In January of last year, three economists – Jonas Herby, Lars Jonung and Steve H. Hanke – published a working paper looking at the effects of lockdowns – specifically at whether they reduced COVID-19 mortality. They concluded “that lockdowns in the spring of 2020 had little to no effect on COVID-19 mortality” – heresy, in other words, and it wasn’t long before the gate-keepers of scientific orthodoxy and their outriders in the mainstream media (aka ‘fact checkers’) set about destroying their paper. In the final version of their working paper, published this month in the Johns Hopkins University series Studies in Applied Economics, they’ve included an Appendix in which they describe this process. It’s quite the eye-opener. Below, we’ve republished it in full.
The Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise, which one of us (Hanke) founded and co-directs, published “A Systematic Literature Review and Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Lockdowns on COVID-19 Mortality” in its Studies in Applied Economics working paper series on January 21st, 2022. The working paper’s findings – that lockdowns had little to no public health effects measured by mortality – and its policy conclusions – that lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected out of hand – attracted considerable attention in the media, in the White House and halls of the U.S. Congress, among public health experts, and within the chattering classes around the world.
But, it was the strong endorsement of Dr. Marty Makary, a distinguished Professor of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, during his February 2nd appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight that set off a media firestorm. Indeed, on February 3rd, the Science Media Centre in London issued a press release, with statements by Prof. Neil Ferguson, Dr. Seth Flaxman, Prof. Samir Bhatt – all affiliated with Imperial College London and authors of two of the studies (Ferguson et al. (2020) and Flaxman et al. (2020)), we implicitly criticised – and Prof. David Paton (Nottingham University Business School). The release contained several criticisms of our working paper from the Imperial College team, many of which were unscientific or clearly flawed. Those were authored by Prof. Ferguson, Dr. Flaxman, and Prof. Bhatt. The press release also contained positive comments by Prof. Paton.
The accompanying Figure 20 denotes five of the most scientific criticisms raised in Science Media Centre as well as five criticisms raised by follow-up ‘fact checkers’. Although we believe that the criticisms are with little or no merit, we are not going to engage in a critique of them in this Appendix, as the relevant criticisms are dealt with, either directly or indirectly, in the text of this working paper. Our purpose is to illustrate how biased and politicised the media was when it came to its reportage of our working paper.
Snopes, which advertises itself as a “fact-checking” website, was quick to jump on the bandwagon. A few hours after the Science Media Centre press release, Snopes published a report that contained eight criticisms. Of those, five were lifted from the Science Media Centre press release. And three new but irrelevant “criticisms” were added, see Figure 20.
On February 8th, Foreign Policy published a critique. It copied three of the Science Media Centre’s criticisms and two of the new ones added by Snopes. In short, Foreign Policy’s article presented nothing new.
Then, USA Today entered the picture on February 18th. The fact checkers at USA Today offered seven criticisms – four copied from the Science Media Centre and three from Snopes.
On March 8, FactCheck presented ten criticisms. They included six from the Science Media Centre (including all five that we identified in Figure 20), two from Snopes, and two new confused and misleading criticisms, see Figure 20.
There was, of course, a great deal of reportage about our working paper that appeared in the early February-April 2022 period. This material was highly repetitive, echoing material presented on February 3rd in either the Science Media Centre press release or the Snopes report. There were several similar reports, but to avoid repetition ourselves, we limit our review to the five reports contained in Figure 20.
The striking feature of the media flow is its unoriginality. Indeed, there is little evidence that the post-Science Media Centre press release authors even engaged in basic “primary” reading of our text, let alone any “critical” reading of the text. What is evident is what Martin Heidegger identified in his 1927 magnum opus Being and Time as “idle talk” (“Gerede”). This is inauthentic discourse, simply adopting and circulating others’ opinions about something without ever engaging in even reading a primary text.
If that was not bad enough, the post-Science Media Centre critiques are clearly biased as they all exclude any mention of Prof. Paton’s favorable appraisals of our working paper. For example, Prof. Paton made the following four points in Science Media Centre (2022):
- “Both parts of the paper (systematic review and the meta analysis) make a significant contribution to our understanding of lockdown effects.”
- “Key to a systematic review like this are the sets of search & exclusion criteria. The paper is very transparent about this which is good. They focus on difference-in-difference empirical studies. i.e. they look at papers which compare the impact of an intervention on mortality by looking before & after, but relative to other areas which did not have the intervention. As a result, modelling studies (like the well-known Flaxman Nature paper) are excluded. That is not controversial.”
- “[The result] is pretty consistent with other, non-systematic reviews (e.g. Herby & Allen) which is reassuring. It is also consistent with the (few) studies which look at the impact on overall excess mortality.”
- “More marginal in my view is their exclusion of synthetic control method (SCM) papers. Some of these papers find a significant impact of NPIs on mortality so including them might have led to somewhat higher average mortality effects. The paper gives a robust defence of their exclusion, but I think you would get people on both sides of that debate.”
As illustrated in Figure 21, none of these positive comments saw the light of day in the “fact checking” that followed the Science Media Centre’s press release on February 3rd. That’s because the new cottage industry called “fact checking” has arguably become highly politicized. As a result, there is not much fact checking, but rather opinions about whether the so-called fact checkers agreed or disagreed with the policy implications or conclusions of what they are supposed to be fact checking. So, for the most part, fact checkers were not engaged in fact checking, but were engaged in publishing opinion and narrative. By hiding behind the shroud of ‘facts’ and ‘fact-checking’, they have attempted to cast doubt, in our case, via innuendo.
In closing this Appendix, we would like to indicate that we received extensive private reviews and comments on our working paper. After all, that’s the purpose of publishing working papers. Our professional correspondents did engage in a serious primary reading of our working paper and made many useful comments and suggestions. Most of their names appear in our thank-you note following the abstract.
We engaged in a thorough review and revision of our January 21st, 2022 working paper. We can report that one error of commission was found in the original. It was not detected by any fact checkers or by those we corresponded with, but by us. The error was a computational error that involved logarithms. It was ‘small’ and did not materially affect our results.
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I’m setting up as a critic of scientific papers.
My scientific background consists of an O level in physics-with-chemistry, fifty years ago. That makes me an expert.
My criticism of all scientific papers I don’t agree with is to read the abstract, then jam my fingers in my ears and shout la-la-la.
I want a sinecure at Imperial College, please.
You read the abstract? You have no place at Imperial College.
Exacly don’t actually read the content create a “Model” of the content, and if the author is not using the correct pronouns lock them out of grants.
I have to agree, FL.
Moreover, Annie has a track record of (and I blush to say it) acute and critical intelligence. You would never be able to trust her.
Not in the Ferguson class, I’m afraid.
Grossly over qualified for Imperial!!
you might try applying for the same at the local infant school.
Unless one claims that Piltdown man is real and living in Birmingham today, having recently left the touring lineup of Deep Purple, one has no place at Imperial College.
Roughly around 1685 onwards a period in human societal develepment commenced in the Western World, it is reffered to as the enlightenment, science led the way dispelling millenia of superstitioue belief.
“The Enlightenment, sometimes called the ‘Age of Enlightenment’, was a late 17th- and 18th-century intellectual movement emphasizing reason, individualism, and skepticism”.
Now science appears to have assumed the mantle of religions the enlightenment challenged.
Groupthink, refusal to debate, persecution and silencing of critics, example, “denier”.
If science does no tolerate debate is it not science it is belief.
We now appear to be facing an “endarkenment”,
Sinister.
Before printing only the very wealthy kings and the church were able to spread their views through hand written books. Then, when printing came along, it allowed a new class of people to express a view to a wide audience. Relatively suddenly, people got their own bibles and started to see for themselves what it said, started to have views on what it said and started to print views that the bible and not the pope should be the prime authority in Christianity. Likewise, middle class people started to read and publish books on science, engineering, betony, etc. etc.That is what led to the religious, politician and scientific revolutions.
But, it was not all good. Some people wrote books on the pseudo-science subject of “witches” in which they made up all kinds of rubbish, taking folk beliefs about healing and fabricating rubbish about how witches could control the climate and not least on the how to torture people to get them to confess to being witches.
This new information revolution produced a lot of good, but it also created extreme delusions and caused some appalling atrocities.
Step forward to the late 19th & early 20th century … the rise of cheap newspapers, books and latterly radio & TV. Suddenly the lower classes got a voice ..suddenly we saw a rise of “socialism”, a demand for universal franchise and education. There were dramatic changes, but that new information revolution didn’t all go well. In Germany the National Socialists developed a way to bombard the Germans with messages of hatred against the Jews and to stir them (and themselves) into the delusional belief in their own superiority. A similar use of propaganda through the new media led to the delusional five year plans of communists that killed so many as well as Pol Pot.
Step forward to the development of the Internet … a great deal of benefit has been created … but likewise, we are now seeing the rise of delusional propaganda and hate filled attacks against the non-conformists.
Like the Spanish inquisition’s attempt to put the revolution in religion created by printing back in its box, we are now seeing modern inquisitions trying to censor the internet, we are now seeing a spate of witch hunts against any who dare oppose the delusional thinking in climate, Covid, etc.
Betony?
It’s a wild flower.
Interesting points and I broadly agree, although you make the common mistake of assuming the Spanish Inquisition was a primitive process – originally, it required higher standards of evidence than the state courts (to such an extent, that criminals would request to be judged by the Inquisition!).
People often don’t realise that torture was routinely used to extract confessions by state justice systems throughout Europe.
In Germany, there was first the anti-enlightenment of Kant, Hegel, Marx etc.
Following from this, especially with Kant being the father of nihilism, National Socialism and Communism followed. Those two are unbeatable as examples of nihilism.
You reminded me of something there Mike.
Consider Marshall Mcluhan’s famous essay: ‘The Medium is the message’
https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/mcluhan.mediummessage.pdf
After you absorb that essay, you will notice that the parasite class didn’t study Mcluhan when they pushed the notion that the internet and social media would unite and “bring the world together”. In fact, the response has been the opposite, and the reaction of the elites has been to double down on the “content” (dominate the conversation), which, as Mcluhan points out, is a futile.
A few years ago, I was reading an academic paper about the birth and introduction of the Gutenberg printing press which posited that within about ~70 years of its introduction, to any place in the world, there has been a revolution. Two of the examples I remember were the Reformation & American Revolution. In the American Revolution the regions with the most printing presses were the most rebellious. Canada had practically none and there were very few in the Southern States. Conventional, linear thinkers, would posit that the plethora of printing presses allowed the dissenters to “get the message out” but Mcluhan asserts this is incorrect. (sorry couldn’t find the paper to link)
If global elites cannot control communication technology, the next best thing is to try to dominate the conversation, through a fear campaign and a call for global unity (covid, climate change, terrorism, whatever)I wonder what Marshall Mcluhan would make of the internet, the push for biometric digital IDs as a requirement for access, the push to cancel people, and/or label anyone with a counter gov/narrative position as a ‘domestic terrorist’ with ‘hate speech’ and other laws so nebulous anyone could fall foul one day, all leading to a social credit system: Lin Jinyue, lead designer of China’s social credit system, extolls its value and his hope for worldwide adoption: “If you had the social credit system, there would never have been the Yellow Vests, we would have detected that before they acted.”
https://brandnewtube.com/watch/take-away-their-freedoms-take-away-their-homes_MvS2rHPhYGrLSDj.html
Mcluhan mite say that all of the corrective measures (really content regulation) I mentioned, is an effort to put the internet genie back in the bottle. While that may work for a while, he would posit that ultimately the medium will prevail. Ultimately, all of the content regulation is a tacit admission of the content’s veracity.
What is interesting about Mcluhan’s lens is that he makes the assumption that people have not changed in thousands of years. There have always been liberals and conservatives living together and the complaints people were making back in 1776 are the same as people are making now. So, if people are the same, then the only variable left is how they communicate (the medium).
Before the internet, you may have had no idea that your neighbors believed in some ideology that you disagreed with. But now that everyone can tweet and blog, you know who believes in what. The internet is like providing everyone with their own personal printing press.
The ironic thing is is that your community has not changed at all, but what has changed is that you now know how your neighbors think. So, with this discovery, your community or nation, goes from harmonious to acrimonious.
I don’t know where this going or how it will end, but I think Mcluhan’s lens may be of use in deciphering the outcome, it would be interesting to get a media savvy academic type chap to explore this IMO.
I have heard these times referred to as the Deenlightenment, I think both words fit exactly with what we are living through
Excellent points. The ‘endarkenment’ actually began in the mid 19th century with Charles Darwin’s absolutist evolutionary theories and intolerant political agenda, one of whose proponents boasted about ‘sharpening his beak and claws’ to deal with any opposition.
Not surprising when a central plank of Darwin’s hypothesis was ‘survival of the fittest,’ in this case being applied to science, any valid version of which is if course based on ‘survival of the factest’.
A whole series of atheistic pseudo-sciences ensued – including eugenics, racism, marxism (Karl Marx stated that Darwin had provided him with ‘proof’ that violent struggle was the basis of all human history) and environmentalism (or Darwinian nature worship, with anthropogenic ‘Climate Change’ being the main current political battering ram, and the ultra-health approach of Coronavirus lockdowns etc representing a subset) all of which operate via tyrannical dogmatism rather than scientific empiricism.
And, as a quick glance at the history books plus contemporary scene show, ones which have proven to be catastrophically harmful for humanity.
A new spiritual Enlightenment – a revival of genuine open-minded and humanitarian empirical science coupled with a rejection of the social-Darwinian ‘survival of the fittest’ concept – is desperately needed.
“Survival of the luckiest” fits the facts and should be the go-to theory.
“Survival of the fittest” was always wishful thinking.
The harder i work, the luckier i get.
On the contrary, Darwin had no political agenda and his conclusions were drawn from observation of reality.
By contrast, Marx drew his conclusions from his imagination.
Your attack on Darwin and his actual science is as anti-enlightenment as it is possible to be.
BTW, ‘Social Darwinism’ comes from Hegel, not Darwin.
Yes, although what he meant by that was ‘survival of the most appropriately adapted’, not literally the fittest or strongest.
In certain circumstances it would pay to be lazy or less strong.
I’ve tried that argument with Mrs Dee. Turns out she’s not a Darwinist.
As Fredy Perlman put it so well, ever since Charlemagne declared he was the Holy Roman Emperor everything in “the West” has been a lie.
That includes “science”. What needs to be remembered is it came out of the all-male Royal Society and the all-male Cambridge University, especially Trinity College. (I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to find out where the word “scientist” comes from. You may well be surprised at how recent it is.) “Scientist” types didn’t have and still haven’t got the sheerest f*cking clue about how to speak to somebody at a bus stop, let alone about the cosmos. Sure, some of them know how to solve intricate problems or play chess at a high level. The successful ones all know how to hobnob, crawl, gang up, etc. Big f*cking deal. They are like insects. They know where they can shove any theory of the universe, or of society, or of human evolution, based on that kind of fly-by-night, venal, small-minded cr*p.
Seriously, did Archimedes not employ reason when he designed stuff? Or is “modern western reason” incomparably and ineffably more divine than ol’ Archie’s?
The ideology that asserts there was an epistemological break to end all epistemological breaks at the time of the “Renaissance”, the “Enlightenment”, or the “Scientific Revolution”, is absolute c*ck. It is risible. I don’t care how many stupid idiots stand up straight and mutter at their gatherings and in their journals in the lingo of their clique.
All invention tends to come from males. Females have a minimal impact on science, engineering and invention generally. As Camille Paglia puts it, if women had been in charge of civilisation we’d still be living in mud huts
But they’d have the best curtains and wall paints.
And shelves with lots of little glass animals.
There must be change, then!
We might be having a much nicer time if we were living in mud huts anyway. Most houses in a country like Britain are a huge waste. We could all be living in sturdy sheds with some decent insulation. The reason we aren’t is all to do with class, imposed by planning law and moneylenders and the controllers of opinion.
There’s no known case of a bonobo killing another bonobo. There are many cases of chimpanzees killing other chimpanzees. Bonobo society is matriarchal; chimp society, patriarchal.
Who wants a society based on “invention”, itself based on an understanding of the relationships between THINGS and of the structure and properties of THINGS?
The revolution when it comes will mostly be brought about by women. One day women are going to have an enormous screaming-fit freakout against “digital society”. I’ll be with them. Humanity depends on this. This is our only hope.
We are living through a huge attack on women that goes beyond the holocaust against so-called “witches”… This is the meaning of the “trans” stuff: it essentially says it’s meaningless to be a woman, that women don’t exist, that respect for women should be “cancelled”.
If we continue on our path, especially the people we are importing, the last thing women will have to worry about is transgenderism. They’ll be back in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant.
Invention doesn’t imply “science”, though. Invention is helped a lot by dreaming, whether in engineering (Elias Howe’s sewing-machine) or in music etc. (Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner). Ditto in physical theory, e.g. with the benzene ring (Kekule).
Some male-dominated cultures have been very scared of women dreaming. (This is highly on-topic for this thread, given the title and image!
Correct, in that the dominance of mediaeval superstition masquerading as science is due to the revival of mediaevalist philosophy.
Man’s mind, to this philosophy, is the enemy.
“Endarkenment” – I’m stealing that.
According to the Institute of Mathematics the British modellers were roughly correct. I wonder how many other learned societies are denying reality.
The model may not have been “wrong” but many of the assumptions included and parameters used were wrong and the end result entirely without merit.
if your error bars cover the whole number line (see vCJD drivel) you can never be wrong.
The SARS2 models were totally useless as even the most cursory examination showed them to be badly written (nondeterministic) with badly ordered assumptions.
They correctly extrapolated false premises into absurd, apocalyptic fantasy, apparently.
Royal Society of Chemistry for another. Bearing in mind Kary Mullis was ‘one of ours’, a shame they unquestionably re-iterated the PCR as a diagnostic tool & just generally the government b-s as ‘the science’. Not one reference back to HIV / swine flu.
Now it’s the climate crap as a fully resolved scientific fact. Along with as much diversity rubbish as the BBC.
Let’s face it, the establishment – government, media, Big Tech, industrial corporates – were all invested in the Covid scam, each for their own reasons.
They will do everything in their considerable power to censor the truth.
Fact is though, there’s more of us than them.
Keep fighting.
and what an opportunity covid created. Nature abhors a vacuum; unfilled spaces go against the laws of nature and physics. Every space needs to be filled with something.
There is no reason to keep these lowlifes in place. They serve no purpose, other than to maintain their power via terrorism and social engineering, whereby they seek to dumb down the population so they are disarmed when it comes to analysing their crimes. It is our job to spread the truth far and wide, with the fact that our “Establishment” is little more than a bunch of piece of dirt criminals, liars and terrorists, central to the message, who have no values and who think shitting on people for personal gain is ok. It isnt, and these scumbags need to be got rid of.
Back in the day, there was another name for fact checkers. They were called journalists. Modern day fact checkers are simply spin doctors. They get paid to distort the truth. What a job eh!
Who fact checks the fact checkers?
a war is being thought, behind the scenes and out of sight, to promote a narrative of consensus to particular viewpoints.
when a lefty rag prints something as truth and references external fact checkers we should be able to trust it, but we can’t when those fact checkers are following the same agenda and promoting their combined narrative.
this all started with Blair, he installed his 5th column in the uk and looks like it’s also present across the western world.
Blair wasn’t the instigator. He was just the conduit. Acting as a Prime Minister while they put their people in place out of sight. He was the template for most western leaders now in place. A total nonentity willing to say or do anything to secure his place. There is also the hint of a murky private life we sense from many of the others too.
If you read Peter Hitchens, sceptical of Blair from the mid-nineties, he recounts his own experience of his early adoption of Marxism, then his inevitable awareness it was all fantasy bollocks by his late twenties. As he says, many of his Oxford contemporaries didn’t outgrow it. That group then went on to occupy key positions in the civil service, intelligence services and the media. Hitchens strongly implies he knows named individuals with whom he mixed in his youth who made it to these exalted positions. He is blunt in his analysis; they never shook off the religious belief in reshaping human beings to something more pleasing. He also understands their absolute hatred for Britain and the West generally, especially the role of Christianity.
How else can we explain the insanity of multiculturalism, destined everywhere to trigger violent conflict? The promotion of homosexuality, understood through history as deviant behaviour that damned the participants to a lifetime of hedonism? Or the destruction of the family, the absolute bedrock of any society?
I do think the Marxists of the 60s and 70s are the architects of all that we see around us. It is a cultural war, and we are losing.
Hitchens is still a Marxist to this day, he hates America, he opposes capitalism, he is for socialism that he pretends isn’t socialism and he especially despises Ayn Rand, his pig-ignorant fake review of her is far worse than that done by Whittaker Chambers, the Communist spy, in the fifties.
Hitchens is a nihilist, for nothing in particular. He waits to see the way the prevailing wind blows and says the opposite.
I have often wondered why there is only one monopolies commission.
Removing the monopoly held by The Monopolies Commission was one of the policies of “The Monster Raving Loony Party” in the days of the late David (Screaming Lord) Sutch. Such a shame that there are so few politicians of his calibre nowadays.
Definition of a Fact Checker: Someone telling you what to think.
Do your own research; reach your own conclusions.
Fact checking in its modern guise is designed to offer reassurance to the shallow. The kind of people who hate thinking are comfortable outsourcing it to others. This gives the average social media consumer a degree of reassurance with things they’d normally have to confront and think through for themselves. The recent jabs are an obvious example. No rational person would touch them. But that meant coming to the conclusion independently, and withstanding social pressure. Both are uncomfortable to many.
Our enemies understand human psychology better than most. Fact checking is a roaring success. It works on the masses, which is all it needs to do. Expect much more in future. I suspect it will be a key part of the push for the various “Online Harms” bills now being pushed by every Western country. The fact checker outlets will be used to ease the transition to a full spectrum censorship panopticon. And the masses will feel absolutely great about it
Quite often the only fact check of the fact check needed is the notion of common sense.
sadly they’ve been removing common sense from education for decades. So the next generation are taught to trust whatever the authorities tell them rather than seeing for themselves.
The fact checkers remind me of the folk who want to insist that you recognise their chosen gender, use their preferred pronouns and stop saying that women don’t have penises.
‘I’m a fact checker because I say so’ seems to be the order of the day.
A great article but sadly not remotely shocking.
This is how science has been done for years now, way before the ‘pandemic’.
If you question the ‘consensus’ and the ‘settled science’ they will come for you and do everything in their power to dis-credit you.
The only voice they want heard is that of those with a paucity of proof but an abundance of belief.
They cease to be scientists and become political activists.
Robust stuff!
For me, the wider key point here is that you cannot trust the institutions and individuals of the established orthodoxy in any area that touches on elite dogmas – in our society these are usually referred to as the political correctness issues: sex, race, to a lesser extent religion, and on the occasional particular issues that spring up – or are made to spring up – for various reasons: covid, the Ukraine etc.
On these issues people, even (especially) respectable people, and the institutions they run will twist truth beyond the breaking point to avoid associating themselves with heresy,and to demonstrate their hostility to it by attacking it as fiercely as they can, with little regard to truth or honesty or compliance with norms of decent treatment.
On race, on sex, on covid, on Ukraine – raise your instinctive questioning of orthodox science and opinion to especially high levels, and especially reserve judgement on any arguments attacking heretical ideas.
Basically, what “everybody knows” isn’t worth a jot.
But, as Michael Caine purportedly insists: ‘Not a lot of people know that’.
This is how it works these days. Governments and NGO’s decide what policies they want, then they fund – directly or indirectly – academics to undertake studies and research with pre-drawn conclusions. Studies are published, government reacts, ‘experts’ are wheeled out to call for the policy, MSM report that policy is endorsed by experts, Government implements their policy.
…agreed..and sadly none of it to make the lives of ordinary people any better, this is what I have a hard time with when I see so many people going along with ‘whatever the new thing’ is..
Indeed – and on the rare occasions that the government conducts public consultations (eg, on HS2) and actually finds out what the public wants, excuses are rolled out, and the results are conveniently ignored.
…another home goal? Anything that I read that’s been ‘fact checked’ I immediately mistrust. As I’m happy to do my own research this isn’t a problem…but I now know many people who’s trust in Government, science and medicine has been broken over the course of the last two years+, my own sister and best friend both refusing the flu jab now, which they have taken in the past…similarly last winter the NHS saw flu vaccine uptake in staff fall from over 50% to less than 29%….just a small example, and probably a minority…but I suspect the minority that has ‘woken up’ is bigger than they think.
Fact-checkers are a recent invention. Their jobs are non-jobs. It is my responsibility to check / confirm the veracity of anything I consume.
Articles in MSM are no different but as an industry has appeared from nowhere telling me what to think I believe I had a responsibility when these leeches appeared to check their work. My conclusions – fact checkers push opinions as facts, fail to check sources, rarely present counter evidence, tend to write and argue poorly and universally push a mainstream agenda.
I have done my research. Fact-checkers do not check facts they are simply promoted as a second line of support for the mainstream propoganda outlets. In short, not worth the time of day.
The fact that the population of Sweden has remained virtually unchanged over the last 26 months is enough testament to the pointlessness of lockdowns, masks et al.
You don’t even have to go that far. Just compare the figures for England with those of the looneyceltic fringes, with their ersatz Stalins enforcing gulag regulations. Wales, Scotistan and Northern Ireland had either the same, or worse, outcomes.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-p-scores-average-baseline?tab=table&country=GTM~PRT~GBR~DEU~FRA~GRC~ISR~SWE~ITA~USA~RUS~NZL~AUS
it’s not moved a bit in England and Wales…
But scotchland is bad.
But only certain, more densely-populated parts of scotchland.
(Not that many of the mask-wearers throughout the hinterland seem to have noticed that.)
Wouldn’t it be nice if the actual names and qualifications of these fact checkers were published when they publish their criticisms. You know, just like the names and sources at the end of any scientific paper.
When I did look in to the backgrounds of some of these organisations they tended to have links to Billy and co even if only remotely. Also, many are staffed by recent graduates with pointless degrees.
It’s a pointless industry providing non jobs.
Does Imperial really have no idea of the damage that fornicating ferguson is having on their college? I know two sets of parents who have told their offspring they’ll support them to go to uni if needed for their career choice but not if they choose Oxbridge, Bristol or Imperial.
Insane. They could be studying Eng Lit.
Yes these institutions have unveiled themselves as tools of the criminals. They are part of an organised crime and brainwashing network, nothing to do with education or improving the world.
I sense you’ll find that the funds that ICL stands to lose through its possible failure to attract a few undergraduate students will be insigniifcant in the greater scheme of things, e.g. the income that they receive for research commissioned by various governments, NGOs etc. At times, it almost explains why many universities and academics seem to regard the presence of undergraduates as an unwanted inconvenience…
Extraordinary isn’t it?
You would almost think that the entire Mass Media and our Government, all the Official Authorities and all our Institutions were involved in a massive ‘conspiracy’ wouldn’t you?
But then wouldn’t that just be ridiculous?
No top-down conspiracy, all carried out in the open and with a large majority of the UK population fully supporting the illiberal coronavirus measures such as lockdowns and mask mandates.
This being a consequence of the near universal acceptance of the environmentalist religion and its ultra-health sub-set.
The problem is ideological, not political or conspiratorial.
And it is certainly not one of any core weakness in the multi-party liberal democracy model as you seem to be implying. Quite the contrary, the freedom of speech which still exists in the UK (though currently unduly curtailed at the margins) coupled with party-forming and voting rights allows us the full opportunity to challenge the government on any policies and agendas, including those relating to public health.
As the articles and comments on this site show.
And unlike in tyrannical and oppressive systems such as those currently in place in Russia and China (amongst others).
No Daily Sceptic there.
You make some very good points here. Thanks for posting.
Instead of agonising over the utopia we don’t have, use what we do. This site is a decent example, including the comments.
Your comments about Russia too. There is much to commend about Russia and Russians, but we forget their legal system is significantly less trustworthy than ours, and doesn’t have our history of adversarial argument. The Chinese legal system is widely understood as a black hole. Once you are in it you are done for.
Nothing is perfect. We must build upon what we do well.
Thank you in return, and I agree with all that you said.
I have nothing against either China or Russia (in fact I developed such a deep affection for the latter due to reading the great 19th century authors such as Tolstoy and Dostoevsky that I visited it in 2001, the trip of a lifetime) and appreciate the huge contributions they have both made to cultural and other aspects of human history and contemporary life.
At the same time I feel very sorry for the people living there now due to the tyrannical systems that are in place.
My challenges are always designed to be ideological and practical rather than personal, and certainly not sectarian.
I also agree that we should hold onto and build upon the many great advantages brought about by the liberal democratic model instead of always looking for flaws – which simply assists agendas seeking to undermine and ultimately overthrow it.
Our legal system is shot to pieces.
I’m not sure that the conspiracy bit is necessarily accurate. The MSM in particular is/was bleeding readership, so the money had to come from somewhere. Enter stage left Gates and Big Pharma.
You’re not actually ‘conspiring’ if you simply take money for doing what you’re told.
All these references to institutions and to professional positions, along with the engagement in w*nky academic competitiveness, complete with talking out of the side of the mouth, cause those of us who value clear understanding and emotion and intellect and other things that are worth valuing to WANT TO SPIT.
Just say what you’ve got to say. Be a geezer or gal who says what you’re saying. That’s how to earn respect. Take the uniform off.
Since the world drifted off script towards the end of 2019, I’m beginning to wonder whether an unknown force has slowly been pushing back, correcting our course?
That hypothesis would suggest that our lives, upto a point at least, are pre-scripted. Quite why all 650 MP’s appear to have identical scripts is puzzling.
Especially since not all of them can read.
“Anatomy of a Scientific Witch-Burning”: anatomy of a witch-burning masquerading as science, you mean.
What this seems to underline (unsurprisingly) is that, if you don’t follow The Narrative, then The Narrative comes looking for you.
John Hopkins university where the wuhan flu bogus statistics were gathered and clarioned.
We also note.
The concerted and egregious attempt to besmirch HCQ and Ivermectin as (we know) – genuine and effective drugs to counter the chimera. The malice with which the authorities and academia attempted to shutdown all dissentient voices only confirms it, The liars were and still are very frightened of being undone – but uncovered, tried and prosecuted they must be.
Reminder to sign the petition
White members of the Church of England’s leadership must resign over institutional racism
https://www.change.org/p/white-members-of-the-church-of-england-s-leadership-must-resign-over-institutional-racism
There are really only 2 ways that you can address this Covid pandemic- 1) you go with the scientific viewpoint and have their vaccines. 2) you don’t, it is as simple as that.
Irrespective of which way you jump, the only free way that will stop you from getting Covid, is the kill the Coronavirus you are infected with first, because mRNA vaccines don’t do that – that was never their purpose: 3 minutes from preparation to job done!!
Everything else you have read, or heard, is totally irrelevant – how simple is that?
Covid Crusher: Mix one heaped teaspoon of Iodine table salt in a mug of warm clean water, cup a hand and sniff or snort the entire mugful up your nose, spitting out anything which comes down into your mouth. If sore, then you have a virus, so continue morning noon and night, or more often if you want, until the soreness goes away (2-3 minutes) then blow out your nose and flush away, washing your hands afterwards, until when you do my simple cure, you don’t have any soreness at all, when you flush – job done. Also swallow a couple of mouthfuls of salt water and if you have burning in your lungs, salt killing virus and pneumonia, there too.
My simple salt water cure, kills all Coronaviruses and viruses, as soon as you think you have an infection, or while self isolating, before the viruses mutate into the disease in your head and body, for which there is no cure – that is, after you have been out shopping, or mixing with people with potentially, Omicron or Delta viruses, or any other virus.
It washes behind the eyes, the brain bulb, brain stem (Long Covid), The Escutcheon Tubes to the inner ears and the top of the throat which is at a point roughly level with half way up your ears and not where your mouth is and down the back of your throat, when sore.
I have been doing this simple cure for over 28.5 years and I am and others, never sick from viruses and there is no reason why any of you should be either – when your only alternative are those vaccines!!
I do my simple preparation, after I have been out and about, or come into contact with people who have been vaccinated – it has kept me safe – and I hope it keeps me safe for the foreseeable future as Graphene Oxide is in the very air we breathe, outside, as well, but now from the vaccinated!!
Simply put, if the inside of your nose is dry and crusty, you are OK, if your nose is runny, you really need to do a salt water sniffle as quickly as possible and monitor the results, to see if further salt water sniffles are necessary, but later on in that evening – so far – I remain immune from potential Covid infections, doing just this.
No vaccines for me – ever – pass on my free cure and have those pass it on too
The Hydrogel patent US8415325B2 is listed in the Moderna patent, here. Hydrogels are also mentioned in a second Moderna patent, here. Hydrogel is listed in the Johnson & Johnson patent, here. Hydrogels are made from Graphene Oxide. Nobody can deny the evidence that Graphene Oxide is in the shots.
GMO HUMANS
All the Covid-19 “vaccine” patents mention gene deletion. All the patents except one, mention “complimentary DNA” (cDNA). cDNA is a chimeric mRNA cocktail that’s being coded into Human cells using artificial genetic sequences in cross-species genomics.
According to the US Supreme Court ruling in 2013, altering Humans with cDNA makes them patent eligible. The court documents show that cDNA is made using modified bacterium and Supreme Court judges ruled it patent eligible. This means that a plant, animal or Human, could be patented and owned if first genetically modified with cDNA.
Mark Steele summarized it perfectly by stating:
In the US, the Supreme Court has ruled that vaccinated people worldwide are products, patented goods, according to US law, no longer human. Through a modified DNA or RNA vaccination, the mRNA vaccination, the person ceases to be human and becomes the OWNER of the holder of the modified GEN vaccination patent, because they have their own genome and are no longer “human” (without natural people), but “trans-human”, so a category that does not exist in Human Rights. The quality of a natural person and all related rights are lost. This applies worldwide and patents are subject to US law.
Since 2013, all people vaccinated with GM-modified mRNAs are legally trans-human and legally identified as trans-human and do not enjoy any human or other rights of a state, and this applies worldwide, because GEN-POINT technology patents are under US jurisdiction and law, where they were registered.”
See link here: https://ambassadorlove.wordpress.com/2021/12/08/covid-19-patent-horrors/
4) 1,291 Side Effects Pfizer COVID Vaccine Reveals Released Documents March 5, 2022
Link here: https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/fda-releases-pfizer-vaccine-documents/?utm_source=salsa&eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=867161ce-6420-4a7d-8768-345d40947a6c
“Vaccine efficacy is generally reported as a relative risk reduction (RRR). It uses the relative risk (RR)—ie, the ratio of attack rates with and without a vaccine—which is expressed as 1–RR. Ranking by reported efficacy gives relative risk reductions of 95% for the Pfizer–BioNTech, 94% for the Moderna–NIH, 91% for the Gamaleya, 67% for the J&J, and 67% for the AstraZeneca–Oxford vaccines.
“However, RRR should be seen against the background risk of being infected and becoming ill with COVID-19, which varies between populations and over time. Although the RRR considers only participants who could benefit from the vaccine, the absolute risk reduction (ARR), which is the difference between attack rates with and without a vaccine, considers the whole population. ARRs tend to be ignored because they give a much less impressive effect size than RRRs: 1·3% for the AstraZeneca–Oxford, 1·2% for the Moderna–NIH, 1·2% for the J&J, 0·93% for the Gamaleya, and 0·84% for the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccines.”
The Lancet Study
Doctors for COVID Ethics
On The accompanying chart:
Pfizer/BioNtech RRR 95.03% ARR From Jab 0.84%
Moderna (NIH) RRR 94.08% ARR 1.24% From Jab
Janssen RRR 66.62% ARR 1.19% From Jab
Astrazeneca/ Oxford RRR 66.84% ARR 1.28% From Jab
The Lancet
5) show 93% of people who died after being vaccinated were killed by the vaccine
The vaccine was implicated in 93% of the deaths in the patients they examined. What’s troubling is the coroner didn’t implicate the vaccine in any of those deaths. Steve Kirsch
I got an email recently from Mike Yeadon, former VP of Pfizer, who urged me to check out this video. He wrote me this email on 12/24/21:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/fHIT55iM4Zv9/
Steve,