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School shutdowns harm children? It’s a bit late to tell us now

By Laura Perrins | TCW Defending Freedom | May 19, 2022

I HAVE an article I want to direct your attention to. It is from our friends at the Guardianwho only now are pointing out the damage lockdown did to the youngest children. 

In this piece we are told: ‘The youngest children have been most affected by lockdowns and closures during the Covid pandemic, with new research finding that the educational progress and social development of four- and five-year-olds suffered severely during their first year at school. Aggressive behaviour such as biting and hitting, feelings of struggling in class or being overwhelmed around large groups of children were among the difficulties reported by teachers.’

It may be new research but it is simply more confirmation of the shocking damage that was officially reported six weeks ago that Kathy commented on at the time on Mark Steyn’s GB News show. It was a cruelty that we witnessed first and reported on at the time, affecting seven- and eight- year-olds too, as reported here.

The Guardian article is worth reading in full, but where was this newspaper at the time? Castigating the teaching unions’ lockdown zealots? No. As you know I was very angry about the lockdown but nothing angered me more than when they closed schools. I could have lived with pretty much any other restriction but closing the schools was an evil, wicked thing to do. It is proven. The government sacrificed children on the altar of Covid. Boris Johnson should have refused to do it and have utterly shamed all those who pressured him to do so, not least the teaching unions as well as the left-wing press.

It is all a bit late in the day now to tell us what we already knew – that closing schools was doomed to cause the serious harm to the poorest and most vulnerable children, as Kathy said on Steyn. The Guardian report, while welcome, is all too little, too late. The damage is done.

May 19, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

German Supreme Court rules mandatory vaccination is constitutionally justified

The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | May 19, 2022

Judges in Germany’s top court clearly haven’t looked at the data produced in multiple countries, showing the vaccinated being more likely to catch coronavirus.

In a press release today, the court announced that a case, challenging the obligation to provide evidence of vaccination, had been unsuccessful. The complainants said that the mandates violated their fundamental rights.

Whilst the initial vaccine mandate for all adults was rejected earlier in the year, it was still implemented for healthcare workers in March. This meant that all healthcare workers had to provide proof of full vaccination, recovery from COVID-19 or a small number of medical exemptions. If employees did not provide proof, the health department was to be notified immediately and the individual banned from entering the workplace.

One of the reasons for the case being unsuccessful, given in the judgment, was that interference with the right to physical integrity is constitutionally justified. Basically, the protection of vulnerable people is more important than an individual’s fundamental right.

The judgement admits that COVID-19 is mild for most people but can be fatal for the elderly and vulnerable who also don’t respond well to vaccination. They say that at the time the law was passed, a clear scientific majority assumed that vaccinated and recovered people were less likely to become infected and therefore transmit the virus. It was also assumed that vaccinated people were less infectious and for a shorter amount of time. According to the judgement, expert third parties largely agree that vaccine effectiveness will continue to exist, albeit at a reduced level.

Comically, the judgement states that there is no justification for compulsory vaccination enforced by the state but instead the decision should be down to the individual – they can choose to either give up their previous job or consent to the impairment of their physical integrity. Why thank you, Master, for providing me with two terrible choices. But, every cloud and all that, I suppose it is better than being pinned down and vaccinated. Well, until you can’t pay your rent or buy food for your children and have to steal a cardboard box to sleep on in the street.

Fortunately, the judges concluded that it is ok to breach an individual’s fundamental rights because serious side effects or serious consequences induced by the administration of the vaccine are very rare. And, in any case, they are continuously monitoring and evaluating them. They say that the very low probability of serious consequences of vaccination contrasts with the significantly higher probability of damage to vulnerable people.

They conclude, that the further development of the pandemic, after the law was passed, has not changed anything. Nor have any new developments or better insights.

So there you have it. An individual’s rights can be overhauled if a majority of experts conclude you are a danger to a small group of people. Whilst I can understand and appreciate the need to protect the elderly and vulnerable, this shouldn’t be used as a pretext to remove people’s basic rights.

The majority of health care workers want to protect the elderly and vulnerable, that’s why they do the jobs they do. If they are ill or test positive, they aren’t going to deliberately go and infect someone who is likely to die from Covid – they aren’t pyschos (unlike some of the individual’s making these laws).

Furthermore, the science clearly doesn’t back up what they are saying. You are more likely to catch Covid if you are vaccinated and your viral load is similar, if not the same. There may be evidence showing that you are not as infectious for as long but there also may be evidence showing you can have Covid but aren’t testing positive.

Health Minister Karl Lauterbach welcomed the ruling saying that “the state is obliged to protect vulnerable groups”. He is now off for a meeting with other G7 ministers, despite being in contact with the US health secretary, a day before testing positive for Covid. Rules for thee, not for me.

Clearly, the battle to retain one’s basic rights is still not over in many parts of the world. And if it isn’t completely squashed now, you can be sure it will return everywhere with a vengeance, come the winter.

May 19, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

A Primer on the WHO, the Treaty, and its Plans for Pandemic Preparedness

By David Bell | Brownstone Institute | May 19, 2022

The World Health Organization (WHO), whose constitution defines health as ‘a state of physical, mental and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity,’ has recently orchestrated remarkable reversals in human rights, poverty reduction, education, and physical, mental and social health indices in the name of responding to the Covid-19 pandemic.

WHO proposes to expand the mechanisms that enabled this response, diverting unprecedented resources to addressing what in terms of history and disease are rare and relatively low-impact events. This will greatly benefit those who also did well from the Covid-19 outbreak, but has different implications for the rest of us. To address it calmly and rationally, we need to understand it.

Building a new pandemic industry

The World Health Organization (WHO) and its Member States, in concert with other international institutions, is proposing, and currently negotiating, two instruments to address pandemics and widely manage aspects of global public health. Both will significantly expand the international bureaucracy that has grown over the past decade to prepare for, or respond to, pandemics, with particular emphasis on development and use of vaccines.

This bureaucracy would be answerable to the WHO, an organization that in turn is increasingly answerable, through funding and political influence, from private individuals, corporations and the large authoritarian States.

These proposed rules and structures, if adopted, would fundamentally change international public health, moving the center of gravity from common endemic diseases to relatively rare outbreaks of new pathogens, and building an industry around it that will potentially be self-perpetuating.

In the process, it will increase external involvement in areas of decision-making that in most constitutional democracies are the purview of elected governments answerable to their population.

WHO does not clearly define the terms ‘pandemic’ and ‘public health emergency’ that these new agreements, intended to have power under international law, seek to address. Implementation will depend on the opinion of individuals – the Director General (DG) of the WHO, Regional Directors and an advisory committee that they can choose to follow or ignore.

As a ‘pandemic’ in WHO parlance does not include a requirement of severity but simply broad spread – a property common to respiratory viruses – this leaves a lot of room for the DG to proclaim emergencies and set the wheels in motion to repeat the sort of pandemic responses we have seen trialed in the past 2 years.

Responses that have been unprecedented in their removal of basic peace-time human rights, and that the WHO, Unicef and other United Nations (UN) agencies have acknowledged to cause widespread harm.

This has potential to be a boon for Big Pharma and their investors who have done so well out of the last two years, concentrating private wealth whilst increasing national indebtedness and reversing prior progress on poverty reduction.

However, it is not something that has just appeared, and is not going to make us slaves before the month is out. If we are to address this issue and restore societal sanity and balance in public health, we need to understand what we are dealing with.

Proposed International Health Regulations (IHR) amendments

The IHR amendments, proposed by the United States, build on the existing IHR that were introduced in 2005 and are binding under international law. While many are unaware of their existence, the IHR already enables the WHO DG to declare public health emergencies of international concern, and thereby recommend measures to isolate countries and restrict movement of people. The draft amendments include proposals to:

  • Establish an ‘emergency committee’ to assess health threats and outbreaks and recommend responses.
  • Establish a ‘Country review mechanism’ to assess compliance of countries with various recommendations / requirements of WHO regarding pandemic preparedness, including surveillance and reporting measures. This appears to be modeled on the UN’s human rights country review mechanism. Countries would then be issued with requirements to be addressed to bring them into compliance where their internal programs are considered inadequate, on the request of another State party (country).
  • Expand the power of the WHO DG to declare pandemics and health emergencies, and therefore recommend border closures, interruption and removal of rights to travel and potentially internal ‘lockdown’ requirements and send teams of WHO personnel to countries to investigate outbreaks, irrespective of the findings of the emergency committee and without consent of the country where the instance is recorded.
  • Reduce the usual review period for countries to internally discuss and opt out of such mechanisms to just 6 months (rather than 18 months for the original IHR), and then implement them after a 6-month notice period.
  • Empower Regional Directors, of which there are 6, to declare regional ‘public health emergencies,’ irrespective of a decision by the DG.

These amendments will be discussed and voted on at the World Health Assembly on May 22-28, 2022. They only require a simple majority of countries present to come into law, consistent with Article 60 of the WHO constitution. For clarity, this means countries such as Niue, with 1,300 people, have an equal weight on the voting floor as India, with 1.3 billion people. Countries must then signal intent to opt out of the new amendments within 6 months.

Once approved by the WHA, these measures will become legally binding. There will be heavy pressure applied to governments to comply with the dictates of the WHO DG and the unelected bureaucrats that comprise the organization, and thereby also the external actors who are influential in WHO decision-making processes.

Proposed WHO pandemic ‘treaty’

The WHO proposes a new ‘instrument’ to allow it to manage pandemics, with force of a convention under international law. This has been formally discussed within WHO since early 2021, and a special session of the WHA in November 2021 recommended it go to a review process, with a draft to be presented to the World Health Assembly meeting in Q2 2023.

This proposed treaty would give WHO powers to:

  • Investigate epidemics within countries,
  • Recommend or even require border closures,
  • Potentially recommend travel restrictions on individuals,
  • Impose measures recommended by the WHO which, based on Covid-19 experience, may include ‘lockdowns,’ prevention of employment, disruption of family life and internal travel, and mandated masks and vaccination,
  • Involve non-state actors (e.g., private corporations) in data gathering and predictive modeling to influence and guide pandemic responses; and in implementing, including providing commodities for, the response;
  • Impose censorship through control of, or restrictions on, information the WHO considers to be ‘mis-information’ or ‘dis-information’, which may include criticism of the measures WHO imposes.

Notably, it envisions the setting up of a large entity within WHO to support permanent staff whose purpose is to undertake and enforce the above measures. This sounds very similar to the ‘GERM’ entity proposed recently by Mr Bill Gates, a wealthy US software developer with major pharmaceutical investments, who is the second largest funder of the WHO and one of a number of ‘billionaires’ who have greatly increased personal wealth during the Covid-19 response.

The proposed treaty would prioritize vertical structures and pharmaceutical approaches to pandemics, reflecting approaches by Gavi and CEPI, two organizations set up in the past decade in parallel to the WHO. It would create another bureaucratic structure on pandemics, not answerable directly to any taxpayer base, but imposing further support, reporting and compliance requirements.

Process, acceptance and implementation

These two mechanisms for increasing direct WHO control of pandemics have strong backing from private sector funders of the WHO, and from many national governments, starting with Western governments who adopted Covid draconian measures. To come into practice they must be adopted by the WHA and then be agreed, or ratified, by national governments.

The proposed IHR amendments modify an existing mechanism. A simple majority of States present at the WHA voting against them at the May 2022 meeting would also reject them, but this appears unlikely. To prevent their application, sufficient individual countries will need to signal non-acceptance or reservations after the coming WHA and WHO DG’s notice of adoption, so probably before the end of November 2022.

With regard to the proposed treaty, a two-thirds majority at the 2023 WHA will be required for its adoption, after which it will be subject to national ratification by processes which vary according to national norms and constitutions.

Funding for the large increase in bureaucracy proposed to support both mechanisms will be necessary – this may be partially diverted from other disease areas but will almost certainly require new, regular funding. Other mechanisms in parallel are already being discussed, with the World Bank also proposed as the home for a similar bureaucracy to manage pandemic preparedness, and the G20 mulling their own mechanism.

It is unclear whether these would be tied into the WHO’s proposed treaty and IHR mechanisms or be presented as a ‘rival’ approach. The G20 task force of the WB and WHO suggest a $10.5 billion additional annual budget for pandemic preparedness is required. With such potential financing on offer, and the promise of building powerful institutions around this pandemic preparedness agenda, there is going to be much enthusiasm and momentum, not least from institutional staff and the global health community in general, who will sense lucrative employment and grant opportunities.

While all this depends on money being available, a refusal of countries to fund may not be sufficient to prevent it, as there is considerable private and corporate interest in the treaty and related proposals. The same entities that benefited heavily financially from the Covid-19 response will also stand to benefit from an increased frequency of similar responses.

Whilst pandemics are historically rare, the existence of a large bureaucracy dependent on their declaration and response, coupled with the clear gains to be made by influential funders of the WHO, raise a strong risk that the bar to declaring emergencies, and imposing human rights restrictions on States, will be far lower than before.

Independent States are not however directly subject to the WHO, and adopting these amendments and treaties will not automatically allow the WHO to send teams across borders. Treaties must be ratified according to national processes and constitutions. If accepted by the WHA, it will however be difficult for individual States to avoid compliance unless they are particularly influential on the WHO itself.

International financial agencies, such as the IMF and World Bank, can also exert considerable pressure on non-complying States, potentially tying loans to implementation and commodity purchase as the World Bank has done for the COVID-19 response.

The IHR amendments also allow measures to be taken such as interrupting international travel that can be economically very harmful to small States, irrespective of the State providing permission. Powerful States that are highly influential on the DG election may also in practice be subject to different levels of implementation than smaller ones.

There seem to be at least two feasible scenarios for preventing the adoption of the two new mechanisms.

Firstly, the populations in democratic donor States, who have most to lose in terms of autonomy, sovereignty and human rights and whose taxes will predominantly fund these institutions, can stimulate open debate leading to decisions of national governments to reject the treaty at the WHA, and/or otherwise refuse to ratify.

Secondly, large blocs of countries could refuse to ratify or subsequently comply, making the treaty and IHR amendments unworkable. The latter is conceivable if, for instance, African nations perceive all this as a form of neo-colonialism that needs to be fought in the name of independence.

Some background on pandemic risk, and the WHO.

What is the risk of pandemics?

WHO records 5 pandemics in the past 120 years:

  • The Spanish Flu (1918-19), killed 20-509 million people. Most died due to secondary bacterial infection, as this was before availability of any modern antibiotics.
  • The 1957-58 influenza outbreaks that killed about 1.1 million people each
  • The 1968-69 influenza outbreak that also killed about 1.1 million
  • Swine Flu in 2009-10 killed about 120,000 to 230,000.
  • Lastly, COVID-19 (2020-22) is recorded by WHO as contributing to the death of several million, but most in old age with other severe comorbidities, so actual figures are difficult to assess. As this indicates.

Pandemics have therefore been rare – once per generation. For context, cancer kills many more people each year in Western countries than Covid-19 at its height, tuberculosis kills 1.6 million people every year (much younger than Covid-19) and malaria kills over half a million children annually (barely affected by COVID-19).

However, as pandemics are very loosely defined by WHO, it Is not unreasonable to assume that a large bureaucracy dependent on pandemics to justify its own existence, and heavily invested in surveillance for new strains of virus, will find reason to declare far more pandemics in the future.

Pandemic response

COVID-19 is the first pandemic in which mass lockdowns, including border closures, workplace closures and prolonged school closures, have been used on a large scale. It is worth remembering that 1969 is remembered for the Woodstock music festival more than the ‘Hong Kong flu,’ a pandemic that targeted young people more than Covid-19. Human rights and economic health did not suffer such declines in any of these prior events.

These new approaches used in the Covid-19 response have resulted in wide disruption of supply lines and healthcare access, increases in early marriage / enslavement of women, mass loss of education of children, and increases in current financial inequality and educational (so future) inequality. Many low-income countries have increased debt and undergone recession, which will reduce future life expectancy, while child deaths have increased, including from former priority diseases such as malaria.

What is WHO, and who owns or runs it?

The WHO (the World Health Organization) was set up in the late 1940s, to coordinate health standards and data sharing internationally, including support for the response to pandemics. It is the main health agency of the United Nations Organization (UN). It provides some support for low-income country health systems where local technical expertise is lacking.

It has country offices in most countries, 6 regional offices, and a global office in Geneva. It is a hierarchical organization, with the Director General (DG) at its head. It has a few thousand staff (depending on definition) and a budget of roughly $3.5 billion a year.

The WHO is controlled in theory by the member nations (most UN members, and a couple of others), on a one country-one vote basis through the World Health Assembly, that usually meets annually. As example, India, with 1.3 billion people, has the same power on the voting floor as Nuie, with 1,300 people. The WHA elects the DG through a 4-yearly vote that is often heavily accompanied by lobbying by major countries.

WHO funding was originally nearly all derived from member countries, who contributed to the ‘core’ budget. WHO would then decide on priorities for expenditure, guided by the WHA. In the past 2 decades, there has been a significant change in funding:

  1. A rapid increase in private funding, from individuals and corporations. Some is direct, some indirect through parallel international health organizations (Gavi, Cepi) that are heavily privately funded. The second largest contributor to the WHO budget is now a private couple in the United States heavily invested in the international pharmaceutical sector and in software / digitization services.
  2. The budget has moved from mainly core funding, to mainly ‘directed’ funding, in which the funder specifies the area in which the funding can be used, and sometimes the actual activities to be undertaken. The WHO therefore becomes a conduit for their funds to undertake their intended activities. Both country private funders heavily use this directed approach.

The WHO therefore retains under overall control of an assembly of countries, but day-to-day priorities are increasingly directed by single countries and private interests. Former strong rules on conflict of interest regarding private sector involvement are less externally obvious now, with WHO working more closely with private and corporate sector entities.

Reference documents:

David Bell is a public health physician based in the United States. After working in internal medicine and public health in Australia and the UK, he worked in the World Health Organization (WHO), as Programme Head for malaria and febrile diseases at the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) in Geneva, and as Director of Global Health Technologies at Intellectual Ventures Global Good Fund in Bellevue, USA. He consults in biotech and global health. MBBS, MTH, PhD, FAFPHM, FRCP

May 19, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

WHO Stealth Coup to Dictate Global Health Agenda of Gates, Big Pharma

By F. William Engdahl – New Eastern Outlook – 18.05.2022

Acting on an initiative from the Biden Administration, by November 2022, conveniently at the onset of the next flu season in the northern hemisphere, the World Health Organization, barring a miracle, will impose an unprecedented top-down control over the national health regulations and measures of the entire planet. In what amounts to a stealth coup d’etat, WHO will get draconian new powers to override national sovereignty in 194 UN member countries, and to dictate their health measures with force of international law. It is sometimes referred to as the WHO Pandemic Treaty but it is far more. Worse, most of the WHO budget comes from private vaccine-tied foundations like the Gates Foundation or from Big Pharma, a massive conflict of interest.

Draconian New WHO Powers

Doing something with stealth means doing it in a secretive or concealed manner, to prevent it being widely known and possibly opposed. This applies to the proposal given by the Biden Administration to the Geneva WHO in January 18, 2022 according to official WHO documents. The WHO hid the details of the US “amendments” for almost three months, until 12 April, just a month before the relevant body of the WHO meets to approve the radical measures. Moreover, rather than the previous 18 month waiting time to become treaty in international law, only 6 months are used this time. This is a bum’s rush. The US proposal is backed by every EU country and in total 47 countries ensuring almost certain passage.

The proposals, officially titled, “Strengthening WHO preparedness for and response to health emergencies: Proposal for amendments to the International Health Regulations,” were submitted by Assistant Secretary for Global Affairs (OGA) in the US Department of Health and Human Services, Loyce Pace, as “amendments” to a previously ratified 2005 WHO International Health Regulations treatyThe WHO defines that 2005 treaty thus: “the International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR) provide an overarching legal framework that defines countries’ rights and obligations in handling public health events and emergenciesthat have the potential to cross borders. The IHR are an instrument of international law that is legally-binding on 196 countries, including the 194 WHO Member States.” (emphasis added).

Ms Pace came to the Biden Administration from heading the Global Health Council, whose members include the most corrupt names in Big Pharma including Pfizer, Lilly, Merck, J&J, Abbott, Bill Gates-funded AVAC, to name a few. Her proposals for the radical transformation of WHO “pandemic” and epidemic powers, could easily have been written by Gates and Big Pharma.

Before we look at what the Loyce Pace “amendments” will do to empower the transformation of WHO into a global health dictatorship with unprecedented powers to overrule judgments of any national governments, one stealthy legal issue must be noted. By disguising a complete change in the 2005 WHO treaty powers as mere “amendments” to a ratified treaty, WHO claims, along with the Biden Administration, that the approval of the amendments requires no new ratification debate by member governments. This is stealth. With no national debate by elected representatives, the unelected WHO will become a global superpower over life and death in the future. Washington and WHO have deliberately restricted the process of public participation to ram this through.

A De Facto New Law

As required, the WHO finally published the US “amendments.” It shows the deletions and as well the new additionsWhat the Biden Administration changes do is to transform a previously advisory role for the WHO to national governments on not only pandemic responses but also everything tied to national “health,” with an entirely new power to override national health agencies if the WHO Director General, now Tedros Adhanom, determines. The US Biden Administration and WHO have colluded to create an entirely new treaty which will shift all health decisions from a national or local level to Geneva, Switzerland and WHO.

Typical of the Washington amendments to the existing WHO Treaty is Article 9. The US change is to insert WHO “shall” and delete “may”: If the State Party does not accept the offer of collaboration within 48 hours, WHO shall may…,. In the same article now deleted is “offer of collaboration by WHOtaking into account the views of the State Party concerned…” The views or judgment of say, Germany or India, or USA health authorities become irrelevant. WHO will be able to override national experts and dictate as international law its mandates for any and all future pandemics as well as even epidemics or even local health issues.

Moreover in the new proposed Article 12 on “Determination of a public health emergency of international concern, public health emergency of regional concern, or intermediate health alert,” WHO head–now Tedros in his new 5-year term–alone can decide to declare an emergency, even without agreement of the member state. The WHO head will then consult his relevant WHO “Emergency Committee” on Polio, Ebola, Bird Flu, COVID or whatever they declare to be a problemIn short this is a global dictatorship over citizen health by one of the most corrupt health bodies in the world. The members of a given WHO Emergency Committee are chosen under opaque procedures and typically, as in the current one on polio, many members are tied to the various Gates Foundation fronts like GAVI or CEPI. Yet the selection process is entirely opaque and internal to WHO.

Among other powers the new Pandemic Treaty will give Tedros and WHO the power to mandate vaccine passports and COVID jabs worldwide. They are working on the creation of a global vaccine passport/digital identity program. Under the new “Pandemic Treaty”, when people are harmed by the WHO’s health policies, there’s no accountability. The WHO has diplomatic immunity.

Former WHO senior employee and whistleblower, Astrid Stuckelberger, now a scientist at the Institute of Global Health of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Geneva, noted, “if the new Pandemic Treaty is adopted by member states, “this means that the WHO’s Constitution (as per Article 9) will take precedence over each country’s constitution during natural disasters or pandemics. In other words, the WHO will be dictating to other countries, no longer making recommendations.”

Who is WHO?

The Director General of WHO would have the ultimate power under the new rules, to determine for example if say, Brazil or Germany or USA must impose a Shanghai-style pandemic lockdown or any other measures it decides. This is not good. Especially when the head of WHO, Tedros, from the Tigray region of Ethiopia, is a former member of the Politburo of the designated terrorist (then by Washington) Marxist organization, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. He holds no medical degree, the first in WHO director-general history without such. He has a PhD in Community Health, definitely a vague field, hardly medical qualification for a global health czar. Among his published scientific papers are titles such as “The effects of dams on malaria transmission in Tigray Region.” He reportedly got his WHO job in 2017 via backing from Bill Gates, the largest private donor to WHO.

As Ethiopia Minister of Health in the Tigray-led dictatorship, Tedros was involved in a scandalous coverup of three major cholera outbreaks in the country in 2006, 2009 and 2011. An investigative report published by the Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health found that during one major cholera outbreak, “Despite laboratory identification of V cholerae as the cause of the acute watery diarrhea (AWD), the Government of Ethiopia (Tedros) decided not to declare a “cholera outbreak” for fear of economic repercussions resulting from trade embargos and decreased tourism. Further, the government, in disregard of International Health Regulations (WHO), continually refused to declare a cholera epidemic and largely declined international assistance.”

As Ethiopian Health and later Foreign Minister Tedros was accused of systematic ethnic cleansing against rival tribes in the country, especially Amharas, denying opposition supporters World Bank and other food aid, as well as nepotism, diversion of international funds for hospital construction into political support for his minority party. Ironically this is the opposite of the new WHO law Tedros backs today. On 22 September 2021 Merkel’s Germany proposed Tedros for a further term without opposition.

WHO, Gates, GERM

A hint of what’s in store under the new rules was given by WHO’s largest donor (including his GAVI), the self-appointed “Globalist Everything Czar”, Bill Gates. On his April 22 blog entry, Gates proposes something amusingly with the acronym GERM — Global Epidemic Response and Mobilization—team. It would have a “permanent organization of experts who are fully paid and prepared to mount a coordinated response to a dangerous outbreak at any time.” He says his model is the Hollywood movie, Outbreak. “The team’s disease monitoring experts would look for potential outbreaks. Once it spots one, GERM should have the ability to declare an outbreak…” It would be coordinated by, of course, Tedros’ WHO: “The work would be coordinated by the WHO, the only group that can give it global credibility.”

A dystopian notion of what could take place is the ongoing fake “Avian Flu” epidemic, H5N1, that is causing tens of millions of chickens to be terminated worldwide if even one chick tests positive for the disease. The test is the same fraudulent PCR test used to detect COVID-19. Recently, Dr Robert Redfield, Trump’s head of CDC, gave an interview where he “predicted” that Bird Flu will jump to humans and be highly fatal in the coming “Great Pandemic,” for which COVID-19 was a mere warm-up. Redfield declared in a March 2022 interview, I think we have to recognize – I’ve always said that I think the COVID pandemic was a wakeup call. I don’t believe it’s the great pandemic. I believe the great pandemic is still in the future, and that’s going to be a bird flu pandemic for man. It’s gonna have significant mortality in the 10-50% range. It’s gonna be trouble.” Under the new WHO dictatorial powers, WHO could declare a health emergency on such a fraud regardless of contrary evidence.

May 19, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

The (Undercover) Epicenter Nurse | Episode Nine

Perspectives on the Pandemic | June 9, 2020

Erin Marie Olszewski is a Nurse-turned-investigative journalist, who has spent the last few months on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic, on the inside in two radically different settings. Two hospitals. One private, the other public. One in Florida, the other in New York.

And not just any New York public hospital, but the “epicenter of the epicenter” itself, the infamous Elmhurst in Donald Trump’s Queens. As a result of these diametrically opposed experiences, she has the ultimate “perspective on the pandemic”. She has been where there have been the most deaths attributed to Covid-19 and where there have been the least. Erin enlisted in the Army when she was 17. She deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. Part of her duties involved overseeing aid disbursement and improvements to hospital facilities. While in country she received the Army Commendation Medal for meritorious service, and was wounded in combat.

Erin eventually retired as a sergeant, and became a civilian nurse in 2012. Erin is a medical freedom and informed consent advocate. She co-founded the Florida Freedom Alliance but no longer has any connection with the organization. Watch more episodes of Perspectives on the Pandemic here:

Episode 1: https://dai.ly/x7ubcws

Episode 2: https://dai.ly/k7af1wKOAvcoA7w5DkZ

Episode 3: https://youtu.be/VK0Wtjh3HVA

Episode 4: https://youtu.be/cwPqmLoZA4s

Episode 5: https://dai.ly/k3l3VyZ2YQv6Zbw5VqE

Episode 6: https://youtu.be/3f0VRtY9oTs

Episode 7: https://youtu.be/2JbOvjtnPpE

Episode 8: https://youtu.be/WlLmt6_w_AM (As of publication of this video, the producers are still awaiting comment from Elmhurst Hospital). Produced by Libby Handros and John Kirby, The Press and the Public Project. Ref 7814

May 19, 2022 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Taking the milk out of babies’ mouths: Food shortages are the new globalist weapon

By Kate Dunlop | TCW Defending Freedom | May 18, 2022

ARE you getting used to the Great Reset? How are you liking the New World Order built on globalist diktat, infection, mass poisoning by inoculation, inaccessible healthcare, inflation, draconian policing, shortages, uncontrolled migration, fear, more fear, and war…

You’ll doubtless be prepared for what’s coming next. It’s not a secret – Bill Gates and his World Health Organisation cohorts have already told us. The next viral releases – Hantavirus, Nipah virus, Marburg, whatever – are all primed and ready to go, together with monkeypox and avian bird flu. All come packaged with their own ‘off the shelf treatments’ from Big Pharma, all guaranteed to be equally as effective as the Covid jabs.

Supply chain problems are already here and will worsen, depending on whatever the next emergency is, and the UK is as well prepared for them as it is for shortages of fuel, gas, and electricity – which is to say not at all.

Now we are being told that a major food crisis is inevitable. Speaking at a Nato conference in Brussels on March 25th of this year, Joe Biden said: ‘Regarding food shortages – yes, we did talk about shortages, and they’re going to be real.’ He’s a man of his word.

Previously the blame was put on ‘climate change’, Brexit, shortages of foreign hands to pick and harvest crops, not enough lorry drivers, lockdowns, the ‘management’ of Covid, and the mass culling of chickens due to bird flu.

Now the war in Ukraine and sanctions against Russia are delivering shortages of gas, oil, and wheat. Russia and Ukraine together are the largest exporters of wheat and other grains in the world and Russia the largest exporter of oil and gas. Their impact on global logistics and food supply is immense.

At the same time, food production and processing facilities in the US seem to be spontaneously combusting. Since August last year, more than 16 such plants have been damaged by fire.

In September, a meat processor in Nebraska lost five per cent of the country’s beef supply. In March this year, a frozen food plant in Arkansas and a potato processing site in Maine both burned down. Last month, two planes crashed into two food plants, causing massive destruction – one at a General Mills facility in Georgia and another at a potato processing unit in Idaho.

Florida is having its worst orange crop in 70 years, with 90 per cent of trees affected by ‘citrus greening,’ a disease spread by the invasive Asian citrus psyllid bug, which was first found in China, then India and Saudi Arabia. Today, every citrus grove is infected. The impact on farmers already suffering from Covid restrictions is disastrous.

Russia and Belarus are two of the biggest global exporters of fertiliser and fertiliser-related products, accounting for 10 billion dollars activity per annum. The war and the sanctions have damaged the fertiliser market, with prices hitting all-time highs in March.

China’s draconian ‘Zero Covid’ approach and its export ban on fertiliser since last summer has added to farmers’ woes and hit food production costs.

Now it’s baby formula milk, with shortages across the US since February this year. CBS News reports that some 40 per cent of top-selling formula products were ‘out of stock’ at the end of April, according to an analysis from Datasembly.

The Wall Street Journal suggests two reasons for the shortages. It says supply chain issues caused by the Covid-19 pandemic worsened after Abbott Labs, a major formula manufacturer, voluntarily recalled some products and closed a plant in Michigan. Then there was a Food and Drug Administration investigation into complaints related to four infants who were hospitalised, two of whom died.

The White House reaction last week was woeful, with the tone-deaf press secretary Jen Psaki saying the government is ‘doing its best’ and that manufacturers are working at full capacity. In a national health emergency she went on to hint that some mothers are hoarding formula.

But, as with everything in the Magic Kingdom of Biden, things are not what they seem. The legacy media are slow to show locked cabinets in Walmart and empty shelves in other stores, though news that the government is transporting supplies of baby formula to border migrants is beginning to leak, as Tucker Carlson reports.

Eric Boehm, writing in Reason, confirms that although some of the shortages stem from the closure of the Abbott plant, there were already longstanding market problems. A closer look at US trade and regulatory policies shows that government is primarily responsible for the shortages.

According to the New York Times, ‘baby formula is one of the most tightly regulated food products in the US, with the Food and Drug Administration dictating the nutrients and vitamins, and setting strict rules about how formula is produced, packaged, and labelled’.

The US formula market was valued at 3,653 million dollars in 2019 and projected to reach 5,811 million dollars by 2027. The Covid-19 pandemic brought an upsurge in demand due to panic buying on the back of shortage fears.

Rising numbers of American parents are sourcing ‘unapproved’ European formula, even though it attracts an 18 per cent tariff quota. Some are desperate for supply, but others choose European brands because they offer options such as goat’s milk or milk from pasture-raised cows, which are ‘rare or non-existent in an FDA-regulated form in the US’.

Others consider EU products to be of higher quality due to stricter content regulations, including important levels of DHA (an omega-3 fatty acid), which are not required in the US. Almost no American baby formula would meet EU standards and many parents worry about adulteration.

Americans pay well over the odds for European formula, with one website selling product from Germany at 26 dollars for a 400-gram box, about four times the price of the top US formulas.

In April 2021, US Customs and Border Protection agents in Philadelphia seized 588 cases of formula worth around 30,000 dollars. The formula was said to have violated the FDA’s ‘import safety regulations.’ According to Twitter chatter, the FDA issued a fake recall of European formulas in 2021 and has regularly seized legal personal-use shipments.

Plain old natural disaster coupled with bureaucratic interference is not what is going on here. The US baby formula shortage is neither due to incompetence nor maladministration – it is an attack on the most vulnerable in society; part of a deliberate policy to keep chaos bubbling at peak in the service of the Great Reset.

We know what is going on. In 1974, Henry Kissinger said: ‘Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.’

May 18, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , , , | Leave a comment

American Airlines Captain Robert Snow speaks out about his vaccine injury

Steve Kirsch | May 14, 2022

Ever wonder why so many flights are delayed or canceled? A lot of it is due to injuries caused by the vaccine mandates.

Today, there are many pilots who are vaccine injured and not saying anything, endangering the public.

Here’s what happened to one vaccine injured pilot who now has to retire because he’s unable to fly anymore.

He speaks freely, right after being released from the hospital.

And no, the CEO of American Airlines, working just 10 minutes away didn’t call or come visit him. That’s the way they treat “family” at American Airlines.

Other articles about the vaccine and pilots

I wonder if the vaccine is causing all these incidents. I’m told they are safe and effective. But that’s not what the data says.

THREE KILLED, AS PLANE CRASHES INTO MEXICAN SUPERMARKET

PLANE CRASHES ONTO A STREET IN SAN DIEGO

PILOT SUFFERS MID-AIR HEART ATTACK

CO-PILOT LANDS PLANE AFTER PILOT HAS HEART ATTACK:

TRAFFIC CONTROL HELPS PASSENGER LAND PLANE, AFTER PILOT HAS HEART ATTACK

CHINESE PASSENGER JET NOSE DIVER, KILLING ALL ON BOARD

May 18, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

Conspiracies about conspiracy theories

A little trip down memory lane

el gato malo – bad cattitude – may 16, 2022

My goodness, these “conspiracy theorists” certainly do have vivid imaginations, don’t they?

i mean, that would be terribly divisive, counter to rights, and directly antagonistic to people who just want bodily autonomy. can you even imagine public officials doing something like that?

pretty far fetched…

or health bodies using disease to engage in surveillance?

or governments seeking to do the same and mitigate privacy altogether?

i mean, that’s just silly!

what next, some wild eyed claims that they want universal digital ID?

that they have been quietly rolling out the standards for

and making international and inescapable?

i mean, what will these prolific conspiracy boffins think up next, some sort of state run digital currencies to link to this new ID and surveillance state?

i mean, who would even suggest something like that?

federalreserve.gov/cbdc-faqs.htm

and anyhow, what’s the worst that could happen?

i mean, they told us this is all benign, right?

and it’s not like they ever lied to us before! (or if they did, i’m sure it was for our own good…)

and it’s not like they are seeking to give this power to deeply compromised and captured transnational agencies with no accountability whatsoever and grant them authority over citizens who had no say in the matter…

“The Biggest Global Power Grab We Have Seen in Our Lifetimes”: How Serious is the Threat From the WHO Pandemic Treaty?

so let’s all take a breath. i’m sure you’re just overwrought and imagining things.

there are no conspiracies.

no one is out to get you, least of all some shadowy davos cabal.

and come on, if they were really trying to do this to you, i’m sure they would not just come right out and tell you in some sort of james bond villain megalomaniacal monologue.

i mean, this is real life. no one actually does that…

and hey, i’m sure they’ll probably manage to keep those first 2 promises.

watch out for that third one though.

i have some real doubts about it it…

May 16, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

The vaccine cajolers, Part 6: Indoctrinating children is the key

This is the sixth and final part of Paula Jardine’s investigation into the planning behind ensuring vaccine acceptance and countering vaccine ‘hesitancy’. You can read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here and Part 5 here. 

TCW Defending Freedom | May 16, 2022

COVID-19 vaccines were authorised for emergency use to prevent Covid infection. The ‘vaccine confidence’ people found the word ‘protection’ resonated more with the public than ‘prevention’; accordingly the vaccines were promoted as protecting the community from hospitalisation and death. People who could authentically ‘sell gratitude’ for getting on board with the Covid campaigns for masking or accepting vaccines, the trusted health professionals, social influencers, and ‘people like me’ were deployed to persuade the public. But any talk of a moral obligation to accept the vaccines was to be avoided as they thought it invoked strong negative responses.

Dr Heidi Larson, who set up the ‘Vaccine Confidence Project’ at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, admitted there are challenges, especially when it comes to defining what is misinformation. ‘Social media users may pose questions or instil doubt without saying something that is explicitly false. If someone asks “Do you really know what’s in a vaccine?” we cannot legally or ethically remove it,’ she said. ‘Getting the balance right between freedom of expression, privacy and public health is a major challenge. The erosion of public trust is part of a wider distrust of authorities, experts and industries, but vaccine advocates could lead the way in rebuilding resilience.’

Such reservations have not stopped efforts to police information shared on social media. The authoritarian reflex is to monitor and censor dissent. In 2018, the EU introduced a code of practice on disinformation, and committed to supporting what it called an independent network of fact-checkers, stimulating quality journalism and promoting media literacy. Facebook, Google and Twitter agreed to collaborate by monitoring ‘misinformation’ to ‘ensure the protection of European values and security’.

In June 2021 with the Covid vaccine programme six months old, Věra Jourová, the EU’s vice president for values and transparency, said in a statement: ‘We decided to extend this programme, because the amount of dangerous lies continues to flood our information space and because it will inform the creation of the new generation Code against disinformation.’

To borrow the words of the New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, the authorities are reaching the point where ‘unless you hear it from us it’s not the truth’.

Last August BBC Media Action, generously funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, began a campaign to counter ‘disinformation’ on Covid-19 vaccines, advancing the compromised World Health Organisation (WHO) as the only viable authority on this topic. It is little wonder that the fact checkers themselves began to come under scrutiny, for example by the Critic.

The vaccine safety net approach of counterbalancing was no longer considered sufficient. ‘Inoculation theory’, an idea from the field of public relations, was deployed: ‘Inoculation involves debunking false claims before people encounter them. Then, their first encoding of misinformation is strongly tied with the notion that it is false, equipping people with arguments that can be used to refute and dismiss it. The two main elements of inoculation are explicit warnings that there are attempts to mislead people and refutations of misinformation.’

Dr Emily Brunson, an anthropologist who studies vaccine confidence issues, said: ‘By exposing people to a message that counters your argument and then refuting it, you can help people become more resilient to harmful or inaccurate messaging they may hear later. And just as vaccines only work when they’re administered before someone is exposed to the disease, inoculation theory works when your message is heard first.’

There’s an old-fashioned name for inoculation theory. It is indoctrination. Children, whose minds are the most malleable, are becoming the target. In 2014, the WHO Sage working group laid some of the blame for vaccine hesitancy on the education system saying, ‘Historically, children have not been systematically educated in schools about vaccines, resulting in some in the adult population (i.e. parents and adults) who do not appreciate their benefits to health and societal value for their children and for themselves.‘ Larson agrees: ‘We need to do a better job in schools, helping children to understand essential concepts about how immune systems work to fight disease and how vaccines help build our body’s own protection against infection.’

With the Covid vaccines, applying ‘social norms’ has become part of the persuasion playbook. Lisa Fazio, a psychologist who participated in the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) Covid communications expert group, said: ‘It’s useful to find the influencers and get them to change their mind, which can have big downstream effects. So, for example, if you were working in schools, you would target the kids who have the most connections with other kids and have them be the ones implementing change. Identifying those influencers is going to have a bigger effect than just random people.’

If the Covid vaccine campaign exposes anything 18 months in, with some people having received fourth and even fifth doses, as any protection conferred by the hastily developed vaccines is short-lived, it’s that the idea that vaccines can be used to eradicate diseases is a pipe dream. It demonstrates too that the War on Microbes persists and that, with Covid, the opportunity for a further coercive tool to encourage uptake – the vaccination pass – can be added to its arsenal.

Today the EU is leading the world on the development of these digital certificates. According to Ursula von der Leyen, ‘the development of a vaccine certificate within Europe helps ensure the functioning of the single market, as well as enable Europeans to move freely for work or tourism.

If these certificates achieve permanence, they will remove any remnant of choice over vaccination. The future won’t be Mahler’s holistic vision of health, instead it threatens to be one of being endlessly and needlessly medicated with vaccines, the ultimate fulfilment of Grant’s vision of universal vaccination. Dystopia for the greater good.

May 16, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

No sympathy for widows from the vaccine zealots

By Laura Perrins | TCW Defending Freedom | May 16, 2022

DEAR reader, I’m going to tell you something and you are not going to like it. People don’t care about you. Deep down, deep, deep down, people who don’t know you don’t really care about you. Not really. Not in any way that matters.

As many readers will know, all last week Mark Steyn interviewed victims of the Covid vaccine. They include widows whose husbands were killed by the vaccine, and survivors who were left with life-changing injuries from the vaccine. If you haven’t watched them, please do try to catch up on YouTube, or at Mark’s website.

As I sat through these testimonies, what struck me was the quiet dignity of the widows and survivors. They were all articulate and dignified. Some were careful to say they were not anti-vax; they just wanted to be listened to, their loss acknowledged and adequately compensated for by a government that forced them to take this vaccine. (And once we look at the propaganda and emotional blackmail it was coercion.)

Some other disgusting journalist took issue with Mark interviewing these victims, saying he was ‘exploiting’ them. Nothing could be further from the truth. The only reason Mark Steyn ended up with these interviews is because every other media outlet ignored them. The government ignored them, the vaccine manufacturers ignored them and the media, who usually would be all over stories like this, ignored them.

There was no rage or anger but plenty of bemusement, bewilderment and hurt as to why and how these victims could be treated like this. The most repeated phrase was that the victims were not scared about getting Covid themselves, but they did not want to spread it to others, they were told to get the vaccine, and they wanted to do the ‘right thing’.

At this point, I felt genuine pity for them. They trusted the government, they trusted the mainstream media and they were injured for it. I especially felt for Charlotte Wright whose husband, Dr Stephen Wright, had died leaving sons aged seven and one.

Those boys, Izaac and Elijah, will grow up without their father because he took a vaccine he did not need. Those boys were told, Daddy is not coming home, ever. To lose a father is bad enough. To lose a father because your government coerced him to have a vaccine is an outrage. Not even to compensate the family is evil.

We now know the vaccines do not stop transmission. As such, why healthy people who had no underlying conditions were told to take them should be subject to a public inquiry. In fact, the population were not just told to take them – they were shamed, bullied and threatened with dismissal from their jobs and civil society itself if they didn’t take them. Leading commentators – Andrew Neil, Piers Morgan, Claire Cohen – advocated for a system of apartheid and punishment for ‘vaccine refuseniks.’ These vaccine victims didn’t stand a chance.

At one point I did seriously consider getting the vaccine. I had just the baby and the government propaganda was seeping even into our No BBC house. I also worried about my husband. I worried that one of us would catch Covid and die leaving the four kids. It didn’t make any sense, but everyone breaks sometimes. Everyone. Luckily, a friend called me and told me to pull myself together and that I stood a much greater chance of being injured by the vaccine than Covid. So that moment passed.

Which brings me back to people not caring. When I considered getting this vaccine, what also stopped me is that for all the talk of ‘do the right thing’, I knew that if my husband died from it, no one other than close family and friends would care. Ultimately Matt Hancock was not going to call at my door and say, Don’t worry you are not going to starve to death even though your husband has died.

If I got injured and couldn’t drive, which would devastate the workings of the family, Claire Cohen wasn’t going to rock up and say, Don’t worry, I’ll do the school run. Childless Andrew ‘Punish refuseniks’ Neil certainly wasn’t going to take the baby if I could barely carry him. Neil had his house in the South of France to retreat to – so shut up and take your vaccine.

Ultimately, these people don’t care. They don’t care because they have never once recognised the injuries caused by the vaccine they so passionately advocated for. They don’t care because from my viewpoint they have never once written about it, or had the victims on their shows.

The same goes for the ordinary public. The bottom line is we all have a limited supply of sympathy and empathy to go around, and if we felt every loss we couldn’t get out of bed. But to advocate in such strong terms for a vaccine that has killed and injured people – that was morally abhorrent.

May 15, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

The vaccine cajolers, Part 5: Nudging and eavesdropping

By Paula Jardine | TCW Defending Freedom | May 15, 2022

This is the fifth instalment of Paula Jardine’s six-part investigation into the planning behind ensuring vaccine acceptance and countering vaccine ‘hesitancy’. You can read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here and Part 4 here. 

THE starting point for universal vaccination is that virtually everyone is (indeed, needs to be) a suitable recipient. This has proved the case for the Covid-19 vaccines even though they are still technically under emergency use authorisations pending the completion of clinical trials, and even though the disease is a serious mortality risk for only a minority of the older demographics.

This presumption is at odds with the fallout from the 1976 landmark US judgment in Reyes v Wyeth Laboratories. The parents of a child who was paralysed by polio caused by the Sabin oral polio vaccine she had been given sued the manufacturer and won. In affirming the decision the Federal Court of Appeal said the manufacturer had a duty to market and inform potential customers of the dangerous vaccine and that this duty was heightened since the manufacturer had knowledge of the vaccine’s harmful potential.

In the wake of the case the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) added a ‘duty to warn’ clause to all its vaccine purchase contracts which required that ‘vaccines be administered only after an individualised medical judgment by a physician, or after “meaningful warnings related to the risks and benefits of vaccination” were provided in understandable language.’

Today the CDC advocates what it calls ‘medical provider vaccine standardisation’, saying offering vaccination should be a default option at patient visits. Ideally, the vaccine is available to be administered then and there, for the sake of convenience, and lest upon further reflection there be a change of mind.

Informed consent guidelines require that an explanation of both the risks and the benefits is provided, that the decision is voluntary and is not influenced by pressure from medical staff or others. Vaccine confidence literature, however, suggests the trusted health care practitioner’s role is to influence decisions by presenting vaccine-positive information so that patients or parents will choose vaccination. Safe and effective is the familiar mantra.

The World Health Organisation technical advisory group on behavioural insights and sciences for health have considered the ways in which vaccination decisions can be influenced. They say that ‘anticipated regret’ – when people expect that an unpleasant outcome would lead them to wish they had made a different decision – ‘shows promise as a predictor of intentions and behaviour’. They go on to suggest that ‘leveraging regret’ is a strategy that can be used ‘to tackle motivational barriers to vaccine acceptance and uptake’.

Dr Heidi Larson, a professor of anthropology, risk and decision science, who set up the ‘Vaccine Confidence Project’ at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine but is not a member of the behavioural insights advisory group, offers the same advice saying, ‘Regret is an important dimension in conversations with parents, but the important thing is to shift the anticipated regret towards how they might feel if their child is not vaccinated and becomes seriously ill or even dies from a vaccine preventable disease rather than being more focused on the potential side effects of the vaccine.’

Another strategy that this advisory group has recommended to help increase vaccine uptake is to emphasise the social benefits (or disadvantages of not) such as being able to stay in the workforce or provide for your family. Lisa Fazio, a psychologist who participated in the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) Covid communications expert group, also recommends leveraging altruism. What was required for Covid vaccines, she said, was ‘a call to action beyond “getting” the vaccine for yourself, but using emotions via an aspirational approach. The call to action is something that is elevated and aspirational and focused on the benefits and that sense of normalcy. The call to action is not getting a vaccine that is available to you. The call to action is, “Protect your family, protect your loved ones. Help the world get past this crisis”.’

Another pitch offered by yet another NIH adviser, Paul Slovic, a psychologist who studies risk perception, was that being vaccinated could help people feel that they’re taking back control. ‘One of the things that makes Covid scary is that it’s difficult to control,’ said Slovic. ‘It’s invisible, people can carry and transmit the disease without showing symptoms, and there are limited treatment options. People have profound discomfort with uncertainty, and so offering the vaccine in the context of regaining control could be quite powerful.’

Persuasion isn’t left on its own to do the work. The 2019 Global Vaccination Summit endorsed behavioural nudging to increase uptake: ‘Interventions which focus directly on supporting individual behaviour and making vaccination as easy and convenient as possible have more impact than interventions attempting to modify attitudes and beliefs. In other words, “nudging” and behaviourally-informed strategies can trigger vaccine confidence.’

The idea behind nudging (though a doubtful science) is that it works to increase uptake by making people feel as though they are making a free choice. ‘Offer a default option that’s determined by experts, with an opt-out possibility. This retains people’s sense of freedom, but default architecture will guide them into the experts’ recommendations.’

The Covid-19 vaccination campaign in the UK used this presumptive approach by inviting people to vaccination appointments rather than asking people to request them. It may have been the fear/urgency factor that worked. But that does not lessen the manipulative intent.

Regardless, anyone trying to sell you an investment product by inflating past performances, failing to ascertain its suitability for you as an individual, and using manipulative talk while providing insufficient information for you to make an informed decision in order to make a quick sell, would be deemed to have engaged in unethical practice. Depending on the nature of the misinformation, it could even be illegal.

Vaccines are biological pharmaceutical products, and in the case of mRNA Covid vaccines gene transfer therapies, ones that permanently and irreversibly alter the physiology of healthy people. Having claimed that the case for universal vaccination is a moral one, for the greater good, the strategies employed in pursuit of coverage targets to increase uptake have been and are to varying degrees ethically suspect.

As Covid vaccination uptake figures show, most people do accept vaccines but, despite all the nudging and the hard sell, the 100 per cent coverage that is meant to deliver a disease-free utopia remains elusive. Demand generation at that level would require universal uncritical acceptance of vaccines.

Larson likened people exercising their right to refuse the medical procedure of vaccination to an epidemic requiring crisis management. The various vaccine confidence projects describe their aim as helping populations become more resilient against what they call rumours or misinformation, a nebulous category of anything that might threaten the War on Microbes, that cause people to reject vaccination.

‘We need to be more sophisticated and to build strong transnational networks to pick up rumours and misinformation early and surround them with accurate and positive information in support of vaccination,’ said Larson, chillingly.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) provided the Vaccine Confidence Project with research assistance to support its Covid vaccination work. In the six months from November 2020, NetBase Quid technology was used to ‘scrape’ online forums and social media for conversations about vaccines “to get a deep understanding of the obstacles to vaccine adoption, barriers to building trust and the communication strategies that move people to action”.

No fewer than 66 million conversations were identified and analysed to provide insights on how to target communications for Covid vaccines. It enabled a market segmentation of messaging, microtargeting different messages for different audiences.

May 15, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

WHITE HOUSE “SPEECH POLICE” GETTING SHUT DOWN?

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | May 13, 2022

BILL GATES REVEALS THE HIGHWIRE WAS RIGHT

May 14, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment