Belarus has finally, after several months of delay, published its overall mortality figures up to March 2021, meaning for the first time we have a plausibly reliable indicator of the true impact of the pandemic in the country famous for refusing to impose even minimal measures.
Few have trusted the official Covid case and death statistics from the authoritarian country, which are implausibly low. However, the overall death statistics are generally thought to be reliable, and indeed by comparing them to neighbouring countries we can see that they are comparable, adding to the sense that they are accurate.
While the country did not impose any Covid restrictions or ‘guidance’ at all, there was some voluntary behaviour change, as mobility data shows, but it was limited compared with other places.
Alongside places like South Dakota, Florida, Sweden and Tanzania, Belarus is an important illustration of what can be expected from COVID-19 when restrictions aren’t imposed. Like those places, we see that the outcome is basically the same as similar places where restrictions are imposed (for reasons which Professor Anthony Brookes explores here).
Isn’t it time the scientists and their models caught up with the reality of what actually happens when measures aren’t implemented, rather than just what their assumptions assert should happen? With PHE yesterday claiming, once more from their modelling, that vaccines prevented an incredible 23.4 million infections in England – as though nearly half the population of England has been saved from infection by the vaccines (which there is increasing evidence do little to prevent infection anyway) – isn’t it past time the scientists made more effort to base their efforts on reality rather than on free-floating mathematical theories?
It simply isn’t the case that a whole country becomes infected if the virus is given largely free reign, as Belarus, like other no-restriction jurisdictions, shows. Even without lockdowns and vaccines the epidemic is self-limiting and comes to an end at around the same point having infected a similar number of people. Until our leaders and their advisers grasp this crucial fact about COVID-19, they will keep pursuing pointless and ineffective but deeply harmful policies.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Why oh why does this never get mentioned in any MSM news?
Because most have sold themselves to government and its advertising bribery, and are also terrifed of being “cancelled” if they don’t toe the line. A bunch of frit proprietors, editors, journalists and reporters.
The Trusted News Initiative.
Fact checked by the Ministry of Truth.
Because it doesn’t fit the narrative.
And as we all know, it’s very difficult to admit you’re wrong.
because OFGEM applied a D-Notice to them in early 2020
Because Belarus maybe?
They are all ‘on notice’ from OFCOM, restricted from printing anything negative about the ‘pandemic’. You have to hope that when the orders are lifted the floodgates will open, my guess is that the order will be lifted about a week after Doris has announced his exit from the stage.
Because the politicians and MSM believe themselves to be all-knowledgeable and infallible, but more importantly, having set themselves up on a pedestal, cannot be seen to be proven wrong. They are the very opposite of scientific.
Belarusian President Lukashenko: “It’s better to die standing than live on your knees”.
I think I can agree with him on that at any rate.
So do I. But it’s even better to live standing, which is what Belarusians are doing.
Funny, I seem to remember we once had politicians who said, and acted upon, that kind of thing. No longer.
I remember last year he suggested saunas and vodka. A very high rate of sauna use is possibly the reason for the mildness of the COVID outbreak in Finland, see some of the Medcram videos on this subject for example this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFRwnhfWXxo Not sure about the vodka but it might have merit as a mouthwash if used regularly
The vodka is just to make the sauna more fun
Vodka makes everything more fun
Lukashenko refused a large WHO bribe last year to fall in line. He refused, hence the EU orchestrated ‘colour revolution’ and smears from the BBC etc.
Alexandr Lukashenko – a president with scruples – OffGuardian (off-guardian.org)
Brilliant! Thank you very much.
The six countries ‘deaths from all causes’ chart looks a bit like a part of one of those wavy lines charts where the median 0% turns out to be pretty much the average over, say, a five year period……..
An age adjusted version would be very interesting.
It’s good that there is some real evidence for some nations on at least two continents now which demonstrates what the real enemy is – not an inanimate object, namely a virus.
Also gives weight to the very simple precept that you can’t control a virus.
“…the epidemic is self-limiting…having infected a similar number of people.”
Talking of numbers, reminded me of this which I came across a couple of days ago and I checked again prior to posting, for updates:
The infamous 233 cases.
What do all these places throughout the world have in common?
Alberta; Oregon; Singapore; Mizoram,Ind; Charleston,W.Va; Latvia; San Diego County; Allen County, Indiana; Idaho Falls; Lithuania; NSW; Alberta; Croatia; Trinidad and Tobago; Winnebago County; Jackson,Miss; Hawaii; Frankfort, KY; Tajikistan; India etc etc
They have all reported as having ‘233’ new cases at some time or other since April 2020 – some as recent as a few hours ago!
Just google Covid 19 233 new cases and it brings up the many reported news items for the different areas.
I haven’t posted the link as it is one of those long, convoluted ones that spreads across the page but included a screen shot of some of the reports.
Interesting reading.
233 new cases…MSM at its finest…
Found this earlier:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/IIUKRXWUCmIo/
Incredible, its as if they were made up! smirks.
Must be another one of those darned coincidences because they would never lie to us, would they? Wink wink, nod nod, cough cough.
that is totally weird, from the start and still doing it, they’ve stuck to 233
What’s 233 divided by 42?
Sorry, as much as I agree this is all dodgy, try the same for 234, 235, 236, etc. You find exactly the same. What I think this really shows is the absolute obsession with reporting mindlessly exact numbers, not trends and percentages.
Very much this, you can just put any number in and get something similar. All this shows is the media’s rampant obsession with covid, endlessly reporting the same nonsense day-in, day-out. The lazyest of journalism. Pathetic, how can anyone read this garbage?
Could the second peak be related to Sinopharm vaccine as well as winter?
Will HMG be taking legal action against Berooos?
“Will HMG be taking legal action against Beroos?”
For the benefit of those who may not have seen this….it’s priceless.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KvgwKX-3Gs
Beroos. Lol. And she claimed it was racist to mock her. What an Idiot
All these free countries have effectively been ‘living with Covid’ – which is the policy that we are now starting to espouse.
‘Living with Covid’ essentially means accepting that the illness is around (just like flu) and treating it properly if you do happen to catch it. However, ALL treatment protocols have been effectively banned by our authorities, who have been blinded by the promise of a vaccine, and insist that 100% vaccination is the only answer.
We will not be able to ‘live with the disease’ until the medical industry is allowed to develop effective treatments, and we should be pushing for that to happen.
Those treatments and protocols exist already, and those who use them are threatened, criticised and persecuted.
You forgot banned & cancelled
Precisely. Proof that “saving lives” isn’t part of the plan.
‘Living with Cancer’, maybe for the same reasons? Just have to ‘live with it’
Yes indeed, except that I see little evidence we are “living with covid” in much of a rational manner. The Big Lie that it was/is exceptional is still unchallenged, billions are still being spent on political theatre connected to it, and lots of restrictions are either still in place, or threatened.
So Belarus is described as an “authoritarian country” but the UK and France are not? In the UK, opposition parties’ bank accounts are closed without warning (Reform), there is heavy censorship, freedom of movement has been limited, the main media are to a considerable extent funded by government, a well-known journalist has been held without trial with long periods in solitary confinement, and the right to protest is at the discretion of the government.
Fancy swapping?
Quite possibly, when my circumstances permit. Mexico and to some extent Russia also looking interesting.
The Allied countries in World War II were not paradises, nor were the neutral countries, but most of them would have been preferable to live in compared to the Axis countries. The attraction is relative.
Yes of course it is relative. Do you really think the constraints on our liberties are worse than in Belarus or Russia? I wonder how many people on this forum would agree.
On the face of it, they are quite a lot worse yes. Are you thinking of anything specific or just the general rhetorical case made by the UK’s government-controlled media? The whole of the UK was put under damaging house arrest for months, on a medical pretext without evidence or cost-benefit analysis; that’s quite a constraint. Imagine the uproar if the things I listed above had happened in Belarus rather than the UK. Taxes are also much lower in Russia than in the UK.
The reality is this is just how it has always been. The UK is not some special country free of corruption. Belarus may have taken a different path when it comes to covid, but in many ways they are much worse off than the UK.
Oh no, the UK is a democratic country, just like the German Democratic Republic was…
Please keep in mind that it’s not just lockdown in a given country that causes disruption in basic functioning of society and excess deaths in that given country, but also lockdowns in other, neighboring countries and lockdowns around the world that cause disruption and excess deaths in that given country.
For example, it was already written how global lockdowns have disrupted global supply chains and this has caused many extra starvation deaths in 3rd world countries (more extra starvation will come in the next years and decades). So, it’s not just lockdowns in those 3rd world countries that caused excess deaths but lockdowns around the world.
Belarus and (south)eastern Europe are not 3rd world countries but are also not 1st world countries, they are somewhere in between. Lockdowns in whole of Europe and world would affect these countries (even if countries like Belarus didn’t impose lockdown).
A lot of people from eastern Europe work in western Europe and around the world (mainly US & Canada). Some of them have citizenships of those countries but many don’t and/or are just seasonal workers. When everywhere lockdowns were introduced these people lost their jobs, they didn’t get the furlough or any kind of welfare. They were also literally kicked out of these countries if they didn’t have residency.
In many of the (south)eastern Europe countries the money sent by diaspora to their families in a given year is close to the annual budgets of these countries. So if half of this money stops flowing it’s going to cause a mess.
An illustrative example. You have older and frail people living in Belarus. The pension is very small and public heath care very bad. They don’t have enough for basic medicine or ok heating in the winter (public heating is bad, private too expensive for them). So their children or grandchildren send them money which is just enough to go by. But if this money stops coming, some of these old and frail people will die, especially during cold winter.
Also the fear and panic is global, so even if Belarus or some other country didn’t lockdown many people would still be afraid. They wouldn’t go out of the house, would suffer physically and psephologically, or they wouldn’t go to the hospital in case of an emergency (even if there were empty places in public hospitals or they could afford private care).
These factors are most probably what caused those peaks of excess deaths in Belarus. I think the virus itself wouldn’t do anything in these countries. Unlike 1st world countries, people die more of more general conditions (due to lower quality of life) before they can get old and frail enough to be “finished of” by c19.
“[Uk lockdown contributed to] many extra starvation deaths in third world countries”.
And the Guardian is supporting these lockdowns? Utter sellouts!
Belarus has an unrepentant dictator crushing his political opponents by murdering them. Even Sturgeon hasn’t gone that far. Yet.
I think people look at Belarus and its lack of covid restrictions with envy, while completely forgetting everything else wrong with the country. The grass often looks greener on the other side of the fence.
The problem is expecting the same media that brought you wall-to-wall COVID propaganda to somehow be a beacon of truth when reporting on an “enemy” country. Mainstream media has been an unreliable source for foreign policy issues for many years, to some extent for ever.
How many people have our own unrepentant dictators’ so-called public health policies killed? Particularly the banning of safe and effective treatments? And the totalitarian states that these people are trying to bring in are not going to be safe places for political opponents.
Didn’t Belarus require masks?
Dunno, I was watching some Belarusian football, from last year and there seemed to be plenty of people without masks. I know Belarus has its problems, but strikes me it has some mighty powerful compensations too. August 2 last year, they had crowds watching football mask free. A few days before, our mad government pronounced restrictions on visiting people’s homes for millions of people in the North of England. The graphs above, and the effects on children reported elsewhere suggest it was pointless and harmful.
This is why Lukashenko was put on a fast track regime change op after he refused the IMF ‘loans’ to go along with the lockdown scam. He was marked for assassination as per usual with these things. Fortunately he had some assistance from Russian intelligence.
The ‘game plan’ so beloved of the CIA involved the equivalent of Venezuela’s Random Gaido Guy declared by the US to be the legitimate ruler of Venezuela. It looks like the UK government /courts are close to handing over ~£1.3 billion in gold held in London for ‘safety’ to this ‘official’ representative of the Venezuelan government. Now, that is how you rob a bank.
The Belarus equivalent is some non-entity called Tikhanovskaya who has gained a place at Stanford (unusually not Harvard) where whe will recevie full attention for her handlers.
It’s not ever going to change, sorry guys. Not until all the lockdowners grow grow a pair and stand up to the bullshit that’s being thrown at them.
When, not ever will that happen, it’s to late.