This week has seen several timely reminders that the Covid narrative is not done. It may have lost its number 1 spot at the top of the “news” charts, but it’s not dead. It’s just resting.
While the big red numbers at the top of every front page are now casualties instead of “cases”, the pandemic is simmering on the backburner and can be brought back to boil at a moment’s notice.
In China they are reporting huge spikes in “cases”, numbers not seen since the halcyon days of March 2020. Millions of Chinese citizens are already back on lockdowns, many now need police permission to travel from one province to another.
Giant multinationals are halting production for the near future at least, with the BBC warning that:
The lockdowns have raised concerns that crucial supply chains may be disrupted.
Yes, more supply chain disruption. Just like the war.
Funny how that works out.
It’s not just China either, according to Bloomberg Europe is seeing a “Covid Resurgence” after a “rushed exit” from restrictions, with Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands all reporting spikes in cases.
Germany’s “Covid resurgence” comes just days before the government’s emergency powers are due to expire, and just as they are planning to ease all restrictions.
Funny how that works out.
The alleged “resurgence” is the work of a not one but two “new” variants.
Firstly, Deltacron is back. They’re calling it a “new variant”, but the truth is the recombinant virus was first “discovered” back in early January.
Why Everyone’s Talking About The Deltacron Variant Again
Why indeed. It’s a real puzzler.
Perhaps aware that “Deltacron” sounds like a villain from Transformers, they’re also pushing another new variant: “Omicron BA.2”.
Now, while that name definitely isn’t silly, it also isn’t very catchy – so they’ve got a cool scary sounding name for it too: “Stealth Omicron”.
It’s called “stealth omicron”, because it’s lacks markers that can be picked up on by PCR tests, meaning testing positive for this strain of the virus will look just like testing positive for the other strains.
Oh, and this variant isn’t actually new either, it was first discovered back in December, to very little fanfare.
But that was then, and this is now, and now experts are “worried”, apparently.
The press are already reporting that it might be the “most infectious disease on Earth”
All this just serves as a reminder that the Covid story is still there, and they can (and probably will) bring it back whenever they want. Maybe the very moment Ukraine and Russia agree on a peace deal.
Game of Thrones famously used to alternate their season finales, in an odd-numbered season the show would end with a shocking plot twist, and in even numbered seasons it would be an epic battle.
Maybe this will be our new reality, lurching from pandemic to war to pandemic to war, and around and around.
A perpetual cycle of different grand narratives, linked only in their shared consequences: More power for them, less freedom for us.
It’s tough being a writer. It’s even tougher when your work is being actively suppressed by the world’s biggest market place for books: Amazon.
Reputed to account for 80% of world book sales, for an author there’s no getting away from the online giant, no escaping its tentacles.
My problems with Amazon began when I had the audacity to publish a couple of BBC critiques; birds of a feather stick together and the broadcaster wasn’t too happy about these exposes of mine.
In normal times, they’d just have to suck it up. But these are not normal times. McCarthyism lives again only this time, co-ordinated by Big Tech. It’s a far more frightening prospect than it ever was in the 1950s.
Anyway, I’d said what I wanted viz the BBC and moved on to a new project: solving a mystery which had occurred in Provence in 1973, the savage murder of a British headmaster and former intelligence agent, John Cartland.
In a vain attempt to escape censure for my previous ‘crimes’ I even adopted a nom de plume: ‘Stockton Heath’. Almost two years later the task was complete: the mystery had been solved!
As an independent project there was no alternative but to publish via Amazon. While Amazon will plug certain books linking them to other books and ensuring their visibility on its platform, my little effort had no such benefits and duly dropped off the radar.
Reviews were hard to come by. On one occasion I noticed a positive review and my heart leapt only to find it had mysteriously vanished the next day.
How many more reviews have been deleted without my knowledge?
All was not lost. In France the crime is still referred to and remains one of that country’s most perplexing mysteries. Would I have better luck there?
After paying a French contact to assist with translation and six months after starting what became a long and complicated process, ‘Imaginer Un Meurtre: L’affaire Cartland Revistee’ was finally completed in February this year.
Initially all went well. It seems like my hunch had been right: the book sold relatively well during its first week on Amazon France. And then, nothing.
Just over a week ago sales stopped dead. More Amazon antics? It looked that way. I had started to receive a few emails from associates in France: ‘Where was the book? Hadn’t I published after all?’
I checked Amazon France: searching for the book’s title ‘Imaginer Un Meurtre’ auto-corrected to ‘Imagier Un Meurtre’.
The word ‘imagier’ in French means ‘colouring book’ and so instead of my book I was presented with children’s colouring books.
It soon became apparent that unless customers typed in the full title of the book + sub-title + author’s name, henceforth it would be effectively invisible to browsers of Amazon France.
Having spent hours on the telephone to Amazon reps is enough to drive one to distraction: they deny everything, even when viewing actual proof captured on film which shows how the Amazon website is subverting searches for the book. (Video can be viewed below)
It’s all due to the “algorithm” and that is that. Have a nice day.
So what happened? I have a theory: having suddenly become aware that I had published on Amazon’s French platform and the book in question was doing ok, Amazon stepped in to subvert the book’s visibility by ‘tweaking’ its searchability.
And it worked too: the book is now headed the same way as the English language version: to oblivion.
Once you’ve upset the establishment that’s your card marked, or so it seems. MSM (BBC) and Big tech is crossed at one’s peril.
This amalgamation of political parties/politicians with mainstream media and Big Tech into one immoral and corrupt uni-party was predicted by Orwell in 1984.
Orwell’s world is one of fear and paranoia where citizens are subjected to 24-hour surveillance by a brutal authoritarian police state – just the kind of society warned about by the so-called anti-fascist busily taking Orwell’s dystopia for their ‘Build Back Better’ blueprint.
Where does one go from here? Having resisted the lies for so long, the hero of 1984 finally submits to the Party orthodoxy at the end of the novel.
While he was right about everything else from The Thought Police to Big State propaganda channelled through ubiquitous tellyscreens, let’s hope that as far as his ending was concerned, Orwell got one thing wrong.
David Sedgwick is a writer and bon viveur based in Malaga and Split with occasional visits back to Liverpool. He writes about a wide range of topics from F1 and film to true crime and travel. http://www.stocktonheath.net
The US Central Intelligence Agency used a detainee in Afghanistan as a ‘prop’ to teach interrogators how to torture prisoners, leaving the man with brain damage, newly declassified documents have revealed.
According to the 2008 report by the CIA’s inspector general, published by The Guardian, 44-year-old Ammar al-Baluchi was used to teach interrogators how to perform a torture technique called ‘walling’. As explained by the CIA, walling is where an interrogator “pulls the detainee towards him and then quickly slams the detainee against [a] false wall.”
The document states that Baluchi was subjected to walling for up to two hours at a time, and a former trainee claimed that “all the interrogation students lined up to ‘wall’ Ammar” so their instructor “could certify them on their ability to use the technique.”
“In the case of ‘walling’ in particular the [Office of the Inspector General] had difficulty determining whether the session was designed to elicit information from Ammar or to ensure that all interrogator trainees received their certification,” the declassified report said, noting that it appeared “certification was key” during the torture sessions.
Baluchi – who was captured by the CIA in 2003 before being transferred to Guantanamo Bay in 2006 – reportedly suffered from brain damage as a result of his detainment by the US intelligence agency.
The Kuwaiti-born man was detained for allegedly having a role in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and serving as a courier for Osama Bin Laden.
Baluchi remains in US custody at Guantanamo Bay, despite calls from the United Nations and human rights activists for his release.
A Saudi Arabian man was released from Guantanamo Bay to receive mental health treatment this month after nearly 20 years in custody. Mohammad Mani Ahmad al-Qahtani, 46, was freed after US officials deemed his imprisonment “no longer necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the national security of the United States.”
Qahtani was reportedly diagnosed with schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder after he was subjected to beatings, sexual humiliation, sleep deprivation, and other forms of torture at Guantanamo Bay.
There are 38 detainees left in the military prison.
The subject of excess deaths during the pandemic, meaning deaths more than prior years, has received much attention. Now comes an analysis by medical establishment researchers, funded by Bill Gates and published in the premier establishment medical journal – The Lancet. An establishment publication commented positively on the article.
Before explaining what was intentionally omitted, here are the key findings.
The study covered the initial two years of the COVID pandemic, 2020 and 2021. It estimated excess mortality from the COVID-19 pandemic in 191 countries and territories, and 252 subnational units for selected countries. Global deaths directly attributed to COVID-19 reached 5.9 million, yet estimates put excess deaths during this period at a staggering 18.2 million. In other words, about 12 million people probably died from causes other than COVID infection. Something that the public health establishment should be held accountable for.
At the country level, the highest numbers of cumulative excess deaths due to the pandemic were estimated in India 4·07 million, the USA 1·13 million, Russia 1·07 million, Mexico 798 000, Brazil 792 000, Indonesia 736 000, and Pakistan 664 000. Note that the figure for the USA was about 300,000 greater than the CDC official number of deaths related to COVID infection through 2021.
Among countries, the excess mortality rate was highest in Russia 374·6 deaths per 100 000 and Mexico 325·1 per 100 000, and was similar in Brazil 186·9 per 100 000 and the USA 179·3 per 100 000. The highest estimated excess mortality rate from COVID infection was in Bolivia at 734.9 deaths per 100,000, followed by Bulgaria, Eswatini, North Macedonia, and Lesotho. Iceland had the lowest excess mortality rate 47.8 per 100,000. Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, and Taiwan had negative excess mortality rates, meaning fewer people died than in pre-pandemic years.
The study noted: “Our estimates of COVID-19 excess mortality suggest the mortality impact from the COVID-19 pandemic has been more devastating than the situation documented by official statistics. Official statistics on reported COVID-19 deaths provide only a partial picture of the true burden of mortality.” In other words, something other than the virus is to blame for millions of deaths.
An interesting finding was that studies from several countries including Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands, suggest COVID-19 infection was the direct cause of most excess deaths, most likely because these nations maintained a more open society than other countries.
The study did recognize that there was likely underreporting in some places of direct deaths due to COVID infection.
The key goal in excess death studies is explaining deaths not resulting from COVID infection, and this usually means collateral or indirect deaths from how the pandemic was managed or, more correctly, mismanaged. So many people died from the many impacts of economic lockdowns, inability to get regular medical care, suicides and illegal drug use, for example.
Most interesting in this very detailed study was absolutely no consideration of deaths associated with COVID vaccines. Data from the US, UK and European Union indicate at least several hundred thousand deaths. Many more in other global locations could easily bring the total to several million, especially recognizing that millions of adverse health impacts from vaccines likely will keep explaining deaths for quite some time.
But the study had a very positive view of the benefits of COVID vaccines: “the development and deployment of SARS-COV-2 vaccines have considerably lowered mortality rates among people who contract the virus and among the general population. As a result, we expect trends in excess mortality due to COVID-19 to change over time as the coverage of vaccination increases among populations and as new variants emerge.” This, obviously, is an establishment view of the COVID vaccines despite a large medical literature with an opposite view.
Also interesting was the detailed analysis for states in India that totally ignored what is now widely known. Namely, that a number of states, especially Uttar Pradesh, used ivermectin to successfully wipe out the pandemic.
Death numbers in a number of other nations were also surely reduced by wide use of ivermectin. But this study had no interest in examining this.
US excess deaths
There are reasons to think that the excess death data for the US was an undercount. Various insurance industry officials have spoken about very high death rates not due to COVID infection in working age people. CDC data shows the Millennial generation suffered a “Vietnam War event,” with more than 61,000 excess deaths in that age group in the second half of 2021, according to an analysis by Edward Dowd a former Wall Street executive who made a career of crunching numbers to make big-dollar investment decisions. The Millennials, about ages 25 to 40, experienced an 84% increase in excess mortality in the fall, he said, describing it as the “worst-ever excess mortality, I think, in history.”
Along this same line is this: According to the CEO of OneAmerica, a national life insurance corporation headquartered in Indiana, deaths are up 40% in the third quarter of 2021. These deaths are primarily non-COVID deaths among workers aged 18 through 64. “We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have seen in the history of this business – not just at OneAmerica,” the company’s CEO Scott Davison said. The data is consistent across every player in that business. What the data is showing to us is that the deaths that are being reported as COVID deaths greatly understate the actual death losses among working-age people from the pandemic. It may not all be COVID on their death certificate, but deaths are up just huge, huge numbers.”
Conclusions
The massive number of all pandemic deaths shows how totally ineffective all actions by governments and public health groups, as well as the medical establishment, have been. It has all been one gigantic pandemic blunder.
Even if there was some undercounting of COVID infection deaths, there probably was at least 10 million pandemic deaths in the two years covered in this study that can and should be blamed on a number of ineffective and unnecessary public health actions. Where is the accountability for these non-infection deaths?
Considering the enormous number of COVID vaccine shots given globally there also should be no praise for them saving lives. In some countries like the US with high rates of vaccination there were still high COVID deaths. What must always be emphasized is that the use of ivermectin and various non-vaccine protocols could have prevented nearly all COVID infection deaths.
Before ‘The Science’ flipped in the spring of 2020, the consensus among Western epidemiologists was that community masking doesn’t affect the spread of respiratory pathogens like influenza. As Jonathan Van Tam said on April 3rd 2020, “there is no evidence” to support the general wearing of face masks.
Although masks might block large droplets in close-contact settings like hospitals, and thereby slightly lower the risk of transmission, they can’t block airborne particles – which simply go through/around them, and then remain aloft for minutes or even hours.
As a result, large indoor setting like supermarkets, transit stations or classrooms soon fill up with airborne particles – even if everyone’s wearing a mask.
A new Spanish study strongly supports the pre-Covid conventional wisdom that masks don’t stop transmission of respiratory pathogens. The study uses quite a powerful design, which makes its results all the more convincing.
Ermengol Coma and colleagues analysed data on a large cohort of Spanish children aged three to eleven, whom they followed for the first term of the school year from September to December of 2021. During this period, there was a mask mandate in place for children in primary school (aged six and up) but not for those in pre-school (aged three to five).
Hence the researchers compared outcomes between children aged five (who were not subject to the mandate) and those aged six (who were subject to the mandate).
This constitutes a relatively well-controlled comparison, given that the two groups differ by only one year in age. In other words, since six-year olds are only one year older than five-year olds, you wouldn’t expect the rate of transmission to differ much between them for reasons other than the mask mandate.
The researchers estimated the incidence of Covid, the secondary attack rate and the R number separately for the two groups. If mask mandates work, you’d expect all these quantities to be higher among the five-year olds. However, the researchers found no statistically significant differences between the two groups.
What’s more, they found a strong positive association between measures of transmission and age across all the age-groups in their sample. In other words, transmission was higher among older age-groups, despite the fact that these groups were subject to the mask mandate, whereas the younger ones weren’t.
Ermengol Coma and colleagues’ findings suggest that mask mandates do essentially nothing to reduce the spread of Covid. And given that masks plausibly impede both learning and social interaction, on top of being uncomfortable, there’s no good reason for children to wear them. Indeed, the fact that they were ever made to is a scandal.
A number of people have said it, but — and I feel it, actually: I’m a wartime president. This is a war. This is a war. A different kind of war than we’ve ever had.
-Donald Trump, Former President of the United States
We are at war. All the action of the government and of Parliament must now be turned toward the fight against the epidemic, day and night. Nothing can divert us.
-Emmanuel Macron, President of France
This war – because it is a real war – has been going on for a month, it started after European neighbors, and for this reason, it could take longer to reach the peak of its expression.
-Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, President of Portugal
We are at war with a virus – and not winning it.
-Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary General
We must act like any wartime government and do whatever it takes to support our economy.
-Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
The president said this is a war. I agree with that. This is a war. Then let’s act that way, and let’s act that way now.
-Andrew Cuomo, Former Governor of New York
You get the picture. Leaders at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic really wanted us to think of ourselves as combatants possessing a civic duty to fight an insidious, unseen enemy. They wanted us to think that victory was possible. They wanted us to understand that there would be casualties, and collateral damage, and to steel ourselves for the inevitable enactment of broad and unfocused policies that would keep us safe, no matter the cost.
This isn’t all that surprising in hindsight. Politicians love to use war as a metaphor for just about every collective enterprise: the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the war on cancer. They understand that war provides an incomparable motivation for people to make sacrifices for the greater good of their countries, and when they want to harness some of that motivation, they pull out all the metaphorical stops.
Leaders have been searching for a “moral equivalent of war” for a very long time. The idea was introduced by psychologist and philosopher William James in a speech at Stanford in 1906 that has been credited for inspiring the creation of national projects such as the Peace Corps and Americorps, both organizations aspiring to “enlist” young people into meaningful, non-military service to their country:
I spoke of the “moral equivalent” of war. So far, war has been the only force that can discipline a whole community, and until an equivalent discipline is organized, I believe that war must have its way. But I have no serious doubt that the ordinary prides and shames of social man, once developed to a certain intensity, are capable of organizing such a moral equivalent as I have sketched, or some other just as effective for preserving manliness of type. It is but a question of time, of skillful propagandism, and of opinion-making men seizing historic opportunities.
People are willing to do things during a war that they wouldn’t be willing to do during peacetime. During World War II, it was impossible that German bombers would reach the middle of the United States, yet citizens in the U.S. Midwest practiced blackouts to demonstrate their commitment to defeating an enemy they had in common with people far away. People that actually had to sit in the dark at night to be safe.
This was what leaders using war metaphors were asking from their citizens at the start of the pandemic:
The war metaphor also shows the need for everyone to mobilize and do their part on the home front. For many Americans, that means taking social distancing orders and hand washing recommendations seriously. For businesses, that means shifting resources toward stopping the outbreak, whether in terms of supplies or manpower.
However, it wasn’t just social distancing and handwashing—leaders were asking for cooperation for a complete lockdown, a complete suspension of normal life for a short, yet vague and undefined period of time. There was no thought to how this would actually stop a highly contagious virus, or how people would be expected to return to normal life when the virus hadn’t completely disappeared. There wasn’t a desire to mobilize the engines of democracy for war. Instead, there was a mandate to shut them down. Economic production wasn’t maximized, it was minimized.
I was skeptical of the ability of shutdowns to do much good from the beginning, and was very much afraid that panic and overreaction would have serious consequences. I didn’t use war metaphors because it never occurred to me that they would be in any way helpful. Yet when I advocated trying to minimize collateral damage by allowing people who were less vulnerable to severe disease to resume their lives, others criticized that I was for “surrendering to the virus”. The use of war metaphors wasn’t just limited to leaders, but had quickly spread to the broader population.
Some international leaders tried to resist the temptation to use war metaphors, but ultimately failed. After telling the Canadian House of Commons that the pandemic wasn’t a war, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau couldn’t resist: “The front line is everywhere. In our homes, in our hospitals and care centers, in our grocery stores and pharmacies, at our truck stops & gas stations. And the people who work in these places are our modern-day heroes.” Trudeau later also couldn’t resist using extreme measures normally reserved for wartime to quell a protest led by the very truck stop heroes he had once glorified.
Indeed, the findings of this study show how, within the context of Covid-19, war metaphors were important in: preparing the population for hard times; showing compassion, concern and empathy; persuading the citizens to change their behavior, ensuring their acceptance of extraordinary rules, sacrifices; boosting national sentiments and resilience, and also in constructing enemies and shifting responsibility.
“Constructing enemies and shifting responsibility” would play an important role later on in the pandemic, when extreme and damaging measures didn’t work and politicians resorted to blaming their own citizens for failing to cooperate with damaging and unsustainable measures.
Some academics, like anthropologist Saiba Varma, warned that:
Analogising (sic) the pandemic to a war also creates consent for extraordinary security measures, because they are done for public health. Globally, coronavirus curfews are being used to mete out violence against marginalised (sic) people. From the history of emergencies, we know that exceptional violence can become permanent.
It was obvious that working class and poor individuals would be disproportionally harmed by draconian COVID measures, and that the wealthy, or Zoom class might actually benefit:
We have, for example, already witnessed how people in already quite privileged positions are the ones who have the ability to work from home, which means that they also have more potential to act according to health recommendations, while others run the risk of being dismissed from their work or of their businesses going bankrupt. Then, there are those in positions identified as socially important functions that cannot choose to avoid risks, particularly in the care sector, where the risk of infection is the largest and shortages of protective equipment exist. Last, not everyone has the resources that are required to participate in pandemic self-governance (knowledge of how and when to shop, having people who can help you, the hospital closest to you having enough respirators, etc.).
The authors to the above article, Katarina Nygren and Anna Olofsson, also commented on the criticism of “lax” pandemic response measures in Sweden, noting how the pandemic response in Sweden was vastly different from that of most other countries in Europe because it emphasized personal responsibility rather than relying on government coercion:
Thus, the Swedish strategy to manage Covid-19 has been largely based on the responsibility of the citizens who receive daily information and instructions for individually targeted self-protection techniques by the Public Health Agency of Sweden’s website and press conferences held by state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, and other representatives of the government. They continue to underline the importance of all citizens playing their part to stop the virus from spreading and avoiding the enhancement of law enforcement’s restrictions on citizens’ rights as long as possible.
With recommendations rather than prohibitions, the individual becomes the unit of decision making towards whom claims of liability are directed if he or she does not manage to act ethically according to social expectations. This kind of governing of conduct, which has been characteristic of the Swedish risk management strategy during the pandemic thus far, targets the self-regulating individual in terms of not only trust but also solidarity. This type of governing was explicitly made by the prime minister in his speech to the nation on the 22nd of March (speeches that are extremely rare in Sweden) in which he particularly emphasized individual responsibility not only for the sake of personal safety but for the sake of others.
The Swedish Prime Minister, Stefan Löfven, used precisely zero wartime metaphors in his March 22, 2020 speech to the nation about the COVID pandemic and the response of the Swedish government. Within the next few months, the Swedish response was, rather predictably, viciously attacked by other leaders and media outlets for its failure to conform to the rest of the reflexive lockdown-mandating world. Yet the Swedish strategy has overall not resulted in much higher deaths, currently 57th in COVID deaths per million inhabitants, well below many of its critics.
There were only a few other notable exceptions in the metaphorical blitzkrieg of war imagery by world leaders in their early pandemic speeches. Another was German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who said of the pandemic, “It is not a war. It is a test of our humanity!” The reluctance of a German leader to use a war metaphor for something that is clearly not a war is both understandable and admirable.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was contemptuous of lockdowns and refused to use war imagery in his speeches, making it quite clear that pandemic deaths had no easy collective solution, only hard choices: “Stop whining. How long are you going to keep crying about it? How much longer will you stay at home and close everything? No one can stand it anymore. We regret the deaths, again, but we need a solution.” Not surprisingly, he was widely condemned for these comments.
Interestingly, much of the analysis and criticism of the use of war metaphors for the early pandemic response came from left-leaning outlets, like Vox, CNN, and The Guardian, where journalist Marina Hyde wrote:
As the news gets more horrifyingly real each day – and somehow, at the same time, more unmanageably unreal – I’m not sure who this register of battle and victory and defeat truly aids. We don’t really require a metaphor to throw the horror of viral death into sharper relief: you have to think it’s bad enough already. Plague is a standalone horseman of the apocalypse – he doesn’t need to catch a ride with war. Equally, it’s probably unnecessary to rank something we keep being informed is virtually a war with things in the past that were literally wars.
An article in Voxwarned of the consequences of too much power in the wrong hands:
A war metaphor can also have dark consequences. “If we look at history, during times of war, it’s often been the case that war is accompanied by abuses of medicine and the suspension of widespread ethical norms,” Keranen said, citing Nazi use of medicine or other public health trials that have been conducted on prisoners and war resistors over the years. “Especially now, we need to be on guard for this with the clinical trials and other product development that we’re undergoing, so that in our haste to ‘fight’ the disease with a military metaphor, we’re not giving away our fundamental ethical concepts and principles.”
“Giving away our fundamental ethical concepts and principles” is arguably exactly what happened in manywestern nations, yet hard-hitting and often accurate criticism from left-leaning media outlets speaking out against the pandemic as a war view had all but gone silent sometime after November 3rd, 2020. Coincidently, the conflation of a pandemic public health response with a military one has all but been erased by an actual war when Russia invaded Ukraine. An actual war tends to bring perspective back to places where it has been lost rather quickly.
With two full years of hindsight, it’s clear that lockdowns were a disaster and that mandated measures caused more harm than benefit, yet this has not prevented leaders from declaring victory, crediting their own brave and resolute leadership for saving millions of lives and routing the viral enemy. However, SARS-CoV-2 isn’t a real enemy—it doesn’t have an intention other than to exist and spread, and it won’t agree to an armistice. Instead, we will have to live with the virus forever in an endemic state, and skip the victory parades.
There’s no evidence that calling the pandemic what it truly was—a global natural disaster, admitting our limitations for “defeating” it, and calling on people to stay calm and avoid acting in irrational fear, would’ve resulted in a worse outcome. It’s more likely that the collateral damage of broad and unfocused responses would have been avoided in a pandemic-as-disaster scenario. There would be no need to view leaders as military commanders or experts as heroes or high priests of absolute truth. Rather, the humble and rational response that Sweden’s leaders enacted and the proponents of the Great Barrington Declaration proposed will be remembered as the least damaging among many others that resulted in failure and defeat on the metaphorical battlefields of public health.
Steve Templeton, PhD. is an Associate Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at Indiana University School of Medicine – Terre Haute.
Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.
Drug harm reporting systems, like the MHRA’s yellow card system, are designed to alert the regulator to a potential issue. They are not designed to measure the size of the problem. If an issue is highlighted then the regulator has a responsibility to carry out an audit and see whether the incidence of the condition of concern has been higher than historical levels in the population who were vaccinated.
The Government appears to be treating the yellow card reports as if they are a record of every occurrence of a condition in the country, comparing the number of reports with background levels in the whole population. It is well known that reporting systems only capture a fraction of cases and it is very odd that the Government is treating this data as comprehensive.
As an example, let’s take Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS) which is a rare condition where the immune system attacks the nervous system. It is usually caused by a viral infection but has been attributed to vaccination adverse reactions in the past. There are 1,300 cases every year and 608 cases have been reported on the yellow card system.
A study by Hanson et al in the USA of 10 million patients showed that in the first 21 days after the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine the rates of GBS were 15 times higher than expected levels. Extrapolating from this figure we would expect 500 AZ vaccine related cases in the UK. There have been a total of 488 reported in the yellow card system but it is not clear whether these were within 3 weeks of vaccination.
In a three week period we would expect 29 background cases to have occurred co-incidentally. Based on the Hanson data of 500 cases after 24.9 million doses, the cause of someone having GBS within 3 weeks of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine would be the vaccine 95% of the time and coincidental 5% of the time. The morally right thing to do for these people, is to accept that they have been vaccine injured and be wrong 5% of the time rather than claim these were coincidental and be wrong 95% of the time.
The Government appears to want to claim coincidence. A few of these patients have filed claims with the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme. None of the claimants have been helped, even patients whose deaths have been investigated at inquest and where a coroner has determined the vaccine as the cause of death. When rolling out a £12bn vaccine programme it is naive not to set aside a budget for vaccine injury. The current claims system requires proof of “60% disability”, a ‘proof of cause’ and does not compensate for lost earnings or costs of care. Maria Caulfield, the minister for patient safety and primary care, said that they were employing people to look through the claimant’s medical records for a “causal link” as if vaccines write confession notes. Surely, this is the real waste of public funds and seems to point to a reluctance to compensate deserving victims.
As I described in my last article, the California Democratic Party and the Democratic National Committee have embraced the Pan Doctrine that is junk-science-eugenic-fascism with the added twist that they want everyone to be chronically ill in order to enrich their largest donors. This particular political machine works right up until the point at which the entire society collapses — which is fast approaching.
So what’s the alternative to the Pan Doctrine?
Actual Science.
What are the elements of actual science in connection with our current debate? These are the principles that came to mind for me but I imagine you’ll be able to add many more:
1. Nullius in verba which means “take nobody’s word for it.” Secondary sources are not a valid epistemology. One must read original source documents. Examine data and evidence. Draw your own conclusions. Think for yourself. Escape information bubbles and transcend dogma. Morality and ethics are vital. Skepticism, disinterestedness, transparency, and rigorous debate are the hallmarks of good science. Reductionism, censorship, and conflicts of interest are fatal to good science.
2. Civil engineers, not vaccines, produced the large gains in life expectancy over the 20th century. About 90% of the decline in infectious disease mortality among U.S. children occurred before the introduction of mass vaccination campaigns (Guyer et al. 2000). The large gains in life expectancy over the twentieth century were mostly the result of the construction of water and sewer systems, improvements in food safety, hand washing, improvements in housing, and reduced overcrowding in U.S. cities.
3. The best vaccine safety data set in the world shows that all vaccines on the U.S. childhood schedule produce more harms than benefits. The data show that only a few live attenuated vaccines produce more benefits than harms (oral polio, measles by itself, and tuberculosis) in regions where these viruses are endemic. None of those vaccines are available in the U.S. However, all live virus vaccines eventually revert to virulence and cause outbreaks of the disease that they are trying to protect against. The harms from coronavirus shots far exceed any benefits.
4. The human immune system is wondrous, more sophisticated than any man-made product, and not well understood by so-called “experts”. When our bodies need extra support, nature has given us a wide array of tools for treating disease. Community, a sense of connection, and meaning are key to health too. Allopathic medicine has a role to play in emergency treatment but over the long run the largest gains in health often come from lifestyle changes. Toxicants play a huge role in disease but they are poorly studied because government is captured by industry.
5. Science, technology, class, health, sex, wealth, and power are interwoven. From medieval witch trials through today, the wisest healers are often persecuted and the most effective treatments are often suppressed. Pure objectivity is impossible because the observer is always part of the world that is being observed. Science is always changing. Institutions exist to reproduce themselves. The purpose of the pharmaceutical industry is to enrich shareholders. It is essential to take personal responsibility for one’s own health.
Do you get the feeling digital id is being hyped by every government, corporation, financial institution and globalist-connected NGO as “the way of the future”? Well, you’re right! But why is this being pushed so hard right now. Don’t miss this important edition of The Corbett Report podcast where James lays out the digital ID agenda and how it serves as the linchpin of the entire global enslavement grid.
ESG stands for “Environmental, Social, Corporate Governance” and has been likened to a globalized Social Credit Scoring system for business. If you have a high ESG score, it will be easy to qualify for credit, to get the best deals with vendors and to participate in the global supply chain.
Alas, if you don’t have a high ESG score, you won’t be in business long unless you change your behavior and knuckle under to its demands.
So, how is ESG determined and who sets the rules and guidelines?
First, ESG has nothing to do with the physical aspects of a company, like capital, cash flow or profit. Rather, it concerns intangible factors such as how closely you, your vendors and customers adhere to Sustainable Development and climate change policies.
“The story of ESG investing began in January 2004 when former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan wrote to over 50 CEOs of major financial institutions, inviting them to participate in a joint initiative under the auspices of the UN Global Compact and with the support of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Swiss Government. The goal of the initiative was to find ways to integrate ESG into capital markets.”
One year later (2005), an environmental policy wonk, Ivo Knoepfel, wrote a a major paper, Who Cares Wins: Connecting Financial Markets to a Changing World. This 58 page report contained “recommendations by the financial industry to better integrate environmental, social and governance issues in analysis, asset management and securities brokerage.”
The corporate collaborators, far from real people like ordinary citizens, included all the big names one might suspect: World Bank Group, Morgan Stanley, HSBC, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance, Citigroup and others.
And just like that, ESG was born.
The report summarizes ten innocuous and subjective principles that read much like the UNs’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs):
U.N. Global Compact Principles
Human Rights
Principle 1: Businesses should support and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights within their sphere of influence; and
Principle 2: make sure that they are not complicit in human rights abuses.
Labour
Principle 3: Businesses should uphold the freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining;
Principle 4: the elimination of all forms of forced and compulsory labour;
Principle 5: the effective abolition of child labour; and
Principle 6: eliminate discrimination in respect of employment and occupation.
Environment
Principle 7: Businesses should support a precautionary approach to environmental challenges;
Principle 8: undertake initiatives to promote greater environmental responsibility; and
Principle 9: encourage the development and diffusion of environmentally friendly technologies.
Anti-Corruption
Principle 10: Businesses should work against corruption in all its forms, including extortion and bribery.*
Who decides ESG standards and scores? It is repeatedly stated that financial analysts are the key operatives:
“We invite financial institutions to expand the scope of ESG integration in research to other asset classes impacted by ESG factors, beyond equity.” Beyond equity implies a rating system for bonds, corporate debt and other financial instruments.”
“We encourage analysts to further advance the development of valuation methodologies to better deal with qualitative information and uncertain impacts related to ESG issues.”
“Financial analysts should expand their understanding and analysis of these factors to other industries.”
“Financial analysts should improve their understanding and integration of ESG issues in emerging markets research.”
“Financial analysts and investment professionals should take a leading role because they are the specialists best placed to show how ESG issues impact company and investment value.”
To put this in perspective, the financial analyst position at a large financial institution is typically an entry-level job for people just out of college. In reality, they are coached by ESG policies to act like “fact checkers” as they examine these non-tangible aspects of a company. With the stroke of a pen then can upgrade or downgrade a company according to its ESG compliance, but no two analysts would likely come to the same exact conclusion.
Nevertheless, with subjective ESG research reports in hand, senior executives then call on pension funds, mutual funds, hedge funds, investment funds, etc., to divest themselves of low scoring companies and reinvest in high scoring companies. If they refuse to cooperate, they are branded with a lower ESG score of their own. Lending institutions are approached to examine the ESG value of their loan portfolios. Not high enough to satisfy the “fact checkers”? Then stop loaning money to low ESG companies, or risk being downgraded yourself!
It gets worse from here. The report calls for government force to mandate disclosure:
“We also believe that regulatory frameworks requiring a minimum degree of disclosure and accountability on ESG issues would improve the availability and comparability of data, and therefore support integration in financial analysis.”
And for stock exchanges to inform rank-and-file investors and institutions alike:
“Stock exchanges, for instance, could include ESG criteria in listing particulars for companies. Both voluntary and market-friendly regulatory approaches are needed to improve disclosure. Both should be flexible enough to allow for diversity of approaches and providers, rather than relying on rigid prescriptions.”
Conclusion
ESG is a globalist scam, and having just said that, my score probably went to zero. It is designed to drive investments and company operating policies into Sustainable Development, aka Technocracy. It is also a circular design that once started, reinforces itself with every spin around the financial universe.
Next up will be ESG for individuals, which goes one step further into how you actually think about these things.
What? You own an investment in a dirty old low-ESG company? Own a gas-guzzling car? Big house? Too much grass in your front yard? Work for a low-ESG company? Post social media pictures that lampoon global warming or mask mandates? Well, that shows that you just don’t care, so boom, down goes your score. Now, try to get financing for that new car you want to buy, or get underwritten for a new life insurance or homeowner’s policy.
You get the idea.
Patrick Wood is a leading and critical expert on Sustainable Development, Green Economy, Agenda 21, 2030 Agenda and historic Technocracy. He is the author of Technocracy Rising: The Trojan Horse of Global Transformation (2015) and co-author of Trilaterals Over Washington, Volumes I and II (1978-1980) with the late Antony C. Sutton.
The most strenuous form of critique the media seem able to muster is to tell policymakers to apologize for “getting COVID wrong.”
Early on, Children’s Health Defense and other independent voices forcefully called out the government’s sub-rosa agenda as a deliberate, multisectoral effort spearheaded by central bankers and billionaire technocrats to ensnare the world in a global control grid — in other words, modern-day digital slavery.
Viewed from this angle, the “separate mind-boggling events” of the past two years “line up as sequential moves on a worldwide chessboard.”
Restrictive COVID policies and strange central bank maneuvers were no accident but rather the tools of a planned economic takedown of the most vibrant and independent segments of the economy, notably the small “retail, arts and entertainment, personal services, food services and hospitality businesses” that, together with other small business sectors, have “pretty much driven most economic activity throughout our known history.”
Even before this purposeful economic havoc, the developed world’s richest denizens were living at least 10 to 15 years longer than the world’s poorest.
When experimental injections were added in December 2020 to the mix of COVID interventions, the takedown began taking on even more gruesome dimensions.
Discussing far-reaching vaccine fraud allegedly perpetrated by Pfizer, acting in cahoots with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, former BlackRock investor Edward Dowd has said:
“I think this is the greatest crime ever committed because most of the frauds I’ve been involved with are financial frauds where money’s lost; This has killed and maimed people.”
On March 1, shortly after a board member of German insurance company BKK ProVita expressed public alarm at the widespread killing and maiming — noting that Germany’s federal health agency was underreporting COVID vaccine injuries by a factor of 10 — the executive was summarily fired.
Prominent physician Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, who blazed a hopeful trail with his inexpensive and successful COVID treatment protocol, bluntly characterized the toxic jabs as instruments of “premeditated first-degree murder and genocide.”
Empty words and gestures
Of late, policymakers seem to have decided it’s time for some crocodile tears — and also time to make a show of putting a few COVID restrictions on hold.
For example, consider the recent remarks by Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Walensky said health officials “had perhaps too little caution and too much optimism” about the COVID shots.
For those paying attention, there can be little doubt these words and gestures are less about a policy one-eighty than about window dressing and distraction — as well as perhaps a clever move to “undercut” the momentum of the People’s Convoy currently demanding an end to all emergency measures.
As Jon Rappoport warned, “Although some governments … are lifting COVID restrictions and mandates, we should remember they still hold the power to re-impose those measures at the drop of a hat — for any reason they cook up.”
The key takeaway of the last two years, Rappoport clarified, is that governments’ COVID actions were expedient political decisions — designed to “advance tyranny” — and had “nothing to do with science or morality.”
New York City’s recent actions exemplify the duplicity of the policy rollbacks and the steady behind-the-scenes march of the control agenda. Remember — officials there willingly spent two years gutting the city’s famed restaurants, other small businesses and cultural institutions.
Now, while announcing an easing up of restrictions out of one side of his mouth, the new mayor fired almost 1,500 unvaccinated municipal workers, is insisting on continuing to mask 3- and 4-year-olds (defying widespread parental objections) and is advising businesses they “can still choose to require proof of vaccination.”
Maryland is another jurisdiction that has been indifferent to the distress caused by its policies, ignoring, for example, a leading trade group’s warning that politicians’ capricious on-again, off-again restrictions — promoted as protecting “well-being” — would permanently close four in 10 of the state’s restaurants.
In the state’s largest city, the Baltimore government is suddenly reopening some government services and lifting masking edicts. Yet at the same time, the prominent Baltimore Sun is beating the drum for joint COVID and influenza vaccine mandates.
In thinly veiled praise for coercion and segregation, the Sun argued, “employers and municipalities can certainly require flu vaccinations in order to engage in certain activities.”
Policy hypocrisy is also alive and well internationally. While the World Health Organization (WHO) issues parameters for “carefully relaxing the rules” — parameters so narrow as to be meaningless — Italy and China (the two countries that set the global precedent for lockdowns) are fining individuals who decline mandated interventions or denying them entry to workplaces, restaurants, stores, banks and post offices.
Vaccine passports and digital identities — full speed ahead
As Off-Guardian’s Kit Knightly noted on March 1, “Covid might be dying, but vaccine passports are still very much alive.”
In late February, Knightly also pointed out that the WHO, ominously, is working on an “international treaty on pandemic prevention and preparedness” that would invest the global health organization with the authority to preempt national sovereignty in the management of future pandemics and health challenges.
In a five-part series, Corey Lynn of Corey’s Digs outlined many disturbing implications of the push for vaccine passports. Falsely marketed as a “convenience,” the “passports” eventually will encompass far more than just vaccination records:
“From education to health records, finances, accounts, travel, contact info, and more, will all be linked to your QR code, along with biometrics and fingerprints, then stored on the Blockchain.”
The longer-term aim, said Lynn, is to achieve “full power and control,” down to the individual level, of spending, taxation, education, transportation, food, communications and healthcare, among other domains.
As writer Cherie Zaslawsky sees it, globalists “seek to enslave humanity worldwide in their long-dreamed-of totalitarian utopia. That’s utopia for them — as the ruling class that owns the world and everything in it — and dystopia for We the People.”
Knightly’s March 1 commentary drew readers’ attention to SMART Health Cards — “a covert federal vaccine passport” — rolled out in roughly half the country thus far, including in red states that previously had paid lip service to banning vaccine passports.
A late February article in Forbes boasted that more than 200 million Americans can already “download, print or store their vaccination records as a QR code.”
VCI was created by the federally funded MITRE Corporation (an MIT spin-off), which receives an estimated $2 billion a year from U.S. taxpayers to develop advanced surveillance technology, among other dubious national security pursuits.
MITRE received a $16.3 million CDC contract “to help construct an efficient game plan for the country during the health crisis,” and also spearheaded U.S. Department of Homeland Security efforts to “coordinate” responses among the nation’s mayors and governors.
Members of VCI’s public-private coalition include Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, the Mayo Clinic, and the California and New York state governments, as well as “other health and tech heavyweights.” Additional organizations are contributing to the initiative as “data aggregators” and “health IT vendors.”
As an inner-circle member of VCI, New York State has been in the vanguard in building out a digital identity infrastructure intended to be interoperable (able to exchange or assemble data) “throughout the United States and abroad.”
New York’s “Digital Identity” policy, conveniently updated in July 2020, stipulates that citizens, businesses and government employees who conduct online business with the state must go through an “identity vetting” process that could involve authentication via “smart card” or “biometrics.”
Refuse totalitarian tyranny
Almost immediately after the COVID shots began being rolled out, Dr. Mike Yeadon, at one time a chief scientist and vice president at Pfizer, began protesting the push to inject children.
Yeadon also denounced vaccine passports, describing the apps as a sly vehicle for implementing “illegal, medical apartheid” and totalitarian tyranny.
In a more recent talk, Yeadon emphasized that the QR codes’ global interoperability will translate into 24/7 tracking of every person “in that moment, in that spot, down to the individual level.”
To impress upon the public the dangers of allowing a vaccine passport system to take hold, Yeadon described what it would mean to become an “out-person:”
“One example: Your VaxPass pings, instructing you to attend for your 3rd or 4th or 5th booster or variant vaccine. If you don’t, your VaxPass will expire & you’ll become an out-person, unable to access your own life.”
Fortunately, the globalists’ stark vision is becoming increasingly apparent to many members of the public, who are coming to understand, as Ron Paul said, that “authoritarian politicians will always lie to the people to protect and increase their own power.”
Mainstream media outlets also have begun openly worrying that “parents have a long memory when it comes to how their children have been treated.”
And, although it may not seem like it, governmental decisions “ARE affected by what citizens do or don’t do,” said Rappoport, arguing that it’s no time to “let up on pressure.”
The bottom line at this critical juncture is simple — rather than be lulled into complacency (or distraction) by the latest propaganda, just say no and don’t comply.
Don’t wear a mask. Don’t get tested. Don’t accept toxic jabs. And don’t download any QR codes or any other tools (no matter how “convenient”) that allow the build-out of digital tyranny.
Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | April 4, 2024
A principal goal of Stark Realities is to “expose fundamental myths across the political spectrum” — and few myths are as universally embraced as the notion that US participation in World War II (1941-1945) lifted the American economy out of the Great Depression.
This myth is dangerous not only because it leads citizens and politicians to see a bright side of war that doesn’t really exist, but also because it helps foster a belief that government spending is essential to countering economic downturns. That belief, in turn, has helped propel us to a point where the national debt now exceeds $34.6 trillion, with interest payments alone on pace to reach $1 trillion a year in 2026, inviting financial catastrophe. … continue
This site is provided as a research and reference tool. Although we make every reasonable effort to ensure that the information and data provided at this site are useful, accurate, and current, we cannot guarantee that the information and data provided here will be error-free. By using this site, you assume all responsibility for and risk arising from your use of and reliance upon the contents of this site.
This site and the information available through it do not, and are not intended to constitute legal advice. Should you require legal advice, you should consult your own attorney.
Nothing within this site or linked to by this site constitutes investment advice or medical advice.
Materials accessible from or added to this site by third parties, such as comments posted, are strictly the responsibility of the third party who added such materials or made them accessible and we neither endorse nor undertake to control, monitor, edit or assume responsibility for any such third-party material.
The posting of stories, commentaries, reports, documents and links (embedded or otherwise) on this site does not in any way, shape or form, implied or otherwise, necessarily express or suggest endorsement or support of any of such posted material or parts therein.
The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
Fair Use
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more info go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
DMCA Contact
This is information for anyone that wishes to challenge our “fair use” of copyrighted material.
If you are a legal copyright holder or a designated agent for such and you believe that content residing on or accessible through our website infringes a copyright and falls outside the boundaries of “Fair Use”, please send a notice of infringement by contacting atheonews@gmail.com.
We will respond and take necessary action immediately.
If notice is given of an alleged copyright violation we will act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the material(s) in question.
All 3rd party material posted on this website is copyright the respective owners / authors. Aletho News makes no claim of copyright on such material.
Aletho News
Aletho News 