The New Yorker has published a disturbing article by Emma Green (’The Case For Wearing Masks Forever’) on the political activists in America demanding we lockdown forever in the name of racial justice. They sound like textbook left-wing loons, but we know from bitter experience that these post-Christian, quasi-religious cults have a nasty habit of infecting state bureaucracies, particularly in public health – and that already appears to be happening with respect to this cult. Here how the article begins:
Last December, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that it was shortening the recommended isolation period for those with covid-19 to five days. Getting exposed to the virus no longer meant that people needed to quarantine, either, as long as they were fully vaccinated and wore a mask. It was a big moment, and it occurred just as the Omicron variant was surging. Mindy Thompson Fullilove, a Professor of Urban Policy and Health at the New School, was livid.
Fullilove, who is Black, has spent her career studying epidemics: first aids, then crack, then multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis. She has seen how disease can ravage cities, especially in Black and working-class communities. From the beginning, Fullilove was skeptical of how the federal government handled the coronavirus pandemic. But these new recommendations from the C.D.C., she said, were “flying in the face of the science”. Not long after the announcement, she sent an e-mail to a Listserv called The Spirit of 1848, for progressive public-health practitioners. “Can we have a people’s CDC and give people good advice?” she asked. A flurry of responses came back.
What emerged was the People’s C.D.C.: a ragtag coalition of academics, doctors, activists, and artists who believe that the Government has left them to fend for themselves against COVID-19. As governments, schools, and businesses have scaled back their covid precautions, the members of the People’s C.D.C. have made it their mission to distribute information about the pandemic – what they see as real information, as opposed to what’s circulated by the actual C.D.C. They believe the C.D.C.’s data and guidelines have been distorted by powerful forces with vested interests in keeping people at work and keeping anxieties about the pandemic down. “The public has a right to a sound reading of the data that’s not influenced by politics and big business,” Fullilove said.
No one is in charge of the People’s C.D.C., and no one’s expertise is valued more than anyone else’s. The problems of “the pandemic and its response are rooted in hierarchical organisations”, Mary Jirmanus Saba, a filmmaker and one of the volunteers, told me. Roughly 40 people come to each weekly meeting, but many more are involved. (This spring, after a few of the group’s organisers published a manifesto of sorts in the Guardian, several thousand interested people reached out, Fullilove said.) The group sends out a weekly Weather Report – put together by a team composed, in part, of doctors and epidemiologists – summarising data about transmission rates, new variants, and death rates. They’ve published explainers on testing, masks, and ventilation, among other topics, typically with a call to action: call the White House, call your congressperson, demand free tests and treatment for all. On their Web site, they recently posted a guide for safer gatherings, which recommends that all events be held outdoors with universal, high-grade masking. The organisation has nearly 20,000 followers on Instagram, and it prides itself as a resource for various groups, including people who are immunocompromised and want to find a way to protect themselves and activists who are trying to lobby their local government for more covid restrictions.
Although the group has been scathing in its critiques of the C.D.C., it has received support from respected institutions in the public-health world. It has also received blue-chip funding from organisations such as the Kresge Foundation, which focusses on expanding opportunities in American cities, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, one of the most influential health-focussed philanthropies in America, which gave the group a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. As it happens, Robert Wood Johnson’s C.E.O., Richard E. Besser, is a former Acting Director of the C.D.C.
Fullilove would neither confirm nor deny whether there are any current C.D.C. employees involved with the People’s C.D.C., but, in a recent Webinar, Edgar Rivera Colón, who often serves as the group’s meeting facilitator, claimed that there has at least been some moral support: “We have comrades that are within the C.D.C. who are saying to us, ‘Go ahead with your bad selves.’” The volunteers don’t necessarily agree among their bad selves about what, exactly, their larger goal is – whether their project is a protest, an act of mutual aid, or an exercise in shadow governance. What’s clear is that the People’s C.D.C. interprets evidence about this stage of the pandemic, and what we should do about it, differently than the C.D.C. and the White House. Their goal is to provide the public with an alternative source of information. The organisation is part of a much broader ecosystem of left-wing public-health groups that advocate more persistent mitigations: there are support communities for those experiencing long covid, including Survivor Corps, which has almost two hundred thousand members on Facebook; research groups like the U.K.’s Independent sage, which reviews the British government’s pandemic policies; and nonprofit activist groups such as Public Health Connected, which provides resources to health-care professionals. This constituency is loud on Twitter, and they are influential in the press.
Influential in the press. Just let that sink in.
Green goes on to give a name to this cult – although the one she comes up with could equally apply to climate activists:
The People’s C.D.C. talks about ‘science’ as proof that the members’ position is correct, when in reality they’re making a case for how they wish the world to be, and selecting scientific evidence to build their narrative. It’s a kind of moralistic scientism – a belief that science infallibly validates lefty moral sensibilities.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: The New York Times published a piece on Boxing Day entitled ’The Last Holdouts’ about the poor, benighted souls who still believe we’re in the midst of a dangerous pandemic and insist on wearing industrial grade masks on the rare occasions they come out from under their beds.
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Referring to para 2, a while back it seemed to me that the obsession with antibodies, especially re the product on offer, looked like an advertising tactic, not proper science. More like deliberate avoidance of comprehensive education on the topic.
About a year ago, via this site (or maybe it’s predecessor), I came across organisations that can (at a fee) perform T-cell assessments related to SARS-Cov-2, which I became interested in on the basis that it was well over a year since I had some kind of respiratory attack (traditionally called common colds) around the time that C-19 emerged. Not advertising, but the firm used was based in Abingdon. The result of that was inconclusive, so it was probably caused by one of the hundreds of other viruses. I had a go at this, because it was obvious that it would be pretty unlikely for any relevant antibodies to be on board after 12 months or more.
Looking on the bright side, it has turned out to be educational about the mechanics of our immune system. On the other side, I’d better not say too much!
Incidentally, I endorse John Campbell’s channel; useful and reassuring to a large extent.
Very interesting (as always).
I’m afraid there has been so much lying that my default assumption now is that any covid related output from “official” bodies is not based on incorrect assumptions or innocent mistakes but on expediency, greed, lust for power, arse-covering. So rather than that concluding that “vaccines” were “effective” because antibodies, the conversation was more like “what plausible story can we cook up that sounds like these vaccines are effective”.
Yes indeed. Why choose the spike protein for the covid vaccine :-
https://hillmd.substack.com/p/spike-proteins-choice-by-competing
Yeadon may be being a little over dramatic by describing the vax as bio weapon, but for a more nuanced view :-
https://dpbh.nv.gov/uploadedFiles/dpbhnvgov/content/Boards/BOH/Meetings/2021/SENEFF~1.PDF
I’ve yet to see any scientific rebuttal of the dangers raised in the paper (and the earlier one with Antony M. Kyriakopoulos).
The immune system is incredibly complex and poorly understood, and even worse often misunderstood, especially by the genetic engineers behind mRNA whose only brief nod to the immune system, seems to have been how to avoid their product being destroyed by it.
What could possibly go wrong.
I don’t think Yeadon is being over dramatic at all. These products are referred to as ”countermeasures”, and Katherine Watt elaborates further;
“NUTSHELL: US Government since 1969 has incrementally transferred/hidden the joint DOD+HHS Chemical and Biological Warfare Program (50 USC 32) in the Public Health Service Act (42 USC 201) and Food Drug and Cosmetics Act (21 USC 9), such that federally-funded, federally-directed public health programs and products are actually bioterrorism programs and biological and chemical weapon attacks.
21 USC 360bbb-3, Authorization for medical products for use in emergencies, is one of the key pseudo-laws enabling the bioweapon attacks under the Covid-19 national emergency pretext.
We now know that there is no stopping condition, because use of the products “shall not be considered to constitute a clinical investigation.” If there is no regulated investigation, then there is no stopping role for a regulatory agency to perform, and the products are not medicinal drugs or devices: they are weapons.”
https://bailiwicknews.substack.com/p/stopping-conditions
“I recently watched a documentary, Idiocracy” – thanks for that, this really did make me laugh out loud. I guess this is the film Hancock should have watched rather than the fictional disaster movie Contagion
Yes, a very good question as to why they chose the spike protein for the vaxxes, particularly as there were doctors warning in December 2020/January 2021 that the spike protein was already being seen as the pathogenic part of the virus. I remember reading quite a few items on Children’s Health Defense about that. I also remember reading about a study that had shown the spike protein had caused damage in different organs, without any trace of the virus being found. They can’t claim there was no knowledge, when even I had heard that the spike protein was in itself harmful prior to the vaxx rollout. It could be as simple as Fauci et al. long knowing what the problem was, what part of the virus they felt needed to be eliminated and had started brewing their poison some time around October/November 2019.
Another very good question is why “scientists” across the world decided to fixate on antibodies. It’s one thing saying that the health authorities in the US or the UK decided on a certain course of action and that was that, but why did every other country on earth decide to follow suit? The real pandemic was the “stupid” bug that invaded most people’s brains.
Looking forward to your article on pregnancy and the vaxxes.
I’ve learnt a lot these past couple of years not only about our fake democracy or rNHS not being the envy of the world, or the government who’s job it is to protect this country and its inhabitants but does not, but how wonderful our own bodies are, our immune systems are nothing short of miraculous, provided we take care of it and not bombard it with toxic chemicals. I question everything now! We only have one life and I am not entrusting it to anyone particularly the government or its health agencies.
Idiocracy is the name of a film about the human race regressing to stupidity! Very apt!
‘Regressing’ – I think we are beyond present continuous and have arrived at past perfect.
We have had a pandemic of stupid which started in 1945 when the Nation went nuts and overdosed on the Cradle-to-the-Grave, lots of free stuff elixir doled out by Labour.
Stupid is now endemic, taught in schools, and there is no cure. Only a minority have immunity.
Instructional, well balanced and argued. Thanks.
At the very least, the OAS theory is much too simplistic: Influenza (and common colds) are recurring infections most people survive without even getting seriously sick. This implies that people becoming reinfected with it will have an immune system supposedly imprinted by the previous version of it. Nevertheless, the immune system must be capable of updating itself quickly in the overwhelming majority of cases.
Forgive me, Amanuensis, until I reached “…..and this will lead the cell being targeted by the immune system, resulting in to the usual immune response to cells …….” I was following your explanation beautifully, but then lost the thread. Sorry to be a pain, but there appears to be a typo in the extract above. Could you please amend. Many thanks, and for your excellent articles generally.
“The rapid rise in N-protein antibodies across the population at the start of 2021 might simply reflect the relatively high infection rates seen with the Omicron variants compared with prior variants, although it might also be important that Omicron is rather dissimilar to prior variants and this might reduce the impact of any OAS that is present.”
I think you mean 2022, not 2021.