Dr. Roger Hodkinson
Part Three – A Vivisection of the Idiocy
As the title implies, I am outraged, and my reasons will become abundantly clear as you read on.
The Corona Pandemonium was grotesquely mismanaged from its very inception, as I described in the previous two articles. It was driven initially by the computer ‘modelers’ and public health nutcases, otherwise known as left-wing sociopaths, still hell bent on destroying capitalism after their failed putsch with global warming.
In Part Three I intend to dismember limb-by-limb virtually every intervention that has been so forcibly foisted on us, using a combination of (largely) common sense and (some) medical knowledge. If my rant seems excessive to sensitive eyes, I urge you to hold your venom until the end, and then compare the utterly indefensible arbitrary measures with the untimely and unnecessary deaths for so many of our loved ones, and the totally unwarranted devastation of the global economy with hundreds of millions (that’s MILLIONS by the way) of people now out of work and facing a highly uncertain future. The manipulated scale of threat and the inestimable consequences of the so-called ‘control’ measures begs for a vivisection as the beast is still alive. So here it is.
But first, a quick update on the US stats – these are the only ones that matter given the huge significance of the upcoming election there for the future of democracy as we used to know it. (An additional warning to reader: yes, I am indeed a virulent unabashed Trumper.) At the time of writing, there have been close to 100,000 US deaths attributed to COVID-19 (more about that erroneous statistic later), which is virtually identical to the number of US deaths from the 57-58 Asian ‘Flu and the 68-69 Hong Kong ‘Flu (CDC stats). This degree of carnage has already happened erratically in the past, and it was accepted then as a risk of living – oh, but not now, with the Nanny State running rampant and increasingly controlling so many aspects of our lives that were previously off-limits for Government. The ‘me’ population demands that the ‘authorities’ provide iron clad protection from every conceivable risk of ordinary everyday life. Obviously a ridiculous expectation, but beware of what you ask for! You may actually get it, and this time you most certainly did – but with ‘knobs on’ as we say in Lancashire!
Protecting those that need no protection
What was actually needed? NOTHING! I repeat NOTHING, other than what we have previously done ourselves, without the force of Government edict. Allow me to explain why.
The stats speak volumes and their significance intentionally ignored: the vast majority of deaths have occurred in the over-70 age group where risk-defining morbidities abound. Extremely few deaths have happened in the healthy working population. In Alberta, as of the date of writing, only 15 deaths out of a total of 135 have occurred under 70, and the average age for deaths attributed to COVID-19 is 82. So, ipso facto, why pray tell do we need such draconian measures imposed on the under-70s, otherwise known as the working well? Did we really need to completely shut down our already fragile economy in a fatuous attempt at saving 15 lives? Obviously not. The illogic is screaming. Do we ban cars because of road traffic deaths? Do we ban hamburgers due to obesity and coronary artery disease? Get the point yet? But wait – there’s more.
The litany of totally arbitrary idiotic ‘interventions’ includes:
- Travel bans
Trump beats his chest and proudly proclaims his travel ban from China saved an enormous number of lives (just add zeros). There I part company with him. It sounds intuitive I know, but there’s no evidence for the claim. It works politically of course to blame China for the early spread, but I strongly suspect the genie was out of the bottle before any effective international containment at the source could have been remotely successful. The volume and speed of international air traffic is such that asymptomatic infected people and those with early symptomatic infection were already flying everywhere – it was unstoppable and got onto every lemon in every grocery store before you could say Jack Robinson.
That’s not to be misinterpreted as my being an apologist for China – quite the contrary, I’m vigorously and unashamedly sinophobic. China was undoubtedly sloppy in its laboratory hygiene at their Level lV lab in Wuhan, and they certainly hid evidence of it from the international community (including their toadies at the WHO). But in my opinion those factors did not and could not have changed the consequences. So please stop blaming China – they were just doubly incompetent with lab hygiene and what they claim to be really good at: information suppression. Dumb indeed, but not intentionally malicious.
- Hand washing
Sounds obvious doesn’t it? Of course it is, but does it work? Unfortunately not. Just ask yourself: exactly how many more times a day are you washing your hands now than BC (the new epoch called Before Covid!)? Put it another way: if physicians don’t/won’t wash their hands regularly in hospitals, which is very well documented, what hope for the general population? It’s absurd to think it makes a scrap of difference, but it sure sounds good on the news. People will still pick their noses going through Wendy’s drive-thru’ as they always have.
- Masks
How the lemmings follow their leader!
Better to describe where masks could be effective: emergency personnel and relatives visiting the vulnerable. That’s it. If you’re infected and staying at home, wearing a mask is useless – the virus is everywhere in the home and family cannot be protected. Everything else in my opinion is simply window dressing. Why should everyone wear a mask if most people are not symptomatic spreaders or post infection? It’s obviously idiotic to wear a mask outside or in your car alone – yet it’s happening everywhere and totally useless. That’s besides the fact that the cheap disposable paper masks don’t fit well enough to be effective at all. Pure cosmetics, but also stigmatising for those smart enough not to wear one!
Not wearing masks has a major hidden advantage. If the majority of people are not infected, let’s encourage symptomatic people to freely spread the virus as widely as possible (except obviously to the vulnerable)! We actually want to encourage herd immunity until an effective vaccine is found. It may never be, as RNA viruses such as COVID-19 and Influenza are always mutating and ahead of the game. Infection of the working well is the very best vaccine there is. It costs nothing, builds herd immunity, and is immediately available – so logic dictates we should use it to the fullest extent possible. Sounds like heresy doesn’t it – but give me effective counter arguments!
Dr Deborah Birx of Trump’s Corona task force has quoted “scientific evidence” that masks do trap infectious droplets as justification for everyone wearing them. Of course they do – we don’t need to be lectured with obviousisms. But so what? It’s irrelevant, intended to mislead, and is besides the point for reasons I’ve stated above.
- Social distancing
During the forgotten time called BC this phrase didn’t exist. Give a useless activity a fancy name and it is more likely to be innocently followed. It’s the lemmings again. It doesn’t and can’t protect you at all – most people coughin’ ‘n sneezin’ stay home. Those breathing normally in the line up at SafeWay never did aerosolise their saliva in your face. And the plastic screens don’t work either – you can’t hear the clerk speak through it with a mask on, so naturally you speak around its edge. Brilliant! But oh so woke.
- School closures
This one takes the cake.
First off kids don’t get sick from COVID-19. Secondly any politician should be aware of the demographics of the workplace: so many working women have their kids in daycare or school, and it should have been so obvious that closing those centres would automatically mean that a large number of companies would be without key personnel effectively shutting them down. Only a minority of women so affected could work from home, which is yet another example of the Law of Unintended Consequences referred to in my second article.
In any event we want to ENCOURAGE spread, not reduce it.
- Business closures
Did we shutter businesses last year with the flu, or ANY other year? Of course not. It was idiocy to kill commerce in order to avoid killing a handful of workers – that’s not callous, it’s just harsh reality. It’s that thing called LIFE – it happens. Sadly, thousands of people die unannounced every single year from the ordinary common or garden flu.
In any case, why is it that some people could still buy marijuana but others not openly shop for what they considered essential items such as lawn seed for example? Again, Big Daddy (or the nice neighbourhood snitch) is watching, and you may be fined or even arrested for such heinous acts as wave surfing or attending a funeral. The micro-minded politicians in charge of all this should be ashamed of forcing the police to lay such ridiculous and indeed inflammatory charges. The consequences of business closures, unemployment, and lower tax revenues, not to mention suicides, will take years to recover from and totally eclipse any relatively minor public health benefit.
- Self-Isolation (another word never heard BC)
Didn’t we all do that every year with the ordinary flu? We didn’t have to be told to obey or else! We just did it, not wanting to infect our co-workers. We had chicken noodle soup with a sprinkling of Tylenol, went to bed and sweated it out, didn’t we? Of course we infected our entire family in the process, but that was good for herd immunity. So there’s no need to force us to do what we always did anyway, just as our parents did and theirs before them. Funny isn’t it that the only thing that’s at all sensible is old hat and decidedly un-woke?
- Contact Tracing
This is where it starts to get distinctly Orwellian.
There are actually plans afoot to force citizens to carry smart phones, or implanted chips, so that their every movement can be tracked for more efficient contact tracing. It’s already happening in Taiwan, but won’t fly in North America as it would rightfully be seen as a gross intrusion into our personal liberty. Civil disobedience would rapidly follow if any jurisdiction was foolish enough to try it on. Yet 300,000 ‘contact tracers’ (all in brown shirts) are already being proposed for the USA by the CDC. Remember the title of this piece: A Vivisection of Idiocy! I wasn’t kidding.
At this point it’s so important to remind the reader that we’re dealing with just another flu, albeit with a Chinese handle that makes it sound scary. We are NOT dealing with Ebola or HIV. Our leaders need to get a grip – they are the servants of the people, not heading a fascist regime.
Not surprisingly, this draconian iPhone based contact tracing concept is being actively promoted by the likes of sino-friendly Bill Gates (wonder why!).
As I said: NOTHING works for the working well. So why do it?
For a more precise expression of indignation: 135 deaths in Alberta represents a staggering 0.003% of the entire population of 4.41million! And the 15 deaths under the age of 70 represent 0.0003%, with some of those likely representing immuno-compromised people or otherwise vulnerable and in need of extra protection. And for that degree of risk we shut down an entire economy? Go figure.
Everybody was forced to drink the Jones Town KoolAid, and suffer we did. Unthinking obedience on a slippery slope backwards in time to 1984 BC. Nothing ‘flattened the curve’ – the mortality curves all have identical bell shapes in every country, with an eight-week course, including Sweden that did virtually nothing. ‘Grattis Sverige’ for boldly highlighting everyone else’s idiocy.
Protecting those that need protection
This is where that uncommon virtue called common sense kicks in.
If it’s the old and immuno-compromised that the virus picks off, then obviously that is where intense focus should have occurred. But, bizarrely, it didn’t. In fact, the Mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, intentionally sent back to nursing homes elderly patients known to be COVID-19 positive where they would kill the other inhabitants! All to “free up’’ hospital beds that were going unused. Cruel and unusual punishment indeed from a supposedly socialist Mayor. Class action suits are already lining up.
Most of the vulnerable over 80 years of age are concentrated in nursing homes – facilities that are physically well defined and into which access can be efficiently controlled. So here is my list of ‘Must Dos’ next time around:
- Access to nursing homes by everybody and everything should be vigorously controlled
- All staff should take an accurate blood test for the virus every evening, after a shift, to demonstrate a negative result before being allowed to enter the next day. The test should have a next morning result, with testing performed overnight in a local laboratory without transportation needs.
The fast point-of-care tests (similar to pregnancy tests) should not be used as they have an approximately 5% false negative rate which undermines the entire intent of really tight protection. Just ONE COVID-19 positive nurse is quite sufficient to kill many of the occupants. - Many nursing home staff are from third world countries, and many of them do not understand English well enough to read and understand infection control instructions, let alone the underlying principles. Serious ongoing education of all the nursing home staff on infection control would be vital.
- All objects and food supplies entering would need to have surface decontamination
All the occupants would be required to take a daily prophylactic once one has been identified. Contenders known to have very low risk of toxicity include:- Hydroxychloroquine
- Vitamin D – use of this immune-enhancer has been widely overlooked. Most nursing home occupants are severely deficient in this important vitamin
- All occupants would be encouraged to get vaccinated if a safe effective vaccine becomes available
- At the very first sign of potential COVID-19 infection the patient would be transferred to a hospital with trained triage staff
These measures imply very restricted contact with loved ones which is highly undesirable, especially for a likely two-to-three-month period. Given modern communication technology, there should be elegant ways to overcome this with readily accessed Skype/Facetime video between the family members. Family could even visit inside the nursing home if they could show a negative COVID-19 test from the day before, performed by an accurate method.
So in summary, my position is this: on a mass population basis, it is supremely idiotic to try and protect those who are not going to die, with success totally unachievable. What is immensely logical is to implement effective quarantine measures for the vulnerable in nursing homes. It is also a heck of a lot less expensive and does not result in economic shutdown with its many unintended consequences. Doesn’t all that make a lot of sense? I mean common sense!
The ‘re-opening nonsense (another word from BC)
Businesses were only forced to close because of the mass hysteria generated by hugely exaggerated statistical predictions from clairvoyants without a shred of common sense, ably abetted by Public ‘Health’ Officers who dutifully fell in line. Politicians are now backed into a corner of their own making, and cannot allow everything to open up immediately as it would undercut the rationale for their massive overreaction in the first place, and put the idiocy of it all in plain sight.
ALL businesses, schools, daycares, etc. should re-open TOMORROW with NO restrictions whatsoever! There is no evidence that there will be a menacing ‘second wave’ – again fear mongering by fortune tellers who have been wrong so many times already.
Not to ‘Open’ immediately is preposterous, and makes an already bad situation considerably worse. Businesses are going bankrupt by the thousands as I write this, taking with them the jobs and taxes generated by their employees. Suicides in California apparently already exceed so-called COVID-19 deaths.
The ‘New Normal’ idiocy
Give me a break.
It’s just another flu with a funny name. We should all get back to the old BC ‘normal’ immediately, but also better prepare for the next ‘Big One’ with enhanced stockpiles of protective gear for front-line workers and substantially better testing accuracy and availability.
This whole idiotic experience, the greatest mass hysteria since the 17th century Dutch tulip bubble, has resulted however in additional realisations that should be very positive:
- The obvious brewing confrontation with China that previous US administrations chose to ignore is now front and centre US politics. It all started with the belated realisation of how dependent we are on pharmaceuticals made in China, but will expand dramatically to the repatriation of much US manufacturing that was outsourced to China. It could be an example of the ‘Butterfly Effect’ as previously described.
- The unavoidable start of a new Cold War with China has been accelerated before China planned it. We should take advantage of this new window of opportunity to defeat China economically, before its growing economic strength gives it the upper hand and the West suffers the predictable consequences.
We defeated the Nazis, Japan, Russia and Islamo-terrorism – and we can bring China, our emerging new foe, to its knees too. But timing is everything – and the window is NOW.
- Well-founded distrust of so-called experts in ‘Modelling’ and Public Health, and more reliance on good old Common Sense.
- The mortality stats themselves are totally suspect. They have been artificially inflated/deflated in different countries for different reasons – such as dying ‘with’ COVID-19, instead of ‘due to’ COVID-19. And then there was the financial incentive for US hospitals to code any death as due to COVID-19 because they were paid more! There needs to be much more rigour in how mortality stats are reported.
- No protection of any kind is needed for the working well. Attempting to do so will fail and dramatically reduce herd immunity. Actually encouraging transmission to enhance herd immunity is the best vaccine we have to stop COVID-19 in its tracks. Protecting the vulnerable should have been the entire focus. The global approach was exactly the opposite of what was obviously needed.
Finally, one more time: Knock, Knock – it’s just another bad flu! Remember that next time they threaten to shut down our economy for a 0.0003% risk of dying for the working well!
That risk translates into ONE in 300,000! Calling it all idiocy is understated; it’s actually lunacy.
This article was originally written for the University of Regina School of Public Policy on May 24th. The author was told it would be published if he toned it down. He refused.
Donate
We depend on your donations to keep this site going. Please give what you can.
Donate TodayComment on this Article
You’ll need to set up an account to comment if you don’t already have one. We ask for a minimum donation of £5 if you'd like to make a comment or post in our Forums.
Sign UpLatest News
Next PostLatest News