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Major Study Says Lockdowns Did More Harm Than Good – Well D’uh!

By Richie Allen | February 3, 2022

Lockdowns did far more harm than good. A new study published by Johns Hopkins University, in the US, Lund University, in Sweden and Denmark’s Centre for Political Studies found that lockdowns prevented just 0.2 per cent of deaths compared to letting people get on with their lives.

According to The Telegraph :

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University, in the US, Lund University, in Sweden and the Centre for Political Studies, in Denmark, said the costs to society far outweighed the benefits and called for lockdown to be “rejected out of hand” as a future pandemic policy.

The team even found that some lockdown measures may have increased deaths by stopping access to outdoor space, “pushing people to meet at less safe places” while isolating infected people indoors, where they could pass the virus on to family members and housemates.

“We do find some evidence that limiting gatherings was counterproductive and increased Covid-19 mortality,” the authors concluded. “Often, lockdowns have limited people’s access to safe outdoor places such as beaches, parks, and zoos, or included outdoor mask mandates or strict outdoor gathering restrictions, pushing people to meet at less safe indoor places.”

This isn’t earth-shattering. In March 2020, when the first lockdown was implemented, many doctors and healthcare workers warned that locking down would be ineffective against an airborne virus and that the measure would be devastating for public health.

They weren’t just ignored, they were banned by the mainstream media. I featured many of them on The Richie Allen Show.

Look, the government and its scientific advisers knew that lockdowns would be ineffective and dangerous. The policy wasn’t pursued in the interest of public health, rather it was implemented in the interest of public coercion.

The events of the last 22 months have nothing to do with a virus and all to do with mRNA drugs. They grossly exaggerated the threat of covid-19 and forced the world into lockdown after lockdown, to push their experimental jabs.

The major new study on the ineffectiveness and danger of lockdowns concludes thus:

“Lockdowns during the initial phase of the Covid-19 pandemic have had devastating effects. They have contributed to reducing economic activity, raising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence and undermining liberal democracy.

These costs to society must be compared to the benefits of lockdowns, which our meta-analysis has shown are marginal at best. Such a standard benefit-cost calculation leads to a strong conclusion: lockdowns should be rejected out of hand as a pandemic policy instrument.”

February 3, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Costa Rica Anti-Vaccine group enters hospital by force

The Tico Times | January 27, 2022

In a chaotic, and at times violent confrontation, a group of anti-vaccine advocates forcibly entered a hospital in Heredia as part of their protest and to remove a child with Covid-19. Six protestors were arrested at the scene. Police later arrested another person after he posted threatening comments online against government officials enforcing Covid-19 health restrictions.

The confrontation arose from a situation where, reportedly, a six year old unvaccinated patient was admitted for one issue and then was discovered to have tested positive for Covid-19.

Hospital officials were reluctant to release the child back into the community while infectious, at the same time the patient’s parents, both anti-vaccine advocates, claimed their child was being held “hostage” as hospital officials waited for guidance from the Ministry of Health.

A small, but hardline group organized online, reportedly initially to go to the hospital to physically remove the child themselves. Included in the group was a member of the National Assembly by the name of Diaz.

Security personnel and hospital employees confronted the protestors and scuffles ensued until police arrived and the “rescue mission” became a sit in. Hospital officials denounced the participants for putting patients at a crucial medical facility at risk for what they described as a political stunt. Prosecutors promised to take a hard line against any violent protestors that may have broken the law.

February 2, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

The Race Is On for an Omicron Jab

By Dr. Joseph Mercola | February 1, 2022

At this stage in the game, it’s apparent that the COVID jab no longer works. Many health officials and world leaders are even openly acknowledging that the COVID shots cannot end the pandemic and that we must learn to live with the virus.

A major driver for this U-turn in the pandemic narrative is the emergence of the Omicron variant which, by mid-January 2022, accounted for 99.5% of all COVID cases in the U.S.1

The infection, which is far milder than previous ones, is ripping through populations, leaving natural herd immunity in its wake. Despite that, vaccine makers are still hard at work to produce an Omicron-specific injection.2 Pfizer has promised to have one ready by March 2022.3

The question is why, seeing how by the time the shot is released, just about everybody will have been exposed. If natural herd immunity is already maxed out, what good could a “vaccine” possibly do?

‘Everyone’ Will Have Natural Immunity

As Dr. William Moss, executive director of the International Vaccine Access Center at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health told CNBC,4 “An omicron-targeted vaccine was needed in December [2021]. It still could be valuable but I do think in many ways, it’s too late.”

Dr. Shaun Truelove, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a member of a team of researchers who make COVID projections, agreed, saying, “Given how quickly this [variant] is happening, [the targeted vaccine] may not matter because everybody’s going to be infected.”5 Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla even admits he doesn’t know “whether or not the new vaccine is needed or how it could be used,” CNBC reports.

January 25, 2022, Pfizer and Moderna announced they’ve started enrolling adults, 18 to 55, for trials on an Omicron-specific jab in the U.S. and South Africa.6 Pfizer will evaluate safety, tolerability and immune response in 1,420 volunteers,7 some of whom will have received two doses while others will have received three already. A third cohort will be unvaccinated (although one wonders where they’ll get those from).

Moderna has also joined the pointless race to produce an Omicron booster,8 although it’s doubtful they’ll be able to produce one any faster than Pfizer.

Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel told CNBC that a fourth COVID jab also may be on the horizon, “as the efficacy of boosters will likely decline over time.”9 It’s unclear what strain that fourth shot would target.

Israel Proves Failure of COVID Boosters

For a preview of what’s in store after third and fourth booster shots, all we have to do is look at Israel, where more than 250,000 fourth doses had already been given by early January 2022. According to CNBC:10

“Early data from Israel shows that a fourth dose does increase antibody levels, says Dr. David Hirschwerk, infectious disease specialist and medical director at Northwell Health’s North Shore University Hospital.”

What CNBC neglects to note is that, after the rollout of a fourth dose, Israel now has the highest COVID case rate per capita of any country in the world since the beginning of the pandemic.

Looking at a Reuters graph11 of Israel’s seven-day average case rate, something absolutely abnormal appears to have happened in mid-January 2022, as the line shoots straight upward, hitting an all-time high of 75,603 new infections per day on January 24, 2022.

This, despite 74% of the population having received at least one dose, 67% having received two doses, and 56% having received at least one booster, as of January 25, 2022.12

What Does It Mean To Be ‘Fully Vaxxed’?

While the pandemic narrative has recently shifted, and rather dramatically, with some leaders openly speaking out against boosters without getting canceled or censored, it seems clear that we’re not out of the woods yet when it comes to COVID shots.

Vaccine makers clearly aim to make the COVID shot, at bare minimum, an annual injection.13 In the meantime, the definition of what it means to be “fully vaccinated” against COVID keeps shifting. At the beginning of 2021, many people undoubtedly got their primary series (two shots of Pfizer or Moderna, or a single jab in the case of AstraZeneca and Janssen) thinking life would be easier that way.

Being “fully vaccinated,” they wouldn’t be inconvenienced by vaccine passport restrictions and mandates. Well, that fantasy only lasted a few months. Now, those who got the first required series find themselves in the unwelcome position of being among the “unvaccinated” again unless they submit to a third jab.

As explained by U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Rochelle Walensky during a recent press briefing:14

“What we’re really working to do is pivot the language to make sure everyone is up to date with their COVID-19 vaccines as they personally could be, should be, based on when they got their last vaccine. If you’ve recently gotten your second dose but you’re not eligible for a booster, you’re up-to-date. If you’re eligible for a booster and you haven’t gotten it, you’re not up-to-date and you need to get your booster.”

It’s only a matter of time before those with three jabs will be “unvaccinated” unless they submit to a fourth, and so on, ad nauseum. An as-yet unanswered question is how many mRNA injections can a person survive?

Considering the injection causes your body to produce toxic spike protein in uncontrolled amounts, it seems reasonable to assume there’s a tolerance limit, although that limit may vary from person to person. There’s really no telling how many people are one shot away from a crippling side effect or sudden death.

Each Shot Degrades Your Immune System

As reported by The Exposé,15 January 22, 2022, government data from around the world suggest people who have received at least two shots are now showing signs of serious immune system degradation.

According to that report, data from Australia, the U.S., Canada, Scotland and England clearly show “that their vaccinated populations immune system capability has been decimated when compared to the not-vaccinated population.” For starters, Omicron cases are rising far more rapidly and readily among the fully jabbed and boosted than among the unvaxxed.

In Australia, the fully jabbed are 2.2 times more likely to catch COVID than the unvaccinated. “So, the vaccine passports holders are 2.2x more likely to spread COVID than the unvaxxed who are denied vaccine passports and locked up in detention centers,” The Exposé dryly notes.

Several studies have also shown the effectiveness of the jab wanes incredibly rapidly. And, disturbingly, it doesn’t peter out at zero. Immunity goes negative, meaning the fully vaxxed and boosted rapidly become MORE prone to COVID infection than they ever were before.

Negative Effectiveness Rates Found in Many Countries

In the U.S., a study16 on 780,225 U.S. veterans found the effectiveness of the jab dropped precipitously over six months:

  • Janssen dropped from 86.4% effectiveness at the outset to 13.1% in the sixth month
  • Moderna dropped from 89.2% to 58%
  • Pfizer dropped from 86.9% to 43.3%

A Canadian study17 found vaccine effectiveness started declining sharply within as little as the second week after the second jab. By the sixth month after the second jab, the blood of 70% of nursing home residents had “very poor ability to neutralize the coronavirus infection in laboratory experiments.”

In the U.K., government data “show a clear linear fall-off in vaccine efficiency at an average rate of 4.8% per week for the over 18s,” The Exposé reports,18 and by the time you get past Week 9 after jab No. 2, effectiveness starts going negative.

“Doubly vaxxed (unboosted) people in the U.K. have now (as of January 2022) run right out of immune system efficiency against both Delta and Omicron when compared to unvaccinated people,” The Exposé writes. The question is whether or not there might be a point at which the immune system stops deteriorating. As of now, we don’t know.

Using data from five UK HSA COVID-19 Vaccine Surveillance Reports, The Exposé created the following graph, illustrating “the overall immune system performance among all age groups in England over the past five months.”

The Exposé explains:19

“What we can see from the above is that the immune system performance for adults aged between 18 and 59 has deteriorated to the worst levels yet since they were given the COVID-19 vaccine.

Whilst the immune system performance of everyone over the age of 60 has deteriorated dramatically following receipt of the booster shot, but not yet to the level seen between week 37 and week 40. The over 70’s have however seen the most dramatic fall in immune system performance between month 4 and month 5 alongside 18-29-year-olds.

The 55% boost to the immune systems of the over 80’s given by the boosters between month 3 and month 4 has all but deteriorated between month 4 and month 5. Their immune system is performing 1% better than it was in month 3 but still 54% worse than their unvaccinated counterparts.

The 73% boost to the immune systems of the 70-79-year-olds given by the boosters between month 3 and month 4 has also all but deteriorated between month 4 and month 5. Their immune system is performing 10% better than it was in month 3 but still 63% worse than their unvaccinated counterparts.

The minor boost however, given to the immune systems of everyone between the age of 30 and 59 by the boosters between month 3 and 4 has been completely decimated by the following month, whilst 18-29-year-olds have seen a 60% decline in their immune system performance between months 4 and 5.”

Are Double- and Triple-Jabbed People at Risk for VAIDS?

By now you may be wondering whether this negative effectiveness could be indicative of something far worse than just being more prone to Omicron infection. The Exposé20 believes the double- and triple-jabbed may actually have vaccine-acquired immunodeficiency syndrome or VAIDS, similar to AIDS.

While I think it’s still too early to come to a definitive conclusion, former Pfizer vice president Michael Yeadon has made a similar statement.21 In a December 6, 2021, article on americasfrontlinedoctors.org, Yeadon is quoted saying:22

“If immune erosion occurs after two doses and just a few months, how can we exclude the possibility that effects of an untested ‘booster’ will not erode more rapidly and to a greater extent?”

The article goes on to cite a Lancet preprint23 that compared outcomes among “vaccinated” and unvaccinated Swedes over the course of nine months. As in other studies, they found that protection against symptomatic COVID rapidly declined, and by six months’ post-jab, “some of the more vulnerable vaccinated groups were at greater risk than their unvaccinated peers.”

“Doctors are calling this phenomena in the repeatedly vaccinated ‘immune erosion’ or ‘acquired immune deficiency,’ accounting for elevated incidence of myocarditis and other post-vaccine illnesses that either affect them more rapidly, resulting in death, or more slowly, resulting in chronic illness,” the Frontline Doctors explain.24

The article also cites an August 2021 report from Scotland,25 which found those who had received the jab were 3.3 times more likely to die from COVID infection than the unvaccinated — a finding that certainly blows a huge hole in the claim that the jab prevents serious illness and death even if you do get symptomatic infection.

ICU Admissions Spike Among Vaxxed Immunocompromised Brits

The Daily Mail at the end of November 2021 also reported that weekly ICU admissions of “most vulnerable patients” had risen by 50% in the two preceding months, and that 1 in 28 ICU patients had conditions affecting their immune system. Blood cancer patients and organ transplant patients made up a bulk of this group.26

While the Daily Mail blamed the unusually high rate of admissions of immunocompromised patients on the government’s failure to roll out booster shots fast enough to counteract waning immunity, this is incredibly short-sighted. As noted by America’s Frontline Doctors, the shots are creating “vaccine addicts,” in the sense that their immune system won’t be able to ward off COVID without them. However, it’s still a losing venture, as each shot only worsens the immune erosion.

In the final analysis, it looks as though many may indeed end up being just one shot away from VAIDS as they continue to chase protection from an ever-mutating coronavirus.

The Daily Mail article tells the story of a transplant patient who was desperate to get his booster, knowing he was at high risk for COVID complications. It took three weeks, but he finally got his third shot. The very next day — THE NEXT DAY — he developed “a blinding headache, nausea and dizziness. A lateral flow test was positive and a follow-up PCR test confirmed that he had caught COVID.”

But rather than realizing he’s a victim of that third shot, the man is irrationally convinced that had he just gotten the third dose sooner, he wouldn’t have gotten COVID at all. Sadly, people like these will likely die from their “COVID jab addiction.” In closing, The Exposé writes:27

“Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a condition that leads to the loss of immune cells and leaves individuals susceptible to other infections and the development of certain types of cancers. In other words, it completely decimates the immune system.

Therefore, could we be seeing some new form of COVID-19 vaccine induced acquired immunodeficiency syndrome? Only time will tell, but judging by the current figures it looks like we will only need to wait a matter of weeks to find out.”

Sources and References

February 2, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

“Medical boards get pushback as they try to punish doctors for Covid misinformation”/ Politico

Meryl Nass, MD | February 1, 2022

The medical boards are getting in trouble for swallowing the malarky from the Federation of State Medical Boards and other bloated medical nonprofits. These organizations somehow worked in concert during the second half of 2021 to terrorize doctors who failed to hew to the current medical narrative. Presumably they got paid to do so.  Presumably those trying to cement control over Americans felt it necessary to act extrajudicially to use threats to enforce only ‘approved’ medical speech.

The clueless Medical Licensing Board members, a mix of medical professionals and citizens, rely on attorneys on their staff to get the legal details right. Instead, the attorneys never told the Board members that none of them them had any authority to legislate new crimes, that misinformation is not a crime under US law, that Freedom of Speech is a foundational principle of law that may not be abrogated, ever, especially not by any state or state agency.

A few Medical Boards, including my own, got too far out over their skis, and now it is starting to sink in what they have done. Their legislators are saying, “Whoa, Nellie! You guys were supposed to protect the citizens from drunkards, druggies and rapists. We never asked you to trash the 1st and 14th Amendments.”

From Politico,

… the responses from some medical boards and state officials have been stymied by political backlash. States like Tennessee and North Dakota, for example, have restricted state medical boards’ powers. And now legislators in 10 other states — including Florida and South Carolina — have introduced similar measures.
Some state boards also lack the legal tools to discipline doctors for sharing unreliable information via social media. They believe the precedents in their states for unprofessional or unethical behavior more narrowly apply to actions or speech made directly to patients under their care…

Meantime, my license remains suspended while the Maine Medical Licensing Board hopes against hope that if they keep fishing, they might someday be able to find a crime with which to charge me. It’s your taxpayer dollars they are spending to destroy my career and silence my voice. They think it is free money. What do you think?

February 1, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Write History

Corona Collapse: Reader Reports Wanted

eugyppius | February 1, 2022

Containment is collapsing around the world. I want to compile reader reports on local debates and the mood on the street.

I am grateful for anything you can give me, but local information is golden. What your friends think, how local politicians are reacting, how mask rules and other regulations are received, what’s up with testing, how people feel about vaccine coercion, the difference between what the law demands and what is enforced – all of this can be hard to get from press reports, and is what I most value from you, my fantastic readers.

Write to me with your report at containment@tutanota.com.

I read everything you send me. Even if I can only respond to a few emails, I really do read everything you send, I have learned so much from all of you.

February 1, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Justice For the Hyde Park One

By Andrew Rootsey | The Daily Sceptic | February 1, 2022 

As you may recall, we secured Debbie’s acquittal at Cheltenham Magistrates Court on the December 20th 2021 for offences relating to organising/being involved in organising a gathering of more than 30 people during a period of national lockdown or alternatively for participating in the gathering.

The relevant gathering was a protest held in Stratford Park in Stroud in November 2020 against the restrictions imposed on the British public under the Coronavirus Regulations. The protest was called the ‘Freedom Rally’ and was attended by more than 50 people.

The Stroud ‘Freedom Rally’ was held two days into the second national lockdown and therefore at the time it was illegal to organise a gathering of more than 30 people or to meet in groups of more than two people. A conviction would have left her liable for a £10,000 fine.

Ms. Hicks was acquitted of both offences after the court accepted our argument that her arrest and prosecution was a disproportionate interference with her human rights – namely the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, given that she was engaging in a legitimate protest.

The court found that Ms. Hicks had organised the ‘Freedom Rally’ and had breached the Coronavirus Regulations in force at the time by doing so. However, she had a reasonable excuse because she was attending a legitimate, peaceful and well-organised protest. The officers on the ground at the protest had been labouring under a misapprehension of the law – that protesting was not lawful under the Regulations – and were essentially imposing a blanket ban on protesting. Therefore, their actions in arresting her were not rational or proportionate.

In complete contrast – and a perfect example of how this contentious piece of legislation is flawed and open to misinterpretation – on the November 16th 2021 the City of London Magistrates Court convicted Debbie of breaching similar coronavirus regulations by protesting in Hyde Park against the imposition of lockdown restrictions during the pandemic. The District Judge in this case found that Debbie did not have a ‘reasonable excuse’ for protesting and found that the interference with her Human Rights was proportionate. Debbie was convicted and sentenced to a financial penalty.

The case raises important issues on freedom of expression and assembly, as well as the chilling of the right to protest. We wish to appeal this case to the High Court in order for the High Court to settle the important questions of law raised.

A fundamental consideration for the High Court is the ambiguity of the right to protest during the Coronavirus pandemic during periods of national lockdown and the operation of the ‘reasonable excuse’ jurisdiction in this regard.

The Government has made it clear, as have the courts, including in Debbie’s case before the Cheltenham Magistrates Court, that protesting during the Coronavirus pandemic was never illegal. Yet that was not always clear from the Coronavirus regulations nor was it the understanding of most police officers. How the reasonable excuse defence is to operate in these circumstances requires clarity and we are confident that the High Court will settle the issue in our favour and set a precedent for future cases and those seeking to appeal against their own convictions.

Debbie Hicks is probably best known for filming within the Gloucester Royal Hospital in December 2020 during Tier 3 restrictions. Debbie did so, exercising her freedom of expression, in order to highlight that Government restrictions were having a devastating effect upon access to healthcare across the board and to investigate mainstream media reports that hospitals were overflowing with patients.

Despite her efforts to avoid confrontation, she was challenged at the hospital by two employees. During the exchange, which lasted less than a minute, Debbie did not film the staff members. She explained the purpose of her visit and her views as to the provision of NHS services during lockdown. Staff members took offence at her comments and subsequently made a complaint to the police. Debbie immediately left the hospital voluntarily and was subsequently arrested at her home in front of her family and charged with using abusive, threatening or disorderly words or behaviour.

Debbie was not at the hospital deliberately seeking an encounter with staff. She has in the past been a vociferous supporter of the NHS and has supported NHS staff in respect of vaccine mandates.

In connection with this episode, Debbie stood trial for an offence under Section 5 of Public Order Act on January 6th 2022 and having adjourned the case in order to hand down his judgement the District Judge convicted Debbie of a S5 Public Order Act offence on January 19th 2022 at Cirencester Magistrates Court.

We wish to appeal this conviction as well and ask that the High Court settle this case on the basis that the District Judge was wrong in law to convict Debbie of this offence. We are firmly of the view that the Prosecution case simply did not cross the threshold of what constitutes abusive, threatening or disorderly words or behaviour. The District Judge’s analysis was flawed and did not properly interpret Supreme Court authorities nor give appropriate weight to Debbie’s rights of freedom of expression and assembly as enshrined in the European Convention for Human Rights, nor give appropriate weight to the political nature of Debbie’s views when the case law makes clear political freedom of expression should be given special protection.

Debbie is trying to raise £10,000 to take both cases to the High Court. She hopes that those who continue to believe in freedom of speech and the the right to protest will continue to support her. Our hope is that if we can get these convictions overturned, it will set a legal precedent for those convicted of similar offences and who may face prosecution in the future.

Debbie needs to raise funds in order to pay her legal costs and any help is hugely appreciated. Her fundraiser can be found here.

Andrew Rootsey is a solicitor at Murray Hughman.

February 1, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Fake News, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

Biden’s ridiculous free N95 mask offer

Nobody in the medical community is speaking out about how ludicrous this is. So I will.

Traditional ritual mask wearing
By Steve Kirsch | January 31, 2022

The Biden administration is giving out 400 million free N95 masks.

Here’s what they aren’t telling you:

  1. An N95 respirator will “work” for around 2 hours in a hospital or similar setting with filtered air
  2. An N95 respirator will “work” for around 30 min outdoors

So if 200M Americans receive two respirators each, they get around 4 hours of protection. And that only works if the respirators are fitted perfectly with no gaps and people are trained on their use. And as we noted before, even if everything was perfect, you aren’t likely to get anywhere close to 95% reduction in virions (because of the size of the particles and the rate of airflow into the respirator), and even with such a reduction, that’s unlikely to make the difference between getting infected and not getting infected.

In general, N95’s are ineffective with respect to protection against viral spread. Randomized studies show cloth and surgical masks do nothing. Zero.

Not surprising at all. If you read the WHO 2004 “Laboratory Biosafety Manual” (Third Edition) it says, “Surgical type masks are designed solely for patient protection and do not provide respiratory protection to workers.”

So it’s not like we haven’t figured that one out 15 years before COVID. It says surgical masks do not work. Period.

Yet, here we are 18 years later and the CDC and medical community are still pretty clueless.

Consider this quote from highly respected UCSF infectious disease Professor Monica Gandhi in a story about the Bangladesh mask study (which, despite the headlines, proved that masks don’t work at all as I’ve pointed out before):

The study results prompted Monica Gandhi, an infectious-disease physician at the University of California, San Francisco, to switch from cloth masks. “I bought surgical masks for myself — pink ones,” she says.

See? You cannot make this stuff up. It is unbelievable how uninformed the doctors are. Professor Gandhi uses protection that even the WHO says does nothing (and so did that Bangladesh mask study).

And you are taking advice from her?!?!

Check out how much better N95’s are compared to surgical masks:

That’s right. Anyone with a working brain can see N95 masks are not effective at all. There is no measurable difference!

Full article

January 31, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Against Peer Review

eugyppius | January 31, 2022

You cannot discuss Corona or any other academic topic anywhere on the internet, without self-righteous small-minded debunkers demanding to know whether the studies you’re citing are peer reviewed. A lot of people, it seems, believe that there are no certain proofs or arguments, unless some random anonymous academics have approved them.

In my short time on this earth, I’ve done a lot of peer review. I’ve had my own stuff peer reviewed, and I’ve peer reviewed other people’s stuff. It is a cumbersome, arbitrary and worthless process. Whether any particular research has been peer reviewed or not, tells you nothing about its quality. What peer review does tell you, is that the peer reviewed item is very likely to be boring and to say more or less the same thing that all the other peer reviewed stuff says.

The purpose of peer review, is not to enhance the integrity or reliability of academic publications. Peer reviewed studies turn out to be wrong all the time. It is rather one of many mechanisms, via which academics aim to police their own discourse and exclude outside ideas.

I’ve written before about James Lindsay’s distinction between internet hive mind theories and ideas, and official establishment theories and ideas. The theories and ideas promoted by crazy anonymous internet people turn out to be far more dynamic, interesting and predictive, than the theories and ideas promoted by establishment media sources and heavily credentialed, tenured professors. The anonymous internet world is one with very low barriers to entry, many more participants, and ruthless selection for interesting, explanatory content. Here as elsewhere, there are many wrong and crazy ideas, but there is also a broader competitive process that weeds out the least defensible theories, and promotes the most interesting ones. Even when they are wrong, internet theories – by the time they come to your notice – have much more depth and texture to them than the intellectual products of establishment organs.

To save syllables, and widen the applicability of the concept, it is probably better to distinguish simply between curated and uncurated discourse. Curated establishment discourse was always managed and stifling, but before the internet, the people running it at least had the advantage of extensive networking. Professional organisations, periodicals and conferences are the main ways that professors network among each other and share ideas. Before the internet, people outside these academic networks remained comparatively isolated. They had their own local religious, social and professional networks, but it was not easy for them to build large networks around common intellectual interests. In this world, the gate-keeping mechanisms of academia excluded outside ideas, in much the same way as the press kept dissident politics out of the media and away from public notice for decades.

Social media and the internet have changed all of this. For 20 years now, blogs and internet commentary have destroyed the legacy media control over political discourse, and gone a long way to discrediting journalism. The barriers to networking have also fallen, and there now flourish enormous and highly sophisticated uncurated discourses in fields from ancient Greek history to microbiology. Hundreds of thousands of people participate in these discussions, and the curated discourse looks every day less interesting.

The internet did not make academics vulnerable, of course; it just overcame their defences. Universities have feared the ideas of outsiders for a very long time, because it is painfully obvious to every honest person here that most of what we do is wide open to amateurs.

January 31, 2022 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Surveys Show That Democrats Can’t Let Covid Go

By Noah Carl | The Daily Sceptic | January 31, 2022

In the early days of the pandemic, when we didn’t have much information, partisan differences in concern about Covid were relatively small. A Gallup poll from February of 2020 found that precisely 35% of U.S. conservatives and 35% of liberals were worried about the pandemic.

Since then, a massive partisan gap has opened up, with Democrats being far more concerned than Republicans. This gap persists to the present day.

While being greatly concerned about the disease was not unreasonable in the spring of 2020, when few people had immunity and excess mortality was high, the situation we face now is dramatically different. All adults have been offered a vaccine, and a significant fraction of the population has natural immunity.

More and more people can see it’s past time we got back to normal. Even one-time ‘Zero Covid’ advocates like Devi Sridhar admit the virus has been “defanged”. But in the U.S., Democrats can’t seem to let Covid go.

Their refusal to face reality is laid bare in two recent surveys: one by Morning Consult, which is summarised in the New York Times; one a join venture of Rasmussen Reports and the Heartland Institute.

Let’s take each one in turn. Here are two headline results from the first survey. Remember, the data were collected in January of this year – mere weeks ago.

83% of Democrats are still concerned about their children getting sick from Covid at school. 83%! This is despite the fact that Covid poses almost no risk to children; indeed, those aged 5–14 are more likely to die in a car accident on their way to school.

As a result of these ungrounded fears, a shocking 65% of Democrats want to go back to remote learning – something that has demonstrably harmed kids’ education, while yielding almost no benefit in terms of reduced transmission.

What about the second survey? Respondents were asked a series of questions about measures that could be taken against the unvaccinated. The results make for alarming reading indeed.

59% of Democrats would support a policy of confining unvaccinated people in their homes “at all times, except for emergencies”. 48% would support a policy to “fine or imprison” those who publicly question the vaccines’ efficacy. And 45% would support a policy of requiring unvaccinated people to live in “designated facilities or locations”.

Of course, polls can’t always be trusted. Yet as Philippe Lemoine observed, “even if we divide each number by 2, this is still completely insane…” Not least because the vaccines, as we’ve known for some time now, don’t stop transmission.

Note: I’m not claiming that Democrats are uniquely irrational; Republicans have plenty of biases and misconceptions of their own. But if after two years, you still don’t get that Covid isn’t a threat to children, I don’t really know what to say.

And make no mistake: what Democrats believe matters. They currently control the White House (in the world’s ‘most powerful country’), and remain disproportionately represented in U.S media and academia, including public health. Once Democrats let Covid go, the rest of us can too.

January 31, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

The COUP appears to have failed, while all the apparatchiks are still in place. A preliminary proposal to fix the mess.

By Meryl Nass, MD | January 31, 2022

I’ll assume you have been reading my blog and agree with me that an attempt at gaining world domination is at this very moment failing.

It required a deadly pandemic, vaccines that actually worked, and the ability to snooker billions of people into believing that the responses of the government were logical, beneficial and well-intentioned.

It required keeping people separated from each other, communicating primarily via easily surveilled devices.

It required keeping people frightened and distrustful of one another.

It required loosening or destroying the bonds between family members.

It required uniform messaging by virtually all mass media.

It required making doctors and patients distrust one another, while yet submitting to government-enforced medical edicts, denying us the ability to act within any normal doctor-patient relationship.

It required a profound fear of death and loss, enough to supercede our normal instincts regarding loyalty, interpersonal relationships and friendship.

It required massive carrots and sticks to enforce a uniform narrative, against all data (most of which was persistently rigged) and the surrender of common sense.

The carrots came mostly in the form of taxpayer dollars. In the US, trillions have been spent since the start of the pandemic to enforce government lockdown edicts, masks, distancing, vaccinations… The list could go on and on.

No doubt plenty was spent before the pandemic as the chess pieces (crooks) were moved into place to get ready for the coup, under the guise of a medical emergency.

Fauci was already there. He moved Walensky in to control CDC. Janet Woodcock was made acting FDA Commissioner, and FDA sat without a Presidentially-appointed Commissioner for an entire year. Presumably the coup leaders had no one else who could be trusted to ruthlessly carry out every needed act. Such acts included issuing and then retracting EUAs to confuse the public over HCQ; doing a bait and switch with a Comirnaty license; then suing to prevent release of the licensing data, which no doubt failed to justify an EUA, let alone a license.

Here is one reasonable proposal for a way forward. Trillions were doled out to industry, schools, federal agencies, media etc. to get them to fall in line and do whatever was required.

These were federal contracts. We have the contracts. Simply require every entity that got paid off to give the money back to the federal treasury. Or, they can keep some of it if they clean up their act. Can’t pay it back? Ever heard of debtors’ prison?

Will media figure out how to stop lying and fearmongering? I think they could solve that in a heartbeat if it meant they did not have to return all the money.

What about schools? Could they ditch bogus curricula, mask mandates, plexiglass, vaccine mandates, testing… if the alternative was returning $190 billion dollars to the federal treasury?

Emergency rules at the state level: rescind them immediately or return the federal grants to states and state agencies. Give them a choice.

Remove the chief medical officers of every hospital and state agency, every state CDC, and HHS Department. All federal executive agencies. Have the deputies take over immediately. Pay the former agency heads their prior salary if they take on their new role: documenting all the methods by which martial law was imposed. Later they can go through a truth and reconciliation process. Based on South Africa’s example, if they fully spill the beans, they are pardoned. If not, they stand trial for their crimes. The deputies must also spill their beans, btw.

Honesty, kindness and consideration for one’s fellow man will become the new norms that are praised by society. Greed will not be seen as something to aspire to, and the tax structure will disincentivize greed. Under JFK, those paying the highest marginal tax rate had to part with 91% of their top earnings. We can do that again; why not? The tax structure is what allowed the Gateses and Bezoses and their ilk to amass the ill-gotten gains. The tax structure can also take away.

Antitrust prosecutions will be undertaken unless large corporations break themselves up in an approved manner.

We can do this. Let’s just be creative and fair. There are plenty of models around to draw ideas from. Let’s move carefully and deliberately back from the abyss.

And paper ballots, with identifiable markings and no scans or electronic ballots, will be all that is acceptable, with video cameras documenting the vote counts. Votes cannot be moved around–they will be counted where they are cast. Absentee ballots will require a visit to a public office with ID, preceding the date of any election.

Courts will be established to review initial information re corruption very quickly on members of Congress and other critical figures; if there is reasonable evidence of malfeasance, they will have to take a leave from office while the evidence is weighed.

January 31, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Now Is the Time for Mass Resignations from Within the Ruling Class

BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER – BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE – JANUARY 30, 2022

If there is a historical precedent for the truckers’ revolt in Canada, and the populist protests in so many other parts of the world, I would like to know what it is. It surely sets the record for convoy size, and it is historic for Canada. But there is much more going on here, something more fundamental. The two-year imposition of bio-fascist rule by diktat seems ever less tenable – the consent of the governed is being withdrawn – but what comes next seems unclear.

We now have two of the most restrictive “leaders” in the developed world (Justin Trudeau of Canada and Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand) hiding in undisclosed locations, citing the need to quarantine following Covid exposure. Streets globally have filled up with people demanding an end to mandates and lockdowns, calling for accountability, pushing for resignations, denouncing privileged corporations, and crying out for a recognition of basic freedoms and rights.

Note too that these movements are spontaneous and from “below:” they are populated mostly by the very workers whom governments shoved to face the pathogen two years ago, while the ruling class hid behind their laptops in their living rooms. It was the lockdowns that sharply divided the classes and the mandates that are imposing segregation. Now we are facing a modern allegory to the peasants’ revolt in the Middle Ages.

For a long time, the workers complied bravely but have been forced to accept medical shots they neither wanted nor believed they needed. And many are still being denied freedoms they took for granted only two years ago, their schools non-operational, businesses wrecked, places of entertainment closed or severely restricted. People turn on the radios and televisions to listen to lectures by ruling-class elites who claim to be channeling the science that always ends in the same theme: the rulers are in charge and everyone else must comply, no matter what is asked of them.

But then it became screamingly obvious to the world that none of it worked. It was a gigantic flop and the sky-high cases of late 2021 in most parts of the world put a fine point on it. They failed. It was all for naught. This clearly cannot continue. Something has to give. Something has to change, and this change probably will not wait for the next scheduled elections. What happens in the meantime? Where is this going?

We’ve seen what revolutions look like against monarchies (18th and 19th century), against colonial occupation, against totalitarian one-party states (1989-90), and against banana-republic strongmen (20th century). But what does revolution look like in developed democracies ruled by entrenched administrative states in which elected politicians serve as little more than veneer for bureaucracies?

Since John Locke, it is an accepted idea that people have the right to rule themselves and even to replace governments that go too far in denying that right. In theory, the problem of government overreach in democracy is solved by elections. The argument made for such a system is that it allows for peaceful change of a ruling elite, and this is far less socially costly than war and revolution.

There are many problems with matching theory and reality, among which that the people with the real power in the 21st century are not the people we elect but those who have gained their privileges through bureaucratic maneuvering and longevity.

There are many strange features of the last two years but one of them that stands out to me is how utterly undemocratic the trajectory of events has been. When they locked us down, for example, it was the decision of elected autocrats as advised by credentialled experts that were somehow sure that this path would make the virus go away (or something like that). When they imposed vaccination mandates, it was because they were sure that this was the right path for public health.

There were no polls. There was little if any input from legislatures at any level. Even from the first lockdowns in the US, occurring March 8, 2020 in Austin, Texas, there was no consultation with the city council. Neither were citizens asked. The wishes of the small business people were not solicited. The state legislature was left out entirely.

It was as if everyone suddenly presumed that the whole country would operate on an administrative/dictatorship model, and that the guidelines of health bureaucracies (with plans for lockdowns that hardly anyone even knew existed) trumped all tradition, constitutions, restrictions on state power, and public opinion generally. We all became their servants. This happened all over the world.

It suddenly became obvious to many people in the world that the systems of government we thought we had – responsive to the public, deferential to rights, controlled by courts – were no longer in place. There seemed to be a substructure that was hiding in plain sight until it suddenly took full control, to the cheers of the media and the presumption that this is just the way things are supposed to be.

Years ago, I was hanging out in the building of a federal agency when there was a change of guard: a new administration appointed a new person to head it. The only change that the bureaucrats noticed was new portraits on the wall. Most of these people pride themselves in failing to notice. They know who is in charge and it is not the people we imagine to elect. They are there for life, and face none of the public scrutiny much less accountability that the politicians face daily.

Lockdowns and mandates gave them full power, not only over the one or two sectors they previously ruled but the whole of society and all of its functioning. They even controlled how many people we could have in our homes, whether our businesses could be open, whether we could worship with others, and dictate what precisely we are supposed to do with our own bodies.

Whatever happened to limits on power? The people who put together the systems of government in the 18th century that led to the most prosperous societies in the history of the world knew that restricting government was the key to a stable social order and growing economy. They gave us Constitutions and the lists of rights and the courts enforced them.

But at some point in history, the ruling class figured out certain workarounds to these restrictions. The administrative state with permanent bureaucrats could achieve things that legislatures could not, so they were gradually unleashed under various pretexts (war, depression, terror threats, pandemics). Moreover, governments gradually learned to outsource their hegemonic ambitions to the biggest businesses in the private sector, who themselves benefit from increasing the costs of compliance.

The circle has been completed by enlisting Big Media into the mix of control via access to the class of rulers, to receive and broadcast out the line of the day, and hurl insults at any dissidents within the population (“fringe,” etc.). This has created what we see in the 21st century: a toxic combination of Big Tech, Big Government, Big Media, all backed by various other industrial interests who benefit more from systems of control than they would from a free and competitive economy. Further, this cabal leveled a radical attack on civil society itself, closing churches, concerts, and civic groups.

We’ve been assured by David Hume (1711-1776) and Etienne de la Boétie (1530-1563) that government rule is untenable when it loses the consent of the governed. “Resolve to serve no more,” wrote Boetie, “and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces.”

That’s inspiring but what does it mean in practice? What precisely is the mechanism by which the overlords in our time are effectively overthrown? We’ve seen this in totalitarian states, in states with one-man rule, in states with unelected monarchies. But unless I’m missing something, we’ve not seen this in a developed democracy with an administrative state that holds the real power. We have scheduled elections but those are unhelpful when 1) elected leaders are not the real source of power, and 2) when the elections are too far in the distant future to deal with a present emergency.

One very easy and obvious path away from the current crisis is for the ruling class to admit error, repeal the mandates, and simply allow for common freedoms and rights for everyone. As easy as that sounds, this solution hits a hard wall when faced with ruling-class arrogance, trepidation, and the unwillingness to admit past errors for fear of what that will mean for their political legacies. For this reason, absolutely no one expects the likes of Trudeau, Ardern, or Biden to humbly apologize, admit that they were wrong, and beg the people’s forgiveness. On the contrary, everyone expects them to continue the game of pretend so long as they can get away with it.

The people on the streets today, and those willing to tell pollsters that they are fed up, are saying: no more. What does it mean for the ruling class not to get away with this nonsense anymore? Presuming that they do not resign, they do not call off the dogs of mandates and lockdowns, what is the next step? My instincts tell me that we are about to discover the answer. Electoral realignment seems inevitable but what happens before then?

The obvious answer to the current instability is mass resignations within the administrative state and among the class of politicians that gives it cover. In the name of peace, human rights, and the renewal of prosperity and trust, this needs to happen today. Bury the pride and do what’s right. Do it now while there is still time for the revolution to be velvet.

Jeffrey A. Tucker is Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute and the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and ten books in 5 languages, most recently Liberty or Lockdown.

January 30, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Bougiecrats are headed for a fall-of-communism-style collapse

Sensing defeat they are lashing out in all sorts of weird ways

By Toby Rogers | January 30, 2022

Background and context

As far back as 2001, Democratic stalwarts John Judis and Ruy Teixeira began making the case, to anyone who would listen, that demographic trends in the U.S. (e.g. immigration and higher birthrates in the Latino population) would lead to a semi-permanent Democratic majority in government. Their book, The Emerging Democratic Majority created a cottage industry of pollsters and political scientists who showed, with fancy charts and graphs, how Democrats, particularly Progressive Democrats, were about to be in the catbird seat of American politics.

Democrats came to see this as their due — they had higher levels of educational attainment and they had been at the forefront of the movements for racial equality, women’s rights, LGBT rights, and environmental protection — and now the arc of history was bending towards justice and they were going to collect their reward. Electing Obama showed that America had turned the page and the 2016 Presidential election was going to cement their place in history as the new hegemonic majority.

And then the wheels came off the bus.

Hillary Clinton was a uniquely flawed candidate with a spectacularly flawed team (made up entirely of loyalists, not critical thinkers) and she lost to a guy who had never held elected office before. Fainting in public at a ceremony commemorating the 9/11 attacks (and following a pneumococcal vaccine) raised doubts about her fitness for office (regarding both her health and veracity) and probably cost her the election.

By the 2020 election, in the midst of a pandemic, Democrats came together with a singular goal — remove Orange Man Bad from office. They settled on a lowest-common-denominator, Weekend-At-Bernie’s-style candidate. If elected, Biden would function as a papal placeholder while the actual power brokers run the day-to-day operations at the White House. Dems barely captured the Presidency but exit polls revealed that their hoped-for demographic waves had evaporated. Latinos abandoned the Democratic Party in large numbers. Democrats still held on to the most highly educated voters but the rest of the electorate is now up for grabs.

So Democrats were already on edge and then the pandemic got worse under Biden after 500 million coronavirus shots were injected into Americans in 2021. Roe will be significantly rolled back by summer, Dems are going to lose the House & Senate in November, and Biden appears to be a one-term president if he can even make it that long.

But the scale of the collapse ahead is so much bigger than losing any one particular election. The coronavirus pandemic was a test, and the entire Democratic theory of the state has failed. The collapse ahead is more like the fall of the Soviet Union. Democrats are not conscious of what is happening yet but on some subconscious level they can feel the political earthquake, and they are lashing out.

The last few weeks have been ugly and it’s about to get a whole lot worse.

Dems are holding miserable cards and everyone knows it

Sitting at the poker table here are the cards in the Democratic hand:

Their most beloved public servant, Tony Fauci, funded the creation of a chimera virus that killed 5 million people.

After 10 billion doses, coronavirus vaccines are a complete failure as daily new cases have reached a record high.

The entire theory of the case about their most sacred product, vaccines, is now in tatters.

All federal regulatory agencies (set up by the progressive movement over the last century) — FDA, CDC, NIH — have made the pandemic worse.

Empathy — the foundational emotional impulse of the party — is gone. Blue check bougiecrats now resemble something out of Lord of the Flies as they gleefully block access to safe & effective medicines and taunt their victims.

The entire notion of the regulatory state is now discredited as all federal and most state regulators are captured by industry.

Nearly all bourgeois institutions (media, academia, science and medicine) have failed.

The entire notion of “meritocracy” is gone (our leaders are not the best, nor the brightest, but certainly the most corrupt).

Elite universities have been exposed as Potemkin Villages as they are unable to do even the most basic risk/benefit calculations and are completely unwilling to protect students in their care from the predatory cartel.

What remains

The Democratic worldview lies in shambles. The tribe that remains has abandoned all principles and only believes in holding on to power. The Democratic platform now consists of:

🚩 Censorship
🚩 Cancel culture
🚩 Tribalism
🚩 Jim Crow
🚩 Apartheid
🚩 Show-me-your-papers
🚩 Indefinite extrajudicial detention
🚩 State ownership of your body
🚩 Fascism
🚩 Corporate junk science and
🚩 As many useless toxic vaccines in as many bodies as possible, damn the results.

Self-inflicted harm

I’m struck by the fact that the defining characteristic of this crisis is self-inflicted harm. It’s the greatest show of pointless masochism in human history.

Democrats poison themselves and rush out to poison their kids on the first day that they are deemed “eligible” by the state.

Intellectual heroes of the left — Noam Chomsky, Slavoj Žižek — have thrown all of their ideals out the window and now go around mumbling about how they want more fascism.

Over the past week, “reporters” at the Washington Post seem to be engaged in a debase-a-thon to see who can humiliate themselves the most in defending the cartel.

In just the past few days, a handful of washed up former rock stars have cancelled themselves in a sort of ritual human sacrifice to honor their corporate overlords.

And now the rest of the tribe (*ahem* Brené Brown) are jumping into the volcano to prove that they will remain faithful to the discredited ideology to the end.

Here’s our hand:

The #1 cable news show in the country (Tucker Carlson) is with us.

The #1 podcast in the country (Joe Rogan) is with us.

The #1 book in the country (RFK Jr., The Real Anthony Fauci) is with us.

The best rapper in the country (Jimmy Levy) is with us.

The best athletes in the world (Novak Djokovic, Aaron Rogers, and Kyrie Irving) are with us.

We just had an incredibly successful March on Washington that showed that our numbers have increased by at least 10x over the last year.

Our independent media channels on Substack, Telegram, Rumble, Odysee, Bitchute, and Gettr, are thriving. Each episode of The Highwire now gets several times more viewers than any show on CNN or MSNBC.

Almost everything we have said about the pandemic has proved to be true:
◾️ SARS-CoV-2 came from a lab;
◾️ lockdowns cause more harms than benefits;
◾️ vaccines cause more harms than benefits;
◾️ existing off-the-shelf treatments are the best way to end the pandemic.

Our movement is the embodiment of “clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.” Our weapons are logic, reason, and common sense. We follow the scientific evidence, not any one particular leader.

And now, we have a model for how to overthrow these corrupt governments — trucker convoys.

But even more than that, our theory of the case has won in a landslide. To wit:
✅ the best check against corruption is to protect the sacred rights of individuals;
✅ the regulatory state is captured and too many “experts” work for the cartel; and
✅ the best way to solve problems is to leave them up to millions of individual citizens using their best judgement rather than centralized, corrupt, statist control.

It’s all over but the shouting.

January 30, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , , | Leave a comment

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