Discrimination against people on the grounds of their health status is not acceptable, while the ever increasing reach of the surveillance state is pernicious. The idea of people without Covid-19 antibodies being treated as second class citizens should be anathema to anybody with concern for human liberty.
It is improbable that Covid-19 will be eliminated from the world in the forseeable future. Like Spanish flu or Hong Kong flu, it will lurk around in the mix of seasonal infections for many years to come, hopefully, but not necessarily, like them becoming less severe through serial mutations. It appears likely that, as with flu, there may be a regular vaccination cycle.
Just now, England and Wales are in negative excess deaths. Less people are dying than normally do at this time of year, on a rolling average of the last five years. I presume Scotland will be similar, though I cannot immediately find current figures.
The number of people dying within 28 days of a covid diagnosis is down to approximately 300 a week in the entire UK, and has been steadily falling. How much of this fall is due to vaccination and how much due to lockdown is an open question. But it remains a stubborn and undeniable fact, much as some people do not like it said, that Covid-19 has never been a major threat to young and healthy people. Older people and those in vulnerable groups have in very large majority been at least partially vaccinated now. The odds of those in the unnvaccinated groups dying of covid are really very low indeed.
A medical member of the UK government’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Innoculation stated on BBC News on Friday that the risk of mortality to a healthy person under 30 who caught coronavirus was 117,000. He was explaining that this is such a remote risk, that it was almost as remote as the chances of a serious side effect from the Astra Zeneca vaccine, and that was why the use of that vaccine in that age group was being suspended; not that the vaccine was dangerous to this age group, but that they didn’t need it enough to justify even a minuscule risk.
The point of vaccinating the healthy middle aged and under is not that Covid-19 is a serious risk of death to them; it is not. It is simply to break transmission. Now I have had my first shot of vaccine myself, and urge everyone to take their vaccine. I have expressed before my view that I believe that refusing to be vaccinated is an immoral position; it is to benefit from herd immunity while refusing to accept the very small personal risk from the vaccine itself. But I utterly reject the notion of compulsory vaccination or of penalising those who do not wish to vaccinated by limiting their lives. Health is a personal matter, and discrimination on the basis of health status cannot be correct, nor the revelation of details of health status to people other than medical professionals employed in care.
I have no problem with vaccine certificates for international travel, having carried them my entire adult life. But the idea of having to show intrusive personal identity and health status documents to prove who you are, and prove your antibody levels, before entering a pub or a theatre ought to be anathema to every right thinking person. It is like very poor dystopian science fiction.
If find the daily graphs of whole UK figures from from the Guardian is very helpful (the daily death figure is even lower than the average of about 40 this week because of weekend registration) .
Overall, it does not lie, although the left hand graph is massively distorted in its first months by the lack of testing availability. For most of the period, the relationship between all three graphs remains broadly constant. The glaring anomaly of daily cases in the first few months (the left hand graph) relates entirely to the fact testing was unavailable. It also accounts in very large part for the huge public hysteria over Covid-19. When it was only possible to get a test if you were approaching death’s door, a very high percentage of those with positive tests died. That this led large numbers of otherwise intelligent people to accept ludicrously exaggerated infection fatality rates for the disease, is something I struggled with a great deal.
We are probably many years away from there being a scientific consensus around the infection mortality rate of Covid-19, and indeed consensus may never emerge – there is still much debate over infection mortality rates from various types of flu. This letter published in the BMJ cites the Pastor-Barriuso study finding a median of 0.8% and Ioannidis finding 0.27%. What does appear true is that Covid-19 is particularly transmissible, so while it may not have an infection mortality rate very much greater than influenza, it does have the ability to kill a lot of people in a short space of time and overwhelm health services. There are also the effects of long covid, which appear still to be little understood.
I am genuinely unsure why it causes so much anger to state that those people who are non-geriatric and healthy are only at very slight risk of death from covid-19, when it is an undeniable fact. I feel confident that we have seen the end of mass deaths in the UK, because the at risk sectors of the population have been vaccinated, reducing their chances of getting seriously ill by 80%. So there may be something of a surge in cases following lockdowns, but it will not result in a matching increase in hospitalisations or deaths.
Covid-19 has been a genuine crisis which has killed a large number of people and played havoc with the lives of many others. But it too will pass and the worst of it has passed. It must not be allowed to become an excuse for permanent even higher levels of governmental intrusion and control. We are approaching normality again. Both power-drunk politicians and Stockholm syndrome populaces need to embrace the idea of normal. It is a great deal more pleasant.
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In my opinion as a long time reader not your best article Craig, leaves something of a sour taste for a lot of people I imagine, with the possible exception of some deluded centerists desperately clinging to the notion that this isn’t a vicious form of medically enabled, fascist class warfare. To be fair to you, I shouldn’t be surprised that a man of your particular experiences is struggling to reconcile this with your world view though I suppose; the cognitive dissonance is clearly making absolute mince meat of a lot of otherwise intelligent people’s critical faculties.
So thanks for the somewhat lacklustre defence of individual liberty and bodily autonomy I guess. As you’ve hightlighted, the problem always stems from ‘mission creep’ and the fact that freedoms surrended are virtually never returned except by force. That this bald historical fact has escaped the majority of the plebs can probably be sadly forgiven due to the abysmal propaganda that moonlights as state education, but I generally like to think that the readership of sites like yours are a little better informed. Worryingly I see there’s even a few reactionary idiots here though buying this liberty-as-a-zero-sum game rubbish.
Whether the six fingered animal touchers in charge have deduced from the vaccine minister’s private entity masquerading as a branch of government pollsters that the mad max style feral underclass and the mass of obedient ‘health’ paranoid serfs they’re busy ushering into existence will be formed along some interesting racial lines remains to be seen, however.
Ultimately your attitude to the vaccine can be broadly tied to how much trust are you willing to place in authority? I’ve spent the last year reading third hand personal anecdotes disguised as fact from the middle classes, holding court on facebook from their positions of privilege without even realising it. Direct evidence from trust worthy sources is noticably absent to the observer trying to get an accurate understanding of anything.
In my personal life I’ve been a member of 2 different subcultures, both of which share some ostensibly anti government, left wing views to characterise them generally, though made up of some very different kinds of people. The interesting difference between the 2 being that the group comprised overwhelmingly of white people has followed government dik-tat to the letter, and members have even become some of the most vocal and sanctimonious cheerleaders of this tyranny. The group which is largely people of colour, however, has essentially ignored the whole pandemic and continued as before except where physically prevented from doing so (with a notable complete lack of deaths I might add).
How the overlords are planning on avoiding the slap in the face bad optics of all the people inside being fairer skinned than the unwashed disease ridden masses outside I’m not sure. Could ask Lenny Uncle Tom Henry to have another go I suppose?
Very well said!
I have to say, I’m not a medical doctor myself (my wife is), but we think, this all farce is no longer about virus…
Firstly, here is a statement from the very developer, Creative Diagnostics of the PCR test, claiming “This product is for research use only and is not intended for diagnostic use” *(and more); https://www.creative-diagnostics.com/pdf/CD019RT.pdf
Secondly there is an open letter from Belgian medical doctors and health professionals, originally intended to all Belgian authorities and media. https://docs4opendebate.be/en/open-letter/
PCR isn’t used for diagnosis; the population tests are to anticipate demand upon hospitals, and to advise self-isolation to slow the spread.
Doctors recognise serious covid; the patient having trouble breathing is usually the most obvious sign.
What test(s) is then used for diagnosing covid?
Are you a doctor?
I’m not a doctor, but Dr Edd / Dredd posts on this site, and I’ve read other doctors’ accounts.
Shortness of breath, low bloodstream oxygen saturation, grainy shadows on lung scans, high bloodstream D-dimer clotting agent; these are the ones I remember. PCR is helpful because it confirms that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is present, but alone it does not indicate the illness COVID-19.
Laszlo
This is best explained as follows:
“The Novel Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) Real-Time Multiplex RT-PCR Kit is an in vitro diagnostic test for the
presumptive qualitative detection of nucleic acid from the SARS-CoV-2 in upper and lower respiratory
specimens (including nasopharyngeal or oropharyngeal swabs and sputum) collected from individuals as
recommended for testing by public health authority guidelines.
Results are for the presumptive identification of SARS-CoV-2 RNA. The SARS-CoV-2 RNA is generally
detectable in upper and lower respiratory specimens during infection. Positive results are indicative of
active infection with SARS-CoV-2 but do not rule out bacterial infection or co-infection with other
viruses. The agent detected may not be the definite cause of disease. Positive results should be
reported in accordance with local regulations.”
https://www.who.int/diagnostics_laboratory/eual/eul_0486_139_00_novel_coronavirus_sars_cov_2_real_time_multiplex_rt_pcr_kit_ifu.pdf
In other words the test if positive confirms the presence of RNA from the virus but cannot be used solely to diagnose the disease caused but the virus which needs the presence of the clinical picture. This is simply because about 80% of those infected with the virus will either develop no symptoms or very mild symptoms.
So any black man advocating for taking up vaccine is an “Uncle Tom” now? Screw your racism, pal.
Of course, take a tongue in cheek flourish at the end of my post to dismiss me and adjust the parameters of the discussion. Try harder, mate.
And is this also a “tongue in cheek flourish.. to adjust the parameters of discussion”?
“.. with the possible exception of some deluded centerists desperately clinging to the notion that this isn’t a vicious form of medically enabled, fascist class warfare. “
Just asking.
If the cap fits, by all means feel free to wear it my friend.
The notion that the Tories, along with the ruling classes of most of the west, have gamed the pandemic to their financial advantage is one generally accepted by anyone paying even vague attention to current affairs given the mountain of evidence in the public eye. But the premise that those same rulers would collude to intentionally fear monger around an annual cold and flu variant in order to keep the wheels on the capitalist system which had just been torpedo’d below the waterline by Aramco’s tremendous lack of stock market buoyancy, is a ridiculous one, gotcha.
Therein is your problem Northern. The fact that the Tories manipulate a disaster to their advantage is part of the way capitalism works. We all agree there. Where we disagree is that, shall we say through ignorance, a statement that the SARS-Cov2 virus is just another ‘cold’ virus, is stated as fact. Introducing a fallacious statement into your argument unfortunately is an embarrassment for you, given the complexity of the differences between the viruses discussed. OK I give you the benefit of the doubt, you are not a virologist, but then you have made a very bold statement that implies that you know so much more than many or most virologists who have devoted their life to study viruses.
For some reason I am unable to reply in thread.
“Therein is your problem Northern. The fact that the Tories manipulate a disaster to their advantage is part of the way capitalism works. We all agree there. Where we disagree is that, shall we say through ignorance, a statement that the SARS-Cov2 virus is just another ‘cold’ virus, is stated as fact. Introducing a fallacious statement into your argument unfortunately is an embarrassment for you, given the complexity of the differences between the viruses discussed. OK I give you the benefit of the doubt, you are not a virologist, but then you have made a very bold statement that implies that you know so much more than many or most virologists who have devoted their life to study viruses.”
No, don’t put words in my mouth. I’m not claiming to know better than any particular experts so I feel no embarrassment despite your suggestion. If you read my statement again and try to actually comprehend it rather than arguing with your own strawmen, you should be able to see that what I’m saying isn’t mutually exclusive with your position. I’m not some anti vax ideologist, despite your attempts to suggest so.
We could have quite easily had a proportional response to Covid without erecting every billionaire fascist fanboys wet dream of a police state.
“Could ask Lenny Uncle Tom Henry to have another go I suppose?”
Really?
Call me immoral if you will, but I will not take an experimental medical intervention, which is not due to complete phase III trials until 2023, under emergency licence, when there is no emergency. I’ve already sacrificed my livelihood in order to ‘save the NHS’ and vulnerable people to whom I supposedly posed a deadly threat if I continued to earn a living; my two children have lost a year of university and suffered considerable mental health difficulties too. I know not a single person who died from Covid-19 (not denying it exists, just to be clear, but average age of death: 82), but I do know a young person who took her own life at 19 because in her despair during lockdown she saw no future for herself. Our young people are now being demonised and called ‘immoral’ if they don’t want to risk the experimental jab, and effectively coerced into it with threats of being unable to participate in normal society if they refuse. It’s unbelievable.
You’d be surprised how many folks I know that aren’t taking the experimental gene-based vaccine.
I don’t believe the Gov. numbers on vaccine uptake for a moment.
Neither do I. Worth remembering that the numbers quoted are actually those that have been offered the ‘vaccine’, not those that have had actually had it.
Source please?
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/vaccinations
– “The number of people who have received a first dose COVID-19 vaccination, shown by date reported. Daily figures include all vaccines that were given up to and including the date shown, and that were entered on the relevant system at the time of extract. “
Emma, this has been going on for some time, and I am beginning to doubt your honesty.
If enough people refuse to take the vaccine and that becomes publicly known, vaccine passports are a nonstarter. On the other hand, if governments and media lead people to believe that there are very few refusers,…
Emma – “I will not take an experimental medical intervention, […] under emergency licence, when there is no emergency”
The reduction in emergency is due to social restrictions, which you oppose, and the majority of people being sensible enough to get vaccinated, which you also oppose. Maybe you live in an area where infection prevalence never became very high; if so, it was still the social restrictions elsewhere which achieved that, and the vaccinations which are maintaining it.
Why do you not argue against the government’s political policies, eg. supporting only certain types of business and refusing to deploy a Universal Basic Income? Do you share this government’s ideology?
“The reduction in emergency is due to social restrictions, which you oppose”
There is no proof of this.
Graph after graph, country after country:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Prevalence rises until restrictions arrest it.
This post of Clark’s can actualy be quite easily disproved, using the “ourworldindata” graphs of “Share of tests that are positive”. They show starkly that positive test rates began to fall on Jan 4th, a day before the lockdown, and had continued to rise before that unaffected by all previous restrictions. The overriding factor is seasonality.
Personally I had already implemented lockdown conditions in my own life before Jan 5; the government were again being too slow. Some of the people I know did likewise; I expect a lot of sensible folk did.
There was no seasonal change on January 4.
Hilarious. The graphs don’t illustrate what you want them to, so now you claim that because you had the foresight to adapt your behaviour before lockdown, other ’sensible’ folk did too, and hey presto!
Seriously, if you can demonstrate that there is no correlation between infection rise and restrictions, go ahead and do so. But twice now there has been this more subtle claim that infections started to fall before restrictions – and this apparently blows the whole correlation. OK, so what’s going on? We see infection rise halting around the time of restrictions in country after country; so you’re saying that if we check, they will nearly all turn out to have started to fall just before restrictions?
So if that is so, what will this tell us? That all governments coincidentally, repeatedly implemented lockdown at just the moment the infection rate was starting to fall by itself? Is that likely? Or did they watch the rise in positive tests to slam in their strictest restrictions just as the rise slowed or stopped, to squeeze the maximum justifiable restrictions out of whatever natural peak was available? Or all their diverse lesser restrictions, applied at diverse earlier times, all happened to pay off just as their strictest restriction was applied, but hardly anyone’s noticed? You cited a scientific paper the other day; found any discussion with the authors?
Daily new cases for first sixteen days of January 2021:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/
01 – 53,186
02 – 57,619
03 – 54,889
04 – 58,676
05 – 60,804
06 – 62,208
07 – 52,522
08 – 67,928
09 – 59,827
10 – 54,839
11 – 46,084
12 – 45,449
13 – 47,438
14 – 48,593
15 – 55,655
16 – 41,270
Highest day the 8th, highest 7 day moving average the 9th.
The 7 day average on the 5th was 55,843. It doesn’t drop below that again until the 12th.
Looks to me like lockdown stopped the rise – which is just as well or there’d have to have been something very strange going on.
The positive rate from Our World in Data:
01 – 11.7%
02 – 11.9%
03 – 12.7%
04 – 12.8%
05 – 12.4%
06 – 12.2%
07 – 11.7%
08 – 11.2%
09 – 10.7%
OK, it does fall on the 5th (not the 4th), but this seems to be driven by the sudden 0.8% increase to just two unusually high-rate days, the 3rd and the 4th. The 0.4% drop can’t really be called “stark”, the next day’s being only 0.2%; it isn’t until the 7th that it’s dropping half a percent per day.
Are we really pinning this theory on a two day spike? And you’ve checked this on how many lockdowns, in how many countries? And why use the rate instead of the total anyway? Looks like cherry-picking to me.
Ben McDonnell, you can see from the timestamps that it’s taken me considerable time to visit your source, copy the figures and correct the misleading impression; would you mind telling me how you found this, er, glorious nugget? Did you find it yourself, or what source pointed it out?
Of course social restrictions work; the virus passes from people to people when they share air, so if people stop meeting others the virus gets destroyed by immune systems faster than it can spread. It’s so blindingly obvious that you’d need really good evidence to refute it, and some two-day anomaly isn’t nearly enough.
– “Or did they watch the rise in positive tests to slam in their strictest restrictions just as the rise slowed or stopped, to squeeze the maximum justifiable restrictions out of whatever natural peak was available?”
…and these natural peaks just keep happening to coincide with their hospitals reaching capacity a week or so later?
I’m glad you took the piss, Emma 😀
The reduction in emergency is due to seasonality. How do you account for the increase in coronavirus prevalence in fully vaccinated Israel?
I don’t oppose anyone getting the vaccine, if that is their choice, as long they give their consent in full knowledge of all the facts about them.
I do argue about the government’s political policies, although maybe not in this arena. Why assume I support them? It’s you who are a cheerleader for their lockdown strategy – you actually think it’s effective.
I didn’t assume; I asked – because you have argued exclusively against social restrictions, but never (that I’ve seen) against the way support has been allocated.
Yes, I expect that seasonality may help, people gathering outside rather than indoors etc. But daily new cases have been declining in Israel since mid January. And the Isle of Man, which I think you criticised just days ago, is back to covid-free again now.
I don’t cheerlead the UK government’s social restriction strategy; they have repeatedly been too late, and have neglected to promote ventilation. Their incompetence astounds me, and I am furious. I cheerlead Australia, China, New Zealand and the Isle of Man’s strategies; hit covid fast and hard; track, test and get the handful infected into state-supported quarantine, and restrictions can be lifted quickly, often within days.
Well, you and I discussed on these pages recently the lack of support for those in the arts and cultural sectors so I don’t know why you choose to forget that. The government’s handling of the entire situation has been scandalous, no argument from me there.
I disagree with you that Australia and NZ have succeeded because they locked down early – it’s far more complex than that. And as for cheerleading china’s handling of it, words fail me.
Some instances of China’s lockdown were brutal and inhumane, but not the majority. Lockdown was delegated to local housing authorities; most did it humanely, some not.
But China has had hardly any covid since May. My point is, fast restrictions work. Whether they are done humanely or otherwise is a different point.
And:
– ” you and I discussed on these pages recently the lack of support for those in the arts and cultural sectors so I don’t know why you choose to forget that.”
I didn’t forget it; you criticised the social restrictions, not the lack of support.
In reply to Emma
> The reduction in emergency is due to seasonality
Umm, so in France, where covid is booming, the seasons follow a different calendar?
Here, where I am stuck due to covid, apparently the travel restrictions don”r worry you or others minimising the effects of the virus, there is huge surge at present which a rather mild confinement doesn’t seem to be containing, there is absolutely no evidence of seasonality. Also vaccination is very slow and the government is only now making the discovery that Britain did months ago, ie. the only way out of this still growing crisis is mass vaccination… assuming we don’t adopt total confinement as in China.
As you appear to dislike the very minor inconvenience of a couple of jabs – something anyone who travels a bit takes for granted in order to visit many countries, then I doubt you would be happier with their very effective, but rather irksome method.
I can’t see any other routes, pretending the problem doesn’t exist isn’t a very sensible option, in my opinion.
Clark, there’s no point arguing with people whose minds are closed.
The argument proceeds in public 🙂
Pot kettle
Nonsense, Steve. The denialists are full of references to right-wingers, dubious sources and argument by youtube crackpots. Proponents of vaccination are scientists who are open to having their views challenged in public.
Perhaps it suits people who know they are on the losing side to do the “both sides-ism” thing, just like the right-wing media do, when pretending that fascists and anti-fa are the same thing really.
– “The denialists are full of references to right-wingers…”
Indeed. Many of the very same characters and think-tanks who deny global warming, funnily enough:
https://www.desmogblog.com/uk-covideniers/
Indeed Steve.
And as for those denialists, right-wingers, dubious sources, Youtube crackpots and deniers of global warming, you couldn’t find worse than those that write opinion pieces for the Daily Mail!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8899277/Professor-Sunetra-Gupta-reveals-crisis-ruthlessly-weaponised.html
The use of smears such as ‘denier’, anti-vaxxer etc. for those who question the policy advice of a select group of unelected ‘experts’ in a situation of extreme uncertainty such as this pandemic should be beneath commenters on this blog. The removal of such fundamental rights as e.g. free assembly on the grounds of ’emergency’ should be a red flag to all those that remember the aftermath of an emergency event in 2001 and the subsequent permanent removal of rights to privacy etc. This is especially the case when acknowledged experts are removed from social media platforms for advocating a response that was government policy until March 2020. This should not be a left/right issue and yet bizarrely, it is mainly the left that seems to be advocating a ‘trust the benign Government’ position. I have read enough of Craig’s blog posts to be extremely distrustful of those that take draconian measures to save us from ourselves and of measures that are promoted by such august organs as the BBC and The Guardian.
DWeller, I’m glad you’re concerned about “the removal of such fundamental rights as e.g. free assembly”, so I trust you’ll be joining me on the upcoming actions to oppose the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill? I was at the London one, Saturday 10th but there will be more:
https://www.thecanary.co/opinion/2021/03/23/the-real-story-of-the-siege-of-bristols-bridewell-police-station/
– Kill the Bill
– Under the cover of a national health emergency, the Tory government has launched the biggest attack on our freedoms since the Public Order Acts of the ‘80s and ‘90s. The controversial Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill passed its second reading in parliament last week. The bill will give the police unprecedented draconian powers to arrest protesters, and will criminalise trespass, effectively outlawing the livelihoods of the UK’s Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities.
@Clark: “The reduction in emergency is due to social restrictions, which you oppose, and the majority of people being sensible enough to get vaccinated, which you also oppose.”
Those are contentious points that are not supported by robust evidence. There are many studies which suggest that lockdown has been ineffective. Equally, it it is possible that innate and acquired immunity have contributed as much as the vaccination campaign, and possibly more. Your absolutist position is not supported by robust evidence.
I have had covid-19. Is it therefore “sensible” for me to take the vaccine? If you answer yes, please support your position. (Having had the virus, and therefore having acquired complete and long-lasting immunity, I regard it as being unnecessary.)
– “Those are contentious points that are not supported by robust evidence.”
Social restrictions work beyond any reasonable doubt; graph after graph, country after country; infections rise, restrictions reverse it.
– “There are many studies which suggest that lockdown has been ineffective.”
The few such studies I’ve seen were crap, and overlooked the blindingly obvious point above.
Vaccination figures will have to wait a little longer, but figures from the most vaccinated populations, the UK’s and Israel’s, are looking good.
Incidentally, Israel is also generously supplying a valuable control study, by withholding vaccination from Palestinians. I suppose you must regard that as ethically wonderful.
I am concerned that variants may defeat vaccination. We should wipe out covid by self discipline.
I for one don’t feel that you’re immoral Emma.. I’m absolutely in agreement with you.
It should always be a matter of informed choice, and given the fact that this is indeed an experimental gene-based technology never before used on such a scale, and especially as the epidemic is well under way, and clinical trials aren’t complete until 2023, I’m not keen to be part of this experiment… Many prominent scientists within the field of vaccine and respiratory viral infection research are putting their reputation on the line to warn us of potential long term dangers.. Dr Michael Yeadon, who was chief researcher for Pfizer is one of them and also Geert Vanden Bossche head of vaccine research for Germany have some very interesting things to say about it all, and definitely worth paying attention to… They are both 100% pro vaccine advocates.
The degree of censorship throughout this past year has thrown up every red flag for me, and the circumstantial evidence is quite strong, relative to the fact that we’re dealing with a gain of function virus produced in a laboratory.
I wouldn’t dream of trying to talk anybody out of taking this substance into their body, as that’s their choice, and as Craig states the very idea of covid ID so as to gain access to a social life again is a massive cause of alarm.
The fact that this is a universal response, throughout the UN should inform people that there’s a degree of orchestration going on from people who make very big decisions on a global scale…
Yes… There is a viral pathogen… It’s origin is shady and it’s obvious there’s a huge cover up in relation to that… The vaccines may not be so dangerous, but they’re definitely being used to bring about an agenda for a 2 tier system, and a digitised surveillance state… What’s happening in Israel demonstrates that.
Dr Michael Yeadon is a liar; he’s prominent in a company selling nebulisers, and specifically marketing them for the second wave he claimed could never happen, a couple of months before it did.
Geert Vanden Bossche is pushing his own, entirely untested vaccine technology.
It is notable that these two do NOT conduct their arguments in the scientific literature; they’d rather foist their highly technical arguments directly upon the inadequately trained public. Now why might that be?
Both of them have invited open scientific debate between people of influence within science, to be witnessed by the public.
Listening to them both, along with many other well qualified and respected scientists, doctors and professors who have been ridiculed and censored for asking intelligent questions which challenge the official orchestrated UN narrative, then they are keen to be proven wrong and admit their mistakes… Unlike the authoritarian dogma we have been submitted to which isn’t scientific in any way… The new dogmatic religion of scientism.
In less than 5 minutes it’s demonstrated through proper scientific interpretation of the data, that lockdowns and mask wearing isn’t the main factor in stopping the spread of this virus, based upon Florida’s experience… No lockdown and no mandatory masks, and Florida has the oldest population in America and one of the lowest mortality rates from Covid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DOwDAbibQI&t=1s
Yes, we have to slow down and be extra mindful, but excessive stress, anxiety and depressed states of consciousness inhibit the natural functioning of our immune systems, and the entire population has been subjected to exagerated fear mongering for an entire year, and that’s been devastating to the health of the nation, making more people susceptible to serious infection when they inevitably contract the virus….
True leadership would have included advice and guidance on the use of natural medicines and supplements such as vitamin D, Zinc and high dosage Vitamin C… All of which are known to be invaluable support.
Part of the equation is the general underlying health of the nation and for many years we’ve been consuming tons of junk food and food laced with toxic chemicals which have been weakening our immune systems and leading to all sorts of degenerative health conditions… Covid has come along to illustrate that we need to make systemic changes around how we relate to the environment and what we consume… Instead of taking an honest look at that then people want an escape route… A sticking plaster which doesn’t heal the true cause of our deep rooted disease which is eating away at the fabric of society and the integrity of our health… That means taking responsibility, but instead we’re going into the next round of intensification of control by the ‘big other.’ Their ‘solution’ to the crisis is only going to deepen the genuine crisis which humanity is faced with.
– “lockdowns and mask wearing isn’t the main factor”
Deaths per million population on the day I’m posting this:
Florida – 1,589
Sweden – 1,346
UK – 1,865
Not a lot to choose between them; a factor of 1.4 at most.
Australia – 35
New Zealand – 5
Between 38 and 370 times better.
– “and the entire population has been subjected to exagerated fear mongering for an entire year…”
Only those who consume corporate media. I agree with your junk food comments, but corporate media is junk brainfood. Reject it; I do.
I don’t know the figures on vitamin C and zinc, but I have seen a systematic review that strongly supports vitamin D. It’s published in the scientific literature, BMJ maybe, which is an appropriate venue for this sort of thing. Rather than:
– “open scientific debate between people of influence* within science, to be witnessed by the public”
No, you’re not going to get all the relevant evidence and appropriately technical discussion into a two hour televised debate or whatever; it takes time for considered replies. It’ll just degenerate into polemicism and “controversy”, as we’ve witnessed for thirty years with global warming. *And “people of influence within science” is an appeal to authority, not evidence.
I no nothing about the main point of your comment but I must draw your attention to the fact that this pandemic and the battle over treatment and medicines has emphasised that the famous Scientific Literature has been shown to be highly unreliable. The totally false campaign to show that HCQ was “dangerous” and to stop its use, was supported by at least two fraudulent articles one in the Lancet and one in the New England Journal of Medicine, that had to be withdrawn within days. This is unique.
Editors and have drawn attention to the decline in standards in these journals.
The current campaign to sabotage the use of the highly effective cheap safe Ivermectin now has its own meta- study openly labelled as a medical fraud because the conclusion was doctored under the influence of the financial sponsors to suggest falsely that more research is needed before it is safe to use. So far neither the University concerned, nor the author, nor the financial backers have threatened to sue – why not? They have plenty of money – but the NHS and the various national and international bodies, as with HCQ, have seized the opportunity to delay use by demanding more time wasting trials.
The highly reputable Dr Tess Lawrie carries on the fight to inform doctors and public, get it into use – https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-us-get-lifesaving-drug-approved-for-covid19?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet
No, the retractions were examples of the scientific literature working appropriately. As you say, the articles were withdrawn within days.
But yes, capitalistic competition corrupts everything, and we really need to change that. Any suggestions? I’m saying, concentrate on the systemic problem rather than guessing which ‘side’ to support regarding current treatments, because the next crisis will probably be about something completely different.
How is it your moral obligation to take a vaccine when the demand for the vaccine has been created by our government frightening people into a state of fear that can only be resolved by a vaccine that is a psychological vaccine and not a medical necessity?
I have no moral obligation to help the government manipulate the people.
But you’ll help conspiracy theorists manipulate the people. Great!
In the UK there are three sets of relevant mortality statistics – died within 28 days of a positive test result (whereas a person’s chance of dying in any given 28 days is low), covid on the death certificate (doctors recognise the symptoms), and death from all causes – plus statistics for hospital demand, positive test results (PCR plus lateral flow) and antibodies. The variations in these graphs over time paint a consistent picture; covid has killed around 130,000 people.
Really? Everything in the world that is planned is a conspiracy: the election, the response to Covid, a newspaper. your morning shit (if you tell your wife first). Maybe grow up a bit so that I can take you seriously? Your decision.
Let us look at the government response: scare the bejesus out of the population. Wow, that’s clever, also totlly self defeating because once the people are scared how are you going to calm them down?
You obviously have no history of statistics: it is my job, I analyse financial statistics every day. Covid is indistiguishable from flu. Sorry, but that is the statistical fact. Heart disease still kills more people in the UK, yet the government is intent on frightening people into hiding in their houses and not seeing anybody.
Sorry, I have no more time for you.
– “Let us look at the government response: scare the bejesus out of the population”
You seem to have forgotten recent history. Johnson said we were “going to take it on the chin”, didn’t he? Didn’t government scientific adviser Graham Medley say that ‘ideally’, we might need ‘a nice big epidemic’?
https://www.medialens.org/2020/for-unknown-reasons-they-waited-and-watched-lancet-editor-exposes-devastating-government-failure-on-coronavirus/
– “You obviously have no history of statistics”
Anyone can read the hundreds of graphs; infection prevalence rises fast until social restrictions reverse it. Which is exactly what you’d expect for respiratory transmission. The restrictions you dismiss are precisely the reason that covid hasn’t outpaced heart disease or a very bad flu season in the UK. No point analysing statistics while blinding yourself to the causal relationship, is there?
Do you have any moral obligation to the 130 000 dead in Britain, or the many times more in the USA, or the 100 000 in France to not pedal anti-vaccination propaganda? Isn’t it at least a bit of a moral obligation on all governments to try the best, however poor this may be, to prevent the pandemic getting worse, as it is world wide according to the WHO?
> I have no moral obligation to help the government manipulate the people.
Aren’t you trying to manipulate people yourself ? Was Trump right about covid in your opinion then?
Do you know how many people die every day of all causes? Your question is plain stupid. I have no “moral” obligation to any of the people who died. For example, you may demand that i have a “civic duty” to get the jab. Really? Like the brownshirts in Germany had a “civic duty” to rat on Jews and turn them into the authorities? That sort of “civic duty”. Sorry, the world is not a one-way street: give and take defines every healthy relationship and the government have not allowed us to contribute to the management of this pandemic. They treat us like morons, you accept that I do not. My informed consent requires “informed” and “consent”. I am willing to give my “informed consent” to have a jab once I am convinced that I am not being lied to by my government: every day I hear more lies from them. Until they change course, I owe society nothing.
– “every day I hear more lies from them”
Better to stop listening then? I did.
– “Until they” [the government] “change course, I owe society“ [the people] “nothing.”
Huh. Looks to me like you’re shirking responsibility; more here:
– “the government have not allowed us to contribute to the management of this pandemic”
You’re actually contributing right now, but negatively, by promoting misinformation.
At long last, an article from Craig about covid with which I broadly agree. Yes, domestic covid-19 identity documents must be resisted.
A few points:
– “But it remains a stubborn and undeniable fact, much as some people do not like it said, that Covid-19 has never been a major threat to young and healthy people.”
Hmm. Not quite; we know of serious damage to athletes’ hearts, for instance, and virus lurking in gut and nerves. And we can’t know the long term effects until a long term has elapsed – various viruses have turned out to cause cancer, for instance. And it is contradicted by another of Craig’s statements:
– “There are also the effects of long covid, which appear still to be little understood.”
– “We are probably many years away from there being a scientific consensus around the infection mortality rate of Covid-19, […] it does have the ability to kill a lot of people in a short space of time and overwhelm health services.”
These two points are interrelated, not independent. The context of the observed infection fatality rate is that the vast majority of people who required hospital treatment were in fact provided with it. The majority of those received simple treatment on a ward eg. non-invasive oxygen support. A smaller proportion received intensive care.
But had the original Westminster government policy of no restrictions in pursuit of “herd immunity” not been opposed by the epidemiological consensus (including the wrongly maligned Ferguson of ICL), between five and twenty times as many people would have required hospitalisation at the same time. Even with the social restrictions, the hospital system filled beyond capacity – that nearly everyone needing treatment received it is a major credit to the NHS emergency measures, improvised on-the-fly and with unbelievable dedication and self sacrifice.
Of course, if no treatment had been available for between 80% and 95% of those needing it, far more would have died, resulting in a much higher infection fatality rate. This, of course, is one of the reasons that the mortality figures have such a wide range.
– “I am genuinely unsure why it causes so much anger to state that those people who are non-geriatric and healthy are only at very slight risk of death from covid-19, when it is an undeniable fact.”
Grief, Craig, do you really need an explanation? Because that fact was being used by denialists of various shades to argue that we should let covid rip through the population unrestricted, thereby overwhelming the hospitals and leading to between five and twenty times as many deaths! And had there been that many deaths, far more of them would have been younger and healthier people, negating your own argument.
– “I feel confident that we have seen the end of mass deaths in the UK, because the at risk sectors of the population have been vaccinated, reducing their chances of getting seriously ill by 80%”
I think we’re OK, but I very much hope that new variants don’t escape the vaccine.
You realise the inherent confirmation bias in your post here I assume? You’re clearly capable enough to do so.
Slaughter goats or the death rate will be huge.
Mass goat slaughter.
See the death rates weren’t huge, the goats did the trick.
But they didn’t slaughter any goats and their death rates were less than ours. And they slaughtered more goats and had higher death rates?
Clark can’t accept the goats died in vain.
That would be true, Davie, except for the facts which don’t bear it out.
Since you appear to understand things best in terms of goat slaughter, imagine if the death rates went down every time goats were slaughtered, and up when they did not, precisely in relation to the extent of goat slaughters – with massive controls and data to support the observations – in every country in the world, on multiple occasions.
One would be forced to accept that goat slaughters were – somehow – related to lowering death rates.
Only back in the real world, it’s not a real mystery – except to people who choose not to bother to understand the correlation between measures taken against the virus, and lowering the negative outcomes from it. That would be someone like yourself, obviously.
How about this. Death rates go up when the virus first becomes endemic in a population. So around March 20. Lockdown implemented. We start to move into summer. Death rates go down, Lockdown conditions eased THEY GO DOWN FURTHER we start to move into colder months and…..well, it’s almost like it’s seasonal.
However there has been a strange psychology occurring whereby politics and viruses become intertwined. At this stage showy left wingers (and in terms of politics, economically I’m somewhere along the road to communism) have taken the opportunity to throw themselves into measures to show JUST HOW MUCH THEY CARE. Anyone expressing even remote scepticism about the implementation of unprecedented measures that contrast directly with accepted WHO wisdom of only a few years ago is a RIGHT WINGER, a COVID DENIALIST and an ANTI-VAXER. Other taunts are Trumpian, libertarian nutjob etc. Essentially anything to target the messenger rather than the message.
One of the features of this is that those who have bought into the hype are psychologically damaged. I do not use that in a pejorative sense. Clark has admitted that not only has he followed lockdown protocol he has implemented his own earlier than government. So you are at home, isolated and feeding off government propaganda and like minded social media. Your insistence that things are terrible and your sacrifice necessary is ‘sunk cost fallacy’ writ large.
I on the other hand recognised that the official line was bullshit very early. Since April 2020 I have done largely as I please. Friends, family (including grans), dinner with friends, guys round for sporting events, kids allowed out with their friends, kids staying over at ours and vice versa. I stay in an East Ren suburb and while I couldn’t say this is the norm it certainly isn’t unusual. I know of one person who has been hospitalised, a fat father of one of the kids I coach. He’s fine.
So I have real life examples that it’s safe to get out and about. You have information that may be true, may be propaganda. I don’t wear masks, you will be one of the people crossing the road to avoid someone on the pavement walking the other day.
I actually feel for you. You have been betrayed.
Of course there is a seasonal aspect to it – the seasons have a bearing on human behaviour. The more congregating indoors that takes place, the more the virus will spread. Just as any other seasonal virus. I’m not sure why you are making such an issue of this.
It’s also unclear why you think left wingers are communists etc., and what bearing this has on anything much at all. Of course the far right deny there is any need to interrupt business, and right wing authoritarians have seen the worse outcomes for their countries. Before you start going on about Sweden, their poor outcomes are precisely because of the reluctance to impose social measures that would limit spread of the virus.
You apparently took no measures, and acted with disregard for your safety, that of your family, and society at large. If you feel you got away with it, that’s lucky. But you don’t know that you didn’t go asymptomatically spreading it around, so in your arrogance you have risked the well-being of others. Shame on you.
“You apparently took no measures, and acted with disregard for your safety, that of your family, and society at large. If you feel you got away with it, that’s lucky. But you don’t know that you didn’t go asymptomatically spreading it around, so in your arrogance you have risked the well-being of others. Shame on you.”
Glen, you’re one of the guys (Clark even more so) that perfectly fits the term I’ve come across during the last year. A mid-wit. Not a half-wit, you’re clearly not stupid, but a mid-wit who isn’t nearly as clever as you think you are. You are so attached to your dogma you don’t realise how cowed and manipulated you are. I’m a particularly sociable person who has continued to be sociable throughout this pandemic. I almost consider it a moral imperative to get out there and show the weak of mind and spirit that they are acting in a manner that is counter-productive to their wellbeing. And similar to those cute little computer models showing how the virus spreads that is how my social, work and volunteering networks spread. I know a lot of people who know a lot of people. And nobody knows anyone who has died, we barely know anyone who has been ill. As for your attempts to shame me as I’ve been spreading it asymptomatically – unlikely as I had it in Dec 2019, long before documented Chinese and Italian outbreaks – unless I have been spreading it through my networks who have been spreading it through their networks and we’re all asymptomatic then I’m afraid not. I’d call it a very good outcome indeed if it were the case.
However this real world experience simply isn’t sufficient for you. I have no doubt you’d call it anecdotal. Instead you sit in your front room with the curtains drawn reading about the latest terror and having online arguments with people. I’m out there living life; I can therefore look at both sides of the ‘debate’ and make an informed judgement.
Do not try and shame me. Your fear has caused the greatest ruptures in society since the war, and we will pay for it dearly. I work in a field where our aim is to address disadvantage and inequality. This has set us back decades and we have created a whole new category of impoverishment; previously working families who are now reliant on foodbanks. The impact on our children is profound; again those most vulnerable impacted more severely by orders of magnitude.
You stay in your room Glen and urge everyone to follow suit and shame those who don’t. What could go wrong?
Davie, April 13, at 08:56:
– “around March 20. Lockdown implemented. We start to move into summer. Death rates go down”
You’ve reversed the order:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/
Death rates started to fall mid April, plummeted through May, and were down by over a factor of ten before we reached Summer.
– – – – – – – – –
– “Clark has admitted that not only has he followed lockdown protocol he has implemented his own earlier than government. So you are at home, isolated and feeding off government propaganda and like minded social media.”
I read graphs, Davie. Dry, boring graphs. I don’t watch telly, don’t read “news”papers or their websites, I have no Facebook or Twitter account, and I certainly don’t get my epidemiological ideas from YouToob.
Give up on the conspiracy theory and you might lose the insufferable sense of self-superiority. Maybe people other than you aren’t just stupid sheeple, eh?
Davie: This reply of yours is one of the most extraordinary examples of self aggrandisement, together with baseless personal insult, I have come across in some time.
Your “argument”, if it really can be credited with such a description, is basically this: You don’t agree with me, therefore you are stupid and I must be much more clever. And because of this, I am right and you are wrong, due to my superiority and therefore my authority on the matter.
A lot of conspiracy nuts consider themselves to be on a higher intellectual plane than the “sheeple”, you are a textbook example of this taken to an absurd degree. Conspiracy theory largely works by flattering dupes into thinking themselves superior.
As it is, you have broken the law and brag about it. Ignored medical and public health advice and consider yourself too clever to need it. You – and idiots like you – are the very reason we still have such a problem with this virus. Countries where people have far more sense than you and those like you are more or less back to normal.
Now why don’t you go back to those nice youtubes which will tell you how clever you are again, being much more informed and in on the secret truths – you probably need to have these notions reinforced around now.
It’s a bit different when you’ve got graphs of deaths against time, ‘cos you can see what works and what doesn’t. Craig posted crude graphs for the UK above; the downturns follow the stay-at-home restrictions three times.
– “You realise the inherent confirmation bias in your post here I assume?”
No I don’t, but point it out and I’ll respond.
– “You’re clearly capable enough to do so.”
Less of the snide insinuation please 🙂
“we know of serious damage to athletes’ hearts” – what are the numbers on this Clark?
“A recent study showed that asymptomatic heart inflammation was seen on magnetic resonance imaging in up to three-quarters of patients who had recovered from severe COVID-19.”
The study in question can be found here:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7385689/
and it was cited in this Harvard Medical School blog:
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/covid-19-and-the-heart-what-have-we-learned-2021010621603 “COVID-19 and the heart: What have we learned?”
The study makes the point that:
“In this study of a cohort of German patients recently recovered from COVID-19 infection, CMR revealed cardiac involvement in 78 patients (78%) and ongoing myocardial inflammation in 60 patients (60%), **independent of pre-existing conditions**, severity and overall course of the acute illness, and time from the original diagnosis. These findings indicate the need for ongoing investigation of the long-term cardiovascular consequences of COVID-19..”
Ok, interesting small (100 participants), observational study, participants aged between 45 and 53 – not exactly young? And they all suffered a ‘severe’ case. Nobody’s arguing the virus isn’t severe for some groups – the elderly, those with comorbidities, those with poor vitamin D status. Where’s the evidence for the serious damage to athlete’s hearts?
– “And they all suffered a ‘severe’ case”
No.
– Conclusions and Relevance
– In this study of a cohort of German patients recently recovered from COVID-19 infection, CMR revealed cardiac involvement in 78 patients (78%) and ongoing myocardial inflammation in 60 patients (60%), independent of preexisting conditions, severity and overall course of the acute illness, and time from the original diagnosis. These findings indicate the need for ongoing investigation of the long-term cardiovascular consequences of COVID-19.
Yes:
“This is a prospective observational cohort study of 100 patients diagnosed with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2”
Athletes?
Maybe a different paper; seek and ye shall find 🙂
“…we know of serious damage to athletes’ hearts, for instance, and virus lurking in gut and nerves”.
“We know of…”? Chapter and verse, please; I know of no such thing. Where are the papers?
As for “…virus lurking in gut and nerves”, that’s just bluff. Everyone has thousands of strains of virus lurking in their bodies. Anyone who has had chickenpox – and many who haven’t – have herpes “virus lurking in gut and nerves”, usually for the rest of their lives. Sometimes this manifests as hives; usually not.
Throughout the biosphere, viruses are omnipresent in incomprehensible numbers. It’s not their presence that matters, on or in the body. It’s whether body is in proper health, and thus able to live in balance with them.
“Ships? I see no ships.”
– “It’s not their presence that matters, on or in the body. It’s whether body is in proper health, and thus able to live in balance with them.”
Yeah right. Go “live in balance” with smallpox, HIV, SARS or MERS.
I refuse to believe I have any moral duty to subject myself to these experimental vaccines only issued under an Emergency Use Authorization that could only be issued because other already existing treatments were studiously ignored. I think that by taking large doses of Vitamins D and C I am doing as much as morality requires.
And lysias
Do you genuinely believe that the medical profession is so immoral and corrupt as to ignore effective treatment for the sake of an experimental vaccine?
SA
Do you genuinely believe that billionaire corporations wouldn’t put profit before people’s health?
Coz that’s never happened, right?
AstraZeneca have undertaken not to make any profit from their Covid vaccine during the pandemic.
Michael Hudson explains, in many of his blog articles and books, how giant US oil corporations which he advised reported no profits at all for many years. Of course the profits were there; they simply took care that they appeared on the books of subsidiaries and trading partners abroad. No profits, no taxes.
It’s amazing how little interest the tax authorities can take in such exercises if one owns enough politicians at the right level.
Which has what to do with AZ?
“AstraZeneca have undertaken not to make any profit from their Covid vaccine during the pandemic.”
They have however been criticised for charging countries outside the EU, such as Uganda, twice the price however. They are also only committing to this ‘price promise’ until they decide the pandemic is finished, after which time of course we’ll all need at least annual booster jabs won’t we.
These arguments are tiresome.
“Someone might be making money…. therefore it’s all a hoax”
Sure. So cars are a hoax, so are houses, food, clothing – please feel free to make an extensive list.
Indeed, glenn. But you won’t catch any of this crowd criticising capitalism. Odd, that.
When AstraZeneca considers the “pandemic” to be over, it will charge for any booster vaccinations.
The Financial Times wrote:
“The company, which is developing a vaccine with Oxford University, received hundreds of millions in public money to fast track development. AstraZeneca, which has promised not to profit from its Covid-19 vaccine “during the pandemic”, has the right to declare an end to the pandemic as soon as July 2021, according to an agreement with a manufacturer. The UK pharmaceutical company, which is developing a vaccine candidate with Oxford university, has said it would provide doses on a cost basis for at least as long as the pandemic lasts. However, a memorandum of understanding between AstraZeneca and a Brazilian manufacturer, which has been seen by the Financial Times, defines the “Pandemic Period” as ending on July 1 2021”
This is not an answer to my question if you think it through, it is deflection.
Apologies. My comment was directed at Kempe’s remark, but I inadvertently replied to you
Er, yes.
Although it’s not so much “the medical profession” as a monolithic body, but individual doctors who quite like money and prestige and promotion and honours and appearing on TV and in the papers.
It’s actually quite easy to persuade oneself that a risky experimental drug is perfectly safe – if the government and all its top advisers say so. Or that very safe, widely-used drugs with excellent track records are “too risky” because no one has written papers about them or done lengthy trials of them. (Which they never will, because the profit’s not there).
Or that mere vitamins and minerals cannot possibly affect health (except to harm it) – nothing at all to do with the fact that they are too cheap, and not made by the right corporations.
Before a great actor performs a role, he gets into it and lives it. And before one lies convincingly, it helps if one can manage to believe the lies. It’s amazing what one can manage to believe, if there is enough to gain.
Er… yes. And the brave truth-tellers who take their message to the public via youtube, rather than face serious scientists who know what they’re talking about for peer review – they don’t like publicity at all, do they Tom?
Tom
Your post is based on conjecture and totally removed from facts. Your knowledge of how the medical profession works seems to be rudimentary.
I know that this is a waste of time even as I type but for what it is worth here is my view on the profits to be made/grants were to University depts or research groups (not individuals) etc arguments:
I spent about 7 years in academia as a PhD student and Post-doc, I the work was fairly fundamental and miss the inquisitive playful environment and the junkets. Research is very competitive, one of my colleagues described it as a sport papers and citations are everything being published in nature is like winning the FA cup. And once your group reaches critical mass the football analogy continues, you can get the best players and equipment go to more conferences and advertise your work, get more high impact publications and so on it goes.
If you don’t think a massive wedge of taxpayers or charity cash helps the research group to increase volume and quality of output, thereby gilding their reputations and forwarding their careers and that they might be grateful for that, then you are on another planet. On top of that most grants will have budget for travel to conferences and that is a free holiday FFS.
I think Tom knows people
Andic
Yes what you say is true to a great extent, there is corruption, inducement and junkets but there are also medicines vaccines and other progress that drives the need to spend the money. It is not just all a hoax and certainly doctors treating patients don’t do it just because of what you describe.
“Or that mere vitamins and minerals cannot possibly affect health (except to harm it) – nothing at all to do with the fact that they are too cheap, and not made by the right corporations.”
With their money, myopia and abuses, these pill makers match big pharma—Ben Goldacre.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/sep/12/matthiasrath.aids
The food supplement and vitamin industry IS big pharma. The above article is from 2008. Not for the first time on here I recommend you read Ben Goldacre’s books “Bad Science” and Bad Pharma. (and he had another but start with those)”
Do a search on Matthias Rath: https://anarchic-teapot.net/reposted-from-bad-science-matthias-rath/
While people were dying alone and in despair both from covid and all the usual ailments, and vast numbers in the private sector were having livelihoods destroyed, our NHS staff were turning people away, correographing tiktok videos, and demanding pay rises.
Dozens of high profile media quacks have bent every which way in the wind to push the narrative of the day, performing about turns like trained seals in order to keep their appearance fees going.
Yes I consider them as immoral and corrupt as every other profession.
Until June 1st I believe it says in their contract. After that the price goes up but you wont read that in your newspaper.
If anyone really wants to see an informed discussion of the many loose ends concerning “Covid-19”, they might look at the blog of another celebrated, highly expert Scot: Dr Malcolm Kendrick. Dr Kendrick knows a great deal about how facts and figures are presented, and how they are distorted by commercial interests and governments. He is also a GP who has treated a good number of patients who may have been suffering from Covid-19. (No one can be certain, as there is no reliable test, there are no unique signs or symptoms, and post mortems have been discouraged or actually forbidden).
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/
Dr Kendrick is a lot like Mr Murray in many ways. Both are very determined, honest Scotsmen who dislike being conned and who are prepared to stand up to official discouragement and harassment. Both have been “cancelled” from Wikipedia and other social media sites. And both have been scoffed at by people who don’t have a fraction of their knowledge and wisdom.
I forgot – both have a great sense of humour, and both are partial to the odd wee dram. In fact, I imagine they would get along very well together.
Thank you
– “No one can be certain, as there is no reliable test, there are no unique signs or symptoms, and post mortems have been discouraged or actually forbidden”
This, presumably, is the sort of nonsense you’ll get from Kendrick. I took a look at his stuff and most of it was the usual misleading soundbites.
There is a clear clinical pattern – low bloodstream oxygen saturation, grainy pattern on lung scans, high bloodstream levels of clotting agent D-dimer. Doctors recognise this disease.
There is clear evidence that doctors recognise covid-19 because they have learned how to treat it. At first, 50% of patients requiring ICU died, but over the months doctors improved treatments reduced that to 30%.
They couldn’t treat it if it was unrecognisable.
Oh and Craig hasn’t been “cancelled” from Wikipedia. In fact, Craig’s articles about Philip Cross lead to Cross being investigated and the account’s editing privileges being curtailed.
Clark,
“Craig’s articles about Philip Cross lead to Cross being investigated and the account’s editing privileges being curtailed.”
How curtailed? Cross is still active on Wikipedia as far as I can see. He’s currently targeting Greyzone journalists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Editing_restrictions/Placed_by_the_Arbitration_Committee&oldid=1015559125
– “Philip Cross
– BLP issues on British politics articles, as amended by motion
– Topic ban
– Philip Cross is indefinitely topic banned from post-1978 British politics, broadly construed. This restriction may be first appealed after six months have elapsed, and every six months thereafter. This sanction supersedes the community sanction applied in May 2018.
– Indefinite “
And a report here:
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/fake-news-wikipedia-arbitration-committee
Rather than griping (or as some do, screaming conspiracy), go and make a difference!
– “He’s currently targeting Greyzone journalists.”
I’d say that Cross is gaming the system. Go look at the Arbitration discussion, find the editors that opposed Cross, and leave a note about his current activity on their Talk pages.
I had a look at Dr McKendrick’s site. He is one of those ‘doctors’ who are promoting dietary saturated fats as good for us – bacon, eggs and sausage smothered in butter and coconut oil for breakfast and to hell with your LDL count. This is what he calls the ‘Great Cholesterol Con’. Incidentally, he appears to have been beaten to the post on that book title. But anyway, he is promoting the exact opposite of what what most of us accept to be true and good dietary advice. So which is it? Are these saturated fats good for us or bad. Is high circulatory LDL the key to good health? What is the definitive answer? Or are ‘doctors’ deliberately peddling information injurious to our health? I believe that anyone, ‘doctor’ or otherwise who deliberately promotes information that is damaging to our health should be behind bars. I don’t care if it is to promote book sales, get youtube ‘hits’, borne of out sheer narcissism or whatever. But the thing is that these claims and counter-claims can never be proven one way or the other. Which brings us neatly back to the ‘covid vaccine’. Do you trust any of these ‘doctors’, government, youtube or otherwise? Well, I don’t – and sure as hell won’t be taking any vaccine, at least voluntary or till such time as it becomes impossible to function in society.
In the case of Coconut derived fats, it seems to be a matter of record that Pacific Islanders who formerly relied upon the coconut for fats lived reasonably healthy lives despite the apparent danger that received wisdom would have us believe.
It was when those folk were exposed to western fats and food that they started to exhibit the food related ailments common to western man.
You mean like bacon and eggs?
MacDonald’s, and the other food items that are selected for profit over healthy nutrition 😀
No, like highly refined and processed grains and sugars. And vegetable oils. Cut out those three, and you have a good chance of getting healthy again.
Ironically, the only dangerous part of a Big Mac (if those still exist) is the bun. (And perhaps the gigantic cup of sugar dissolved in barely enough flavoured water to stay in solution).
As diabetics know fat is far less a problem than sugar.
And as many people still seem not to know, all carbohydrates are basically glucose. Starches digest to plain glucose. You need some, unless you are on a low-sugar diet, but it’s best from root vegetables and a little fruit.
Low fat was the government advice and is patently wrong as heart disease is still the main killer. That doesn’t make high fat right, but if it makes no difference then pass the bacon.
And the government advice was based purely on a whim?
According to the BHF the incidence of heart disease has fallen by 75% since the 1960s. The government advice as you put it is working, the problem is the people who don’t follow it. We still have one of the highest obesity rates in the world.
It makes no difference; indeed, it turns out that animal fat (from animals that have been decently reared and cared for and fed) is about the only nutrient that is not harmful in any amount. One reason is that, as we evolved to rely on fat for more than half our calories, we instinctively know when we have had enough. If you are hungry and eat liver or cheese, you will not be tempted to eat after you are full. Quite the opposite of sweet foods.
Meg – I live in France and can only dream about bacon egg and sausage. However I can tell you that Coconut oil does not increase your adverse Cholesterol. I know I take it every morning because I hope it staves off altzheimers but if it doesn’t so what. I had a blood test yesterday no sign of increased LDL.Nobody in their right minds mixes butter and coconut oil. But some, like me, substitute coconut oil for butter. Except on Sundays…
In reply to Meg
That’s your right but it increases the risk of your dying of covid or helping spread it to someone else who may die or suffer quite a lot for weeks. You don’t say your age but if you are young enough and have no medical conditions which make your demise by covid more likely, then apart from the moral aspects you decision could be defendable.
My situation, over 70, long term blood condition which is kept under control by a load of substances which keep me alive but reduce my resistance to germs and viruses, means that not taking a vaccine makes no sense at all. It also meant that in France I was one of the minority who have been lucky enough to be vaccinated, I’m still careful, keep a good distance from puffing joggers and friends and family, wear a mask and slosh alcohol about if I touch anything that might be infected but at least I can reasonable sure that even if I did manage to catch covid it would be quite likely non-fatal.
It seems that Scottish nationalists, if this forum is typical of them, share your views on the matter. I find this puzzling, What can the link be between nationalism and distrust of these vaccines?
No, the Scottish independence supporters are mostly a different bunch of usernames.
I support Scottish independence, as it goes, but I’m in the south of England.
Sorry, Meg; you are apparently living in the 1970s or 1980s. It’s not your fault, though; I used to believe that saturated fat was dangerous, that meat and eggs and dairy were best avoided, and that we should stick to healthy whole grains and vegetable seed oils.
All those beliefs have now been thoroughly refuted. Read any reputable and up to date book on nutrition, and you will see that the foods on which our ancestors throve for millions of years are still healthy, whereas “modern” artificial food-like substances are dangerous. Government diet advice, which is stuck in the 1970s, will very likely make you sick and possibly give you diabetes.
Try the Jaminets’ “Perfect Health Diet”; Dr William Davis’s “Wheat Belly” books and blog; Tom Naughton’s excellent video film “Fat Head”; etc.
Incidentally, his name is Dr Kendrick, not “McKendrick”.
It has been said in previous comments. You are terribly mistaken on the threat of covid to young and healthy people (me included). Death is not the only negative consequence one can suffer from covid. Other long-term effects are in some sense much worse. A year after getting covid I am still not back to full strength and probably never will be. I find your stupid claims about covid not being a threat deeply insulting.
Your personal anecdote, while dreadful for you, doesn’t alter the fact that the vast, vast majority of young people have a negligible risk, a much lower risk than from flu. My mind isn’t closed, it’s been opened significantly over the last 12 months. My children are both vaccinated with the usual childhood vaccines, I’ve taken them all too. But I no longer trust bodies like the MHRA, or even my GP practice, who have gone along with this charade and refused me treatment for a condition which would have made a significant difference to my life – a steroid injection for a frozen shoulder – even throughout last summer when we were eating out to help out. My 19 year old son was refused medical attention for an ongoing kidney disorder likewise, much more serious for him than Covid. Your ire would be better directed at doctors who turned a blind eye to cheap therapies that were available at the outset and may have spared you the long Covid you now suffer, rather than individuals like myself who have never swallowed the Covid orthodoxy.
And your anecdotes, Emma, of which you seem to have an unusual number, should lead you to support social restrictions policies such as those of Australia, China, New Zealand and the Isle of man, because hitting covid fast has been supremely successful in keeping social restrictions very brief.
Instead I have seen you deny the success of the Isle of Man.
Why on Earth anyone would advocate for letting the wild virus itself cut a swathe through the population entirely unrestricted, but argue against vaccines made from a carefully selected part of the virus, with all its reproductive capacity removed, is completely beyond me.
Nothing wrong with anecdotes, but they don’t prove anything. I was simply illustrating why my previous faith in these public health bodies has changed.
I’ve never argued for allowing a ‘wild virus’ (whatever that is) cut a swathe through the population. I’ve argued for the Swedish model, which was in fact our own and the WHO’s pandemic response plan honed over decades of scientific study, until 2019. Then in 2020 they decided to bin that and follow China in an experimental response that was previously not recommended, with no cost/benefit analysis – and now look where we are.
A wild virus is precisely what it says – a virus in the wild, reproducing, mutating and exploiting its hosts opportunistically – just like the term “wild animal”.
As opposed to “domesticated” – which, in a sense, is what vaccines are. For instance, domesticated animals often have their reproductive organs removed; likewise, the vaccines contain no reproductive parts.
Little difference in policy, little difference in death toll. Not much to choose between them.
Oh I see, a wild virus, like the billions of others our immune systems have learned to deal with over time. Have you looked into these ‘vaccines’? They’re not made with attenuated virus.
The mRNA vaccines (which you dishonestly pretend all the vaccines are) carry only the code for the spike protein. Now you’re conflating them with the more traditional viral vector vaccines. You seem to be choosing the scariest description at every opportunity.
– “like the billions of others our immune systems have learned to deal with over time”
Yes, and the others which our immune systems haven’t, such as smallpox, HIV, Ebola, MERS, SARS, dengue…
You’re really into getting people infected, aren’t you Emma?
New Zealand, Australia , Taiwan and South Korea (DMZ 100% closed) are islands so blocking entry of anyone with a variety of Covid-19 flu is easier. The UK could have done the same but didn’t. Blocking still leaves the whole population’s immune systems un-challenged for this corona virus, so no natural immunity development there. In today’s super-interconnected world the virus will enter later rather than sooner.
“You’re really into getting people infected, aren’t you Emma?” Feeble.
Carefully selected?
Do you have a citation for that?
I am genuinely interested as I have read a number of papers that state that care needs to be taken as the spike protein contains the mRNA ‘code’ for hexa and heptapeptides that we naturally produce and ‘accidental’ immunity to these proteins may lead to autoimmunity.
My issue is that there doesn’t seem to have been any pushback from the vaccine makers to show that their ‘carefully selected’ mRNA sequences avoid these risks. At least I have not come across them.
– “Carefully selected?”
That’s right Steve, they just throw it together. They don’t care if, ten percent into deployment, people start keeling over causing the remaining 90% to reject their vaccine.
Steve, the disclosure situation is not great, but there are pressures on the companies to get it right, even if regulators were 100% owned and companies were 100% indemnified against liability.
Better to work on the underlying problem of the dominance of capitalism over all good sense, than to obsess about current vaccines, ‘cos it’s not like we can make the UK government adopt Australia’s covid suppression strategy, not with all these denialists about, many of them frequently promoted by the “MSM” corporate media.
Australia, New Zealand, and likely Taiwan, will turn out to be the big losers to covid ?
Their very success at keeping out the virus, must have resulted in populations that are extremely naive to the virus, and infection by the same. Should the virus evolve to a low level endemic state, rather than going away as did the Spanish Flu virus, they’ll have years of problems ahead.
Not sure that lockdowns have done all the heavy lifting there.
Only last night I read that Australian GPs have been using an ivermectin based protocol since last August https://www.bloomberg.com/press-releases/2020-08-19/ivermectin-triple-therapy-protocol-for-covid-19-to-australian-gp odd that UK GPs and A&E doctors have not used this widely if at all.
Note also that some States in India use Ivermectin in preference to hydroxychloroquine to protect frontline medics from infection as ivermectin is claimed to have no side effects as used while HCQ has side effects in 17% of medic using it as prophylaxis.
I saw it for myself; my friend was watching the international tennis from Melbourne. Suddenly the game was halted and the public cleared from the court. Everyone had to go home. Immediate lockdown of Melbourne, because nine tests had come up positive. Just positive tests; not hospital admissions or deaths.
But just five days later, restrictions were lifted again. With just nine tests to follow up, all contacts had been traced and tested, those trails of covid had been pursued to their ends. Fifty or so people had been quarantined, and Melbourne reopened again.
Jan, belatedly I send my sympathy. I have heard from a good source, but have not checked for myself, that vaccination may treat long term consequences, by stimulating several times as powerful an immune response than infection by the virus does, and thereby cleaning up virus lurking in, for instance, gut and nerve cells. I hope this is so, and I hope you recover fully in time.
I just heard through someone who was planning to visit me from the States after lockdown, that even if you have tested negative immediately before flying, and even if you have had 2x vaccinations, no matter where you fly from, i.e. a green light country: you must quarantine for 10 days and pass two more tests in that time. Thereby eradicating all significant overseas tourism whatsoever, until further notice.
Supposedly, even Prince Harry has to do this, even though he will go to the funeral prior to the 10 days.
A fascinating post. I have only recently started supporting your blog Mr Murray and enjoy it’s excellent content…but I must confess I am saddened that you would consider me immoral.
The propaganda push behind mass vaccinations is the very essence of what you would usually challenge with your skepticism and insight. Your coverage on Salmond, Assange, Cummings, the Skirpal murders etc etc is usually geared towards challenging the mainstream media …for that reason alone I know for a fact you must have considered the wide scale consensus on why we must all be vaccinated…the BBC, the media, the scientists, Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock, two of the most corrupt senior officials to ever be in government. Does it not strike you as odd? The vaccines made sense for the vulnerable. The risk of a side effect was not greater than the risk of the virus itself. But that’s where the logic stops. The concerted effort to vaccinate tens of millions of people in this way is the largest scientific experiment in human history. We simply cannot know what the impact it may have.
In any case, I am pleased you are taking a stand against domestic vaccine passports which would almost certainly be used for controlling the population in the years to come. As Naomi Klein covered in her book “Shock Doctrine” governments and those in power frequently wait in the wings for a crisis in which to instate their hidden agenda…and vaccine passports are exactly that.
I’ve enjoyed the comments here and it’s always interesting to read opposing views on the matter, thanks all
No one can be an expert on many topics. Most of us fail to be experts in any field! (Joke, in case anyone misses that).
I have found, almost without exception, that anyone I have found to be a reliable authority on one subjects has Achilles’ heels elsewhere. It’s inevitable: we have to take some things on trust, and we are constantly being systematically lied to from so many directions.
Those who have reasonable views about nutrition may seem foolish about politics or economics. Those who appreciate that Russia, China and Iran are not out to get us may well be suckers for “global warming” propaganda. And people who understand economics and finance may well turn out to be terrified of nuclear power.
The only way to form relatively reliable opinions about anything is either to find a wholly trustworthy authority or to study it yourself. You would be amazed how many experts on nutrition learned about it the hard way. Typically, a doctor or a scientist believed all the things Meg told us, yet found he kept getting fatter and sicker. Eventually, he took a holiday or a sabbatical and went to the library – where he found that the papers and research cited in support of the official nutrition advice did not come to the conclusions the authorities said they did. For example, there is no reliable evidence whatsoever that eating cholesterol increases the level in your blood; or that the level in your blood affects your health. Even Ancel Keys, originator of the “cholesterol theory” and the broader lipid hypothesis, admitted both those facts before he died.
Richard David Feinman, Tom Naughton, Paul and Shou-ching Jaminet, and Dr William Davis are all examples of scientists and doctors who found out the truth for themselves.
– “…suckers for “global warming” propaganda.”
Er, the polar icecaps are melting away pretty fast now, much faster than predicted; summer Arctic sea ice all gone in fifteen to thirty years, just by extrapolating the graphs. Just simple observation; no fancy computer models necessary. Oh, and our emissions cannot be undone, so if you’re wrong…
I think Mr Murray is being worn down. Another half-hearted effort.
This fella makes some interesting points:
https://www.deconstructingconventional.com/post/18-reason-i-won-t-be-getting-a-covid-vaccine
PS I’m not getting the jab!
Excellent link.
Many of the reasons contained therein do seem irrefutable.
I think it’s quite simple.
1. I don’t need it.
2. It hasn’t been tested, and may well be quite dangerous.
Why would I submit to danger to avoid a non-existent threat?
– “Why would I submit to danger to avoid a non-existent threat?”
Because your conspiracy theory is irrational.
Irrational – not in proportion.
By your own argument, you’re submitting to the known dangers of covid to avoid the tiny threat from vaccination. You’ve completely reversed the preponderance of evidence to rationalise your contrarian position.
Cheers for the link,
Informed & thoughtful article.
More than anything, I appreciated the tone – like a breath of fresh air,
more ‘sense’ than ‘sensationalism’.
Ah ‘you cannot disprove it therefore it must be true’.
Anyone who quotes the notorious quack Mercola has to be suspect, or desperate, and Vanden Bossche isn’t the world’s leading vaccinationist he’s a vet.
That is basically how science works – you just missed out the bit that demands every theory to be falsifiable – as long as it isn’t falsified it remains ‘true’.
We’re into Russell’s Teapot territory again.
Every hypothesis requires supporting evidence. Just saying it must be true because nobody has disproved it isn’t enough.
Still missing the point.
I think you will find that hypotheses are constructed on many different grounds but to qualify as they must be based upon things that can be tested ‘true or false’.
It’s e.g. the black swan being found that disproves the ‘all swans are white’ hypothesis.
Or, in the current pandemic it’s the emergence of immune thrombocytopenia temporally linked to at least 4 vaccines that disproves the hypothesis that they are safe.
You can argue, as the vaccine companies and the vaccine proponents do, that these are rare ‘coincidences’ but there are others, equally qualified and likely not as conflicted, who are pointing out that ‘if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is probably a duck’. It is almost certainly unethical to conduct a series of trials to pin down which part of the spike protein is likely responsible, and who might be predisposed to react, but that shouldn’t be allowed to conceal these rare effects of the vaccine from the supposed ‘informed consent’ required under the EUAs granted.
“Conceal”? They seem to be all over the news. You certainly seem to have heard of them.
??
Check out Vanden Bossche’s bio on linkedin, its open to outside viewing, and seems to show quite a few positions held where one might imagine bluff artists would quickly be discovered.
On the other hand, the bod out of New York who did the hatchet piece on Vanden Bosssche after the he released the paper alluded to in the link above, has a linkedin bio that is not available to outside view, seems to have made a living writing books that shill for the Pharma Buddies, and strangely, seems to have a thing about Christmas trees somehow contravening the part of the US Constitution that forbids an established religion.
And as for Veterinaries, it might be in order to recall that their profession reminded us all shortly after the virus hit the UK, that despite much effort there has never been a successful Corona Virus vaccine, and it may be worth a bet that such a state of affairs could well persist.
The first two paragraphs are ad hominem argument; “A looks like a good guy whereas B looks like a bad guy therefore A’s assertion is true”.
Vanden Bossche is presenting his highly extreme assertions directly to the public. With a background in science, he presumably understands why scientists should not do this (Wakefield, Pusztai etc.), and should adhere to presenting their claims in the scientific literature where appropriate expertise is available to critique them.
Vanden Bosssche also presents in a particularly seductive manner, starting with a simple and plausible (but inappropriate) analogy to antibiotic resistance, but gradually escalating above the technical knowledge of all but the most expert readers. That alone is tailored to draw in the non-technical public, but would be ludicrous in the scientific literature.
He’s also trying to promote his own highly speculative vaccine technology I think you’ll find.
So of the eighteen reasons put forward, how many did you agree/disagree with?
Matt
April 12, 2021 at 14:08
Haha “lick down”
“Great typo.
My apologies for being amused by this.”
————————————————————-
Matt I suspect there has been a significant increase in lick downs during the lock downs.
Thanks for approving a mistake, purely a fat finger syndrome, as a hilarious anecdote for the many lick downs during lock down (XR, MS Ecerards untimely death and the public reacrions to the fairy tales told by the Met, many anti lock down demonstrations) etc.
Lets hope the powers to be realise that they are trying to dance on a pin that is being whittled down by the public. Any more lick downs to whip through the new policing bill whilst clambering to hold on to the Emergency legislation will have drastic consequences.
Thanks for the link soothmother, well argued questions and a fine personal position, whilst many of us have already accepted the vaccination which is being carried out unchanged, i.e. the most unproductive, very likely Conservative voters, first.
Even when it became clear that the Kent variant attacked all ages, this prioritisation did not change, regretably.
Imho, from last September onwards all age groups, bar children, should have received vaccination, typical for the Tories to think of getting re elected with wvery measure they take.
They have failed, the massive deathtoll speaks volumns and the figures are fudged.
That they completed mortuaries before thinking of the NHS, was in recognition of the many cuts to it and the xenophobic messages spread that made staff leave. thousands of them.
Anybody voting for them should find a corner and cry for the souls lost.
I have just read the entire section, only skipping the odd very long post, and find it quite disturbing… as said lower down one would expect a more rational reaction on a forum which is usually, in appearance at least, followed by people who think a bit. There’s no point in repeating Craig’s arguments, he has presented them perfectly well.
One additional point, mentioned below too, and one that is not sufficiently considered in continental Europe, is the the absolute necessity to reduce the number of infections as quickly as possible before even more nasty variants come along – the effect of the “Kent” variant has shown just how a variant can completely change the game not only in Britain but now in France where all intensive care beds are full and the system is real danger of going under. I give this example as I am living though it, but also in other countries, due to the wildfire spread of the variant. A variant which was both more deadly and undeterred by existing vaccines would be like a horror film.
I assume that many posters here are campaigners for Scottish independence, if they are a valid cross section of the independence movement it doesn’t bode well for Scotland!
Already too late ?
The so called Kent Variety went from early entry, to top of the pops in the western world in space of about 4 months. At this time the South Africa variant seems to be accounting for some 25% of cases in France, where lockdown and curfew has been re introduced. Needless to say it cannot be contained to France, and research coming through regarding the existing vaccines, suggests they posses little efficacy against the SA mutation.
Conclusion, the SA variant will in a couple of months have taken the dominant position from the Kent variety ? And should the virus not go away in the manner that All previous pandemics have, and come next November, it’ll be back to the start line.
Can you give some evidence about the “deadly Kent strain” because the media are reporting a contrary view to yours from the Lancet today.
“The variant of the coronavirus first detected in Kent does not increase the chances of developing long Covid, serious illness or death, according to two “reassuring” studies.
The research papers, to be published today in The Lancet Infectious Diseases and The Lancet Public Health, are based on an observational study of patients in London hospitals, and analysis of symptom reports made by 37,000 people to a Covid-tracking app”
Re-read and see that I suggest that its the SA mutation, that is not ‘Deadly’ but may well have evaded much of the current Vaccines efficacy. 🙂
In other news, as most of the country remains ‘lockdown’ Jobcentres around the country have flung open their doors today – 12 April. It’s back to ‘business as usual’ for the Jobcentres. It is hard to imagine a more effective vector for a virus to spread than a Jobcentre.
Especially if they follow the ‘guidance’ on masks [never worked, never will as specified, no trial has shown any efficacy, demonstrable mechanism of bacterial pathogen harm] and 6ft social distancing [Porton Down’s CCU is the only source I can find where a separation distance was used in the examination of transmission of coronavirus and they used 30 feet] —- almost guaranteed to spread the virus.
i am in total agreement with all those who refuse to be coerced into taking an experimental medicine…there seems to be little publicity to the fact that these so called vaccines do not promise that they will provide people with immunity to the disease or indeed prevent vaccinated people from passing the disease on to others…all they promote is that the “vaccines” will possibly reduce the effects of the disease
This makes a nonsense of any vaccine certificates as all a vaccine certificate will imply is that the holder may have a less severe infection if or when they become infected
As an 80 year old with a great desire to get back to living my old productive and sociable life i propose that my health is my own concern until such time as i believe that my behaviour is putting others at risk…and of this i am not convinced to be the case
a couple or three Covid haiku
socially
we keep our distance
craving closeness
cocooned in a web of fear
shackled by obedience
silenced by compliance
masking our faces
we turn our backs and move
ever further apart
1. The vaccines are not experimental – by now tried and tested on millions of people with better than expected results.
2. Other vaccines do not guarantee immunity – polio for example
3. Getting vaccinated along with others is the best way of getting back to your “old productive and sociable life”.
Can you point me to the results analysis please?
Oh! And what were the expected tesults?
To act as a symbol to quell hysteria, thereby allowing governments to pretend that they had the correct policies. And that the coming financial bill, that will disproportionately hit most commenting here, will be a price worth paying.
Chris
The primary aim of the vaccine and primary end point of the trials have to be determined and achievable at the beginning of the trial. Trials for the SARS cov2 vaccines could not be designed to answer the question of reduced transmission. The end points for the trial were reduction in deaths and reduction in serious disrase or of clinically significant disease. These endpoints were met. However since then because of mass vaccination, data is now available to show that the vaccines do reduce the transmission of the virus.
Craig’s first sentence “Discrimination against people on the grounds of their health status is not acceptable, while the ever increasing reach of the surveillance state is pernicious.” Indeed it is.
Confirmed in this interview with Neil “lockdown” Ferguson.
“Professor Neil Ferguson has given an extraordinary interview to Tom Whipple at The Times, in which he confirms the degree to which he believes that imitating China’s lockdown policies at the start of 2020 changed the parameters of what Western societies consider acceptable. “I think people’s sense of what is possible in terms of control changed quite dramatically between January and March,” Professor Ferguson says. When SAGE observed the “innovative intervention” out of China, of locking entire communities down and not permitting them to leave their homes, they initially presumed it would not be an available option in a liberal Western democracy:
It’s a communist one party state, we said. We couldn’t get away with it in Europe, we thought… and then Italy did it. And we realised WE COULD.”
Remember the Chinese people collapsing in the street being carted off by the Hazmat suited ones.
The fools only needed masks, hand sanitiser and a one way system!
Mockingbird, instructing everyone to stay at home is neither surveillance, nor “discrimination against people on the grounds of their health status”.
So your point is what, exactly? That Neil Ferguson is some champion of the surveillance state? Ironic that, as it was Ferguson who was tailed by a pack of reporters just waiting for him to put a foot out of line, the press coming down on him like a ton of bricks for visiting his intimate partner, while Johnson flounced about shaking hands with all and sundry. Meanwhile, covid ripping through Downing Street went entirely unreported.
But then the right-wing press already had it in for Ferguson, because it was his work that insisted that eating meat from animals with a neurological disease could cause neurological disease in humans – what a bastard, denying all those Tory farmers their rightful profits! And the right-wing press would certainly rather there were no social restrictions, so Ferguson became their target again.
@Clark … My point being is Neil Ferguson stated SAGE thought they couldn’t get away with the communistic model of China
in the UK, but did it anyway. His words, not mine.
Ergo, what’s stopping them from introducing Covid Vaccine Passports which could eventually lead to more surveillance and
even a social credit rating system in future years, not unlike the Chinese model.
Yeah, they might get away with it.
And the Sun and its ilk would probably get away with blaming Ferguson for it too. “Boffins”, they’ll say (to softball the government), just like they did at Christmas.
If there was a vaccine for pregnancy,
That couldn’t guarantee you wouldn’t become pregnant,
And, you still had to wear a condom,
Would you still take it?
It really is that stupid.
But what if it lessened the symptoms of pregnancy if you did happen to fall pregnant. Would you take it then?
Kinda doesn’t follow type statement.
Erm, what kind of comparison is this? All contraceptives have a failure rate, none can guarantee success. And you might use a condom for other reasons.
A reversible single-dose fire-and-forget contraceptive is the holy grail of contraception.
CM – “The number of people dying within 28 days of a covid diagnosis is down to approximately 300 a week in the entire UK, and has been steadily falling. How much of this fall is due to vaccination and how much due to lockdown is an open question.”
I suppose what you could do is compare the figures for Sweden and the UK between March and July 2020. Sweden had some minor restrictions in place, the UK had a full lockdown. In neither case is the vaccine a factor. Using the Worldometer data, the figures to compare are on the daily deaths chart.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/
The daily deaths charts look remarkably similar in shape. Figures differ because of population sizes.
You could argue (as some do) from this comparison that lockdowns make no difference. But in fact you can’t really argue that because as the covid cultists will argue – ‘but if Sweden had locked down the number of deaths would have been lower’. And there’s no answer to that. You need a parallel universe in which Sweden-B does lock down and UK-B doesn’t lockdown in order to carry out a scientific comparison against Sweden-A and UK-A. Comparisons of US states Florida and California likewise proves nothing.
But the daily deaths charts are themselves meaningless, because the ‘within 28 days of testing positive’ raises the issue of dying with or from Covid. And the PCR testing regime is so fucked up that a positive test is meaningless – cycle thresholds, contamination, operation by out of work bar staff, two or one gene match?, etc.
Sars-Cov-2 has turned out to be a postmodern virus. Who do you want to believe the Guardian, the BBC, Bozo, Sturgeon, Whitty or the rebel alliance – Gupta, Wittkowski, Heneghan, Lee, Sikora (all those people Owen Jones hates). The looking glass is behind the clock striking 13.
– “the ‘within 28 days of testing positive’ raises the issue of dying with or from Covid”
No, because a person’s chances of dying within a specified 28 days are low, so the “with” element is negligible.
– “And the PCR testing regime is so fucked up that a positive test is meaningless”
It can’t be, or the positive test results curve couldn’t predict the diagnosed covid death curve around two weeks later, nor the demand for hospital admissions, but it consistently does; check for yourself.
The cycle thresholds issue concerns false positive results only after infection and recovery; fragments of virus result in a positive result even though the person has recovered. It does not produce false positives from people who have never been infected. It is therefore unimportant, because when infection prevalence is rising rapidly, such “post-dated” false positives can be only a small proportion of total positive results.
Despite the legal differences (the Swedish constitution precludes lockdown), population mobility in Sweden fell almost as much as in the UK.
– “Who do you want to believe the Guardian, the BBC, Bozo, Sturgeon, Whitty or the rebel alliance – Gupta, Wittkowski, Heneghan, Lee, Sikora”
I went for data and reasoning, thanks, and it turned out to be consistent with the scientific consensus.
“Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.
“Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period…
“Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way”.
– Michael Crichton, “Aliens Cause Global Warming” https://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/Crichton2003.pdf
Yeah, yeah; as I said, “I went for data and reasoning, thanks, and it turned out to be consistent with the scientific consensus”.
Crichton’s just miffed because he went against the consensus and turned out to be wrong; the icecaps are melting away. Yeah, when the consensus gets overturned, that’s a breakthrough, and its how science progresses. But between those rare events, the consensus is the best we’ve got, so don’t knock it.
Very old people needing hospital have a significant chance of death within 28 days. They also have a fairly high chance of picking up a whiff of covid around the same time, what with 40% of cases being acquired there.
Even at a couple of hundred deaths a day, in a population of 75 million, these are tiny numbers. Once it gets down to the tens, then it is minuscule.
This entire Scottish second wave of excess deaths has been on a par with the 2018 flu season, there have been double the first wave ‘covid’ deaths from the combined second and third wave in Scotland, yet the excess deaths show a completely different story – the first wave was massively significant in terms of excess deaths, the 2nd/3rd was a very bad winter, but nothing wildly extreme.
I’m glad Scottish more stringent restrictions helped. Scotland managed to drive two strains to extinction in Scotland, while they persisted in England.
Why do you disagree with the CDC who said early on (and haven’t changed their view) that only 6% died of Covid alone? – so 94% died with Covid & those pesky comorbidities.
And, coupling this with the demographic who died in the greatest numbers last spring – the ‘one foot in the gravers’ – it cannot be suggested with a straight face that these unfortunates are in a cohort of those unlikely to have died within 28 days of a positive test.
The fact that this cohort had been scared witless by HMG & SAGE and their ‘positive’ test, and isolated either at home or in care without any treatment for a ‘deadly’ disease (it would be interesting to know if ‘Covid’ treatment measures ranked anywhere in the treatments they were receiving for their comorbidities) probably didn’t help though.
The rtPCR testing was fucked up in that no attempt was made to use the test properly. The test could have been used to determine the pre-symptomatic and potentially spreaders from the recovered and not infectious [you record the ct and if above 30 retest 24 hours later to see if the ct has increased – so post-infective if now over 30 – or gone down – infection increasing ] As it is, high ct (above 30) is now acknowledged to indicate very low levels of virus or parts of dead virus and in either case a non-infectious patient.
As a result of using fucked-up testing we could never distinguish between infectious and non-infectious positives and the result was the misery of unnecessary isolation and lockdowns.
The PCR test is fine for what it’s used for. In the UK it predicts hospital demand; lockdown is timed to prevent hospital overload by watching the rise of the PCR positive curve. In Australia, PCR is used to great effect to trigger immediate but brief (days long) lockdown, and to determine the starting point for fast and efficient trace, test and quarantine.
‘One foot in the gravers’? My immunocompromised friends will be charmed by your compassion.
– “the ‘within 28 days of testing positive’ raises the issue of dying with or from Covid”
No, because a person’s chances of dying within a specified 28 days are low, so the “with” element is negligible.
It is well known that the vast majority of those who die, whether of or with, COVID19 have serious existing conditions especially if you include advanced years as a condition. So your assumption is not valid for the cohort most affected by COVID19. So in my opinion your analysis is naïve; or something
“Serious”? Try “common”.
Most of those killed had years of life expectancy ahead of them. One of a friend’s colleagues died; he was 63.
Put it this way. You’ve been dropping in on an elderly relative once a month for the last few years. They have a recurrent health niggle, but do you expect them to be dead each time you arrive at their doorstep?
I am sorry Craig, but I do not agree with your logic:
“It is selfish not to get vaccinated.”
I don’t think it is selfish not to get vaccinated with unproven experimental vaccines with unknown side effects.
You yourself are not sure if it is the vaccine or the lockdown which has reduced infections and deaths.
It is selfish to be super rich when people are literally starving and working like slaves in this so called first world country.
Millions of people have already been vaccinated, but side effects are rare.
Covid, on the other hand, is well proven to be dangerous.
These graphs look very interesting.
I wonder if there’s any data here that confirms Clark’s statements?
Even if you’re Spanish, you’ve got to feel a little sorry for the old folks in Gibraltar.
And as for Israel, it’s now a world leader.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1373333873103400962.html
Always has been a world leader, in violence against Palestinians which are not getting a jab unless they are regular workers creating Israels wealth. But they are getting more popular via their vaccine diplomacy, ‘You want some vaccines, OK….love us and say so diplomatically.’ Creeps
The idea that you can dismiss thousands of deaths and tens of thousands of serious side effects as ‘rare’ really bothers me. I understand why you do it, and it isn’t pretty or ethical. We are not numbers -yet- and each one of us who dies or is permanently disabled leaves a mourning or struggling family who may never recover.
To suggest that it is ok for some to die because, as a percentage of the herd, they are a small number is, frankly, disgusting.
And, there is very strong evidence that the rules under which the FDA granted EUAs was broken, because however wonderful these vaccines turn out to be (if they are not further beset by growing numbers of ‘coincidental’ deaths temporally related to vaccination) there were treatments that were effective and, while already safely being used for other diseases, had been noted as treatment for SARS-CoV (1) by Fauci after their failure in 2005 to create a vaccine.
Justifying the numbers dying from the vaccines by pointing out that the virus is ‘proven to be dangerous’ is without context because it is not ‘proven to be dangerous’ to everyone, just to those we might have known from what happened in Spain and Italy were the vulnerable. We have also known from the occupants of the ICUs last spring that you had to have comorbidities rather than just being ‘old’ (as I am), and from nurse’s reports the greatest numbers in ICU were the morbidly obese who had poorly controlled diabetes T2. How many of the ‘frightened to death’ cohort would not have been frightened if they knew that they didn’t bear any similarity to patients dying in ICUs and were therefore at insignificant risk – even if they had had a positive PCR test result (without being told what that meant).
– “I understand why you do it, and it isn’t pretty or ethical.”
Well you might be psychic but I’m not, so spell it out.
I’m not aware of these “thousands of deaths and tens of thousands of serious side effects”; if you have good evidence (not over-interpretation of the VAERS database etc.) then post it.
Reminder – the number needing hospital treatment is about equal to 5% of the positive tests at that time. That’s around 12 times the number that covid kills. They’re admitted to hospital because they need treatment, they are at risk from their infection, so you need to broaden your meaning of ‘vulnerable’ by a factor of 12.
It certainly seems like utter madness to have mass vaccination of the entire population of an experimental vaccine with no medium to long term safety data to back it up. Several respected experts have given plausible theories that this vaccine could be a very bad idea when the next variety of viruses turn up.
Meanwhile 2/3 of the population have no need for the vaccine. It may not stop them catching or passing on the virus, just reducing their already negligible symptoms.
“You yourself are not sure if it is the vaccine or the lockdown which has reduced infections and deaths”.
Actually, it was neither. Respiratory infections come and then they go. Over time, most pathogens become less lethal.
Measuring “infections” using PCR or LPR is meaningless, as neither of them is a reliable means of diagnosis. And the numbers of deaths are equivocal. If they have risen – and they have not risen much – it’s quite possible that the cause lay in the lockdowns themselves.
– “Measuring “infections” using PCR or LPR is meaningless, as neither of them is a reliable means of diagnosis.”
Measurement is not diagnosis; the tests are fine for population surveys.
– “it’s quite possible that the cause lay in the lockdowns themselves.”
Tripe. Look at the graphs. Hospital admissions peak around a week after infections peak, and deaths peak around a week after that. If lockdowns were responsible the deaths should follow the lockdowns, and be unrelated to hospital admissions.
Bayard,
What qualification does the world’s top Covid expert Bill Gates have?
Is Bill Gates “the world’s top Covid expert”? I never knew that.
In that case, I’ll resign myself to never going to a large public event again. I’m in an older category, more at risk, as is my wife. Prior to covid, I spent a lot of time going to classical concerts. A packed venue now is a risky place, and certification is one way of lowering that risk. I do not consider this as a loss of civil liberties so much as a long-term loss of many things that, prior to covid, made my life meaningful.
ANd before you label me as ignorant or mis-applying the data, I’m well aware what journals say about vaccine efficacy – I have a few grey cells – prior to retirement I was a mathematician – and I read papers, summaries of papers, statistics and so on.
It’s not all about death; there’s long covid and other forms of risk.
Del G, I think it will be OK, fairly soon. Vaccine acceptance has been high – enough people will be vaccinated for covid-19 to fall to a background level comparable with other routine risks. I hope so, for everyone in your circumstances.
There’s a particularly noisy minority against it. I wonder what proportion of the population they really represent? One good thing is that having a vaccine reduces your chance of death or even hospitalisation to zero. The vaccine might not be 100% effective, but even if a bunch of denialists fail to do the right thing and go around offering infection to others, it is highly unlikely to kill sane people.
On the other hand, if the level of stupidity in the population is sufficient to have large numbers of people unvaccinated, they could produce a variant that could cause real trouble.
Interesting reports out of Israel that more people who have had two doses of the Pfizer vaccine are catching the South African variant more often than the unvaccinated. It remains to be confirmed, but if it is right it is a serious concern.
Too tentative, Craig, but it’s a start. ‘Anti-vaxxer’ is up there with ‘conspiracy theorist’ as a lazy dismissal of the unwelcome.
“The media have created a straw man: a self-indulgent, anti-science, anti-vaccine caricature that the media can disparage and destroy. It has to be all or nothing: you favor forcing every child to receive every government-designated vaccine that is added to the schedule by CDC, or you hate vaccines, period. Reasonable facts and and opinions will not be allowed in this debate. Freedom to pick and choose your vaccines, when you deem they are desirable–which until recently was the norm–has become anathema. Such ideas are too dangerous.”
I am very disappointed to see the idea of declining the ‘vaccine’ to be a selfish act. Unlike every other vaccine this one has not been through clinical trials/testing and has been approved for use on an emergency basis. Since when is choosing to be prudently cautious selfish, especially as the producers have been given complete immunity from liability.
Additionally the vaccine does NOT stop someone from either contracting the virus or from passing it to another person. It only minimizes (at best) the symptoms. So in this way it is completely unlike the flu vaccine or any other vaccine. Please don’t assume I am an anti vaxxer. I have had every other vaccination but intend to sit this one out until all the appropriate testing is completed.
The vaccines used at present do reduce the transmission of the virus as well according to reports being made public in France at present. The other positive consequence of vaccination, even after the first jab, is that it reduces enormously, some say totally depending on the type of vaccine, the risk of the more serious and deadly forms of the virus, which is good for the people concerned but even more vital to free up hospital beds which are at crisis level in some countries, France, for example.
Peter: “Additionally the vaccine does NOT stop someone from either contracting the virus or from passing it to another person.“
Could you please provide your proof of this? You state this quite emphatically, so your references are surely solid.
We keep being told by the antivaxers that it was written into the ‘endpoints’ of the trial specifications. Maybe someone could cut and paste to show it isn’t true.
I am looking forward to being waved through the gate at DTRH, with my personal stance on this virus being respected rather than having to go through hoops to show I had two jabs, bar showing my vacc. card.
I think you should really have a look at the interviews with Dr Mike Yeadon in regard to the pandemic
This would be the same Dr Mike Yeadon who confidently declared that the pandemic was ‘effectively over’ back in October?
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/dec/02/blog-posting/former-pfizer-employee-wrong-coronavirus-pandemic-/
The fact check would be more convincing were it to point out that being wrong can be equally apportioned to both sides of the prediction game. I’m sure we all remember Ferguson who’s modelling was somewhat adrift, and considered that lockdown regulations which he probably had a hand in designing, did not apply to him and his squeeze when they fancied a bit of nookie. 🙂
I’m not recommending Prof Ferguson to anyone. This is about Dr Yeadon.
As I finish reading this blog post there are already 271 comments, and having read as many as I can it seems as if everything has been said. I will not post more of the same but really Craig your characterisation of anyone declining an untested half-licensed medical procedure as “immoral” really is too much. I have to give you some credit for your other observations such as the covid risk for almost everyone being very low, and for the title of your post.
@Funn3r and many others
I don’t think you are aware of just how serious this pandemic is. Far from being “over” or “under control” world-wise it is still growing rapidly according to the WHO. Another nastier variant, which becomes more likely as time goes on and/or the number of sufferers or carriers increases would make the present situation look like a bad dose of flu.
The vaccines have been tested, they are no more “experimental” than any other vaccines. If you are lucky enough to have the chance of being vaccinated, a privilege denied to most of the world’s population, it is both incredibly stupid and also, as Craig has said, immoral. Sorry but he is right on this one, irresponsible and immoral.
Something like 2% of the world has so far either had the virus or been vaccinated. That means 50 times the number of people to date are susceptible, all of which can produce variants which might not be stopped by current vaccines.
Former PM Gordon Brown is lobbying to get vaccine to the third world. Former PM Cameron was lobbying to get a personal payment of £21.8 million into his own pockets. This should tell us something about Labour Vs Conservative values.
For what it’s worth (the square root of heehaw in this case) Marjorie “Jewish space laser” Greene is also opposed to Covid passports. Greene maintains that Covid passports are “the mark of the beast” as prophesied; Book of Revelation cptr 13, vs 18.
Coming round to the conclusion that rather than being a total nut job, Greene is running a relatively sophisticated con on her clinical befuddled constituents.
Dear Vaccine Refuseniks,
Any restaurant, theatre or form of public transport has always had the right to deny entry to anyone it deems unsuitable. This could be due to their age, their state of intoxication or even just that they are not wearing a tie. It therefore seems entirely reasonable that they should be able to request proof of vaccination or a certificate declaring the bearer has legitimate MEDICAL reasons for not being vaccinated.
If you think this is discriminatory, do you also think it is unreasonable that you cannot drive unless your eyesight meets a required standard or that you cannot work with children until you have had a criminal record check?
By all means refuse a vaccination but be prepared to accept the consequences that some of your freedoms may be curtailed just as I cannot open a bank account unless I choose to reveal various personal details.
I am particularly baffled by those who claim they will not get vaccinated because pharmaceutical companies are profitable multi-national companies. Who do you think produced the electronic device on which you spend such an unhealthy proportion of your life expounding your views?
Instead of demanding your “rights”, spare a thought for your fellow citizens who have endured 14 months of curtailment and show some responsibility for communal safety.
“Dear Vaccine Refuseniks,
Any restaurant, theatre or form of public transport has always had the right to deny entry to anyone it deems unsuitable. This could be due to their age, their state of intoxication or even just that they are not wearing a tie. It therefore seems entirely reasonable that they should be able to request proof of vaccination or a certificate declaring the bearer has legitimate MEDICAL reasons for not being vaccinated.”
I like this blog for it’s lack of name calling and respectful tone. But this is one of the most stupid things ever written. Can public transport and restaurants refuse on grounds of sex, race, colour or even more pertinently disability or disfigurement?
Any establishment can put up a sign saying “No shirt/ No shoes – No service”. That’s a call by their management, not an infringement on your human rights. So with all due respect, your comment above is actually one of the most ignorant things ever written.
Sorry Glenn, I gave you the benefit of being a mid-wit above. You are actually a moron.
If you are agreeing with this statement ‘Any restaurant, theatre or form of public transport has always had the right to deny entry to anyone it deems unsuitable’ that is so historically, legally, demonstrably, incorrect then you are beyond engaging with.
No Blacks, no dogs, no Irish, no morons.
Fair enough, we all have to suffer for our principles. Some of us will have to give up the opera, the pub or the football match, some will get crucified, and others will have to give up their lives or their health.
Life’s always been a gamble, but when you opt for the needle of death, you turn it into a game of Russian roulette. The question is, do you feel lucky?
If anyone is thinking of getting the lethal injection please have a look at this:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YK0JR_lFy88Zu3rcC3L5NvL_Xr3ib6zY/view
Even I am shocked and I’ve been following it.
These people—and there are hundreds of fatalities reported on here—are young. They would never have died of covid.
What utter drivel. Tens of millions of people have been vaccinated. It doesn’t protect you from ALL forms of death, you know – just Covid. It would be miraculous indeed if nobody had died in the months following vaccination!
Page 1 – “It is everyone’s right to review the first-hand testimonies of the covid vaccine adverse reactions without censorship by the news media (or social media)”
Page 2 – “LET’S LOOK AT THE DEATHS”
Great to see commitment to such a balanced approach; we wouldn’t want to start with the total number of people considered, or anything like that.
Page 3 – Thirteen republished extracts from the corporate media; I suppose this must be the “censorship by the news media” mentioned on page 1. One of the “victims”, Moshe Gafni, isn’t even dead! Another was said to have been given a placebo but, horror! it was a meningitis vaccine! So this is just an anti-vax document.
Pages 4 to 106 – Dismiss.
– – – – – – – –
What incredible bilge people will believe if it confirms their existing prejudices.
Absolutely right. There has also been a study of anti-vac social media output which found that it was dominated by a handful of organisations that were sponsoring their own quack medicines ie wanting to peddle their lies to make a few quick bucks from the gullible.
Crispa: “… wanting to peddle their lies to make a few quick bucks from the gullible.”
From the looks of posts around here, there’ll be no shortage of customers!
Looking at the similar “Gish-galloping” style and content of the posts, as well as the slew of new and unfamiliar names, I’d say there was also a certain amount of sock-puppetry going on.
It is “immoral” not to take a vaccine? two basic questions:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/covid-vaccine-pfizer-transmission-dose-b1807964.html
glenn_UK
Note also that 12 days is not sufficient for full effect. So having 1/4 of the chance of being infectious (whether presenting with illness or not) even after 12 days is quite remarkable.
Disappointing that this piece, in common with virtually everything written about C19 in the main stream media, has nothing positive to say about treatments. Particularly those cheap generic and safe ones, such as hydroxychloroquine/zinc, Ivermectin and even VitD that have been peremptorily brushed aside by Johnson and co. This has allowed C19 to retain its ‘deadly’ status for far longer than necessary, with many lives needlessly lost. For me this raises a terrifying non-rhetorical ‘Why? that one day must be answered.
Shock horror!
Boris Johnson says today lockdowns work, not vaccinations in so many words.
Boris: “The reduction in hospitalisations, deaths and infections has NOT been achieved by the vaccination programme.
“It’s the lockdown that has been overwhelmingly important in delivering this improvement in the pandemic.”
With the help of the complicit media whether left or right leaning, the world has been bombarded with a campaign of fear mongering from January 2020.
Did this man in Wuhan really die of Covid? Is it fake news covered by all media? or were the Daily Mail and all the others trying to frighten populations worldwide about a virus which imo is not as dangerous as being portrayed by governments worldwide, media and big pharma.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7951059/Man-lies-dead-streets-coronavirus-ground-zero-Wuhan.html
Lockdowns suppress the virus. Vaccines will eventually eliminate it. What confuses you about this?
What is your evidence that vaccines will elimate the virus?
Smallpox, and so on. Deadly communicable diseases which have now been effectively eliminated.
Do you know why they don’t vaccinate people against smallpox anymore? It’s because it worked.
glenn_uk
April 13, 2021 at 16:03:
“No cure or treatment for smallpox exists. A vaccine can prevent smallpox, but the risk of the vaccine’s side effects is too high to justify routine vaccination for people at low risk of exposure to the smallpox virus…… (ACAM2000) uses a live virus that’s related to smallpox, and it can occasionally cause serious complications, such as infections affecting the heart or brain. That’s why it’s not recommended that everyone be vaccinated at this time. The potential risks of the vaccine outweigh the benefits, in the absence of an actual smallpox outbreak.”
(https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/smallpox/symptoms-causes/syc-20353027)
Although I appreciate a rhetorical flourish as much as the next person, what you say still should to be the whole truth, if you want to be taken seriously
The great Covid vaccination experiment provides a glidepath for using mRNA technology for other vaccines, including cancer, autoimmune disorders, and other infectious diseases, as well as vehicles for genetic therapies. It really does help accelerate the whole biomedical field.
Before 2020, only 12 mRNA vaccines ever made it to human trials. None were approved. Then came the coronavirus and it was imperative to provide immunity at ‘warp-speed’ and that meant reaching out to gene therapy. Scientist knew from work done for instance at Porton Down or the Ministry of Defence’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory that a ‘spike’ protein was essential if not vital and mobile strings of genetic code that contain the blueprints for proteins would realise that target.
The viral proteins these cells produce can’t infect any other cells, but they are foreign enough to trigger the body’s defense systems. They also look enough like the real virus to train the immune system to recognize SARS-CoV-2, should its owner encounter the infectious virus in the future.
I wonder if there is any connection financial or otherwise with Porton Down scientists and Big Pharma Corporatons in the West and the Wuhan Institute of Virology?
I very much doubt it.
Apart from this, you mean?
Dr Anthony Fauci backed $7.4m funding for controversial Wuhan lab blamed for causing Covid-19 by conspiracy theorists
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11507231/dr-fauci-7-4-million-funding-wuhan-lab-blamed-covid-19-conspiracy/
Fauci was forbidden by law to do such “gain of function” research in the USA, so he simply sent the money to China to have it done there.
Correct Tom and Information obtained from the US federal contracts registry reveals that the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) has funded a number of military projects performed at the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), or Porton Down, over the last decade. David Kelly (PBUH) knew Porton performed experimental respiratory infection of non-human primates (marmosets) with Anthrax, Ebola virus, Marburg virus, Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus, Western equine encephalitis virus, and Eastern equine encephalitis virus. This is of course denied.
Mark – kindly explain why you claim the vaccine is “gene therapy”. In the meantime, you might be interested (or not) in reading the truth about why it is not gene therapy:
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-latest-antivax-false-claim-mrna-vaccines-against-covid-19-are-not-vaccines-but-medical-devices-or-gene-therapy/
Accuracy matters, Mark. Truth matters.
Ha! Accuracy matters and if you understand English I do not claim the vaccine is “gene therapy” – what I have said is ‘reaching out to gene therapy.’ a medical field which focuses on a type of treatment which uses genes to treat illnesses.
Please do not tell a grand-mother to suck eggs – truth can be ethereal requiring integrity and sincerity. Thankyou
The idiom is not “telling a grand-mother [sic] to suck eggs” but “telling (more usually: teaching) a grandmother how to suck eggs”. The difference in meaning is rather large, as I know you will agree. Accuracy does indeed matter.
My own grandma is perfectly able to make up her own mind when – or indeed whether – to do the sucking. She also has a welter of tools and techniques at her disposal should the need arise. I am seldom personally involved. I perfectly accept that your grand-mother may be more indecisive, less skilful and quite possibly both.