WHO Envoy: Life Won’t Return to Normal For at Least 2 Years
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | December 7, 2020
The WHO’s special envoy for the global COVID-19 response says that despite the arrival of a COVID-19 vaccine, normal life won’t resume for at least two years.
Dr David Nabarro suggested that social distancing and masks were something that would have to continue as a way of “treating this virus with respect.”
“This will mean face masks and physical distancing otherwise the virus does keep on surging. The reality is it will be some months before we can dispense with these precautions,” he said.
When asked when things would return to normal, Nabarro suggested that this wouldn’t occur until the end of 2022 at the earliest.
“I hate making predictions, but let’s just consider it in the big picture. None of us will be safe until the whole world is safe,” remarked Nabarro.
“Big patches of normality are coming up soon, but not everyone will be vaccinated for at least a couple of years. So normal life as we know it is a couple of years away for the world,” he added.
As we have previously highlighted, two years may seem a naive target for a return to normality given that some prominent figures have said the world will never get back to what it was pre-COVID.
“Many of us are pondering when things will return to normal,” wrote World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab.
“The short response is: never. Nothing will ever return to the ‘broken’ sense of normalcy that prevailed prior to the crisis because the coronavirus pandemic marks a fundamental inflection point in our global trajectory,” he added.
In addition to Schwab, a senior U.S. Army official said that mask wearing and social distancing will become permanent, while CNN’s international security editor Nick Paton Walsh asserted that the mandatory wearing of masks will become “permanent,” “just part of life,” and that the public would need to “come to terms with it.”
Eat Your Lemon!
By Israel Shamir • Unz Review • November 26, 2020
The G20 leaders have reached a consensus of a magnitude previously observed at Warsaw Pact summits. News in brief: they want to vaccinate us, and then, before we become restless, switch to combating global warming. If we survive masks and vaccines, austerity will kill off the survivors.
Remember, before the pandemic there was Greta? Greta will return, as soon as everyone gets a jab. This Save-The-World program appeals to a significant part of humanity, including Russians, Europeans, Americans. First, a jab to save us; then, save the planet from warming. So much of this world-saving is straight out of a comic strip. Now let us take time to look at what is happening.
While you were spending your weekend preparing for Thanksgiving, the leaders of twenty of the world’s leading countries held their Online Summit. Usually they come together, talk, discuss problems on the sidelines – this time it was all online. Although the summit was formally hosted by Saudi Arabia, Zoom is Zoom – the hosts of the summit had few opportunities to show off their hospitality. And there was little controversy. The leaders generally agreed with each other.
The main dissenter – the Orange Monster, aka President Trump – could have shoved a cane into the spokes of the-too-fast-by-half-chariot, but he had no time for them. He was immersed in his battle for the White House in the courts, and in his spare time he played golf.
The previous G20 summit took place in March, and there they decided to open the gates for lockdown and destroy the world, as we knew it. Before March, the Covid obsession was still a minority interest. Russians just laughed about it. After the March G20 decision, it became the top priority. The November Summit affirmed the March decisions, and went further, much further.
While President Putin stressed at the summit that the main danger to the world is unemployment, poverty, and economic depression of unprecedented scale, other speakers gave the impression that they were satisfied with the current situation, because it allows everything to be rebuilt. Build back better, is the slogan of Joe Biden:
For some, Covid is a plague, but for our leaders it is an Overton window. I’d advise them to eat a slice of lemon before speaking. This, of course, will not help against Covid, but at least it will wipe the blissful smiles off their faces. (“Eat a slice of lemon before speaking”, was advice given to a lady who complained of getting too much male attention in Italy).
The Chinese leader Xi proposed introducing worldwide QR codes so that without them people could not irresponsibly roam the planet. Nobody objected, but they did not support this initiative either. Xi is afraid that the wily Westerners will impose their own sanitary passports allowing only people injected with Western vaccines to travel. This possibility worried Putin, too, as Russia has developed two or three of their own vaccines. If the Chinese and Russian vaccines aren’t recognised by Europe, their people won’t be able to travel.
The WHO fancied that this virus was not the last; there will be more pandemics, and only vaccinations, masks and generous contributions to its budget will save us. They also promised a new wave of Covid in January, and then another, and so on until the earth will be covered with vaccines. To help poor countries, the leaders declared that the repayment of debts may be postponed, and that vaccines will be supplied to the impecunious nations for free. Free for them, but you will pay for them. (Not that they need it. Poor countries do not suffer of Covid. China’s neighbour Mongolia, despite open border with China, had no Covid. Poor Cambodia, ditto. Africa, none, excepting South Africa. )
The EU representatives called for Global Rebuilding – Build Back Better. That is, we will rebuild everything, but better and in way which is inclusive, green, sustainable. And much more expensive. And at your expense. The struggle for the climate is austerity under another name; it calls for a radical drop in living standards. We shall tighten our belts, and we will regret that Covid did not relieve us from unnecessary torment.
In past forums, Trump has constantly spoken out against the fight against warming, but this time he resigned himself. And his likely successor, Joe Biden, has already pledged to return America to how it was with the WHO and the Paris climate agreement.
So the worldwide rebuilding, perestroika seems to be as inevitable as Gorbachev’s in 1986. The Russian perestroika killed more people than Stalin’s Gulag; it destroyed the livelihood of millions. The wealth of the Russian people has been looted by Messrs Abramovich, Deripaska et al. From the earliest days of these changes, a minority of Russians weren’t optimistic about the outcome, but they were marginalised and their voices were silenced. Now the same is in store for the disaffected and dissidents – if all 20G take this disastrous route, this is well-nigh unavoidable. I do not know what is worse, the Covid lockdown or climate austerity, but there is no need to decide for we shall have both.
A few numbers regarding climate austerity. The Russian perestroika reduced CO2 emissions by 5 per cent year after year for ten years. The Great Depression was even better: a 10 per cent drop in emissions year after year. Millions of Americans died (The Grapes of Wrath), and nobody told them they were saving the planet. Optimistic researchers with the Global Carbon Project say the emissions should be cut by 5.5 per cent per year over the next 45 years. This is a deadly collapse; what we have now is a preview of what they have in store for us and our children. (You can check the numbers here).
The Chinese do not mind this, as they do not mind lockdowns, face recognition and social rating. Their popular film The Wandering Earth shows a world that fights global warming the Chinese way and depicts a future so grim that 1984 looks Utopian beside it. Even so it was still considered a positive and encouraging film by the Chinese audience. We should not accept Chinese methods of fighting diseases or climate change or indeed general governance. They are too different.
If they insist on fighting global warming, let us begin with them personally. Let Gore and Greta and their followers live ecologically on average salary. It is not difficult to live green if you are a millionaire. Do it on the average income. After you pay electricity, water, rates, transport, school you won’t even think of paying much more for making your car “green” and CO2-neutral. You’d be happy to survive as it is. I’d make it a law: every green activist should surrender his assets for safekeeping and manage his green life on the average income for at least one year.
The summit called for further digitalisation, for increased information flows across borders, for a combination of distance learning with conventional learning. Perhaps some digitalisation is unavoidable, but do we need more of it? We need more freedom, and digitalisation appears to be strongly repressive. It is a good tool for tyranny. Any tyrant of old, be it Hitler or Borgia, would be able to achieve much more in union with Zuckerberg. We need to stop the data giants, tax them to the hilt, make their life miserable, change their CEO by users’ vote at least once a year.
Distance schooling is probably the worst innovation of its kind. And rich folks know it well. In New York, the public schools were barred, but private schools operated normally all right, because distance schooling is no better than learning by watching telly. It also kills social fabrics and habits, making children boorish and unable to communicate. It is unnecessary, for children practically do not suffer of Covid. The main reason of going distant is to make our children even more stupid than they are likely to become anyway after watching YouTube. Another reason is to make them asocial and unable to act together against their betters. It should be outright forbidden, not encouraged.
A detailed declaration was prepared and drawn up before the summit and confirmed by the leaders. It also contains approval of the previous March declaration which began the triumphant march of lockdowns around the world.
Of course, the summit did not make binding decisions – only declarative ones, but they were detailed and unambiguous. Vaccinations, a perpetual fight against pandemics, smoothly turning into a fight against global warming, more austerity accompanied by QR codes on a global scale. What we have is what we shall have, this is what they decided. Masks are now and forever:
The leaders agreed to strengthen the WTO (the United States will return to as it was before under Biden) and strive to create a unified global tax system. The IMF (International Monetary Fund) will be at the centre of efforts to coordinate cryptocurrencies in relation to debtor countries, banks and other financial institutions. Some analysts were expecting a departure from the dollar as a reserve currency, but this has not yet been debated.
In the ongoing discussion between liberal globalism and nationalism, the G20 went for globalism and liberalism on steroids. Though President Trump still hopes to conclude the elections in his favour, the G20 already went the Biden way. It is difficult to understand, as the WTO, IMF, WHO are universally disliked by Russians, Americans and many Europeans, too. This is a sad and discomforting decision.
Humanity has made a big step towards unity at this summit. I am not sure it is worth rejoicing. Disagreement is a dangerous thing and leads to wars, but unanimity can be even more dangerous if it is the unanimity of experts and not peoples.
A comforting thought before you despair: declarations of unity were adopted earlier, in particular, when the League of Nations and the UN were created, but then disagreements took over, and a blessed diversity of opinions came back. I do not think we are ripe for that much of unity.
Israel Shamir can be reached at adam@israelshamir.net
Who Chooses the Official, Governmentally-Approved “Health Experts”?
By Prof. Bill Willers | Global Research | November 12, 2020
“My budget [is] highly earmarked, so it is driven by what I call donor interests.” –Margaret Chan, Director General of the World Health Organization, 2014
“For the world at large, normalcy only returns when we’ve largely vaccinated the entire global population.” –Bill Gates, April, 2020
You have to hand it to governmental health experts: All are uniformly “on message”. Meanwhile, abundant medical expertise from around the world at odds with official messaging is rendered invisible. The Great Barrington Declaration, so critical of governmentally-imposed lockdown strategy (and associated policies, e.g., public masking, quarantine, etc.), has, since October 5, 2020, been signed (as I write) by more than 45,000 medical scientists and practitioners worldwide. But mainstream media figures, savvy to the perks of power, know better than to report this. It’s worthy of note that the founders of the Declaration go to pains to declare their detachment from financial gain, perhaps to stand out against prominent governmental experts with ties to the pharmaceutical industry (e.g. here, here, here).
There are also America’s Frontline Doctors, the many dissenting scientists being discovered by journalists (here, here, here, and just the other day still more here and here), and plenty of others too, trying to be recognized above the din of officialdom, only to be forced to the outer margins of the Internet, where only a small fraction of the public bothers to seek them out. Relatively speaking, it’s lonely out there. Only a select set of officially approved voices conforming to a tightly-controlled narrative are allowed space in mainstream media, and therefore in the larger public mind. By what process, one wants to know, do specific individuals become the “health experts” for government and media?
The World Health Organization (WHO) is the global authority to which the medical institutions of nations look for leadership. WHO opinion and policy informs the NIH, CDC, schools of public health and medical societies in the US and their counterparts in countries all over the world. Visualized as a pyramid, WHO is the apex. Information from there descends through national organizations, schools and institutions to regional and local authorities. Gates and the pharmaceutical industry weave strategy at the apex, with industrial and political players making their impacts all the way down to the base of the pyramid where one finds hordes of frightened, masked citizens.
In this light, consider Margaret Chan’s introductory quote (above) regarding donor impact on WHO policy. Now, scroll down this 2017 list of contributors to the WHO that shows the United States as top contributor at ~$401Million.
But forget that sum, because President Trump thereafter stopped US contributions. That so, further scrolling down reveals that the major contributor is not a nation but the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation at ~$325Million, seconded by GAVI, the vaccine alliance (itself heavily funded by Gates), at ~$133Million.
The top donors to the WHO are not countries, as is widely believed, but private interests. In fact, in recent decades, private donations to the WHO have continued to grow relative to national contributions, so that by 2017, their total had passed the 50% mark. And the pharmaceutical industry, the vaccine aspect in particular, is primary.
As one peruses the backgrounds of the the government’s (and media’s) chosen health experts, as opposed to the wealth of medical expertise resisting the lockdown and its isolating mandates, there seems within the former a high frequency not only of governmental bureaucrats but also of ties to schools of public health, and therefore to the many connected interests of those schools. Put another way, the commercial involvements of public health schools move quickly and unavoidably into a political realm that a critical eye might conclude is inappropriate for a medical school per se. Considering the inevitable conflicts of interest characteristic of corporate involvement, shouldn’t there be a solid wall of separation between medical schools and schools of public health?
A way to understand what is encompassed within “public health” is to read the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, rated tops in the nation and named for its billionaire donor: “We implement large-scale solutions”, which includes development of “programs” and “interventions” in disaster response, refugee health, evaluation of health insurance programs, human rights and sustainable practice. The site links to Bloomberg’s “Centers and Institutes” which include the Bill and Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health and four others that are specific to vaccine development, production, education and access. Bloomberg School’s joining with the World Economic Forum and the Gates Foundation to host Event201, that foretold Covid19 Pandemic five months before the real thing hit, shows the School to be a global power player, and other schools of public health are certainly similarly oriented.
In 2005, in my home state, the School of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin in Madison underwent a change to become the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. The expanded mission to include public health was, as stated, to emphasize community health needs. A strict focus on medicine, on the one hand, and the vastly expanded array of considerations innate to “public health”, on the other hand, thereby became integrated into a single unit. In Wisconsin, two voices from within that school have been dominant in messaging with regard to the Covid19 Pandemic and how it should be handled, with the result that the Governor instigated a severe lockdown strategy that included a statewide masking mandate.
While it would be natural for a political leader to rely on medical advice, what is problematic is the unanimity of designated experts nation-wide in their conformity to a specific Covid19 policy that is, on many levels, dubious or downright false. For example, the two accepted experts in Wisconsin, cited above, have insisted that scientific evidence has established that public masking is a powerful means of preventing viral transmission, this mirroring the position of the Director of the CDC who told a Senate Committee that masks are more protective than vaccines. This claim is absolutely and demonstrably false. No scientific evidence has shown anything of the sort. A “smoking gun” in the masking issue is the fact that perhaps the finest meta-analysis of public masking, published in 2016 and titled “Why Face Masks Don’t Work: A Revealing Review”, was suddenly taken down as “no longer relevant in the current climate”. (Fortunately, it was saved at the Wayback site). What stands out is that the “current climate” referred to has nothing to do with weather. Rather, it mirrors a global project the details of which are hidden to the extent possible.
There is growing awareness that pre-Covid19 life will never return, and that masking, social distancing, and the like, will become normal aspects of daily life, for we — particularly the youngest among us — have been persuaded by officially-designated health experts to see our fellow humans as toxic and threatening. Indeed, Klaus Schwab, guiding light of the Big Reset, confirms the loss forever of life before Covid19, as he and his colleagues of the World Economic Forum put components of their new world order into place.
Putting the pieces together, one recognizes a global medical bureaucracy from the WHO on down, in concert with schools of public health and the pharmaceutical industry, combined into a politically powerful triumvirate dedicated to goals most certainly linked to those of the World Economic Forum, with which Bloomberg School collaborates. The selection process within this triumvirate designates its experts for governmental and academic advancement, and for public display by mainstream media, this to the exclusion of dissenters. The apparatus for social control now being put into place is to involve an unimaginably profitable vaccine-based medical authority touted by certified “health experts” and governmental enforcers, all of whom will assure the public that they “have the science”. There will be discovery of new pathogens threatening epidemic and pandemic waves, complete with spikes and hotspots. One foresees populations nurtured in fear, herded into groupthink and longing for salvation through vaccination.
***
Copyright © Prof. Bill Willers, Global Research, 2020
WHO Taps ‘Anti-Conspiracy’ Crusader to Sway Public Opinion on COVID Vaccine
By Jeremy Loffredo | Children’s Health Defense | October 23, 2020
An outspoken proponent of government-led tactics to influence public opinion on policy and to undermine the credibility of “conspiracy theorists” will lead the World Health Organization’s (WHO) efforts to encourage public acceptance of a COVID-19 vaccine, Children’s Health Defense has learned.
Last week, WHO’s general director, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, tweeted that he was glad to speak with the organization’s Technical Advisory Group (TAG) on Behavioural Insights and Sciences for Health to “discuss vaccine acceptance and uptake in the context of COVID-19.”
In his next tweet Ghebreyesus announced that Cass Sunstein, founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School, will chair the advisory group, which was created in July.
Sunstein was former President Barack Obama’s head of Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs where he was responsible for overseeing policies relating to information quality.
In 2008, Sunstein wrote a paper proposing that governments employ teams of covert agents to “cognitively infiltrate” online dissident groups and websites which advocate “false conspiracy theories” about the government. In the paper, Sunstein and his co-authors wrote:
“Our principal claim here involves the potential value of cognitive infiltration of extremist groups, designed to introduce informational diversity into such groups and to expose indefensible conspiracy theories as such.”
The government-led operations described in Sunstein’s paper would work to increase faith in government policy and policymakers and undermine the credibility of “conspiracists” who question their motives. They would also maintain a vigorous “counter misinformation establishment” to counter “conspiracy” groups opposed to government policies that aim to protect the common good.
Some of this would be accomplished by sending undercover agents, or government-paid third parties, into “online social networks or even real space groups.”
Sunstein also advocated in 2008 that the government pay “independent experts” to publicly advocate on the government’s behalf, whether on television or social media. He says this is effective because people don’t trust the government as much as they trust people they believe are “independent.”
WHO has already contracted the public relations firm, Hill + Knowlton. The PR giant, best known for its role in manufacturing false testimonies in support of the Gulf War, was hired by WHO to “ensure the science and public health credibility of the WHO in order to ensure WHO’s advice and guidance is followed.”
WHO paid Hill + Knowlton $135,000 to identify micro-influencers, macro-influencers and “hidden heroes” who could covertly promote WHO’s advice and messaging on social media, and also protect and promote the organization’s image as a COVID-19 authority.
There’s no evidence that WHO has yet implemented any “cognitive infiltration” policies similar to what Sunstein advocated in 2008. If the organization were to adopt such a strategy, and use it to convince hesitant populations to take a COVID vaccine, it would raise questions of legality.
As put forward in a report by the Congressional Research Service, illegal “publicity or propaganda” is defined by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to mean either (1) self-aggrandizement by public officials; (2) purely partisan activity; or (3) “covert propaganda.” By covert propaganda, GAO means information which originates from the government but is unattributed and made to appear as though it came from a third party.
Because WHO is a multinational organization and not a U.S. Government agency, covert “cognitive infiltration” policies could fall into a gray area, or even be considered legal.
Dr. Margaret Chan, former general-director of WHO, once stated that the organization’s policies are “driven by what [she called] donor interests.”
According to a 2012 article in Foreign Affairs, “few policy initiatives or normative standards set by the WHO are announced before they have been casually, unofficially vetted by Gates Foundation staff.” Or, as other sources told Politico in 2017, “Gates’ priorities have become the WHO’s.”
WHO’s current general director, Ghebreyesus, was previously on the board of two organizations that Gates founded, provided seed money for and continues to fund to this day: GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, a public–private global health partnership focused on increased access to vaccines in poor countries, and the Global Fund, which says it aims to accelerate the “development, production and equitable global access to safe, quality, effective, and affordable COVID-19 diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines.”
If, as Politico put it, “Gates priorities have become the WHO’s,” and if WHO’s policies are driven by “donor interests,” this raises questions as to what online groups, people and websites would be targeted by such covert programs.
The idea of government agents carrying out psychological operations on social media is not far fetched. Earlier this year the head of editorial for Twitter’s Middle East and Africa office was outed as an active officer in the British Army’s psychological warfare unit, known as the 77th brigade, which specializes in online behavioral change operations.
© 2016-2020 Children’s Health Defense® • All rights Reserved
WHO (Accidentally) Confirms Covid is No More Dangerous Than Flu
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | October 8, 2020
The World Health Organization has finally confirmed what we (and many experts and studies) have been saying for months – the coronavirus is no more deadly or dangerous than seasonal flu.
The WHO’s top brass made this announcement during a special session of the WHO’s 34-member executive board on Monday October 5th, it’s just nobody seemed to really understand it.
In fact, they didn’t seem to completely understand it themselves.
At the session, Dr Michael Ryan, the WHO’s Head of Emergencies revealed that they believe roughly 10% of the world has been infected with Sars-Cov-2. This is their “best estimate”, and a huge increase over the number of officially recognised cases (around 35 million).
Dr. Margaret Harris, a WHO spokeswoman, later confirmed the figure, stating it was based on the average results of all the broad seroprevalence studies done around the world.
As much as the WHO were attempting to spin this as a bad thing – Dr Ryan even said it means “the vast majority of the world remains at risk.” – it’s actually good news. And confirms, once more, that the virus is nothing like as deadly as everyone predicted.
The global population is roughly 7.8 billion people, if 10% have been infected that is 780 million cases. The global death toll currently attributed to Sars-Cov-2 infections is 1,061,539.
That’s an infection fatality rate of roughly or 0.14%. Right in line with seasonal flu and the predictions of many experts from all around the world.
0.14% is over 24 times LOWER than the WHO’s “provisional figure” of 3.4% back in March. This figure was used in the models which were used to justify lockdowns and other draconian policies.
In fact, given the over-reporting of alleged Covid deaths, the IFR is likely even lower than 0.14%, and could show Covid to be much less dangerous than flu.
None of the mainstream press picked up on this. Though many outlets reported Dr Ryan’s words, they all attempted to make it a scary headline and spread more panic.
Apparently neither they, nor the WHO, were capable of doing the simple maths that shows us this is good news. And that the Covid sceptics have been right all along.
RFK Jr. Sues Facebook, Zuckerberg and So-Called ‘Fact-Checkers’ for Vaccine Censorship
Children’s Health Defense | August 18, 2020
Washington, DC — Children’s Health Defense (CHD) filed a lawsuit on Monday in San Francisco Federal Court charging Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, and three fact-checking outfits with censoring truthful public health posts and for fraudulently misrepresenting and defaming CHD. CHD is a non-profit watchdog group that roots out corruption in federal agencies, including Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and exposes wrongdoings in the Pharmaceutical and Telecom industries. CHD has been a frequent critic of WiFi and 5G Network safety and of certain vaccine policies that CHD claims put Big Pharma profits ahead of public health. CHD has fiercely criticized agency corruption at WHO, CDC and FCC.
According to CHD’s Complaint, Facebook has insidious conflicts with the Pharmaceutical industry and its captive health agencies and has economic stakes in telecom and 5G. Facebook currently censors CHD’s page, targeting its purge against factual information about vaccines, 5G and public health agencies.
Facebook acknowledges that it coordinates its censorship campaign with the WHO and the CDC. While earlier court decisions have upheld Facebook’s right to censor its pages, CHD argues that Facebook’s pervasive government collaborations make its censorship of CHD a First Amendment violation. The government’s role in Facebook’s censorship goes deeper than its close coordination with CDC and WHO. The Facebook censorship began at the suggestion of powerful Democratic Congressman and Intelligence Committee Chairman Representative Adam Schiff, who in March 2019 asked Facebook to suppress and purge internet content critical of government vaccine policies. Facebook and Schiff use the term “misinformation” as a euphemism for any statement, whether truthful or not, that contradicts official government pronouncements. The WHO issued a press release commending Facebook for coordinating its ongoing censorship campaign with public health officials. That same day, Facebook published a “warning label” on CHD’s page, which implies that CHD’s content is inaccurate, and directs CHD followers to turn to the CDC for “reliable, up to date information.” This is an important First Amendment case that tests the boundaries of government authority to openly censor unwanted critique of government
Attorneys Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Roger Teich, and Mary Holland represent Children’s Health Defense in the litigation.
The lawsuit also challenges Facebook’s use of so-called “independent fact-checkers” – which, in truth, are neither independent nor fact-based – to create oppositional content on CHD’s page, literally superimposed over CHD’s original content, about open matters of scientific controversy. To further silence CHD’s dissent against important government policies and its critique of Pharmaceutical products, Facebook deactivated CHD’s donate button, and uses a variety of deceptive technology (i.e. shadow banning) to minimize the reach and visibility of CHD’s content. In short, Facebook and the government colluded to silence CHD and its followers. Such tactics are fundamentally at odds with the First Amendment, which guarantees the American public the benefits to democracy from free flow of information in the marketplace of ideas. It forbids the government from censoring private speech—particularly speech that criticizes government policies or officials. As Justice Holmes famously said, “the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.” The current COVID pandemic makes the need for open and fierce public debate on health issues more critical than ever.
Mark Zuckerberg publicly claims that social media platforms shouldn’t be “the arbiters of truth.” This case exposes Zuckerberg for working with the government to suppress and purge unwanted critiques of government officials and policies.
The court will decide whether Facebook’s new government-directed business model of false and misleading “warning labels,” deceptive “fact-checks,” and disabling a non-profit’s donate button, passes muster under the First and Fifth Amendments, the Lanham Act, and RICO. Those statutes protect CHD against online wire-fraud, false disparagement, and knowingly false statements.
CHD asks the Court to declare Facebook’s actions unconstitutional and fraudulent, and award injunctive relief and damages.
WHO’s Conflict of Interest?
US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, in Bern, Switzerland, on June 3, 2019. (State Dept. Photo by Ron Przysucha/ Public Domain)
By David Macilwain | American Herald Tribune | June 30, 2020
Last week the French National Assembly convened an inquiry into the “genealogy and chronology” of the Coronavirus crisis to examine the evident failures in its handling and will interview government ministers, experts and health advisors over the next six months. While we in the English-speaking world may have heard endless arguments over the failures of the UK or US governments to properly prepare for and cope with the health-care emergency, the crisis and problems in the French health system and bureaucracy have been similar and equally serious. Given the global cooperation and collaboration of health authorities and industry, the inquiry has global significance.
Judging by the attention paid by French media to the inquiry, which comes just as France is loosening the lock-downs and restarting normal government activities, it is set to be controversial and upsetting, exposing both incompetence and corruption.
Leading the criticism of the Macron government’s handling of the crisis are the most serious accusations that its prohibition of an effective drug treatment has cost many lives, a criticism put directly to the inquiry by Professor Didier Raoult, the most vocal proponent of the drug – Hydroxychloroquine. At his institute in Marseilles, early treatment with the drug of people infected with Sars-CoV-2 has been conclusively demonstrated to reduce hospitalization rates and shorten recovery times when given along with the antibiotic Azithromycin, and consequently to cut death rates by at least half.
Raoult has pointed to the low death rate in the Marseilles region of 140 per million inhabitants compared with that in Paris of 759 per million as at least partly due to the very different treatment of the epidemic in Marseilles under his instruction. The policies pursued by local health services there included early widespread testing for the virus and isolation and quarantining of cases, aimed both at protecting those in aged care and in keeping people from needing hospitalization with the help of drug treatments.
It incidentally seems quite bizarre that some countries – notably the US, UK and Australia, are only now embarking on large testing programs – and claiming a “second wave” in cases – which Raoult calls a “fantasme journalistique”. The consequent reimposition of severe lock-downs in some suburbs of Melbourne, and in Leicester in the UK is a very worrying development.
The efficacy of HCQ and Azithromycin is well illustrated – one should say proven – by this most recent review of its use on 3120 out of a total of 3700 patients treated at the Marseilles hospitals during March, April and the first half of May. Unlike the fraudulent study published and then retracted by the Lancet in May, the analysis in this review is exemplary, along with the battery of tests performed on patients to determine the exact nature of their infection and estimate the effectiveness of the drug treatment. The overall final mortality rate of 1.1% obscures the huge discrepancy in numbers between treated and untreated patients. Hospitalization, ICU, and death rates averaged five times greater in those receiving the “other” treatment – being normal care without HCQ-AZM treatment – equivalent to a placebo.
The IHU Marseilles study and its discussion points deserve close scrutiny, because they cannot be dismissed as unsubstantiated or biased, or somehow political, just because Professor Raoult is a “controversial figure”. There is a controversy, and it was well expressed by Raoult in his three hour presentation to the inquiry. His criticisms of health advisors to government include conflicts of interest and policy driven by politics rather than science. Raoult has been vindicated in his success, and can now say to those health authorities “if you had accepted my advice and approved this drug treatment, thousands of lives would have been saved.”
This is quite unlike similar statements in the UK and elsewhere, where claims an earlier imposition of lock-down would have cut the death toll in half are entirely hypothetical. As Prof. Raoult has also observed, the progress of this epidemic of a new and unknown virus was quite speculative, and its handling by authorities has failed to reflect that. In fact, one feels more and more that the “response” of governments all around the world has followed a strangely similar and inappropriately rigid scheme, of which certain aspects were de rigueur, particularly “social distancing”.
There seems little evidence that would justify this most damaging and extreme of measures to control an epidemic whose seriousness could be ameliorated by other measures – such as those advocated by Raoult’s Institute – which would have avoided the devastating “collateral damage” inflicted on the economy and society in the name of “staying safe”.
Prof. Raoult’s vocal and consistent criticism of the political manipulation of the Coronavirus crisis is hardly trivial however, to be finally excused as a “failure”- to impose lockdowns sooner, to have sufficient supplies of masks or ventilators, or to use more testing and effective contact tracing. What lies beneath appears to be, for want of a better word, a conspiracy.
As previously and famously noted by Pepe Escobar, French officials seemed to have foresight on the potential use of Hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19 infection, with its cheapness and availability being a likely hindrance to pharmaceutical companies looking to make big profits from new drug treatments or vaccines. Of even greater significance perhaps, was the possibility – or danger – that the vast bulk of the population might become infected with the virus and recover quickly with the help of this cheap drug treatment, while bypassing the need, and possibly interminable wait for a vaccine.
Now it can be seen that in Western countries the demand for a vaccine is acute, and the market cut-throat, despite assurances from many quarters that “vaccines must be available to all” and that “manufacturers won’t seek to profit” from their winning product. (the profit will naturally be included in what their governments choose to pay them) The clear conflicts of interest between health officials, public and private interests make such brave pronouncements particularly hollow. Just one case is sufficient to illustrate this, as despite its unconvincing performance in combatting the novel Coronavirus, the drug developed and promoted by Dr Anthony Fauci and company Gilead, Remdesevir, was rapidly approved for use following a research trial sponsored by the White House.
More concerning however is what appears to be a conflict of interest in the WHO itself, possibly related to the WHO’s largest source of funding in the Gates organization. While the WHO has not actively opposed the use of Hydroxychloroquine against the virus infection for most of the pandemic, neither has it voiced any support for its use, such as might be suggested by its obvious benefits, and particularly in countries with poor health facilities and resources.
Had the WHO taken at least a mildly supportive role, acknowledging that the drug was already in widespread use and there was little to lose from trying it against COVID-19, then it is hard to imagine that those behind the recent fabricated Lancet paper would have pursued such a project. Without claiming that the WHO had some hand in the alleged study that set out to debunk HCQ treatment, it should be noted that the WHO was very quick to jump on the non-peer-reviewed “results” and to declare a world-wide cancellation of its research projects on the drug. And while it had to rescind this direction shortly afterward when the fraud was exposed, the dog now has a bad name – as apparently intended.
This stands in sharp contrast to the WHO’s sudden enthusiasm for the steroidal drug Dexamethasone, recently discovered by a UK research team to have had a mildly positive benefit on seriously ill COVID19 patients:
“The World Health Organization (WHO) plans to update its guidelines on treating people stricken with coronavirus to reflect results of a clinical trial that showed a cheap, common steroid could help save critically ill patients.
The benefit was only seen in patients seriously ill with COVID-19 and was not observed in patients with milder disease, the WHO said in a statement late Tuesday.
British researchers estimated 5,000 lives could have been saved had the drug been used to treat patients in the United Kingdom at the start of the pandemic.
“This is great news and I congratulate the government of the UK, the University of Oxford, and the many hospitals and patients in the UK who have contributed to this lifesaving scientific breakthrough,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in the press release.”
There is something more than ironic in the WHO’s interest in a different cheap and available drug that has also been widely used for decades, but which is no use in protecting those people in the target market for the vaccine. To me, and surely to Professor Raoult and his colleagues, this looks more like protecting ones business interests and investor profits, at the expense of public health and lives.
Postscript:
It has just been announced that GILEAD will start charging for its drug Remdesevir from next week at $US 2340 for a five-day course, or $US 4860 for private patients. Generic equivalents manufactured in poorer countries will sell for $US 934 per treatment course. Announcing the prices, chief executive Dan O’Day noted that the drug was priced “to ensure wide access rather than based solely on the value to patients”.
It seems hardly worth pointing out that six days treatment with Hydroxychloroquine costs around $US 7, so for the same cost as treating one patient with Remdesevir, roughly four hundred could be given Hydroxychloroquine. If this is compounded by the effective cure rate, Remdesevir treatment costs closer to one thousand times that of HCQ. The addition of Azithromycin and Zinc doubles the cost of HCQ treatment, but also increases its efficacy considerably.
“Deadly” Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) to treat Covid 19: How the World’s Top Medical Journals, The Lancet and NEJM, Were Cynically Exploited by Big Pharma
By Elizabeth Woodworth | Global Research | June 14, 2020
Abstract and Background
A publishing scandal recently erupted around the use of the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) to treat Covid 19. It is also known as quinine and chloroquine, and is on the WHO list of essential medicines.[i]
The bark of the South American quina-quina tree has been used to treat malaria for 400 years.[ii] Quinine, a generic drug costing pennies a dose, is available for purchase online. In rare cases it can cause dizziness and irregular heartbeat.[iii]
In late May, 2020, The Lancet published a four-author study claiming that HCQ used in hospitals to treat Covid-19 had been shown conclusively to be a hazard for heart death. The data allegedly covered 96,000 patients in 671 hospitals on six continents.[iv]
After the article had spent 13 days in the headlines, dogged by scientific objections, three of the authors retracted it on June 5.[v]
Meanwhile, during an expert closed-door meeting leaked May 24 in France, The Lancet and NEJM editors explained how financially powerful pharmaceutical players were “criminally” corrupting medical science to advance their interests.
*
On May 22, 2020, the time-honoured Lancet [vi]– one of the world’s two top medical journals – published the stunning claim that 671 hospitals on six continents were reporting life-threatening heart rhythms in patients taking hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) for Covid-19.
The headlines that followed were breath-taking.
Although wider access to the drug had recently been urged in a petition signed by nearly 500,000 French doctors and citizens,[vii] WHO and other agencies responded to the article by immediately suspending the clinical trials that may have cleared it for use.
North American headlines did not mention that HCQ has been on the WHO list of essential drugs since the list began in 1977. Nor did they mention an investigative report on the bad press that hydroxychloroquine had been getting prior to May 22, and how financial interests had been intersecting with medicine to favour Gilead’s new, more expensive drug, Remdesivir.[viii]
The statistics behind the headlines
As a Canadian health sciences librarian who delivered statistics to a large public health agency for 25 years, I sensed almost immediately that the article had to be flawed.
Why? Because health statistics are developed for different purposes and in different contexts, causing them to exist in isolated data “stovepipes.”[ix] Many health databases, even within a single region or country, are not standardized and are thus virtually useless for comparative research.
How, I wondered, could 671 hospitals worldwide, including Asia and Africa, report comparable treatment outcomes for 96,000 Covid patients? And so quickly?
The Lancet is strong in public health and surely suspected this. Its award-winning editor-in-chief, Dr. Richard Horton, has been in his job since 1995.[x]
So how could the damning HCQ claims have been accepted? Here is what I discovered.
The honour system in medical publishing
To some extent, authors submitting articles to medical journals are on the honour system, in which cited databases are trusted by the editors, yet are available for inspection if questioned.[xi]
On May 28, an open letter from 200 scientists to the authors and The Lancet requested details of the data and an independent audit. The letter was “signed by clinicians, medical researchers, statisticians, and ethicists from across the world.”[xii]
The authors declined to supply the data, or even the hospital names. Meanwhile, investigative analysis was showing the statistics to be deeply flawed.[xiii][xiv]
If this were not enough, the lead author was found to be in a conflict of interest with HCQ’s rival drug, Remdesivir:
“Dr. Mandeep Mehra, the lead co-author is a director at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, which is credited with funding the study. Dr. Mehra and The Lancet failed to disclose that Brigham Hospital has a partnership with Gilead and is currently conducting two trials testing Remdesivir, the prime competitor of hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of COVID-19, the focus of the study.”[xv]
In view of the foregoing, the article was retracted by three of its authors on June 5.
How did this fraud get past The Lancet reviewers in the first place?
The answer emerges from what has remained an obscure French interview, although it has been quoted in the alternative media.[xvi]
On May 24, a closed-door Chatham House expert meeting about Covid included the editors-in-chief of The Lancet and the NEJM. Comments regarding the article were leaked to the French press by a well-known health figure, Dr. Philippe Douste-Blazy,[xvii] who felt compelled to blow the whistle.
His resulting BFM TV interview was posted to YouTube with English subtitles on May 31,[xviii] but it was not picked up by the English-speaking media.
These were The Lancet editor Dr. Richard Horton’s words, as reported by Dr. Douste-Blazy:
“If this continues, we are not going to be able to publish any more clinical research data because pharmaceutical companies are so financially powerful today, and are able to use such methodologies as to have us accept papers which are apparently methodologically perfect, but which, in reality, manage to conclude what they want to conclude.” [xix]
Doust-Blazy made his own comments on Horton’s words:
“I never thought the boss of The Lancet could say that. And the boss of the New England Journal of Medicine too. He even said it was ‘criminal’. The word was used by them.”[xx]
The final words in Doust-Blazy’s interview were:
“When there is an outbreak like Covid, in reality, there are people like us – doctors – who see mortality and suffering. And there are people who see dollars. That’s it.”[xxi]
The scientific process of building a trustworthy knowledge base is one of the foundations of our civilization. Violating this process is a crime against both truth and humanity.
Evidently the North American media does not consider this extraordinary crime to be worth reporting.
Notes
[i] World Health Organization. “World Health Organization Model List of Essential Medicines, 21st ed.”, WHO, 2019, pp. 24, 25, 53 (https://www.who.int/medicines/publications/essentialmedicines/en/).
[ii] Jane Achan, et al., “Quinine, an old anti-malarial drug in a modern world: role in the treatment of malaria,” Malaria Journal, 24 May 2011 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3121651/).
[iii] WebMD, “Quinine Sulfate” (https://www.webmd.com/drugs/2/drug-869/quinine-oral/details).
[iv] The Lancet, “RETRACTED: Hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine with or without a macrolide for treatment of COVID-19: a multinational registry analysis, by Mandeep R. Mehra et al,” Lancet, 5 June 2010 (https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31180-6/fulltext).
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Famous weekly British medical journal, founded in 1823.
[vii] Lee Mclaughlan, “Covid-19 France: petition for wider chloroquine access,” 6 April 2020 (https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/Time-wasted-over-use-of-choroquine-coronavirus-drug-says-petition-by-former-French-health-minister).
[viii] Sharyl Attkisson, “Hydroxychloroquine,” Full Measure, 18 May 2020 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zB-_SV-y11Y). Attkisson is a five-time Emmy Award winner (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharyl_Attkisson).
[ix] See “Stovepiping,” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stovepiping) (accessed June 12, 2020).
[x] Dr. Horton’s career, professionalism, and awards are shown at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Horton_(editor)(accessed June 12, 2020).
[xi] The Lancet and NEJM editors could not be expected to comb through data from 671 hospitals to verify their accuracy – especially when submitted by four doctors.
[xii] The full-text letter and signatories appear at https://zenodo.org/record/3862789#.XuQiNmYTGhM
[xiii] Melissa Davey, “Questions raised over hydroxychloroquine study which caused WHO to halt trials for Covid-19,” The Guardian, 28 May 2020 (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/may/28/questions-raised-over-hydroxychloroquine-study-which-caused-who-to-halt-trials-for-covid-19).
[xiv] Melissa Davey et al, “Surgisphere: governments and WHO changed Covid-19 policy based on suspect data from tiny US company,” The Guardian, 3 June 2020 (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/covid-19-surgisphere-who-world-health-organization-hydroxychloroquine).
[xv] 1. Alliance for Human Research Protection, “The Lancet Published a Fraudulent Covid-19 Study,” 2 June 2020 (https://ahrp.org/the-lancet-published-a-fraudulent-study-editor-calls-it-department-of-error/).
- Brigham Health, “Two Remdesivir Clinical Trials Underway at Brigham and Women’s Hospital,” 30 March 2020 (https://www.brighamhealthonamission.org/2020/03/26/two-remdesivir-clinical-trials-underway-at-brigham-and-womens-hospital/).
[xvi] Vera Sharav, “Editors of The Lancetand the New England Journal of Medicine: Pharmaceutical Companies are so Financially Powerful They Pressure us to Accept Papers,” Health Impact News, 5 June 2020
[xvii] Dr. Philippe Douste-Blazy, MD, is a cardiologist, former French Health Minister; 2017 candidate for Director at WHO; and former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Douste-Blazy.
[xviii] “(Eng Subs) Hydroxychloroquine Lancet Study: Former France Health Minister blows the whistle,” BFM TV, 31 May 2020 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=ZYgiCALEdpE&feature=emb_logo).
[xix] Ibid.
[xx] Ibid.
[xxi] Ibid.
Copyright © Elizabeth Woodworth, Global Research, 2020
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A short history of British torture
ICC | December 2005
When the House of Commons was debating how much to increase the time limit for detention without trial the question of torture came up. Officially this was limited to the nice considerations of whether it was all right to send people to places where torture is used and whether Britain can use information collected by the use of torture in other countries. This discussion gave an impression of democratic Britain as the home of civilised behaviour where the very idea of torture is repugnant to our legislators – unlike, say, the US with its secret CIA jails… In reality, the British state has a long history of using and developing a whole range of torture techniques. … continue
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