The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | November 24, 2022
When I first read the title of an article in The Lancet last week, I thought, this might be interesting, some acknowledgement about how bad lockdowns and mandates were. The title ‘Human rights and the COVID-19 pandemic: a retrospective and prospective analysis’ made me read on.
Maybe, I shouldn’t have been so naïve and maybe I should have looked at who the authors were first but I read on anyway.
I was still hopeful during the summary.
When the history of the COVID-19 pandemic is written, the failure of many states to live up to their human rights obligations should be a central narrative.
Which states will they talk about? The UK? America? I’d put money on Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Since then, COVID-19’s effects have been profoundly unequal, both nationally and globally. These inequalities have emphatically highlighted how far countries are from meeting the supreme human rights command of non-discrimination, from achieving the highest attainable standard of health that is equally the right of all people everywhere, and from taking the human rights obligation of international assistance and cooperation seriously.
Rubbing my hands together, I scrolled on, expecting to see scathing criticism of citizens being locked at home and how Covid mandates were completely unjust.
We propose embedding human rights and equity within a transformed global health architecture as the necessary response to COVID-19’s rights violations. This means vastly more funding from high-income countries to support low-income and middle-income countries in rights-based recoveries, plus implementing measures to ensure equitable distribution of COVID-19 medical technologies.
We also emphasise structured approaches to funding and equitable distribution going forward, which includes embedding human rights into a new pandemic treaty. Above all, new legal instruments and mechanisms, from a right to health treaty to a fund for civil society right to health advocacy, are required so that the narratives of future health emergencies—and people’s daily lives—are ones of equality and human rights.
Oh, here we go – high-income countries imposing their views on low-income countries. Distribution of mRNA vaccines and a new pandemic treaty.
Deflated, I finally checked the authors. The lead author works for the WHO and many of the other authors championed vaccine passports.
Realising this isn’t going to be the article I thought it was going to be, I skipped to the conclusion.
Equity demands treating health as a global public good and creating new legal instruments grounded in rights and equity. A reimagined, strengthened global health architecture, with human rights as its foundation, would be a fitting monument to the tens of millions who have died and suffered grievously—and would better prepare the world to address climate change, antimicrobial resistance, and other global threats. Furthermore, it would enable a swift, effective response the next time a novel or emerging infection threatens the globe—honouring the dignity of each of us.
I’ve seen that language before. “Equity demands”, “global public good”, “grounded in rights and equity”, “human rights as its foundation”. And whilst it all sounds lovely, it never ends well and the only human rights that are respected are those belonging to the humans that agree with what is being proposed.
You don’t want a pandemic treaty, forced vaccinations and mandates? Think of the tens of millions who have died and suffered grievously, you monster. Think of climate change, you devil in disguise. This is being done to honour the dignity of each of us. Well, not your dignity, you don’t agree with us, you stay locked in the quarantine camp thinking about the lovely dignity you could have if you did agree with us.
It was a struggle but I forced myself to read the rest of the article.
Many authoritarian regimes and populist leaders, however, have disregarded science, and have imposed harsh restrictions on human freedoms
One again, my hopes were raised. Maybe there is a small section on lockdowns etc. I saw the letters U.S.A. Maybe it will discuss how it is ridiculous that unvaccinated people still can’t travel there. Nope, it criticised the USA for opposing risk-mitigation measures such as business closures and mask or vaccine mandates.
It continued to get worse.
Public health officials have not always followed the science. The Public Health Agency of Sweden chose to allow a large portion of the country’s population to become infected, aiming to achieve herd immunity through eschewing basic scientific guidance of physical distancing and mask-wearing. This course was so fundamentally unsuccessful in protecting people’s health that it was beyond the discretion permissible under the right to health. By the end of 2020, Sweden’s mortality rate was ten times that of its neighbours, four-times higher than Denmark’s, and higher than in most European countries.
I agree with much of this section to a large extent, impacts of COVID-19 does disproportionately affect people with little money due to a plethora of risk factors. But so does any disease. And by locking people up, making them unhealthier and poorer, you only exacerbate this inequality.
But carry on with the virtual signalling and keep blaming it on systemic racism. Or Covid racism, I’m not quite sure. Either way, by not investigating why certain races disproportionately filled critical care units meant that more ethnic minorities carried on dying. Congratulations, by trying not to be racist, you actually ended up being racist.
Service disruptions were responsible for an estimated 47,000 additional malaria deaths in 2020 compared with 2019, and 100,000 additional tuberculosis deaths. 121 (93%) of 130 countries reported mental health service disruptions, as depression and anxiety levels greatly increased. By 2022, more than 200 million additional people faced acute hunger compared with in 2019, while COVID-19 forced nearly 80 million people into extreme poverty.
One word – Lockdowns.
Governments exercised vast emergency health powers, including business closures, cordon sanitaire, and full lockdowns, which are warranted only if supported by science, and are necessary, proportionate, and non-discriminatory.
So lockdowns are warranted if supported by science. Still no acknowledgement of the terrible harms they have caused.
authoritarian leaders have used the pandemic as an excuse to violate human rights, including suppressing information, punishing whistleblowers, arresting and detaining opponents and citizen journalists, and undermining democratic rights
I recognise all of those things having happened in many Western countries but are they mentioned? Of course not. China, Tanzania, Egypt, Russia, Pakistan, Madagascar, Bangladesh, Venezuela, Cayman Islands, Burundi, India, Hungary, Malaysia, Zambia, El Salvador, Thailand, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Ethiopia and Uganda all get a mention but nothing about the US, UK, Australia, Canada or New Zealand.
France and Greece get a brief mention. Maybe they haven’t been sending enough funding to the WHO recently.
And there we have it. Now we know exactly where this article has come from!
A new rights-based national and global governance for the right to health would respond to the daily health emergency of health inequities that COVID-19 revealed and reinforced. Future governance, and the mechanisms that underpin it, must ensure equitable and effective responses to health emergencies by embedding the right to health, accountability, participation, and equity in global and national policies and international responses.
A new right-based global governance. Where have we heard that before? Nothing to see here. It all sounds completely reasonable and not sinister or dystopian at all.
These people don’t have a clue. That don’t recognise the harms they have caused and they wouldn’t recognise a human right if it jabbed them in the arm.
But they are calling the shots and they want global governance based around the greater good. Not enough countries did as they were told during this pandemic, so next time they want a structure in place that means your democratically elected leaders can’t decide if lockdowns are appropriate or not, the whole world will be locking down together.
Don’t get in the way of the greater good because if you do, you aren’t good and that means we can lock you up. Nobody likes not-good people and everyone will cheer your incarceration because it will keep them safe.
If these recommendations are allowed to go ahead, not only is it dangerous but also stupid. Never again will we know if a certain measure was the correct one to take or if a vaccine or treatment has a particular side effect because everybody in every country will have to do the same thing.
A New Book by Simon Elmer
OffGuardian | November 24, 2022
With the lifting of the thousands of regulations by which our lives were ruled for two long years there has been an understandable desire to believe that the coronavirus ‘crisis’ is over and we will return to something like an albeit new normal.
But as new crises have sprung up to take its place — war in the Ukraine, the so-called ‘cost of living crisis’ and the return of the environmental crisis — it’s increasingly difficult not to look back on ‘lockdown’ as the first campaign in a war that has not been declared by any government but is no less real for that.
The willingness of our governments to use the forces of the state against their own populations on the justification of protecting us from ourselves signals a new level of authoritarianism — and something like the return of fascism — to the governmental, juridical and cultural forms of the formerly neoliberal democracies of the West, and one of the aims of this book is to examine the validity of this thesis.
Its purpose in doing so, however, is not to contribute to an academic debate about the meaning of the term ‘fascism’, but rather to interrogate how and why the general and widespread moral collapse in the West over the past two-and-a-half years has been effected with such rapidity and ease, and to examine to what ends that collapse is being used.
The more deliberate is the immiseration of the populations of Western democracies, the clearer it becomes that the war started by COVID-19 is not between nation states but a civil war waged against our institutions of democratic governance and the division of powers between executive, legislature and judiciary.
Insofar as these institutions and this division are being dismantled and replaced by the rule of international technocracies that, under the cloak of the ‘pandemic’, have assumed increasing power over our lives since March 2020, this war represents a revolution in Western capitalism from the neoliberalism under which we have lived for the past forty years.
Where it is heading with ever greater speed and finality, and which The Road to Fascism sets out to demonstrate, is the new totalitarianism of the Global Biosecurity State.
Simon Elmer is the founder of Architects for Social Housing (ASH), you can follow them on twitter. The Road to Fascism was published by ASH on 28 September, and is available in hardback, paperback and e-book. Click on the link for purchase options, the contents page and preface. Excerpts have been published in The Daily Sceptic and The Exposé; and you can hear Simon discussing his book in an interview on The Delingpod.
Drosten: “Didn’t we congregate to challenge a certain theory, and if we could, drop it?”
eugyppius – a plague chronicle – November 23, 2022
In February 2020, virologists were beginning to worry that discussion about the origins of SARS-2 was getting out of hand. Four of them – Edward Holmes, Kristian Andersen, Andrew Rambaut and Robert Garry – decided to write a short statement on the matter, in the hopes of regaining control of the debate. Jeremy Farrar, chairman of the international vaccination cabal known as the Wellcome Trust, coordinated their work and sent a draft to various virological villains, among them Anthony Fauci and Christian Drosten, for comment. A later version of the statement appeared in Nature a month later as “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2”.
New emails discussing the genesis of this statement came to light yesterday, as a result of another successful FOIA request for Anthony Fauci’s emails, and it contains some interesting moments.
The draft statement itself (at p. 67 here) is mostly unremarkable and not all that different from the Nature piece. It insists, in bold on the first page, that “Analysis of the virus genome sequences clearly demonstrates that the virus is not a laboratory construct or experimentally manipulated virus.” At least some of its authors, though, especially Edward Holmes, were willing to entertain the lab leak hypothesis, and the consequence was this paragraph considering the possibility that SARS-2 had been enhanced by repeated passage in cell cultures or animals:
Christian Drosten, after reading the draft, complained immediately that he thought he and his colleagues had already agreed “to challenge a certain theory, and if we could, drop it”:
From this we learn, first, that Drosten had been party to prior discussions among his colleagues, where they had discussed messaging strategies relating to “a certain theory”; and, second, that Drosten apparently had no real understanding of the reasoning behind or the case for laboratory origins, and this as late as 9 February.
Edward Holmes (who Farrar elsewhere says is leaning “60-40” for the laboratory origins of SARS-2) has to bring him up to date:
Jeremy Farrar also chimes in:
Then Holmes’s co-author, Kristian Andersen (who has since become a hardcore if disingenuous natural origins advocate), contributes these very interesting remarks:
Among other things, it’s telling to see how eager all these virologists were for those fishy pangolin sequences, which Chinese scientists released just as discussions of laboratory origins were gaining ground.
There’s surely more lurking in this email dump, but I have (alas, alas) a conference coming up, and thereafter it’ll take me a few days to get through it.
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | November 23, 2022
Dr. Anthony Fauci today faced questions from Attorneys General Eric Schmitt (Missouri) and Jeff Landry (Louisiana) in their lawsuit against the federal government for allegedly colluding with Big Tech platforms to censor content critical of COVID-19 vaccines and countermeasures.
Fauci sat for a deposition one day after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily halted the depositions of three other Biden administration officials.
In a statement released Tuesday in advance of Fauci’s deposition, Schmitt said:
“Tomorrow, along with my colleague from Louisiana, my Office and I will depose Dr. Anthony Fauci in our lawsuit against the Biden Administration for allegedly colluding with social media companies to censor freedom of speech.
“Since we filed our landmark lawsuit, we have uncovered documents and discovery that show clear coordination between the Biden Administration and social media companies on censoring speech, but we’re not done yet. We plan to get answers on behalf of the American people. Stay tuned.”
The statement also quoted Jeff Landry:
“We all deserve to know how involved Dr. Fauci was in the censorship of the American people during the COVID pandemic; tomorrow, I hope to find out.
“And I will continue fighting for the truth as it relates to Big Government colluding with Big Tech to stifle free speech.”
Schmitt and Landry sued President Biden, Fauci and others on May 5. New Civil Liberties Alliance, a nonprofit group representing outspoken critics of COVID-19 vaccines and countermeasures, including Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya, Martin Kulldorff, Aaron Kheriaty and also Jill Hines, joined the lawsuit in August, as did Jim Hoft, founder and editor-in-chief of The Gateway Pundit.
According to the complaint, government officials colluded with and coerced Big Tech and social media platforms to “suppress disfavored speakers, viewpoints and content” relating to COVID-19.
Several officials named in the suit, including former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, argued they shouldn’t be required to be deposed, but a federal judge on Monday denied a request to quash Psaki’s subpoena.
The same judge, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, on Oct. 21 ordered Fauci and other government officials to provide depositions under oath.
In addition to Fauci and Psaki, other government officials slated to be deposed include:
Two lower-level officials were listed as alternates: Lauren Protentis of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in place of Easterly, and former White House COVID-19 adviser Andrew Slavitt in place of Flaherty.
A previous ruling had forced the above-named individuals to provide written testimony.
Judge rejects ‘self-serving blanket denials’
In his Oct. 21 ruling, Judge Doughty agreed with the plaintiffs that Fauci’s prior “self-serving blanket denials” regarding his role in censoring certain types of content and viewpoints on social media could not be taken at face value, necessitating a deposition.
Fauci challenged the order to sit for a deposition, arguing the communications in question are protected by executive privilege. But Judge Doughty ordered Fauci to turn over the documents within 21 days and to answer the plaintiffs’ questions in full.
Landry and Schmitt filed a request for depositions Oct. 10. In a statement released at the time by Schmitt, he said:
“After finding documentation of a collusive relationship between the Biden administration and social media companies to censor free speech, we immediately filed a motion to get these officials under oath.
“It is high time we shine a light on this censorship enterprise and force these officials to come clean to the American people, and this ruling will allow us to do just that. We’ll keep pressing for the truth.”
Depositions of three Biden administration officials on hold
In an order issued Monday, the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit temporarily halted the scheduled depositions of Easterly, Flaherty and Murthy.
According to Politico, the three-judge panel unanimously found Judge Doughty had erred in approving the depositions without first examining whether there were “other means” of obtaining the information the plaintiffs are seeking.
The court sent the case back to Doughty for further review. According to the order:
“Thus, before any of the depositions may go forward, the district court must analyze whether the information sought can be obtained through less intrusive, alternative means, such as further written discovery or depositions of lower-ranking officials.
“Written findings as to the availability and sufficiency of alternatives need to be entered.”
In a statement provided to The Defender by Landry’s office, Landry said, “These developments do not change my pursuit of the truth. We respect the court’s decision and will continue in the discovery phase of this case.”
Thursday’s court order came after lawyers for the government argued the plaintiffs should not have the ability to depose the three officials in question, on the basis that they are high-ranking government officials, and that the depositions would “unavoidably distract” them from “their important and time-sensitive duties,” which would “cause irreparable harm.”
However, the federal government’s motion for a partial stay of Judge Doughty’s deposition order was denied. The Nov. 21 order stated, “We make no ruling on the petition … at this time.”
Easterly, Flaherty and Murthy were scheduled to be deposed in early December.
On Wednesday Judge Doughty, in a separate ruling, ordered Psaki to sit for a deposition and rejected an attempt to shield FBI Agent Chan from answering questions under oath.
Plaintiffs in the case argued that none of the officials were “high-ranking,” and Judge Doughty agreed, finding that the “burdens” the officials would face as a result of sitting for depositions were outweighed by the necessity of gathering more information regarding the allegations in question prior to ruling on a motion for a preliminary injunction.
According to the 5th Circuit’s order:
“It is not enough, as the district court found, that these officials may have ‘personal knowledge’ about certain communications.
“That knowledge may be shared widely or have only marginal importance in comparison to the ‘potential burden’ imposed on the deponent.”
According to the court, the government already produced “extensive written discovery.” The government claims that these documents do not reveal any violations of the First Amendment, while the plaintiffs claim otherwise.
Politico also reported that the 5th Circuit asked Judge Doughty to consider ruling on the overall viability of the lawsuit before allowing the depositions to proceed.
The 5th Circuit said Judge Doughty should have not issued a ruling regarding the depositions until the courts decided on the government’s motion to dismiss — even though that motion was withdrawn after plaintiffs filed an amended complaint and the government has not filed a new motion to dismiss.
According to Politico, the 5th Circuit’s order is not final: Judge Doughty may still decide, based on a newly clarified analysis, that depositions of Easterly, Flaherty and Murthy are needed.
Politico also reported that the 5th Circuit’s order may strengthen efforts by Psaki and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to halt her deposition.
At a recent hearing, Psaki’s lawyers claimed there is no evidence she had met or had been in contact with any social media executives regarding purported “misinformation,” although she did express critical remarks about social media platforms during White House press briefings.
In his Nov. 21 order, Judge Doughty rejected that claim, writing:
“Despite the fact that Psaki is a former high-ranking official, the potential burden upon Psaki was outweighed by the need to determine whether free speech had been suppressed.”
Previously, a federal judge in Virginia rejected the arguments made by Psaki and the DOJ, including that sitting for a deposition would place an “undue burden” on her, taking her away from her family and her new job at MSNBC for several days.
Magistrate Judge Ivan Davis of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia passed the issue to Judge Doughty. Davis dismissed Psaki’s claims, arguing that Psaki and the DOJ were attempting an “end-run” around the deposition order.
Judge Doughty previously found “that Plaintiffs have proven that Jennifer Psaki has personal knowledge about the issue concerning censorship across social media as it related to COVID-19 and ancillary issues of COVID-19.”
“Psaki has made a number of statements that are relevant to the Government’s involvement in a number of social-media platforms’ efforts to censor its users across the board for sharing information related to COVID-19,” Judge Doughty added. “Any burden on Psaki is outweighed by the need to determine whether free speech has been suppressed.”
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
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.
No legal prohibition authorized or justified hospitals to withhold the drug from dying patients. Let the lawsuits begin.
By Dr. McCullough & John Leake · Courageous Discourse · November 22, 2022
The Epoch Times recently reported an astonishing statement by a U.S. government lawyer in a federal court in Texas, where the FDA is being sued by Dr. Paul Marik of Virginia, Dr. Mary Bowden of Texas, and Dr. Robert Apter of Arizona. The three plaintiffs claim the FDA illegally prohibited them from prescribing the drug to their patients. At a November 1 hearing, U.S. lawyer Isaac Belfer argued for the defendant:
The cited statements were not directives. They were not mandatory. They were recommendations. They said what parties should do. They said, for example, why you should not take ivermectin to treat COVID-19. They did not say you may not do it, you must not do it. They did not say it’s prohibited or it’s unlawful. They also did not say that doctors may not prescribe ivermectin.”
If Belfer’s assertion is true, it raises a very urgent question: On what legal grounds did hospitals all over the United States refuse to administer ivermectin to severely ill COVID-19 patients, even when patients and their family members begged for the drug to be administered?
If ivermectin was not prohibited by the FDA or any other U.S. medical authority for treating COVID-19, why did Dr. Paul Marik’s hospital prohibit him from administering the drug to his dying patients? Why was Dr. Mary Bowden reported to the Texas Medical Board for disciplinary action when she prescribed it? Why did many pharmacists fear losing their licenses if they filled ivermectin prescriptions for treating COVID-19?
In our book, The Courage to Face COVID-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex, Dr. McCullough and I document numerous instances of hospitals flatly refusing to grant the wishes of dying patients and their family members for ivermectin.
All these patients asked for was to be allowed to try the drug (FDA-approved for River Blindness, Elephantiasis, and Scabies) for COVID-19. The patients and their kin gladly indemnified the hospitals and arranged to have their independent primary care doctors deliver and administer the drug. Nevertheless:
Several readers have told us that our chapters covering this shameful scandal— Chapters 38: Begging for the Wonder Drug and Chapter 40: Graduating into Eternity—are horrifying beyond belief.
Now we hear U.S. government lawyers arguing in court that the FDA never prohibited using ivermectin to treat COVID-19 patients, but merely recommended not using it. This indicates that hospitals had no legal grounds for denying sick patients a drug that could have helped them. How is withholding medicine from a sick man any different from withholding a life ring from a man who has fallen overboard in high seas?
For families who watched their loved ones slip away after being denied the right to try ivermectin, U.S. attorney Isaac Belfer’s statement may be interpreted as declaring open season for lawsuits against hospital administrators and doctors.
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | November 19, 2022
Former White House Press Secretary Jen Paski’s motion to quash the subpoena to depose her in the lawsuit filed by Missouri and Louisiana was denied. The lawsuit alleges that the Biden administration colluded with social media companies to suppress certain viewpoints on Covid and elections.
When she was the White House Press Secretary, Psaki made statements encouraging social media companies to censor more content. At one time, she said, “We engage with (social media companies) regularly and they certainly understand what our asks are.”
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit want her deposed so that she can say who within the government was engaging with social media companies and what they said.
Psaki filed a motion to quash the subpoena in a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. She was allowed to file the motion in a different state because that is where she lives. Her lawyers argued that she had little information to give and that most of the information is available through the emails and other documents that were obtained by the plaintiffs. They also argued that the deposition would be a burden to her.
US Magistrate Ivan Davis was not impressed by the arguments, but did not reject her request. Instead he referred the motion back to Louisiana, where the lawsuit was filed, because the judge there is more familiar with the case. Davis also refused to stay his ruling so that the motion could be appealed in a district court in Alexandria.
Davis said that Psaki had failed to demonstrate how being deposed in her home state qualifies as an undue burden. If indeed she has little information to offer, it should not be a burden, the judge argued.
“How much time does it take to prepare a witness for deposition when she doesn’t really have anything to say?” Davis asked.
How Our Regulatory Agency Got Out of the Way from the Beginning
By Dr. Peter McCullough | Courageous Discourse | November 18, 2022
When the US HHS invoked the Emergency Use Authorization and the Department of Defense offered COVID-19 vaccination to be administered by the US FDA and CDC, it was clear the FDA was going to play no role in stopping the vaccination freight train that was about to steamroll America. A recent paper from Dr. Maryanne Demasi points out that the FDA “checked-out” early in the COVID-19 pandemic:[i] “Regulatory documents show that only nine out of 153 Pfizer trial sites were subject to FDA inspection before licensing the mRNA vaccine. Similarly, only 10 out of 99 Moderna trial sites and five of 73 remdesivir trial sites were inspected. Now, facing a backlog of site inspections, experts have criticized the FDA’s oversight of clinical trials, describing it as “grossly inadequate.” They say the problem, which predated covid-19, is not limited to a lack of inspections but also includes failing to notify the public or scientific journals when violations are identified—effectively keeping scientific misconduct from the medical establishment. The FDA is “endangering public health” by not being candid about violations that are uncovered during clinical trial site inspections, says David Gortler, a pharmacist and pharmacologist who worked as an FDA medical reviewer between 2007 and 2011 and was then appointed as a senior adviser to the FDA commissioner in 2019-21.”
Demasi goes on to point out the FDA suspended inspections and despite having vast resources, does not utilize their discretionary budget to protect Americans from product safety threats. “With a total budget of $6.1bn in 2021, he [Gortler] suggests the agency needs to be leaner and more efficient, with employees interested in improving public health.” “The bottom line is that the FDA has over 18,000 full time employees, more than any other drug regulatory agency by far, so it could have retrained and retooled anybody to tackle the need for increased inspections,” he says. “Half of its budget, about $3bn, is discretionary, which means it could have hired contractors, retirees, or repurpose existing workers. It chose not to. The FDA was just yawning its way through the pandemic. The entire agency is broken.” “The lack of full transparency and data sharing does not allow physicians and other medical scientists to confirm the data independently and make comprehensive risk-benefit assessments,” continues Gortler, who is now a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington DC.”
The most egregious example of FDA malfeasance is the intent to withhold release of the Pfizer regulatory dossier on its COVID-19 vaccine for 55 years knowing it contained reports of 1,223 deaths shortly after administration of their vaccine. In a continued set of historic blunders, the FDA approved the COVID-19 bivalent vaccines with no randomized trials powered for clinical outcomes with Omicron, and no information on safety. I believe Drs Demasi and Gortler are correct, the FDA is broken beyond repair, officials and staff involved in malfeasance should be named as targets in federal investigations since so many lives have been impacted by their malfeasance.
[i] Demasi M. FDA oversight of clinical trials is “grossly inadequate,” say experts BMJ 2022; 379 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.o2628 (Published 16 November 2022) Cite this as: BMJ 2022;379:o2628
BY DR GARY SIDLEY | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | NOVEMBER 15, 2022
Throughout the Covid era, those expressing views at odds with the dominant narrative were often subjected to unprecedented levels of censorship and psychological manipulation. Academic journals played a significant role in this silencing of alternative voices by, for example, ignoring the work of established scholars, perpetuating bias, rejecting research papers that reached conclusions inconsistent with mainstream views, and demonstrating a financial motivation to only publish studies favourable to the pharmaceutical industry. As a consequence of this partiality, the perceived scientific integrity of academic periodicals has suffered considerable damage. Alas, a recent article in the once highly respected Nature journal will have done nothing to improve the credibility of the academic press.
The article, titled “Mastering the art of persuasion during a pandemic“, is a supplementary ‘outlook’ piece written by Elizabeth Svoboda, a Californian science journalist. Drawing on the perspectives of a cluster of social science experts, Svoboda lauds the importance of health policymakers deploying “effective communication strategies” so as to ensure that the populace do the right things when faced with the next global pandemic. She asserts that a range of behavioural science strategies, or “nudges”, will be of central importance in enhancing compliance with public health restrictions when the next novel respiratory virus emerges over the horizon. The article, however, is riddled with highly questionable assumptions and ideological biases.
The Covid science is not settled
Arguably the most blatant distortion, illustrated many times by both the author and the experts cited, is that the Covid science is settled and their version is the definitive truth. The article opens with the ludicrous suggestion that the official advice in early 2020 – that masking healthy people would achieve no benefit – was a “fateful moment”, a missed opportunity “to stop the virus bringing the world to a halt”. In support of this assertion, Rob Willer, a sociologist at Stanford University, describes this initial guidance as “a big credibility mistake”, and goes on to suggest that it was an example of public health experts trying to protect the supply of masks to healthcare. According to Willer, this noble white lie led to many people feeling “resentful” at having been misinformed and it fuelled their reluctance to adhere to subsequent mask requirements. Totally ignored is that most of the more robust, real-world evidence concludes that masking healthy people achieves no meaningful reduction in viral transmission, and the U-turn in mid-2020 towards mask mandates was not the result of new research findings but was – more likely – politically motivated.
Similarly, the raft of unprecedented Covid restrictions (lockdowns, shutting businesses, school closures) inflicted on Western citizens by the public health establishment are all assumed to achieve important benefits so that the only challenge for the pandemic experts is how to persuade the pesky people to comply with them. Consequently, the article cites the ideas of a number of social scientists regarding how to effectively lever compliance with future public health diktats. Varun Gauri, a senior economist, highlights the importance of making it easier for people to ‘do the right things’. Matthew Goldberg, a research psychiatrist, wants the psychological persuasion techniques of behavioural science to be used pre-emptively “so that when the time arises, people can act quickly”, a view echoed by infection-control researcher Armand Balboni. Katy Milkman, a behavioural scientist, promotes her strategies to enhance the take-up of Covid vaccines, including a “regret lottery” where people are informed that their names have been entered into a draw to win a lot of money, but that the “winner” will lose the prize if not vaccinated.
Despite the wealth of accumulated evidence that lockdowns are ineffectual in reducing Covid-related hospitalisations and cause huge collateral damage, alongside the emerging realisation that Covid vaccines may achieve no overall net benefits and can do considerable harm, nowhere in the article is there even a hint of recognition that the restrict-and-jab doctrine of mainstream public health failed to achieve many of its stated aims.
One important negative consequence of the flawed ‘science is settled’ assumption, as displayed by the author and her expert contributors, is that it justifies the censoring and vilification of anyone challenging the dominant narrative. For example, Varun Gauri says, “During the COVID-19 pandemic, disinformation played a major part in sowing division and undermining the authority of health officials” and that this “paved the way for fast viral spread and low vaccination rates”. His solution is for authorities to “take a bigger, legislative approach to the problem” – a euphemism for censorship. Similarly, Katy Milkman warns against allowing “conspiracy theories to slither in”.
The controversy surrounding the acceptability of state-imposed ‘nudging’
It seems that all those involved in the Nature article are blissfully unaware of the controversy surrounding the state’s use of covert psychological strategies (or ‘nudges’) to promote compliance with Government restrictions. Blinded by their fixed belief that the Covid science is settled, and focused only on the goal of persuading the populace to ‘do the right things’, the social scientists cited in the commentary blithely propose a range of behavioural science interventions without any questioning around the appropriateness and ethical acceptability of these clandestine methods.
Nudges are psychological strategies of persuasion that largely impact upon their targets below the level of conscious awareness – that is, people do not know they are being influenced. Such techniques have been heavily deployed throughout the Covid era, and have evoked a range of ethical concerns relating to the acceptability of the state strategically (and non-consensually) increasing the emotional discomfort of its citizens as a means of promoting compliance with unprecedented and largely non-evidenced public health restrictions. Also, as the strategies operate subconsciously, they could often be categorised as manipulative.
The expert contributors referenced in the Nature article repeatedly commend greater deployment of these ethically dubious techniques in future pandemics. For instance, Balboni urges political leaders to ensure human behaviour specialists play a much bigger part in health policy, bemoaning that, during the Covid era, “social scientists, anthropologists and psychologists were not used nearly enough”. Later in the article, the purported benefits of the “pre-emptive deployment of behavioural science” is highlighted.
More specifically, the value of equating virtue with compliance with the restrictions is lauded. This particular strategy – an ‘ego’ nudge in behavioural science parlance – was used repeatedly throughout the Covid event, effectively evoking shame in anyone who deviated from the demands of public health diktats and the vaccination doctrine. Many will recall the repeated ‘I wear a face covering to protect my mates’ adverts, the ‘don’t kill your gran’ quips by ministers, and the close-up images of acutely unwell hospital patients with the voiceover, “Can you look them in the eyes and tell them you’re doing all you can to stop the spread of coronavirus?” Of the same ilk was the NHS document (later redacted) advising front-line staff to tell young people that, “Normality can only return, for you and others, with your vaccination” (my emphasis).
The Nature article endorses the same tactic of differentiating the goodies from the baddies. It is stated that, “Encouraging feelings of empathy in people could make them more likely to choose to protect others during a pandemic”. There are also references to the desirability of “invoking of empathy” and emphasising “the vaccines’ collective benefits, such as protecting others”. In the words of Balboni, it is really important to get people to recognise that “through their behaviour, they can actually protect other people”. Clearly, the considerable evidence demonstrating that Covid vaccinations do not prevent viral transmission has yet to reach these nudge enthusiasts.
In a Western supposedly liberal democracy, is it ethical for the state to strategically inflict shame on its citizens? Does the informed consent of the people, as to whether to accept a medical or psychological intervention, no longer matter? Is it acceptable to covertly influence the general population to follow contentious and largely non-evidenced Covid restrictions? Shamefully – pun intended – these key ethical considerations are totally disregarded in this Nature journal commentary.
The role of political ideology and conflict of interests
What might account for the publication of such a partisan article in an academic journal?
Many critics of Covid orthodoxy have raised the spectre of an underlying globalist agenda, removed from any democratic process, shaping Western responses to pandemic management. With the central involvement of the World Economic Forum (WEF), it has been argued that the crisis following the emergence of a novel respiratory virus has been opportunistically exploited in pursuit of wider, pre-existing goals pertaining to tackling climate change and the imposition of Covid Passes and Digital ID, Social Credit Systems, Central Bank Digital Currency and Universal Basic Income (as detailed in Agenda 2030). The authoritarian control over the world’s population (essential to realise such an agenda) is typically legitimised under the banners of ‘the greater good’ and ‘social responsibility’, two themes that run through the Nature article. Is it possible that the author and contributors adhere to this globalist ideology?
Exploration of the ongoing interests of those involved in the compilation of the article is revealing:
Would it be too speculative to suggest that those involved in the Nature article harbour a penchant for a new world order, and that these globalist proclivities may have compromised their objectivity?
Finally, my eye was drawn to a footnote to the article that read: “This article is part of Nature Outlook: Pandemic preparedness, an editorially independent supplement produced with the financial support of third parties.” And who funds this supplement? Astra Zeneca and Moderna.
I rest my case.
Dr. Gary Sidley is a retired NHS Consultant Clinical Psychologist and co-founder of the Smile Free campaign. He blogs at Coronababble.
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