberties. Such scenarios have long been envisioned – as far back as 1999, a possible smallpox outbreak was studied. Exercises such as Dark Winter, Atlantic Storm, Clade X, and Event 201 followed. They simulated imposition of martial law, detention of citizens, control of messaging, censoring dissent, enforcing mandates, and surveillance during public health crises. Recommendations to increase state power and use police or military intervention were subsequently embodied in the 2002 U.S. Public Health Security & Bioterrorism Preparedness & Response Act.
The religion of scientism took hold as Dr. Anthony Fauci, former chief medical advisor to the President, reframed the narrative on Covid, shifting the focus from the virus to viewing humanity as a vector. Fauci and a set of scientists and technocrats with broad powers arrogated to themselves a monopoly on knowledge and expertise. Lacking rational explanation, they used force, defamation of critics, and dubious promises of future outcomes to obtain public conformity to the security and surveillance measures.
The vast influence of Big Pharma over governments, the research establishment, and media, says Kheriaty, cannot be understated. Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson are wealthier than most countries, with vast sums available for lobbying. In 2020, 72 senators and 302 congressional representatives cashed campaign checks from the pharmaceutical industry. Biomedical researchers and medical journal editors receive payments from pharma. In a nine-year-period, two-thirds of all FDA reviewers took positions in the industry they regulated. The National Institute of Health, which owns half of the Moderna vaccine patent, chose to conduct internal testing of the vaccine rather than leave it to independent university-based researchers. Media acquiescence was achieved through $1 billion-worth of vaccine advertisements, paid for in taxpayer dollars!
Kheriaty goes so far as to assert that the lockdown was driven by an economic agenda disguised as public health protocol. It helped Big Pharma, multinationals, and the global elite who control them achieve the largest transfer of wealth in history by eliminating competition and spelling doom for small business.
The ultimate plan, devised by the global elite, is for a new world order, shifting government authority from sovereign states to powerful NGOs like the World Economic Forum (WEF), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Health Organization (WHO). Plans are afoot for a WHO-driven international pandemic treaty tied to a digital ID system, while IMF is promoting central bank digital currency (CBDC), which will allow complete tracking of monetary transactions. WEF chairman Klaus Schwab nurses transhumanist dreams, saying “we will not change what we do” but “who we are,” through gene- and bio-engineering.
The concluding chapter suggests ways of avoiding totalitarian emergencies and the abyss of the biomedical security state. He suggests strict limits on the declaration and control of emergencies, incorporating more checks and balances if necessary. He calls for substantive institutional reform that will eliminate the revolving door between Big Pharma and federal agencies. Besides, he says, the NIH monopoly must be broken, perhaps by distributing research grants to 50 state institutes of health that will focus on issues of local concern. Other ideas include provision of accurate, comprehensive information to allow people to give informed consent; allowing doctors to prescribe off-label or repurposed drugs and provide individualized care; holding Big Pharma accountable by bringing back product liability.
Freedom is at stake, as we discovered during the pandemic. Dr. Kheriaty lost his job, without a chance to defend himself, for daring to dissent. This – or much worse – can happen to any of us if we allow America to become the biomedical security state the global elite want to transform the world into.
No inquiry would be better than this inquiry
It doesn’t look good for balance or evidence when the Covid-19 inquiry is asking for lateral flow tests and masks
BY LAURA DODSWORTH | JUNE 13, 2023
The first Covid-19 inquiry public hearing will be held today, following the preliminary hearings which began in February. The inquiry will call witnesses to give evidence under oath and they will then be questioned by barristers and the chair, Baroness Hallett.
There is no deadline for the inquiry’s conclusion. It is an eye-wateringly expensive investigation, currently estimated to cost £114 million, but it will potentially run to more than the Bloody Sunday inquiry which was nearly £200 million. 63 lawyers are working directly for the inquiry and a further 100 are named as representatives. MP Graham Stringer has commented that this is a ‘very expensive and very bloated’ inquiry and it may be used to ‘kick things into [the] very long grass’.
It is important not to pre-judge the outcome of the inquiry, but it has been increasingly difficult to be hopeful for the inquiry’s fairness and value for money. After the imbalance of the modules and core participants, the first serious dark cloud to descend was the lamentable list of 150 questions put by Baroness Hallett to Boris Johnson. Now, they are only questions and we don’t have the answers yet, but to give you an idea, question 45 was particularly chilling:
45. To what extent did the UK Government have regard during the period January to March 2020 to the response of other countries to Covid-19? Did you consider taking more stringent measures in response to Covid-19 such as those seen in, for example, Taiwan, Singapore, New Zealand etc? What, if any, assumptions were made about how such measures would (or would not) work in the UK?
Why not Sweden? It did not impose strict lockdowns, or close schools for under 16s and currently has the one of the world’s lowest excess mortality figures. This inquiry appears to favour stringency above existing pandemic planning, minimum economic and social disruption, and low excess deaths.
But there was worse to come. If you thought that the curtain had closed on Covid safety pantomime, think again. Broadcaster Julia Hartley-Brewer has tweeted that the Covid-19 inquiry policy is for staff and visitors to take weekly lateral flow tests if they attend daily, and test in advance for individual days. The inquiry’s Covid policy goes further than government recommendations, asking those who test positive to stay away. The largely pointless face masks are welcome. The air will be purified, sanitising stations available and a ‘disinfectant fogging treatment will be used on the surfaces in the hearing room, viewing room and other rooms each evening’.
While some of the attendees who have lost loved ones to Covid may appreciate these gestures, they are nevertheless gestures. The Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry, for instance, does not publish such a ‘thorough’ Covid policy.
Psychologists found lockdown in itself was a primary reason why so many people were willing to abide by the rules from the start – believing the threat must be very severe if the government was willing to impose such drastic measures. In other words, ‘if the government is doing this, it must be really bad’. This supposition was reinforced by a concerted behavioural psychology campaign, a blitzkrieg of advertising, Downing Street briefings, unbalanced media coverage, the Covid death data dashboard, the most punitive laws and fines since the Dark Ages and the ongoing restrictions, tiers, rules and isolating lockdowns.
And now the people running the inquiry think we need more lateral flow tests and masks. The country has been institutionalised by Covid fear-mongering and the inmates are now running the asylum inquiry.
After dressing up in masks, taking weekly lateral flow tests for years and processing the answers to biased questions, the inmates at the inquiry will simply deduce that the walls were not ‘funny’ enough, not built early or high enough. Next time there is a pandemic, people will be able to say ‘Baroness Hallett’s report stated that the UK government didn’t lock down fast – or hard – enough. We won’t make that mistake again!’ There will be no redemption, just a long, hard sentence, swiftly imposed. Once again, lives will be ruined, not saved.
It would be better to have no inquiry than this inquiry.
Dr. McCullough Testifies in the Pennsylvania Senate
Four Domains of COVID-19 Vaccine Injury Syndromes Revealed
By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse | June 9, 2023
On Friday June 9, 2023, I returned to the Pennsylvania Senate on request by former military officer and American hero, Senator Doug Mastriano (R-33). The session was co-chaired by Senator Cris Dush (R-25). Co-presenters included Steve Kirsch, Founder of the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation, and attorney Tom Renz. I organized my comments along the lines of this outline:
- Update on the US design and blueprint of SARS-CoV-2 from Baric et al at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, funding by the NIH and outsourcing of the research plans via the EcoHealth Alliance to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, in Wuhan, China.
- COVID-19 vaccine injury syndromes
- Cardiovascular
- Neurological
- Thrombotic
- Immunological
- Questions from Senators and Representatives answered
- Shedding
- Risk benefit analysis of COVID-19 vaccines
- Failure of vaccine efficacy
- Reason why SARS-CoV-2 was created
- Global results of mass indiscriminate COVID-19 vaccination—winners and losers
United States: Fifty Little Dictatorships
Brownstone Institute | June 11, 2023
Historically, a public policy catastrophe like the Covid response would lead to reform aimed at curtailing the powers that leadership abused. The Teapot Dome scandal led to increased regulation from the House Ways and Means Committee. The Vietnam War prompted the War Powers Resolution of 1973. Watergate caused Congress to strengthen the Freedom of Information Act.
But what if the government had responded to Iran-Contra by increasing the president’s ability to circumvent federal arms embargoes? In the wake of the Johnstown Flood, what if lawmakers’ reaction had been to make it more difficult for victims to recover for their damages?
We’d consider the rulers delusional and corrupt, callous to the damage that they inflicted on the people they purport to represent. It would be worse than dereliction; it would indicate that they relished the damage or remained beholden to interests averse to the general public.
It is now clear that those responsible for the Covid response aren’t looking for amnesty or forgiveness; they seek a government structure that codifies their authoritarian impulses and a legal system that offers citizens no means of demanding accountability from their rulers. Publicly, they are searching for any “emergency” to increase their power. Privately, they are looking to put that system into law.
With the East Coast enveloped in smoke, the political class immediately saw the temporary crisis as an opportunity to implement permanent change. Despite evidence that arson caused the wildfires in Quebec, the same groups that adopted mantras of “public health” to collect power announced that the smog was evidence of a “climate crisis.” Like Covid, the emergency demanded centralizing power and overturning American society.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote, “We must adapt our food systems, energy grids, infrastructure, healthcare, etc ASAP.” Senator Chuck Schumer similarly called on government to “do more to speed our transition to cleaner energy and reduce carbon.”
Just as a respiratory virus became the pretext for unrelated political aims like student debt relief and eviction moratoriums, leaders already seek to impose unrelated cultural change through fear-mongering and deception.
But while the smoke clears, a more insidious development is taking place. The largely unknown Uniform Law Commission (ULC) has proposed a law that would drastically increase executive power in the United States and reduce citizens’ legal right to resist unconstitutional edicts.
The ULC is an influential interstate organization that works to make state laws more uniform. Since 2021, the group has worked to draft a “Model Public Health Emergency Authority Act.”
The impetus for this initiative was the “uncertainty about the legal authority of governors and other state officials to enact certain emergency laws and declarations” during Covid, according to journalist David Zweig. “The legal ambiguity around many pandemic declarations resulted in new legislation in many states that explicitly clawed back public health powers from governors and executive branch officials.”
In response, the ULC seeks to codify a system that shields and promotes unchecked executive authority. Zweig writes, “It wants the legal authority that’s given to governors to be clear. And a memo indicates that the ULC expects the adoption of the Act will result in people suing only if the Act itself wasn’t followed, rather than suing based on a claim that the governor’s actions were unconstitutional.”
The Act threatens to strip Americans of their legal ability to oppose mandates, lockdowns, or other government orders. It offers total deference to governors in deciding what constitutes an emergency. No evidence would be required for state leaders to impose arbitrary and irrational limits on human liberty. Schools, businesses, and churches would be subject to the whims of executive power.
The ULC plans to vote on the Act in July, and passage threatens to strip Americans of their constitutional rights.
If passed, Kathy Hochul would be free to declare that the Quebec smoke constituted an emergency that justified her drastically limiting New Yorkers’ fuel consumption. Gavin Newsom could ban singing in churches the next time a town had a Covid outbreak. The pretense of an emergency would abolish the separation of powers, leaving legislatures and the judiciary powerless to oppose the mandates of self-appointed governor-tyrants.
Brownstone was founded on the premise that Covid was “not just about this one crisis but past and future ones as well. This lesson concerns the desperate need for a new outlook that rejects the power of the legally privileged few to rule over the many under any pretext.”
The pretexts are many, some predictable and some not. But the drive remains the same: more power to the government, less freedom for the people.
The ULC’s proposal prepares the ground for any and all crises. It codifies a system that augments the power of the legally privileged under any pretext and strips the many of their right to legal recourse.
In Federalist No. 51, Madison wrote, “But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”
Citizens had painful reminders of their leaders’ mammalian flaws of the last three years. Hypocrisy, irrationality, self-interest, and insatiable pursuits of power became commonplace. There were the double standards of governors flaunting their own restrictions and granting blatant political favoritism. Children suffered under cruel and irrational edicts and states criminalized basic human liberties. Governors called on local law enforcement to break into homes to arrest families for gathering at Thanksgiving.
Now, the ULC proposes granting governors more power for when the next emergency arrives. There is no reason to expect angelic behavior in the next crisis. The attempt here is to end what most annoyed the ruling elites during the Covid crisis: the relatively decentralized response due to American federalism. One state (South Dakota) did not go along at all. Others bailed on the lockdown agenda after a few weeks. As time dragged on, some states tried to hang on to the crisis for as long as possible while others moved on with life as normal.
In all the postgaming in the elite narratives, this point sticks out the most. The next time, they want an all-of-society response, no stragglers and refuseniks. The efforts by the ULC are part of rigging the system toward that end. Instead of 50 “laboratories of democracy” they want 50 mini-dictatorships carrying out the orders of the elites in Washington, DC.
This legal push has received no public attention, and not even Zwieg’s expert journalism seems to have broken through the wall set up by the mainstream media. And that is precisely why anyone concerned about the future needs to get the word out. The efforts toward fundamental regime change are real, threatening, and deeply dangerous to the future of liberty itself.
‘Medical Gaslighting’: Physicians Speak Out Against COVID Policies, Call for Reform
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | June 5, 2023
The Global Health Project last week released a video titled “The Oath,” in which physicians describe the effect on doctors, patients and the healthcare system of silencing dissent during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The filmmakers also called on doctors to commit to making foundational changes so that what happened during the pandemic never happens again.
The film features six doctors — Elizabeth Lafay, D.O., Steven Klayman, D.C., Timothy Stonesifer, D.O., Molly Rutherford, M.D., MPH, Michael Turner, M.D., and Amy Offutt, M.D. — who said they are “saying what tens of thousands of silenced medical professionals from all over the world have not been able to say.”
Throughout the video, they respond to a series of questions.
Responding to the first question, “When did you begin to have doubts?” they described how they lost faith in institutions such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Lancet and the pharmaceutical companies as they saw well-respected doctors silenced, articles retracted and corrupted clinical trials exposed.
It became clear the agencies were not acting in the public interest, Turner said, because “they’re captured, they’re paid off, they’re corrupt.“
In response to the second question, “How have people been harmed?” they discussed spiking levels of anxiety and depression that began with the fearmongering at the start of the pandemic.
Lafay described working in the ER during the early days of the pandemic when the hospitals emptied out and there were few COVID-19 patients — but many people arriving with “horrible, debilitating anxiety and depression.”
People stuck at home in front of the television absorbed the message “Stay home, don’t be with your family, don’t be with your friends. Isolate, hibernate,” Offutt said. “It’s really taken its toll.”
“People are fearful and I think that was the goal, to make people fearful and be forced into taking this vaccine,” Klayman added.
They said many people no longer trust the medical profession because doctors have been silent on what happened and that many doctors felt they could not speak out.
As the names of pharmaceutical giants such as Novartis, Merck, Pfizer, GSK (formerly GlaxoSmithKline), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and others flashed across the screen, Lafay said:
“It’s really tough because we’re all owned at this point. It’s easier for me to come on camera maybe and say some things like this because I am an independent practitioner now. If you don’t have your [own] practice, then you really can’t help people.
“And I think that is where a lot of [practitioners’] fear comes from, the fear of not being employed.”
But there are larger moral issues at stake, too, Klayman said, adding: “Are you going to give in to what is wrong? Or are you going to fight for what is right?”
Offutt said she thought “fixing the broken system” begins with rebuilding the doctor-patient relationship. Doctors used to spend more time with patients, she said, but then, “It became a business, and I was just one of the employees.”
“There is uniformity and conformity that’s encouraged, and the decision-makers at the top usually are not physicians, and this is a big problem, right?” Turner asked. Instead, they are lawyers looking to minimize risk and accountants looking to maximize profits.
When doctors work for these corporations, Lafay said, insurance and pharmaceutical companies are calling the shots:
“We don’t really have a voice anymore. We’re not really making choices that are best for our patients. We’re checking boxes.
“Unless we fight for the doctor-patient relationship and work to maintain privacy and decision-making that is based on an individual patient scenario, then that will be lost. The art of medicine will be gone, and we may as well be replaced by artificial intelligence.”
The doctors said in order to heal, you should “own your health” — eat well, get sunshine, move around, connect in person and to other people.
“I think doctors who maybe did some things that they regret should come out and acknowledge what they did and assure patients that they’re going to learn from it and change,” Rutherford said. “And then I think we need the truth. We need to investigate, why did all of this happen and how can we keep this from ever happening again?”
Turner said people from across the political spectrum and all walks of life are starting to come together around principles such as “accountability, honesty, respect, self-determination, bodily autonomy, freedom.”
“There’s an awakening going on, so it’s exciting and we’re gonna come out the other side,” he said.
The video closes with the oath:
“I solemnly swear to listen to my patients, respect their wishes, and together make the best choices for that individual and to do no harm.”
Video marks launch of Global Health Project
The video release marked the launch of the Global Health Project, an organization hoping to raise awareness of the coercive power exerted on society by global health agencies during the COVID-19 pandemic and to build a movement to create a better system.
The group began as a conversation among physicians and health researchers about what happened during the pandemic and how to make sure it doesn’t happen again, Andrea Nazarenko, Ph.D., a spokesperson for the organization, told The Defender.
The group hopes the video will open the door for conversation, Katarina Lindley, D.O., family physician and another group spokesperson, said.
A doctor might hear the physicians’ stories and say, “That’s exactly how it happened to me,” she said. Or, patients can go to their doctors and raise these issues with them.
Lindley also said that statements by global leaders, the World Health Organization’s proposed pandemic treaty and amendments to the International Health Regulations, and other evidence point to the fact something like the COVID-19 pandemic can happen again, and if it does, the Global Health Project wants to build an informed and connected public. She continued:
“So our hope is that by sharing these stories, by empowering the public as well, we want them to question things … when new things come along. And if they feel in their gut something is wrong, they need to trust their gut, then they really become advocates for themselves, for their family, for their friends.
“And I’m hoping that physicians will remember why they took the Hippocratic oath … And there’s lots of things that we need to start questioning that maybe we didn’t question before.”
While the changes they are talking about are systemic, Lindley said it starts in the doctor-patient relationship.
When someone’s car breaks down, she said, they usually try to find a good mechanic by asking friends and shopping around.
“I think when it comes to medicine and healthcare, we kind of almost need to do the same thing. Shop around … interview your doctor. Even if you have insurance and you’re assigned to a doctor, you don’t have to accept the doctor.”
People can find doctors who are independent, who have “stepped away from the matrix, as I call it,” Lindley said, so they can build great relationships with patients.
Nazarenko added:
“Ultimately, what we experienced during the pandemic was traumatic. We are suffering from collective trauma at a societal level. Just like any other trauma, this trauma will not disappear by ‘moving on’ and ‘forgetting about it.’ Trauma must be processed.
“Unfortunately, what we are facing right now is the mainstream narrative telling us to ‘forget about it,’ to ‘just move on,’ and to ignore our feelings (‘just let it go’). This is medical gaslighting at a population level. In any other relationship, we would identify this as the behavior of an abuser.
“If we want to move on and create a world of togetherness, we need to talk about it. We don’t all need to agree on everything — but we need to have the conversation.
“Silence leaves us vulnerable to this happening again. They separated us for a reason. This video is about bringing people together again and engaging in authentic conversations.”
Watch here:
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Deaths from the flu – do not seek and ye shall not find
By Professor Martin Neil | TCW Defending Freedom | June 7, 2023
The flu vanished from the UK in the winter of 2020/21 and did not return for another year, as I wrote in TCW here. The official reason is that the novel and deadly SARS-CoV-2 virus ‘outcompeted’ flu and replaced it as a primary cause of death during that time. However there appears to have been a collective and systemic failure in flu surveillance and flu death reporting systems in the UK during 2020 and into 2021. Thus, it is possible that the failure to detect and report flu (and deaths recorded as due to it) may better explain the mystery of vanishing flu rather than viral interference from SARS-Cov-2.
A mix of surveillance systems consistently reported on flu before 2020 and continued to have some role to play post-spring 2020 until flu returned at the end of 2021. In the UK, flu surveillance is performed via clinical surveillance by primary care (based on networks of GPs), the FluDetector and the FluSurvey systems.
Credence has been given to the idea of tracking pandemics using machine learning via Google Trends data, the UK’s FluDetector system being one such system. FluDetector reported that flu disappeared in 2020/21, yet this is totally at odds with Google’s own data and UKHSA reports, both of which report a clear signal for flu in the UK in 2020/21. What the Google data does show is that people were concerned enough about flu that they searched for flu on the internet in significant numbers, even when apparently in the middle of a deadly pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2, a virus they were told was more novel and more deadly than the flu. It is also notable that the number of searches for flu in 2020 were not significantly different from those conducted in previous years in the UK.
The UK FluSurvey system was originally conceived to survey a panel of self-selecting participants for signs and symptoms of influenza-like illnesses (ILIs). In March 2020 it was repurposed to cover both Covid-19 and flu symptoms, and the routine questionnaire was adapted to capture Covid-19 specific information. The FluSurvey system tracked ILI incidence only until week 20 of 2020, and never updated this data. It was decided no longer to track both flu and Covid from November 2020 but report this change in policy only in January 2021. The FluSurvey then stated it (presciently) knew in January 2021 that the flu season had now begun and did so after (supposedly) witnessing the near eradication of flu from March 2020 to May 2020. Fever and cough symptoms were still tracked and peaked in the same way as in previous years and this continued, but tracking ILI incidence was abandoned, thus reducing the strength of the flu signal.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) have a legal duty to report mortality statistics for each year. The 2020 statistics for England and Wales exclude any report on influenza and pneumonia deaths, and instead are wholly focused on deaths ‘involving’ Covid-19. In contrast, their 2021 statistics report on influenza and pneumonia deaths, starting on January 8. So, for 2020 any reporting of flu deaths was completely abandoned in favour of Covid-19 reports, and flu is included only in surveillance reports from 2021, thus giving the impression flu had disappeared in the intervening period.
In response to a freedom of information request about flu in 2020 the ONS obfuscated its answer by using a different death code, ‘respiratory disease’ rather than flu, for the period up to May 2020, and may have done so to hide the deaths that should have been attributed to flu. This FoI request shows that there were 2,287 flu deaths in March 2020, which is not greatly different from the 3,324 Covid-19 deaths that same month; yet SARS-CoV-2 was considered to be a significantly greater threat to public health. Furthermore, in January 2021 the ONS reported that there were almost as many deaths involving flu (5,719) as there were involving Cc
Evidence for the presence of flu is available from other data sources. Data for pneumonia and flu deaths can be extracted from the UK NOMIS (official census and labour market statistics) system. When we queried this system, we were quite shocked to find that it returns 20,130 influenza and pneumonia deaths for 2020, at a rate consistent with previous years (eg 26,342 in 2019). The presence of flu deaths in 2020 in the UK is repeated elsewhere. In the US, influenza and pneumonia numbers are similar in 2020 to previous years, as reported by the CDC, with 53,544 deaths in 2020 compared with between approximately 50-60k deaths in each year from 2015 to 2019.
Despite these facts, the WHO’s international flu surveillance system, FluNet, shows no significant flu for 2020/21 in either the UK or US.
The fact that these failures cut across all parts which comprise the UK flu surveillance and reporting system suggests that this failure is not coincidental, as do the observed inconsistencies in changing patterns of flu surveillance and reporting across different branches of UK public health.
In a previous article we pointed out the dearth of virological evidence for viral interference causing SARS-CoV-2 to ‘outcompete’ flu. These new findings relating to reporting systems also strongly suggest that viral interference between SARS-CoV-2 and the flu is a myth. Flu was present in 2020 and some of the respiratory deaths attributed solely to SAR-CoV-2 may have also involved flu in some significant way.
This is based on an original article co-authored with Professor Norman Fenton, Nick Hudson and Jonathan Engler. The extended version is available from the substack Where are the Numbers?
Querying the existence of a covid ‘pandemic’
Health Advisory & Recovery Team | June 6, 2023
Covid-19 has been described as a global pandemic but does this title give it a severity and indeed fear factor way beyond its actual impact?
The word pandemic used to have a very specific meaning. It was used to describe a scenario where there was extensive incapacitation of key workers and large numbers of deaths, including young people. A genuine pandemic is not something that would have needed billions of dollars in advertising for people to even notice and fear. Using this long-established definition of the word, we conclude that there was in fact no global pandemic in 2020. The word was deliberately misapplied and weaponised against an unsuspecting public. Let us be clear, this article is not questioning the existence of a virus SARS-CoV-2 or an illness named Covid-19, but even the choice of ‘SARS’ (Severe Acquired Respiratory Syndrome) as the name for this coronavirus was already setting the scene for systematic fear-mongering.
The notion of a ‘pandemic’ was relentlessly promulgated through mainstream media to ramp up fear in the population, to help enforce unprecedented lockdowns and other extremely harmful policies (e.g school closures and universal mask wearing) and to push through Emergency Use Authorisations of novel technology mRNA and viral vector DNA products.
This would not have been possible were it not for three false premises that covid was:
- novel;
- extremely lethal; and
- unprecedented.
It was none of these things. It was no more novel than numerous other viruses which emerge each year in terms of the ability to be recognised by our immune systems. It was no more lethal than bad influenza viruses of the past and was less lethal than seasonal influenza for the young. Intensive care stays were longer than have been observed with flu, though whether that was due to a virus directly or caused by our changed response to how we treated respiratory infections is unclear. Overall it was a treatable, seasonal respiratory virus mostly affecting the old and infirm.
HART has written previously on how similar the mortality was to the bad influenza winter of the year 2000. The mortality data for 2020 is unremarkable globally when compared to previous influenza seasons except perhaps in New York City and Northern Italy. In both of these outliers, the data emerging is raising uncomfortable questions about the relative contribution of the virus versus the impact of policy-related responses when considering the extraordinary number of deaths reported. In spite of these outliers, global mortality data shows no evidence of a global pandemic. It could be argued that a once in every 20 year event should not be minimised, but nor does it justify an all of society emergency response or the institution of a permanent biosecurity surveillance state.
Figure 1 showing ONS crude mortality rates since 1840
Without the highly flawed PCR case data and draconian global restrictions on doctors’ freedom to treat their patients as they saw fit, there would be nothing particularly notable about this year. Outside of PCR driven data, a small rise in the number of calls to ambulances for breathing difficulties was observed, though it is possible that hysteria and fear may be responsible for at least part of this. We might have noticed an unusually late spike in influenza-like illness but not much more. Mortality-wise, it would appear as a mid-range ‘bad flu’ year. It is worth reading the work of Professor Denis Rancourt on mortality data, who has been pointing out this inconvenient truth since early 2021.1,2
Interestingly, the WHO quietly altered the accepted definition of ‘pandemic’ in 2009, just before the so-called H1N1 ‘pandemic’. The rushed-to-market Pandemrix vaccine which was pushed hard in the face of the imaginary ‘pandemic’ was subsequently pulled from the market due to life-changing side effects (often in children), a signal picked first up in Finland but later found elsewhere.
In essence, they used exactly the same playbook in 2020, but seemed to have ironed out some of the ‘problems’ encountered the first time round. Vicious behavioural psychology tactics were the main tools used to ‘correct’ these ‘problems’. Shaming people into believing they may ‘kill granny’ was a master-stroke. They used guilt, shame and the threat of ostracism, these being some of the most powerful drivers of human behaviour. There was even an identical cast of characters; Fauci, Drosten and Gates, all reporting for duty, aided and abetted by the bought and paid for media machine working on 24 hour overdrive.
In 2003, an influenza pandemic was defined as follows:
“An influenza pandemic occurs when a new influenza virus appears against which the human population has no immunity, resulting in several simultaneous epidemics worldwide with enormous numbers of deaths and illness.”
In 2009, the WHO decided, in their infinite wisdom, to get rid of the words “enormous numbers of deaths and illness.” from the definition. You would think deaths and serious illness were the only meaningful characteristics of a ‘deadly pandemic’.
To successfully fight against the globalist mission creep of tyrannical public health measures, we must collectively stop stoking the ‘deadly pandemic’ fire. If we continue to allow this falsehood to embed in public consciousness, all of the unethical horrors enacted will simply be repeated for the next non-pandemic-pandemic.
Without the requirement for excess deaths and widespread serious illness, malevolent profit-driven interests can simply will a ‘pandemic’ into existence on finding any new mutation amongst the global virus population. A strategy to force countries to invest heavily in searching for genetic anomalies will fuel the pandemic creation industry. Once one is found, the response can be fuelled by using fraudulent test data and media advertising, as they did very successfully in 2020. We cannot allow this to happen again and must therefore reclaim the word ‘pandemic’ to ensure it is only applied in the correct way.
We expect a reflexive objection to this article from some quarters on the basis that the case has not been adequately argued that covid had minimal impact on overall mortality in 2020. This fact is irrelevant when challenging the terrifyingly inappropriate global response. The world’s population was sold a serious lethal deadly pandemic which – we were told – necessitated the reordering of society. The ‘new normal‘ as it was affectionately called by so many perfectly in-sync global leaders. In the event, we did not have a serious lethal deadly pandemic, and what has happened (and continues to happen) is based on a lie. Arguing about whether or not some bits of the lie might have a modicum of truth in them is a distraction from much bigger questions which need addressing.
Footnotes
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From the Archives
The New Baghdad Pact
By Dr Bouthaina Shaaban | February 23, 2017
A recently declassified CIA document prepared in 1983, and released on 20 January 2017, shows that the United States had at the time encouraged Saddam Hussein to attack Syria, which would have led to a vicious conflict between the two countries, thus draining their resources.
The report, which was then prepared by CIA officer Graham Fuller, indicates that the US tried adamantly to convince Saddam to attack Syria under any pretense available, in order to get the two most powerful countries in the Arab East to destroy each other, turning their attention away from the Arab-Israeli conflict. … continue
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