This article was produced by the Brownstone Institute and is reproduced by kind permission.
The claim is now everywhere: we had to lock down because we just didn’t know about this virus. It was all very confusing and we had to play it safe. We had no other option because we just had no clarity about what we were dealing with. The precautionary principle dictated the unprecedented actions.
Actually, the precautionary principle goes both directions. It also dictates that we not enact policies that we know for sure would wreck lives and liberties. They did it anyway, without sufficient knowledge that the measures would achieve any positive good.
We approach the third year and people have forgotten that all the harms of lockdowns were strongly warned about by many voices in many venues. In addition, the virus was much better understood back then and openly discussed. We knew for certain that the panic and fear were being wildly overblown.
Below follows resources assembled by the ‘Robber Baron‘ and many others who write for the Brownstone Institute. These citations from newspapers, magazines, academic journals and interviews, with many respected voices, show that we certainly knew tremendous amounts in the early days. All the warnings and information were readily available to anyone paying attention.
We certainly live in an age of short attention span but many of these signs and warnings came weeks or months before the world locked down and they chronicled the damage as it was happening. Why all this came to be completely ignored remains the burning question.
- 2019: WHO Global Influenza Programme recommends against lockdowns and masks
- Sept 2019: Johns Hopkins pandemic preparedness study recommends against lockdowns
- Jan 24: Doctor warns that mass quarantine won’t work and will devastate society
- Jan 30: Obama health adviser says stop panicking
- Feb 5: Fauci says there’s no asymptomatic spread
- Feb 28: Fauci says this is more akin to flu than something more deadly
- Mar: 81% of Chinese Covid cases are mild
- Mar 1: Sweden: No effective measure to let healthy school children stay at home
- Mar 2: Discussion on how Covid IFR was likely much lower than predicted
- Mar 2: 800 public health scientists warn against lockdowns, quartantines, restrictions
- Mar 3: Article on why masks are impractical
- Mar 3: Berkeley doctor indicates masks are not helpful in preventing Covid
- Mar 4: Doctor says Covid not nearly as deadly as feared
- Mar 4: Your doctor is not panicking and neither should you
- Mar 6: Doctor talking about unnecessary panic over Covid
- Mar 9: Article on how Covid is only really dangerous to the elderly
- Mar 12: Chief medical officer saying people shouldn’t wear masks
- Mar 13: Review found severe mental health problems from prolonged quarantine
- Mar 15: Medical organisation says stopping elective surgeries is unnecessary and dangerous
- Mar 17: Warning of financial crisis, unrest, civil strife, war, and a meltdown of the social fabric
- Mar 19: Article about Covid overaction and its issues
- Mar 25: Data about the health impacts of crushing the economy
- Mar 26: Early evidence of hospitals inaccurately listing Covid as cause of death
- Mar 26: Early data show we’re overreacting to Covid (Diamond Princess)
- Mar 28: Predictions about the harms of lockdowns: Drugs, Suicide, and Crime
- Mar 28: Guardian outlines rise in domestic abuse throughout the world
- Mar 30: Study showing children are not the primary spreader of Covid
- Apr 1: Article saying masks offer little to no advantage outside of hospital settings
- Apr 3: An overview on the dangers of lockdowns
- Apr 4: Warning of the harm in delaying non-Covid medical procedures
- Apr 4: Research showing the seasonality of Coronaviruses
- Apr 6: U.N. warns about domestic violence surge
- Apr 6: Piece on domestic abuse during lockdown
- Apr 7: Study from China finds of 7,324 COVID-19 cases only two transmissions occurred outdoors
- Apr 7: Piece on the mental health cost of the lockdown on kids
- Apr 8: Research showing school lockdowns aren’t helpful and cause great harm
- Apr 13: More confirmation about domestic abuse rising due to lockdowns
- Apr 14: Children are very unlikely to contract Covid
- Apr 15: Barely any transmission from outdoor activities
- Apr 15: Different approaches by countries have little impact on Covid deaths
- Apr 15: Molecular Biologist suggests the cure is worse than the disease
- Apr 16: UN overview about the poverty/death that will come from lockdowns
- Apr 16: CDC mask study concludes that masks don’t work
- Apr 17: Info on how damaging cancelled procedures are
- Apr 20: Oxford professor says cases in U.K. peaked before lockdown
- Apr 22: Potential for 60,000 cancer deaths due to lack of screening/treatment
- Apr 23: The harm lockdowns are having on people with heart conditions
- Apr 24: Data on the mental health toll of lockdowns
- Apr 24: Study showing school closings are the least cost-effective pandemic policy
- Apr 27: The rise of domestic abuse during lockdowns
- Apr 28: Increasing child abuse is a side effect of Covid lockdowns
- Apr 29: Cancer deaths could increase by 20% due to lockdown
- May 1: Indications from Europe that lockdowns are ineffective
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We did know, plenty of us.
Thirty seconds of basic research to find normal mortality rates per 100K per year, plus another thirty seconds of junior school arithmetic, to establish that the numbers of people dying every day (which we were told meant we were in the middle of terrible pandemic) were completely normal for the time of year.
Telling people about my basic checks earned me the title of Selfish Conspiracy Theorist.
And then there was the much more basic fact of our streets being strangely empty of dead bodies.
And then the Diamond Princess.
And,
And,
And.
And here we are.
Why did I think to do these basic checks, I hear some ask? Well, very simple really..
“If,”
I though to myself,
“If it really is as deadly as they are telling me it is, then I must prepare to take some serious steps to protect me and my family. Such steps could be very expensive. So before I take such steps, I should perform some DUE DILIGENCE.”
That’s why.
A conspicuous absence of diseased people was a bit of a give-away. Except to the mindless blobs that make up a majority of our wonderful populations. (Now, the same idiots are being bought off with Govt handouts to pay their energy bills instead of holding the Green Gestapo’s feet to the fire.)
Lockdown reproduced the exact situation a true pandemic would have produced – deliberate to cover up there was no pandemic.
The notion of innocent, ‘well meaning’ or ‘noble’ effort to ‘save lives’ in the face of the unknown, just isn’t credible and obviously a lie.
Coronaviruses are one of the most studied, most prevalent virus families in Humans and animals. ‘Novel’ virus – bovine fæces!
It was premeditated, deliberate, knowing: evil – and the worst of all evil, that dressed up as being for the good.
They want to be forgiven? OK after they’ve served whole life jail time – without possibility of parole.
“They want to be forgiven? OK after they’ve served whole life jail time – without possibility of parole.”
Seconded.
7 people died on the Diamond Princess of Coronavirus.
Or did they?
I’ve managed to find that 4 of the passengers, 2 Japanese, 1 brit and 1 Australian (all elderly) ended up in hospital. No surprise there but it’s highly likely that all were were in the ICU (the australian and British person were).
And what was the treatment? Almost certainly ventilation. That ‘cure’ was, I think most would agree, very dangerous. It’s been reported that the mortality rate in some US hospitals was up to 90%.
So could it actually be the ventilation that killed or hastened their deaths (from other existing illnesses or co morbidities) administered by medical professionals smitten by Covid hysteria and using plenty of confirmation bias to ‘diagnose’ Covid?
Of the other 3 who died I can find no further information but I would not be at all surprised if they ended up in the ICU too.
So could it be possible that NO ONE actually died of Covid 19 on the Diamond Princess?
https://cmmid.github.io/topics/covid19/diamond_cruise_cfr_estimates.html
Very interesting. Thanks.
Let’s not forget that diagnosis of this ‘new’ illness is reliant on a PCR test that could be 0% accurate. It was in 2006 at the Dartmouth Hitchcock medical centre Whooping Cough outbreak. And that was a bacteria, gigantic compared to a virus, and yet the PCR test (out of 1000 tested) found 142 positive for Whooping cough. The difference in that case was that, because it was a bacteria, the results could be confirmed by traditional culture testing. When this was done it was found that not a SINGLE one of the 142 PCR positive tests was correct and there was, and never had been, any Whooping cough outbreak at DH.
For the Covid PCR there is no ‘test of the test’ so we have to simply believe what the ‘experts’ tell us, that PCR testing is 100% effective and to shut the **** up if we are skeptical of that claim.
You’ll notice that at DH the response to the ‘outbreak’ was eerily similar to Covid, lockdowns, isolation, antibiotics, vaccinations, ICU beds put aside for the expected ‘influx’ and people displaying the physical symptoms of the disease (almost certainly psychosomatic) yet there was no evidence of the bacterial infection existing in reality.
So it could well be that finding the IFR of a virus that doesn’t exist could be pointless.
There was a temporary mortuary situated at Southampton Airport. It was never used, but it didn’t stop the local council trying to find somewhere else to put it when the airport finally re-opened. There was no learning as to why it hadn’t been used and why was it still needed.
“You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.” – T. Sowell
This article by Toby ‘Casandra’ Young was published by the Critic magazine on 31st March 2020, it was also published in the Daily Telegraph, the newspaper of record for big C and small c conservatives.
We can therefore be certain that many members of the government were fully aware of the foreseeable consequences of their ruinous actions.
“Has the government overreacted to the Coronavirus Crisis?”
It’s all there: economic costs will be felt in the much longer term.
Quality adjusted life years lost versus ‘lives lost’. Wider healthcare harms from shuttering the NHS and social care harms caused by isolating the elderly.
Infection fatality rate, age stratified data. Co-morbidities.
Societal harms like crime, poverty and suicide.
Immiseration will lead to earlier deaths and shorter lives.
Sweden’s light touch is clearly the right approach.
School closures should be no more than three weeks.
We knew, they knew. One can only surmise that they chose their course of action through cowardice or for nefarious reasons.
https://thecritic.co.uk/has-the-government-over-reacted-to-the-coronavirus-crisis/
or both
Correct
I will argue that many governments ‘over-reacted’ by supposedly following general public opinion. The CCP broadcast dramatic imagery of locked down cities, people falling over, people being dragged out of their homes and others in full protective gear spraying everything, and followed by the message that this ‘virus’ is coming. Now that large populations were primed to be fearful governments of sovereign nations all copied each other and locked down willing populations. The WEF book “C19: – The Great Reset” was published just 3 months after the pandemic was declared and spoke with great authority on how C19 presented an ‘opportunity’ to ‘re-imagine the World’. The book praises the CCP, WHO, UN and the EU and criticises Brexit Britain and Trump US. The WHO kept up the pressure for nations not to open up. I think that sovereign nations have been tricked into sabotaging their societies because the end result will be large populations turning against their governments and institutions. Isn’t that what Marxists have been trying to do for decades?
“To produce a maximum of chaos in the culture of the enemy is our first most important step. Our fruits are grown in chaos, distrust, economic depression and scientific turmoil. At least a weary populace can seek peace only in our offered Communist State, at last only Communism can resolve the problems of the masses.” – L. Beria
March 2020 – The article misses out the most important data, from Diamond Princess cruise ship a unplanned lab experiment which showed beyond doubt the virus was mild for most, particularly the young, there was a high level of natural immunity, deaths occurred Only among the most elderly.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/03/16/diamond-princess-mysteries/
Excuses for lockdowns were nothing but myths and lies.
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Carry on the good work my friends. WELL DONE!
If this truly was a pandemic of any significance, then the public’s principal experience of the pandemic would have been one of suffering severe disease and death. Of course, this happened, to an unfortunate minority, who have all our utmost sympathy. But to date, the official Worldometer count of total Covid deaths worldwide stands at less than 0.1% of the global population over three years. Even if you doubled this – a very generous adjustment for the possibility that large numbers of deaths went unregistered – you still have (obviously) 0.2% of the global populace in 3 years.
Therefore people’s experience of the pandemic was not mainly one of illness, infection and death – rather it was one of being restricted from work, social life, education, religious practices, depression, anxiety, loneliness, and many other side effects of the coordinated over-zealous response.
Had the pandemic itself really have had such disastrous potential as was being sold to us over the airwaves and by those imaginative modellers, people would really have felt “sufficiently threatened” (in the words of SPI-B), and would have voluntarily and willingly stayed at home and waited out such a supposedly calamitous event!
But we didn’t. It was a pandemic we had to be told about. We were afraid because we were told to be afraid.
I ask people, “Would you have known it was a pandemic if you’d ignored the mainstream media and the government?!”
I reckon the strip lights start flickering on in about 30% of folks.
It’s the same with the ridiculous LFTs. I had to do one recently because of a hospital appointment and I tested positive so I officially had Covid for the first time. For me it was like a very bad cold – aches and pains, sore throat, feeling lousy etc. Would I have tested in the absence of a hospital appointment? Most definitely not. I’d have kept away from people, I’d have been off work for a few days and told everyone I had a really bad cold. People just tested and tested almost as a way of warding Covid off at the slightest of symptoms. Virtue signalling was rampant of course as was the hope that a positive test would allow people off work in many cases.
I live in Scotland – I know, don’t judge me – and every day we had wee Jimmy Krankie and her pals delivering messages of doom and death threats via the MSM so the fear was reinforced big time. I’m proud to admit I never saw or heard one of the broadcasts.
My mother lives in Scotland and I have a few friends there – and what has struck me each time I visited is how much more compliant and fearful the Scots were through 2020 and 2021. I think maybe the propaganda machinery in Scotland was more effective and that Sturgeon was more convincing than Johnson and Hancock – and maybe also that the greater socialist tendencies amongst the Scottish population made the people more receptive to being told what to do by the State.
Sturgeon and her allies did so an excellent job of terrifying the Scottish population – a lot are still terrified and would lock-down in a heartbeat. The daily sermons promising war, pestilence and famine due to non-compliance were very slick, so I’m told.
I can’t understand Sturgeon’s appeal but she did take out a super-injunction against the Press and they are/were prevented from criticising aspects of her reign. The MSM got rid of journalists who were less than positive about the message, I suspect because of this super-injunction and any associated legal issues. It was therefore very difficult to gather information outwith the MSM so people could only talk of the propaganda they were fed.
“We were afraid because we were told to be afraid.”
Not here. From the very start, even before I got to the point that I knew this was a scam my attitude to the C1984 was – CGAF!
And I meant it.
Lockdowns might have been appropriate right at the very beginning of the pandemic (as we understood it). This would have entailed restrictions of flights from China and checks at immigration that people weren’t circumventing the rules. This wasn’t done. Indeed, many people vehemently opposed such restrictions — ironically, these were the same individuals that went on to be the most passionate supporters of the in-country lockdowns.
By the time that our leaders decided to introduce lockdowns, enough was known about Covid to support only the locking down of the most vulnerable (the very old and very obese). They locked everyone down anyway (even though the potential risks of this policy were very much known).
By the time that government started to introduce draconian laws, and the police started bothering people that weren’t displaying risk behaviours (eg, going for a walk was never a problem), enough was known about Covid to have a light-touch policy.
“support only the locking down of the most vulnerable (the very old and very obese).”
Seriously? Big fat NO from me on that one I’m afraid. Give free adult citizens accurate information to do with what they will. “Locking down” anyone is just not on.
Lol.
Loving the downvote.
I’m neither old nor obese but who are you or anyone else to tell them how to live their lives?
Correct again
Yep. Lockdowns should only ever be used for prisoners and psychiatric inpatients who are a risk to others. Certainly that was the only context that I’d ever heard that term prior to 2020. Even the WHO, in their 2019 guidelines for mitigating the risk of epidemic and pandemic influenza stated, “Home quarantine of exposed individuals to reduce transmission is not recommended because there is no obvious rationale for this measure, and there would be considerable difficulties in implementing it.”
My sister described lockdown as feeling like being sent to prison for a crime you didn’t commit.
Her mental health really suffered during it. It broke my heart.
Agreed, locking down any free person against their will is a crime that should be dealt with in the strongest of ways.
Bang on tof.
“Lockdowns might have been appropriate right at the very beginning of the pandemic (as we understood it). This would have entailed restrictions of flights from China and checks at immigration that people weren’t circumventing the rules.”
Er well it depends when you’re talking about. Isn’t there evidence that covid was circulating in summer or autumn 2019?
Also whatever happened to the Pandemic Preparedness Plan? Oh that’s right it was jettisoned at the first sign of trouble. Instead we employed the CCP handbook much to Neil Ferguson’s joy.
This is winding back to cock-up theory. A poor interpretation.
THEY didn’t know since all those who felt in their gut something was profoundly wrong and were pointing out the dangers of lockdowns etc etc, were suitably silenced and banned, cheered on by all those who thought they knew better. Who’ve now second thoughts over their tyrannical behaviour and their tail between their legs because they were adamant in their opinion and subsequently feel guilty. It’s not only that they didn’t know, they didn’t know but arrogantly thought they did – either because they were under the mass formation or so ‘the narrative’ could continue unabated.
I hope this serves as a lesson as to what can happen, even when acted upon with the best of intentions (trying to be kind), silencing opinion is fraught with costs – good AND bad. But it would appear they don’t even realise how this happened hence their playing dumb.
Plenty saw this without their crystal balls but were shunned and attacked for saying exactly what these tyrants now admit themselves. I’m generally not the type of person to hold a grudge but.. remember their names until lessons are learnt with genuine apologies.
I will never forget …and I will never forgive them.
The role played by the mainstream media, with its Trusted News Initiative (aka Ministry of Truth), is one of the most abhorrent aspects of what has taken place. Without a media that genuinely and in good faith seeks to hold power to account, a democratic society is doomed.
Don’t be so accommodating to the evil buggers.
Well if it really were a legit pandemic of Armageddon proportions why did we have to endure those ridiculously fake, Monty Python-type videos from China, ( man stands at bus stop with grocery bag. Man topples over and face plants the ground. All around him just carry on regardless. Only in China though! ) and be expected to swallow such amateur street theatre performances? A true pandemic wouldn’t need an epic amount of propaganda to begin with. Pathetic, and people should feel ashamed if they were reeled in by such transparent tripe.
Yep, back in March and certainly April 2020 it was all there for anyone who cared to look. But very few people wanted to. Why?
I recall that in the April I was alone out on the moors here in Deepest Devon and the thought suddenly popped into my head, from nowhere, that this societal nervous breakdown, this collective moral collapse, was going to happen anyway, covid or no covid. Covid was just the vehicle, and if it hadn’t have been covid it would have been something else.
Everything that’s happened since then, and everything that’s been revealed about our political, journalistic and professional classes – and, perhaps most of all, our middle classes – has merely reinforced that view.
It’s as if as a society we’ve forgotten our values, forgotten what it took to get us to where we were, or appeared to be, in the latter part of the twentieth century.
I’m not sure where things go from here. Maybe there will be a simple degeneration into a new Dark Age of brutality and want. Or maybe some profound shock – economical, or maybe the vaccine damage health bills that will be coming due – will provide a societal glimpse into the Abyss and sufficient jolt to pull us out of the torpor.
But things don’t feel too good right now.
And we elected the buffoons who were so pig ignorant as to believe the rantings of Ferguson and Michie
Not me! If there is no independent candidate or centre Right challenger party on the ballot paper it receives a cross through it. Establishment party politics is a s- – t s- – w.
Couldn’t agree with you more. The “we” referred to those who voted for the current government and the opposition parties, all of whom rushed into hysterical mode. When voting them in to run the country they didn’t realise that meant into the ground.
The headline in The Times this morning has Sunak telling us the state can’t do everything for us. Well, who knew? Obviously not the millionaire Chancellor who hosed £ billions into the economy for no good reason other than to cause inflation. Remind me who that idiot was…….
But is that the right way around? I’ve long thought that the likes of Ferguson and Michie were brought to the fore because there were espousing the data and policies which favoured lockdowns – because that is what the elected politicians, prompted by their supra-national masters, wanted to do.
Ferguson and Michie simply read from the scripts provided by Billy boy. Their wages depend on it.
The only people who didn’t know that the lockdowns and all the rest of the ridiculous performatory restrictions were completely unnecessary were the people who didn’t WANT to know it. ie gullible sheeple and lefties in the public sector who stood to gain from it.
The destructive consequences for the economy and millions of lives were obvious from the outset. But they did it anyway. Why? The Great Reset and control of populations who thought they lived in democracies but were proving to be a bit rebellious and not voting for the “approved” policies/people.
Indeed, but it has been ‘brewing’ for a while. See what this lot of hysterics and ideologues think. The last quote is frighteningly not unique
“Government in the future will be based upon . . . a supreme office of the biosphere. The office will comprise specially trained philosopher/ecologists. These guardians will either rule themselves or advise an authoritarian government of policies based on their ecological training and philosophical sensitivities. These guardians will be specially trained for the task.” – David Shearman An IPCC Assessor for 3rd and 4th climate change reports
“The concept of national sovereignty has been immutable, indeed a sacred principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation.” UN’s Commission on Global Governance
” The objective, clearly enunciated by the leaders of UNCED, is to bring about a change in the present system of independent nations. The future is to be World Government with central planning by the United Nations. Fear of environmental crises – whether real or not – is expected to lead to – compliance” Dixy Lee Ray Former liberal Democrat governor of State of Washington, U.S
“A climate change response must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources.” – Emma Brindal – A climate justice campaigner coordinator for Friends of the Earth
” The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can’t let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the US. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are.” Michael Oppenheimer
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill….All these dangers are caused by human intervention….and thus the ‘real enemy, then, is humanity itself….believe humanity requires a common motivation, namely a common adversary in order to realize world government. It does not matter if this common enemy is ‘a real one or….one invented for the purpose.” Club of Rome
” Democracy is not a panacea. It cannot organize everything and it is unaware of its own limits. These facts must be faced squarely. Sacrilegious though this may sound, democracy is no longer well suited for the tasks ahead. The complexity and the technical nature of many of today’s problems do not always allow elected representatives to make competent decisions at the right time.” Club of Rome
” …the resultant ideal sustainable population is hence more than 500 million people but less than one billion.” Club of Rome
I rang British Gas today to book a boiler service and before getting to the booking bit I was asked whether anyone in the family had Covid symptoms and then that all their engineers are tested before visiting anyone. This is a bit like one of Stalin’s speech’s where he gets a standing ovation that goes on for hours because no one dare be the first person to stop clapping.