One of the most troubling aspects of the Government’s response to the pandemic was its complete disregard for ethics. It seems not to have occurred to the decision-makers that the instant removal of fundamental civil liberties required – and must always require – the most comprehensive ethical justification.
During the largely self-made crisis, the Government passed sweeping mandates with barely any serious reflection on the impacts on millions of people’s lives, and stubbornly refused to listen to a multitude of far more thoughtful, well-informed alternatives.
Inexcusably, it appears that the main reason the Government and its advisors neglected to consider ethics was brute ignorance – they didn’t think about ethics because they have no idea why it is important. To them ethics is at best a scarcely relevant adjunct to ‘following the science’.
Had they understood ethics – or bothered to ask people who do – they would have been able to approach policymaking in a properly balanced and effective manner.
There are several ways to include ethics in decision-making. Two of these are 1) to apply ethical standards and principles and 2) to deliberate holistically. Both can be undertaken simultaneously.
Ethical standards
A range of carefully considered ethical standards has been developed and fought for in the Western world over the past 70 years and more. Arguably the most fundamental of these is the principle of informed consent to interventions, established in both ethical theory and health care law. It is now regarded as essential that any health care professional – including public health professionals – must fully explain the range of possible interventions available and disclose the reasoning behind any recommendation they make. Anything less is either negligent or coercive.
Holistic deliberation
Beyond the application of fundamental principles, ethics may be seen as a thoughtful, wide-ranging decision-making approach which seeks to balance a variety of factors to reach reasonable conclusions. These conclusions will aways include both evidence and values. Taking one without the other is bound to lead to inadequate choices: the evidence cannot speak for itself and value judgements alone quickly become dogma.
The Government and its advisors failed woefully to take account of either understanding of ethics.
Any robust analysis of a personal or social problem requires the consideration of a range of ideas. However it seems that where public health is concerned, policies are routinely drawn up according to a single imperative – ‘we must reduce disease and therefore save lives’ – but of course this imperative itself requires ethical standards and ethical deliberation because, as we have tragically witnessed, trying to save lives in one way risks lives in other ways.
As soon as you start to think beyond the fear of infection to consider the bigger picture, there is a flood of specific ethical issues.
Is it ethical to force businesses to close their doors?
Is it ethical to cause so many people to lose their livelihoods?
How is it acceptable to override basic human rights with so little public involvement?
Is it ethical to close schools, particularly when the evidence that this will help control the spread of the virus is unclear? (In 2022 it is now clear that this made little or no difference to ‘stopping the spread’.)
Do restrictions heighten social inequalities (it is easier to self-isolate in a comfortable home, it is easier to cope if you have a pleasant garden, it is easier to weather financial uncertainty if you have a secure career and savings)?
Given that governments have borrowed many billions to weather the crisis, and this debt will have to be repaid, is it ethical to cause hardship and suffering to future generations in the interest of existing generations?
There are many other measurable harms that should have been considered. ‘Minimising death’ was only one of many possible rationales. Consequently, the Government’s stubborn failure to reflect in a professional, balanced way caused massive, avoidable damage.
Ethics is ultimately a matter of respecting thoughtful traditions grounded in compassion and human rights, and thinking as deeply as possible about the many effects your choices will have on other people. Ethics is the essence of civilised human co-existence. Over the past two years a handful of people, quite out of their depth, were able to dismiss ethics – along with previous well-documented Government pandemic planning – with what seemed like a mere wave of the hand.
We must ensure that this can never happen again.
Dr. David Seedhouse is an Honorary Professor of Deliberative Practice at Aston University.
All this is a digression. The real power, the power we have to fight for night and day, is not power over things, but over men. How does one man assert his power over another? … By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating?
George Orwell, “1984”
“We become slaves the moment we hand the keys to the definition of reality entirely over to someone else, whether it is a business, an economic theory, a political party, the White House, Newsworld, or CNN.“
B.W. Powe
COVID-19 has magically disappeared.
After more than two years of non-stop bombardment with Covid “news”, there has been none at all in mainstream headlines for over a week. The media giveth and the media taketh away.
Through the immaculate erasure of the ‘Covid Crisis,’ those responsible for these harms are attempting to make us forget what they did to us, our families, and the permanent damage they caused to society.
Think back to what life was like two years ago and imagine if someone told you that a “health emergency” would require a crackdown on all social and economic life.
Remarkably, the public health orders moved quickly from “flattening the curve” and “slowing the spread” to containment, suppression, contact tracing, social isolation, quarantine, face coverings, de facto house arrest aka “lockdowns” (a prison/slave camp term), and mandated experimental injections.
In order to “keep us safe” government policies mushroomed from innocuous instructions into draconian decrees.
The limitation of the right to engage in basic economic transactions; the limitation of the right to freedom of movement; limitations on the right to practice religion; the suspension of the right to an education; the denial of the right to a livelihood; the removal of the right to receive or refuse medical attention; suspension of public meetings; suspension of juries; suppression of the right to freedom of expression; denial of the right to assembly; and much else became the new operating principles of “The Covid World.”
The institution of a bio-security police state was birthed according to health authorities and others the power to quarantine someone considered “infected” or simply to have been in contact with a purported “case.”
To make this appear necessary and acceptable, an intensive full-spectrum psychological assault on our sensibilities was implemented. Covid-19 was hyped as the ‘New Black Death’.
We were told by ‘important-looking people’ that millions will die, the entire planet is in danger, a global response is required and everyone must get in line with the program whilst “heroes” and “experts” take charge of this new global war to keep us safe.
Illogical catchphrases designed to hypnotize the public into a malleable mental state were repeated over and over in every media outlet, across virtually every social institution, and plastered throughout all walks of the public sphere.
“Flatten the Curve”, “The New Normal”, “Social Distancing” and “Follow the Science“ became the nation’s Covid shibboleths. Media bullhorns relentlessly blasted the doublespeak into the public psyche. Oxymorons and euphemisms dominated the contours of any and all “Covid-related” discourse.
Such linguistic manipulations were readily absorbed and seamlessly adopted by much of the public and became the Doublethink phraseology of the Covid Era.
Mantras of the Covid Era were followed by a fleet of psychologically disorienting and arbitrary ‘regulations’, ‘advice‘, and ‘guidelines’ which were quickly put in place, selectively enforced and subsequently changed.
No one was spared.
Children came under sustained psychological attacks, branded ‘super spreaders’, and were told to keep away from the grandparents lest they “kill granny.”
Operating in a fog of psychological trauma, everyone moved through a world devoid of smiles and laughter where faces were hidden by masks and smothered in cloth.
This barrage of brutalizing manipulations was designed to condition us to accept the tyrannical impositions of “The New Normal.” The emotional toll, because of COVID fear-mongering and media hysteria, caused the citizenry to become mentally tamed like institutionalized prisoners who would come begging for “a way out.”
The preordained and only “allowed” exit from this viral nightmare demanded that society embrace the magical “cure” of the “miracle” inoculation. A medical miracle promised to be so effective that it would be required year after year after year.
When not embraced it would be enforced.
One of the striking characteristics of the media blitzkrieg surrounding the Covid “pandemic” – or, to be more precise, the reporting of the “pandemic” – is how it so easily resembled the “War on Terror” or indeed, any war, when considered purely in terms of its effect.
Mask wearing became a patriotic duty. “Security theater” became a feature of everyday life. The vast carnage of Covid policies was sloughed off as “collateral damage.”
Lost in the sound and fury of this media bombardment were evidence, observation, and measurement– 3 of the key pillars of science.
These were replaced by make-believe forecasts, computer-generated estimates, or other not to be questioned ‘scientific metrics’ that hospitals would be over-run, mortuaries would spill into the streets and crematoriums would run out of fuel disposing of all the bodies.
Even as direct observation and real scientific data showed none of this to be true, the public health apparatus and media juggernaut ensured the public would not be exposed to such heresy.
A digital curtain of mass McCarthyite-like censorship descended upon this “Brave New World” of fact-free hysteria.
No amount of evidence could slow the propaganda machine which remained in high gear spitting out a non-stop stream of sanctimonious slogans and exaggerated death tallies.
The intended effect was widespread panic, resulting in a collective psychosis that negated all thought.
“We don’t have time!”
“We must act now!”
“Listen to the “experts!”
“Follow the science!”
“We don’t have the “luxury” of critical thinking!”
And most importantly:
“All who question the “official” narrative must be condemned.”
Put simply, Covid-19 was not an epidemiological event, it was a psychological operation.
Two years later, as bureaucrats and politicians wind down the Covid restrictions in order to quell growing unrest, we can be assured they will insist on retaining the “right” to re-impose them at will.
As long as “new variants lurk right around the corner”, public health bureaucrats and pandemic profiteers can invent the next “health emergency” to impose more shutdowns for any “viral event” that conveniently suits their political and financial aims.
While the Covid propaganda has vanished it is imperative we keep the mountain of lies under scrutiny and continue unveiling the massive corruption that defines the “Covid Era.” This is the only path towards justice and is necessary to defend against future episodes of “pandemic” hysteria.
Ultimately there can be no comprehensive debate and complete understanding of the devastating consequences of the ‘Covid Crisis’ policies without a historical and up-to-date analysis of the Medical Industry’s role in pushing socioeconomic and political agendas which benefit the ruling elites.
It is vital to understand that the public health industry is now directly tied to global markets and operates based on the demands of those financial conglomerates. Manufactured pandemics are now mammoth investment opportunities that increase the wealth of billionaires and further consolidate their power.
It is also necessary to recognize that the primary purpose of the medical industry is no longer the “art of healing”, rather as a financial instrument benefiting investors.
‘We the people‘ must also recognize that the Medical Industry has now been fully weaponized as a punitive system designed to process, dehumanize and control every single person in the system. Before our very eyes, we have seen up close how mere biological existence is criminalized by that system.
The magic act of Covid vanishing from media view and public perception is not due to any medical miracle or the natural trajectory of a virus losing its potency. It was performed by those who manufactured this reality and committed countless crimes, coordinated in an attempt to slip out the back door, avoid further public inquiry and escape any legal consequences.
Though the story of the virus is nearly over, the sorcery that created it has not been exorcised.
The urgent message that we must take from these past two years is that we are under sustained psychological warfare and have been for quite some time.
We won’t have truly won until it is universally established that Medical Freedom is not a negotiable commodity controlled by state bureaucrats, political opportunists, or the medical cartel.
Nothing has been won until the ideology that the state controls our bodily autonomy has been thoroughly repudiated.
This story is not finished until the individuals and institutions that deceived the public and censored and persecuted dissenting voices over the past two years are publicly held accountable.
This fight is not over.
Michael Bryant is a freelance journalist/activist and researcher who presently focuses primarily on issues surrounding health freedom. His work has appeared on HealthFreedomDefense.org
In Fauci’s absence as Covid’s public health media mouthpiece, an ironic twist of transparency has chosen a puzzling replacement – Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla.
Welcome to the next generation of possible vaccine harms. From mouth blisters to debilitating nervous system disorders, scientists are reporting troubling side effects from COVID-19 vaccines.
All eyes are on the coming French elections as the world watches the first political choice to vote out those who forced lockdowns, mandates and purposely made life miserable for much of their population. Opposing French PM Macron who’s trying for his 2nd term is Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour, both siding with the unemployed healthcare workers’ plight due to vaccine refusal.
The past two days have seen sorties from scientists desperate to shore up the lockdown version of history. Lockdowns were necessary, and anyone who disagrees does not care about society or equality. This version of history is so fraudulent that it cannot be allowed to triumph.
Writing in the Guardianyesterday, Devi Sridhar asks: ‘Why can’t some scientists just admit they were wrong about Covid?’ Why indeed? Sridhar notes that scientists have divided into opposing camps, taking ‘particular pandemic positions… eventually building a base of followers that organise around that position and defend it viciously.’ She just doesn’t seem to recognise that this neatly describes her own approach.
Sridhar’s piece is a craven attempt to rewrite history by claiming that the Zero Covid position was only ever intended for the pre-vaccine era. Can this be the same Sridhar who said in a New Statesmaninterview in January 2021 that ‘the better option is to eliminate the virus’ – even after vaccines had started to be rolled out? Or who tweeted in June 2020 that ‘the fastest way to get economy & normal life back is to push for a ZERO Covid Britain. Clear virus, build domestic economy’? Still, as far as Sridhar’s concerned, if anyone got anything wrong, it wasn’t her.
Sridhar’s efforts to rewrite history were joined by a prominent member of Independent SAGE, Kit Yates. Writing in the British Medical Journal on Wednesday, Yates penned an op-ed on the theme “Was lockdown necessary?” Lockdowns, according to Yates, were necessary to protect the NHS and the vulnerable members of society — and yet at the same time ‘no one is in favour of lockdowns’. This sleight of hand followed his tweet in February that ‘everyone is lockdown sceptic’.
Have we all been dreaming about the vituperative onslaught on sceptical voices in the last two years? The answer becomes clearer in the last paragraph of the BMJ piece, where Yates concludes:
Whether you view [lockdowns] as necessary depends on your value system. Many people would place the lives of the most vulnerable high on their list of priorities. Many people would value a functioning NHS with equal access for all at the point of need. Many would place a high worth on the long term health of their population. But not everyone. – KIT YATES, BMJ
Sadly for Yates, his article was published on the very day that Sir Chris Whitty admitted that the long-term health of children had suffered and their life expectancies were lower through increasing obesity brought on by lockdowns. With NHS cancer backlogs projected to last for a decade, it doesn’t seem that this “long-term health of the population” and “protecting the NHS” works out very well for Yates and his ilk.
This is why the strongest advocates of lockdowns such as Sridhar and Yates cannot be allowed to set the tone of the debate as we move away from the pandemic. Strong lockdowns promoted policies that were utterly uncaring of the young, the elderly in care homes, women in abusive situations, the poor whose work disappeared, let alone the hundreds of millions of people whose livelihoods have been destroyed in the Global South.
Meanwhile, 40% of Covid deaths in the West took place in care homes. Far from protecting the vulnerable, lockdown policies did not even protect the most vulnerable. Meanwhile, they have rendered hundreds of millions of people newly vulnerable. That is their legacy, and those who advocated hardest for them must not be allowed to escape it.
Yes, Fauci has never worried about consistency or even contradicting himself one day to the next, often without explanation. Too often his doling out “the science” has felt like performance art. Still, the record is that Fauci and all his compatriots either downplayed or denied natural immunity for two years. That has been the source of vast confusion.
In fact, this might have been the most egregious science error of the entire pandemic. It amounted to giving the silent treatment to the most well-established point of cell biology that we have. It was taught to every generation from the 1920s until sometime in the new century when people stopped paying attention in 9th-grade biology class.
After the pandemic broke, Fauci said nothing on this topic for a year and a half. The John Snow Memorandum, written to counter the Great Barrington Declaration, claimed “there is no evidence for lasting protective immunity to SARS-CoV-2 following natural infection.” Mandates and passports have excluded it. Academic, medical, and corporate enforcers have generally refused to recognize it.
When CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta asked him specifically, September 13, 2021, Fauci quickly demurred.
“I don’t have a really firm answer for you on that. That’s something that we’re going to have to discuss regarding the durability of the response,” Fauci said. “I think that is something that we need to sit down and discuss seriously.”
Earlier, the WHO even backed up this denialism, going so far as to change their own definition of immunity in the middle of a pandemic. They eliminated the old sentence on natural immunity and replaced it with a claim that immunity comes from “protecting people from the virus” and not “exposing them to it.” That’s some clever rhetoric right there!
There’s no question that this effort to deny natural immunity was systematic and pushed from the top.
How has this changed? In February 2022, the CDC finally published on the topic that they could not forever deny. And now, Fauci himself let the following slip in an interview on March 23, 2022:
“When you look at the cases they do not appear to be any more severe [than Omicron] and they do not appear to evade immune responses either from vaccine or prior infection.”
What’s critical here is not his debatable claim about vaccines but rather his offhand remark about prior infection. It was tossed off as if: “Everyone knows this.” If so, it is no thanks to him, the CDC, or WHO.
To be sure, everything we’ve known since two years ago – if not 2.5 thousand years – is that immunity from prior Covid infection is real. Vaccines have traditionally been a substitute version of exactly that. Brownstone has assembled fully 150 studies that demonstrate that immunity through infection is effective, broad, and lasting.
Had that messaging been around during lockdowns, the attitude toward the virus would have been very different. We would have clearly seen the present reality from the beginning, namely that endemicity generally arrives in the case of a new virus of this sort due to exposure-induced population immunity. This is how humankind evolved to live in the presence of pathogens.
If we had widespread public awareness of this, the public-health priority would not have been locking down people who can manage exposure but rather alerting those who cannot to be careful until herd immunity in one’s own circle of contacts has been realized via meeting the virus and recovering.
To those who say that is dangerous, consider that mass exposure is precisely what happened in any case, stretched out over two years rather than occurring in a single season. This delaying of the inevitable might be what allowed for variants to emerge and take hold in successive rounds, each new one hitting naive immune systems in ways that were difficult to predict. Flatten the curve amounted to “prolonging the pain,” exactly as Knut Wittkowski predicted in March 2020.
A widespread understanding of natural immunity would have changed the entire calculus of public perception of how to manage one’s life in the face of a new virus. Instead of just running and hiding, people might have considered tradeoffs, as they had always done in the past. What is my risk of infection and under what conditions? If I do get the thing, what happens then? It might also have changed the priorities from disease avoidance and vaccine subsidies and mandates to thinking about the crucial thing: what should people do if they get sick? What should doctors recommend and prescribe?
The neglect of therapeutics figures into this very highly. If people believe that locking down, staying away, masking up, stopping travel, and generally giving up all choices in life were the right way to make a pathogen magically disappear, plus they are under the impression that the risk of severe outcomes is equally distributed across the whole population, plus they believe that 3-4% of the population is going to die from Covid (as was suggested in the early days), you end up with a much more compliant people.
If natural immunity had been rightly seen as the most robust and broad form of immunity from the beginning, and we instead followed the idea of focused protection, the vaccine mandates would have been out of the question.
In other words, the silence of this topic was critical to scaring people all over the world into going along with an unprecedented attack on rights and liberties, thus losing up to two years of childhood education, closing millions of small businesses, and denying people basic religious liberties, in addition to the collapse of public health that resulted in record-breaking alcohol and opioid-related deaths, not to mention lost cancer screenings, childhood vaccinations, and general ill-health both physical and mental.
This stuff is not without consequence. One might expect some contrition. Instead we get a passing comment and nothing more. After all, frank talk about this subject might be risky: it would imply that their entire mitigation strategy was wrong from the beginning and should never be attempted again.
UNLESS there is a change of policy, from April 1 the public will have to pay for the testing still required to visit loved ones in care homes, hospitals and other regulated healthcare settings.
It is incredible that neither the mainstream media nor the public are discussing this injustice in any depth, let alone being up in arms about it. Most have likely yet to comprehend how ruinous a policy this will prove for so many people. Again.
For a citizen of England to have to pay to visit a sick, dying, or lonely relative in a care home or hospital – even if both are triple-jabbed (and whilst unvaccinated health workers may come and go) – is an inhumane policy.
That one’s visit might not even be permitted in the first place is another story – an ‘exclusive’ the Telegraph claimed to have broken on February 18, despite TCW having written about it as far back as December 7, 2021 ( see here and here, for example).
What are the real-life consequences of having to fork out to visit vulnerable loved ones? Let’s begin with the obvious: the mounting financial cost to the individual.
The high street price of a single lateral flow test is currently predicted to be from £2 to £5, depending on how many are bought at once. Better deals will doubtless be found online, but for simplicity let’s run with £2 per test.
That’s £14 a week straight off the bat (working on the assumption that consecutive daily visits are permitted: check with your local NHS Trust) but potentially much, much more for someone such as an elderly person not able either to shop confidently online, or trawl the high street for the best deal.
Throw in the cost of fuel for a 15-to-20-mile round trip at today’s wartime prices (or public transport), plus hospital parking charges which hover around £2.50 for two hours (one hour is often free, but would not suffice), then even in a best-case scenario, visiting a dearly beloved could end up costing from £7.50 to well over £10 a time.
Suppose one were unemployed and on Jobseeker’s Allowance – visiting a gravely ill loved one in hospital every day for a week could easily use up half of one’s weekly benefit. Food and energy stability, or being at a loved one’s bedside: some of the many new decisions to be faced by the less affluent in post-Covid England.
But no matter what the expense, it is the dehumanising ideology behind the imminent change in rules that displays how far England has sunk ethically since this rotten new era of hypochondriacal public health despotism began.
How on earth can paying to visit the sick and dying be said to be ‘living with Covid’? And with cases purportedly on the rise, who foresees any loosening of visiting protocols this year?
What of the elderly in care homes – the pandemic’s original totems for mass hysteria? For two years now they have had to endure a level of enforced solitude unthinkable in pre-Covid England, and yet even though Johnson has finally swapped playing public health-Connect Four for the chess game of war, the elderly have now to navigate their relatives’ financial concerns over visiting, set against the backdrop of a sharp rise in energy prices precipitated by the Prime Minister’s latest, and totally unrelated, geopolitical switcheroo.
It boggles the mind, boils the blood and cracks the heart to imagine any of the citizens of this country either being totally denied access to their loved ones, or having to pay for the privilege if granted. Lay aside how England compares with other countries: what on earth have WE become?!
As previously touched upon, compounding this grotesque unfairness is the fact that health workers will not only retain their access to free testing, but regardless of vaccination status may continue touching, breathing upon, bathing, feeding, and dressing those in need – for remuneration – whilst triple-vaccinated relatives have nonsensically either to pay to sit quietly at the bedside of the very same needy, or be left out in the cold entirely. Riddle us that one, Covid Inquiry: we’re all ears!
As usual, with each mutation of the narrative the public are left with nothing but a list of worrisome questions:
· Will we have to pay for lateral flow tests for ever? After all, we are being told with great confidence that the virus is not going anywhere. If not, then at some point will testing be eradicated completely? How low must case numbers get before we REALLY start living with Covid?
· Will tests become free again in the event of another Delta variant-style wave?
· Will Ukrainian refugees also have to pay?
The majority of this nation went along with the Covid narrative – supposedly entirely out of fear, pressure from peers, family or employers; a sense of patriotism or moral duty; as a means by which to virtue-signal, or perhaps even just for kicks – either directly or indirectly succumbing to public health propaganda.
I don’t buy this wholesale. Not one bit.
My overriding impression is that most were simply too uninterested, too analytically inept or lazy, or too lacking in courage – imagination even – to rock the narrative-boat for fear of creating for themselves a modestly taxing degree of both mental gymnastics and personal sacrifices.
And so who do we ultimately have to blame for Government’s impending, exploitative and divisive ‘pay-to-love’ scheme: that of having to grovel for permission to shell out hard-earned money on visiting a perhaps dying loved one? Ourselves, unfortunately.
That’s what we get for two years of slavish obedience to the hyper-romanticised, brainless mainstream trash of the age.
In more ways than one it is not unreasonable to say that we have done this all to ourselves, and that the crippling costs of both our torpor and cowardice, as predicted, continue to be borne by all and sundry, but predominantly the weak and vulnerable.
Please don’t get seriously ill any time soon, Mum. You’ll likely have to go it mostly alone, cause I ain’t exactly flush these days.
A reader was disturbed this week by a visit from an official from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). What the official said appears to bode ill for the idea that the U.K. is ‘living with Covid’ insofar as that means moving away from all the Covid theatre and regulations of the past two years.
I work in a London hospitality business. This week an official from the HSE came in to do a Covid compliance spot check. Despite the Government making noises about Covid regulations being binned, the HSE person informed us that from April businesses with more than five employees will still be required to adhere to general ‘Covid safe’ practices, under the threat of enforcement proceedings (and fines) by the HSE.
Overhearing what the HSE official told the General Manager, it sounded to me as though it will involve keeping a Covid risk management plan in place and ensuring ventilation, access to sanitiser for customers and so on.
Most of it was asking questions about Covid management actions we have taken and are still taking. It implied that, so far as the HSE is concerned, Covid is a now a ‘standard’ risk which needs to continue to be managed alongside others.
So briefly, it appears:
– they are doing Covid spot checks insofar as they apply to employees;
– they will be increasing spot checks from April.
This suggests the perpetuation of Covid regulations will be enforced under the guise of general health and safety law. Not as advertised by the Government at all if so, and hardly reflects ‘living with Covid’ like we live with other mostly mild respiratory viruses.
Runs counter to the official narrative of a bonfire of Covid restrictions.
If the Government is serious about moving on from the pandemic then it needs to rein in the HSE and withdraw its guidance that treats COVID-19 as a special threat.
A new poll finds that vaccinated people are far more likely to risk World War III over Ukraine by supporting aggressive measures against Russia, while unvaccinated people are more likely to support diplomatic measures.
The revealing results of the survey, which was conducted by EKOS, were published by the Toronto Star.
Canadians who have received “three or more shots” massively supported expanding sanctions (86%), seizing Russians assets (85%), cutting off shipments of Russian oil (81%) and sending additional military equipment to Ukraine (82%). Over half (52%) supported providing Ukraine with fighter jets.
On the flip side, unvaccinated Canadians were far less likely to support measures that would serve to escalate the conflict.
Indeed, a majority of unvaccinated (52%) don’t support any of the measures listed at all.
“The overwhelming majority probably would have said “use diplomacy” if it was an option but the warhawks behind the poll left it off the list,” comments Chris Menahan.
The insightful poll results back up the claims of many, that the COVID narrative was switched for ‘support Ukraine’ virtually overnight by the media and the unthinking masses immediately displayed their ideological subservience.
NPCs were able to seamlessly transfer from zealous support for vaccines and vitriolic denunciations of anyone who didn’t get one, to zealous support for Ukraine and vitriolic denunciations of anyone who didn’t fully swallow the war narrative.
It seems that mass support for whatever ‘current thing’ the political class and culture demands has become a form of cognitive addiction.
Humanity is seemingly dependent on defining itself by lurching from one crisis to another and weaponizing it to ostracize, publicly shame and deplatform dissidents who suggest all may not be as it seems.
Samizdat adds:
The poll also revealed how the two groups feel about the reasons for the conflict, with 88% of vaccinated respondents saying the repression of Russian speakers in the Donbass region does not justify Russia’s actions in Ukraine. The unvaccinated, however, are more split on the question, with 26% saying Russia’s military operation is justified, 27% saying it isn’t, and 35% saying they neither agree nor disagree with it.
The vaccinated also say, almost unanimously (88%), that Russia is guilty of war crimes in Ukraine, while only 32% of unvaxxed respondents agree, and 42% say they don’t believe it is happening at all.
EKOS President Frank Graves said he found the poll results alarming, suggesting that vaccine refusers were “much more sympathetic to Russia,” and that it showcased the “highly corrosive influences of disinformation.”
“This is definitely a new and bluntly insidious force that’s contributing to polarization and disinformation and poor decision-making. And it doesn’t seem to be going away. Things are getting worse,” Graves said, as reported by the Toronto Star.
“I don’t think this is because those people had an ingrained sympathy to the Russians. They’re reading this online, they’re consuming this from the same sources that were giving them the anti-vax stuff.”
March 3, 2022, CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky answered questions in front of medical students at her alma mater, Washington University. This is an excerpt of the 45-minute presentation,1 during which Walensky made several statements about the public health response to COVID-19 in the past two years, admitting the CDC had relied heavily on vaccines, that she’d learned of the 95% efficacy from CNN and was not told the shots would lose effectiveness.
In fact, much of her presentation is riddled with statements that likely revealed more than she intended. She might not have realized the presentation was being taped or thought a taped presentation in front of medical students wouldn’t be found. Or maybe, the CDC simply doesn’t care that what they say in 2022 is the same information that caused many to be censored or maligned in 2020 and 2021.
It would be an interesting test to repeat her statements on social media today to see if the information would be tagged as misinformation or disinformation now that the CDC has publicly recognized what scientists have been saying for years.
Walensky Admits Her Source Was CNN
Walensky was invited to speak to the medical students at Washington University as the 2022 Gerald Medoff Visiting Professor in the Department of Medicine. During the interview conducted by Dr. William G. Powderly, co-director of the Division of Infectious Diseases, she was asked what the CDC got right and how that might affect the response to future pandemics. Three minutes into her answer, she said:2
“Where could we have improved? Well, you know, I think … I can tell you where I was when the CNN feed came that it was 95% effective, um, the vaccine. So many of us wanted it to be helpful. Many of us wanted to say, “OK, this is our ticket out.” Right? Now we’re done.”
This may be a mind-blowing admission — that the head of the CDC’s information came from a CNN news report and not from Pfizer. It turns out the CNN report was a regurgitated Pfizer press release. Investigative journalist Paul Thacker, writing in The Disinformation Chronicle, discusses the timeline of events that led to Walensky believing the Pfizer vaccine was 95% effective.3
It is likely the CNN report Walensky is referring to was published November 18, 20204 by Maggie Fox and Amanda Sealy, who it appears did little to augment the story after pulling information from a Pfizer press release published the same day.5 What is remarkable, and unfortunate, is that a story in CNN influenced Walensky’s thinking about the vaccine and future guidance from the CDC.
It turns out it is even more deplorable since it wasn’t a story but a republished press release. Also interesting is that it took two CNN reporters to present one republished press release/story. As Thacker writes, “The Pfizer press release became CNN headline, became CDC pandemic policy.” Walensky went on to say during the interview:6
“So I think we had perhaps too little caution and too much optimism for some good things that came our way. I really do. I think all of us wanted this to be done. Nobody said waning, when you know, oh this vaccine is going to work. Oh well, maybe it’ll work — (laughs) it’ll wear off. Nobody said what if the next variant doesn’t, it doesn’t, it’s not as potent against the next variant.”
Thacker dug into the published transcript7 of a Pfizer earnings call held February 2, 2021, in which an analyst from global financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald asked four pointed questions.
If the COVID vaccine becomes routine, how do you think governments and physicians will choose among these vaccines that have received emergency use authorization?
And then how do you think about that 95% efficacy rate in light of mutations?
And the last question is on your PCV20, if it’s approved, what do you expect the ACIP [Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices] recommendation to be your — what would you ideally like it to be?
And do you think there will be any upgrade for those 65-plus due to the additional serotypes?
It seems interesting that the analyst from Cantor Fitzgerald understood enough to ask about whether the vaccine would be effective against a virus nearly every scientist in the world expected to mutate. And yet, Walensky did not consider the possibility,8 despite having been a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School with years of experience dealing with viruses.9
Where Does the COVID ‘Science’ Come From?
When asked about the ACIP recommendation, Pfizer responded, “And then to your question about ACIP. Of course, we’re working closely with the FDA for approval and with the CDC at the right moments in time to get the right recommendation.”10 Many believe that the “right recommendation” was not given, yet Pfizer likely got exactly what they wanted from the CDC.
Walensky has overruled or avoided asking the ACIP’s advice on COVID booster issues at least three times, according to a STAT News report.11 As Thacker writes, this sequence of events is:12
“… direct evidence of a corporation influencing federal policy by laundering their press release through media outlets like CNN. Further, republishing press releases seems a pervasive practice in how the media covers COVID-19 vaccines — meaning, they don’t do much reporting. This has been obvious since late 2020.”
Walensky’s presentation at Washington University was just days after it was revealed that Biden and the CDC are parroting talking points developed by the same firm that conducted polling for Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign.13 The memo sent February 24, 2022, closely matches statements Biden used in the State of the Union Address.
In other words, it appears that at least some of the “science” driving public health policy for COVID-19 and destroying the economy is coming directly from Impact Research,14 who are “the proud pollsters for President Joe Biden” and whose marketing includes “electing Democrats in the toughest districts,” “electing presidents” and “crafting the most authentic and persuasive language for your communications.”
Two days after Walensky spoke at Washington University, former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson, wrote,15 “She’s right. Nobody could possibly have known variants might be a problem.” Under this, he posted a tweet dated January 20, 2021, in which he had posted, “Spoiler alert: the vaccines probably don’t work against at least one new variant and they’re going to want you to get vaccinated again next fall.”
By August, Twitter banned Berenson permanently for “repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation rules.”16 The tweet that put Twitter over the edge compared the vaccine to a “therapeutic “with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile.” He also questioned vaccine mandates.”
Data supporting limited efficacy17 and terrible side effects18,19 are not difficult to find. In fact, Walensky admitted the vaccine has limited efficacy to Washington University — will Twitter ban her?
Walensky Knows She’s Wrong for Half the Country
Midway through the interview, Powderly asked how Walensky balances the risks of infectious disease against the mental health and economic risks from decisions the CDC has made. Her response was telling:20
“This is such an important question. The easy answer is I know I’m going to be wrong for half the country (laugh) so now that I’ve accepted that um … some fraction of people will be unhappy.
We are looking under the lamppost of all the cases and all the deaths and there have been so many other things that we’re counting that don’t make the headlines — opioid deaths, mental health challenges, cancer screening. I’ve heard from colleagues of people who came in whose elective surgeries were deferred who now come in with metastatic disease.”
Minutes before, she was asked what she thought the next couple of years would look like. She started by saying, “So this is a safe space because every piece of advice I’ve gotten is don’t predict what’s going to happen.”21 The implication appears to be that she didn’t think what she said would be made public. She went on to predict that in the months ahead she believes:
“… [O]verall immunity is going to hold us in good stead. I don’t know whether we’re going to need another boost and I don’t know when and I don’t know what that’s going to look like but I do think ultimately we will have a good level of population immunity for variants that come our way … Ultimately we will have a coronavirus that will lead to death in some people every season, that we will tolerate in some way.”
This coronavirus that will lead to death every season sounds amazingly like seasonal flu. The final estimates by the CDC22 of the 2017-2018 flu season showed 41 million people were symptomatic with an estimated 18.9 million who received medical care, 710,572 who were hospitalized and 51,646 who died.
She also hinted that mask-wearing may be here to stay, saying, “I haven’t had a cold in a really long time, and I suspect we don’t miss those.”23 Yet, Walensky has also admitted that the CDC’s mask policy for public schools to reopen was influenced by teachers’ unions who were against in-person learning.
In other words, the guidelines for children to wear masks throughout their school day were not developed based on science but, rather, on “hearing firsthand from parents and teachers directly about their experiences and concerns.” and “superintendents, principals, civil rights groups, and all sorts of other folks.”24
Despite History, CDC Is Calling for Transparency
Anyone who has held an opinion that differs from the mainstream narrative has been censored, questioned and fake “fact-checked” so the debate over science would never see the light of day. Mainstream media outlets took up the banner, quashing any information that didn’t neatly fit the story.
If data might demonstrate that the vaccine was not functioning the way it was promised, then the CDC25 withheld the information and Health and Human Services26 stopped tracking hospital deaths related to COVID-19. But they haven’t been able to stop the data coming from Israel,27 the U.K,28 Germany29 and insurance companies.30
During Walensky’s appearance, she said she was “proud of our ability to get data out,”31 in reference to the vaccine. She indicated that they used a “pedal-to-the-metal”32 system to analyze and assimilate data that was published, on average, every 48 hours. Yet, her comments are in direct contradiction to a recent investigative report published in The New York Times33 that shows the CDC was not transparently publishing “large portions” of vaccine data.
In fact, Walensky has also publicly discredited the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), which is co-administered34 by the FDA and CDC. During her January 11, 2022, testimony before the Senate,35 Walensky clearly stated that any death after a vaccine could be reported to VAERS using the example of an individual who gets vaccinated, hit by a car and dies.
She implied without outright stating that this death would also be recorded in VAERS and logged as a death related to the vaccine. In other words, she skirted the issue without having to outright lie to the Senate.
Just days before she declared her pride in the CDC’s ability to publish accurate and informative data, The New York Times36 revealed that the FDA had been aware the COVID shots were only 12% effective in children under the age of 5. However, they withheld the information before a scheduled meeting on February 15, 2022, which was subsequently canceled. According to the Times :37
“Experts worried that the news would further dissuade hesitant parents from immunizing their children. Other studies have shown the vaccine was not powerfully protective against infection with the Omicron variant in adults, either.”
Will the Gaslighting Stop?
During the interview, Walensky alluded to people in the media who “reject evidence,” saying,38 “You know in the media now, there are a lot of people who are using their voice that may or may not be helpful for public health … then that decreases public health in general so our messaging I think we have to be clear about.”
The information that Walensky revealed during the interview makes you wonder about who’s making public health decisions and why. It’s difficult to imagine and scary to think that after two years, one of the largest and most powerful health care agencies in the U.S. is led by a director who is potentially uninformed, or worse, purposefully misleading the public.
In approximately 35 short minutes Walensky revealed much. While she characterizes those who reject her propaganda as “rejecting evidence” since scientific debate is no longer part of the scientific process according to the CDC, it’s interesting to note that she:
Admits learning about the Pfizer 95% efficacy — information which was then used to formulate CDC guidelines — from a CNN report,39 which was nothing more than a republished press release from Big Pharma.40
Believes the CDC is transparently publishing data in a “pedal-to-the-metal” scenario41 even though The New York Times uncovered evidence the CDC is withholding data.42
Believes that no one told her or the CDC that a virus may mutate and render the vaccine ineffective,43 yet a financial analyst was astute enough to ask the question.44
Isn’t sure if we will need another booster45 after Pfizer told the world last year that a fourth dose may be needed sooner than expected.46
Blames the “public” at large for believing “the science” is black and white despite her colleague, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who as director of the NIAID, has been the face of COVID-19 for the White House, claiming HE was the science.47 Walensky now admits: “I think the public heard that science is black and white, science is immediate … and the truth is, science is gray.”48
The book The Year the World Went Mad by SAGE-member Mark Woolhouse, has now been published as an audiobook and will be available in hard cover on April 12th. This is an important book, for here the author, a key player in the pandemic response in the UK, admits that more or less everything he and his colleagues suggested and the government did was wrong.
In this interview with Spiked-online, Woolhouse admits that focused protection, as suggested by the proponents of the Great Barrington Declaration, would have been the right approach, and that he and his associates knew it. He even claims they suggested it, but nobody listened. However, even if they did, why didn’t they speak up? The scientists who wrote and published the Great Barrington Declaration were denounced as pseudo-scientists – and by whom? Among others, by the very people who knew they were right all along.
In the author‘s own words:
“So how do you protect those people? First of all, since they have to have contact with certain people, you make it as Covid-safe as possible for them to have those interactions. Take all the precautions we know to take now, about wearing masks, ventilation and physical distancing. But that alone is not enough. You need to make sure that the contact themselves does not have an infection and is not going to pass it on to the vulnerable people they’re interacting with. We were talking about this in April and May 2020 to many people in government. But we never implemented it. It never took off. And yet it’s quite clear from our work that this would have had a very significant impact. It would not be enough by itself “You still need to suppress the virus to a degree, but you would not need lockdown.”
The lockdowns, travel bans, school closures and all the rest were useless and extremely harmful to society. But still the scientists in charge of the pandemic response, including Mark Woolhouse, promoted those methods and justified them. They derided those who criticised their methods, cancelled them, claimed they didn’t respect science. But it was the other way around. This, we must never forget.
This book is a good step. But I wonder if the author has apologised to those who were right all along, to Martin Kulldorff, Sunetra Gupta, Jay Bhattacharya and all the other honest, real scientists who had the courage and moral standard to tell the truth. If he hasn’t, I urge him to do so.
Following our recent article highlighting isolation and neglect in care homes, we are appalled to report that the situation is only slowly improving. What is more, many NHS sites are still imposing draconian and vindictive policies. Children are being separated from parents and dying relatives are being abandoned to a lonely end.
It is beyond comprehension that this situation persists. Three weeks to flatten the curve? More like 24 months to bulldoze the social contract. Here is one quote from a UK hospital this week:
“We know that continuing to extend restrictions on visiting will be disappointing and it is not a decision we have taken lightly. We understand how important the support of family and friends can be for patients in their recovery while they are in hospital, however, our number one priority is to keep everyone safe”.
These silken, virtue-signalling words – keeping “everyone safe” – are not only utterly simplistic, they disguise blanket policies that encourage multiple Milgram-esque acts of cruel depravity. We are hearing horrific stories of desperate children being denied access to their dying parents.
“Everyone” is not safe when a nonagenarian, now in declining health, has to spend their remaining weeks – or even days – in soulless incarceration. These individuals spent their entire working lives rebuilding this country after WW2 and then brought up a subsequent generation of taxpayers. Surely we owe these bastions of society the dignity of choice in their final days.
If this situation was not depressing enough, HART has also been made aware of the most cruel of indignities: patients in their final days of life are being denied palliative care if they refuse a covid injection. It is hard to comprehend the wickedness of foisting this particular medical intervention – with all the known short-term adverse effects – on someone with a severely weakened immune system who is already in their final days. It is hard to see this as anything other than battery.
There is no doubt that the overwhelming majority of people involved in the healthcare services want the best for their patients, so how can these things still be happening? Two years into this depressing saga, perhaps it is too late for those who promote these injustices to take responsibility for the harm caused. However, those that have been ‘going with the flow’, perhaps hoping for an easy life, might want to reconsider whether their consciences can bear any more of this, and whether they want to align themselves with faceless and sadistic despotism.
After all, you cannot comply your way out of tyranny.
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